Scenes from Childhood

Daniel and Isabel dive into Schumann's Kinderszenen ("Scenes from Childhood") and more!

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:19

First movement of Robert Schumann's Kinder Zanin, Scenes from Childhood. Um, really beautiful way to start the set with this kind of wonder and curiosity and openness. It's like a childlike sense of wonder. You know? Just write away a bunch of simple questions.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

This is the first piece of the set called Scenes from Childhood.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Scenes from Childhood. So this one is um of foreign lands and people. Um translated as forever.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

Do you think he means when he says foreign, is it because to a child everything is foreign?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

It's like an imaginary exoticism.

SPEAKER_03 1:00

Or is he like just have had a super rich, privileged childhood, and it's like, well, of course you're gonna be going to foreign countries. And it's very disorienting as a child.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Very odd. There's gonna be a lot of dissonant harmonies.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

Um, this almost sounds like um uh I could imagine like just a baby's first glimpses of the world. Uh yeah, what makes it so innocent sounding? I think partly it's the it's the register of the melody. It kind of sounds like a toy piano almost.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yeah. Yeah, because if you put it down here.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

That's gorgeous, but it's different. It's a little more noble.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Yeah, yeah. But this is the perfect register for that toy piano kind of thing. Even if, even if ultimately a toy piano has like this kind of effect up here. Right. But somehow it might be that we have we have multiple little parts going on that sound like toys. It's like you got the melody up top, you have this accompaniment figure happening in the middle, these triplets that are kind of chugging along in their own role, and then the bass. And you put them all together, those individual parts. And they form like a really simple machine. Whoops sorry. I mean it's still very it's very expressive and very beautiful, and maybe I over-romanticize it actually when I'm playing it sometimes because you want to bring out that naivete when you're playing it. Just as it's just simple.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Well, the A section is I feel like the B section we get a little more emotion, which we haven't played yet. But the A section, I for sure if I were playing it, I'm not a pianist, so I can't play it. But I would play it very simply. Naive. This is just a a new life.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Just everything is like Yeah, and uh even just the structure of the actual phrase is very simple. It's actually like classical. You know, someone like Mozart would write it this way, where we have two bars, this is a really common way to compose is just two bars, and then another two bars that are very similar, in this case identical, and then four bars to finish the phrase. And he even connects those last four bars with a slur, so there's no mistaking that they're connected, those last four bars. So it's like two plus two plus four is a very symmetrical uh way to have a phrase that everyone can understand. It's not odd, it's not immediately developing into something crazy and chaotic and adult. It's just being. Let me play the beginning one more time. I'll try to play it as innocently as you like. As I like it. Does that sound right? Uh and then I'll move on to the second section and just wrap it up because it's a really short piece. It's only one, it's a one pager. These aren't quarter notes, these are really carefully notated eighth notes with eighth rests. So there's like a lift that the middle section doesn't have. The bass in the middle section has these long quarter notes that are connected in the bass. It's almost more melodic.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

Which is evidence that it's maybe a little like a less naive section.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Less naive, richer, deeper. There's something going on that's darker, maybe. And also the minor key, you know, it helps. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

No, I was just gonna say that even so, the way it's written, but all these sections could just loop around and around into each other endlessly. Like da da da da da. It just always goes back.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Right. And and almost like it's not that it's not even that big of a deal that it went back. I mean, he writes this ritardando and this formato, like, hey, you want to take time. You want to make sure. Like, it's kind of like, oh my god, we reached this, and then where are we again? Oh yeah, I'm just back in my room.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Like, oh yeah, these are just toys I'm playing with. You know, kind of like you allow your imagination to go to some dark places and rich places and adventurous places, but in the end. It's really just in it in your head, it's a sense of wonder. You know, you're not in real danger here.

SPEAKER_03 7:36

That is I was trying to think of the word earlier, the this sort of feeling of being a new human. But it's a sense of wonder that comes along with being inexpert for things being foreign. And they they can be scary, but they can also be hopefully more often giving you the sense of wonder and curiosity.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yeah. And we so uh what's so beautiful about Schumann as an adult composing is that he doesn't he never lost that.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

And and that's something that we naturally can lose because of our environment, because of our growing accumulated knowledge of things. We get stuck in our ways, and now we have look, I mean, podcasts, for example. It's like everybody's got their own channel that they want to tune into that is like, oh, I like this, so I'm gonna s I'm gonna listen to this, or I'm gonna watch this real, or I'm gonna tune into this channel because it's already affirming something that I like. And then I know this about myself, like I can get stuck in that. I can repeatedly listening, oh, like, oh man, I really like this specific um this specific thing, and I'm just gonna get locked into that, and then it's very hard to break free of that um and have that kind of sense of curiosity and wonder that we started with.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

