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In einer eMail vom 16.06.2006 14:33:19 Westeuropãische Normalzeit schreibt FBCorcoran:
Whose used–up yarn is this spinning? The voyeur is always in me? Which looking–glass declares an interest? Whence all these e–entrails I see, trailed around the mulberry–bush? Evening–questions seldom going away, let my fine fingers sing it:
Take Euclidian parallels. Take: ‘‘Can music ever be completely programme–free?’’ Now if your answer is ‘‘Yes’’, why can’t we make a case also for the occasional, programme–free Musing? This here is one such: perhaps in the whole flaming firmament, this e–mail might be only the second known case of an Uncaused Cause (lower case, please). E–scutter floweth as it will, meandering magma loitering, causing at least a civilized smile.
It’s not actually enough to fob off Our Great E–typing Author with ‘‘uncaused causation’’ or with ‘‘let–it–flow–if–or–where–it–magmatically will’’ either. Bad enough to be caught anywhere near this theory of ‘‘any possible programme’’ (– eg. Our Muser–Author’s ounds, the scrofulous breakfast, gene versus Jane versus Holy Joe in early boyhood).
Much worse, oh woe, not to expect anything from an e–mail, no effect, none. Nothing. If idle is as idle strives to be, if (as here) it be meta–musing on and on how to see behind its own very behind, then, there, be the art of comedy chided.
This e–centred, this I–centred e–thrust, swallowed up in victory, all very well that ; – by the way, who’ll fork out the cheque–book when the celestial nuptials for ‘‘I’’ and for ‘‘Me’’ draw nigh, this very night and all, oh my ‘‘Musing’’, my very sawl?
What be e–writing at all, mused or fused tohuwabohu? Then suffices no ‘‘It’s only snorting self–expression’’. As is the humble courtier’s microtonally tuned fart. And the humbler’s (eaten well prior) white–beans for lunch after the early morning’s quartering up at Hangman’s Square, a mere finch in the turnip–pie, causing this (then this in its turn, then, further causes) uncaused exhuding, this very what? I wasn’t it. He there. Master Magma himself, careful, boy.
Not every musing could keep up concealing the awkward given of the e–mail reflexive, the e–mail at play, the e–mail confessional, Gödel’s E–mail, the e–cry or the e–caoine, e–haiku and e–mourn. They’re on the prowl, our dear anti – ‘‘Musing’’ police. Have to be. You couldn’t allow total e–licence to the e–plebs.
O Inner circle, sneak closer. Either a ‘‘Musing ’’ amuses or, in its musing, it bemuses. Either it’s an Uncaused Cause (– but ‘‘LOWER CASE, PLEASE’’) or is eén now causing wryness, a dry throat, reach for red pencil, sure the man’s mad as a muser? Exhausted WHO is emailing exhaustive whom the following text: ‘‘This e–message is in love with itself’’?
What makes our homo e–scribens so different, we left the wall–paintings and Sumerian crúisgín l´n behind a long time ago? Out with it, your cheap attacks on e–courage! Beat intransivity, slash the e–knot of reflexiveness! Quod scripsi non really scripsi, true or Gödel–true? Could it be that, e–quill and e–ink put tranquilly aside, we never, never, never love unselfishly? Who said you can’t be e–mailing ‘‘In Paradisum’’? Is Paradise my mode of existence while I mutate into my own e–mail? All changed, changed utterly, I now am subsumed in what I´ve written. I have become this e–text. Scared? Naw... My actual existence is also virtuality. What is behind my behind, then? How’ll I have a look?
In einer eMail vom 02.06.2006 01:05:48 Westeuropãische Normalzeit schreibt FBCorcoran:
Suppose I did not have to lie to my e–self. Artful enough, mind you, was the (actually modest yet, still – it was early – fairly humble, she’d see it, any fair–minded) plan: I’m going to disprove once and for all my–and–your, I am merely and gently surmizing – more NO ! ! ! – Gödel–Google Theorem 13 B.
