Erich Fromm

 “But the historical period through which I lived become a social laboratory which never failed.”

Erich Fromm

                                        

photo via Pinterest

September 11th and Schubert Piano Trio

 

September 11^th and Schubert Piano Trio  

Dear diary,  

There is a piano trio that got associated with the events of September 11^th.  At least for me. For this 25^th anniversary of 9/11, this is a story of Schubert Piano trio in B flat Major. 

Music has a power to transport and connect us to different places, people and events. It links individual to a group; it can bring cohesion. It can bring optimism as well as sadness. It can be a symbol.

Montréal, September 2001: 2001 was the year when I started my Master’s degree at Conservatoire de Montréal. Life was beautiful and my only worry at that time was my sadness that Conservatoire had to move from that beautiful old building in Old Montréal.

That September, I had a required class called Chamber Music. It is a particular class where I was assigned to play duos, trios or quartets. I came to Conservatoire with a soloist background and my chamber music works consisted of works for two pianos or piano violin duos. I did not play many piano trios. And somehow, we were assigned a grand Schubert piano trio in B flat Major, one of the most celebrated masterworks in the chamber music repertoire that takes 40 minutes to perform. I had an honor to do this trio with Emilie, violinist and Yoav, cellist, two wonderful musicians that were doing their Master’s at the same time as me. We had an entire semester to prepare it and perform it in December, at Jeunesses Musicales du Canada concert hall here in Montréal.

Our first trio rehearsal was scheduled for Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, I got up happy, and eager to go to Conservatoire and start the work with my trio partners.  Was proudly holding my Schubert trio scores in my hands and was just about to get out when on my surprise I found my entire family in the living room in front of the television. Thousands died, said from another room, buildings collapsed, there are first responders and firefighters dead as well, it was a terrorist attack. Unable to move I set beside them. Crying. Life stopped.

Bus 97 going West was packed. I was on my way to Conservatoire.  In bus, unease and silence. Hurt and confusion everywhere. Some were shaking heads in disbelief. We were all looking at each other. I was holding my cell phone in one hand and my Schubert trio scores in another. Like a compass. Almost squeezing them.

Arriving at Conservatoire, we did our first reading. An atmosphere difficult to explain. I believe that all three of us just moved our fingers and stared blankly through our scores. What a sad day it was.    

New York, April 2005: Few years later, I found myself in New York. I was preparing for the Chopin International Piano Competition. An April morning my mom and I visited the Ground Zero before my piano lesson. In 2005 Ground Zero was still far away from the memorial that we know today.  Fences were still around. All around buildings were still covered. Beneath, thousands and thousands ordinary people that went that morning to their work and never came back. The feeling that they had families, they had hopes. It was all gone, life has stopped. We stayed there for few minutes while ordinary people like us were rushing their ways to their work.

 

I was late for my piano lesson as my lesson was quite a few blocks away from the site. Once arrived, I started my worm up session with some scales and etudes. That day I supposed to present Chopin first piano concerto but during my worm up, I suddenly switched to the opening part of the Schubert piano trio. I did not bring my scores, but from my memory, I managed to play the opening and second theme of the first and second movements. Symbolically, in this opening, the images of New York’s Ground Zero in front of me joined the images of that Tuesday Montréal morning of September 11^th. It was the same sunny morning when I was holding my trio scores as I was securing their existence in my hands on that bus 97 going West.

 

Montréal, April 2005: Few days later, I got back to Montréal. Found my Schubert piano trio scores, opened them and went through the entire trio, my part. Slowly. Remembering. Notes were going one by one. The first movement, a beautiful second theme, then the second movement, third movement Scherzo and fourth movement Rondo. Entire trio till its end. Reminiscence. Schubert piano trio resonating.   

 

An epilogue: In his theory of symbolic interactionism American sociologist Herbert Blumer explains that human beings act toward things, including physical objects, other people, institutions, and situations, based on the specific meanings those things hold for them.  

