Autobiography & Understanding: a Few Idle Thoughts on a Sunday Afternoon

[amateur51]

so what does one make of a jokey poem ('bombastic, turgid, grotesque, OTT') - inept 'unpoetic' grovelling. To me it was the effervescent high spirits of relief. That's where the creativity of the reader comes in. Can one ever really know, unless the composer/poet has written a full account what one is "supposed" to understand from the autobiography of a creative work of art?

Isn't it possible too that the poet was using the rhetorical device known as hyperbole?

Might the 'invasion' movement of Shostakovich symphony no 7 be an example of hyperbole in music too? If so how does that affect one's view of the subsequent movements?

[Sir Velo]

Isn't all music autobiographical?

Go on then: what's the "backstory" to Webern's Symphony Op.21?

[Richard Barrett]

Can we deny that Gesualdo's psychoses inform the fractured bars and previously unheard dissonances of his music?

Although actually Gesualdo was a representative of a small and short-lived movement in Italian music whose other representatives (Pomponio Nenna, Michelangelo Rossi, Giovanni Pietro del Buono etc.) presumably weren't all "psychotic" even though in some cases the harmonies of their music are somewhat more extreme than Gesualdo's (see the wonderful CD La Tavola Cromatica for example). Which goes to show that looking at a composer's biography and his/her music and jumping to a simple causal relationship between the two can be quite misleading.

Teamsaint, I'll say something at greater length later on about the language/music problem (unless MrGG would like to step in!).

[edashtav]

Although actually Gesualdo was a representative of a small and short-lived movement in Italian music whose other representatives (Pomponio Nenna, Michelangelo Rossi, Giovanni Pietro del Buono etc.) presumably weren't all "psychotic" even though in some cases the harmonies of their music are somewhat more extreme than Gesualdo's (see the wonderful CD La Tavola Cromatica for example). .

I'd like to examine that thought but rush to a distant funeral of a musical friend.

[aeolium]

That's the autobiography behind it: so what does one make of a jokey poem ('bombastic, turgid, grotesque, OTT') - inept 'unpoetic' grovelling. To me it was the effervescent high spirits of relief. That's where the creativity of the reader comes in. Can one ever really know, unless the composer/poet has written a full account what one is "supposed" to understand from the autobiography of a creative work of art?

No, and even if a composer made it unambiguously clear what he intended to convey in a piece of music, there would remain ambiguity and unintended resonances, allusions within the music, because however much the composer is in control of the 'superstructure' of the music there will always be something there that is uncontrolled - as there is in a richly ambiguous painting, a poem, a novel. It's hard to say of a listener's perception of a piece of music that it is clearly wrong, because it is what that listener honestly perceives in the work. It may be that Barber for instance intended something quite different in his adagio to the op 11 string quartet, later transcribed for strings, from the way it was widely received - as music of great sadness and pathos, often played at funerals. It's one of the delights of music that it can evoke so many different responses and interpretations of its character.

[Bryn]

Go on then: what's the "backstory" to Webern's Symphony Op.21?

Now that's a Perle of a question.

[verismissimo]

Go on then: what's the "backstory" to Webern's Symphony Op.21?

Not a clue. But I expect it's there, Sir V. :)

Good excuse to listen again!

[verismissimo]

Go on then: what's the "backstory" to Webern's Symphony Op.21?

There may be a clue in his reference in a lecture in 1932, where he quoted the magic formula from Pompeii:

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

[french frank]

Isn't it possible too that the poet was using the rhetorical device known as hyperbole?

Might the 'invasion' movement of Shostakovich symphony no 7 be an example of hyperbole in music too? If so how does that affect one's view of the subsequent movements?

Well, it certainly was hyperbole. But that is the essential difference between literature and music - words (usually!) convey something precise. But in terms of music, I'm not sure that autobiography has that much significance. You can say that a particular emotion or effect reflects or is intended to represent something immediate in the composer's life or thought, and it's always 'nice' to have explanations for things. But if you experience those emotions, does it affect your musical appreciation of the piece to know what lay behind them? Or does knowing what was happening in a composer's life allow you to experience emotions which might otherwise be undetectable?

It's a question that has also been asked of literary studies: the broad histoire littéraire approach.

[verismissimo]

In his Aspects of Wagner, Bryan Magee wrote:

"It has been said of The Ring that in the deepest sense there is only one character, the different 'characters' being aspects of a single personality, so that the work is a portrait of the psyche as well as a depiction of the world."

No prizes for guessing whom that single personality might be.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But background knowledge does much more than enrich the experience and if you dismiss it as a "purely musical" achievement without that knowledge then your judgement is almost invalid, coming from the wrong perspective (or no perspective).

