GRGR3: Discussion Opener for Section 3

[hankhank at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu]

On Fri, 18 Oct 1996, Alan Westrope wrote:
> This one's a gimme: a too-obvious reference to the ballet Swan Lake [1876]
> by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, famed Russian composer

One might also connect PIT to the Beethoven-Rossini debate; avant-garde
people like Adorno and the novel's Gustav Schlabone always regarded
Tchaikovsky as a composer of shameless kitsch. (Together with, e.g., my 
fellow countryman Sibelius, which is *much* harder to understand.) So
maybe this could, in the Frankfurtian view, point to the character's
petty-bourgeoisity. The Rossinian view would be, of course, quite
different, although Tchaikovsky was a more melancholically Romantic
composer than the Italian.

Heikki