Читать книгу The Seventh Cellist - Monika Borth - Страница 7

Prologue

Jeden Augenblick des Lebens,

er falle aus welcher Hand des Schicksals er wolle, uns zu,

den günstigen sowie den ungünstigen,

zum bestmöglichen zu machen,

darin besteht die Kunst des Lebens

und das eigentliche Vorrecht eines

vernünftigen Wesens.

(Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742-1799, German writer and scientist)

These famous lines about the art of living, about “living each moment in life” have guided me all through my life. The idea of dealing with both life’s “favourable” as well as “unfavourable” moments and forming them both to one’s advantage – as Lichtenberg points out - is our privilege as rational human beings.

Every day I look at these lines at the wall in front of my desk, I feel stranded by the waves of life, often distanced from the outside world, and I am challenged to cope with my innermost thoughts and feelings. During my active life as a musician, my instrument and I were a medium which distributed music to others, often inspiring enthusiasm at many places in this world, together with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and, of course, with the 12 Cellists!

Now, when contemplating the walls in my study, I see photographs of enlightening encounters I had in those many years: one of them shows a conversation with Herbert von Karajan, and the second one displays Yehudi Menuhin during a formative encounter. What I see in our faces is a sort of inner glow resulting from the concert experience we had just shared. I also notice big concert halls in front of me, they lead me from Berlin to Tokyo and New York, among many other places. And finally, I feel again what I have once been: a cellist in a world-renowned orchestra!

No, I don’t want to be someone who reminisces about past deeds and glory, just to escape some gloomy winter moments. I want to live in the present, but I need to relive and rethink the past, in order to find out who I am today. And I feel that I am grateful for people who ask me about it.

Friends and companions have encouraged me to put my thoughts into writing, while enjoying many of my often-amusing anecdotes. But eventually my intention is to show internal references of my professional and personal life, with and for music.

My reflections on life and music will include a lot of gratitude, as well as very special moments a musician lives through, apart from practicing for and playing in concerts. They will show how “the favourable“ corresponds with “the unfavourable“ and perhaps will reveal a certain pattern in the end. Some may ask: How does it feel to hold your beloved cello in your arm for hours on end, drawing the bow over the strings with your right hand, while your left hand creates the line of the melody, with your head slightly bent to better absorb the sound, and with your eyes closed - self-critical and touched at the same time?

And finally: How does a person deal with life – past and present – who used to experience those moments of happiness when sound and soul were in complete harmony, culminating in something close to what might be called a revelation?

Perhaps the reader may also sense how difficult it is, after a life of such deep involvement and emotion, to, all of a sudden, lose one’s hearing, a predicament I have now had to live with for quite some years.

The notes, which follow, may be a way of not losing myself on a dark winter’s day.

Berlin, January 2019