It's like I see what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 9:08

You're saying as we get older, we get more I'm I'm gonna easily contradict this in a second, but as we get older, you're more and more set in your ways, and you don't really want to explore or grow. You want to we lose that wonder and naivete. Well, for a lot of reasons. A lot of kids are like super set in their ways too, and picky eaters. And so I feel like as I say that, I know a lot of kids who like aren't that curious.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Yeah, that's true. But they're too old.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

Yeah, I guess like under what age two, most kids are pretty curious, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Super curious. I mean, they have no choice. You have no choice when you're thrust into a foreign world to try to f try to learn. You know what I mean? And I th I do think it's more important than ever now that we're that we try to challenge ourselves to think differently and be open to new experiences as the algorithms are hitting us in a way that is like locking us into a certain way of thinking. Yeah, we don't have to get in down that rapid.

SPEAKER_03 10:13

I do have a thought on this because I I've been thinking a similar thing of it's not just a sign of our aging, but I also feel like a sign of the times. I sense less that people are looking to be moved and inspired and in awe and more just tell me how everything works so I can know how it works too. And it's almost a sign of like super capitalistic tendencies, because it's it's like, well, how let me figure out how to do that. Like, because there's so many podcasts now on like process and how to do things, and we've we've sort of lost our it's not that we've lost our curiosity, people still want to learn how to learn about things, but it's more f for like so that I can get ahead rather than so that I can marvel even more at the process and the world. Right. And I don't have any actual evidence to back that up. That's just a feeling I get. Yeah. Like we're it's almost like we don't want to be impressed anymore. We just want to see what we like and know as much about it as we can and know how to do it and how we can recreate it and monetize.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

It's a really dark view of the world that I hope isn't really true, but well, I this is like partly why I do love coming back to classical music and people like Schumann because bring it back to Schumann. Get me out of here. No, no, oh my god, I started it. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_03 11:40

And that's what I think about podcasts. Why would I say that? No, I loved it. That's good. We're not cutting any of this.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Okay, good. Um Schumann had that clearly had that wonder. I mean, Clara, his wife, mentions somewhere that he seems like a child to him, to her, to her. So and and I don't think she meant that as an insult. You know, I think he and he think he probably would have loved that, that just like there is a way that he views the world that is full of questioning and full of curiosity. And you hear it, you hear it in his pieces. You hear it at the beginnings and ends of his pieces, especially. I mean this it starts very unassuming. I mean, this is like an incomplete chord, even it doesn't even have a fifth in it, and it's already just gonna start leaping up.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

When you say a f doesn't have a fifth, what would it sound like if it had a fifth?

SPEAKER_00 12:39

And how is it? Well, I guess immediately it does start rolling the cord. So, but it's that, alright, we're already it's almost like it's in the middle of something. You know?

SPEAKER_03 12:51

Well, it's also not to get too granular, and I'm I'm sure it wasn't this much of a direct depiction of childhood or birth, but you're adding in the fifth, you're growing, you're you're developing.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah, already. It's like let's start it basically as simple as we possibly can in scope. Not not have a bass down here. You know, it's like there's no complexity yet. It's just um, and the way he ends the piece is the the melody note is actually exactly where we started. But what's the left hand doing? It does have that fifth. In fact, it's it is nothing but a fifth in the chord, so and it's in that lower register, it's richer, it's deeper, it has an exhale to it. And yet, you know, he's not ending with a with the tonic or the G. This is a key of G major.

SPEAKER_03 13:56

What would it sound if he ended with the tonic?

SPEAKER_00 13:58

If he ended with the tonic in the top, that sounds a lot more final, doesn't it? So final. Less, it's just less dreamlike. Less dreamy, less uh, less of a feeling like this could then like this child is still thinking. Like, or there's there's more to be had. Let's turn the page, let's see what world opens up. Um that if you don't mind, I'm gonna play like some just some of the more sensitive pieces from this set. I don't mind. If you don't mind, okay, good. You got nowhere to go. I have you here. Um Troy Mariah Dreaming.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

Also from Scenes from Childhood.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Um it's a really again, um, an invitation to kind of reflect, you know? This is is this a parent watching their child sleeping? Or is this, you know, an actual child's dream, or is this the scene of a child dreaming or or is it like a daydream?

