About the arts and ideas - on my novels and literature, music, and art

A new book about Beethoven gathers together (and completely rewrites and supplements) my blog posts on Beethoven into a short introduction to the composer, Ways of Hearing Beethoven, which I hope to see published. My novel The Fall of the Berlin Wall, completed a year ago, is about musicians and particularly the intense, irrepressible daughter of the legendary pianist featured in my previous novel Hungry Generations, now fifteen years after those events. Five years ago, my 2015 novel, The Ash Tree, was published by West of West Books in conjunction with the April 24, 2015 centenary of the Armenian genocide; it's about an Armenian-American family and the sweep of their history in the twentieth century - particularly from the points of view of two women in the family.

There are three other novels of mine, which I would love to see published. One is Pathological States, about a physician's family in L.A. in 1962. Another is Hungry Generations, about a young composer's friendship in L.A. with the family of a virtuoso pianist, published on demand by iUniverse, which I think would be of value to a conventional publisher. A Burnt Offering - a fable (a full rewriting and expansion of my earlier Acts of Terror and Contrition - a nuclear fable) is my political novella about Israel and its reactions to the possibility of a war with Iran (with the fear that it will be a nuclear war).
[My blog posts are, of course, copyrighted.]

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Literature and Music - Modernism

Marcel Proust (1871-1922), In Search of Lost Time, from “Swann’s Way” (1913) excerpt.

Gustav Mahler:

Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde (1909) – Weng Wei – Der Abschied:

English Translation: …I stand here and wait for my friend; I wait to bid him a last farewell. I yearn, my friend, at your side to enjoy the beauty of this evening. Where are you? You leave me long alone! I walk up and down with my lute on paths swelling with soft grass. O beauty! O eternal loving-and-life-bedrunken world! He dismounted and handed him the drink of Farewells. He asked him where he would go and why must it be. He spoke, his voice was quiet. Ah my friend, Fortune was not kind to me in this world! Where do I go? I go, I wander in the mountains. I seek peace for my lonely heart. I wander homeward, to my abode! I'll never wander far. Still is my heart, awaiting its hour. The dear earth everywhere blossoms in spring and grows green anew! Everywhere and forever blue is the horizon! Forever ... Forever ...

Walter and Ferrier (51 and 56): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PogZpvxq6Cg

Ranier Maria Rilke (1875-1926): texts of poems "Music" and Sonnet to Orpheus I, 3

Arnold Schoenberg, texts for quartet (George's Transcendence) and for the ending of Moses and Aaron.

String Quartet No. 2, opus 10, 4^th move. (1908), Kolisch, Gilbert

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0GA20IaFVw

Moses and Aaron - 1938, Freiberg Orch. and Grundheber (2:10)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxrQDmmc4jg

Thomas Mann (1875-1955), Doctor Faustus (1947), near the end, chapter 47, on Lamentations of Dr. Faustus; then, earlier texts of Kretchman on op. 111, and Adrian’s thoughts after Kretschmar, culture, and barbarism.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

“Beim Schlafengehen” (1948) – Hermann Hesse:

GOING TO SLEEP Now that day has tired me, my spirits long for starry night kindly to enfold them, like a tired child. Hands, leave all your doing; brow, forget all your thoughts. Now all my senses want to sink themselves in slumber. And the soul unwatched, would soar in free flight, till in the magic circle of night it lives deeply and a thousand-fold. (2:25):

Kiri Te Kahana, Davis, LSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbU66ttUcqo

Brecht and Weill

The Three-penny Opera (1928) Text of Mack song and ending...

Excerpts from Pabst film – (2:02, 15:30, 18:58, 22:40-26:40):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-igC0jAV_zQ&t=136s

Concluding remarks:

W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) on Pater's aesthetic:

“It taught us to walk upon a rope, tightly stretched through serene air, and we were left to keep our feet upon a swaying rope in a storm.”

--from “Sailing to Byzantium”

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress.

To illustrate what Mann's Kretchmar was referring to:

Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in c minor, opus 111, second movement variations:

Claudio Arrau (9, 13:43, 15:29, 17:37, 18:14, 20:47)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ljq4MwzAbo&t=42s

Literature and Music talks - session 5 - Late Romanticism and Early Modern

Flaubert and Baudelaire:

Flaubert (1821-1880), Madame Bovary (1857) – from Part Two, Chapter 8: text...

