Music and other four letter words; 5; The Wertherian Upheaval: The Road Back

University of Utah radio presents music and other four letter words. Here is your host associate professor of music at the University of Utah. All bad. I suppose we might call this one the road back. You may not be sure of course. Back from where. But in preceding programs we've talked about a kind of music which has been written in one generation or another which purports to take us beyond itself and indeed beyond. Ordinary experience to some level of higher awareness or some deep fount of perception. Which gives us the intimations of things that ultimately it was really I think who thought that the moment of artistic creation the production of a poem was the supreme achievement and that there was nothing so difficult as the road back from Art Beethoven would disagree I suppose.

Art that which is aesthetic is a mere thing. We must transcend even art if we intend to reach something ultimate. Says the man. Who was someplace or other. I seem to remember saying something like. We have fallen in. Dreams the ever living breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world and then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh which sounds like the men who. Perceive this someplace which is all summit in which he has always been to which he has struck somehow maybe by my own artistic route maybe Yeats by way of poetry maybe Beethoven by way of music maybe the rock group by means of their own particular set of sounds and discoveries.

But who is also aware that there is a world in which we live. There is a place in which we seem to be the coming of the Baroque paradox of course that we have also referred to. And somehow this is a sad awareness looking about him the poet says we mankind have fallen in dreams illusions the myth to the illusion and we have fallen in dreams the ever living breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world and then smooth out with ivory hands. And sigh. How many times has that kind of resentment occurred to someone. Those of you who read legends stories the story of a me and a meal of the twelfth century renaissance that Walter Pater likes to speak of. Sir Kenneth Clark in his famous

lecture on the failure of nerve about certain kinds of unhappy subtle presenta meant in the first part of the 16th century among visual artists after what seemed to be a gigantic achievement and stride forward of the Spirit. In the decades immediately preceding. In the seventeenth century John Donne. Writing a strange poem like this. And a new the last iffy calls all in doubt. The element of fire is quite put out. The sun is loss and the earth and No Man's with it can well direct in what to look for it. Is all in pieces. Or no coherence gone. All just supply and all really see on. Nor can the sun Parfitt to circle or maintain his way one direct. But where he rose to day he comes no more.

But with a cousin in line steals by that point. And so is serpentine but yet to come for this business. The world's proport seen on this figured is. I want to say something today about not the 17th century and not the 16th and not the 12th but the 18th and by implication of course the 20th to which we will return. It seems to me that as opposed to the transcendental lists than the persons who find a way. To say musically that Johann Sebastian Bach some occasion leave the Gaelic frankly to be Kendall's. Striking beyond music and beyond art indeed to present a month's all to much. And to places which transcend time and places which even transcend the place. There are some people who cannot quite

rise to the Great into the splendid occasion. And they may sense as did Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach for example that dad could do it. That there was a generation past which seemed to rest on certain. Of unquestioned verities unquestioned generalities certain fictions reason nature balance proportion. But that the nature of things the kind of astigmatism with which the children of those fathers are afflicted makes it impossible for them to see in any direct line with any clarity with any sort of unequivocal feeling. It was all right for dad. But what was good enough for grandpa is and probably in this case good enough for me. Everything is equivocal everything is contradictory everything is

paradoxical. Reason is not sufficient. There is no balance. There are the John Donne's who feel that the Terrible. Sort of tearing XPS within there were the same Poles who feel the constant war rings in their members. They are subjected to two new philosophies to a new awareness as to new demands of the new times and somehow it seems that for a moment at least there are no time places. There are no timeless trues there is no way to strike out side time to some alternate peace where there is on the Serenity and light and as Keats. So I think later puts it on the pinnacle of all that. The Great. Awareness of. Universal love. The loss of these new present amounts call everything in doubt. And this is the dawn presentment that we just mentioned. The element of fire is quite put out.

All basic things seem not so basic anymore the son is lost and the earth and No Man's with it. Can Well direct him where to look for it. Tis all in pieces. All coherence gone. Reminds me of once again in this century Hart Crane's poem The Broken Tower. The bell rope that gathers gone back to Dawn and dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell of a spent day to wander the cathedral lawn from pit to crucifix feet chill on steps from hell. Have you not heard have you not seen that of shadows in the tower. Whose shoulders sway to from the little carillon was launched before the stars are cotton hived in the sun's ray. But I say the bills break down their tower and swing. I know not where. That

tongue's engraved membrane through marrow. My long scattered score of broken intervals and I Sex done slaves. And so it was. I entered the broken world to trace the visionary company of love. Its voice and instant in the wind. I know not with her but not for long. To hold each desperate choice. There we are. It is all in pieces all coherence gone all just supply and all relate. And no man's wit. Can Well direct him. Where to look for it. Reason will not do.

