re- them seven diatonics a

[WillL at fieldschool.com]

Date	5/10/96
Subject	re-  them seven diatonics a
>From	WillL
To	Pynchon List

re:  them seven diatonics and democracy
Davemarc sez:

"I'm not sure that I'd want to call the challenge to diatonicism (or, to be
more precise, tonality) "democratization."  I think I understand the
intended meaning; I just wonder whether we could agree upon a better word."

Well, it's Pynchon's (or, er, the GR narrator's) word (p. 430, Viking):

"'I'm not so much for Beethoven qua Beethoven,' Gustav argues, 'but as he
represents the German dialectic, the incorporation of more and more notes into
the scale, culminating with dodecaphonic democracy, where all notes get an equal
hearing.  Beethoven was one of the architects of musical freedom -- he submitted
to the demands of musical freedom, despite his deafness.'"

Of course, it's not at all as simple as that (or, perhaps, as my post from
yesterday suggested either).  Saure notes that, after listening to Rossini you
feel good ("lovers always get together, isolation is overcome . . . LOVE OCCURS.
 All the shit is transmuted into gold.") whereas Beethoven makes you feel like
"going out and invading Poland."  Some democracy, huh?

'F course, Gustav digs Webern too, who he says had moved music to the edge of
tonality, calling it musical "polymorphous perversity -- till all notes were
truly equal at last."

My point is that Gustav is as stuck in a European repressive order as anybody
else.  What difference does it make if you have seven or twelve "equal" notes
when the ignored and preterite notes are the infinite tones between the cracks
of the Bosendorfer's keys?  If you some clearer crack at democracy, some greater
chance of escaping what's coming, then you'd better look to those bluesmen and
mystics, the guys who live for the notes no piano can muster.

But Cage's silence?  Seems to me that's the awful sound after our LA movie-house
has had its map erased.  If I'm still around, I'll stick with "Parker's Mood,"
thanks.

-- Will Layman