Wanderer & Fantasy: "Hopeless but not serious"

You might have guessed what I will talk about today.

But first, it is an omnipotent saying.

Once I found a video on youtube - Actually it was a photo-slide, and incidently, it was chosen the water-flowing impromptu in G-flat as soundtrack:

(Youtube database gives free and LEGAL use for certain commercialized audios for quick video-making) It is about the Global Warming. A pity that it was cut off before the recapitulation. I asked the video maker why he/she had decided to use the piece, if he/she was alluding the climate situation with the famous Viennese saying (probably considering its relation with the composer of this music treasure). The answer was NO. But he/she agreed on my selfish interpretation.

Actually, as a German illiterate, neither did I hear of that expression until last year through an emission by BBC Radio 3, with previous commentary given by Alfred Brendel, on the program of a recital in Bath. Later I also found more usage of it, like in certain novel and TV. But, what does it have to do with me?

I had no special interest in German. If not counting musical words like "Sonate(n)", "Klavier", "spielt" (the only verb I knew), "Konzert" or "Konzerhaus", then I knew very limited expressions during my first years in Europe. On one hand, "Guten Tag", "Danke" and "Tschüs", thanks to having worked in an automobile engineering company and seated with two general secretaries who are German, among other German-speaking colleagues; And on the other, "Flughafen", "Bahnhof", "Jugendherberge" and "Schloss", for obvious reasons.

However, things began to change when I got in contact with the lieder world: Even through those transcribed by Liszt for piano solo, one would be curious about at least what the title says. As famous as they are, and as many as the conventionally recognized versions they have in many languages, finally one always prefers to reading the original poems while listening.

One day when I was boring at work, I decided to check how many things I could tell in German. I looked around, and found nothing in the office I knew. But when I shut off my eyes trying to think from blank, there were so many of them! Wind-Flower-Snow-Moon (风花雪月 like in the Chinese expression) , thus all type of poetry and maybe "useless" utterance in our everyday life.

Then came the definite shift, which took place twenty days ago, in Bonn - my first lieder recital experience. I even didn't think I deserved such an invitation - and it was Winterreise! Oh I prepared for weeks, re-listening to some recordings I had and also bought new ones with female voices. But the real effect still astonished me - It had nothing to do with CDs or live videos - I didn't heard the diction, I FELT it, LIVING the unforgettable strength and beauty expressed with each and every consonant. It was not about language, you understand the text or not, but about the true poetry which is MUSIC, just sane.

Perhaps it is as if to learn Italian with Petrarch. Not practical - but neither is it too strange how I reached the German acquisition situation...

"Hopeless but not serious"? I shall say: