Good Vibrations

Tonight I felt a bit schizo as I went to two musical performances, one a celebration of punk rock, the other the Ulster Orchestra performing two works by Clara Schumann.

There was first a book then a movie and now a play called Good Vibrations, by Terry Hooley. Terry helped promote local punk bands in the 1970s and 1980s and he had a record store in Belfast throughout the Troubles. Hooley and the cast of the play were at a hotel downtown tonight playing music by Rudi, Stiff Little Fingers, the Undertones, and other popular Northern Ireland bands of my youth. I loved hearing the old songs--so much energy and teenage angst!

The Schumann pieces were interesting. When I listen to classical music, I love the warp and weft of the strings, reeds, and brass. Just waves of music sliding over each other. The second piece was dominated by piano playing that I would describe as aggressive and angry. It reminded me of the score to a horror film. There weren’t chords or melodies, just banging up and down the keyboard. I just read Clara Schumann’s biography on Wiki to understand if she was a tortured soul. The profile wasn’t in depth, but her father was a controlling, authoritarian figure--maybe her music, composed in adolescence, was her own teenage angst. Her composing career was cut short by raising her eight children and, later, three or four grandchildren after two of her children killed themselves. She also had to keep quiet so as to not interrupt the work of her husband--Robert Schumann.

I may learn more by reading the program handed out at the concert. The print was so small, I couldn’t read it on the night without my reading glasses. I find this happening more frequently these days--which, by the way, happens to be a lyric from a song by the Boomtown Rats, my favourite punk band!!!
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