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Visit http://www.garcabranca.com for details/booking/confirmation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sequeira's 'Arietta' : Hearing the Silence Spending a quiet morning in Delhi in memory of my mentor and friend. Going down the years thinking how much he meant to me. Helping me through are Beethoven's last 3 piano sonatas (Rudolf Serkin, pianist). How much Sequeira would have enjoyed listening to them. As the notes cascade over each other I realise Sequeira was an interpreter of life like Serkin is of Beethoven's music. Music moved him, pushed him, challenged him towards the absolute. 'Beethoven's thirty-two sonatas were written over almost 30 years, in the manner of a gigantic clash between Beethoven and his instrument, in which his creative genius expressed itself condensed, decanted, like nowhere else,' writes Andre Tubeuf. Sequeira's life too was a constant encounter with music, whether seeing similarities between music and literature, teasing out the jazz forms of Vachel Lindsay, or speaking on the cadence of an urdu nazm or ghazal. On October 10, 1991 I shared the dais with him at the Golay Memorial hall at the University of Poona, Pune. He was to speak on 'Literature and Music' and I on Mozart. This was to commemorate the bicentenary of Mozart's death in 1791. Though we did play the sprightly opening movement of Mozart's '40' i.e. Symphony Number 40 in G minor, Isaac's favourite was always Albinoni's stately Adagio for strings and organ in G minor. In my MPhil days when he breezed in to the Department of English of the University of Poona to speak at the refresher courses, he strode like a colossus, having a distinct penchant for that deep blue shirt of his. He filled the room with his presence. Awed by his deep appreciation of music as an elixir of life -- I used to pick up cheap cassettes of compilations of western classical music from Alurkar music house, Karve road, to listen to, in a bid to develop my fledgling interest. When I showed one of these to him he rubbished my purchase saying I should listen to the entire work, not fragments of it. We somewhat made amends by taking in 'Ghasiram Kotwal' when it was staged at Nehru Memorial hall, Pune after which we settled down to hearty sizzlers at 'The Place' (Near Manneys) with Sequeira holding forth on the finer points of venison and lamb. In Hyderabad he helped me with my paper on 'The Use of Music in TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral' (CIEFL Bulletin, 6.1 June 1994). At one of the various sessions discussing the role of the Chorus in the play he promptly started singing the 'Dies Irae' (Day of Wrath) in Gregorian chant in Latin with the emphasis at the appropriate places: doh si doh la si sol la la QUAERENS ME SEDISTE LASSUS He took a keen interest in opera. But his attempts to cultivate a liking for this form in his students met with little success as he recounted to me. All he got once after a sublime aria was a shocked silence among the class and a brave voice which perked up and said 'Sir, yeh aurat kyoon chillah rahee heh?!' When I moved to Delhi in 2000 and worked Sundays as an announcer on AIR I used to host the 'Music for Leisure' slot in the afternoon. Oftentimes if we were broadcasting a piece I knew he'd enjoy, I used to call him up and press my mobile to the playback speakers in the studio. Vivified and in a hearty post-prandial mood he would hold forth on the piece in question - Wagner, Delius or Brahms - and garnish it with an anecdote. Though I had begun my working life, our interaction never waned. Whenever I used to buzz down to Hyderabad I would make it a point to see him. And take a photo with him. And lately I noticed, depending on which side of him I was standing, his arm used to reach behind me holding me close to his side. Yet taking the utmost care that his hand was not caught on camera. The infinite vision of Beethoven's Arietta of Sonata No.32 in C minor, Opus 111 (CD, Sony 5128692000) helps me cope with the absence. In its melding of polarities, from the limpid to the ethereal, it is the work of a genius. Roughly 18 minutes, it seems to span a lifetime of purpose. A heroic statement, a bridge across the river of time, a meditation on the lanes, between this world and the beyond: Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when the earth shall claim your limbs then shall you truly dance. -Kahlil Gibran 'The Prophet' brian mendonca [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list Goanet@lists.goanet.org http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org