This trio could be remembered as another requirement for an obligatory class. But that was not the case. For me, this piano trio transcended and ‘broke’ the fences. It became connected to the day and place of human tragedy and to the people who are not with us anymore. Buildings were full of people that day, music was surely part of their lives. September 11^th came between us and our everyday lives. September 11^th came between me and this piano trio. From that day on whenever I perform it, whenever I open this trio’s scores, or hear it performed I am reminded of human tragedy of September 11,2001. 

 

Schubert Piano Trio n. 1 in b flat Major Op. 99 (D. 898) performed by Trio Dali
 

A tale of four chocolates, Act One

 

        A tale of four chocolates 

            Act One 

Sociology gives us tools for the analysis of historical movements of our societies.

I recently talked to a friend about a sociological work I am doing. He asked if I am studying individuals, “no just groups”, I responded and than added “in fact yes, I do study individuals to infer about the groups.”  

Groups are important. They are giving us an identity, guide us and give us meaning to our everyday life. Our professional, religious, ethnic and economic groups are all inter-related.  Erich Fromm sees something similar into his definition of social character as “shared core of a character structure that is common to most members of a specific culture or society.”  He says that groups give us “frame”. Emile Durkheim sees an individual as a part of something bigger than himself through collective effervescence. 

Individual can not survive without a group, I agree. But a blind belief in a group might have negative consequences. For example, it might result in a creation of uniformed groups that my look the same. We might end up with not having anymore a “control group”, a group to which we usually make reference when doing our sociological research. It is something that John Stuart Mill saw in his work “On Liberty”: “Comparatively speaking, they now read the same things, listen to the same things, see the same things, go to the same places, have their hopes and fears directed to the same objects”.      

An introduction: By destiny or for any other reason my family is well scattered around all continents. I have uncles, aunts, cousins and whatever you want living in a thousand different time zones.  You get up in the middle of the night and you lose the sense of where exactly you are and to whom you spoke at 3am.

When visiting, my uncles always brought me chocolates and I used to name them by chocolates they brought. There was   a “Milka” a “Toblerone” an “Oh Henry” and an “After Eight” uncle.

“Milka” uncle was concerned with social problems of population and spent some time working in western Europe.

“Toblerone” uncle was a doctor of endocrinology and spent much of his time discussing and influencing politics. He had a belief that we all should share his views. Our home was open to all and we had family and friends from all spheres, from the extreme right to extreme left to the extreme center. We believed that we were free to express our views. My “Toblerone” uncle considered that we might be ‘on the other side of the fence’, or that we were in his view some sort of a ‘black sheep’ parts of the family. From our perspective we found his views dogmatic. We loved him dearly. The dogmatic “Toblerone” uncle.  

“After Eight” uncle got married with a flight attendant, my aunt at that time, and visited us after many years and I had a chance to meet my cousin.    

Dearest of all my uncles was my fourth uncle, the “Oh Henry” uncle. At that time Montréal’s Jean Coutu and Pharmaprix stores were close to his work and after he finished teaching and supervising his students, he always brought us (to me and my cousins), “Oh Henry” chocolates.  

He was a passionate fisherman. For fishing bites, “Oh Henry” uncle used the natural ones, usually after rain that he collected in nearby parks. I once accompanied him. It was a bit late at night, and we were on the corner of Saint-Denis and Prince-Arthur streets. A guy came near us and asked something, a situation was a bit odd, and my uncle, with a flashlight in one hand, I was holding another in my hand, said to me “quick, turn your flashlight toward the sky and circle with it, I will do the same with mine.” We both turned our flashlights for about half a minute. I even managed to turn around myself for better effects. The guy left, totally surprised. “Oh Henrry” uncle concluded “Remember, whenever in your life you find your self in an awkward situation, react crazier than the subject/object in front of you. Crazier, better.” His words are still resonating. My “Oh Henry” uncle.

Some of my uncles literary “parachuted” and appeared after 20 years. This particular one did not bring me a chocolate but he appeared ‘celestially’ on my computer and brought us interesting stories. The time zone was about 12 hours difference and sometimes we found each other talking late at night. Real twilight zones soirées. A twilight zone uncle. 

