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Aus Liebe...

  • Writer: Kira Lee
    Kira Lee
  • Jun 20
  • 4 min read

As I sing this Bach aria, I think about the semiquavers, the line, the love, and the act of doing something out of love. Or rather, what it means to love music. To be able to love something so ineffable is a powerful thing. So where does that leave me when so much of that love is lost?


Many of us often turn to music for its healing potentials, its beauty, and its ability to allow us to distance ourselves from the everyday. But when music is written to hurt, it is no longer the restorative elixir we were once able to consume. I find myself constantly questioning what it means to love music, and how that love, for me, is far from what it once was. There is beautiful music (actually, a lot of Lieder) which are now too painful to listen to. When beauty becomes pain in a musical sense, it is often very confusing. It's been months and I still cannot listen to Robert Schumann's Op.24 Liederkreis without my stomach churning. Those were some of my favourite songs.


I'm not sure if I know what it truly means to love music anymore. Is it possible for one to proclaim that they love musicology but hate music? (literally me over the last two weekends, but we are working on it.) My second year at Oxford has left me wondering if I will ever be able to love such a huge part of my life in the same way anymore. In six months, I've watched a 16-year relationship between my instrument and I crumble. And I think its time for us to rebuild it a little differently.


When I think back to what music and love used to look like for me, I would link it to a feeling of being alive. It was the moments where the violin and piano join together in the most seamless way to create a breathtaking phrase - there's a bit in the 3rd movement of Elizabeth Maconchy's First Violin Sonata that never fails to evoke this for me. It's that feeling of freedom when singing high runs, where everything leaves your body through the back of your head - Madeline Dring's Love and Time has a gorgeous sense of this. And it's the final return of a distinctive theme, a true 'one last time' where you and your ensemble mates relish in that satisfaction - the return of the first movement's secondary theme returning in the final movement of Fanny Hensel's Piano Trio will always make me smile.


But of course, we can experience love on the receiving end of this dialogue too. Maybe its listening to lyric therapy and relating far too much to that girl with her guitar (Isabel Pless was the reason I made it out of bed in Hilary Term). Or perhaps its screaming your head off at and Alanis Morissette concert (I have done this once before and I will do it again). And more recently, it's listening to Eleri Ward's covers of my favourite Sondheim songs and being moved by the immediacy of the voice and the lyrics.


I have been wondering if I have indeed become numb to music. I feel dead behind the eyes when I play, I don't feel particularly connected to my body, voice, or violin. But then I remind myself that the first step towards finding love is feeling, and I can most certainly still feel. I don't care if I'll cry when singing Abide with Me or the descant to Coe Fen. I mourn the girl that carried so much in her mind and body and poured out a good part of it when performing Bloch's 'Nigun' (year 12 Kira was actually acing life). I miss the ten year old that learnt Enescu's 'Ballade' despite being teeny. Her dreams came true and she got to perform it at the Purcell Room a few years later. In missing so much of me I know that to learn to love music again is to find a new part of me - a character in a chapter that hasn't been written yet. I don't know what this chapter will hold but it's within reach. And no, I am not completely numb because I will still tear up when we sing spiffing hymns on a Sunday. I have no shame in crying when engaging with music; I am allowed to feel, even if it is too much.


I am learning to heal a part of me that is so integral to every essence of my being. The little musician inside me is becoming her own person and I can't wait to see what she does next. To love is to learn, and I am learning what 'being alive' feels like at this next stage in my life. But for now, I'll probably still be soppy about the Coe Fen descant. Some things don't change, and that's okay.


spotify playlist of tunes from this post can be found below!

 
 
 

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©2023 by Kira Lee.

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