I love this song. Joe Jackson is fantastic and the song is so intimate, and just right.
The stripped-down accompaniment, the clean sound, the plain old “in the box” chord progression:
Describing the progression in Roman Numerals doesn’t really do it justice. VI – II – V – I implies an overall motion to the final chord. Perhaps better to say V/V/V – V/V – V – I, but that doesn’t really do it either. The fact that the progression returns to the beginning is perhaps more defining than its resolution to the final chord. But that’s the reason I like it so much, and it rings so true to the song.
The song describes a snapshot in time, without any resolution. The point is not the expression of any process that is to be resolved, but of the feeling experienced within that process. The recurrence of the progression is part of it, the fact that over and over again Joe (the fictional character) sees these pretty women out walking with gorillas. This fact is further emphasized by the repeated elision in the melodic line, the late arriving G# that descends to the F# in order to return to the beginning. The chorus is a soliloquy on how the process feels (“Is she really going out with him?”) and the B section (“But if looks could kill…”) is his waking dream of breaking from the recurring nightmare.
Better, this analysis provides us with a justification for the Raconteur’s identical progression in “Steady as She Goes.”
Here I was thinking I was smart for hearing the similarities, but it has been mentioned before in at least two places. The first place, a blog, seems to be concerned with whether or not Jack White was conscious of the similarities and the second seems concerned with which is better: “”Steady” proves White’s non-Stripes chops (he’s not allergic to bass after all!), but Jackson’s track is a stone classic.”
The circling progression allows the listener to relive the moment over and over again—“Steady as she goes…” Isn’t that really what this music is all about? Hmmm.
So everyone’s all excited about the meeting, well, those who went, well, those who went and posted something about it on their blogs. Strange, I saw a bunch of bloggers there who really aren’t saying anything. I guess if you don’t have anything nice to say…. There are some really nice pictures though. Ah well. I have a couple of nice things to say.
My favorite (or should I say favourite) paper by far was Sarah Hibberd’s Cherubini and the Revolutionary Sublime. In it, she argues that the French were equally pursuing “…a (French) conception of the sublime that complements the German Idealist view that has tended to dominate nineteenth-century studies” (from her abstract) It was a nice discussion although I wish she had looked a little closer at German idealism. The terror created by (and pleasure derived from) an experience of the sublime shifted subtlety in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century-a shift that was complemented in England. Wordsworth in his Preludes describes it quite nicely:
I too exclusively esteemed that love,
And sought that beauty, which as Milton sings
Hath terror in it. Thou didst soften down
This over-sternness; but for thee, sweet friend,
May soul, too reckless of mild grace, had been
Far longer what by Nature it was framed—
Longer retained its countenance severe—
A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds
Familiar, and a favorite of the stars;
But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers,
Hand it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze,
And teach the little birds to build their nests
And warble in its chambers…( 224)
That beauty which hath terror in it. The flower among the rocks. The fragile thing in threatening isolation—the prima donna at the precipice. In Cherubini’s opera Lodoiska (the fragile thing) is imprisoned by that evil Count Dourlinski, but her desperate position is not emphasized by the fire and the battle scene. At least not until Weber wrote his great insert aria for the opera that emphasizes her beauty in the wilderness. In the Romantic movement in Germany and England, they sought to amplify the terror of the sublime by mixing it with beauty. As Schilling stated in On the Sublime (1801) “Only if the sublime is wedded to the beautiful and our sensitivity for both has been cultivated in equal measure are we perfect citizens of nature without thereby becoming her slaves and without squandering our citizenship in the intelligible world.” I think I’m going to write a paper on that—see? Hibberd gave an inspiring paper—saved the conference for me and justified the $80 and 5 hour drive. I’d like to tell her personally, but I don’t know how, I suppose I’ll just cite her paper in mine. Zoe’s paper was cancelled. I saw the Rock-Doc lookin’ cool with a Bloody Mary at the Hotel bar (TA in tow). DF was holding court and I actually spoke to S.B.
Outside of the conference it was nice to see Dad’s neighborhood, and stay in Grandpop’s old pad.. I think I saw the music shop where Dad bought me my first guitar. It was just fun and nostalgic for times that I had, or might have had, or wished I had, or could have had, or thought I had, or might still have….yuck. Anyway, here is a little Lodoiska on the YouTube:
Not great quality, but a worthwhile performance.
