One of many possible endings

Today's post functions as a tag to the "The Losing Card, I'll Someday Lay" post.  Below is a link to a video of a person on YouTube performing the first prelude from the Well Tempered Clavier, Book 1 by J.S. Bach.

http://youtu.be/NdSlu06gDy8

My experience in music has led me to discover pieces of music that illustrate the final crossing from life into whatever is next.  This prelude came to mind today.  I decided to place the link before the text, so you would hopefully take a listen before you read my thoughts on the piece.  I am convinced there is a transition out of life where the etheral part of you (i.e. your soul/spirit/etc.) moves away from your brain and transforms itself for whatever comes next.  I think that during this transition, there may be some "conscious thought" left within the soul.  Albeit, such thought will never be experienced as we know conscious thought, rather it'll be whatever is recorded by your soul to be its final memories of the time spent on the plane of existence where we all reside.

This prelude describes how that transition feels.  In mortal terms, it would be described as floating.  However, the actual motion wouldn't be random as floating indicates--nor do I see it as direct as flying.  I suppose I see it more as a detachment.  As the body is either worn to its last or is compromised so that it is incompatible with life, the soul simply detaches itself from wherever/however it is one with the body.  That process of release is what Bach captured with his notes in this prelude.  As the piece progresses diatonically and chromatically, I hear that as the encoding of the aforementioned conscious thoughts into whatever memory capacity that our soul has--if its is memory as I know it at all.  I also hear this middle section (development--or fantasia as Wynton Marsalis calls it), as the remaining consciousness of our soul looking down at its former host as its transformation happens.  I know I am anthropomorphizing the concept of a soul, but my descriptions are limited by my strictly human experience.

The final statement of V7 (where the pedal tone C has a major 7th above it in the tenor voice) and subsequent resolution to tonic (with the final 4-3-2-3 in the melody) is the completion of both the transformation and transition.  The V7 is one final look at the end of the mortal experience and the I begins whatever comes next.

Thanatopsis and the Pathetique Sonata: A Complement

Poetry has never been an area of English literature where I have found much refuge.  I do not hate poetry; however, my brain apparently does not function in conjunction with how English is used to create poetry.  As a student, I had grave difficulty interpreting poems.  I can recall being in my AP English class in high school reading works by John Donne, etc., and having no clue what they're about.  The few times I did have an idea it was so far off the traditional realm of interpretation it couldn't be measured.  Shirley Burns was most patient with me.

There was one poem with which I was successful.  William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis.  Now, I will not kid you and say that I have a solid grasp of the entire poem.  The final stanza is where this poem and I connect.  I recall Mrs. Burns requiring us to memorize and recite the stanza.  This is its text.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan which moves

To that mysterious realm where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

At last!  I found a part of a poem that I both understood and loved.  If you're a poetry expert (or average interpreter), it's probably obvious that Bryant is telling the reader to not fear death but allow it to take you without pain and suffering.  For me, realizing its meaning was a big deal.

Fast foward 11-12 years, and I am now a "competent" musician who knows the second movement of Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata for piano.  I have always loved the second movement.  The first and third are unfamiliar to me.  Here is a link to a fine performance of it on YouTube.

I've been listening to this movement for the better part of 72 hours.  I am reminded of that last stanza of Thanatopsis each time I hear it.  The melodic, expressive, and harmonic ideas seem to complement Bryant's text.  Do not ask me how.  I cannot articulate it--it is a feeling.  I'm unsure if I fear death, for I can make arguments to and to not.  I have not had to face my imminent death yet; though, I have experienced opportunities where such a place/time could exist.  Bryant and Beethoven make death seem like it is not the ultimate doom that which often characterizes it.