Namely: your e–mail, any e–mail, EVERY e–mail, is always, will always – it HAS to be always, a very e–mail out for self–service, an, you may suppose e–extension of e–time–serving; of herself – serving instrumentality. I must, self–deceit awake me how I might, see how this very e–act here is self–intentional, how it is not thus once, nor might it be only sometimes, it is so, ex natura). Nunc e–mail; e–see my, il nostro desperate self–referential. ‘‘Mrs. Google–Gödel, indecently fast, ringing through tonight : ’’ I am; pleading with you. My darling. Don’t, do NOT this way take away my last vestiges of even my e–faith! ‘‘Virtual me, meself, reluctant:’’ Faith but there’s no way but this e–killing of my e–myself, too, kiss! Yerra! Once a female, how–are–you, always eternally e–feminine, oh e–cliché; surely, you must know? ‘‘You must, but not only you must, grant me a poor e–woman, at least this, here is your cosmos–defining e–mail ludens, your very e–mail Parmenidean?’’
‘‘I mean ( – oh my Frau Gödel–Google, perfumed self–interest, self–unknowing through thy silk, who’ll sew thy brocade, my e–insights into the mind of WHICH e–man, e–woman) that you –at least once – believe you were e–mailing truth non–instrumental, e–mailing the enlargement of, say, game–theory, and thus e–mailing our (– her imperceptible hip–twitch nearly threw me here) ‘charge–ím–on– towards the truth that does not profit, neither fades nor grows it dark brown, doth it?’ ’’‘‘Not now! Not here! People’ll see us! God wot!’’
She’s melting my he: ‘‘Shush! Slumber! All manner of things.’’
My Mrs. G. – G., it behoves art to watch its impertinence!‘‘Meaning just which twitch of which of my hips?...’’
‘‘All e–mails were ever self–deceiving. No e–mail has ever yet escaped the total gravitational pull of me. – Many being e–posted, yet do not, can not arrive.’’
(Now was my flush weakening, it was her epiphany total, her being more than just any one of their very e–mailable e–shifts, or eén airy a one e–swish, a daily e–huff, a concept of an e– crossing of their more–than–ever–conceivable–lovely–e–legs) Know what she said?
‘‘You did. Many e–mails. Many e–mails ago. Try again, my e–buckoo! Eejit lovely! Aim Once Above And Outside Your Gravitational Great Gödel–Bucket! Listen. Lisp it me: ‘‘E–mail, e–mail, e–mail mein / E–mail auf der Heide!’’
‘‘Receive one last e–mail, oh my she–hip–shifter, Du my e–mind–bender.’’
Thus. I believe that there was at least once in the entire e–history of our virtual world, sorry or glorious depending on your e–view, an e–mail sent (– ever received is a different thing) that intended towards truth, truth that was not just a ‘‘how’ll I survive truth’’, nor a ‘‘what use is it if does not’’ etc. truth, nor a ‘‘how’ll I soften her hip, excite her down the alley?’’ truth, nor a great ‘‘this is the ultimate in letting–the–sow–out–to–graze’’ truth. No. The once only is all I am pleading for. One only ‘‘this truth is independent of whether you like, you receive, we profit by, praise or scold, celebrate as being true, publish or destroy it.’’ I had her now. Yet her hip–flick– back walloped me: ‘‘ Your e–mail is of the form : " I believe that... ’’
‘‘What of it and of me and us?’’
‘‘I’ll tell you’’, she was never more desirable, yours is the e–mail self–reflexive, intransitive but transitory, self–prophecying, the worst type! So because it must be. Postulation masquerading as expostulation. E–persuasion as old as the Sophists. Look you: your thought aspired to ‘‘There is an e–mail such that this e–mail belongs to Class XYZ etc.’’ ‘‘Supposing, only supposing (– you like my hip, no?) this might – standing on its own cosmic hips somewhere in space–time – possess a smathán of transcendental truth (– that is what your me–fondling self is getting at, isn’t it?), yet you E–MAILED it through to me! – You blew it!’’
’Twas then I swore I’d never, never use this e–avenue again.
She wasn’t finished. With her own hips. ‘‘Want that I rape my very self? Naw, naw. What your Irish shame busily obfuscates daily : so, every time you think you´re sending a self–less e–mail, you are actually, hips or nothing ever to stand between our , e–mailing selfishly. Always. Has always to be. –Gotcha, quasi epistemologically?’’ I minced not: Not actually, nor was I even a shade virtually. If my Corcoran’s ( – actually Kant’s) Transcendental Theory – take : if X is true / beautiful etc., then it is true / beautiful ( – oh, oh, divine hips divine, etc., etc.) irrespective of whether etc. and etc. See Appendix Tomorrow And Tomorrow.
