Mowing and Lent

There are two different flower beds for azalea lining along the street. Yesterday afternoon, I have mowed the lawn there and pulled weeds between azaleas. They were bearing fresh buds on the tips of branches, which may come out soon. Kids, elementary school pupils, were coming home yakking like birds behind me sitting on a small chair and doing the work. A few of them were saying hello to me.  

I have also cutting lawn/weeds in a larger area in the garden east of there. A bit of hard work for me. Expecting much work in the garden like this, I was already feeling as if worn out with it. I heard the property my mother's folks used to live for a long time was going to belong to another soon. This place might be the last property my mother's anscestors used to own. I don't value much with owning such an old property and won't care for who would take it over. So far as I could care for this place by myself, I would only do it. It's just an anti-aging exercise for me as well.

As I wrote about it in a comment to Susan, the daughter of Dave N4DAG, being in the season of Lent right now, I was again listening to St. Matthew's Passion. It was a recording by Richter conducting Muenchen Bach Ensemble in 1958. Richter was only 32 years old up-and-coming conductor those days. With his spirit of ambition in it, it has been regarded as one of the best performances of this great music. Briskly energetic and played as if in block style. Of course, it has Richter's profound understanding in Christianity.

Every piece of this music is piercing our mind as well as soothing and relieving it. It is a mysterious consequence that a music could bring our mind such an impression, apparently contradictory each other. As told before elsewhere in this blog, I have felt this fact from most of Bach's works. In this Passion, the 1st piece, a grand prelude is typical for such a power in music. It is foreshadowing or even foretelling of the tragedy but also of the evangel to us at the same time. The theme is Christ's death on crucifixion and his resurrection, which are the extreme absurdity in the world. No wonder this explains ambiguity or rather dual meaning in this music.

Even in his instrumental music such as Suite in H moll, I am always overwhelmed at its dual meaning, emotion of sorrow and of pleasantness at the same time. Away from the religious context, this characteristics may be inherent to Bach's works. In Matthew's Passion, the two arias which are sung after the betrayal by Juda and Petros, respectively, are the other example touching our mind in the same way. Both of them are in H moll as well. H moll seems to be a special tonality for Bach, which has not been used in music prior to his. Those pieces deeply move my mind with their characteristic double meaning.   

Digressing to a trivial thing. I had learned German for a few years in university days, which I have never used in daily life ever since. Very few knowledges in it left in my memory if not at all. I find it quite tough to understand the lyrics of arias and chorus or the speech of the evangelist. I remembered I had had a resolution to read the novels by Albrecht Goes in German. No progress yet. It might be an unachievable project. But I would start learning German again. At least, what a fun if I could understand the messages of this Passion listening to it.