Shakespeare's Death of Priam

One of the pleasures of getting on in years is getting to revisit art. How different a work can seem after more living. How much more truthful, inspiring, and unique they can seem. Everyone has, I think, a variety of relationships with art. Some works become thoroughly internalized and part of one's mental furniture, others seem to grow right alongside you. Some we neglect, unfairly, and others we adore. Sometimes a piece we have read or heard many times suddenly strikes us for the first time with its full force. I had that experience the other day when revisiting Hamlet. Specifically I was surprised by the end of the second scene of Act II in which the prince first meets the players. [See eText]

Hamlet, Act II, Scene II

Hamlet greets the players and asks the first of them to play a little scene, "'tws Aenas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially where he speaks of Priam's slaughter:" Hamlet, in trying to cite the line actually plays some of the scene himself.

We should first consider this scene's context within the play. The play-within-a-play feature is of course a famous device and the play Hamlet arranges to test Claudius is quite well-known. Here though is not just an inserted scene but one of radically different style. This difference though seems not to be of form since the scene is not strictly an aside, a dramatic monologue, or an instance of ekphrasis though it shares features of those forms. The difference is instead of style, particularly diction, tone, rhetoric, and syntax. Rather than treating each feature in turn let us look at this act straight through.

Hamlet begins by describing Pyrhhus, the son of Achilles also called Neoptolemus, first as rugged but then as "Hyrcanian." This is interesting in two respects. First it is a dash of the exotic. To the Greeks and Romans Hyrcania, the region surrounding the southern tip of the Caspian Sea (mare Hyrcanum), was distant and exotic, lying at the heart of the Persian Empire. (see Catullus, II.5.) In Aeneid IV Vergil refers to the land's tigers: Caucasus Hyrcanaeque admorunt ubera tigres. This association seems to have fascinated Shakespeare too since he uses it not only here but in Macbeth (III.iv) and Henry VI, Part III (I.iv). It quickly evokes exoticism and savage beastliness. Now quite cleverly Hamlet pauses as if he has misquoted the line and begins again without "Hyrcanian." Shakespeare of course gets the effect of the word anyway but he also seems to be making another point. Now of course this use demonstrates that Hamlet has not only memorized this passage, but has confused it with another, apparently one of equal grandiosity. Alongside his rhetorical ability and wit which we see in his normal speech, it's a very subtle hint about Hamlet's education, mind, and personal world.

Now Pyrrhus is "sable," sable meaning dark but also connoting heraldry since sable is a heraldic color. Shakespeare avoids "dark as night" (which must have been cliché as long as "cold as ice") and instead uses "black as his purpose" but still works in the night, compensating for the cliché by 1) separating it from the object it describes, 2) reversing the order of the phrase, 3) metrically making sure you can quickly bounce through it, 4) and using it as a bridge to the following phrase, which too picks up on the darkness in the "couched in the ominous horse."

Shakespeare continues: his dark figure is even more dismal for what he has already done. He is "total gules" i.e. all red with the "blood of fathers, mothers, and daughters." (Specifically gules is the heraldic term for red.) Shakespeare uses a culinary vocabulary to describe the caked on blood, "bak'd, impasted, roasted." Calling Phyrrus "trick'd" refers not simply to him being adorned with blood but to the process of "tricking" (i.e. prefiguring/sketching/notating) a coat of arms on a surface. We ought read tricking as metonymy for the actual act of painting. This would continue the heraldic theme and link Pyrrhus with his father Achilles, (to whom Priam compares him later in Vergil's account.)

The light from the burning city is "tyrannous and damned" as is the death of Priam, i.e. Priam and his city are being dominated and destroyed. The phrase "Hellish Pyrrhus with his eyes like carbuncles," (i.e. reddish-brown gems) is so covered in blood he is "oversized" contrasts with the gentle "old grandsire Priam." The word order also mirrors the sense as "old gransire Priam" is surrounded by Pyrrhus' seeking: the hellish Pyrrhus old gransire Priam seeks.

Now Hamlet, realizing he has gotten carried away with himself, asks the First Player to continue. The groundling Polonius makes the ridiculous and passionless compliment that the prince spoke well and with "good discretion." The First Player takes over.

