Tai Chi Chuan and the Operas of Benjamin Britten

Tai Chi Chuan and the Operas of Benjamin Britten

WHAT????

Let me explain.  I am going somewhere with this one.

I am a BIG fan of the operas (and music) of Benjamin Britten.  One of the few.  He died in 1976 and hasn’t totally infiltrated the classical music world despite serious admiration from music critics and scholars.  A few hits in his catalogue get played with respectable regularity.  Britten usually picks a literary source for his operas: Peter Grimes, The Turn of the Screw, Billy Budd, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Death in Venice, Paul Bunyon along with his three Biblical parables.  His style is somewhat oblique.  It is lyrical, yet not always melodic.  And in just about every case, when I first hear his operas, my response is more or less, “Interesting, but it doesn’t quite get me.”  But because they are interesting, I revisit his operas for a second, third, fourth and so on, listening. 

Then something happens.  I get it.  While before it was sort of an intellectual curiosity, with a few intriguing bells and whistles, suddenly it has gotten under my skin.  The entire piece is as easy to enjoy as a dark chocolate chip pecan cookie: I am hooked.  I not only “get it”, but the pieces fall together and I see more and more and more of his musical intent.  It is wonderful to listen to and exciting to see his intellectual mapping of sounds and words.  At this point, I wonder how was it possible to not hear this before?  Before it was somewhat indecipherable, but now it becomes something I want to hear again and again… 

This has happened to me with just about every single one of his operas.  In this regard, it is hard to share his operas with anyone because most listeners are not inclined to return to a piece because it is “interesting”.  Mostly, we want satisfaction in our musical listening time immediately.  I suppose my own curiosity about his work drives me to return to them with regularity.  If nothing else, he is famous and he spent a lot of time working on each opera.  The bottom line is that his work is deep and requires more to appreciate them.  And I know at this point that time spent listening to the Britten opera will reveal more.  (Example: in The Turn of the  Screw, I’ve read that between the 14 scenes are small musical interludes that are in fact 14 variations on a single theme.  While I can hear the interludes, I have yet to find them to be “variations” on a theme.  But that question – perhaps beyond my ability to actually hear it – keeps me listening a bit more deeply.  I’m truly curious and want to be able to hear this.)

So have you seen the link to tai chi?  That it doesn’t necessarily reveal itself immediately, that you need to return to it again and again and again, that once you see it, more is then revealed and becomes much more accessible, that once you see it suddenly the enjoyment factor explodes, and lastly that you need not only patience, but curiosity to keep asking, “What is here? What is going on?”  Britten took me years. Tai chi even more years.

Yes, to me, tai chi is like the Benjamin Britten opera.  All is relative, and not everyone will like the Britten opera, nor tai chi.  But the kind of mind I seem to have in relation to the Britten opera is exactly the kind of mind needed to explore tai chi. 

(I have a friend who rolls his eyes if I mention Britten, and doesn’t see why anyone goes to an opera where you don’t hum the tunes immediately after you leave the theater.  Britten, like tai chi, has more up his sleeve.  He gets under your skin and the musical language is often below the surface and very complex. My friend will never be a tai chi student!)

OK, you can pass on the operas.  But I’ll assume that if you are reading this essay, it may clue you into how to wrap your mind around the “work” of tai chi.  What you hear today will change and you will hear more tomorrow.  There is a thrill when that happens.  And tai chi will get into your mind/body.