Zadie Smith, in her novel On Beauty, describing Mozart’s Requiem:
Mozart’s Requiem begins with you walking towards a huge pit. the pit is on the other side of a precipice, which you cannot see over until you are right at its edge. Your death is awaiting you in that pit. You don’t know what it looks like or sounds like or smells like. You don’t know whether it will be good or bad. You just walk towards it. Your will is a clarinet and your footsteps are attended by all the violins. The closer you get to the pit, the more you begin to have the sense that what awaits you there will be terrifying. Yet you experience this terror as a kind of blessing, a gift. Your long walk would have no meaning were it not for this pit at the end of it. You peer over the precipice: a burst of ethereal noise crashes over you. In the pit is a great choir, like the one you joined for two months in Wellington in which you were the only black woman. This choir is the heavenly host and simultaneously the devil’s army. It is also every person who has changed you during your time on this earth: your many lovers; your family; your enemies, the nameless, faceless woman who slept with your husband; the man you thought you were going to marry; the man you did. The job of this choir is judgement. The men sing first, and their judgement is very severe. And when the women join in there is no respite, the debate only grows louder and sterner. For it is a debate — you realize that now. The judgement is not yet decided. It is surprising how dramatic the fight for your measly soul turns out to be.
Smith’s title, by the way, is derived from Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just, a thought-provoking if not always transparent little book.
definitely a candidate for the “Bulwer-Lytton” fiction contest.
That book is about E. M. Forster, yes?
I think this passage is an homage to what I think of an as all-time great literary description of music. It’s from Howards End, about Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Helen is putting a story to the music.
Schopenhauer suggested that (classical) music is highest among the arts because it’s most capable of direct expression of the soul.
Generally, in reference to classical music, programme music is inferior to absolute music. Music that evokes mental pictures/stories tends to be less subtle, less intelligent, than music that has no representative value and is beautiful per se.
There are, of course, many cases of compositions intended to be programmmatic that also succeed as absolute music.
Now let’s not off started on what type of music is the absolute best. Go listen to Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris on their “TRIO” album or a good old George Jones song. Or the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix.
I love Mahler, Barber and Copeland as well but… this could become a very long thread if you know what I mean.
Elliot: In the context in which I used the word, “absolute” refers to music that is meaningful per se – ideally, music that has no programmatic or descriptive value. The distinction between absolute and programmatic value can be applied even to the different sections of a given work.
Interestingly, you cite the works of some very talented pop composers/interpreters. Although their music must reasonably be considered minor works, when the music is presented sans lyrics it’s obvious that it (the music) is generally not descriptive – that it’s music per se -and very good music at that. A good pop piece has integrity, which we can’t say of a lot of bad classical work.
“Yesterday” is a fine example of a perfectly integrated work; we can’t change a note of it without compromising it’s value. When the same can be said of the work of a composer of ‘major’ works we are dealing with genius. The larger a work, the more ability is required to maintain its integrity; for this reason, judging by their respective bodies of work, Motzart is superior to McCartney, even though Motzart would not have been able to improve on McCartney’s tune.
Sisyphus,
Agreed it’s hard to compare “larger” works with “smaller” works but I humbly suggest the Jimi Hendrix was one of the greatest musical geniuses of any era.
Elliot
Anyone here read or heard of any interesting new theories re. Mozart’s death/ burial?
I’m aware that movies that claim to be biographical dramatize and embellish life stories. Plus, I’m a not a fan of movies by any means. Even so, I can’t get the ending of “Amadeus” out of my head. It’s one of those rare movie vignettes that made a lifelong impact on me.
I think that Mozart put all the darkness and morbidity that soured his life – his bitter relationship with his father (and perhaps with Salieri as well?) into the Requiem. It seems to me that for most of his life, Mozart escaped his own personal circumstances by retreating to the world of his sparkling, hopeful melodies. But towards the end, the gloominess that surrounded him became too overwhelming even for him, and he poured everything into the Requiem.
More about Beethoven and his ‘pauses’ which I like to call The Pause that Refreshes’.
When Beethoven was about 30, he started going deaf, and the style of his music suddenly changed. Each piece of music he wrote, he thought might be his last. As his ears closed to the sounds of the outer world, they opened up to the sounds of his inner world. By the time that he was 50, his deafness was total. Beethoven is a master is his use of silence. Here, I’d like to use Yehudi Menuhin’s words (*) in describing Beethoven’s pauses:
“His pauses are among the most pregnant voids in the universe; like the emptiness of space, they are filled with the power of magnetic tensions, set up in like manner by the mass of each heavenly body. Those pauses are essential to the music. When we experience them we find the pulse is never absent, and the way the music then continues is quite wonderful. If the following phrase comes in a trifle too soon or too late, the magical effect is lost, for the length of silence is predetermines and fateful.”
(*)The Music of Man by Yehudi Menuhin and Curtis Davis
Agreed.
Likewise Miles Davis, Lenny Tristano and some others of the extempore creators. These people can express genius within very limited timeframes because the musical relationships they explore are of the highest order of sophistication. Whether or not the output of the great improvisors tends to be great works in and of themselves is a matter for discussion, but certainly the ability to deal with such musical complexity on an impromtu basis is evidence of musical genius.
Regards,
S
Amara #8: As Beethoven’s hearing closed to the sounds of the outside world they also closed to the imperfect silences of the outside world; his deafness must have altered his understanding of the meaning of silence.
If I’m paraphrasing you here, I apologize.