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Weekend Concert 31: A Lonely Spirit's Century of Wandering

2007/3/25 13:50:10

In the century just past, the gradual unfolding of capital's globalization from the latter half of the nineteenth century onward -- in the hallucinatory vision of capital's universal brotherhood -- turned people into homeless spirits, cast into the demonic realm of capital, wandering without rest. No homeland. All the naive hypnosis of humanists had lost its effect. Lonely spirits reincarnated through phantom-like slaughter, a demonic realm from which there was no escape, every light leading only to deeper darkness.

All the culture and philosophy of the last century, in all their variety, were nothing but the wailing of homeless spirits. Eden was lost forever. The shattering of divine authority only brought deeper, more omnipresent domination by capital. People were severed from the world, severed from each other. At the climax of the two world wars, amid iron fire and vital blood -- one could walk out of Auschwitz, but never walk out of the demonic realm of existence.

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a great composer -- the last true heir to the great German-Austrian musical tradition -- gave a prophetic portrait of this century of wandering spirits. His name was Gustav Mahler, yet another Jew, carrying on his back the history of a homeless people, writing for humanity's receding homeland the fading grey-yellow as history peeled away in the setting sun.

Today's program features two of his early works

"Songs of a Wayfarer"

The wanderer, the drifter,
forever, wandering without a homeland.

"Titan"

The First Symphony,
An age of titans without titans,
Thought -- the plague of the twentieth century

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  • Weekend Concert31：Mahler "Songs of a Wayfarer" 1
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  • Weekend Concert31：Mahler "Songs of a Wayfarer" 2
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  • Weekend Concert31：Mahler "Songs of a Wayfarer" 3
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  • Weekend Concert31：Mahler "Songs of a Wayfarer" 4
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  • Weekend Concert31：MahlerNo. 1Symphony "Titan" 1
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  • Weekend Concert31：MahlerNo. 1Symphony "Titan" 2
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  • Weekend Concert31：MahlerNo. 1Symphony "Titan" 3
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  • Weekend Concert31：MahlerNo. 1Symphony "Titan" 4
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Replies​

Chán Zhōng Shuō Chán 2007/3/25 13:51:06

Beijing's weather is nice today. Before April's arrival, listening to Mahler couldn't be more fitting.

Heading out first, goodbye -- outside, countless flowers are waiting on the branches.