Un-Heard Melodies

   Leap Year Day, February 29, 2016 --
This day has been one of musical reflections for me.

    Among other things, it is the day that our beloved Lynda Hasseler and members of her Capitial University choirs are singing at Carnegie Hall.

   It is the time when Gayle Walker and her Otterbein Concert Choir students are embarking on their Spring Break tour to Boston.

   It is Rossini’s birthday, as our friends at WOSU Classical radio  reminded me by broadcasting some of his best ditties.

    The most profound musical reflections that stick with me are from watching the movie “Copying Beethoven” instead of tuning into the Oscars on Sunday night. 

   “Copying Beethoven” is a fictionalized tale of the last year of Beethoven’s life.   What haunted me about it was the intense, passionate moments when Beethoven was hearing "what God wanted him to hear", though he was deaf.  He exhorts those around him to hear, see and create what would please God. 

    It’s not a great movie.  It deserves its bad reviews.   I cannot imagine that a pretty, refined, well-educated young woman would have been alone with Beethoven in his rooms. That she and Beethoven would have any kind of intimate relationship -- even a non-sexual one -- is just not credible to me.   

     In his “Above The Mean” blog today, my friend, Carl Japikse, quoted from the poet John Keats’ “Ode On A Grecian Urn”:

        ”Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:”

 Japikse suggests that masters such as Keats and Beethoven were attuned to something that cannot be heard or experienced on the physical plane – something of Spirit.

  One of the pieces Beethoven composed when he was deaf was his Ninth Symphony.  The music of the Ninth dominates the movie.  It's the choral piece that contains the beautiful and popular “Ode To Joy”. 

   Seeing this movie and hearing Beethoven's glorious music again delivers a great reminder that there is no truth or beauty in the cacophony of political and social wrangling that dominates the media and pollutes our culture.
  What would happen if we put aside cell phones and turned off the media for a little while-- maybe just for 15 minutes every day?  For just fifteen minutes every day why don't we try reading good poetry and listening to the music of masters such as Beethoven as we think about and seek understanding about what God wants?