Back to AtD. Music of the Spheres-- Not

[Paul Mackin]

On 7/25/2012 8:19 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> OK, all you plister musicians and the rest who know music better'n me, 
> which oughta be about
> all of you, or at least you know what you like as the saying goes and 
> which might be apt as
> the guide for me to be wild in speculation about the next bit in 
> AtD......p.940......
> p. 940.Lydian vs. Phyrgian modes.....Altho other medieval modes are 
> represented, the Lydian is
> absent in Balkan villages now...."the interval which our awkwardly 
> unflatted B makes with
> F was known to the ancients as 'the devil in the music'.....
> "they tend to favor the so-called Phrygian mode, quite common thru the 
> region.".....[attribute[d] to
> Pythagoras, and may be traceable all the way back to Orpheus 
> himself"......."In view, added Yashmeen,
> of the similarity if not identity, between Pythagorean and Orphic 
> teachings"...
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydian_mode
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_mode
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphism_(religion 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphism_%28religion>)
> My gloss, one level of possible meaning, I say: TRP values the ancient 
> wisdom of folk tradition(s) in general,
> even making sure we understand he respects the Volk of Deep Germany as 
> he slashes Germans and their modern history
> in his works, so here, as the Balkans build to War, they have lost the 
> medieval Lydian mode wherein the devil was
> "in the music', known and tangible (as God was to them) but then, the 
> devil went underground [see below and elsewhere] and reemerged
> in the abstract....I am taken with TRP giving Yashmeen the connection 
> between the Phrygian mode and Pythagoras, often
> called the first mathematician and "Orphic teachings" [unverifiable 
> says wikpedia] which I will read to the disagreement of
> many as another slam at mathematics as an abstraction from 'real 
> life', the folk life of all of us
> & also here another linking
> of the abstraction of religious beliefs [Orphism as example] with the 
> other abstractions--the day-lit fictions-- punctured in AtD.

It sounds like the volk are still observing the taboo against the 
unflatted B in the scale starting on F.  So, to build your case, won't 
you have to defend this superstitious behavior?  In the eyes of 
Pynchon?  Need some clarification.

IMHO it's not a good idea to try to decide what Pynchon approves of and 
doesn't.  Not an absolute rule of course.

The whole scene does serve the purpose of getting Y and her party 
invited along on the expedition to Thrace.

P
> http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/please-allow-me-to-introduce-myself/
> http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/please-allow-me-to-introduce-myself/

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