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Is it like I was gonna say, is it a fantasy? Is it how a child just has all these things going on in their head? Yeah. Because they're playing play is dream. I used to like have dolls that I would make stories out of, you know. That could be dreaming in a way.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

But unlike the first movement, this has this is more rested, you know. It's less um it obviously it has curiosity and wonder, and in fact, I think one of the musical and structural ways that happens is these big chords aren't on the downbeats, they're on the second beats. So we have first downbeat and then that's the second beat. It it causes um a little bit of lift, a little buoyancy, a little feeling of expectation, and it makes these bar lines disappear. That all feels like one big phrase, right? Instead of if I literally banged out the strong downbeats, it doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Like clearly Schumann is not thinking about bars of music or downbeats or meter very much at all. He's trying to he's trying to float, you know.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

Well, if it's a dream, it would make sense that things are a little discombobulated. Yeah. Things aren't where they should be. That's often the experience of a dream, you know. I have a dream and it's Daniel, but he looks like my other friend, but you know it's you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Yeah, you show up in my dream as a minotaur.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Every time. Cool. And I don't know why, but it's just one of those things. Halloween. We're gonna have to figure that out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

Um Yeah, you show up in my dreams as just the scary monster. Do I? Every night, every dream about you is a nightmare.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Uh well, and then you wake up and then I'm a nightmare. You're a living nightmare. You can't escape it. You can't escape me. Um there are these unbelievably tender moments where he reaches higher, and it's like the dream is like, how how high can we reach? How like, and how far away is that from reality? These are our dreams, right? And it always comes back down. And just like in the first movement, there are these moments where we escape to more foreign lands. Now we've modulated to be flat major. Or is it D minor? What is this? And then we're back. But what's so what's so cool about this is like it's kind of monothematic. Like he's not changing the tune. So it's always this, but it's just in different contexts. You know, and and it's floating is very different than is very different than which is eventually where he's gonna go to end the piece. And we return home to F major in the end, and it's much more comforting because he gives a solid chord instead of offbeat, he's finally ending.

SPEAKER_03 20:12

It's interesting that the word dream can mean, you know, a a nighttime what is hallucination in a way. I guess it's a hallucination, a dream. Or it can mean a hope, like hopes and dreams. Right. So does he mean we were kind of talking about this before, but is it it seems more like a hope to me? Someone dreaming of something that hopefully will happen.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

I don't think it leaves that realm of like naivete and innocence. Yeah, you know, quite. And that's what's so uh beautiful about this whole set is it stays within this tender realm, even when it has these like fun outbursts. But um the same is true, I think really the similar idea is true in in one of the later movements, uh child falling asleep, which you might relate to to dreaming. But this one begins in a minor key, it's E minor, so it has a really different tone and timbre to it. And this might be one of the more dark uh movements of the set. What an ending, huh? Very unresolved.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

It's interesting that a piece titled What is it? Kid Falling Asleep. The child falling asleep, yeah. It has such a dark beginning. I mean, the only thing it makes me think of is how falling asleep as a kid was a really scary thing for me. Like I it took me a long time to fall asleep and I would be really scared to be in the room alone.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Really?

SPEAKER_03 23:35

But there's I don't know, it seems like a weird thing.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Just because you're afraid of the dark or you're afraid of monsters in the bed?

SPEAKER_03 23:41

Scared of everything. But then it goes into a now, there's a B section that's clearly like a, yeah, clearly a dreamy, you know, that's undeniably a depiction of the E major.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Yeah, the A major section. Well, throughout this whole piece is this like lilt, this rocking lullaby, even in the minor. So, and this is like, I mean, just like in the first movement, there is this lilting quality of this perpetual motion. And maybe there's something just inherently innocent and vulnerable about I don't know, that that delicate accompanimental motion of just something that's a repeating figure that's rocking is somehow comforting. Um, and it's something that we come to expect and we can't we kind of give ourselves into. So sometimes talking about this stuff helps me play it really more. Yeah, because you know, when it's kind of like, you know, in that classical training, when it's like, okay, here's your performance, go, then it's like your mind is kind of in the wrong space. You know, you need I need anyway to be conceptually more in the world of the music and not be thinking about like, I don't know, how I am physically or my approach to the music or what's going on in the room. It's hard to not get distracted before you perform something. So I find like after we've talked about stuff, it's easier for me to play.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

Well, you're giving a voice outwardly to the voice in your head. I mean, it's if you talk, you're kind of trumping the demons. Yeah. Because if if I'm not speaking, then the other thing is like, don't mess up, make sure you play this right.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

It's if it's all about what the sound I'm making is, and there's a microscope on that, it's just more intense, you know.

