Johannes Brahms took a traditional holiday melody and wrote a variation on the theme. I find Brahms' treatment to be sublime and remarkably creative -- it's an exquisite exemplar of Brahms' skill as a composer of variations. Only Brahms could have written this.
The original hymn tune, Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, most commonly translated to English as Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming, is a Christmas carol of German origin. The original hymn tune is played in the second half of the YouTube video.
The carol speaks of a rose bud miraculously blooming in the dead of winter. The theme of fertility emerging in a barren wilderness is explored in the following post.
http://dailstrug.blogspot.com/2010/02/etosha-national-park-and-schizoid.html
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I originally posted the Brahms YouTube on December 21, 2009. Only today it occurred to me that there was a thematic relationship between the symbolism of the blooming rose in December and my later post (February 2010) about Etosha National Park in Africa.
I wonder if my friends at the Justice Department picked up on this connection. Aren't they supposed to be masters of connecting the dots?
June 6 is my mother's birthday, by the way.
"Clifford Odets' core-image of himself as a growing plant remained until the last moments of his life. On his deathbed he picked the last petal from the last yellow rose on his nightstand."
Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets: American Playwright at 637 n. 7.4.
Brahms wrote this piece shortly before his death from liver or pancreatic cancer.
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