Ian Sidden

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“Ständchen” by Schubert, Guitar and Voice Arrangement

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Before I ran off to the US this summer, I shared a YouTube video of me playing Franz Schubert’s “Ständchen”. I’ve loved this troubled love song for years, and when I was first experimenting with self-accompanied art song, this was the first place I looked.

It has a clear guitar-like accompaniment, and in terms of the harmonies, most of the chords are perfectly playable on guitar. Indeed, there are various arrangements floating around, and I wish I’d looked there first; my arrangement has many similarities to the guitar-only arrangement by Mertz (minus the melody in the guitar). Had I just looked there first, I could have saved myself a lot of time.

Of course, part of the time was just learning the technique to play it in the first place. I hope to do many more of these, and with each piece I have to stretch my classical guitar abilities further.

I’ll try and share these more quickly here in the future. Please enjoy.

A Corner for Gratitude

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There was a moment in Die Blume von Hawaii, where I always tried to pay meta attention to what was happening and feel gratitude for it. Laya and Lilo Taro were singing in subdued light, while the rest of the cast and chorus were frozen, having just sung a big ensemble.

I was singing as Kanako Hilo and was situated center at the front corner of a high platform. One step forward, and I’d fall several meters to the stage, but while frozen, my sight could linger on the audience without it being weird. The music and the lights all came together in a swirling magic, and the drop in front of me provided the private illusion of flying.

In this moment, I felt intense appreciation for the audience’s presence, and I saw how lucky I was to be onstage singing. I reminded myself that I was there through a mixture of effort and sacrifice and luck, and that I had wanted this and was getting it at that moment. I knew I shouldn’t let it silently pass by without that recognition.

There was a similar moment in Don Giovanni, where everyone other than Don Giovanni himself was silent and sitting down in a semi-circle. I loved this production and this scene in particular, so it always came naturally that I felt gratitude for it. Masetto was in a rough place, but Ian was happy and was acutely aware of that happiness.

The gratitude was, however, tied to the knowledge that it wouldn’t last forever. Writing this now, these productions of Blume and Don Giovanni are gone, and the likelihood that I’ll get to do them again is almost nil. More broadly, I’m aware that I won’t get to sing professionally forever. There will come a day, whether by choice or not, where this path will come to an end.

And even more broadly, all of this that is now will pass. And by maintaining some corner of the mind for being grateful now, perhaps we can know that we’ve had our fill when the time comes to let go.

You Know Nothung, Jon Snow

Please forgive the joke in the title ha ha ha…

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Some characters in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones have some serious similarities to characters in Der Ring des Nibelungen. But first:

If you haven’t read the books comprising George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and watched the show Game of Thrones, then you should stop right here, because I’m getting into spoilers right away. Some of them involve spoilers that are show only, which have – as of this writing – gone beyond the books’ plots. On Reddit, this would correspond to a SPOILERS EXTENDED post.

Ok?

I recommend the books whole-heartedly. I also recommend the show (the moments of greatness more than cancel out the moments of not-so-greatness), but the books are the real love of my heart when it comes to this story. Part of the joy is not knowing what the books are actually about through most of their telling, which spoilers ruin.

I also think you should watch or listen to Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen since it’s an incredibly grand fantasy with moments that stand as pinnacles of musical drama 1. If you’ve noticed the recurring musical motifs that accompany Star Wars or Game of Thrones, you have Richard Wagner’s influence to thank.

That said, I don’t think spoilers ruin the Ring in the way they might for A Song of Ice and Fire, so you can read on.

[Read more…]

The Great Courses: Mozart

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Mozart Great Courses Cover Image

After I completed my Mozart listening month, I came across and listened to the Mozart Great Courses lectures via Audible, written by and narrated by Professor Robert Greenberg.

Audible writes this within its larger summary:

Beginning with an examination of the many myths that surround Mozart to this day, Professor Greenberg offers not only an understanding of his music, but also a realistic view of Mozart the boy and man, from his emergence as youthful prodigy to his posthumous deification.You’ll learn about his difficult and ultimately doomed relationship with his father, his troubled marriage, his relationships with luminaries like Haydn, Emperor Joseph II, and his operatic librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, and the triumphs and disappointments that marked his career – including the astonishing and inexplicable creative recovery that enabled him to create his great Masonic opera, The Magic Flute, only months before his death.

That’s a good summary, though the lectures aren’t a simple narrative of his life.

Professor Greenberg has a few central arguments that form the backbone of the lectures. Primarily, he argues that Mozart was a normal human being who nevertheless was prodigiously gifted at all things musical. The myths that surround Mozart, rather than enhancing our understanding of him, only serve to obscure his actual genius, which – make no mistake – was so great that we might become uncomfortable with the simple fact of it. They also obscure some of the tragedies of his life, such as his early death.

Additionally, the influence of his father Leopold was more complicated and uglier than I had previously understood, and that relationship also serves as part of the central backbone to the lectures.

In total, the lectures aren’t especially long, and you could listen to them all within a day if you really wanted to. I spread them out amidst my various other listenings, and they were always immediately re-engaging when I returned to them. Professor Greenberg has a very entertaining style of speaking, but he does maintain a sense of authority and genuine love for the subject.

You can find the lectures here:

http://www.audible.com/pd/Arts-Entertainment/Great-Masters-Mozart-His-Life-and-Music-Audiobook/B00DCY41GU