Saturday, June 16, 2012
Postscript
Oddly, today is Bloomsday (June 16) Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were married intentionally on this date in 1956 to pay tribute to Joyce. I didn't know this until just now reading about Ted Hughes in Wikipedia.
Sylvia had it right even before Betty Friedan
The victim of an unrelenting summer cold, I sit propped on pillows in bed re-reading The Bell Jar. I am too exhausted to practice the piano (my scolding brain chastises me with, if Chopin could compose and play with tuberculosis, then you should be able to also) Before picking up my ancient paperback copy of The Bell Jar I had made a brief stab at reading the poems of Philip Larkin and a formidable book by George Perle called Serial Composition and Atonality. I realized that I just could not focus on anything difficult. Curtiss and I had been having a conversation and suddenly the idea of revisiting the original Girl, Interrupted came to me. My copy of BJ had come from the Newton recycling center's book swap shed--it looks as though it had survived a fire, the covers are motheaten, and someone's pink highlighter and red pen have invaded the text here and there.
This autobiographical novel, written in the Mad Men era before Plath took her own life in 1963, is even darker than Mad Men (and that's difficult to achieve) It contains some beautiful descriptive writing indicative of the great poet she was. It is unmistakably the product of a depressed mind, a lost soul, a self-aware and self-conscious genius who had the misfortune to be born a woman in an era when women were taken even less seriously than we are today. Her insights on the "private, totalitarian state" of marriage do not refer solely to her own dismal marriage to Ted Hughes in 1957.
I have not yet reached the famous shock therapy part of the novel. When I first read the book in college, this resonated with me because I had my own "schizo-affective" breakdown at age 18 resulting in a brief hospitalization. Although I was never given electroconvulsive therapy, there were patients on the ward who had been. They were like zombies, drifting around in a fog of lost memory, and I dreaded that I might be the next to join them. I did undergo an electroencephalogram (EEG) which all entering patients had to take. I will never forget the science-fiction creepiness of a dozen electrodes clipped to various parts of my scalp. It was never explained to me what this procedure was for. I could have written my own book about my experiences in Thompkins One Ward at Yale-New Haven Hospital in the summer of 1971, and indeed I chronicled this experience in my journals which have since disappeared. I have never been able to rid myself of the fear that someday this episode will be used against me, and I have no doubt that it exists to this day in some dossier or dossiers held by some sinister government agency.
But I digress.
In 1963, the same year as Sylvia's suicide, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was published, widely regarded as the seminal tome of the women's liberation movement.
"The problem that has no name" was soon to have a name: sexism, or its vaguely synonymous "male chauvinism." The following are quotes from Plath and Friedan:
I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband...it would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he'd left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he'd expect a big dinner, and I'd spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted. This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's... Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
...I wash the dishes, rush the older children off to school, dash out in the yard to cultivate the chrysanthemums, run back in to make a phone call about a committee meeting, help the youngest child build a blockhouse, spend fifteen minutes skimming the newspapers
so I can be well-informed, then scamper down to the washing machines...By noon I'm ready for a padded cell. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
It should be noted that Friedan is quoting a woman with a PhD in anthropology who became "a Nebraska housewife with three children." And that Sylvia Plath, the girl with fifteen years of straight A's, became one of our greatest poets but ended up a housewife married to another lesser poet. And then ended up with her head in a gas oven, finally a successful suicide after two failed attempts.
For some reason, the name on her tombstone reads "Sylvia Plath Hughes" and is subject to constant attempts by feminists to scrape off the "Hughes." Ted Hughes presumably made the decision to append his own name to hers, as though her being his wife was more important than her status as a poet. This is why I kept my maiden (father's!) name when I married my ex-husband. Women don't own their own names. Still.
It has become fashionable to demean the work of Sylvia Plath, but reading her poetry proves that she deserves her laurels. Perhaps nothing could have dissuaded her from taking her life, even though I like to think that if she had not been in the gilded cage of mid-century middle-class womanhood, she might eventually have gained the desire to live. I myself have contemplated that dark place and stood upon the edge of the abyss.
Yet even though the world remains hostile or indifferent to women of genius, I will not go to that place again. I made the decision to live for art's sake and for the sake of those I love.
This autobiographical novel, written in the Mad Men era before Plath took her own life in 1963, is even darker than Mad Men (and that's difficult to achieve) It contains some beautiful descriptive writing indicative of the great poet she was. It is unmistakably the product of a depressed mind, a lost soul, a self-aware and self-conscious genius who had the misfortune to be born a woman in an era when women were taken even less seriously than we are today. Her insights on the "private, totalitarian state" of marriage do not refer solely to her own dismal marriage to Ted Hughes in 1957.