Old Priam is "striking too short" at the Greeks with his old sword which is "rebellious to his arms" and "repugnant to command." In contrast Pyrrhus is so enraged he swings wide and misses, but Priam falls from the "whiff and wind" and the ferocity of the swing. You can take "whiff and wind" as pleonastic or whiff literally meaning the stench coming off his sword. Shakespeare here personifies the Trojan citadel, "Ilium," which itself reacts to Pyrrhus' blow by collapsing (as in a last-ditch effort) to stop the intruder. While it only "takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear" it catches him amidst his blow, his sword "declining on the milky head of reverend Priam" and he pauses. He stands there as if painted, "neutral to his will and matter," i.e. balanced (and thus still) between what he wants to do and what he can do. Shakespeare follows with classic (or clichéd) references to the calm before the storm and the silence of death. 

Yet even with those not-so-fresh images this scene of Pyrrhus' power paused in hurling Priam's deathblow amidst the flaming ruins of falling Troy achieves a dreadful grandeur. It is as if Shakespeare has drawn a relief for us of this clash from a long-lost epoch. The following analogy has a particularly classical ring:

And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall

On Mars' armor, forged for proof eterne,

With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword 

Now falls on Priam.

The aside about the quality of Mars' armor, the personification (remorseless hammers) and transferred epithet (bleeding sword) and conclusion in the present tense make this passage especially vivid. Now he aspostrophizes to Fortune and the gods, pleading that they stop the deed. Break "all the spokes and fellies" refers to the notion of the rota fortunae, or wheel of fortune, and the changefulness of fate. Hamlet will again consider fortune in the very next act when he says, "To be or not to be–that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. . ." Shakespeare also uses the image in Henry V, Act 3 Scene VI (a cruel trick of fate and a turn of silly Fortune's wildly spinning wheel) and throughout Macbeth in the form of the doomed Thane's rise and fall. Shakespeare will continue the theme shortly in Hamlet.

At the height of the scene's poignancy Shakespeare now, in brilliant fashion, has Polonius interrupt complaining, "This is too long." Hamlet deftly rebukes him for his lack of taste and sensitivity, "He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps." The player continues with "the mobled queen" and Polonius notes that he approves of the turn of phrase, still missing the point of the performance.

Shakespeare now paints despairing portrait of Priam's wife, Hecuba. Her head, once crowned, is now mobled (wrapped or muffled) with a clout (rag) and as she runs barefoot up and down she "threatens" the flames with "bisson rheum," or blinding teary-discharge. The archaism of the phrase suggests more of an uncontrollable outpouring than a weeping over some intellectualized matter. Shakespeare calls her "overteemed" and thus sets up a contrast between her and Priam, who are naturally at the ebb of their power and vitality, and Pyrrhus, who is unnaturally engorged ("o'ersized with gore") with strength. The sight, we are told, would cause anyone to cry treason at the cruelty of Fortune:

But if the Gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husbands limbs,
The instant burst of clamor that she made,
Unless things mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milche the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods."

This climax is perhaps the most simple, and moving, part of the speech, enlarged and made more grand only by the two asides, (When she saw. . . limbs, and unless things. . . not at all.) Anyone, the poet says, should be moved by such a pitiful sight. Except for Polonius, who instead of getting caught up in the speech disapproves of how emotional the player has become, and now we come to our point which Hamlet states shortly thereafter when everyone else leaves. "All for nothing! For Hecuba!" he says. This man has worked himself to tears with pity for a stranger from history and here Hamlet, whose father was murdered and mother stained and kingdom robbed, can say and do nothing. Hamlet in fury and frustration lets loose a torrent of insults against himself before the scene ends with his plot to "catch the conscience of the king."

–

We must ask now, why this particular scene? We could have had a slightly different speech with seemingly similar effect. For example, if Hamlet had found himself moved at the scene he could have asked, "Why can I be moved by this fiction and not by my own misfortune?" Hamlet speaks approvingly of this piece, that it is more handsome than subtle, modest, without affection, and of honest method. It is of course quite embellished and florid, driven more by imagery and description than deep probing into the psychology of the character, a contrast which seems perhaps untrue until the depths of Hamlet's introspection in the following speech sharpens the contrast.

Perhaps Shakespeare's point in imitating this style is the same as his choice of material,  its distance. Surely the style is moving in some respect, but it is so formal and elaborate it becomes removed and less intimate. Still, though, the player is moved. We know this style was still popular in the dramas of the Admiral's Men, the second most popular troupe (to Shakespeare's own) in London so it was not quite alien and it was certainly well-known through Marlowe's Dido's Lament and Vergil himself. Let us look at these works and then consider anew Shakespeare's point in re-writing the story as he does.