SPEAKER_03 25:53

Yeah, sometimes I'll uh perform in my stand-up set, and sometimes I'll tell a little anecdote about performance anxiety and how my bow would shake. And then if I talk about it and then play, sometimes I will then have bow shakes because I've drawn my attention to that again. Self-fulfillment. Yeah, versus if I'm just doing my like jokes and viola playing shtick where it's the viola playing is is serving a very specific purpose, which is to contrast the jokes. I get way less nervous. Yeah. Um, but I think about it in terms of nerves, and if anything that gets me out of my head, like talking about just the music, yeah, not my feelings, but the music itself can really help.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

That's that's interesting. There's um it's reminding me a little of how you know I used to program sometimes um pieces by Georges Kurtag, who's this Hungarian composer who's I believe still alive. Um I think he is. I think he's like a hundred or something. Whoa. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

Um but that's still a contemporary composer. We have to put that into context. Like even though he's a hundred. Yeah. Like how old would Schumann be?

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Yeah. Well, Schumann would be like uh two hundred and fifteen or something. Yeah. Um, so but his his it's yeah, it's funny how that works. Contemporary music includes like the last hundred years or so somehow. Um, but his music has a kind of innocence and poeticism and rawness that Schumann also has. And a lot of his works are actually inspired by Schumann, so there's a connection there. And so occasionally I would like to program a little bit of Kortog next to a little bit of Schumann, and it actually selfishly, it helps me get into the sound world better of Schumann, so that I'm not thinking, my mind isn't conceptually thinking, how do I recreate Schumann or how do I go back to 1850 when this was written? But instead, let me let me turn my attention onto the sound itself, the tenderness of the sound. Kurtag has this really simple seven-note piece, for example, called Flowers We Are, Frail Flowers. And it's just these three beautiful gestures that are very slow on the piano, um, and they force you to kind of pay very close attention to sound. You're hearing how one sound or one note is decaying into the next note. And in order to perform it, you have to listen very attentively. And as an audience member, you also it helps to listen really carefully. So I want to play that and then play the first movement. I want to start the first movement of Schumann and just see how that feels for you and for me. Okay. Here we go. Flowers we are, frail flowers by Georges Courtag.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

I thought we were gonna hold the sound more. Oh, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

No, I want to get to it. I want to get right to it.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

That was so evocative. Yeah. Um it well, it felt you don't feel the connection somehow. Totally. I mean, I know the kind I I was hearing the Schumann in my head about to come up as you were playing the Kurtog. And so to me, it just almost sounded like a dissonant, super slow version of Kinderzinen because it's the same booty, like it's these notes that are like connected kind of fluid, fluidly. Yeah, it's just the Kurt Tog is much more distilled and slowed down and a little more dissonant. Yeah. But the the leaps alone make it expressive. Yeah. And then the way you were playing it obviously was great where you were having every note that you previously played still resonate so that you could hear the clash with the next note. Like if you just played it with no pedal or anything.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Yeah, it would be. Do you want me to try it? I mean, it would just as a disjointed note.

SPEAKER_03 30:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Um like that's to make no attempt at all at legato. I feel like I'm in music theory class and you're like playing me intervals, right? Yeah, like beep boop kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 31:06

Yeah. Oh, when you speed it up, that sounded kind of cool. But at the tempo it's in intended at. Yeah. You need the resonance.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Well, I and I think part of the part of the message or the expression in this sort of music is like what is in between notes, you know, like like how can you hang on to sound? I mean, on a piano, uh, this is like such a thing that pianists have to figure out is how to play legato, how to play connected, how to connect one sound to another sound to another sound. I'm sure I'm gonna talk about this in a lot of other podcasts because it's so important. But the only way is with your ear, really. It's not like I I cannot connect this and this with my hand, right? With one hand. It's not like I'm physically literally connecting the two notes together. That is impossible. This is a percussion instrument. Uh, you know, I'm this note is pressed down and it hits a string, and then this note is pressed down and it hits a string. They're not intertwining the strings together. I can't I I don't have my finger on the string.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

I have my finger on a key. So the only way to connect these two sounds together is to listen to the end of this resonance and then begin in a way that somehow um I can my ear perceives magically that they're connected.

