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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

A Soft Heart

My friend Katherine once told me about listening to a Mozart piece with her granddaughter, who was maybe eight or nine at the time. At the end of the piece the young child said, "Listening to that makes my heart soft."

This evening after a piano student left from a lesson, I sat down and played Mozart sonatas for over an hour. I repeated all the slow movements, the beautiful "Andante" and "Largo" settings several times. And it made me feel so at peace. Indeed, my heart felt soft. 

What is it that makes your heart soft? And when you get to that soft place, what happens next?

FIRST STEPS by Van Gogh
Here is the second movement from Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, Zoltán Kocsis at the piano with the Virtuosi di Praga under Jirí Behlohlávek.

And the simple, lovely Andante from Mozart's Piano Sonata in C Major K. 545, played by Mitsuko Uchida.

This Van Gogh painting captures the beauty of a simple yet joyous moment in family life. If that painting had a soundtrack (like the movies do) it might be one of the Mozart selections above. If Van Gogh hung out with you or me for a day, what scene might he capture on canvas that would go with the Andante?

Here's the famous "Mozart" scene from the 1994 movie Shawshank Redemption. And here is the thought-provoking quote heard at 2:12 . . .


"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is I don't want to know. Some things are best lest unsaid. I like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared---higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."
Here is a link to the whole aria from the opera "The Marriage of Figaro."

Larry and I saw that opera at the Kennedy Center several years ago. It was a magical evening and left my heart soft for "better things" for weeks. 

Morgan Freeman, the actor who shares this quote said it so convincingly. What does it mean that every man felt free? Music has the power to liberate anyone who is a prisoner to things or places or situations that are ugly or demeaning, or even boring, monotonous. It can also put one in a place to dream about doing great things or being enlarged, free from small dreams and smallness of spirit. In the spiritual realm, it can free the eyes of one's heart to see the greatness and beauty of God and His created world and begin to understand one's place in that.

There is so much noise in our world, that the sound of beauty--whether in music, the song of a bird, or a friend's voice--sometimes get drowned out. It's there all around us. May we take the time and care and stop to listen!




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