Marlowe's scene emphasizes the theme of fortune:

Achilles' son, remember what I was,
Father of fifty sons, but they are slain,
Lord of my fortune, but my fortunes turned,
King of this City, but my Troy is fired,
And now am neither father, Lord, nor King:
. . .
Jove's marble statue began to bend the brow
As loathing Pyrrhus for this wicked act.

Here Hecuba in a frantic and futile gesture throws herself between her husband and his attacker before she is quickly and easily tossed aside. Also, Priam here pleads with Pyrrhus.

Vergil's account is by far the most graphic, emphasizing the violence and cruelty of Pyrrhus. Priam's son Polites is rushing to his parents with Pyrrhus hot on his heels and is run through just as he gets there. The scene is frenetic and vivid in Vergil. From Book II:

saucius. Illum ardens infesto vulnere Pyrrhus
insequitur, iam iamque manu tenet et premit hasta. 530
Ut tandem ante oculos evasit et ora parentum
concidit ac multo vitam cum sanguine fudit.

Priam rises in outrage, castigating Pyrrhus that his father Achilles treated him better, for while he desecrated Hector's corpse in rage, he honored the suppliant's rights, returned the body, and let Priam return home. Priam then hurls a spear at Pyrrhus which he easily dodges before his cruel reply:

Cui Pyrrhus: 'Referes ergo haec et nuntius ibis
Pelidae genitori. Illi mea tristia facta
degeneremque Neoptolemum narrare memento.
Nunc morere.' 550

Shakespeare's seems now a sort of pasticcio, but one in which he shifts the focus away to Hecuba, famous for her suffering. In fact Shakespeare mentions her in in Cymbeline, Act II, Scene II:

Pisanio, All curses madded Hecuba gave the Greeks,
And mine to boot, be darted on thee!

and in The Rape of Lucretia. . .

To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come,
To find a face where all distress is stell'd.
Many she sees where cares have carved some,
But none where all distress and dolour dwell'd,
Till she despairing Hecuba beheld,
Staring on Priam's wounds with her old eyes,
Which bleeding under Pyrrhus' proud foot lies.

Yet one still wonders why Shakespeare shifted the focus to Hecuba. He does not at all draw on the part in Vergil's telling in which the old king, impotent as he was, rose in anger to throw that spear at Pyrrhus. That scene surely has a parallelism to Hamlet's situation. Yet that would not have worked as well since Priam was a great king of old. Instead, here this humble player has enough command of himself to grow pale and tearful and choked up over nothing, over Hecuba. Hamlet has not failed to live up to the example of Priam, which would be understandable, but up to the player, which makes him still more distraught: Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Additionally, Shakespeare instead of making the speech about Priam as Marlowe does, uses his fall to build to the higher climax of his wife's despair. The outburst of the address to Fortune and the gods accomplishes this amplification, as in fact do Polonius' foolish interruptions.

This little speech, which seems often to get cut in abridged productions, is a most clever and carefully constructed piece, its style and substance both constructed to fit the needs of the larger drama in which it sits. It is dense with description, imagery, and classical figurative devices and while it begins with two traditional themes (arms, and specifically heraldry, and men) its focus takes an unexpected turn. Finally the end to which Shakespeare puts the speech is simply inspired.

To Be or Not To Be

In conjunction with the recent publication of Dr. Hubert Dreyfus's new book, All Things Shining, co-authored with Sean Dorrance Kelly, I'm posting a trailer for a movie produced by a former student of Dr. Dreyfus.

 

• You can read Eric Ormbsy's WSJ review of the book here. 

• Do listen to Dr. Dreyfus's lectures on Heidegger.

 

Of Smells and Bells

 "A cloud of incense is worth a thousand sermons"
 ---#2,551 of Don Colacho’s Aphorisms.

A Spanish Master

The Richard H. Driehaus Prize is one of the more exciting recent developments in classical architecture. Financially supported by the prize's namesake and coordinated by the Notre Dame School of Architecture, the prize honors architects working in the classical tradition. Some of my favorite architects, including Leon Krier and Quinlan Terry, have been honored in past years. Krier was in fact the prize's inaugural laureate. With this year's winner just announced (Robert Stern of the Yale School of Architecture), I decided to share this video describing the work and achievement of last year's laureate, Rafael Manzano Martos.