BUT NOW, lovely all–hips woman: here comes my Anti–Hips Defence: watch, feel, set yourself careful, hips: Now if Z Y X is true (– see, my beloved hips, above...) it is true ALSO WHEN, DURING, IF I EVER e–mail it to Anyone. And, of course, if I do not. Her lovely limbs I’d reduced to weeping. Behold, yet, her delectable hormonics: ‘‘Franyou, You, Fran, my e–lover, I’d thought you’d disproved for the boring world of meta–matho–physicians that my (not so recently deceased) very late mate’s Google–Gödel Theorem 13 B. is no more. No. Would it were. Thus. Anent your e–logic.’’
I did try to whisper (I, e–author and e–father and e–mother, was all over the e–place, now in tears. For my child’s child, etc.). Still. Exorably. Solvitur ambulando. Or e–ambulando. It was, between her hips, certainly, neither cavil nor conundrum, I made my last e–spake. Text complicated. I extricated my own hips. ‘‘I do hereby e–mail that: though I am now publishing/propagating/ e–sweating and e–spreading my Corcoran Thesis ABC via this finger’s electric mischief, yet I do hereby swear (– by the divine hips of etc.) that – a truth–proposition MUST BE ALWAYS independent of the mode of its patrician progress and propagatio – in this year A.D. 2006 it is still possible – I Dunne It – to e–utter an e– belief, an e–whinney.’’
She closed her hips lovely abruptly. Had me in tighter hip–squeeze : ‘‘By the VERY fact that you e–mailed your for you beloved ( – creepy? Let, heigh, history...) Credo – JMNOP ‘‘now threateningly tight, they:’’ by definition you’re befaughed, mio grande ( – and listen to me, not to your cheap Jobites!) amore. YOU E–MAILED aplusbplusc... Irrespective of all merits internal of aplusbplusc, your e–mailing bunkerblasted its truth–content.’’
I was very angry now. She lovely, dangerously intelligent hips, the very worst combo. I bleated as never before : ‘‘My hips got yours! NOT proven! Yours – and Mr. G. – G.s, recently croaked, heigh–ho, his young widow’s hips your Syllabus Of Lovely Errors: EVEN IF A is TRUE ( – especially, his quiet grave encourageth me; to you, too, I grant, it’s got very nearly nightly, my quiescent hips), it is TRUE NO LONGER when e–mailed.’’ ‘‘Why ever not? Granted Statement ABC is okay, it MUST surely remain hilariously okay, whether I e–mail it or send it between your etc, thighs, or silence it or intentionally internalize it. For ever and ever true.’’ Dead my screen. Her, my darling’s hips’ aisling, went dead.
In einer eMail vom 26.05.2006 17:42:08 Westeuropãische Normalzeit schreibt FBCorcoran:
Things musical in Salzburg this Mozart Anniversary Year are pretty disgusting; commerce and cliché go hand in hand discussing Mozart and Women or Mozart and Syphilis, Mozart and Chocolate Balls etc. Vienna, too, has dug up every four–bars that stiff–wigged little Biedermeier four–years old child–prodigy ever scribbled on music–manuscript of any kind. Awful! Even that North African who won the Vienna Marathon recently, the Moroccan Mohammed what–not, claimed he crossed the pain–threshold to jog to victory with only Mozart piano–concertoes in his head–phones.
I took a long time to sidle up to Mozart. For years I was too young to penetrate behind the brittle surface of many a sonata of his. But I did take young to the last symphonies, particularly the plangent G – Minor, and to his unfinished Requiem, I suppose, to the torment which peeps out occasionally behind the beautiful sheen that seems to say ‘‘Don’t ever dare you try to get behind my brittle surface!’’
Well, I will dare this X–ray analysis of Mozart’s G – Minor – Quintet. I’m going to go behind the surface patter and the throb and pull on your heart–strings. I’ll attempt to break the music down not through words or technical jargon but with the help of the music itself. In a minute I´ll explain what I’m up to.
