The Van Gogh Equation

What I have learned, or remembered and relearned, is that if I put my work out there, in front of everyone, it has a chance to be remembered itself. Even if no one reads it today, someone might discover it tomorrow. Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime, but that did not stop him from painting. And today he is thought to be one of the best, if not the best, artists of all time.

Jan van Gilse – my newest hero – saw his countrymen resist his music as too Germanic, then saw the Nazis ban all performance and try to destroy his manuscripts. Nicholai Miazkovsky composed 27 symphonies, most performed briefly in his homeland Russia, then, like Haydn, chucked aside awaiting the next. They had no staying power, even in Russia, and were ignored abroad == but now we can hear all 27 if we want.

Then there’s Mahler. Always there is Mahler, who rarely got rto hear one of his elaborate and beauty-filled symphonies performed but knew he would be remembered for them someday. Today we consider him one of the greats.

Thousands upon thousands of works of art go unrecognized or enjoyed only by our closest friends and families. I thank you for that, by the way. But fame or value, even after I am dead, yet may come. It’s like the Lotto: you can’t win if you don’t play. You won’t gain an audience if you hide your work. Or, to paraphrase that famous line from “Field of Dreams”: if I write it, they will read.

In that spirit I must be less shy, less anxious, less afraid. Rejections aside, failure would be failure to try.

Back to Writing About Writing

In 1975 I completed a biography of the man whom I considered to be one of the greatest musical geniuses of the Twentieth Century, Dmitri Shostakovich. The book was more than a biography. It was a fun trip through the world of modern symphonic music, written for laymen, like myself.

Soon after I finished the book Shostakovich died. I sold the manuscript, but to fit into the publisher’s series format, the book had to be changed. And changed. The fun went out. What was left was a valuable (of course) biography and musical discussion of Shostakovich’s symphonies, critically well received.

Between sale and publication, four years elapsed. Shostakovich’s own Memoirs came out at the same time as my book, adding vistas to my understanding of Shostakovich the Man and the Artist. After a lifetime of devotion to this man and his music, now I make of him a character in a novel. A ghost, if you will, who wrote music, although it is the ghosts who spoke to him that you will meet.

My First Book Leads to My Next

In 1975 I completed a biography of the man whom I considered to be one of the greatest musical geniuses of the Twentieth Century, Dmitri Shostakovich. The book was more than a biography. It was a fun trip through the world of modern symphonic music, written for laymen, like myself.

Soon after I finished the book Shostakovich died. I sold the manuscript, but to fit into the publisher’s series format, the book had to be changed. And changed. The fun went out. What was left was a valuable (of course) biography and musical discussion of Shostakovich’s symphonies, critically well received.

Between sale and publication, four years elapsed. Shostakovich’s own Memoirs came out at the same time as my book, adding vistas to my understanding g of Shostakovich the Man and the Artist. After a lifetime of devotion to this man and his music, now I make of him a character in a novel. A ghost, if you will, who wrote music, although it is the ghosts who spoke to him that you will meet.

Ghost Music - The Plot

Two men meet in a park, in Dresden, in 1960. One is the conscience of a brutalized generation playing back fear and hope in equal measures. The other is a warrior whose life and deeds condemned that generation to its hell. One is Russian, the other German. For that one brief moment, they reach, remembering the tragedy of Dresden a mere fifteen years before, that seemed a mere microcosm of the tragedy of Man at War.

Ghosts sing to them, many shared between them, yet until this moment they had never met, and, alive, they would never meet again.

Odes to Joy

One of my characters in my new project is going to say the following: Does music have to say anything more than, “I’m glad to be alive”? Or, more simply, Let’s dance!

I struggled for a long time to understand just that aspect of music. So much is tied to a program, or lyrics, or a subtitle, or even the moment in the life of the composer during which the piece was written. We look for meaning. Sometimes there is none, and in music that is just fine..

Music is the only medium I know that does not have to be about anything and still reach you. Even poetry, which supposedly is about the words and their sounds and how they interplay, has to have a subject or object to draw us in. And abstract art is the exception that proves the rule. You look at a Pollack and somehow it moves you, or possibly nauseates you, but it does something –- without reference points. That would not work for a Rembrandt or Vermeer; trust me on this.

Poetry, and anything using words, creates imahes to follow. Music, when it is not anout anything specific, allows us to create our own images from the influence of the notes. It has been said the observer brings his or her preconceptions and expectations to the table when viewing a work of art. But the art always gives you directions, hints. In music those hints are more emotional, more visceral, and the observer’s reaction more complete.

Take for example the coda at the end of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. After all that has preceded it – a funeral waltz, a crushing march, a playful contest and a declaration of Self – this last outburst explodes in the joy of being alive, against any logic. It says everything words cannot.

A song without words, a symphony without subtitles, a joyous celebration or a desperately sad sound, all touch us profoundly, often to tears. And I have to ask: does music have to say something to say something?