Finally, the composer of the day is Vanessa Lann. I don’t like to characterize styles, except to say I like her stuff. Especially, check out Illuminating Aleph (although I’d skip the program and just give it a listen…). G’night y’all
The AMS is this weekend—in Philadelphia. Great City, I can’t wait to see a few old friends, and maybe meet new ones. The program is, well, really odd. Of course Weber is not on it anywhere, but neither is Bach. There is no real new study of Beethoven, or Brahms. In fact, Jimi Hendrix gets more coverage than Bach, Beethoven and Brahms combined. Now I am a fan of Hendrix–but really. I can play most of his songs (not with my tongue) but I’m not sure that I am interested in hearing about them (or any more of their cultural context). But that’s just me. I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be there, just that I’m not interested. Frankly, I’d like to hear papers on Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.
But I have to go to it. There are people there that I really want to see, and good things too. There is a Schumann and Mendelssohn session. Good ‘ole Zoe is giving a lecture on Saturday. There seems to be some really interesting Medieval and Renaissance papers too.
In F.N. we are doing Stravinsky, so here is a little cubism to make your night….
Roger-Noël-François de La Fresnaye, Sitzender Mann.
Also, the composer’s website for the day:
I went to Brandeis with Jeremy. Check out his Stratum, (sample on his site), it sounds excellent on my LENOVO SPEAKERS. See ya soon y’all!
This past summer as Alice and I were riding to a concert at the Hatch Shell, she yelled out “Daddy! a Dog!!” I stopped only to find the coolest Art-Deco Dog Fountain I’d ever seen (not that I’ve seen more than one Art-Deco Dog Fountain).
After a little bit of searching around I found out some interesting stuff. The “Lotta Fountain” was built by the bequest of Lotta Crabtree (1847-1924) a millionaire actress who earned her wealth as a late 19th century Shirley Temple.
She had left money in order that a fountain might be built to refresh horses, dogs, men and birds. After years of battling in court over her will, a commission was finally given to Katherine Lane Weems who finished the project in 1939.
Weems was (obviously) a New England Deco sculptor. Here she is at work in her studio:
She’s particularly famous for her Harvard Rhinos:
So, what makes Weems a Deco Sculptor, or the Dog a “Deco-Dog?” As usual, Oxford online is no help, giving articles either too long or too short, but here is a tidbit:
The Art Deco movement encompassed a wide variety of decorative arts that were characterized by a certain sensuousness of curving forms, a lavish employment of luxurious materials and bold combinations of colours and floral patterns.
Okay, so what does that mean? The spire of the Chrysler Building is of a “curving form,” but I’m not really sure about it being sensuous. The Hatch Shell, (just down the way form the Deco Dog) is pretty curvy too, but sensuous?
I think the Wiki article might best describe my impression—an “opulent” and “lavish” style with “use of stepped forms and sweeping curves.” It seems (to me at least) to have a good share of Utopian optimism.
Returning to Lotta’s dog, I’d have to say it is the sharp angles contrasted by the sweeping curves that define it as Deco for me. That, coupled with the naive optimism that someone could create a simple water fountain for people horses and dogs that would last more than a few decades in Boston. Ah well, it was a really nice day.
Hey folks,
My laptop died and I am stuck running linux, but salvation just got shipped.
I recently gave a paper on F. W. J. Schelling’s aesthetics and their expression in early 19th century German culture and art. One of the primary points concerned Schelling’s ideal for the role of extrinsic meaning in an artistic work. In his Philosophy of Art Schelling describes the ideal:
The painting is to fulfill only the inner requirements of being true, beautiful, expressive, and universally significant such that in any case it can do without that accidental attractiveness resulting from the knowledge of the particular empirical event portrayed. It is equally erroneous for the art to flatter either learnedness or the lack of it.
Essentially, while the Romantic artwork was expected to carry extrinsic meaning (meaning to be found in its history or cultural context), the extrinsic meaning that “results from the knowledge” of the painting’s subject is unnecessary. Recently, it has occurred to me that the same ideal seems to play in modern art, it is part of the common modern aesthetic. Take, for example, the following picture:
It is an amazing shot. First, the light is stirring. The picture frame cast in shadow in the left background creates its own powerful metaphor. The whole background, an obvious opportunity for a symmetrical frame, is wisely left askew creating an softly disorienting effect. Next the blurred hand (and its gesture) in the foreground shifts the viewers attention to the woman’s face which, although partially cast in shadow, is sharply in focus, even as the subject is looking away as though in her thoughts she is somewhere else. The shot (and the captured expression) reveal that while the woman’s prime has passed, she still maintains a passion and fierceness.