‘‘The trouble with Mozart’’ is the title of a book no one has yet written; how would it go down, I wonder, in Salzburg with all those Mozart–Kugeln and Mozart–Kaiserschmarren and Mozart–biros and –puppets and – underwear? This book would have to describe all the 250 years of composer–hagiography and pious cant and sugery castration which Austrians and non–Austrians alike have been inflicting on the ‘‘Oh, he died young’’ immortality of our Wolfgang Amadeus.
What has always revolted me were the abounding self–contradictions in this historical concoction of legend and reality that we’ll never fully now be able to clean up: like, for instance – what was the wild and furious cover–up that was done to his apartment, his corpse, the medicine–bottles, the doctors and undertakers and suspicious funeral–arrangements on that stormy November night he died in 1791? His wife, Costanze, outlived Wolfgang by years, well–married to Nissen. She kept tight–lipped till she died. His only sister, Nannerl, was very close to him as a child, inseparable, you’d say, on all those big European tours they took from crowned court to Ducal palace in the 1760s Yet, when she was burying their father in Salzburg in 1787, he never came back to visit the grave; and Nannerl, too, kept tight–lipped about her younger brother till the day she died. Strange...
Even Mozart’s G–Minor String–quintet was from early on surrounded by legend. In the 19th c. it was THE Mozart Quintet, the most often performed of all. There were always stories and stories about ‘‘depression, deepest melancholy, this is a prayer of tragic loneliness’’ and so on. Behind the tones was ‘‘the Garden of Gethsemane; he must empty this chalice while his apostles sleep’’ kind–of–thing. Well, maybe.
The fact is: Mozart interrupted work on ‘‘Don Giovanni’’ in the Spring of 1787. The father was still alive. They desperately needed cash. He decided to write two quintets, our G–Minor and what I’ll call the ‘‘great’’ C–Major quintet for 2 violins and cello and the dark, chalumeau colour of two violas, then offer them on spec to a publisher, any publisher, to help the family’s rapidly worsening finances. They had to get out of the city centre apartment, into a cheaper suburban flat in the Viennese Vorstadt, Landstrasse Nr. 224. Fourteen days after Mozart finished the G–Minor that I will attempt to X–ray with less words than musical tools, his father died in (– in those days, still pretty distant) Salzburg. Mozart did not bury him but his pet starling that had also given up the ghost. He composed his ‘‘Musical Joke’’ (K.522). But for whom? To whom or what does it refer? I will never know. Better not surround the four movements of the G–Minor quintet with yet more speculation. I want to listen to the actual music:
MUSIC : G–Minor Quintet. 1
What is the musical substance of this pulsing first movement? And here I’d better warn myself, I’m not going to use any technical terms like ‘‘second subject,’’ ‘‘the retrograde inversion modulates to the key of the sub–mediant’’ or such clap–trap...
Let me take a tiny bit out of the middle of this first movement.
Bar 167 – 184
Now Mozart’s opening bars of the G–Minor: Bar 1 – 29.
He lets it flow: Bar 29 – 48.
In 1788, just one year later, Mozart was to compose that great mystery, the G–Minor Symphony ( – again here, for whom is shrouded in mystery...). Here’s how the last movement opens:
SYMPHONY Nr. 40. IV. Opening.
Flash–back to our G–Minor Quintet. Out of the opening movement again. Here the two low violas, delicious colouring!
Bars 140 – 151.
I’ll flash forward to Mozart’s opening of the G–Minor Symphony in 1788:
Bars 1 – 16. Mov. 1, G–Minor Symph.
Could this be the same woeful chromatic line? In our quintet? Take this :
Quintet 1. Bars 76 – 84.
But the g–minor symphony’s second subject ( – OOOPS! There I let it slip out – okay, call it ‘‘second theme.’’ Okay?) is somehow strangely similar :
SYMPH. 40. 1. Bars 41 – 51.
Mozart in 1787 was 31. He knew of his own worth. He was accepted as one of the leading European masters. In far–off Bonn, young Ludwig van Beethoven’s music teacher had let slip that ‘‘he would certainly become another Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart if he continued as he had begun... ’’ Nearly a hundred years later another Viennese master was to call Mozart ‘‘the greatest disaster that can happen to another composer...’’ Young Debussy went one further and said it was a pity he wasn’t French, because he’d be worth imitating.
