The Pure Joy Of Luigi Boccherini: Music & Lifestyle
Katie Mead puts off her routine and delights in the joys of Luigi Boccherini
A Love of Art by Katie Mead, WCW Columnist
A few days ago I found myself alone for an entire day – Ivan was out of town, and Aba had graciously offered to pick up Oscar from school. I had a dinner date with them scheduled for about 6:30, but was blissfully unstructured for the rest of day. Maybe that’s when it started…
So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. Searching for jobs, applying for jobs, writing, musing – all the activities of a typical day. Financial worries, feelings of being ‘stuck’, regretting our dubious investment decision, missing Spain – again, a familiar emotional landscape. And yet something was different…
An Inexplicable Lightening
I had had no concrete positive news. Nor had I had any sustaining interaction with any of my friends. Neither was there a particularly choice opportunity waiting in the wings that I knew about, anyway. Yet, inexplicably, I found my spirits rising…
On one of my recent trips to Vancouver I discovered a piece of music that seems to articulate joy. The composer, Luigi Boccherini, was virtually unknown to me. Mistakenly, I thought he was a contemporary of Vivaldi’s – not so: Boccherini lived from 1743 – 1805, a contemporary of Mozart’s and not born until two years after the celebrated ‘Four Seasons’ composer’s death).
A cello virtuoso, greatly affected by the works of Haydn. Affectionately, he was called ‘the wife of Haydn’ by contemporary critics. His music impresses most with its superb lyricism and sense of exquisite harmonic proportion. He was greatly prolific, contributing a huge body of chamber works, with not surprisingly, a particular emphasis on the cello.
Born in Italy, he held various positions as ‘court composer’, including composing for the Infante Luis in Madrid and finishing with a commission from Napoleon’s brother, Lucien, then French Ambassador to Spain. Perhaps this intimacy with the aristocracy is partly what lent Boccherini’s music its sense of courtly elegance and grace.
Pure Joy
From Boccherini’s Quintet No. 6 in G major, the third movement, the Ritirata di Madrid is a series of 12 variations on a theme (in this video the piano part is played by Giovanni Grano on the guitar). Despite the structure of the piece there is no pomposity: it is disarmingly immediate and direct. He begins by stating the theme, a simple lyrical, straight-forward and ultimately ‘singable’ melody, led by the violin and underpinned by the piano.
It has a fresh, optimistic and expectant ‘early morning’ quality about it. I was listening in the car, just cresting a hill overlooking the valley floor as the sun finally appeared over the tops of the mountains and streamed down…the music fit the scenery perfectly.
As the piece progresses, each instrument takes a turn leading: the piano taking light, gentle steps; the strings play together, courtly and elegant and again led by the violin. At one point a descending minor figure occurs – it is as if a shadow has passed in front of the sun. The brief shadow only serves to highlight the brightness that follows. The phrases continue, overlapping and growing ever stronger – there is a baroque sense of terraced dynamics.
The excitement builds until half-way through the piece when all the stringed instruments come in together backed by a driving piano rhythm. Despite this, the joyful ‘chaos’ that ensues stays impeccably within the parameters of grace and elegance. Baroque ornamentation in the violin line explodes as sheer enthusiasm and simple joy. The piece is buoyant, and bursting with laughter. It is triumphant, but in the way of children : innocent belly-laughs; in love with life. I hear this piece and think of Oscar:the way he approaches most days and all experiences with fearlessness, an unshakable belief in good things to come and a simple faith in the beauty of being alive.
Cyclic Beauty
After its climax, like a musical palindrome the piece quietens. The rhythms smooth out and although the patterns remain the same, the phrases played by the strings lengthen and a sense of contentment emerges – a different shade of joy, quieter and more contemplative. We’re back to rippling notes from the piano and the twining call and response of the strings. In other words, the sun is fully up and there is a sense of ease, warmth and contentment.
Beautiful. Triumphant. Definitely the way I want to lead my life and have, at times, been forgetting to do.
I know joy – I simply have to remember. My immediate path may not be smooth, even now, but there is always beauty.
