When the Music Stopped

Thomas J. Cottle

Description

This is the story of one woman's decision to forfeit a brilliant career for the sake of motherhood. Once a child prodigy, Gitta Gradova traveled the world as an internationally acclaimed concert pianist, performing recitals as well as appearing with prominent orchestras of her era. Her son Thomas J. Cottle uses written records, interviews, and personal reminiscence to reconstruct her life, as well as their own mother-son relationship. He is at times a storyteller, at times a psychologist, at times a son seeking to uncover those aspects of his mother's life he could never know, or perhaps, chose not to know until it was too late.

Preface

1. Hawthorne Place

2. The Pianist

3. My Mother's Couch

4. The Physician

5. On Soirees and Skirmishes

6. Identical Sensibilities

7. Gone in the Moment

8. Merely Two People

9. Giant Shadows

10. Final Concert

Notes

About the Author

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Vie de famille
• Parentalité et Éducation des Enfants
• Singers (album)
• Musician
• Psychology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791485545
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

When the Music Stopped

D I S C O V E R I N G M Y M O T H E R

Thomas J. Cottle

When the Music Stopped

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When the Music Stopped

Discovering My Mother

THOMAS J. COTTLE

S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W Y O R K P R E S S

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2004 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Judith Block Marketing by Fran Keneston

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cottle, Thomas J. When the music stopped : discovering my mother / Thomas J. Cottle. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-7914-5997-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Gradova, Gitta, 1904–1985. 2. Pianists—Biography. I. Title.

ML417.G69C67 786.2'092—dc22 [B]

2004

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2003066186

Music resembles poetry; in each Are nameless graces, which no methods teach, And which a master hand alone may reach. —Alexander Pope, 1709

. . . the true nature of music: is it a sensual joy on the same order as gastronomy, or in essence a veiled art, born of a dream, a reminiscence of the great unconscious universe? —Marc Pincherle,The World of the Virtuoso

The hand reaches and extends, receives and welcomes–and not just things: the hand extends itself, and receives its own welcome in the hands of others. The hand holds. The hand carries. The hand designs and signs, presumably because man is a sign . . . the hand’s gestures run everywhere through language, in their most perfect purity precisely when man speaks by being silent . . . Every motion of the hand in everyone of its works carries itself through the element of thinking, every bearing of the hand bears itself in that element. —Martin Heidegger

Love thinks only in sweet sound For ideas are too far; All that love cares to reveal Only music may surround —Tieck

Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be a soporific. —Aaron Copland,In Praise of Music

When I but hear her sing, I fare Like one that, raised, holds his ear To some bright star in the supremest round; Through which, besides the light that’s seen, There may be heard, from heaven within, The rest of the anthems that the angels sound. —Owen Felltham, “Upon a Rare Voice,”In Praise of Music

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To Gitta Gradova Cottle and Maurice H. Cottle, my parents

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Preface Hawthorne Place

Contents

The Pianist My Mother’s Couch The Physician On Soirées and Skirmishes Identical Sensibilities

Gone in the Moment Merely Two People Giant Shadows

Final Concert Notes About the Author

ix

xi 1 21 53 75 99 129 151 187 207 233 265 279