Further, the art of the shot draws the viewer into two places at once. On the one hand, there is this woman’s world—her photographs and memories, her fears and hopes. On the other there is the intimacy that the photographer feels for this woman. When one considers the photographer, the subject of the shot goes beyond what the woman might be thinking or saying. The furrowed brow and intensity of expression change from an aging woman’s passion to an expression of character as perceived by the photographer.
The fact that this analysis is independently supported by the picture’s historical events brings it within the realm of Schelling’s ideal for art.
The picture is of my grandmother, taken by my cousin. And while, in my experience with her, my grandmother was always soft-spoken and loving, I think that the family realized the potential for her fierceness. It was rooted in the fact that this woman had the chutzpah to open her own business in Northeast Philadelphia long before that was even remotely expected of a wife and mother. Here she is in front of her Deli:
(This picture is not composed, the person taking it is just snapping a shot, but look at the pride in my grandmother’s face.) With her camera, my cousin has managed to capture a character in my grandmother that I’d only heard of and never actually seen.
It strikes me that a portrait seeks a higher purpose than a picture. It not only expresses more about its subject than a mere picture (an expression which, I agree with Schelling, doesn’t require knowledge of the subject’s history or context), but it also imbeds the character of the artist within. But you don’t have to believe me, I am biased, look here. Judge the picture according to the people “in the know.”
The Portrait
by Jane Flanders
What I saw had so little to do with me,
or so I thought. I was the lens,
the clear glass through which all passed,
or was I a mirror, a still, sullen pool?
A delicate instrument? A recording device?
I could have accepted that.
Sometimes, to escape from the brightness
I closed my eyes and felt my way through rocks,
shells, driftwood, seeking that sixth sense
of the blind. Or tasted fruit as if I were nothing
but lips, tongue, gullet. But the gold juice,
the air I sucked up pure, appeared on canvas
tinged with blood. No one had ever seen such
fleshy flowers, such landscapes of bones.
The other day I ran into Hargrave and she bought me an espresso–fancy that! Anyway, as we took in the weather in Harvard Square, and brainstormed solutions to the world’s problems as well as our own poverty, she suggested that I should bake bread. She said it costs her 67 pennies per loaf. Considering that crappy Shop and Stop bread is usually about $2 dollars a loaf I was quite interested. Several days later she referred me to a recipe here at Orangette’s blog:
The recipe is:
¼ cup honey
2 Tbs (2 packages) active dry yeast
2 Tbs canola oil
6 ½ cups whole wheat flour, plus more as needed
2 tsp salt
In a mixing bowl, combine 3 ½ cups tepid water, the honey, yeast, and oil. Stir and set aside for 5 or 6 minutes, until mixture bubbles and foams. In the meantime, spray two 8- by 5-inch loaf pans with cooking spray. Add the flour, a cup or so at a time, and the optional salt, mixing with your hands or a wooden spoon until the dough comes together and forms a manageable ball. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8 to 10 minutes, until your hands come clean when lifted from the dough and the dough is smooth and elastic. [To test if the dough is well kneaded, insert a clean thumb into the dough, and count to 5. If your thumb comes out clean, the dough is kneaded properly, and you don't need to add any more flour.] Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Divide the dough into two equal-sized pieces, and shape into loaves. Place loaves in pans. Cover with dish towels, and set aside in a warm, draft-free place for 40 minutes to 1 hour, until doubled in bulk. Bake bread on the center rack of the oven for about 40 minutes, until the crusts are golden brown and the loaves sound hollow when thumped on the bottom. Cool completely on wire racks before slicing. Yield: 2 loaves
Random Bread Fact:
Did you know that in Ancient Rome the phrase “Bread and Circus” referred to “food and entertainment provided by governments to keep the populace happy.” as in “Panem et circenses.” See Juvenal’s satires.
Anyway, yesterday Alice and I tested Hargrave’s price. We bought the ingredients at stop and shop, as cheaply as possible and this is what we’ve got.
¼ cup honey = 3 oz. We got a 40 oz. (I like honey) bottle for 7.99. (7.99/40)*3=39.995 or 40 cents
2 Tbs (2 packages) active dry yeast We got 4 packets @ 5 for $2. so 40 cents each or 80 total
2 Tbs canola oil 2.99 and two tablespoons is worth maybe a dime
6 ½ cups whole wheat flour, plus more as needed 2/3s of a 2.19 container = 75 cents.
