02-17-2010, 03:05 PM
'Being young, and dipt in folly,
I fell in love with melancholy'
The words of EA Poe, and I claimed them while still in grade school. Not depression, not mind- and spirit-numbing sadness and hopelessness, just melancholy. A wistfulness, a longing, a yearning for something just beyond my vision, something gone but not quite forgotten, a misty, grey picture in my mind of an empty crumbling castle, a feeling of forlorn and loss. A love of clouds and wind and thunderstorms, that delicious shiver with the first rumble and raindrops.
And the music. I heard Beethoven in my head long before my ears heard him on the airwaves and hi-fi. The first movement of Moonlight Sonata was my inner lullaby when I was a baby.
Oh, that minor 3rd. How I love aeolian mode.
And the Moody Blues singing 'Melancholy Man' back in the 70s.
'When all the stars are falling down, into the sea and on the ground,
And angry voices carry on the wind;
A beam of light will fill your head and you'll remember what's been said
By all the good men this world's ever known.
And we're going to keep growing, wait and see.'
But as I went along in this incarnation I learned to love the Picardy third, that change of just one semitone in the final tonic chord of a composition, that sound that brought all the sorrow and sadness to a positive resolution of hope and joy.
That's why we're here, my fellow wanderers. For the Picardy third of this 3D symphony that has been played in a minor key for so long.
I fell in love with melancholy'
The words of EA Poe, and I claimed them while still in grade school. Not depression, not mind- and spirit-numbing sadness and hopelessness, just melancholy. A wistfulness, a longing, a yearning for something just beyond my vision, something gone but not quite forgotten, a misty, grey picture in my mind of an empty crumbling castle, a feeling of forlorn and loss. A love of clouds and wind and thunderstorms, that delicious shiver with the first rumble and raindrops.
And the music. I heard Beethoven in my head long before my ears heard him on the airwaves and hi-fi. The first movement of Moonlight Sonata was my inner lullaby when I was a baby.
Oh, that minor 3rd. How I love aeolian mode.
And the Moody Blues singing 'Melancholy Man' back in the 70s.
'When all the stars are falling down, into the sea and on the ground,
And angry voices carry on the wind;
A beam of light will fill your head and you'll remember what's been said
By all the good men this world's ever known.
And we're going to keep growing, wait and see.'
But as I went along in this incarnation I learned to love the Picardy third, that change of just one semitone in the final tonic chord of a composition, that sound that brought all the sorrow and sadness to a positive resolution of hope and joy.
That's why we're here, my fellow wanderers. For the Picardy third of this 3D symphony that has been played in a minor key for so long.