The Music Driving Home

 So today I was finally able to go get Adri and bring her home. The boys have some jewelry and her mom will have an urn made for her in Louisville. I will have a ring made as well. I needed this to happen, because I didn't like thinking of her, or at least what remains of her physically, all alone in some strange place 20 minutes away from anybody.

On the drive there Beethoven's 5th Symphony was on the radio,  at the end of the third movement right before it transitions into the fourth. This has always been one of my favorite moments in classical music. I can take or leave the first movement with its overplayed repeated 4-note motif, but that transition to the last movement? Breathtaking.

However, today it filled me with anger. I was livid. I sang out the different parts with loud and aggressive "dah dah da daaaaaaaah, da da da daaaah"s just full of all the emotion and passion that I was never able to show when playing such things on the violin in orchestra, much to the chagrin of the director who accused me of just going through the motions. To be fair, I was then. But today: Nope. But the anger surprised me. Overcast skies and rain have kept it relativelly cool in Dallas today, so I had the windows partly down at the beginning. Eventually I had to roll them all up to better muffle my vocalizations of the fourth movement. I didn't want to scare anyone at stoplights.

When I left I placed the small box that seemed heavy for its size in the back seat where it was protected and headed home. I turned on the radio and heard the beginning of another of my favorite works: Schubert's Symphony no. 8, the "unfinished" symphony.  This beautiful melody is in stark contrast to the aggression of Beethoven in general, the fourth movement of the 5th in particular. It made me feel better on the drive home, somewhat hopeful, somewhat peaceful, but at the same time melancholy, because Adrianna herself was of course an unfinished symphony. Like Schubert's 8th, sometimes something unfinished can be glorious none the less, but that doesn't stop us wishing and hoping we had more.

Two perfect bookends from two masterworks. It'll have to do.