2 tsp salt–negligible.
The grand total for one loaves = (40+80 + 10 + 75)/2=$1.03 so it isn’t .67 cents but it is still cheaper and the bread is much better.
More Random Bread facts: Did you know that “to know on which side one’s bread is buttered: is to have the sense to know where one’s interest lies?” or “to have your bread buttered on both sides: means to have great good fortune, lucky circumstances.”
Alice had fun helping me make it too! Here’s the dough after it had risen but before I put it in the oven…
And here is the first slice after it cooled….
I suppose we’ll do it again next week, it was so fun. Perhaps we’ll also try a new recipe, not that this one wasn’t excellent!
Got some bad news this weekend so this made for an excellent distraction, thanx Katie.
Recently a Ph.D. in my field published a plea for help. I have since been horrified by the invective being hurled at this poor musicologist. Invective and “truth talk” with a shocking lack of solutions for the current “job catastrophe.”
Here’s an idea, GROW.
Stop spewing conservative rhetoric (cut, cut, cut…) and get back to some good ‘ole liberal spending and growth. Not enough jobs for musicology Ph.D.s? Why not make public school teaching certification part of a student’s coursework. I know I would have “ho hummed” at the idea while I was taking courses, but I would have done it and it would certainly help right now. Come on! The history, the theory, the languages, the writing, the arts and literature and all the other training that we need to know for this profession would make us welcome in a public school setting–at least until a T.T. job can be found. The teaching would improve our knowledge and increase the interest in the field–interest both in the form of students who will wish to major/minor in music as well as educated folks who might be able to understand the articles we publish.
Can you imagine? We could find our lost relavance in broader society, not by changing the conversation, but by educating the audience! Growth will not come easy, the math and science folks have all been very productive in taking over the high school curriculum (while the humanities have slept). Perhaps the AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY should take a little responsibility for this loss and advocate for its own future. People like music, always have and always will. However, whether we remain marginal or find a way to steer the mainstream towards us is our own decision. Our field is currently so diverse and interesting, and we have so many smart folks just dying to teach music–what a shame.
Instead, the response to the plea is… ”I hear a more than faint bit of entitlement, e.g., an earned degree from a very strong program with some grants, awards, papers and publications somehow “entitles” the holder of a PhD to a cushy position with a 6-figure salary at a top tier university.” Oh come on! a “cushy job?” I think he just wants a(ny) job that offers tenure in the future–that seems a fair thing to ask from a person with “some grants, awards, papers and publications.” It is quite disgusting–in fact embarrassing. One web savvy musicologist [WSM], who once characterized new musicology as “icky” and worse as “victim studies” has even surpassed that statement. Cautioning the author of the ariticle who fears he will never get a job: ”I fear, though, that the author [of the article] may have oonce [SIC] and for all made his own personal and professional situation irreparable in this country.” A visit to the author’s online C.V. quickly reveals that he is of Greek heritiage but with many years in the U.S. and WSM tells him if he doesn’t like it he can leave. A drowning man reaches out his hand and this guy pushes him under…and I thought Wozzeck had it bad. Blah.
Don’t wash your hands of the problem, try to do something about it. I certainly hope to if I ever get the chance. It is a shame Bulgakov wrote fiction and I am beginning to wonder about the increasing similarities between the MASSOLIT and a few of the characters in American Musicology.
In the meantime, as I am quite stressed about landing my next employment spot, I am going to ignore this trivia and keep pushing forward. At the top of the page you might notice that I’ve added some piping. This is plumbing that will, I hope, pump all this negative crap out of my life.
When I started this blog, it was meant to be an aid to facilitate my writing — someplace I could get started typing before working on my dissertation. Well, it worked so well that my dissertation is done, defended and submitted. At first I was just going to drop the blog, but I enjoy it and I think it might give me a space to continue to try out my ideas. In musicology, you are supposed to write, right? Well, then that’s what I plan to do. Below is a paper I gave at a chapter meeting of the AMS in Allegheny county. It was wonderful to be back in Pittsburgh! Anyway, here’s the paper…..