What Emma hears in Pt. Two, Ch. 15: Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermore” Act 1 Finale “Ah! Verrano a te sull'aure”:

LUCIA On the breeze
will come to you my ardent sighs…
When you think of me
living on tears and grief,
then shed a bitter tear
on this ring, ah, on this ring, etc.
ah, on this ring, etc.
EDGARDO and LUCIA On the breeze will come to you, etc. EDGARDO Remember, Heaven has joined us!
EDGARDO and LUCIA Farewell! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xToxhv_Y9nc Sutherland, Pavarotti.

Verlaine, Mallarmé (by Manet), Debussy and Stravinsky:

Text for Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (0-3:00) – and recreation of Diagalev/Nijinsky ballet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzzF21CFJFE

Debussy – from his libretto based on Maeterlinck’s play Pélleas et Mélisande:

Mélisande: [I love you.] Forever. Ever since I first saw you.

Pelléas: It is as if your voice had come over the sea in the spring! I have never heard it until today. It’s as though it had rained on my heart. You say those words so openly, like an angel answering questions. I can scarcely believe it, Mélisande. Why should you love me? Why do you love me? Is it true what you say? Were you making it up? Were you lying to me just to make me feel happy?

Mélisande: No, I never tell lies. I only lie to your brother.

Pelléas: Oh, the way you say that! Your voice, your voice! It is as fresh and as clear as water! It is like pure spring water on my lips. It is like pure spring water on my hands. Give me your hands, let me take your hands. Oh, your hands are so tiny! I never knew you were so beautiful. I had never set eyes on anything as beautiful before. I could not rest, I kept searching everywhere in the house, I kept searching everywhere in the country, but never found the beauty I sought. And now at last I have found you. I have found you. I don’t believe there is anywhere on earth a woman more beautiful. Where are you? I don’t hear your breathing any more.

Debussy, Pelleas and Mellisande – 1902 (7:30 to 9)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxBzEUjwwfw

Mallarmé – from “Literature and Music” – Oxford speech, 1894: > text...

Pater (1839-1894) – from “Giorgione” (1877) in Studies in the Renaissance, Conclusion to Studies in the Renaissance (cancelled in 2^nd ed., then restored in 3^rd): texts...

Ravel, La Valse (Argerich and Freire) 9:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwBuhTZtDT0&list=RDmwBuhTZtDT0&start_radio=1

Debussy, La Mer – 1905 (Boston, Munch) 16:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOCucJw7iT8

Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring – 1913 – Beginning (Orch. de Paris, Boulez) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrOUYtDpKCc

Ending (L.A.Phil, Salonen) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSyOfJRmbLY -From“Poetics of Music” ’38: text...

Image of Debussy and Stravinsky.

Friday, March 1, 2019

Literature and Music - session 4 - Goethe, Liszt, Wagner, Nietzsche, Mahler

Goethe (1749-1832) Faust, Part One (1808) ‘in Faust’s Study i’ (Oskar Werner) [4:00]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXHmwp4JkGk

excerpts from Faust, including Walpurgisnacht:

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Walpurgisnacht, continued: Mephisto Waltz No. 1 – 1859 [Van Cliburn, pianist):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o59zEOq1uBY

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

Wagner, Tristan and Isolde, Prelude – the Tristan chord (Solti and Vienna):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8EQcMurhAI

Liebestode, end of Act 3, Nina Stemme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8enypX74hU

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

In the 1880s, Nietzsche produced a devastating critique of Richard Wagner, announced his rupture with the German artist, who had influenced him, and accused him of embracing the repellant German Volkish (folk nationalist) movement and Antisemitism. The operas are criticized as manipulative, seducing the audience and making them passive. Wagner is seen as less than Bizet and, now, philosophically insignificant, and he has become a symptom of the broader "disease" affecting Europe: nihilism.

excerpt from The Twilight of the Idols:

excerpt from The Birth of Tragedy (1872):

also, Zarathustra's Midnight Song

Gustave Mahler (1860-1911) Symphony no. 3, 4^th move, Zarathustra’s midnight song (Meier):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aM9hezKudY

Symphony No. 1, 3^rd movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5A5tFyXQio