A few thoughts...

...that occurred while listening to a recording of Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto funebre for the last time, before passing it along to the thrift store:

1. In the late 1970s, my family lived on the Aventine Hill, in Rome, near Santa Sabina, and just up the slope from where Cleopatra supposedly stayed during her time in the city. Many mornings, while my brother and I still slept, or while we rose, my dad walked down the hill to a bakery, where he'd buy freshly baked rosette, or rolls, and they'd be on the table, still warm and crisp, when we sat down for breakfast. Today, on an 18-degree Sunday morning, I made my way over to Whole Foods, and bought a loaf of just-baked Tuscan bread. It was still warm as I set out for home, for Sabina Avenue, where, instead of a Cleopatra, a Cleo awaited. Such a simple product, but so sublime: slight taste of salt, hint of fire, and a subtle sweetness. L. and I ate, I think, nine pieces, while Cleo decided that two tiny mouthfuls was just about enough - much as Mikey and I, I bet, felt in 1978 that a single rosetta was feast enough.

2. I got this CD at a moving-out party hosted by an English colleague who once wrote a deeply enjoyable book about readers and reading, and who once suggested that a reader should give every book 75 pages before deciding whether to continue or to put it down. That's generous, in my view; in the past, I've comfortably abandoned ship after a page or two, in certain dire cases. But, aware of her suggestion, I've applied the same principle of open-mindedness to Hartmann, and have patiently given his concerto three listens. The fourth movement, in my mind, is the most rewarding, as there are a few passages that involve a rather delicate tension: sustained notes on violins feel like threads drawn slowly, in the creation of a spare tapestry. But perhaps more compelling than the music, really, is Hartmann's story. He remained in Nazi Germany as a dissdent, and even saw, one evening, 20,000 prisoners being force-marched from Dachau, as the Allied troops advanced. "Unending was the stream," he wrote, after waking to the same line of prisoners that he'd seen the night before, "unending the misery, unending the sorrow."

The world is pleasure; the world is pain. We enjoy, for now, and as fully as we can, the bread we can muster.