In an autobiographical sketch, Carl Maria von Weber described the aesthetic challenge of opera: “The very nature and inner constitution of opera – as a whole containing other wholes – has this essential drawback which only a few heroes of the art have managed to surmount. Every musical number has its own proper architecture which makes it an independent and organic unity; yet this should be absorbed in any study of the work as a whole – a Janus-like image, whose different faces are visible at a single glance.”[1]
The essential drawback that Weber is describing can be seen as an unavoidable result of the transition from the late classic era with its ideal of the autonomous work to the early romantic which expected the inclusion of extrinsic, symbolic meaning even as it demanded that same ideal of autonomy. This challenge was not limited to composers of the period, but was also confronted by early 19th century German artists of every medium and articulated by critics and aestheticians. The following paper seeks to provide a philosophical background to the development of this aesthetic ideal and to apply it as a critical tool for the analysis of both painting and music.
At the beginning of the 19th century German philosophers were concerned with the avenues of artistic depiction. The most systematic description appeared in F. W. J. v. Schelling’s Philosophy of Art (1802) where these avenues are divided into three specific catagories, the schema, the allegory and the symbolic:
That representation in which the universal means the particular or in which the particular is intuited through the universal is schematism. That representation, however, in which the particular means the universal or in which the universal is intuited through the particular is allegory. The synthesis of these two, where neither the universal means the particular nor the particular the universal, but rather where both are absolutely one, is the symbolic.[1]
As Todorov has pointed out, Schelling’s “triad” of expression merged Kant’s opposition between the schematic and symbolic representation, with Goethe’s famous distinction between the symbolic and the allegorical.[2]
In Kant’s construction, the schematic is a non-specific expression that leads to the particular subject of the representation; it is “a direct presentation of the concept.” The symbolic, alternatively, depends on analogy. It begins with a specific expression that requires the audience to construe a general concept and apply that concept to the subject of the representation.[3]
Goethe’s distinction, on the other hand, can be seen as a division of Kant’s symbolic expression into two terms separated by their processes. For Goethe (and for Schelling) the allegoric is a representation that leads through the general, whereas the symbolic is in itself already a representation of the general.[4] As such, the symbolic effectively merges (or synthesizes) the allegory and schema into one-the general and the specific are both represented simultaneously.
While Kant’s opposition is descriptive, revealing how representations work, Goethe’s is prescriptive, designating his “symbolic” as “the approach which is properly the nature of poetry.”[5] Goethe’s symbolic becomes the goal of the expression.
Schelling’s work is innovative for its systematic organization of these three concepts and his application of them to general aspects of several arts, including music, painting, and the plastic arts. For example, Schelling’s three characteristics of music are rhythm, melody and harmony. Rhythm is to be understood as the element that synthesizes the dialectical properties of melody (“unity within multiplicity”) and harmony (“multiplicity within unity”).[6] It is for this attribute that Schelling places music above the other arts as the symbol.
Music as the form in which the real unity becomes its own symbol encompasses necessarily all other unities within itself, for the real unity takes itself (within art) as potence merely in order to represent itself, through itself, absolutely as form. Each unity in its own absoluteness, however, encompasses all others as well; hence, music also encompasses all others.
In this perspective, music is a specific representation that is also in itself a representation of the general-on the level of the three arts, it is the symbol.
Similarly, Schelling places painting within this triadic division of the universe. “The reason painting is allegorical inheres in its very nature itself, since it is not yet the genuinely symbolic art from; if it does not raise itself to this level, as is the case in the highest art genre, it can signify the universal only through the particular.”[7] He then subdivides the art of painting into three parts and folds them into the tripartite hierarchy by equating drawing, chiaroscuro, and color, respectively to allegory, schema, and the symbol.
Schelling also attributes the characteristics of the allegory, schema and symbol to particular genres of painting. “Landscapes,” for example, “are merely schematic, for here it is not the truly formed and limited element that is portrayed, and not the unlimited by means of it, but rather vice versa: the limited element here is alluded to by the unlimited and formless.”[8]
However, the historical painting is primarily, indeed if it is without error, completely allegorical: “Allegory is either used as an addition to an otherwise historical painting, or the entire conception and composition is itself allegorical. The first is always in error unless the allegorical beings themselves that are mixed in can possess historical significance in the painting.”[9]
The error that Schelling is alluding to is actually an application of the enlightenment’s requirement that an artwork be autonomous, and unified towards a singular expression, he continues:
The painting is to fulfill only the inner requirements of being true, beautiful, expressive, and universally significant such that in any case it can do without that accidental attractiveness resulting from the knowledge of the particular empirical event portrayed. It is equally erroneous for the art to flatter either learnedness or the lack of it.”[10]
The allegorical work, within this reasoning, is perfectly consonant with the goal of the unified artwork.
