Isle of the Dead

by compound complex 15 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  compound complex

  Greetings, I quit!

  Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for responding.

  CoCo
• 

  Edington

  I love Rachmaninov's music & 'The Isle of the Dead' is a favorite of mine, in fact I think I'm in the mood to put on the CD player now!

  Ed
• 

  compound complex

  Welcome to the forum, Ed!

  Rachmaninov stated that he had tried to "get into" the new music but could not. Good for him and us!

  Enjoy the lapping of the waves against the boat in 5/8 meter ...

  Thanks for chiming in.

  CoCo
• 

  compound complex

  by Chia Han-Leon

  "I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made intensive efforts to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me."

  Here was a composer who lived from the very end of the Romantic era through the core modernist period, a stretch of human history which endured tremendous change and tumult. The tone poem The Isle of the Dead was inspired by Arnold Böcklin's 1886 painting of the same name, which Rachmaninov saw in Paris in 1907. Written in 1909, it is a relatively early work, but already contained something of the dark Russian spirit which still tints Rachmaninov's last major orchestral work, the Symphonic Dances of 1940.

  The island ... was as solemn as a pyramid. It was a hidden nook for the dead that wished to lie undisturbed. Böcklin expressed this rest of the dead in a place remote and forgotten by the word. The sea is still, there is no cry of bird, no fluttering, no voice.

  The boat approaching the little harbour of the island with its towering blue-green cypresses and awful rocks is rowed noiselessly by the ferryman. The white and quiet figure near the coffin - is it some mourner or is it a priest?

  The 21-minute Isle of the Dead begins with the lowest range of the orchestra tolling ominously, like a slow funeral march, reminiscent of the opening of the Second Piano Concerto. As the strings rise to the surface, the gently lapping 5/8 rhythm (the waves, the rocking boat) breathes with determination, as relentless as Holst's Mars, as dark as Sibelius' Tapiola.

  In effect a long crescendo, the boat approaches the Isle, passing through the mists that separate earthly life and the realm of the dead. Then comes the yearning desire for the rest that death grants, a section of sweet melodic outpourings. After the climax of violent pounding chords, the strings begin [15'56"] to eerily chant the Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath" from the Latin Mass) motif, made all the more creepy by scoring it tremolo. Suddenly - bliss in the form of woodwind, resignation of a wind chorale. His task completed, the grim boatman of death begins his departure. The undulating waves return, slowly, ever so slowly, sending us away from the Isle.

  http://inkpot.com/classical/rachisledance.html
• 

  compound complex

  Reprise of A Sea of Broken Dreams:

  Rudderless in a sea of broken dreams,
  My declining state of mind entwines with a
  Tentacled sargasso that pulls me downward,
  Downward into black, cold, unrelinquishing water.

  I love the land and all her beauties but do fear the sea
  And have never gladly nor willingly ventured upon a bark
  In search of adventure high or low that would risk my terra-
  Bound life by the perils oft regaled by les ultimes survivants. Adrift in my thoughts, I roam the scary shores of what this craven
  Man fears the most, the uncharted waters of the soul and spirit that
  Will surely swallow down whole this flailing, gasping wretch until every
  Sign of life, hope and vitality is extinguished in death's throes victorious.
• 

  compound complex

  Rewrite of A Sea of Broken Dreams:

  I am adrift, without rudder,
  in a sea of broken dreams.

  My mind descends into a tangle
  of tentacled seaweed that pulls

  My hapless frame further downward,
  downward into a black and sinister
  
  Realm that has held ever fast its jailed
  without pity, no hope their escaping.

  I do love the land and all her beauties,
  but have always feared the sea, having

  Never gladly nor willingly ventured forth in
  search of adventure at peril to life and limb.

  Adrift in my thoughts, I roam the dread shores of
  what this coward fears the most: those uncharted

  Waters of soul and spirit; they surely will swallow down
  whole this flailing, gasping wretch until every sign of life,

  Hope, vitality is extinguished in death's throes . . . victorious. . . .