Do you mean that this Music depends, for its final judgement, on knowledge of its background? Allowing that argument to stand, supposing a listener who has such knowledge (and who doesn't confuse the tale with the teller) but still finds the movement "banal" and "bombastic" (even if s/he know that such bombast is intentional and all done with the best possible motives): is such a listener's "judgement" still "invalid"?

Or, for that matter, a listener who loves the movement, finding it exciting both in and out of context, and can hear rhythmic, thematic and harmonic links to the overall structure, but who (by some astonishing oversight) doesn't know anything about the siege of Leningrad - is their Musical appreciation also "invalid"?

Are the composer's/composers' intentions the only "valid" criteria for judgement in such pieces? And who decides what is and is not an "invalid" judgement? (Put briefly; why do you say "dismiss"?)

[ahinton]

Indeed - but I guess what I was saying was that in a musical context this seems pretty apparent without our needing Derrida's help. I've frequently found that ideas like this seem (at least to their authors!) highly sophisticated and profound when applied to literature but somewhat obvious when applied to music.

I wonder why some people have posted that this discussion is "well above" the, I'm sure it isn't! I mean I don't think it's at all necessary to invoke (post-)structuralism to talk about these issues; in fact it's more likely to be a hindrance.

The composers whose work has been mentioned here would seem all to invite the terms "romantic" (Beethoven, Strauss, Elgar) or in different ways "post-romantic" (Shostakovich, Berg) to describe their work, that is to say a way of looking at music and art which places the "self-expression" of the artist in a central position. Does that mean that the idea of "autobiographical" music is a historically and stylistically circumscribed phenomenon? (It's certainly something which is highly unlikely to arise in any tradition of textless music apart from the "Western classical" one I think.)

I think that you're right about this. There's also - within that "Western classical" canon - the question of deliberate attempts at the autobiographical as distinct from subconscious ones; Shostakovich's remarks about the rationale - or lack thereof - behind the quotations in his Fifteenth Symphony suggests that he wrote them into its fabric because that's what he felt the music demoaded that he should do, rather than deliberately to make a point by means of them, whereas the plethora of self-quotations in Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben (mentioned upthread) were deliberately and consciously "autobiographically" motivated (although Shostakovich was in his latter 60s when he wrote his final symphony whereas Strauss was just 34 with many more works ahead of him when he completed Ein Heldenleben).

I likewise fail to understand why the considerations being discussed in this thread would feel as though "above the heads" of anyone here; one doesn't, or example, have to be able to read a score of DDS15 or anything else to have ideas and thoughts about it!

[ahinton]

No, and even if a composer made it unambiguously clear what he intended to convey in a piece of music, there would remain ambiguity and unintended resonances, allusions within the music, because however much the composer is in control of the 'superstructure' of the music there will always be something there that is uncontrolled - as there is in a richly ambiguous painting, a poem, a novel. It's hard to say of a listener's perception of a piece of music that it is clearly wrong, because it is what that listener honestly perceives in the work. It may be that Barber for instance intended something quite different in his adagio to the op 11 string quartet, later transcribed for strings, from the way it was widely received - as music of great sadness and pathos, often played at funerals. It's one of the delights of music that it can evoke so many different responses and interpretations of its character.

That's right; a composer might know some of all of the motivations that gave rise to a particular one of his/her works and might be able to explain it in detail (if he/she wanted to do) but the composer has no control over how different listeners listen to performances of it and the conclusions that they form from so doing.

[Roehre]

Originally Posted by Sir Velo
Go on then: what's the "backstory" to Webern's Symphony Op.21?

There may be a clue in his reference in a lecture in 1932, where he quoted the magic formula from Pompeii:

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

As many times this work of Webern's started as a description: 3 mvts, "lively-sun" - variations -"very calmly -moon", and a Urpflanze (the plant/seed from which everything derives). It hadn't got a title by then.
Webern's preoccupation with the Alpine world, its nature and mountains define this orchestral work from the outset.
Eventually it became a 2 mvt "Symphony (op.21)" beginning with the moon-mvt and concluding with the variations.
A third mvt was partly sketched, but abandonded (though it has been played, i.a. in London in 1983, the mvts then in the "original" order).

The SATOR formula was in Webern's eyes the perfect model of the principles of an Urplanze.

It's Webern's general approach to nature here which defined the shape of the symphony as well as its contents - an autobiographical fact in itself, but not clarifying anything about the work.
The Alpine connection however is clear as soon as you've observed that world through a day and through the seasons.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

FHG, I am afraid this is one of Schindler's (One of the first Beethoven biographers, and, as it has turned out since the mid-1970s, a highly unreliable one) fabrications.

Sorry missed this cross-posting last night.

I thought both ideas ("fate" and "yellowhammer") originated in Schindler. The myth of Beethoven as Byronic hero originates so often in Schindler - the way so much of the late 19th - early 20th Century so eagerly accepted them as corresponding to what they heard in the Music (or how the myths conditioned how the Music was performed and heard) is central to much of this discussion.