Ah, appreciation!

Strange to tell, but I am actually appreciating this music I have to study for class. Like, what torture, Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, Schumann (both of them, Robert and Clara), Stravinsky, etc. I love some of this music already; Firebird, wow. But Liszt was not up there in my opinion. And then I learned how difficult his stuff is to play, and that elevated his music in my tiny mind. How perverse is that, anyway? But, isn't that part of what makes watching ballet so fascinating, the difficulty of it all? There is this piece by Liszt, "The Little Bell", and I went, well, ho hum. But then our erstwhile teacher showed us the fingering, something I am intimate with from the many years I spent studying piano, and I went, holy cow, that's phenomenal. It is so difficult, very few professional pianists will tackle it. And now, I really appreciate it. And the lied, or German artsongs by Schubert or Schumann, well, they are just early versions of "I Will Survive", albeit terribly angst-ridden and dramatic. Those Germans, they really knew how to suffer for love. But the king of suffering is Chopin. There is in his music (almost all written for the piano) this sense of loss and yearning that makes me want to cry every time I hear it. Never mind that he suffered in real life, that he died at 39 of consumption, was painfully shy despite his fame, and carried on a doomed love affair with George Sand, a woman who cross-dressed. How tragic is that?! His music is often played rubato, which gives the performer some lattitude with tempo, tiny hesitations that pull at the heart and sustain that yearning with virtuoso brilliance. It is an emotional exercise, listening to Chopin. Must rest up, study some algebra, to decompress here.