pynchon-l-digest V2 #1193

[rwan]

----- Original Message -----
From: Daniel Wolf <djwolf at snafu.de>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 1:54 PM
Subject: Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1193


> > From: Nudeants at aol.com
> >
> > >>>Actually, the closest parallel to GR's achievment that I think I
could
> > find
> > in music would be maybe some 20th century classical works, such as
Elliott
> > Carter's first string quartet, maybe Pierrot Lunaire by Schoenberg,
> Kraanerg
> > by Xenakis.  Something achieving huge diversity of material coupled with
> > huge
> > diversity in presentation of material, yet managing to achieve unity of
> > purpose seemingly at odds with that diversity.<<<
> >
> > Amen, amen, amen. Where were you during the discussion in which many
were
> > saying Steely Dan was the closest parallel? I was so disgusted by that
> > thread I unsubscribed and joined a John Irving discussion list.
>
> Even more so than any work of Carter, it is the _4th Symphony_, _Three
> Places in New England_, the _Second Orchestral Set_, and the _Second,
> "Concord, Mass." Piano Sonata_ of Charles Ives that come closest, to
> bridging formidable, abstract musical structures with materials,
citations,
> that are immediate referenced to the "real" world.  I had to move to
Europe
> to get the chance to hear this piece -- the American equivalent of
> Beethoven's Ninth -- performed live.  Also unforgettable is John Cage's
> _Renga with Apartment House 1776_, where fragments of revolutionary-era
> American music and  songs of African-American, Sephardic, White
Protestant,
> and Native American soloists are projected in front of an orchestral
tracing
> of drawing fragments from Thoreau's Journal.  Gordon Mumma's
> electro-acoustic "Dresden Interleaf" could have been a missing chapter
from
> GR, while Robert Ashley's video operas are of a piece with CL49 and  VL.
>
> Daniel Wolf
> Frankfurt
>
>
Insofar it is a question of diversity in unity, I would recommend "Sinfonia"
of Luciano Berio. The third part is based on the scherzo "In ruhig
Flissender Bewegung" of the 2nd symphony of Mahler and "the Unnameable"(?)
of Samuel Beckett performed - in the best rendering - by the Swingle
Singers, conducted by Berio himself.. Both music and text are
"banana-leaves" to hold and carry just about anything
past/present/future/potential/unprobable/impossible noise- and voice-like.
And yet: I have the feeling that all this would fit in so much  more in a
thread in a William Seymour Borroughs d. group. Pynchon is NOT music. Music
is too much time-bound even if it succeeds in creating space.  GR -
Pynchon's only book as far as I'm concerned - with all its ac/decelerations
attempts nothing less than giving a blue-print of (human) consciousness.
Nothing less. Is it music? No. Is it a building? Not quite. (That is to say:
that wouldn't sufficiently describe it.) What would then discribe it
sufficiently? Well, Gravity's Rainbow is the best attempt so far and
whatever one can say can only refer to the BOOK but not "explain" it. The
fog might lift in another hundred years and we could have a clear view of
the issues then if we were still around. But we won't.
So I'm afraid we're all back to the book - GR - as its own raison d'etre and
explanation.

"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is
nothing to compare it to now."
(En dan heb ik ook nog de Nederlandse vertaling= And I also have the Dutch
translation)

Richard Wank