26 September 2017

Dreams of Schoenberg

First of all, we know that none of this is historically true.  But, that is not the standard we apply to what happens in dreams.

There was a brick house in which Schoenberg (supposedly, per above) lived while he was in residence here in the United States, and I went to visit this – as we might call it – pilgrimage site.

It was an architecturally unexceptional two-story brick home.  Ranged at intervals along the front lawn were signs reading “Opus 29,” “Opus 30,” on through “Opus 33,” the idea being that, Mad Tea Party-like, Schoenberg composed each piece in that corresponding part of the building.  It was a design error in my dream that there were three signs reading “Opus 33.”  Or maybe it meant that the work took Schoenberg so much effort, he worked on it in three different locations in the house.

The dream then moved to a concert hall where a violinist whose acquaintance I made recently was playing the Schoenberg Violin Concerto (Opus 36), only in the dream this Concerto involved dramatized extended techniques, such as drawing the violin across a bamboo pole held by the violinist’s husband, who assisted.

Must have been all that sea air Sunday.


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