Okay, back to the pathos of the G–Minor String Quintet KV 516 and my musical X–ray now of its Menuet second movement. This is hardly dance–music by any stretch of the imagination. Its jolliness is torment. Here’s how it starts. First I’ll slice off the opening bar. We get:
MENUETT 2 – 10.
Hmmmm I heard that falling, chromatic music in the first movement somewhere!
Mov. 1. Bar. 122 – 133.
Now I’ll bring the Minuet opening again, this time with that opening idea I’d sliced off:
Menuett: Bar 1 – 13.
Just a minute! We heard the second theme of the G–Minor Symphony opening a moment ago!
Symph. 40. 1. Bars 41– 51.
Our quintet–exposition had a solo for the first violin somewhere that brings these bits and smithereens all together. For me, at least!
Quintet 1. 78– 88.
Am I right? Here’s Mozart’s full Minuet Mov. now!
Menuett – Mov. all.
Mozart’s ADAGIO Slow Movement we tend to hear as the apotheosis of sadness; the 5 muted strings sing their muted hymn to Who? What? The Viennese, ever since Eduard Hanslick declared music is ‘‘powerless to express anything at all!’’ have been thinking out loud about this. They didn’t get far.
ADAGIO MA NON TROPPO. Bars. 1 – 9.
Now what was that falling figure of that Minuet again, I wonder?
MENUETT. Bar. 1 – 2.
And now Mozart’s second ADAGIO with that deep pizzicato bass:
ADAGIO. Bars. 1 – 29.
Last flash–back to the Minuet:
Menuett. Bars. 1 – 4.
Or, to think of it, the closing music of the opening movement. It went:
Mov. 1. Bars. 239 – 253. i.e. without those last 2 chords!
TMozart advertised his two string–quintets in the Viennese ‘‘Algemeine Musikzeitung.’’ There were no takers. Nobody wanted to buy his new compositions. He slid deeper into financial misery. Here’s the violin solo at the end of his ADAGIO which lead you on to the last movement. After his death, but it was too late..., they played his chamber–music masterpiece alright. But some people muttered that this first violin bridge–music from his ADAGIO to his Finale was just a little bit light–weight:
ADAGIO Bars. 26, say, – 38.
Let me X–ray these few violin notes again:
Bars. 33 – 35.
But this is just that mighty falling hymn of the first ADAGIO we’ve heard!
ADAGIO MA NON TROPPO Bar.s 1 – 4.
Here’s another biteen of that violin solo – it is, of course, a rhythmic variant of so much falling music in the first movement – I’ll juxtapose two bits and let you hear:
Bars. 35 – 37 ADAGIO then straight into 1. Bars. 31 – 39.
At last Mozart’s final movement jig–rhythm as a kind of relax after the tourning and wailing:
Mov. 4. Bars. 1 – 21.
Is this jig–rhythm all that trivial? No. Behind the brilliance a Mozart always poured into his final movements, there’s that very same falling figure that our thinking ears have come across in every movement up till now!
Bars. 43 – 96.
Get it? – That falling idea, this quintet’s finger–print?
Bars. 80 – 88.
Does your washed ear follow me? How about the last sigh of his first movement. Last time:
Mov. 1. Bars. 242 – 248.
How is he, I wonder, going to find the right ending for such a mighty monument to what?
Bars. 267 – End.
I’ll give a last injection of that G–Minor Symphony 2nd theme you heard here:
SYMPH. 1. Bars. 71 – 85 ( NB – OR LAST MOV.????)
Last ear–thoughts. Last eerie thoughts... Last questions: How’ll I connect up that Jig–music:
Mov. 4. Bars. 21 – 24
with the sublime, slow hymn for 5 muted strings:
Mov. 2. Bars. 1 –2.
and then with that other sighing Adagio that many people call a Cavatina, as if the first violin were a great diva in a sorrowful operatic scene:
ADAGIO : Bars. 1 – 6.
I won’t tell you the answer. Your ears will...
Mov. 4. 21 – 29.