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
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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDelete"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."
ReplyDeleteMargaret Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets: American Playwright at 637 n. 7.4.
Brahms wrote this piece shortly before his death from liver or pancreatic cancer.
ReplyDelete