I have not yet reached the famous shock therapy part of the novel. When I first read the book in college, this resonated with me because I had my own "schizo-affective" breakdown at age 18 resulting in a brief hospitalization. Although I was never given electroconvulsive therapy, there were patients on the ward who had been. They were like zombies, drifting around in a fog of lost memory, and I dreaded that I might be the next to join them. I did undergo an electroencephalogram (EEG) which all entering patients had to take. I will never forget the science-fiction creepiness of a dozen electrodes clipped to various parts of my scalp. It was never explained to me what this procedure was for. I could have written my own book about my experiences in Thompkins One Ward at Yale-New Haven Hospital in the summer of 1971, and indeed I chronicled this experience in my journals which have since disappeared. I have never been able to rid myself of the fear that someday this episode will be used against me, and I have no doubt that it exists to this day in some dossier or dossiers held by some sinister government agency.
But I digress.
In 1963, the same year as Sylvia's suicide, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was published, widely regarded as the seminal tome of the women's liberation movement.
"The problem that has no name" was soon to have a name: sexism, or its vaguely synonymous "male chauvinism." The following are quotes from Plath and Friedan:
I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband...it would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he'd left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he'd expect a big dinner, and I'd spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted. This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's... Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
...I wash the dishes, rush the older children off to school, dash out in the yard to cultivate the chrysanthemums, run back in to make a phone call about a committee meeting, help the youngest child build a blockhouse, spend fifteen minutes skimming the newspapers
so I can be well-informed, then scamper down to the washing machines...By noon I'm ready for a padded cell. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
It should be noted that Friedan is quoting a woman with a PhD in anthropology who became "a Nebraska housewife with three children." And that Sylvia Plath, the girl with fifteen years of straight A's, became one of our greatest poets but ended up a housewife married to another lesser poet. And then ended up with her head in a gas oven, finally a successful suicide after two failed attempts.
For some reason, the name on her tombstone reads "Sylvia Plath Hughes" and is subject to constant attempts by feminists to scrape off the "Hughes." Ted Hughes presumably made the decision to append his own name to hers, as though her being his wife was more important than her status as a poet. This is why I kept my maiden (father's!) name when I married my ex-husband. Women don't own their own names. Still.
It has become fashionable to demean the work of Sylvia Plath, but reading her poetry proves that she deserves her laurels. Perhaps nothing could have dissuaded her from taking her life, even though I like to think that if she had not been in the gilded cage of mid-century middle-class womanhood, she might eventually have gained the desire to live. I myself have contemplated that dark place and stood upon the edge of the abyss.
Yet even though the world remains hostile or indifferent to women of genius, I will not go to that place again. I made the decision to live for art's sake and for the sake of those I love.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
What is music? what does it contain?
Human beings are the only animals who compose and perform music (an animal such as an ape which has been trained to "perform" is merely mimicking and responding to training.) Only a human being can imbue music with meaning in its performance and in the experience of listening to it. Birdsong is musical in the sense of having ordered pitches but it is not music. When we hear a great piece of music, it makes us feel an emotion or emotions the catalyst of which is already inherent in the music itself. This process is independent of any lyrics the music may have.
I have chosen some examples of my favorite music to illustrate this point. There are those who insist that the experience of listening to and feeling music is entirely subjective; a piece that thrills one listener may leave another indifferent. This may be true, but just because a person is unmoved by a piece of music does not mean that the emotional catalysts are not there.
KEYS
I seem to have a preference for the key of G minor. Mozart is said to have preferred either G major or G minor to other keys. This may or may not be related to absolute pitch, which unfortunately is the only thing shared by Mozart and myself. Keys remain an utter mystery after playing and studying piano my entire life. As a composer, I am aware that the same music sounds different when played in different keys.
Classical The Bach Keyboard Concerto in Fm contains all of human emotion in its three movements. This is true whether it is played on the harpsichord or the piano. The piano, being an infinitely more expressive instrument than the harpsichord, delineates these emotions profoundly. The hands, heart, and mind of Glenn Gould makes this all the more profound, together with a great orchestra and conductor. While most music can be moving even when played by performers who are less than virtuosi, any music is more powerful when played by a genius. Bach Goldberg Variations #25 and #21 (both in G minor) are quite different in tone from the other variations. Emotional intensity is created by intense chromaticism. #25 also foreshadows stylistically in its harmonies* the classical and romantic periods in Western music: if one listens carefully as one plays it, Wagner's unresolved half diminished appears followed by a Mozartian phrase.
*created by the contrapuntal lines
Chopin G minor Ballade
[Note: I continue to struggle with this piece: my technique is barely adequate to execute it, even though I have the soul to express it!] From the age of 5 I grew up hearing this piece played by Artur Rubinstein. I came to love all of the Ballades, which are magnificent works and arguably Chopin's crowning achievement. For reasons I cannot explain, the theme of the G minor is one of the most beautiful I have ever heard. And the way it morphs into passionate cascades of sound is thrilling.