Finally, for Schelling, “the most perfect symbolic representation is offered by the enduring and independent poetic figures of a specific mythology.” He includes several Saints as examples, whose specific legends represent the allegorical half of the synthesis, the fact that over time these legends came to represent a general ideal leads to their ascendancy to the symbolic:
Thus, the picture of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, is not an allegorical but rather a symbolic picture, since it possesses an existence independent of the meaning without losing that meaning…. The symbolic image presupposes that an idea precedes it, an idea that becomes symbolic by becoming historico-objectively and independently visible. Just as the idea becomes symbolic by acquiring historical significance, so in a reverse fashion does the historical element become symbolic only by being combined with the idea and becoming the expression of the idea…According to our explanation, the historical is itself merely one particular mode of the symbolic.[11]
Notably, Schelling has constructed a dialectic between the historical significance and an existence independent of historical meaning that matches Weber’s dialectic between the independent organic unity of a musical number and its relationship to the whole of the opera.
In order to apply this theory to actual works, we turn now to two works by two German painters from a group of artists known as the Nazarenes, who had traveled to Italy to master and revive the Italian style of painting, which was then seen as the only viable future for German art. The group’s leader, Franz Pforr was likened to Dürer as “passionate, direct, and full of character,” and took to calling himself Albrecht. Another member, the group’s “priest” Friedrich Overbeck, was likened to Raphael “on account of his piety and tranquil idealism.”[12] Overall, the Nazarene’s program emphasized “the strengthening of a nation through a Christian and moral art that was to be schooled by the example of the Middle Ages.”[13] In October of 1811, Pforr and Overbeck exchanged sketches that expressed this Romantic ideal by addressing the relationship between modern German art and the traditions of Renaissance Italy.
The finished paintings were both to be titled Sulamith und Maria, but Overbeck overtly re-titled his Italia und Germania in 1828. Interestingly, while both paintings consider Germany’s return to the Middle Ages to be important for the future of German Art, the relationship between the two cultures, as expressed by each artist, is quite different.
Pforr’s work separates the two women, treating them as independent subjects, complementary but separate. Sulamith (on the left) is focusing on providing for her child, as Overbeck looks on. She is in a bucolic garden with a lamb at her feet and birds hovering nearby, all of which emphasize her primitive Mediterranean setting. Maria, (on the right) is still in her youth, reading and brushing her hair. The open book on the windowsill reveals her interest in education while the dark background and closed window is reminiscent of the colder, German climate. The two women are treated in parallel, but the frame of the diptych emphasizes their separate development.
Overbeck’s work , only sketched in 1811, places the sisters in a familial setting. Instead of placing the sisters in a parallel but clearly separate depiction, Overbeck has Maria comforting a forlorn Sulamith. In 1828, when he completed it, Overbeck added to the background the architectural contrasts of the sister’s respective regions.
While both artists clearly see the way forward for German art was through the study of the “primitive, Italian style,” the function of their nationalism is distinctly different. Pforr’s Maria has no interest in Sulamith, and there is no indicated role for her in Sulamith’s (Italy’s) life. Overbeck’s Maria however, reveals a cosmopolitan function. Her comforting of the forlorn Sulamith is an expression of Overbeck’s ideal for German art’s role as the rejuvenator of Italian art.
This analysis of the Nazarene’s work has been conducted without regard to the other side of Janus’s head, the historical evidence. If the paintings are to rise to the level of Schelling’s symbol, the historical evidence (any expression that results from pre-existant, extra work meaning) is “merely one mode of the symbolic.” If so, then the historical evidence will support our reading conducted solely from the paintings themselves.
Turning merely to the background provided by the original title of both paintings, the meaning is accentuated but not changed. The names Sulamith and Maria were based on two biblical characters that Pforr had included in a short fable that he presented to Overbeck entitled Das Buch Sulamith Und Maria.[14] In the book, the two characters eventually marry two painters who are literary representations of Pforr and Overbeck. Maria, the betrothed of Pforr, is an incarnation of the Madonna. Sulamith, Overbeck’s betrothed, is an Old Testament character who is described in the Song of Solomon as “My dove, my perfect one, is the only one, the darling of her mother.”[15] Clearly, these are depictions of the ideal woman from different religious traditions, and by placing them side by side, the artists are able to employ the binary and polemical relationship between the Old and New Testaments.
