POT SHOTS PAR CONRAD

Conrad indulges in some delightfully direct potshots:

"They had stopped near the cage. The parrot, catching the sound of a word belonging to his vocabulary, was moved to interfere. Parrots are very human." — Joseph Conrad, Nostromo.

OUR MAN IN COSTAGUANA: AN ESSAY ON CONRADIAN DUPLICITY

I started Conrad's Nostromo a few days ago. Besides the predictably beautiful prose (e.g. first page: "Utterly waterless, for the rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil enough—it is said—to grow a single blade of grass, as if it were blighted by a curse."), the text is chock full of linguistic curiosities. 

The title, for instance, is an Italian term for boatswain, but it's also a corruption of "nostro uomo," i.e. "our man."

Other proper names I've run across so far (roughly 50 pages in) share a similar trans-, inter- and intra- linguistic ambiguity. Two of the more obvious are Costaguana (guana refers to a palm tree, palmera, but also strongly suggests guano), and Viola. There's also the obvious Gould=gold connection and the San Tomé mine (tomb).

WALDSTEIN: I HAD TOO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT

Off to work. Here's Richard Goode playing the rather eery introduzione/adagio middle movement of the Waldstein sonata. Listening to said sonata in the dark and total stillness of 1:30 a.m. (as I did last night) is one bejesus of an experience. More on this later.

THERE IS SUCH A THING

...As an Australian hard-metal band named "DZ Death Ray."

This amazing revelation was brought to me by NPR this evening as I drove home from work. The accompanying song displayed an equally insuperable capacity for self-parody. Their webpage, according to whoever the heck that DJ is after 11:00 p.m., states that "They started out playing at house parties, and they will likely end at one."

Of course, this demands a recognition of Bill the Cat's one and only Deathtöngue. Behold:

THE ANT & THE GRASSHOPPER: LA BISE

Can't. Get. No...

The set-up: Trying to find short texts for language-maintenance since my brain's a little less inclined to read these days. I'm tackling two established masterpieces that've been on my long-list for quite a while: the Grimm bro's Kinder- und Hausmärchen and La Fontaine's Fables choisies. I'll probs just read a story from each every day or so, just to keep a foot in each of the respective Gallic-Teutonic linguistic doors.

So anyway: I'm floating through La cigale et la fourmi ("the ant and the grasshopper" but flipped), when I am greeted with the word "la bise" (= kiss): quand la bise fut venue. This is, of course, rather odd. So I look it up and discover this is in fact a good ol' Alpine nor'-nor'easter. I like it.

Here's the whole bit for the sake of getting it in my head:

        La cigale ayant chanté

               tout l'été,

        se trouva fort dépourvue

        quand la bise fut venue.

        Pas un seul petit morceau

        de mouche ou de vermisseau.

        Ella alla crier famine

        chez la fourmi sa voisine,

        la priant de lui preter

        quelque grain pour subsister

        jusqu'a la saison nouvelle.

        "Je vous pairai," dit elle,

        "avant l'Out*, foi d'animal,   //*= Aout adjusted for the meter

        interet & principal."

        La fourmi n'est pas preteuse

        c'est-la son moindre defaut.

        "Que faisez-vous au temps chaud?"

        dit elle a cette emprunteuse.

        "Nuit & jour, a tout venant

        je chantois, ne vous deplaise."

        "Vous chantiez? J'en suis fort aise;

        et bien, dansez maintenant."

EARLIEST KNOWN POLYPHONIC MUSIC DISCOVERED

Cool.

POSSIBLE EPIGRAM

In the Greek of course. I'll dig that up later. From A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia.

