GG: Art of Fugue, and 12 tone

[Elisha J Tseng <elisha-jt@juno.com>]

Dear f-minoreans,
I remember earlier that Kunst der Fuge was the main subject of this list.
 My apology of mentioning it once more.
Out of curiosity, I worked on Contrapunctus 9, which is perhaps the most
popular of the 20 variations in the work.  My mother disliked it and
dismissed it as repetitive and arcane.  Unconvinced, I brought the work
to my old Russian piano teacher, to inquire on my mom's comment.  In a
diplomatic way, he described the work as something only a few people can
hear.  He made an analogy of a comment by Robert Schumann (and I'm just
paraphrasing this): Within the deep forest admist a gamut of noises,
there is this silence and this one single but soft note wavering in the
air.  Only a few special people can hear it and appreciate it.  

Another comment he said, was that, like the Goldberg Variations, Kunst
der Fuge must be played--during performance--in its entirety.  His
reasoning was that one contrapunctus cannot stand alone, because it is
not complete--much like the Goldberg's 30 variations must be played in
"one fell swoop," instead of playing just variation 17 in itself. 
Lastly, he concluded that this work cannot endure repetitive hearing,
because it will become "annoying" and the fact it is not usually
performed because the audience does not appreciate such kind of work. 
Most of them are unable to hear that "wavering note" admist the noises.

Same thing he said about the second Viennese school, and the composers
were just artists trying to break the old mould of "Romanticism," but it
died anyway because of unpopularity.  Many people I know either never
heard of Schoenberg or just dismissed him as one would with the Dada
anti-art fad after WW I.

The situation disturbed me somewhat, or GG was wrong about his opinion
that every man has the ability to comprehend these difficult styles when
given the chance (GG example in the Two Portrait of an 8 month old child
raised exclusively on 12-tone music).  At any rate, I had to return the
KDF to the library and stopped working on it at my mom's request.

Any comments?

Slightly disturbed, Elisha  




Strong conviction is capable of destroying any prejudice.  The proof:
Glenn Gould.
--Nathan Perelman

___________________________________________________________________
Get the Internet just the way you want it.
Free software, free e-mail, and free Internet access for a month!
Try Juno Web: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj.