Resonant Reading (Saturday)-Beethoven’s 9th Symphony

Facilitators use a light hand, posting the reading in the chat and calling on whoever’s Zoom hand is up. Suggestions for readings* come from group members, who also take turns facilitating, if they want to try that role.
The reading for this session: Saturday (8/30 at 4PM)
The text is Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Mvt 3, Measures 1-24 (The 1st 2:44 in this Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The text is the music, but here’s a description that we’ll use to catalyze the discussion:
We hear a descending motive in the winds like a gently opening curtain, and then a theme in the strings made of 3 phrases. Each phrase falls and then rises like a spirit that finds rest and then a new impetus of life. Each segment of the phrase is echoed in the winds; one could say the winds are the world and the strings are the self. Or perhaps the winds are memory and the strings are the present. [Text based on sources by Harvey Sachs and by Donald Tovey.]
How to join:
- Join this class from your Web browser: https://zoom.us/j/91019857324, passcode 227385
- Join this class using the Zoom app: Meeting ID: 910 1985 7324
- Join this class by phone: 669 900 9128 US (San Jose), Meeting ID: 910 1985 7324
- Join this class by on-tap on mobile phones: +16699009128,,91019857324# US (San Jose)
- Phoning in, but not in the bay area? Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/abL8clvIYT
This is the Zoom link for Saturdays. For the Wednesday Zoom link, go to the Calendar and click on a Wednesday session.
Questions? Drop an e-mail to resonant-reading+owner@uucpa.org.
*This activity was formerly called “Sacred Text Reading.” That proved misleading–for one thing, more often than not our sources are secular–but it’s worth describing the qualities of a sacred text, which we still look for in the readings we choose. It is any reading that helps us to:
- connect to something of supreme importance to us
- feel more connected to other beings or to the universe
- feel more intensely alive
- align our lives with our values,
- perceive or feel more deeply
- be more fully and authentically ourselves.