 

The fifth uncle is related to twilight zone uncle. A hyper intelligent, a rational thinker, a pragmatic and endlessly interesting. We even arrived to the nature/nurture arguments, when talking to cerebral and twilight uncles. A cerebral uncle.   

 

In conclusion of this first Act of a tale of four chocolates: danger of uniform societies might be there but there is still hope. I believe that conversations with my uncles were in form what Hegel meant with thesis/antithesis/ synthesis theory. Our family being “on the other side of the fence” I think we were a thesis, the “Toblerone” ‘s group was antithesis and somehow, we are all waiting for synthesis to arrive.

I also believe that our discussions were even more interesting as      our perspectives carried characteristics of places where we lived. We came from different parts of the world. We symbolized what Erich Fromm referred to social character. His social character is well present as it is forming us and binding us in our differences of opinions.  

To end with Mill’s quote  

 “…there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; It is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood.”     

Because,

 “…the interests of truth require a diversity of opinions.”  Mill “On Liberty” 

 

To be continued…

Artemis II Congressional Space Medal of Honor Ceremony

 

Total solar eclipse, a view from Montréal

                                                    Photo via Time Out Montreal 

Next week, on August 12^th, we will be witnessing a total solar eclipse. It will be visible in Greenland, Iceland, northern Spain, and small parts of Portugal and Russia. 

 

Here in Canada, we had ‘our own’ solar eclipse that took place on April 8, 2024. For that occasion, many public events were organized. Jeremy Hansen, Canadian Space Agency astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist, was present in Niagara Falls (both on the Ontario and New York sides) from April 6 to 8, 2024 and Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques was present at Parc Jean-Drapeau here in Montréal. What a truly historic event it was.   

According to https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/canada/montreal?iso=20240408 “The total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, in Montréal lasted for   2 hours and 22 minutes, with the period of complete darkness (totality) lasting 1 minute and 28 seconds at its peak. Eclipse Timeline began at 2:14 pm its maximum totality: 3:27 PM and it ended: 4:36 pm”

Radio- Canada gave us a link to 1932 Total eclipse Montreal archives https://www.facebook.com/ArchivesMontreal/posts/pfbid0mPtwaaKwJgsDspYgMdNjgn7CSXPrdNbyVHL1UFK4crECPNkZX85mScuY9iFMpEqUl

Members of Montreal Facebook group “Montreal Then and Now” took so many beautiful solar eclipse photos. If you have a chance, refer to that group (year 2024, April 8). Cover photo above was taken by Time Out Montreal.

What was special about this total eclipse is that a few days prior to it, on April 4^th, Montréal received a massive spring snow storm that left around 25 cm of snow. Fortunately, on April 8^th we had 20°C, snow melted, and it was a beautiful  sunny day.  

For the eclipse, originally, I planned to go to McGill, visit the Trottier Space observatory, and then watch the eclipse with the crowd on the main campus. As a good sociologist, I wanted to observe how do we as a crowd behave before, during, and after the eclipse.  Unfortunately, my potential study was impossible as some work kept me that day and I had to stay home.

What was left for me was to sit on my balcony, projected with a ‘panorama view’ of the main street in front of me, and to wait patiently for the sun to be eclipsed. I managed to wave to my neighbors. They were already a few hours early on their balconies with their solar glasses and a music on.   

But what a view, and what a feeling it was once the total eclipse arrived!  Sun was covered in its totality. It was dark. It was, surreal. A real night, during the day. I started filming as I wanted a “souvenir” for myself to keep as a memory. I moved my phone around, but not in the direction of our eclipsed sun, and while filming I realized that a city bus was dragged by another camion that was helping him move. What a scene it was: A solar eclipse above us and a bus slowly moving in this total darkness waiting for the light to come back so it can advance. A rare event in even rarer time.  

Three videos I managed to film, from my archives:

Video 1, during solar eclipse:   

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5nnWcdc7nro

Video 2, during solar eclipse with our city bus   

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yySGKqP3a-E

and Video 3, after solar eclipse

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/c0IBs06k-dU

 

I am eagerly looking forward to August 12^th total solar eclipse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                             

Richard Feynman

 photo via Pinterest 

C Wright Mills