# Music under difficult cirumstances



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

From the BBC: "Man plays guitar during brain surgery."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22667597


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

For me, Shostakovich exemplifies 'music under difficult circumstances.' I can't think of any other composer in history that had to endure the kind of tragedy as Shostakovich. The fact that his very life could be threatened at any moment obviously kept him on edge during Stalin's reign. It also doesn't help to be liked by your own people and then being hated the next and this went on and on for far too long. It was his opera _Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District_ that initially got him into hot water with Stalin. Shostakovich's fear for his own life caused him to hide works for decades out of fear of being ousted and sent to a labor camp. What an incredibly strenuous time it had to have been to be a composer in the Soviet Union, especially one that was well-liked internationally and despised by the Soviet authorities. Thankfully, Shostakovich knew how to save his own skin and also knew how to not only serve 'the people' but also fulfill his own goals as a composer.


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## Guest (May 27, 2013)

Fair enough Ken and Neo : guitarist playing whilst undergoing major cranial surgery, Dmitri's compositional _travails_ during invasions, purges, vodka binges and so on ... What about Beethoven's composing when pretty deaf? Pretty difficult circumstances in my book.


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## julianoq (Jan 29, 2013)

Messiaen amazing Quatuor pour la fin du temps immediatly comes to mind, since it was composed when he was a prisoner-of-war on the WWII.

Also about the premiere:

_The quartet was premiered at the camp, outdoors and in the rain, on January 15, 1941. The musicians had decrepit instruments and an audience of about 400 fellow prisoners and guards.[1] Messiaen later recalled: "Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension."[2] _- Wikipedia


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

TalkingHead said:


> Fair enough Ken and Neo : guitarist playing whilst undergoing major cranial surgery, Dmitri's compositional _travails_ during invasions, purges, vodka binges and so on ... What about Beethoven's composing when pretty deaf? Pretty difficult circumstances in my book.


Not to take the spotlight away from others who had great difficulty like Beethoven or Messiaen, but what makes Shostakovich's story the most compelling to me is the life or death factor and if a certain investigator, who was going to question Shostakovich during one of those famous purges, hadn't died before he could question Shostakovich, I have no doubt that Dmitri would have been executed. I mean you can only **** Stalin off so many times. Sometimes all it took was just looking at him in a wrong way and he'd have you killed right out in the streets.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Delius composed some of his late works while blind and paralyzed.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Bach composed the art of fugue practically blind. Beethoven was deaf during a substantial portion of his career.


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## Guest (May 27, 2013)

Fair enough, Neo. Then again, think about how certain musics have been banned (and quite recently, if I read my newspapers correctly) by the fundamentalist régimes : in Iran, in Afghanistan, in certain areas of Pakistan ... Jeez, Stalin is a pussycat compared to some of this stuff. Idea for a new thread : music as subversion. Plato, anyone?


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Fauré was going deaf when he composed his string quartet. He could still hear, but not very well, and higher and lower registers sounded out of tune to him.

Dame Evelyn Glennie, of course, gives 100 concerts per year despite having been profoundly deaf since she was 12. She also plays the bagpipes (although deafness may actually be an advantage there.)


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## Guest (May 27, 2013)

ahammel said:


> Delius composed some of his late works while blind and paralyzed.


But he did have a 'live-in' help. And a wife. And lived in France (good food, wine ...). Thank the Deity he wasn't living in Scunthorpe.


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## Guest (May 27, 2013)

aleazk said:


> Bach composed the art of fugue practically blind. Beethoven was deaf during a substantial portion of his career.


Hey, Aleazk, what about a TC poll thus: "All things being equal, what would you rather be, deaf or blind?"


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

TalkingHead said:


> Hey, Aleazk, what about a TC poll thus: "All things being equal, what would you rather be, deaf or blind?"


Deaf, I guess. At least I can maintain my work in physics in that way!.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Smetana wrote some of his finest works after becoming totally deaf. These include Ma Vlast and his string quartet 'From my Life.'

BTW I believe Bach set aside his Art of Fugue about 1745, for unknown reasons. This was well before his visit to King Frederick II and his subsequent eye problems.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

KenOC said:


> Smetana wrote some of his finest work after becoming totally deaf. These works include Ma Vlast and his string quartet 'From my Life.'


Yeah, but one needs a great amount of talent in order to do that.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

TalkingHead said:


> Hey, Aleazk, what about a TC poll thus: "All things being equal, what would you rather be, deaf or blind?"


This was a question that exercised me when I was an eight-year-old. I felt then that I'd rather still be able to hear; still do. But let's hope none of us are faced with either.

What about Jeremiah Clarke, writer of the Prince of Denmark's March. He killed himself for love of a high-born lady, so must have suffered agonies. He tossed a coin to decide between hanging & drowning & when it landed in the mud, instead of abandoning his project, he shot himself in a churchyard instead. Only 33. Poor young man.


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## Guest (May 27, 2013)

aleazk said:


> Deaf, I guess. At least I can maintain my work in physics in that way!.


Well, I suppose no serious science was ever done via the other senses. Still, it does remind me of that novel by _*Kurt Vonnegut*_ (_Breakfast of Champions_, if I recall correctly) where the hero, _Kilgore Trout_ (love that name!) meets some aliens who can only communicate via dancing. Imagine conveying complex scientific notions by 'dancing'. Love it !!


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

TalkingHead said:


> Well, I suppose no serious science was ever done via the other senses. Still, it does remind me of that novel by _*Kurt Vonnegut*_ (_Breakfast of Champions_, if I recall correctly) where the hero, _Kilgore Trout_ (love that name!) meets some aliens who can only communicate via dancing. Imagine conveying complex scientific notions by 'dancing'. Love it !!


Bees already do it!


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

TalkingHead said:


> Well, I suppose no serious science was ever done via the other senses. Still, it does remind me of that novel by _*Kurt Vonnegut*_ (_Breakfast of Champions_, if I recall correctly) where the hero, _Kilgore Trout_ (love that name!) meets some aliens who can only communicate via dancing. Imagine conveying complex scientific notions by 'dancing'. Love it !!


Mathematics can be a very visual thing sometimes. Most of the symbols are designed in order to be, visually, very suggestive of their meaning.
Believe it or not, sometimes visual analogies in the way symbols are manipulated can give you hints about the solution of a completely different problem.
Also, in physics, geometry is everywhere.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Ingenue said:


> Bees already do it!


"Found some pollen" is a complex scientific notion.


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## Guest (May 27, 2013)

*Bee 1* (all excited and dancin' around) : Hey, yo, guys, found some pollen!
*Bees 2 - 7,374* : Chill, Daffodil-killer ! Now tell us again, slowly, right?


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## waldvogel (Jul 10, 2011)

Then again, compared to Viktor Ullman, Shostakovich had it easy.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

waldvogel said:


> Then again, compared to Viktor Ullman, Shostakovich had it easy.


Yeah, a man living on the edge for 30 years not knowing when his time was up is quite the easy life.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Neo Romanza said:


> Yeah, a man living on the edge for 30 years not knowing when his time was up is quite the easy life.


Well, really about 17 years...


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Well, really about 17 years...


Piece of cake then ..... not!


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

aleazk said:


> Also, in physics, geometry is everywhere.


No - geometry is physics. That's one of Feynman's insights. Once you've got the geometry sussed then you can comprehend the universe.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

God must be a whiz at geometry then...


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