Orfeo -

[Becky Lindroos]

http://www.musicandliterature.org/features/2014/9/4/a-conversation-with-richard-powers
“In his most recent novel, Orfeo (2014), Powers examines the post-9/11 political landscape through the life of avant-garde composer turned amateur chemist Peter Els, whose Orphic descent into the underworld of twentieth-century composition and his lifelong fascination with patterns leads him to attempt encoding music into the DNA of a living organism."

“A Conversation with Richard Powers” by Keenan McCracken - Sept. 2014
(It’s a long and kind of dense article but it’s fascinating - get lost in it.) 
**

There’s something Bach-like about the structure of Orfeo, the way that certain ideas are put forth and then dissolve only to reappear in different guises. Something Baroque, perhaps.

RP:      Well the book is highly contrapuntal. It is, without giving too much away, a fugue. And you have to remember that the word “fugue” and the word “fugitive” come from the same root. Both of them are flying.

KM:     You seem to have always had an affinity for Bach. What personally draws you to his music?

RP:      You know, he has been my wellspring for my whole life. I put in the book this episode toward the end of Els’s life where, after coming this enormous distance and slogging through the decades trying to extend his musical vocabulary, he has this moment of recuperation near the end where he spends over a year listening to nothing but Bach. I actually did that in my own life back in my twenties. For me it was closer to eighteen months where I listened to nothing but Bach. Everything he wrote. That’s all that I wanted, every day, one day after the next.

Why? Well, you know Nietzsche talks about the Dionysian and the Apollonian in The Birth of Tragedy, about these two modes of art, one concerned with pattern and structure and the exploration of higher orders of order—the Apollonian—and the other—the Dionysian—devoted to passion and disruption and the inchoate swamping of order by chaos and voluptuous excess. It’s a simple dichotomy, and there is no composer for whom either one of those labels entirely fits. You can look at Scriabin and find the Apollonian, and you can look at Milton Babbitt and find the Dionysian. What I love about Bach—and again there is this wonderful essay by Adorno, “Bach Defended Against His Devotees”—I love him because I believe that his music somehow reaches across that false dichotomy and shows the passion inside structure and the voluptuousness and explosiveness inside patterned order.

As a writer, I’ve sometimes elicited readings that say my books are very idea-driven, very pattern-driven and somewhat lacking in passion. Those criticisms are sometimes made against Bach’s music as well, but I believe that the person who takes time to understand the vocabulary of Bach and to learn just how dynamic and inventive and restless and simultaneously patient his compositions are, just how broad his treatment of dissonance is, how shocking his music can be when you understand the expectations out of which they grow—that person will hear just how revolutionary and adventuresome Bach can be. I take heart in that because I feel that the Apollonian caricature of Bach’s music by people who are brought up on a kind of romanticism gives way, with repeated exposure, as you climb toward an understanding of just how deep those waters run and how deep that passion is. And I hope that readers can look at a book like Orfeo and see the intellectual nature of the book and the book’s structural complexities, and yet still feel the desperate and passionate, chaotic impulses driving these characters forward in a dark and confusing world.

*****
Bekah

On Sep 16, 2014, at 2:08 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey, yu all. There is an interesting interview recently around, can't remember where,  in which he talks about writing and music esp. Says he once listened only to Bach for about 18 months. Siad Bach was sometimes seen as technique not passion with which he said the passion was there In the precision. 
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
>> On Sep 15, 2014, at 8:33 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> 
>> I read it a couple months ago and found it a  good read on all levels. It also helped me find someone I knew in High School who was the daughter of one of the composers. I had been slightly misremembering  his and her last name. 
>>> On Sep 14, 2014, at 7:53 AM, Becky Lindroos wrote:
>>> 
>>> I finished Orfeo by Richard Powers and have to tell you all that this is the best thing Powers has done since The Goldbug Variations.  
>>> Excellent.  I was googling all the musical references and the artists etc. so it took longer but I was in a little piece of heaven for awhile. 
>>> 
>>> :-)
>>> 
>>> Bekah
>>> https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com-
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>> 
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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