Atdtda32: A certain adjustment, 896

[Michael Bailey]

found that on Youtube, that Tallis Fantasia, and drifted WAAAAY off
listening to it

somebody probably would've told me if I was levitating, right?

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 12:32 AM, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:
> The section begins with Ruperta plotting, "busy trying, with little success,
> to plant doubts about [Dally] in Hunter's mind"; this goal is directly
> related to attempts "to provoke [him] ... into work unlikely to endear him
> to the British public". Hunter is therefore set against Arturo Naunt, to
> whom Ruperta has just assigned Dally. One might note that Ruperta's failure
> to turn Hunter against Dally echoes Dally's own failure to convince him of
> Ruperta's excesses: "But she likes you ..." etc (892). In that speech Hunter
> has emphasised that it would be an advantage for Dally to associate with
> Ruperta, who "knows everyone": here her relations with TWIT are introduced
> (896).
>
> Her intention for "idle mischief" at Gloucester Cathedral is based on the
> intrusion of low culture (ie Brighton races, represented by her "sportive
> toilette") as an affront to the high culture of Vaughan Williams' music ends
> with her transformed, "never again to pursue her career as determined pest".
> We see here a different take on the role of organised religion (in the form
> of the established church) as a sponsor for the arts, broadly speaking: both
> the Three Choirs Festival and Arturo's sculpture are examples of the effort
> to exert religious hegemony). As an author Arturo is invisible; his identity
> might have been exposed by Dally's research (bottom of 894) but the generic
> form has little room for an auteur. Vaughan Williams, on the other hand, is
> an auteur whose name will precede and dominates the music that, of
> necessity, must carry his name, with or without his role as conductor (and
> of course he has little difficulty raising a public). However, Ruperta's
> levitation will take place within a passage devoted to the generic features
> of the composition.
>
> But what of Hunter? It has been his idea to attend the performance, and the
> narrative will adopt his pov to name the music they have been listening to:
> "he had of course immediately fallen" and "would always love it" (896). His
> response to the music is culturally prescribed ("Possessing one of those
> English ears ..." etc), as much so as Ruperta's apparent antipathy (she
> "despise[s] church music", the writing reducing such music to its generic
> features, denying authorship), which will perhaps explain his distracted
> response to Ruperta, "vaguely aware that something momentous had befallen
> her". However, he will subsequently rewrite the moment and, with hindsight,
> "swear he had seen her surrounded then by a queer luminous aura he knew he
> could not banter away". Thus does Hunter objectify Ruperta as Arturo has
> objectified Dally.
>
>



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- "After all, Salaam and Shalom are only slight different spellings of
 a word that means the same thing in Arabic and Hebrew.
Which translated into English means peace be upon you." - Norman Spinrad