Yet, particularly with Pforr’s work, an investigation of the historical meanings of the secondary objects in his work will reveal the depths of his metaphor. Maria, the idealization of German Art, is placed in an Annunciation scene, in fact, a “pre-annunciation” scene. She is in an interior setting, with a book, and by a window, all of which were common symbols in Renaissance Annunciations, whether painted in the North or South.[16] The white cloth on Maria’s table seems to accentuate the absence of the symbolic lilies that would normally appear in an annunciation, indicating that the depiction is perhaps just moments before the the arrival of Gabriel. Further, lilies actually do appear, but planted on Sulamit’s side of the Diptych. As such, with the understanding that Maria is a personification of German Art, the fact that she is awaiting the Annunciation is a powerful metaphor for Pforr’s belief that German Art is awaiting its own revival.
Similarly, on Sulamith’s side, the appearance of a child in his mother’s arms immediately seems to reference a Madonna and Child, with the planted lilies indicating that her (Italy’s) Annunciation has already happened. All the while the lamb looks on – a symbol of sacrifice and rebirth. Pforr places the Christ child in an Old Testament character’s arms, and perhaps even more alarmingly, he has her feeding the child an apple (with a worm) – the standard symbol for the forbidden fruit. Underlying this metaphor is an assumption that would become common in the 19th century – German artists should study Medieval Italian art, and that Italian Art of the 19th Century was stagnant in that each generation of Italian artists are raised from the same “corrupting fruit.”
Interestingly, a comparison of two works also validates the Nazarene’s likening of Pforr to Dürer and Overbeck to Raphael. In comparison with Pforr’s work, Overbeck’s painting doesn’t contain anywhere near the level of detail and symbolism that characterized the Northern Renaissance style. By simply painting a forlorn Sulamith being comforted by Maria, Overbeck’s composition expresses the same idea with much more grace, economy and fluency.
In turning to music, an important difference confronted by this theory is the fact that in an operatic number or in a movement from any multi-movement piece, the composer has much more power over the work’s historical context or, put another way, while the Nazarene’s entered into dialogue with the historical context of their paintings (the annunciation genre), a composer actually creates the context for the individual movements.
Take for example, the 19th number from Weber’s last opera Oberon. The number, which I’ll play in just a second, is in a simple ternary form with the A and A’ sections in f minor and the contrasting B section in the flat submediant Df major. As we listen, please pay particular attention to the introductory gesture which prepares the dominant area, and the ritornello that marks the breaks between the sections at measure 33 and 52 where the accompaniment comes to a complete stop. Also notice how these figures return at the end.
The close of the A in tonic minor in both sections is unrelentingly plaintive. Even the contrasting middle section fails to break up the dreariness in the way it climaxes to diminished harmony at measures 49 and 50. Taken out of the opera’s context, although it is simple, the piece is a beautiful expression of a woman who has lost so much she no longer has the will to try and that is the dramatic context of the number.
Further, the musical historical context (the other side of Janus’s head) provides another avenue to this meaning. First, the ritornello figure in measure 33 and 52 are both direct references to the opera’s opening horn theme. Importantly, in the drama the magic horn that rescues Reiza from all her troubles has been lost, and the theme’s appearance here seems to suggest that Reiza is wishing that only if she had the horn.
Notably, even the opening gesture of the cavatina is a latent reference to the complete horn theme with the identical harmonic progression passing from the tonic to the minor subdominant (in second inversion) and then a diminished seventh harmony before it arrives at a dominant seventh to open the piece.
The climax of the B section, similarly, can be understood as a direct reference to a storm scene that had shipwrecked Reiza three numbers previous. Specifically, in this previous scene, the power of the storm was depicted with a diminished seventh harmony, in contrast to a diatonic calm beach. Simultaneously, the rhythm of the horn theme is referenced in the bass (double dotted quarter note followed by a sixteenth note) in 45-47. Ultimately, it is not the sheer number of thematic references that make the movement great-particularly by Weber’s standards. It is their subtlety, and the way the references are constructed so that instead of interrupting the musical development and form, they help to articulate it.