SPEAKER_03 32:35

It's the same energy you have when you're playing chamber music with someone where you're perceiving the energy of something else. Like you're it's with yourself, but and it's the same in stand-up with the laughter and timing the next joke with just the end of the laughter because you don't want it to die away completely always. Sometimes you do, but usually you want to ride the laughter into the next line and then get it to build up again. And it's like the laughter in this case is the resonance of the previous note.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's the beauty of transition, which is actually the reality of everything.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

Well, the reality of everything.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Yeah, it's just everything is in transition all the time. Everything's in change. Uh-huh. Yeah, I'm a neo-Buddhist, clearly, but no, but you are? No. I'm just into meditation now.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

But you're just really into Sam Harris.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Yeah, I kind of know. But it's um, it is this uh yeah. I mean, there is a version of understanding the world in which you understand that everything is in constant change. And so rather than fight that, it's beautiful to embrace that and to try to notice how things change and how things change from one thing into another thing, which if you look closely enough is happening all the time with everything. And it's we we notice it when we, you know, when we're 10 years older and we look in the mirror and then we're like, oh my god, I'm older now. But it it's happening all the time. You look exactly the same. You look exactly the same because of what you took, you know, that special substance that we talked about earlier, uh, that we won't reveal on this podcast. You'll have to listen to another one for that. Not a health and wellness podcast. No, no, no. Um with that maybe we can go to the end of this beautiful set, this kind of standing, because how he gets from the child falling asleep into the very last movement the poet speaks is a beautiful use, I think, of of silence, of expectation, of um curiosity. And he he doesn't let us that's it ever. He never lets us really rest. If we're resting, if Schumann allows us to rest, it's in a silence that is filled with meaning, I think. And um the people who really love Schumann are like looking forward as much to his silences as they are to his music because he sets those silences up really, really powerfully. So let me play the end. So after he returns to this section, the A section of Child Falling Asleep, we get this rocking lullaby again. But now a beautiful, tender sequence. This odd A minor chord, not the key we're in, and then the poet speaks. Being the adult who's reflecting back on all these scenes. A little motion. Even though there are technically there's everything you need in this chord. There's the root, the third, the fifth. But it's the spacing. The spacing is is incredibly wide. I can actually barely reach this with my left hand, I always have trouble. And then the top note is the fifth, which even the third would feel more final, and the root would especially feel final. But again, Schumann leaves us in this state of possibility.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Never quite finality, you know, in in in these kind of small character pieces, in these poetic pieces. It's always like his pieces um are in the middle of a world and they end up just with a question.

SPEAKER_03 38:50

You know, so that's a a commonality of a lot of his music or a lot of these pieces in this set?

SPEAKER_00 38:56

I think it's a lot of his music. I mean, sometimes when he does get bombastic and certain and confident, and I mean he has a ton of marches, like there is music where he is rooted and grounded, but a lot of the time you feel like that's all fanfare, that's part of some tale. You know, it's it's like a fairy tale kind of thing, or it's it's a character in a play. You know, it's it's never it's not you don't sense that it's coming from some deep desire for uh or deep part of his soul, the way that like Beethoven's fifth is just like this is the way the universe and spirituality are. Like I'm gonna rip you into it, and this is my confident belief. Schumann is like let's let's go on a ride together and like I don't even exactly know where this is gonna end. And some because he's such an amazing composer and his technique is so good as a composer, he can still his form is still solid enough where oh you're about to burst out laughing. What? Don't continue really. His form is solid enough where he can construct even something like his fantasy in C major for piano is brilliantly and carefully structured, but it feels improvised. Just the way it starts, it's just like like he's throwing everything to the wind. And yet these motives throughout the piece come back in very careful and specific ways. So I I love Schumann because it always feels like there's something very private that he's expressing that he's uh inviting you into. He's not uh he's not shoving it down your throat, you know.

SPEAKER_03 40:43

Is it also an expression of the unknown? Or not expression, an exploration, yeah. Or uh this is what it was making me laugh. Is it a hyper acknowledgement of the unknown? This video.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. A hyper acknowledgement. That is I think that is verbiage that Schumann would hate. Yeah. I don't think he, you know, this is one other irony about Schumann to me is that like he loved playing with words. Like, you know, if famously he puts Clara, the name Clara, in his some of his music.

SPEAKER_03 41:22

Schumann did too, not just Rams, who was in love with her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Schumann did. Okay. And man, everyone just obsessed with this girl.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

There's there's there's symbology and cryptology everywhere in Schumann where it's like, oh, his opus one is called Abeg variations, A, B, E, G, G, and that's I can pull them up, but that is literally the theme of the piece. I mean, it's a theme and variation. What is Abeg? A, B, E, G, G. But it's it's dedicated to the Countess Paulina von Abeg, but who might have been a made-up person.