Mozart Symphony #40 in G minor
Mozart Piano Concerto in D minor
Two other early favorites.
Beethoven Pathetique Sonata (C minor) I played this in college when studying piano with Phyllis Moss.
Beethoven Symphony #9
Bach The Art of the Fugue both keyboard version (Glenn Gould, organ, and Charles Rosen, piano) and orchestra version
Jazz examples (after all, I am a jazz pianist) John Coltrane: Moment's Notice, I'm Old Fashioned, Giant Steps Miles Davis: My Funny Valentine, Someday My Prince Will Come, So What, Seven Steps to Heaven Bill Evans Trio: You Must Believe in Spring, B minor Waltz
Even atonal and microtonal music has the potential to move us (listen to Glenn Gould playing Schoenberg) Music with lyrics is specifically intended to move us. Sometimes, as in Bob Dylan's work, the lyrics stand alone as poetry, but they are given added power and dimension by the music. Lyrics are understood by a different part of the brain. The intellectual and the emotional are continually mixed in any music, with lyrics or not.
Music is the sound that numbers make. The inherent mathematical structure of music can deceive us into regarding it as a product of the intellect alone. Some composers do indeed write music "by the numbers." But most of us compose music more intuitively. Part of the beauty and power of music is its symmetrical and mathematical underlying structure: there are 3 different diminished seventh chords, each with 4 inversions, to total 12 keys, and two whole tone scales (6 + 6) But music is so much more than its structure alone. (To be continued)
KEYS
I seem to have a preference for the key of G minor. Mozart is said to have preferred either G major or G minor to other keys. This may or may not be related to absolute pitch, which unfortunately is the only thing shared by Mozart and myself. Keys remain an utter mystery after playing and studying piano my entire life. As a composer, I am aware that the same music sounds different when played in different keys.
Classical The Bach Keyboard Concerto in Fm contains all of human emotion in its three movements. This is true whether it is played on the harpsichord or the piano. The piano, being an infinitely more expressive instrument than the harpsichord, delineates these emotions profoundly. The hands, heart, and mind of Glenn Gould makes this all the more profound, together with a great orchestra and conductor. While most music can be moving even when played by performers who are less than virtuosi, any music is more powerful when played by a genius. Bach Goldberg Variations #25 and #21 (both in G minor) are quite different in tone from the other variations. Emotional intensity is created by intense chromaticism. #25 also foreshadows stylistically in its harmonies* the classical and romantic periods in Western music: if one listens carefully as one plays it, Wagner's unresolved half diminished appears followed by a Mozartian phrase.
*created by the contrapuntal lines
Chopin G minor Ballade
[Note: I continue to struggle with this piece: my technique is barely adequate to execute it, even though I have the soul to express it!] From the age of 5 I grew up hearing this piece played by Artur Rubinstein. I came to love all of the Ballades, which are magnificent works and arguably Chopin's crowning achievement. For reasons I cannot explain, the theme of the G minor is one of the most beautiful I have ever heard. And the way it morphs into passionate cascades of sound is thrilling.
Mozart Symphony #40 in G minor
Mozart Piano Concerto in D minor
Two other early favorites.
Beethoven Pathetique Sonata (C minor) I played this in college when studying piano with Phyllis Moss.
Beethoven Symphony #9
Bach The Art of the Fugue both keyboard version (Glenn Gould, organ, and Charles Rosen, piano) and orchestra version
Jazz examples (after all, I am a jazz pianist) John Coltrane: Moment's Notice, I'm Old Fashioned, Giant Steps Miles Davis: My Funny Valentine, Someday My Prince Will Come, So What, Seven Steps to Heaven Bill Evans Trio: You Must Believe in Spring, B minor Waltz
Even atonal and microtonal music has the potential to move us (listen to Glenn Gould playing Schoenberg) Music with lyrics is specifically intended to move us. Sometimes, as in Bob Dylan's work, the lyrics stand alone as poetry, but they are given added power and dimension by the music. Lyrics are understood by a different part of the brain. The intellectual and the emotional are continually mixed in any music, with lyrics or not.
Music is the sound that numbers make. The inherent mathematical structure of music can deceive us into regarding it as a product of the intellect alone. Some composers do indeed write music "by the numbers." But most of us compose music more intuitively. Part of the beauty and power of music is its symmetrical and mathematical underlying structure: there are 3 different diminished seventh chords, each with 4 inversions, to total 12 keys, and two whole tone scales (6 + 6) But music is so much more than its structure alone. (To be continued)
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