Love, Teshuvah, and Filipinos Will Save Classical Music: 02 The Lydian Mode

Visual/Textual/Audio Note 02 for Love, Teshuvah, and Filipinos Will Save Classical Music: Cantara Christopher Gives Her Beloved Conductor John Wilson Crib Notes On Todd Field’s Screen Masterpiece, Tár (PDF available here upon completion—keep checking back and don’t distract John with this till I’ve finished or he’ll bite your head off)

I can tell you precisely when Lydia Tár was born.

Lydia Tár, originally Linda Tarr from Staten Island, New York, was born on the Sunday afternoon Young People’s Concerts: What Is A Mode? was being broadcast on CBS-TV the second time around. (I saw it the first time around, 23 November 1966 when I was 11 almost 12; Lydia would have seen this repeat episode for the first time when she was 8 or 9, an impressionable age.)

Lenny’s presentation of the Lydian mode begins at 24:43. “…A strange piercing note that seems to come from faraway places, like the Middle East and Eastern Europe…” as Bernstein describes it—”A tangy mode.” His description lit the first fire in pre-teenage multi-award-winning accordionist (see VN26) Linda; for here was a genuine and thrilling connection with music and the world of Lydia’s immigrant father, Zoltan, (see VN07).