SPEAKER_03 41:57

But how lucky are you that your if your name contains letters that are notes? If she's real, but yeah. I can't have an there's no I or S. No. But they'd figure that out. They'd be like you know, but I don't I don't want to figure it out. I want a real, I want my I want the notes of my.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

That's close enough. Right.

SPEAKER_03 42:23

Isabel A-B-E. A-B-E. Abe.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

He's dedicated to you, Isabel. And it's like, yeah, close enough. All right. Is it pretty? Okay, I'll take it. Um, but he'll take that and start modulating, you know, and make a piece out of it. So he likes playing around with letters and words, and he's fascinated by poetry. And yet, to me, like his music is the epitome of you can't define it, you can't put words on it, because it's all about these ineffable transitions and this magic of like curiosity and wonder and like what isn't defined. Language is so definite because it has to be, because it's it's literally just so that we can communicate with each other and survive and understand each other a lot of the time. It's technology, language. Yeah, yeah. At least that it's uh without the art part, obviously there's poetry, um and you can make art out of language, but fundamentally it feels like something that is rule bound, you know, and so it's just fascinating to me that he's not scared to meld those two, to be like, Oh, I love that concept in that poem, like let me run with that and create something uh at the piano. And that seems to be a a thing of the time too. Like Schubert using Goethe for lyrics and stuff, like the the idea of the the composer and the musician. And um being also in some way a poet and being fascinated by literature and like being fascinated by everything that has to do with the time and the culture and weaving that into their into their work.

SPEAKER_03 44:14

And that wasn't the case for a lot of composers, you think?

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Well, it's just the purpose of music changes over time for each generation. I mean, I think Bach, like, you know, again, I think we talked about it, but he's composing for another purpose. He's worship and from the church, and it's inspired that's inspiring him in his own way.

SPEAKER_03 44:34

Well, even calling a piece scenes from childhood, it it evokes an image, and it's almost like it's a movie. Yeah. So it it it speaks more to entertainment and something beyond just the music moving you in the spiritual way.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

The music itself, kind of yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:52

If he's depicting scenes, yeah. I mean, maybe not literally with the music. We could you could probably try to assign some literal meaning to every part. Maybe that's not what he's doing. I don't know. No idea. But either way, it's still evoking a general, at least a general feeling for each scene.

SPEAKER_00 45:12

Yeah. Well, and I think what's special is he manages to make that incredibly personal, even though it's um usually with programmatic music like this, where you're illustrating a scene, um, it can get specific, right? Like with light motifs and these these pieces of the music that Liszt and Wagner would use to be like, this represents this. Schumann is not demanding that of you. He's just almost like an impressionistic way, just setting a scene for you. And you can try to intuit what it feels for you. Doesn't even have to be an image, it can just be more than anything, the the feeling, that feeling of tenderness, of innocence, of awe, of connection that you have with a child or or with yourself, your own inner child. Yeah. So I think these the the kinders in, and I mean, maybe this is part of the theme of the whole podcast. It's like returning to music that you know uh you might not expect um or you might underestimate, but these scenes from childhood, even though they're very small and kind of quaint and not that technically demanding, are incredibly mature and really worth re-listening to throughout your life. And they're definitely worth me playing again and again throughout my life, reading through.

SPEAKER_03 46:35

If you're not re-listening to Kinder Zanen throughout your life, you're doing it wrong.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

Thanks, Isabel. Well, thank you guys as always for listening. This has been Kinder Zanen, at least a few selections from Kinder Zenen by Schumann. One of my absolute favorite composers, and I'm constantly wondering why. It's like something always gets revealed every time I revisit him.

SPEAKER_03 47:01

You're like, why do I like this so much? How many pieces are in this set? This Kinder Zanen set?

SPEAKER_00 47:09

Uh thanks for that question.

SPEAKER_03 47:12

One, two.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

Oh god, Isabel. Now I lit I'm literally gonna have to count him. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, eight, eight, ten, eleven, twelve.

SPEAKER_03 47:31

I feel like you miscounted, but that's but around twelve.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

Dude, I don't remember. It doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_03 47:37

It does matter, but you can you can Wikipedia it. I I do like we can't even give people the number of the pieces. Bro, that's why, like, don't ask me that. Thanks for listening. Thank you guys.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

See you next time. See you in the next one.