And passion is. Too great an openness to be born. And the nerves pale. And sometimes at the end of all that. There is mental spiritual collapse and sometimes an assault upon the very body itself. Which we are pleased to call suicide for. Well in the eighteenth century as you know there came such a violent reaction to rational ism. I read here in the book before me that in seventeen hundred and fifty five. A French physician totally. Published his use not to do so in which he declared the soul to be a physical phenomenon. The French parliament ordered the book to be burnt by the public executioner but he developed his eye still further and then in seventeen

hundred and forty eight seems to have written his most important book which is called the man as machine. A hand in this he describes men simply as a piece of mechanism. Coming out openly as the representative of what nowadays I suppose we would have to call a stick. Materialism. No grand present amounts of timelessness no senses of oneness and total coherence. No a dedication with all things no all to much trues. Particularly. He was persecuted by the authorities on the ground that his ideas were dangerously subversive and so they were. And because of that Frederick the Great in Berlin summoned him to his special academy and warmly extolled. The complete edition of his works. Limit to materialism and the other elements in the doctrine of empiricism together with ConEd

yaks sensualism indeed arose determinism and the moral theory of the ego was propounded by heavy to us were all assembled. At the court of Frederick by Baron hardy in his system of nature. By which French materialism was erected into a great system. Holdbacks conclusion was that nothing really exists except eternal self-renewing matter. And its movement so that the idea of God is on this a sorry that religion created by the priesthood for their own advantage can only be detrimental to the morals and happiness of the common people. And so for the first time the most radical proponents of enlightenment uncompromisingly rejected or revealed religion. Advocated out of not materialism as a new philosophy of life. In opposition to the theological picture of the universe which had prevailed there for. It was at the court of Frederick the Great that Karl Philip Emmanuel Baha the son of Johann

Sebastian had gone and had gotten fairly respectable job. He was in close touch of course with. Free thinkers swith. Reject are the very things I suppose which he had experienced in his childhood as a stable one and cementing the foundation of. That home in which Johann Sebastian Bach seems to have presided as some kind of Patriarch. There were lots of children and and for all I know there might even have been something of the feeling of anonymity lost as one might be in a family of somewhere between 18 and 20 children. At any rate Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach did not subscribe to the firm convictions of his father and seems to have written a music which is radically different. I let's listen. For a minute or two anyway to a cunt Churchill written by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach at the court of Frederick the Great. This one in D minor

which might strike you as not very interesting and not very spectacular accustomed as we all are to a dynamic and dramatic music of the last century or so but which is unusual music for the 18th century. I think we would have to say tempestuous. Athletic and maybe even if you listen to it with with that point of view a little tortured aggressive demonstrative Stormie stressed see a couple of words to which we will come back in just a few minutes. This is the country Joe in D-minor by Carl Phillip Emanuel by. The Bush were sure. Bleak. For Bush for. The the. Aborted boy. With.

The boy a book. Or book. The boy in. The book. The book. For her. For. Her for. Her for her. FOR BUSH Sure. Thank boy I'm. Sure. The book tour. But.

Thanks for. The effort. Or. For. With

thier. News. And. Then some. Considering a lot of technical features of the music one might say that all coherence is gone just proportion. I'll relay C on if you will bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump I'm a kind of restless driving for that generation one might think tempestuous pulsating bass not unlike some of the kind of the continent was pulsations and vibration setters of some modern rock music. On expected pauses and deceptive cadence as the harpsichord with his constricted sound straining sort of it at the least trying to make more sound than it is capable of and this is the generation of course which is trying to perfect the piano forte

so that indeed wider levels of expression can be possible to performers who are athletic rocket's type tunes. Moments of the flourish and the rest of the TIV the trills which no longer serve a kind of decorative function but which seem to be in fact nervous shudders it's reminiscent of the D-minor concerto a hundred years later of the Oneness Brahms in which the trills serve similar functions and there are the same starts and stops and kind of daring explorations of music. Carr Philip himself said in his very famous treatise on the true art of playing keyboard music that the music ought to be at all costs expressive and that it ought to reach somehow every auditor. So that if there is a room containing say a hundred people at some point in the music each one of those hundred people ought to be affected. Somehow and since he no longer believes in synonymous experience that is that one hundred people can feel the same thing which is something which is father had taken for granted because he had a sort of