Philosophy as a Way of Life

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

A Serendipitous Sanskrit Discovery

It so happened that earlier this week I was going through several boxes of books that had been put in storage. My library, in toto, scattered across three states, consists of at least 1500 volumes, in perhaps half a dozen languages: I put it together over several years, chiefly in college and in the early months of my marriage (prior to the arrival of my first child). Among the many books I found was a collection of Sanskrit primers, grammars, and texts I acquired in college. My skill in the language is very primitive at best, but after quickly paging through the books, I was sufficiently inspired to set them aside, as books deserving further study.

After sitting on them for a few days, I happened to notice a link to a collection of Sanskrit titles, the Clay Sanskrit Library (or CSL). Lo and behold, the CSL, patterned after the marvelous Loeb Classical Library, is an ambitious, though seemingly stalled, project to produce a 100-volume collection of Sanskrit text, with facing Sanskrit and English translation. Despite the halt, the CSL, with the help of its endower and a compliant NYU Press, managed to produce over 50 volumes in the series. After searching through the inventory, I ordered a copy of the first volume of the Ramayana, one of the two chief epics of ancient India (the other being the Mahabharata). The inventory is chronologically comprehensive, though not quite complete. John Clay, the magnanimous donor behind the project, hoped to bring out a complete set of the Ramayana and Mahabharata; but for reasons unspecified, that hasn't happened yet. I only hope the delay is temporary and that the project has not come to a complete stop; but whatever the eventual outcome, the current inventory is impressive. The books are truly works of art; Clay wanted to imitate as closely as possible the fine printing and binding of the old-time Loebs, printed in the past, but not at present, by an English firm, Heinemann. To that end, Clay went to England for the printing, and the result is surely all he could have hoped for. The covers are a magnificent turquoise, a fine counterpoint to the infamous reds and greens of the Loeb.

With 50+ volumes at hand, the Clay Sanskrit Library, even incomplete, is a far-sighted work of genius and love. In the past, most Sanskritists were hatched in Classics departments (the pedagogical domiciles of your humble bloggers). My own introduction to the language came by way of my Greek and Latin studies, and it has always been a hope of mine to return to Sanskrit as an intensive leisure pursuit; whether I succeed or no, it is comforting to know that there is a shelf of Sanskrit books waiting to be read and worked through.

Eric Ormsby, at the New Criterion, has written a glowing review of the series.

Around the Web

New Year's Eve Edition

for December 18 through December 31.

1) King Henri IV's mummified head identified 400 years after assassination. 

2) Why doing a PhD is a waste of time.

3) Cities from Scratch: A new path for development.

4) Weimar Istanbul: Dread and exhilaration in a city on the verge of political catastrophe.

5) The Vandals in Retreat: Britain rediscovers its architectural heritage.

6) The Lies of Science Writing.

7) How Government Failure Caused the Great Recession.

8) The lounge suit, battledress of the world’s businessmen, is 150 years old—possibly.

9) Culture Shock: How joy buzzers, trick chairs, and other prank devices helped manufacture the post-industrial American male.

10) There Is No ‘Right to Be a Scholar"

11) Steve Martin on art and his new book, An Object of Beauty.

12) A World in Crisis: What the thirties tell us about today.

13) Managing the Federal Debt.

14) Don't Look for the Soul in the Language of DNA.

15) Philharmonic Trumpets Faith and Power: Aaron Jay Kernis' "A Voice, a Messenger."

16) Hugo Wolf: A Lifetime Dedicated to Dear Lieder (1860-1903.)

17) In Memoriam – Denis Dutton 1944-2010 The New Yorker ... New Zealand Herald ... LA Times ... Reason ... Edge ... 3 Quarks Daily ... D.G. Myers ... National Review... Washington Post ... spiked ... Sydney Morning Herald ... The Australian ... AP ... Slate ... City Journal ... Open Letters Monthly ... American Spectator ... Cognition and Culture ... Racjonalista ... The Chronicle ... Roger Kimball ... TED Talk

Lists

18) 2010 in Photos.

19) 2010 in Books.

20) The Five Worst Op-Eds of 2010?

21) The Ear chooses James Smith for 2010 Musician of the Year.

