I.
One of the books I would still like to write, is my Big Book of Little Girls - a work dedicated to all of those fantastic creatures who are so much more than merely young females destined to grow up to be women in a conventional bio-cultural manner.
At their best - which is to say at their most phenomenal and inhuman - little girls are extraordinary events whose individuation doesn't proceed via subjectivity, but by pure haecceity. They are defined, thus, not by their age, sex, or material composition (sugar and spice), but by the intensive affects of which they are capable.
At their best - which is to say at their most phenomenal and inhuman - little girls are extraordinary events whose individuation doesn't proceed via subjectivity, but by pure haecceity. They are defined, thus, not by their age, sex, or material composition (sugar and spice), but by the intensive affects of which they are capable.
I already have an index of possible candidates for the book, both living and dead, actual and fictional. And now I have another name to add: Alma Deutscher ...
II.
Born in February 2005, Alma is a highly celebrated and much-loved composer and performer. Starting her musical career early - she began playing the piano aged two, followed by the violin at three - this wunderkind has already written sonatas, concertos, and operas.
For some, she's an angel sent to redeem the world through melody and she herself contrasts the simple beauty of her music with the ugliness and complexity of the times. Anyone wanting to see people in jeans or hear works that deal with social issues, should probably stay away from her recitals: Let them look at passersby in the street or watch TV, she says, with the regal disdain perfected more by Marie Antoinette than by Mozart.
And suddenly one recalls that the term prodigy refers not only to a young person with exceptional gifts, but - as her own mother reminds us - to a monstrous being who violates the natural order and brings with them something more troubling than a nice tune; something unbidden and unexpected ...
At the very least, I think it reasonable to regard this young girl as genuinely inspired, if not, indeed, one possessed; a witch who whirls a magical skipping rope about her head and allows strange forces to work through her. Whether these forces be divine or daemonic in nature is debatable; but it's surely worth remembering that the Devil has all the best tunes and that the positing of Beauty as the highest of all high ideals has, in the past, put dreamy Romantics on a path to Hell ...
But then I'm just one of those whom Robert Schediwy characterises as an advanced culture-theorist, suspicious of any attempt to steer contemporary classical music back to the 18th and 19th centuries with their "uninhibited love of melody", before those decidedly ungalant, 20th century composers dared to experiment with dissonance and require listeners to develop new ears.
As for Alma, obviously I wish her well. But I also hope that, as she matures, she rethinks her relationship to the present, to reality, and to popular culture and sees how even beauty can become an ugly impediment to genius ...
See Robert Schediwy, 'Alma und die gefährliche Liebe zur Melodie', Der Standard (13 Jan 2017): click here.
To listen to Alma play, or to read numerous other press reports and interviews with her and her parents, go to her website by clicking on the link already given. Alternatively, there are plenty of videos available to watch on YouTube, including this one, in which Alma not only performs her own piano and violin compositions, but speaks about her work before an invited audience at the WORLD.MINDS Annual Symposium (2016).
As for Alma, obviously I wish her well. But I also hope that, as she matures, she rethinks her relationship to the present, to reality, and to popular culture and sees how even beauty can become an ugly impediment to genius ...
See Robert Schediwy, 'Alma und die gefährliche Liebe zur Melodie', Der Standard (13 Jan 2017): click here.
To listen to Alma play, or to read numerous other press reports and interviews with her and her parents, go to her website by clicking on the link already given. Alternatively, there are plenty of videos available to watch on YouTube, including this one, in which Alma not only performs her own piano and violin compositions, but speaks about her work before an invited audience at the WORLD.MINDS Annual Symposium (2016).
