"violoncello" poems
It is so measured that rising arpeggio, only to fall and rise again in quicker values, through the dominant seventh to the heartache moment of that minor ninth, a very apogee of dissonance. Then it goes higher still to the fifth, holding to that Phrygian harmony before returning to the tonic minor and a measured fall in the bass. This is a deliberate descent to the sub-mediant, and Bach’s touch of magic, the equivalence with the dominant minor ninth. But then he gives us hope: an extended and joyful play through sequences that rise and fall within each bar, to rest finally on the mediant’s echo of that opening, that measured rise and the quickening fall. We have hardly smiled with relief when Bach pulls us back into the insecurity of the dominant of the subdominant, that V of IV acting like a bridge to a long, long discourse in the dominant, a pedal E holding firmly to itself whilst rising arpeggios and falling decorations and sequences pull and pull through innocently related keys. Longer and longer play the rising passages until short motives of imitation interrupt, treble to bass, tenor to alto, until: a first inversion arpeggio of the dominant seventh measures out the opening rhythm. This happens twice in short succession, as though holding the progress of the music to account. A questioning perhaps before a four-fold sequence asserts the dominant and a chorded caesura. There is a pregnant, though faintly resonant silence as Bach spins the dice of tonality and chooses the subdominant to bring the music towards a waiting Allemande. The music moves through a play of subdominant to dominant, minor to major, the mix of flattened fifth and flattened ninth. It is those intervals that determine Bach as the father of ambiguity in the 20C school of jazz harmony, Arpeggio then a falling scale, and repeat and repeat again, but moving ever higher by sequence. At last five chords – merely a shorthand for closure via the expectation of a right display of the performer’s improvisatory prowess. They prepare us reverently for the tonic minor before the stately Allemande leads the music into the elegant steps of its walking dance.
Jan 5, 2013
Jan 5, 2013 at 3:13 AM UTC
I like you in the morning,
your eyelids still heavy with the innocence
Of sleep
The sunrise still soft on our skin s
I like you at noon, in the heat of day
Pronouncing German, invoking laughter.
What I would give to stand with you,
The sun warm on our faces, our hearts
In some lost and faraway place
If only to quench our Siamese wanderlust
I like you in the evening,
Your strong arms around me
Watching HGTV;
Or when you play me sweet melodies,
(that violoncello will steal my heart)
And yet,
I like you best at night
when you dream aloud-
Hands searching-
Breath quickening-
Skin touching-
Words failing-
One becoming-
You are most wonderful at your most vulnerable,
Most pure
Let’s discover the world together-
Tomorrow?
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 9:35 AM UTC
Over the hill which was dusty and complete lay perfectly nothing.
It stood and it stood with its big cow lips.
Reluctant to say anything in a disappointing display with some of us elderly and expecting entertainment and come all this way I listened for exactly ten minutes, aggressively.
This entire situation had been recommended to me at a party at which she was drunk.
The hill at night was reluctant to purse its dust and listen aggressively to plaintive violoncello.
The spider-lady in the living room was reluctant to sleep with the shortish man but liked the way he spoke.
For exactly ten minutes no one was sure if various members of this post-rock band could be pinned down as anarchists.
So everything stood with its dusty cow lips, disappointed.
Stood and stood like nice white kids from Canada in a cruddy hall full of apparently random images, begging to be taken seriously.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 8:14 AM UTC