GR soundtrack

[Paul Murphy]

At 1:13 PM 7/11/97, Doug Millison wrote:
>Pynchon suggests quite a few musical pieces in GR.
>
>I'll vote for Von Webern, spooky just coming out of turn of the century
>orchestral music haunted my Mahler and ready for a breakdown.

Yes, and not just the orchestral music (which forms only a small part of
Webern's small oeuvre); also, the Lieder, particularly the Trakl-cycle
(op.14), encompassing the "Abendland" triptych, with its ode to great
cities and dying peoples, "pallid wave shattering on the night's shore,
falling stars" ... and the "Song of a trapped Blackbird", with its
culminating lines, "The mercy of glowing arms embraces a breaking heart"
... (to sum up my theory of Georg Trakl's connection to TRP: Trakl received
financial support from Wittgenstein, on the recommendation of Rilke, wrote
some beautiful lines about a boy with 'mondenen Augen', had several of his
incest-and-death-obsessed poems set to music by Webern).

Regards,
Paul