Monthly Archives: November 2017

Music

Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 21, Elvira Madigan (1785)

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In the course of lunch recent­ly, my good friend and sub­scriber to this blog, Jason, sug­gest­ed that I do a piece on one of his favourite pieces of music, Mozart’s Piano Con­cer­to no. 21, the “Elvi­ra Madi­gan” con­cer­to. “You’ll know it” he said, when I con­ced­ed that I couldn’t bring it to mind from its name. Upon lis­ten­ing to it lat­er, I nodded…of course, yes, I know this alright, and yes, Jase, it cer­tain­ly does qual­i­fy for an “occa­sion­al glimpse”!

The con­cer­to is in three move­ments, but it is the sec­ond move­ment, the Andante in F major, that is the well-known part we’ll high­light here. Mozart wrote the con­cer­to in 1785, in the mid­dle of a pro­lif­ic cre­ative burst in Vien­na in which he wrote no few­er than eleven mas­ter­pieces in a 24-month peri­od. It was writ­ten for one of his so-called “sub­scrip­tion con­certs”; he would hire a venue, engage some musi­cians, take all the pro­ceeds from the con­cert and hope­ful­ly make a prof­it.

I was intrigued to learn how the con­cer­to came by its nick­name, “Elvi­ra Madi­gan”. What a sto­ry it turned out to be! It is a rel­a­tive­ly recent nick­name, as it is named after the 1967 film Elvi­ra Madi­gan made by Swedish direc­tor Bo Wider­berg in which the andante was promi­nent­ly fea­tured. The film is based on the true and trag­ic love sto­ry of Dan­ish tightrope walk­er, Elvi­ra Madi­gan (the stage name of one Hed­wig Jensen) and Swedish noble­man and cav­al­ry offi­cer, Lieu­tenant Six­ten Sparre of the Scan­ian Dra­goon Reg­i­ment.

While per­form­ing in Swe­den with her step­fa­ther’s cir­cus in 1887, Elvi­ra Madi­gan met Six­ten Sparre and the two fell in love. How­ev­er, since he was a mar­ried man and from a dif­fer­ent, high­er social class, their love was doomed. After two years of exchang­ing love let­ters, they abscond­ed and holed up in a hotel in Svend­borg in Den­mark for a month. From there, 21-year old Elvi­ra and 34-year old Six­ten took the fer­ry to the near­by island of Tåsinge and stayed at a lit­tle pen­sion in the fish­ing vil­lage of Troense. When Sixten’s fam­i­ly with­held finan­cial help, the couple’s last hopes fad­ed. They went out to the for­est, had a last meal…and then com­mit­ted sui­cide with Six­ten’s ser­vice revolver.

They are buried togeth­er on Tåsinge and to this day their graves are still vis­it­ed by tourists and roman­tics from all over the world. Mozart’s emo­tion­al and dream­like melody fits their trag­ic sto­ry per­fect­ly. Take a qui­et time to expe­ri­ence the music, below, whilst perus­ing the accom­pa­ny­ing images I found of Elvi­ra, Six­ten and the places in which they spent their last days. If you remain unmoved, you may want to just check your pulse…

 

Elvi­ra and Six­ten
Film, TV, and Theatre

Steve Martin and John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

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Writer/director John Hugh­es had had a series of suc­cess­ful movies in the eight­ies fea­tur­ing teenage angst and adven­tures (Weird Sci­ence, Break­fast Club, Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off) when he embarked on this, the more grown-up movie, Planes, Trains and Auto­mo­biles. It’s a com­e­dy, and it is indeed packed with com­ic set pieces, but it’s a lot more than that: it has a gen­uine pathos and poignan­cy.

Inspired by an actu­al hell­ish trip that Hugh­es had per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced, in which var­i­ous delays and diver­sions had kept him from get­ting home for an entire week­end, Hugh­es appar­ent­ly wrote the first six­ty pages of the script in just six hours. Steve Mar­tin plays Neal Page, a mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive des­per­ate to get back home to Chica­go to see his wife and kids for Thanks­giv­ing, and who along the way becomes sad­dled with show­er cur­tain ring sales­man Del Grif­fith (John Can­dy). Mishaps befall the two through­out their trav­els, and they endure every indig­ni­ty that mod­ern trav­el can inflict on its vic­tims.

The suc­cess of the movie is found­ed on the essen­tial natures of its two prin­ci­pal actors: Steve Mar­tin and John Can­dy embody them­selves, and this is key to why the film is able to reveal so much heart and truth. Neal spends the movie try­ing to peel off from Del, whilst Del spends the movie hav­ing his feel­ings hurt and then com­ing through for Neal any­way. It is road trip and bud­dy movie rolled into one, done to high­ly comedic effect, and my fam­i­ly returns to it time after time.

The last scenes of the movie deliv­er the emo­tion­al pay­off we have been half-expect­ing all along. Neal under­goes a kind of moral rebirth: we know he has learned a valu­able les­son about empa­thy, and there is true poignan­cy in the scene where Neal finds Del wait­ing alone on the L plat­form. Inci­den­tal­ly, there is a moment just before this scene where Neal, on the train home before he returns to find Del, starts to laugh qui­et­ly to him­self as he recalls their mis­ad­ven­tures. It’s won­der­ful­ly nat­ur­al and it turns out that there was good rea­son for that: unbe­knownst to Steve Mar­tin, Hugh­es had kept the cam­eras rolling in between takes on the Chica­go train, while Mar­tin was think­ing about his next lines, and in so doing cap­tured this unguard­ed moment. I include it, along with a few of the oth­er great scenes in the two-part mon­tage below.