22) Classical Music Best of 2010: Amazon | ArchivMusic | Classical Review

Book Reviews

23) All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

24) Bad Laws: An Explosive Analysis of Britain’s Petty Rules, Health and Safety Lunacies and Madcap Laws, by Philip Johnston

25) Fame by Tom Payne

26) Seven books by Cass Sunstein

27) Galileo: Watcher of the Skies by David Wooton and Galileo by J. L. Heilbron

28) When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany by Adam Fergusson 

Mozartian Counterpoint, Part V

Mozartian Counterpoint
Part I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII

Before beginning Part V, which focuses exclusively on keyboard music, we ought to note (however briefly) some chamber music in which counterpoint figures but does not predominate. The popularity of some of these works likely suffers because they do not inhabit famous and familiar genres like the symphony or sonata. Yet what intimate dialogues in these pieces and what wonderful combinations of instruments such as in the Piano Quintet in E-flat, KV.452, scored for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, and piano. So also for the Quartet for Piano and Strings in E-flat and the Trio for Piano, Clarinet, and Viola, KV.498 (which is probably more famous by having been dubbed the "Kegelstatt" and associated with Mozart's skittles-playing.) Also to this group we should add the Violin Sonata in A, KV.526, the opening allegros to the Piano Trios KV. 496, 502, 542, 548, and the String Trio in E-flat, KV.563.[14] The counterpoint here is utterly transparent and Alec Hyatt King put it well that, "in spite of his deeper instincts, Mozart became a master of allusive and incidental counterpoint–the union of themes in nimble sections of fugato–swift inversions and graceful canons, all bubbling up with kaleidoscopic suddenness. . ." [15]

–

While the final quintets, operas, and the Requiem undoubtedly dominate amongst the works of Mozart's last years one ought not overlook the splendid and intriguing keyboard music from this same period.


25. Rondo in A minor, KV.511

Abert called this "one of the most important keyboard rondos ever composed" [Abert, 986] and Arthur Hutchings said its mood is "lovely in a musical expression like this, but morbid beyond pathos in a man's behavior." [16]

The chief figures of this landscape are chromaticism and the trills and turns, which as Abert says recur so regularly as to be thematic. We will see this rondo's very close imitation in the stretto entries again in the sonatas, yet not so fierce as here where the mood is perhaps but slightly removed from that of the allegro to the Sonata in F for 2 pianos, KV.497. Like the theme to the finale of that same sonata, this theme too is one of Mozart's most veiled and mysterious: bare yet secretive, intimate yet detached,
longing yet resigned. That it enters so suddenly yet so logically and naturally renders it all the more potent; its return is always as a sort of disturbing reminder. Here the form of the dance creates an air of gentility even as the chromaticism bares unrestrained pathos. Such an unsettling pairing nonetheless transfixes.[17]

–

While the "easy" Sonata in C KV.545 utilizes some imitation in its short rondo finale and the Sonata in B-flat, KV.570 features counterpoint in its outer movements, it is in the two sonatas KV.533 in F and KV.576 in D where we hear Mozart striking an extraordinary balance between the "learned" and "galanterie" styles. In these works we have both lightness and seriousness, accompaniment and counterpoint.

26. Piano Sonata in F, KV.533

Allegro | Andante | Rondo: Allegretto

Allegro in F

Mozart subverts our expectations straightaway. The main theme enters by itself but then is joined at bar 4 by the Alberti accompaniment which proceeds to sort of clash with the scalar figure before it drops out entirely. What are we in for here? We barely get to know the main theme, which only drops into the bass, jumps up again, and is repeated, before it is treated in counterpoint. After the imitative development of the first theme, the second enters (at m. 41 and on the dominant C) and it too is treated in counterpoint straightaway. A third theme enters at m.66 and is not treated in imitation but rather it ushers in an exuberant virtuoso passage of scales and triplets.

m.123-145
click to enlarge

The passage from m.125-145, right, in the development is also a feast of imitation. Here the first part of the second subject is inverted over and over, modulating each time through D minor, G minor, C major, and F major.

At last in the recapitulation at m.194 the third theme enters again, this time as counter-subject to the main theme which enters at m.220 and which is again thrown against counterpoint (m.213.)

Andante in B-flat

Here, "Mozart carries the language capacity of his epoch to the breaking point, and nearly to his end."

