When I said I had never thought of the maiden fighting back before, I seem to have lost a sentence which said, I hadn’t realized this until you said it. Woops, that has kinda turned a compliment into a put-down. Sorry man.

I would though really like it if you could give us some reports on your garden – it would be interesting to see how our different climates effect how we do things…I noted though that I said in my earlier reply that I would like such comments “if you could be bothered” – I didn’t mean it to sound like that! I meant if you had time.

I think i was having a bad day when I wrote all that.

Amazing that you have now got new crocuses whilst mine have all withered away – things dying and things new born!

Back to Death and the Maiden, you have actually changed the way I see this song – and I thought I knew it so well.

It is funny how one can go through life thinking something is clear and right but then someone will come along and change everything.

I think my obsession with the song maybe came from those days when I always thought that we were being tricked by Death into thinking he was a friend.

I tried to sing it as a threatening figure pretending to be warm-hearted.

I was trying to say, I think that Schubert like the Maiden was really both terrified and seduced by the idea of death.

Those deeply moving late piano sonatas, the String Quintet and, of course, the Death and the Maiden String Quartet, which uses this song as its basis, are all concerned with that deceptively consoling moment of the realization of our mortality.

The poet is probably writing about consolation but Schubert, in his setting, is going somewhere much darker and more ambiguous.

This glimpse of death is a moment of narcotic temptation which draws us beyond terror into a vertigo leap into the dark.

It is, I think, a much more terrifying moment that the death that the maiden first sees at the beginning of the song.

In ordinary moments the situation is mostly reversed: life is consoling and death is feared. The genius of the song is that it turns that around, which is death exactly: an utter reversal. But I think you said that. Is Schubert saying then that it’s all a consolation?

I am pleased you like Schubert, Six Feet Under and crocuses! A man of taste I see…it is strange how your garden is seasonally so behind mine though – does your Autumn end later than ours I wonder? I would be really interested if you sent in a few reports on your garden if you could be bothered.

As for letting go of one’s resistances, not so much bombastic I think, as right on the nail. Every time I let a bit more resistance go, I feel happier, healthier and definitely more alive. In the end, I suppose it is the way to self discovery.

As I said in the blog, that song has always been in my repertoire and, easy though it might sound, I have never felt I did it right.

I have to say, after all this time, I had never thought that the maiden might actually fight back or that she had any choice in the matter.

Schubert, I think, well in his best music anyway, has a death wish or at least he is drawn to the idea of death as if it is like a fatal seduction.

Doesn’t mean he wanted to go all the way though and give up, there is a fight in there too, you are quite right.

I think I would probably sing that song better now after what you have said!

Yes, here’s to greater life indeed.

Wow, that was bombastic. I really like the Schubert…and Six Feet Under…my crocuses look nice…