A Composer’s Dealings With Grief

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I dedicate this post to my blogging friend Bernadette on Haddon Musings who hosts the blogging event “Senior Salon”. The Senior Salon has been put on halt as Bernadette lost her son very recently.

I know that Bernadette shares my love for classical music. The trio I mention here can be heard as a way to handle grief. This music describes the phases of grief better than words and you can breathe in the music into your many layers of feelings.

 

Summer-time is Music Festival time. In Denmark, we have a lot of festivals on Classical music placed in venues like old beautiful manor houses or churches. For the sixth time, my husband and I went to the Hindsgavl’s Music Festival on Funen, the island where Hans Christian Andersen was born.

Trio con Brio is a professional Trio consisting of Jens Elvekjaer on piano, his wife the Korean Soo-Kyung Hong on cello and her sister Soo-Kyung Hong on violin. The trio has played together for 18 years, and they play at the most excellent venues in the world.

At the festival, both artists and listeners eat together in the former stable. As we were going to eat dinner, I saw the two sisters and then the pianist running through the big hall chasing two small girls who found it funny to run away from their meal. This took place two hours before their performance. I really liked to see that children are children and very lively too.

Trio con Brio 2013 fra deres Facebook side

With courtesy to Trio con Brio from their Facebook-page

 

I believe it’s tough for the musicians to play such an emotional piece on losing a child when you have small children yourselves.

Should anybody be interested in experiencing Trio Con Brio, have their annual Chamber Music Festival in August at another place on the same island in a town called Kerteminde.

 

The artists like to come to the festival because of the beautiful surroundings, the excellent food and the relaxed atmosphere. We all get the meals in the same big former barn.

The audience is disciplined to be quiet during the concerts. The chamber music requires full concentration from the performers as they are so few performing and mostly without a conductor.

The music I would like to tell you about is by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884). His parents had been through a tremendous amount of grief. His ten older siblings had all died before they reached the age of two.

From early childhood, Smetana showed extraordinary talent on piano and later studied law and was politically engaged as a politician in the war of independence from Austrian-Hungarian empire.

Tragedies

He had to bury his wife and three out of four daughters.

The trio in G-Minor, opus 15 from 1855 was created as a way of coping with the significant loss of his little four-year-old daughter Bedřiška. She would sing different Bohemian songs in tune before she died of scarlet fever. The music is explained in more depth by a Peter Larsen from Melbourne.

We had the music explained before the performance that it was written as a self-therapeutic way of managing his grief of losing his eldest daughter Bedřiška.

The violin opens up the first movement in a lamenting solo interchanged by a beautiful second theme that was the daughter’s favourite song which she was able to sing. It is so real what you go through in sorrow. You feel the overwhelming pain of the loss and then remember the light moments where the child is singing her song and seems vividly alive.

You can hear the movements here at The Zagreb Festival.

The second movement is both unsettled and has sudden changes with happy memories.

The third movement opens with galloping rhythms which reminds us of Schubert’s song (in German “lied”) “Der Erlkönig”. That “lied” tells about a horse-riding father with his child who desperately tries to avoid death, the “Erlkönig”. Excellently explained in the music blog “Ear sense.” 

The last movement leaves you in a light mood after a funeral march through death was inevitable.

In spite of the painful loss, Bedřich Smetana points out that life is stronger than death.

I am sure that this music can be used as a therapy in times of significant losses.

Excerpt from the music blogger “Ear Sense”:

 Smetana’s lone piano trio is a milestone of romanticism. It predates and significantly presages music that would soon come from the likes of Brahms and Dvořák among others.

Glimpses from Hindsgavl Castle

The old part used as a venue for celebrations and gatherings and concerts. It’s placed in a vast park with a view over the water. Hans Christian Andersen was there too in his time.

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The other part of the castle is used as a restaurant, concert venue in a former barn and two old stables as hotel rooms and lobbies.

The former stable building restored as hotel rooms in a rustic modern design
From the lobby in the former stables
The rustic brick walls of the former stables, hotel rooms
Looking out at the inner yard from a hotel window in the former stable
The new part of the hotel in the former stables

Not only the music – the breakfast makes you want to come back to

Different kind of homemade jam at Hindsgavl
Fruit and yogurt at Hindsgavl
Fruit and yogurt and müsli at Hindsgavl
Fruit and bread and cakes at Hindsgavl

 

Categories: Classical music, Culture, History

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23 Comments »

  2. A lovely post, Maria, and a wonderful thought to dedicate it to Bernadette. I noticed the other day that she had been active on Facebook, which I’m hoping is a good sign that she is keeping as well as possible.

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    • Good to know about Bernadette Clive and thank you for your kind remark. If she goes to her blog she will have a notification that I have linked her blog to my post. Some music can have a therapeutic effect so that you can stand the grief

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      • Once I had a very difficult situation with my bosses two years before I retired. I was so hurt I couldn’t speak, be with anybody or eat. But a certain piece of music was put on repeatedly. That was the only thing I could do just sing or listen to keep the ugly feeling away until I came past it. It was like the world stood still

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      • Thank you yes. Now I know that I just went through it and they couldn’t do me any real harm. At the time it was like going through death. A few years after both bosses were replaced

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  5. What a beautiful piece – the music, of course, but your writing too …profoundly sensitive and deeply moving. What is also intensely moving is that you should have dedicated this piece to Bernadette, a dear, sweet soul who, herself is in the depths of grieving her lost child. Nothing can make that better but the kindness of friends and strangers seep through the veil of sadness to touch the heart, I am certain.

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      • I think so often people don’t know what to do when tragedy strikes and in taking time to consider, they think they have lost the moment. My own experience taught me that there is never a right nor a wrong time and that what you say is exactly right … it is just lovely to be thought of and reached out to. It was my pleasure to comment on such a lovely way of reaching out to Bernadette 💛

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  6. What a kind and sensitive gesture to dedicate this post to Bernadette. I believe in the power of music. There were countless moments I couldn’t find words for my sorrow, I listened to Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique over and over again and let the music cry for me. I’ll listen to the music you include in your post.

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