–Hans Werner Henze [18]

The beginning of this sonata brings us near to the world of the introduction to the Sonata in F for 2 pianos, KV.497. The restlessly modulating and fantasia-like passage from m.47-72 is the heart of this movement and of it Abert wrote:

This is one of the most austere passages in the whole of Mozart's output. Certainly none of his contemporaries ever wrote anything to match the present passage in terms of its searing relationes non harmonicae. Together with its contrapuntal accompaniment, which is reinforced in thirds, the motif. . . strives upwards with its sforzato accents, creating a feeling of bitterest self-torment, until it reaches the dominant harmony of B flat major, thereby producing a sense of emotional tension unique in Mozart's sonatas. [Abert, 1146]

N.B: A finale for this sonata was begun but only 16 bars are completed (K.Anh.30 = 590.) The rondo performed with this sonata (KV.494) was composed about 18 months before the preceding movements, and expanded with a twenty-seven bar contrapuntal episode, perhaps to create symmetry with the imitative counterpoint of the first movement.


27. Piano Sonata in D, KV.576

Allegro | Adagio | Allegretto

Mozart completed this sonata shortly after his trip through Leipzig to Berlin (see No. 28 below) possibly in fulfillment of a commission for six "easy" ("leichte") keyboard pieces for the Princess Frederika of Prussia. That this is the only sonata Mozart wrote for this planned series, that it is not at all "easy," and that it was published alone and posthumously all suggest a different purpose for its composition. I once heard Robert Levin give a most insightful (and fun) pre-concert talk about this sonata, a talk of which you can hear a variant here: YouTube. His remarks bring to mind a similar comment from another great pianist, Alfred Brendel, who said that, "Where Mozart somehow manages to surprise us with what we expect, Haydn excels in the unexpected." [19] Indeed while that observation plays out over the course of this sonata there is nothing expected about the contrast in the main theme's pair of figures. Levin respectively terms them "fanfare" and "goody-two-shoes":

m.1-5
click to enlarge

Allegro

This sonata takes further the stretto and inversion and re-inversion of the parts in the B-flat Sonata, KV.570. Contrapuntal procedures begin almost immediately when the first theme is joined by a similar counter-subject. This counter/second subject begins with the "fanfare" theme and continues with a descending semiquaver figure. Soon after at m. 28. this figure enters in stretto. The development section begins with canonic imitation soon repeated in inversion. The rising chromatic passage at m.77 and subsequent semiquaver figures give way to the figure of two triplet quavers from the close of the exposition. For eleven bars it alternates between the hands, treated against a rising chromatic line and dominant pedal before a descending scalar passage enters forte and reintroduces the main theme for the recapitulation.


Allegretto

The form of this movement has been variously referred to as "free rondo" "sonata-rondo" or "irregular-sonata-form." F. H. Marks in "The Sonata Its Form and Meaning as Exemplified in the Piano Sonatas by Mozart" offers an extended discussion of this question of form. Here though we may briefly note that on the one hand this movement has three entries of its subject with interstitial material and on the other the transposition of the melody to the dominant makes it a second subject rather than an episode, and bars 80-116 are developed from existing material, making it a development section. Too, the exposition is not repeated. Of contrapuntal procedures we see the stretto of the main theme at m.34, m.103, m.117 in sharp relief from the virtuosic runs of ascending and descending quavers.


28. Eine Kleine Gigue in G, KV.574

This short gigue is of the French, fugal, type and of course such is what brings it into our purview here. It seems rather curious in Mozart's output at this late date, does it not? Girdlestone suggested it was a pastiche[20] of Bach, probably spurred by Mozart's April 1789 visit to Leipzig where he met Johann Friedrich Doles (1715-97), Kantor of the Thomasschule and pupil of J.S. Bach. While in Leipzig Mozart played and improvised on the Thomaskirche organ, looked at some of Bach's motets, and heard Doles' students perform Bach's motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied. While the precise date of this gigue is uncertain, it likely dates from around May 16 of the same year, when Mozart in fact returned to Leipzig and where he presented this little piece to Carl Immanuel Engel, organist at the Schlosskapelle.

–

Bibliography

Abert, Hermann. W. A. Mozart. Yale University Press. New Haven and New York. 2007.

–

Footnotes

[14] King, Alec Hyatt. Mozart's Counterpoint: Its Growth and Significance. Music & Letters, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Jan., 1945), pp. 12-20 (quotation from p. 17)
[15] Hutchings, Arthur, "The Keyboard Music" in H. C. Robbins Landon and Donald Mitchell (eds.), The Mozart Companion (London, 1956), p. 62 –– cited in Sutcliffe, W. Dean "The Keyboard Music" in The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, Simon P. Keefe (ed.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2003.
[16] See also Levin, Beth: http://www.lafolia.com/archive/levin/levin200310mozart.html
[17] See lecture, "Mozart: Divertimento in E-flat major for Violin, Viola, and Cello, K. 563 (1788)" http://www.chambermusicsociety.org/watchlisten/master_class_lecture_videos
[18] Brendel, Alfred. Alfred Brendel on Music: His Collected Essays. A Capella Books. Chicago. 2007. p.12
[19] ibid. p.110
[20] pastiche should not in this context carry the the often negative connotation of our common usage.

