I found and am listening to an arrangement of Schubert's Winterreise for a wind band with tenor. It is arranged by Normand Forget and performed by a wind quintet with tenor and accordian, so it has a French Caberet sound. I am actually favorably impressed as such things can go aray but clearly the arrangement and performers are quite faithful to the intent of the original.
I had known about this song cycle for many years and in fact remembered hearing the first song in my childhood home probably in 1968 to 1970 before I went away to Graduate School, but I really didn't study the entire cycle until a got a CD in December 2002, and because of events that took place then.
The song that carries the strongest affect of the cycle is no. 8 "An dem Fluse" - On the River, because of this woman I met right at the time. The song is in E minor with a wonderful contrast that interchanges to E-Major in its middle. That is the reason for the cryptic title of this page, and the topic of affect in music reflecting the surrounding emotional climate, subconsciously.
I had gotten other music at the time. The Wherehouse was unloading CDs for very little at the time, and I bought about ten or so during that period of a couple of weeks before Christmas in 2002. So why should Winterreise seize my attention at that time, and not some other music I got such as the Schubert Mass in B-Flat which I got at the same time. I would eventually study and love that and another set of Schubert Lieder that contained selctions for the other two late song cycles?
I think that the reason was unconscious messages I was getting from this woman which were very mixed, and on the day when we first spent time together, her birthday in December 2002, the above song was in my mind's ear all day.
The reference to music theory is a metaphor for the affect of a moment in which I was unaware that would become clear within a short time, and why that particular song would stick with me and why in the midst of a flirtation something as sad as Die Winterreise, which takes a very negative view of relationship, would dominate my feelings, even before I realized that something was wrong with the whole thing.
So what was wrong? It is in the very idea of ICM, interchange of mode, the technique that makes "An dem Flusse" so apealing. At the time I did not know what the German text of the song refered to, about the rejected lover writing the name of his beloved in the ice of the stream, but the hold the piece had on me in that moment and what I was unaware of or unwilling to to admit has to do with the irestable allure of the seduction that was based on a very ambivalant situation. a woman who is used to charming people as a hostess, but who is torn by the situation and is self-sabotaging, and a man who is quite vulnerable and sensitive who is driven in short order to wreck the interaction because the push-pull is exceedingly painful. The Leid contains all of that in the abstract and literal, and caught my attention because of the unconscious message. For a long time afterwards I couldn't listen to the entire cycle without getting emotional, and later I wondered why it arrived at my mental door- step at that time.
I think that Geeky people who are at once intelligent and socially ackward are really very emotionally vlunerable in a way that makes them irrestable to others who overcompensate for feelings of inferiority by appearing to be givers. I can be greatly amused by other geeky people who are less socialy skilled than I. One came out and said that he avoided women he said were too seductive. I understand the risk, and it has been revealed in other less intense interations in which the come-on is really a bid to win control or to get self-agrandizement and prehaps involves a double-cross because the person doing it doesn't believe she is deserving of the attention she has solicited, and has to retaliate because she recalls that the double bind she has created also binds her. So she invents stories that conceal the bind she is in. Such people are dangerous sometimes, but they reveal that they don't think very well of themselves.
One has to be careful of people who mistake emotional openness and vulnerably for weakness for there are many variations on the theme where people will waste your time and then try to abuse you to make themselves feel better. Sometimes this can be over-control in which receptiveness and intellectuallity is mistaken for weakness to domination and wasting of time with narcissistic behavior. One person I knew was actually conscious of this. I gradually learned that despite her great intelligence and creativity that she was a waste of time, both of hers and mine, and it was good that she went away. Another had developed a game of attacking me whenever the topic made her feel vulnerable, a fact she was totally unaware of, and when I called her on the attacks she ran off and I never saw her again. The payoff must have been that denegrating me, whom she said she admired, must have made her feel better about herself, until I caught on and told her to stop the game. The point is that she did not have high self-esteem, and wouldn't grow up.
There were several people who were erased from my life, who went away on their own or were ejected by me when I realized that they were bad for me.
Lately, I have been content to be alone or in the company of people I don't interact with much. I think the reason is that I have acquired self-esteem which is based on acknowledging what you have that makes you feel good and doing that for yourself without regard for what people around you may think. It turns out that most of the time no one notices or cares, and you can pick and choose from those who see to spend time with as potential friends. I used to be afarid and self-conscious while desperate for attention. This will always attract the wrong people, or people who want to use you to bolster their saging egos. One doesn't need that. One must have high standards about who one is when noone appears to be watching. That is the one who others will have to accept.