VLVL(7) Bass notes

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Subject:
        his Quarrel was with the Dithyrambists
   Date:
        Sat, 02 Jan 1999 11:58:46 -0500
   From:
        "Terrance F. Flaherty" <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>
     To:
        "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>

        At the end of Latitudes and Departures (bottom of page 252-253
bottom), Mason, and Dixon are once again, engaged in a contentious
discussion of Matters Religious. Not Forgetting the major themes of the
Soul, Memory, Conscience, and Remebrancers, - “Tha’ll be considering the
next World[s] brand new, -nawh
?”  As we turn the page to America, it is
the Sounds and the Silence, in their respective congregations, which end
their bitter disputation.
 In the beginning of part II, “From the shore they will hear Milkmaids
quarreling


I must admit I have grown a bit weary of Vineland. M&D remains for me the only
Pynchon worth reading. However, as I am very much in favor of the current
format, I shall just have to wait for M&D to come around again. Naturally, M&D
is also concerned with Music. With all of the "Postmodern" descriptions of
Pynchon's fiction, it can almost be forgotten that his ear is his best
attribute. Cherrycoke says that Plato's quarrel was with the Dithyrambists.
Read the Republic and you will find his complaint in BK III. The Repupubic is
a diologue about Music. Ha Ha! bet they don't agree with me in acedemia?
Anyway, what does Plato mean by music? What is happening in American music
that makes this discussion relevent?



Doug Millison wrote:

> >223.7-224.1:  ""taken the frets off [...] Jazz Bass"
> >224.10:  "woo-woo-woo-type"
>
> On a guitar, the fret lets the player cleanly play one or another note,
> either A or A# for example, because the fret shortens the string at the
> right distance to produce the required frequency. Removing the frets
> removes this 0 or 1 limitation.  Guitar players have always been able to
> "bend" notes by pulling the string in between frets, creating the "blue"
> notes of blues, jazz, and folk/traditional music, of course, but no frets
> expands the tonal possibilities along that rainbow of sound.
>
> Van Meter's notion of a "restoration of a premodal innocence in which all
> the notes of the universe would be available to him" (VL 224.3) could let
> him fall next in line after Anton Webern, reaching  a new pinnacle of
> "maximum freedom" in music, as lamented in GR by Gustav the composer:  "
> '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 [...] Webern [...] The young barbarians coming in to murder the
> Last European, standing at the far end of what'd been going on since Bach,
> an expansion of music's polymorphous perversity till all notes were truly
> equal at last. . . . Where was there to go after Webern? It was the moment
> of maximum freedom. It all had to come down. Another Gotterdammerung--"(GR
> 440)
>
> There may be relevant musical references in M&D that tie into this VL
> reference, too, but I don't recall them off hand.
>
> Anybody have any idea why Jazz Bass is capitalized?
>
> D O U G  M I L L I S O N  [http://www.online-journalist.com]
> "Life: a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay."
>         -Ambrose Bierce