ecstasy inducing music or method. Then Karl Philip has to write a strangely dis jointed music so that at one moment those who are given to the lyricism the may respond lyrically and those who are more nervous by temperament will respond in their more nervous way and that the greatly passionate ones will have their moment so that everybody will be satisfied this seems an impossible task to achieve but at least he sets out to do it and the people who play piano sonata say of Carl Philipp manual Bach realize that trying to make overall cohesiveness or coherence is done what happened to the music is not really the point but to create effective moments of disjointed experience is the mode about prevention for his generation. This brings us of course to the most famous book of the generation of Karl for the manual which is nowadays referred to

as either the generation of empathy in some kite from seventeen hundred fifty onwards which is the German way of saying sensibility or feeling. That is we would say we would call it expressionism nowadays. Stormont dung storm and stress which takes its name from a play written by Maximillian cleaner in the 1770s. But it was 1774. Which saw the famous publication of a work by Johann Gunn fun grew to a cold deal I didn't assume and their tax. Which was at first translated the sorrows of Young Werther and has since more appropriately I suppose translated the sufferings to delight a dozen sufferings of Young Werther horror of the attack. Their talk of the German word for someone who is after all worthwhile no matter what society may think of him or the things that he does. That is throughout the book of potential suicide and by the time he gets to the end of the book an

actual one. Society has been taught to disregard suicides as a moral creatures unworthy cowardly. Persons about whom we don't need really to write books and certainly less to read them. The wonder of course they have to talk to some Europeans in the 1770s in the 80s was that it evoked such a general and widespread response in Europe by numbers of young people emulating the example of their terror and in committing suicide themselves. Why have. I. Picked up on my 400 times says the hero of the good little novelette with the intention of plunging it into my heart. I've heard tell of a noble breed of stallions who when they are overheated and run wild instinctively open one of their veins to relieve themselves. I feel like that author. I would like to open the veins that would give me eternal

freedom. Reading. Reading the 1774 novel I thought the Guta is an experience which I think maybe listeners have denied themselves too long if you've never read. If they're tired then your life must certainly be empty and good to himself after he had this kind of found his method found his piece found his control his marvelous discipline in later years said that returning to his early book was still something of a shattering experience for him but it never failed to exert a power event on him and I'm sure that for all of its sentimentalism and for all of the difference of ways in which people respond to passion and to love. Of the eighteenth century from say the 20th it is still a powerful book for anyone who wants to read it with a kind of naivete. It's a wonder how he says writing a letter to his friend. When I came here to the country and looked down into the lovely valley from the hilltop I was attracted by everything around me

that grow over there. Oh if I could somehow mingle with it shade that mountain top. If I could survey the broad expanse from there those hills linked together in the intimate valleys so if I could lose my self. In them I hastened through there and I returned and had not found what I hoped distance affects us like the future before our So lives a vast dimly outlined a hole in which both feeling and sight lose themselves and we yearn to surrender our whole being to let ourselves be filled with all the rapture of one great glorious emotion. But alas when we hastened there when though there becomes the here everything is just as it was and we stand there in our poverty in our limitation and our soul thirsts for quickening water that has eluded us.

So it is that even the most restless Rover finally longs for his native land to find in his cottage on the breast of his wife in the circle of his children. In the affairs that furnish their support the joy that he vainly sought in all the wide world. But even that. For young better. Is illusory. Do you see how different this all sounds. There is Johann Sebastian Bach. There is a fun Beethoven there is even later. Richard Wagner there is some magnificent point in his life Claude Debussy. There are the purveyors of rock nowadays who speak about the reality. Of. Self. Loss. But there is a way for a man to. Submerge self and to be mingled with the whole. But there are times when this is greatly called into question. There are the times of young

there who says I. I want to lose myself in that great there. I want to surrender my whole being and to be filled with the rapture of the ecstasy of one great glorious emotion the whole. And yet when I go there when it becomes Here everything is just the way it always was because there is not a capacity in me somehow. To do it. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach is the man who finds that there is no capacity in him for example to write a kind of music which is ecstasy inducing and and can lead people beyond music and beyond art and beyond mere feeling to some ultimate place. That's strange because Beethoven said he owed a very great deal to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. But I gather he owed him. It was not the ultimate experience but technical prowess. Well we must come back to this because

contemporary with Karl Philip is the better off music you know on Chris Austin Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart about whom we must say many things. Are. This has been music and other four letter words featuring Paul Dunham associate professor of music at the University of Utah. Music and other four letter words as a production of University of Utah radio executive director Rex Cambo. Series director Gene tak. This series is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.