#schuman

© EDanhier 

I am an impatient woman. This quality of mine is exactly why I can no longer watch American tv shows because I simply do not have the patience to watch past a season. This exact quality is what makes it incredibly difficult for me to watch on-going kdramas. I operate by a simple policy: If I cannot binge watch a kdrama over a weekend, then I most probably will not be watching it. However, Do You Like Brahms? was a notable exception to this rule. Despite juggling three lab courses, an internship, and a tutoring gig, I somehow managed to tune into Do You Like Brahms? every Monday and Tuesday and believe when I say that I watched every episode three times. I would first watch the clips that SBS uploaded for each episode before watching the unsubtitled version, and then, I would end my evenings with the complete English subtitled version. I was practically obsessed with the show, even though the show was in many ways imperfect. However, when it came to writing the review, I felt like the original review I wrote didn’t give me room to completely analyze the show to my heart’s content. In this post, I want to focus on the roles of Traumerei and Widmung as motifs reinforced throughout the plot.

The first time that Chae Song Ah and Park Joon Young have a real conversation is when they are both waiting for their respective friend at the airport and Joon Young asks Song Ah what she had to do to land the internship at Kyunghoo Cultural Foundation and Song Ah explains that she designed a concerto surrounding Clara, Schuman, and Brahms and Joon Young asks if the theme of her concert was unattainable love to which Song Ah responds that it was instead a story of three friends. She then asks Joon Young the titular question, “Do you like Brahms” , to which Joon Young resolutely responds no and we soon discover . This brief conversation speaks volumes for the current state of Joon Young and Song Ah’s lives. Though it may not be apparent, unattainable love and friendship are really the same sides of the same coin as both Joon Young and Song Ah are stuck in love triangles. Joon Young has feelings for Jung Kyung, but knows that a relationship between them can never materialize because their friend Hyeon Ho is deeply in love with Jung Kyung. Similarly, Song Ah harbors feelings for Dong Yoon, but conceals them because of his relationship with her friend Min Sung. For both of these individuals, what they conceive as “love” is unattainable, but it is ultimately sacrificed for the necessity of friendship. 

Perhaps no one grapples with this notion more than Joon Young because he is immediately forced to confront the mess of Jung Kyung wanting to break off things with Hyeon Ho to be with him right when he starts to take the initiative to move on from her. He knows that pursuing a relationship with Jung Kyung will ultimately be one that brings pain, but he’s a man struggling with  feelings of lingering attachment. We see that in how he plays “Traumerei” by Schuman as a warm-up before his practice and it also happens to be Jung Kyung’s favorite song. In many ways, Traumerei is a symbolic representation of the ties that needs to be cut and we start to see him do that when he pursues a friendship and ultimately a romantic relationship with Song Ah. 

When Joon Young and Song Ah enter into a relationship, there are already many underlying problems that threaten its foundation. For Joon Young, he cannot completely remove Jung Kyung or successfully establish boundaries that stop her from feeling like she’s entitled to his personal and professional life because of her problematic clinginess. Song Ah, who already suffers from serious self esteem issues regarding her ability as a violinist, constantly compares herself to Jung Kyung ( a violin prodigy) and questions if someone like her can really date the “great” Joon Young. For both, Traumerei really is a song that encapsulates their insecurities and we see the song make a reappearance right when it seems like Joon Young and Song Ah’s relationship is heading towards a train wreck. When Song Ah discovers that Joon Young played Traumerei, things spiral into chaos and we see them break up because Song Ah realizes that this relationship can no longer superficially exist when they cannot be honest about each others’ feelings. 

However, just when the audience starts to get the idea that this tale may become one about “the one that got away, we see our characters thrive individually and reunite, giving us a sweet satisfying end to a drama that elicited a plethora of emotions. Song Ah finally comes to terms with the fact that her emotional relationship with the violin has changed. The violin has no longer become something that she loves but a source of immense burden as playing violin has forced her to navigate a toxic clout-focused environment. Instead, she chooses to pursue a profession in concert and event planning so she could continue to love classical music for simply being music. Jung Kyung realizes that her efforts to win back Joon Young are meaningless and futile, and Joon Young finally speaks up for himself by confessing his love for Song Ah. Its a pleasant surprise when he expresses this through his performance of Widmung, which moves Song Ah to tears and pushes her to reciprocate Joon Young’s feelings. I find this scene especially beautiful because a piece by Schuman that symbolized so much heartbreak for the both of them was replaced by another piece by Schumann that symbolizes hope and love. While Traumerei means dream, Widmung means dedication and the transition from one song to the other symbolizes the growth of Joon Young and Song Ah. In the beginning of Do You Like Brahms, the idea of achieving true contentment was in many ways treated as an unattainable dream by Joon Young and Song Ah. Joon Young constantly put others before himself and Song Ah constantly felt unworthy. However, at the end, by choosing to dedicate themselves to a relationship founded on reciprocity and love, they are able to face their inner turmoil and purse what truly makes them feel happy.

Singer and actress Melissa Schuman -- who wrote a blog post in November accusing Backstreet Boys star Nick Carter of raping her in 2002 -- has now filed a police report.  

NOSTALGIA UK

Professor Schuman (1994)

Professor Schuman was another American in my department, and probably the oldest lecturer there. Of course, this was just my assumption based on his appearance—but I don’t think I was wrong. If I remember correctly, he was the head of the entire Maths and Computing department. His office was a bit secluded compared to the rest of the staff, tucked away in a quieter part of the floor.

To be honest, I don’t recall much about his lectures—except that he taught us programming in Pascal. Kids growing up in today’s IT world have probably never even heard of Pascal. It was a popular programming language back in the '90s, especially for teaching. That being said, I did actually use it to develop a commercial application during my "sandwich year"—the industrial placement year between my second and final year of university.

But what I can’t forget is his distinctive appearance. He was short for an American, with a slightly slouched posture and a slow, deliberate gait that carried an air of quiet authority. His whitish facial hair covered nearly the entire lower half of his face, to the point that even his mouth was barely visible. And then, there was his voice—slow and steady, perfectly matching his pace. It had a deep, rough quality, almost as if it belonged to a thrash metal singer. His speech had no dramatic rises or falls; if you charted its frequency on paper, it would be a nearly flat horizontal line, with the occasional jagged peaks from the rawness of his tone.