In conclusion, like many other artistic accomplishments, nearly as soon as this aesthetic ideal was fully realized, tastes changed. Four years after Oberon’s premiere in 1826, Berlioz premiered the Symphonie Fantastic in Paris with its Idee Fixe. The idée fixe as an expression of a musical obsession, held a programmatic justification for its interruption of the musical form. It did not address the challenge of nested autonomy that Weber sought, but instead merely relied on the program to circumvent the challenge.
[1] Carl Maria von Weber, “Autobiographical Sketch,” in Carl Maria Von Weber: Writings on Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 336.
[1] Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, The Philosophy of Art, Theory and History of Literature ; V. 58 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), § 39, pp.46
[2] Tzvetan Todorov, Theories of the Symbol, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 199.
[3] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, Dover Philosophical Classics (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2005), § 59, pp. 252.
[4] Todorov, Theories of the Symbol, 198-221.
[5] See especially: Gunnar Berefelt, “On Symbol and Allegory,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 28, no. 2 (1969).
[6] Schelling, The Philosophy of Art, 114.
[7] Ibid., 148.
[8] Ibid., 159.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid., 157.
[11] Ibid., 151.
[12] William Vaughan, German Romantic Painting (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), 172.
[13] Keith Hartley, The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790-1990 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1994), 289.
[14] “Das Buch Sulamith Und Maria,” Der Wagen: Ein Lübeckisches Jahrbuch (1927): 51-58.
[15] The critical commentary to the New Revised Standard Version describes the Shulamite: “…actually the Shulammite; the word is not a proper name but an epithet that probably means “the perfect one.” “Song of Solomon,” in The Harpercollins Study Bible : New Revised Standard Version, Including the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, ed. Harold W.; Meeks Attridge, Wayne A.; Bassler, Jouette M. (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper, 2006), 6.9, 6.13.
[16] For example, from Germany, Albrecht Dürer, “Annunciation” from The Life of the Virgin (8)see Jan van Eyck’s Verkündigung, and from Italy Raphael’s Annunciation from the Predella of The Coronation of the Virgin
Tags: Allegheny, Janus, Nazarenes, Overbeck, Pforr, Reiza, Weber
Geez, I’ve been gone for a really long time-is there a rule about inconsistent blogging? If so, I’ve broken it. Life has been a little (too) rich lately so I’ve been busy with other, life or death situations. On the job front, still no word and it looks like there wont be–quite a difficult thing to confront. Over at the Wiki Jobs site, it was REALLY depressing for a while but I just gave up checking. I especially like the rant about travel funding:
There are thousands of people with Ph.D.s in our field who, like me, have never held tenure-track positions. People supported financially for conference presentations should be those of us (i.e., not yet established) who often live on $10,000 or less per year, NOT professors who already make 4-10 times more than I do. Even my academic friends in the sciences cannot believe that I have been expected to spend at least $8,000 to present five papers in Europe, for example. (I’ve had to bail on those and three additional accepted papers in the past nine years.) I’m about to declare bankruptcy in one country, am hiding from various creditors in another, and am about to start over for training in a “new” career, despite dozens of courses taught, dozens of articles and papers, several books in preparation, and so on. Also, universities often give travel money to their graduate students, which is probably not something to which such individuals should get overly accustomed. I would love to hear your explanation for how this is NOT disturbing. (Good luck!)
Wow. I hope I don’t come off as badly as this person does in interviews. It is really embarassing and a shame. In other areas however, there is downright great news. The stimulus seems like it might reach us. See here and here. I am quite optimistic–especially considering President Obama’s interest in getting every American a college education. However, the new new deal aside, it seems that society is turning from the $ to the arts and especially music–see here. It is all very exciting, despite my own school’s abrogation of its social responsability in the humanities. It seems that over the last few years (long before the last six months and the current economic downturn) Dean Jaffe and President Reinharz have taken it upon themselves to get rid of arts programs. First (as far as I know) the graduate program in composition, then the Rose art museum, and now the Lydian String quartet seem to be under threat–not to mention general cuts to all Ph.D. programs . In fact, if you search ‘Brandeis’ in the New York Times, the Rose debacle is still the first hit–arrgh. And to think that when I finally do graduate, Jaffe’s name is going to be on the front of my dissertation–I wonder if I can get someone else to sign it. Meanwhile this ugly temple to Smart Balance butter product is going up in the middle of campus and they are growing the business school. BRILLIANT! as if there isn’t unbeatable competition in those fields in Boston (re. MIT and Harvard). I wish the faculty would get their act together and get rid of these jokers.