DIABELLI VARIATIONS: IT'S FULL OF STARS

Listening to the Diabelli variations straight through is like launching from earth, journeying into space and eventually passing out of the universe altogether. The first theme and the initial few variations are almost laughably bombastic, but the theme gradually shrinks in relation to the overall soundscape or just the "feelingness" of the set... By Var. X it's "OK, yeah, this is fairly clever. Maybe there's more to this." By Var. XX it's "this is jaw-droppingly sublime, " and the overwhelming vastness of space kicks in. From Var. XXIX through XXXI the original theme's become this little blip journeying to the edge of the universe. Then you have the sudden, shocking XXXII fugue striking like the edge of the universe and the blip goes into some kind of polyphonic/transdimensional journey Space Odyssey style. Then there's the finale XXIII. And the original theme's prominent -- but fundamentally altered. It returns the theme to a concrete reality, but in this ethereal, transcendent, starchild kind of way. So, basically, Space Odyssey is a ripoff of the Diabelli variations. All that, from this silly little line by Diabelli.

THE REST IS RUST AND STARDUST

Yeah, it's late. I got nothin'.

SCHIFF TO BRENDEL

Listening to Schiff's lecturette on Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 3 in C major. He mentions Alfred Brendel's writing on humor in music (oo la la). Tried unsuccessfully to locate a copy online. It's in his Collected Essays. I'll try to get my hands on it.

DIE BRÜDER GRIMM

Given pop culture's recent odd-but-paradoxically-predictable rage for pilfering conveniently public domain stories and then presenting them in various shades of absolute post-9/11 grit- and agstiness, and my own affinity for German and narratives with significant cultural-anthropological-historical import, it behooves me to actually read die Brüder's Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Actually its been on my list a long time, but fairly low on it. The format also suits my current rather short attention span.

Listened to Beethoven's Piano Sonata Numero Dos in A major this evening (actually, wee morning) as performed by the uniquely-classical-rather-than-romantic-leaning Richard Goode. That's the second lowest pinnacle in the thirtytwo-peaked "mountain range." The best is yet to come.

WHEN THE TONGUES OF FLAME ARE IN-FOLDED / INTO THE CROWNED KNOT OF FIRE

I have now completed my multi-day marathon listening to a complete cycle of Beethoven's string quartets. Among other things, this experience has taught me that I am completely inequipped to write about music of this caliber in any sort of directly responsive, analytical way. My immediate impulse is to write a piece of fiction or parable, but veiling their inadequacy in indirection seems rather cheap (T.S. Eliot, that's a slight dig at you, but its primarily motivated by envy). Therefore, I will say nothing. Except that gosh it makes me want to learn how to play an instrument.

...Although I will say just hearing those late quartet's in sequence was pretty darn sublime.

And... Phase II will involve listening to all of Beethoven's piano sonatas in chronological order. I  found this fascinating series of lectures by Andras Schiff that I'm going to listen to as I go along.

In the mean time, still plugging along in Barry Cooper's Beethoven and reading bits of George Steiner's monograph on Antigones.

PIZZICATO, PIZZICATO LET ME GO

Harpo van Beethoven

Beethoven's String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat major (nicknamed the "Harp" quartet because of the extensive use of pizzicato in the first movement) remains my all time favoritest of his middle quartets. The trio of Razumovskys (Nos. 7-9) are famous as the chamberwork equivalent to ol' Ludwig van's Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" (i.e. crazy, groundbreaking and the moment when Beethoven becomes Beethoven). The "Serioso" quartet gets top billing for just how audacious it is. But none of them can beat the "Harp." The first movement's got that strangely satisfying sort of warm, glowing, healthy mellow-but-ebullient thing that only Beethoven really does. The slow movement's sad, tranquil and beautiful. The presto is really just as insane as Beethoven ever really gets: it's Jaws meets Psycho meets skeleton dance meets ragtime, and some. The last movement's this lovely little whirlwind of variations that alternate between explosive emotionality and barely-bottled melodrama. The coda says it all: a sustained, blinding onrush of strings instantly resolves itself at the last (literal) second. That glorious Beethovenian sense of Germanic humor is omnipresent throughout the whole piece.

I would also like to take this opportunity to put forward the theory that Harpo Marx is the reincarnation of Ludwig van Beethoven.