CGF Newsletter 45: Summer of Schopenhauer Vol. II
A language the reasoning faculty does not understand
Name That Tune
This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Jeremy. Here’s your hint: Cambridge University awarded this composer an honorary doctorate in 1893.
As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at classicalgabfest@gmail.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing.
Last Week’s Results
Frank Zappa, Outrage at Valdez
Because I had to pre-schedule this week’s edition, I wasn’t able to play along in the guessing game, but I’ll just say I’m always intrigued by the not-insignificant cohort of classical music people who are super into Frank Zappa. But I shouldn’t be! Zappa’s music is interesting, richly-textured music full of detail and quality. It just happens not to be my thing. I’d be sort of hard-pressed to say why not though.
Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!
Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.
Summer of Schopenhauer
I particularly like this quote from Schopenhauer’s chapter on music in his magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation, because right at the top, you get a little encapsulation of Schopenhauer’s view on the Sisyphean pointlessness of human existence. Enjoy!
The nature of man consists in the fact that his will strives, is satisfied, strives anew, and so on and on; in fact his happiness and well-being consist only in the transition from desire to satisfaction, and from this to a fresh desire, such transition going forward rapidly. For the non-appearance of satisfaction is suffering; the empty longing for a new desire is languor, boredom.
Thus, corresponding to this, the nature of melody is a constant digression and deviation from the keynote in a thousand ways, not only to the harmonious intervals—the third and dominant—but to every tone, to the dissonant seventh, and to the extreme intervals; yet there always follows a final return to the keynote. In all these ways, melody expresses the many different forms of the will’s efforts, but also its satisfaction by ultimately finding again a harmonious interval, and still more the keynote.
The invention of melody, the disclosure in it of all the deepest secrets of human willing and feeling, is the work of genius, whose effect is more apparent here than anywhere else, is far removed from all reflection and conscious intention, and might be called an inspiration. Here, as everywhere in art, the concept is unproductive. The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.
Discussion
It’s that last line that gets me. We are so accustomed to thinking about the separation (or lack thereof) between Art and Artist; how often do we discuss the separation (or lack thereof) between Artist and non-Artist Person within the same human body?
Classical Mixtape
Debussy, Syrinx
The Classical Gabfest Newsletter is a spin-off of the now-defunct Classical Gabfest Podcast. It is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)