Movie Review: Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould

Directed by Michèle Hozer & Peter Raymont. 2009.

At some point in the life of every music lover, particularly fans of J. S. Bach and keyboard music, he comes across Glenn Gould. Perhaps one does not so much come across Gould so much as get struck by him. Be it the articulation, the distinction of the voices, the tension, or perhaps just the humming, I suspect the first acquaintance is often a startling one. Such was certainly the experience of many when Gould burst from obscurity onto the music scene with his recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations. That an introduction to him and his take on music still arrests individuals would please him very much, I think, and I say that a little more familiar with him after this splendid documentary.

To begin at the end, the film concludes with the notion that it is the mystery of Gould, not the narrative of his life, that drives peoples' attempts to rediscover him again and again. In this respect, and another which I think would please the late pianist, Gould is himself like a piece of great music: it asks a lot of you, it brings a lot to you, and it gets richer the more you live with it. I say live with and perhaps that's what comes off most from this two-hour film, that Gould lived a musical life. From the age of three when he began to read musical notation (before he could read words) and acquired his trademark habit of singing along to his playing, through his truncated concert career and through his long sessions practicing and recording it is clear he lived and breathed music. He came at a piece from every possible direction, he took it apart and put it back together again, and he internalized it. We gather that he understood pieces as only their creators did and in fact Gould once told a composer who was fretting at Gould's interpretation, "You don't know your own piece!"

Perhaps this internalization was closely linked to the loneliness which followed him through his whole life. As a child he avoided common social affairs and during his adult life it seems he never had more than a handful of friends. This desire or need for privacy and isolation, whether on account of illness or an inability to share his clearly vibrant passion for music or both, was clearly at odds with a musical career. First, performing is an intimate experience in which the performer shares a great deal of himself with a great many people. Second, there is a certain intangible feedback a performer gets from an audience. Third, there is probably a certain degree to which an audience drives the performer to greater lengths. Yet Gould considered "concertizing" hideous and audiences (not individuals but audiences en masse) "rule of mob law." Such too is at odds with his plans, rather vaguely conveyed at least in the film, to "democratize music" with "kits," i.e. to provide people with recordings they could somehow manipulate themselves. (Presaging, of course, today's remixes, edits, "mashups," and playlists.) Yet this paradox in Gould between inner and outer is again like music itself, with its dichotomy between being personal and universal, and both with the utmost intensity.

Gould seems to elicit rather strong, often contrary, emotions. He was quite difficult, but most kind. He tried to control situations, but not people. He had perfect technique, but imposed on the piece. Famously conductor Leonard Bernstein, before a performance of a Brahms concerto with Gould, actually prefaced the concert with a disclaimer that he had great respect for Gould but differed with the interpretation which was to follow. A revealing fact, and one consistent with the man this film introduces us to, is that Gould took Bernstein's comments as having been said in the best spirit. What Bernstein did was of course what anyone who understands music would do. The performance cannot be constrained even by the conductor. It has to, as Gould says, express the individuality of the performer. For Gould, and he said this many times throughout his life, art was about creation and making your own world. It was about expressing your own uniqueness and isolation. Again we see a dichotomy, here between composer and performer.

Indeed in one segment while discussing his performance of a Mozart sonata Gould explains why, though reverently, he changes Mozart's adagio marking to allegretto, and why he draws out the opening so slowly, almost comically: to bring the audience into the world of the piece. You cannot do that by pulling a piece off a museum shelf but by creating something in front of people. He takes such liberty to seize the audience, to let them know something important is happening in front of them, that something rare and beautiful and fleeting is being created and will pass away. In this way too Gould is himself musical: he was himself as fragile and fleeting as a piece of music desperately reaching out through time.

