SCHUBERT SERENITY

“And you would accept the seasons of your heart just as you have always accepted that seasons pass over your fields and you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.” - Kahlil Gibran

A quiet, relaxing day today with household shopping in the morning and then some chores at home. A brief lunch, and some relaxation. Out to dinner tonight and thoughts of serenity. Feelings of gratefulness for this ability to enjoy simple pleasures amidst a world where not much can be taken for granted any more. How many people around the world could say they had a day of serenity today? I doubt if it were the majority…

This post is part of the Saturday Sareenity meme.

A beautiful piece by Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828) tonight. His Notturno D 897 played by the Rubinstein Trio (A.Wesolowska, A. Kostecki, S.Firlej). This substantial but relatively neglected piece has affinities with the slow movements of both the String Quintet in C major D. 956, and the Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat, D 898. Completed in the Autumn of 1827, it is possibly a rejected slow movement of the Piano Trio No. 1. It has the sublime slowness of the string quintet movement, together with a similar use of pizzicato at various points, and with the same paradoxical effect: the pizzicato decorations of the main tune seem to enhance the underlying tragedy of the music, rather than lightening it. The main thematic idea has a characteristic common to a number of Schubert’s most celebrated melodic ideas, including the second subjects of both the C major string quintet’s first movement and the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony No. 8's first movement: that of ‘not going anywhere’, pitch-wise, but seeming to revolve round a single note (the third note of the scale in this case).