Where did the expertise for "Doktor Faustus" come from?

[Lawrence Bryan]

Interesting idea about just how much knowledge an author has of the general area in which a few snippets are dropped in passing from a long novel. I often wondered about the depth of Pynchon's knowledge in certain areas
of GR as I read it the first time.

I got interested in classical music in high school and that interest has never abated. At the university I worked on my mathematics degrees and at the same time in the university's music library. My knowledge expanded as I listened to all the music the various professors had on their required list. Opera never appealed to me and so it was a bit strange that I found myself listening to Wozzeck and actually finding it worthwhile enough to get a score and follow along. (I'll get to the point of this eventually. Patience.) I was fascinated by the way the orchestra and voices interleaved. It was and still is the only opera I could say I knew anything about although I had never seen it staged.

Skip ahead way too many years to my tenure as artistic director of the San Jose Chamber Music Society. A pianist and a soprano are meeting me to present a proposal for a future concert. As part of the soprano's background it is revealed that she has just returned from successful run as Marie in Wozzeck. So we chatted about Wozzeck for quite a while and I must say they were both astounded at the depth of my knowledge of opera as I knew so much of even minor, rarely performed operas, like Wozzeck.

So I wondered if Pynchon had read more of Malcolm X's autobiography than the part about getting his hair straightened.

Lawrence

On Sep 22, 2011, at 5:36 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:

> 
> On 21.09.2011 20:15, Matthew Cissell wrote:
> 
>> I remember reading Dr Faustus and thinking that Mann had this amazing wealth of knowledge, but then someone pointed out that what he really did well was using material (12 tone and Nietzchean thought and biography) in a way that made you think he knew every hing about modern music and philosophy. Of course Mann was no expert on Schönberg or ...
> 
> True enough (though they often had drinks and dinner together in Pacific Palisades), but Thomas Mann had the best expert on modern music and philosophy one can think of: Theodor W. Adorno, who also makes an appearance in the novel as the intellectual incarnation of the Devil with his specs and the affected way of talking. At the time Mann was writing "Doktor Faustus", Adorno had his most creative 
> phase. Wrote the "Philosophy of Modern Music" and "Minima Moralia" (for both books Thomas Mann, in 
> his gratitude, helped to find Publishing Houses) plus, with Horkheimer, the "Dialektic of Enlightenment". Actually Adorno did not only help re the music but also on certain aspects of the text. Erika Mann, the daughter who hated Adorno, wasn't fond of that and when Thoman Mann published "Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus" (about: The Making of Doktor Faustus) she did everything to kick out the most enthusiastic passages  about Adorno's great help. There are, as you can see when you read this book, still more than enough. To get the full picture do also see Mann's diaries and letters!
> And here especially --- Theodor W. Adorno/Thomas Mann: Briefwechsel 1943 - 1955. Ffm 2002.  
> 
> On 12/30/45 Thomas Mann wrote to Adorno:
> 
> "Es ist merkwürdig: mein Verhältnis zur Musik hat einigen Ruf, ich habe mich immer auf das 
> literarische Musizieren verstanden, mich halb und halb als Musiker gefühlt, die musikalische
> Gewebe-Technik auf den Roman übertragen, und noch kürzlich, zum Beispiel, hat Ernst Toch
> in einem Glückwunsch mir 'musikalische Initiiertheit' ausdrücklich und nachdrücklich bescheinigt.
> Aber um einen Musiker-Roman zu schreiben, der zuweilen sogar den Ehrgeiz andeutet, unter 
> anderem, gleichzeitig mit anderem, zum Roman der Musik zu werden --- dazu gehört mehr als
> 'Initiiertheit', nämlich Studiertheit, die mir ganz einfach abgeht." 
> 
> Thomas Mann's  knowledge of Nietzsche, however, was profound to the highest degree. Tommy
> wrote over the decades several long essays on Crazy Fritz and and they're all still solid gold. Actually
> Nietzsche, together with Schopenhauer and Wagner, functioned as Mann's theoretical "Dreigestirn" 
> (Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, p. 97; about: Three-Star-Constellation), which he - though very
> critical of Wagner in later years - basically made use of his whole artistic life.  
> 
> 
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20110922/5658fcd7/attachment.html>