Genius Within falls rather cleanly into two halves, the first of which chronicles his youth and concert career. It was a career with a sudden dazzling rise, punctuated by his spectacular Soviet tour in 1957. The first performance of the tour was poorly attended, owing in part to a lack of popularity for Bach due to him being broadly labeled as evangelical by the government, yet after the intermission the house was packed. One imagines hundreds of giddy phone calls to friends and family akin to, "You've never heard anything like this before. Come!" Surely their enthusiasm for the music gratified him. During his performing career the quirks and eccentricities were under control and perhaps Gould, knowing how they helped his popularity, didn't even mind when they were overplayed in the news. He had his custom chair, his gloves, he canceled performances. He was popular. Yet on April 10, 1964 he gave his last public concert. Henceforth he was to perform only in recording studios, which suited both his desire for privacy and his desire to control the environment of the performance. He also began a series of radio programs and documentaries.

He was to gain something else which he lacked and sought: intimacy. Cornelia Foss, wife of German-born American composer, conductor, pianist, and professor Lukas Foss, left her husband for Gould and moved with her children to Toronto. Again, Gould seemed happy. A friend recollects that he must have said a dozen times throughout his life that, "These are the happiest days of my life." Gould pioneered recording and took advantage of the unique creative possibilities (mixing and splicing) it provided, using an auditorium in a Toronto mall. After a seemingly ideal period in which he recorded prolifically, enjoyed time with Cornelia and her children, indulged his love of nature, and enjoyed his control and privacy, he grew more difficult. His paranoia, controlling temperament, and hypochondria all worsened.  Cornelia left him, saying the eccentricities began to overshadow his personality. Despite a period of collaboration and likely romance with Ukrainian-Canadian soprano Roxolana Roslak, Gould was clearly slipping away. He began to script all of his public appearances. Yet before he died he recorded the Goldberg Variations once more. More eccentric this time, but perhaps more thoughtful too. A touching scene is composed of original footage from Gould's Toronto funeral. In a packed church of over 3,000 they played Gould's performance of the Goldberg aria and the attendees wept as as they listened, Gould characteristically humming along.

Genius Within is a little conventional as a documentary. Chronological and neatly segmented, it is structurally simple. Too it spends a tad much time on his romance with Cornelia Foss and his guilt late in life at not having properly taken care of the parents who were so devoted to him. It is very light on musical analysis. Yet the film is brought to vivid life by the plethora of original footage of Gould and the many interviews with those who knew him. They are all particularly candid and frankly they seem a little baffled and overwhelmed by the effect Gould had on their lives. The most penetrating remarks are from Gould's biographer, Kevin Bazzana, and two of his friends, including the late violinist and conductor Peter Ostwald.

The film ends on a perfectly fitting note: that his mysteriousness perplexes and draws us in to rediscover him. And rediscover him we ought to. His friend suggests he'd have liked to be remembered not just as a performer, but as a Renaissance man, a creative artist who didn't just play but tried to share a philosophy of performance for this most special, curious thing we call music.

–

N.B. A selection (Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Book II) of Gould's performance of J. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier was included on the Voyager I space probe launched in 1977. See http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/music.html for the other music included.

Around the Web

For Saturday, December 4 through Friday, December 17.

1) Victor Davis Hanson on The Destiny of Cities.

2-3) Matt Ridley on:

• Autodidacticism 
• "Remembering the future"

4) Putting on 'The Hard Nut," Mark Morris's two-act dance set to Tchaikovsky's score for "The Nutcracker."

5) An interview with Oliver Sacks, neurologist (and author of Musicophilia and The Mind's Eye.)

6) On Schubert's Winterreise [1] [2]

7) On Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera House [1] [2] [3]

8) The NEH vs. America?

9) David Yezzi on Andrew Marvell

10) Hitchens, Robinson, and Ricochet readers on Vietnam.

11) Obama and the Rhetoric of Progressivism

12) The Crisis of the American Intellectual

13) Human Nature and Capitalism

14) The Fed: The Chicago School's Achilles Heel

15) Stephen Hawking’s Radical Philosophy of Science

16) On a Career Choice, or, "Why I love being a professor."

17) 20 Obsolete English Words that Should Make a Comeback

Book Reviews

18) DC-3: A Legend in Her Time by Bruce McAllister

19) The Fighting Temeraire by Sam Willis

20) Class Conflict, American Style

•  Pathology of the Elites: How the Arrogant Classes Plan to Run Your Life by Michael Knox Beran
• Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America by David Callahan 
• The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It by Angelo M. Codevilla

21) The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth by Richard Conniff 

22) The English Opium Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey by Robert Morrison