To Lighten Your Load: Music, Beauty and the World
By Thomas Neuburger
“If the world is so ugly, why make it even uglier with ugly music?” —Alma Deutscher
It’s been a bit heavy here lately, so I thought I’d lighten the load and offer some Friday fun.
Jonathan Coulton
I’ve loved song since forever. I linked to it recently; here it’s offered in full. I’ve chosen a live performance. Enjoy.
“Did I say overlords? I mean protectors.” Words to remember.
Alma Deutscher
One more, this by a twenty-one year old musical prodigy, a woman named Alma Deutscher. She was composing at five and already her list of works is quite impressive.
Here she improvises a composition from notes drawn from a hat. Note that she has perfect pitch. She was twenty when this was recorded. A delightful listen.
As you’ll notice, she writes in the tuneful romantic style of Mozart, Schubert, Chopin and the like. Responding to those who asked why not write in a modern and frankly more ugly style, she said in a video:
I already know that the world is complex and can be very ugly. If the world is so ugly, then what's the point of making it even uglier with ugly music?”
Not a bad aesthetic. The world’s grown ugly enough. Why add?
Deutscher's quote raises a question I keep circling back to: is beauty an escape from a difficult world, or a way of resisting it? She isn't denying complexity or suffering, just refusing to reproduce ugliness in her own work. That feels less like naivety and more like a deliberate stance about what art is for. I wonder whether she'd say the same about music written to confront horror directly, or if she sees those as different kinds of honesty.
More on this: https://collagemaker.org/
Very good 😊👍
Alma Deutscher's quote, "If the world is so ugly, why make it even uglier with ugly music?" really resonates. It's a powerful statement about the purpose of art and a refreshing counterpoint to some modern trends. Her approach reminds me that even in complex times, there's always room for beauty, much like how finding connections in a game of town of salem can bring unexpected joy amidst the chaos. 😊