Chapter 5 #9
This was so incongruous with the blinding solitude of the square.
I felt as if I had stepped out of one film and into another—the genres had switched on me.
But it was cool inside, and nobody seemed bothered by my presence.
I stood by the center staircase and rested my forearms against the wooden banister, letting the hubbub of voices wash over me.
“Do you have a ticket?”
I glanced up. A young woman in a black suit stood before me, a ticket scanner in hand.
“Oh—no, sorry.”
She looked me up and down. I was trying to remember how to explain I was just looking around the lobby, but then she asked, “Are you a student?”
“Um—yes?”
“We have some complimentary tickets reserved for students.” She handed me a program. “Today’s program features Liszt’s poetic and religious harmonies. If you have proof of identity, I can give you a student ticket.”
I pulled out my NTU card. She glanced down, nodded in approval, and waved me through.
Then I was following the crowd along the velvet ropes toward the hall.
Well, why not? I had no great passion for classical music, nor any particular knowledge about Liszt.
I just wanted to be a part of the crowd, to experience whatever they were experiencing.
If they were so excited about it, then it must be something worth seeing.
I found a seat near the front and flipped open my program.
It was in Chinese, but I was startled by how much of it was immediately comprehensible to me.
I wasn’t struggling to read. The pianist was from Israel, and he was a big deal: He had performed at concert halls throughout Europe and the Americas and been a soloist with all sorts of philharmonic orchestras.
This was his first time in Taiwan. The National Concert Hall was honored to host him.
I thought there would be more pomp and circumstance when the concert began, but no one gave a speech or anything.
The stage lights came on, and the audience fell silent.
Out came the pianist, a dour-faced man who did not so much as crack a smile as we applauded.
He gave a short bow, sat down, and touched the keys.
A tremor came over his shoulders; then he hunched over and began a series of slow, gentle broken chords.
I checked my program: Liszt’s Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude.
The woman in the row behind me kept murmuring to her companion, in English, that she wished they had sat farther back.
“Up close is no good,” she hissed. “It’s like you’re watching a recital in your living room.
” But I liked being up close. I liked seeing the pianist’s hands, and the white of his shirtsleeves poking through the dark of his jacket.
He reminded me of a chef. What was it they said?
Good chefs had clean sleeves? I liked the way he jerked one hand or the other up in the air every time he finished a trill, as if getting it clear of the musical soup.
Like the keyboard was a wash of ingredients and here he was, stirring it around, never letting it splash.
The concert hall was dark, deliciously cool.
I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes.
I felt that hit of vertigo again. For a moment I was afraid that my hunger had caught up with me, and that I would faint in my seat.
But then a marvelous thing happened. The lightness intensified, but I did not lose consciousness.
Rather, my body, or my perception of my body, melted away entirely, until all that existed was the sound.
A tension released from my head. I was free from this struggle to make myself and the world articulable.
I did not have to say anything or interpret anything.
As I sat there in the dark, I felt the core of myself, that part that was capable of conscious reflection, drift outside of my body and toward the stage, riding the notes and going wherever they took me.
How did music paint an image in your head?
I wondered. How could it be that certain combinations of notes struck the same emotions in different listeners?
In my freshman Introduction to Philosophy class, we had learned how Schopenhauer argued that music was the highest of all the arts, because it did not try to represent any ideas from the material world.
Painting and sculpture and poetry were mere shadows of reality, just approximations of ideas, but music was pre-language, pre-association. Only music captured the Will.
But that could not be quite right, because I could see so clearly in my mind’s eye the narrative of this piece.
Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude—the blessing of God, received in solitude.
I did not compose this image from thin air; I saw what the notes told me to see.
I saw the lonely man praying on his knees, whispering in silence, Oh, God.
Saw his lips moving; saw his head bowed in the dark, his eyes squeezed shut and brow furrowed.
Saw the sun coming up, the light streaming through stained glass, and the glow rising around him.
Then the chords crescendoed, and the angels joined in his song, and I saw that man lifting his face, rising up on his knees, because his prayers had worked, and someone was listening after all, and the heavens were answering his call.