While there are many, many reasons for this, one part of that elitism is the continued maintenance of the wall between the performers on stage and the people in the audience. In fact, the performers are placed literally on a pedestal, high above the audience, and there is almost never any direct interaction between those on stage and those in the audience. This maintains separation and distance between those who perform the music and those who observe the music. It is almost like the performers are the church priest who is physically, spiritually, and emotionally elevated above the congregants, while the congregants are considered the ignorant masses.

However, recently, I discovered the Quatour Terpsycordes. At the very top of their biography, they state, in bold:

Love this.

I especially love their 2018 album, Piazzolla - Piaf, which includes tracks of Argentinian tango as reimagined by the Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla and a piece written in creative homage to Edith Piaf by bandonéon player William Sabatier. Tango, influenced by African rhythms and European music, was often featured in the brothels of Argentina, and Piaf, the great French chanteuse born to an acrobat and singer/circus performer, was in fact raised in a brothel. (Note: I use the term “brothel” here only because it was how establishments for sex work were referred to historically.)

My particular favorite track is Escualo, which is sparklingly energetic, with complicated cross-rhythms and a sliding, punching melody in the violin and bandonéon, accompanied by rhythmic bass. Kinetic, frenetic, and such a joy.

For those who may be interested, here are a few different renditions available on YouTube: one very exciting version from 1984 by Quinteto Tango Nuevo with Piazzolla himself on the bandonéon, one by Zinnetango, and one by Salut Salon. However, if you are looking for a great string quartet version, the Quatour Terpsycordes recording gives me the biggest thrills and chills.

~L

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This was not my decision. I was an obedient, well-behaved, and overly compliant child who grew up in an authoritarian family who decided that classical music would be an effective way to control children and keep them “out of jail”. It would also be a way for parents to live out their own dreams of musical glory and to claim honors for having raised a perfect genius child.

Now that I am in my forties, with two music degrees and a decades-long professional performing career behind me, I am revisiting my earlier experiences. I realize now that I worked so hard at being a musician because I learned that my only value was to perform perfectly for others.

Where was the joy?

All that being said, somehow there was joy. I used to feel joy. I used to long for that one moment on stage; that one suspended moment when the music was just too beautiful to hold. That moment when I lost my breath and myself and the world disappeared and expanded. That moment when I could sense all the mystery, all the love, and all that is unknowable in our universe.

I haven’t experienced that moment in a long time.

I’m not sure exactly where or when I lost the joy, but what I do know is that I have lost it. Probably it happened little by little. Bit by bit. Pebble by pebble, drop by drop, grain of sand by grain of sand, it dissipated and evaporated and vanished before I even knew what was happening. All I know is that one day, one year, I hit the desert pavement. That hard, solid rock suggests no nourishment of life or joy whatsoever.

But what if there is still hope of reclaiming a spark of life, a drop of joy?

This is the journey that I am beginning. Let’s see where this leads.

~L

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