ATDTDA (33) - pregnancy in Bulgaria or "The Emancipation of Dissonance"

[Henry]

It was '42, but I'm such of big fan of Schoenberg's Sprechstimme work "Ode
to Napolean" and it's so OBA that I just hadda:

Programme Note
How I came to Compose the Ode to Napoleon [Opus 41], 1942

The League of Composers had asked me (1942) to write a piece of chamber
music for their concert season. It should employ only a limited number of
instruments. I had at once the idea that this piece must not ignore the
agitation aroused in mankind against the crimes that provoked this war. I
remembered Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, supporting repeal of the jus prime
noctis, Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, Goethe's Egmont, Beethoven's Eroica and
Wellington's Victory, and I knew it was the moral duty of intelligentsia to
take a stand against tyranny.

But this was only my secondary motive. I had long speculated about the more
profound meaning of the Nazi philosophy. There was one element that puzzled
me extremely: the resemblence of the valueless individual being's life in
respect to the totality of the community or its representative: the Queen or
the Führer. I could not see why a whole generation of bees or of Germans
should live only in order to produce another generation of the same sort,
which on their part should also fulfill the same task: to keep the race
alive. I even surmised that bees (or ants) instinctively believe their
destiny was to be successors of mankind, when this had destroyed itself in
the same manner in which our predecessors, the Giants, Magicians, Lindworms
[Dragons], Dinosaurs and others had destroyed themselves and their world, so
that first men knew only a few isolated specimens. Their and the ants'
capacity of forming states and living according to laws -- senseless and
primitive, as they might look to us -- this capacity, unique among animals,
had an attractive similarity to our own life; and in our imagination we
could muse a story, seeing them growing to dominating power, size and shape
and creating a world of their own resembling very little the original
beehive.

Without such a goal the life of the bees, with the killing of the drones and
the thousands of offspring of the Queen seemed futile. Similarly all the
sacrifices of the German Herrenvolk [Master Race] would not make sense,
without a goal of world domination -- in which the single individual could
vest much interest.

Before I started to write this text, I consulted Maeterlinck's Life of the
Bees. I hoped to find there motives supporting my attitude. But the contrary
happened: Maeterlinck's poetic philosophy gilds everything which was not
gold itself. And so wonderful are his explanations that one might decline
refuting them, even if one knew they were mere poetry. I had to abandon this
plan. I had to find another subject fitting my purpose.

--Arnold Schoenberg


HENRY MUSIKAR
Information, Media, and Technology Consultant

http://www.urdomain.us/scuffling.htm 


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 9:54 PM
To: P-list
Subject: RE: ATDTDA (33) - pregnancy in Bulgaria or "The Emancipation of
Dissonance"

Of course it's a dark vision, ever heard any Schoenberg?

Of course, Schoenberg/Serialism/Death Of Music was the first 
thing to come to mind. Was it Pierrot Lunaire [1912] that first 
came to mind? Note as well:

                 During the summer of 1910, Schoenberg wrote his 
                 Harmonielehre (Theory of Harmony, Schoenberg 1922), 
                 which to this day remains one of the most influential 
                 music-theory books.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg 

Don't forget that this thread extends into GR. I'm voting for Rossini.
myself.