The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination (44 page)
Read The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination Online
Authors: Matthew Guerrieri
80
. Richard J. Evans,
Rereading German History 1800–1996: From Unification to Reunification
(London: Routledge, 1997), p. 192. Furtwängler was on Goebbels’
Gottbegnadeten
(“God-gifted”) list, a register of those artists the Reich Minister of Propaganda
deemed irreplaceable to the regime and, thus, exempt from military service.
81
. How much danger from the Nazi regime Furtwängler was ever in is not clear. Both
Shirakawa and German musicologist Fred K. Prieberg have proposed that Himmler actively
sought Furtwängler’s arrest, suspecting him of being sympathetic to the 20 July plot
to assassinate Hitler; but Michael H. Kater, in particular, has strongly doubted this
theory: see Michael H. Kater,
The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich
(Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 202.
82
. Harvey Sachs,
Toscanini
(New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 244.
83
. As translated in Bryan R. Simms, “New Documents in the Schoenberg-Schenker Polemic,”
Perspectives of New Music
16, no. 1 (Autumn-Winter 1977): 115–16.
84
. Ibid., p. 113.
85
. Ibid., p. 124.
86
. Quoted in Nicolas Slonimsky,
Lexicon of Musical Invective
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000), p. 162.
87
. “Funds for Study with Schoenberg,”
The New York Times
, Sept. 26, 1933.
88
. Arnold Schoenberg, “How I Came to Compose the Ode to Napoleon,” in Joseph Auner,
A Schoenberg Reader: Documents of a Life
(Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 290–91.
89
. Maurice Maeterlinck,
The Life of the Bee
, Alfred Sutro, trans. (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1903), pp. 351–52.
90
. Auner,
A Schoenberg Reader
, p. 291.
91
. Leonard Stein, “A Note on the Genesis of the
Ode to Napoleon
,”
Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute
II, no. 1 (Oct. 1977), p. 52.
92
. According to one report, Schoenberg at first worked with a German translation of
the poem, which lacked the final verses, and was “thrilled immeasurably” when he saw
the complete version’s reference to Washington; see Walter H. Rubsamen, “Schoenberg
in America,”
The Musical Quarterly
37, no. 4 (Oct., 1951): 478. However, Schoenberg’s typed copy of the poem in English,
with extensive precompositional notes, indicates that Schoenberg was in possession
of the full version before starting work on the piece. See Martha M. Hyde, “The Format
and Function of Schoenberg’s Twelve-Tone Sketches,”
Journal of the American Musicological Society
36, no. 3 (Autumn 1983): 468–70.
93
. After Napoléon’s return from exile—the adventure of the Hundred Days—Byron renewed
his affection, hoping that a victory might produce a radical shift in European society.
Napoléon’s final defeat forestalled that possibility. The Boston-based scholar George
Ticknor was visiting the poet when the news arrived:
After an instant’s pause, Lord Byron replied, “I am d——d sorry for it”; and then,
after another slight pause, he added, “I didn’t know but I might live to see Lord
Castlereagh’s head on a pole. But I suppose I sha’n’t, now.” And this was the first
impression produced on his impetuous nature by the news of the battle of Waterloo.
Napoléon himself might have long since ceased to be anything but a symbol to Byron,
but the collapse of what he symbolized—the prospect of a fit retribution for a conservative
Europe—crushed the Emperor’s onetime castigator. See Ticknor,
Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909), vol. 1, p. 60.
94
. Hyde, “The Format and Function of Schoenberg’s Twelve-Tone Sketches,” pp. 468–70.
95
. Stein, “A Note on the Genesis of the
Ode to Napoleon
,” p. 53.
96
. Victor Klemperer,
The Language of the Third Reich: LTI—Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s Notebook
, Martin Brady, trans. (London: Athlone Press, 2000), p. 16.
97
. Schoenberg’s unease was, perhaps, anticipated by that of the Russian novelist Leo
Tolstoy. In 1900, composer Sergei Rachmaninoff was invited to visit the great man
(it was the composer’s second meeting with Tolstoy). Asked to play something, Rachmaninoff
and Feodor Chaliapin performed Rachmaninoff’s song “Fate” (op. 21, no. 1), the music
of which liberally quotes the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth. As Rachmaninoff later
recalled:
When we finished, we felt that all were delighted. Suddenly the enthusiastic applause
was hushed and everyone was silent. Tolstoy sat in an armchair a little apart from
the others, looking gloomy and cross. For the next hour I evaded him, but suddenly
he came up to me and declared excitedly: “I must speak to you. I must tell you how
I dislike it all!” And he went on and on: “Beethoven is nonsense, Pushkin and Lermontov
also.” It was awful. (Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda,
Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music
[New York University Press, 1956], p. 89.)
The following year, Tolstoy would be excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church
for his espousal of anarcho-pacifist principles.
98
. Pierre Boulez, “Schoenberg Is Dead,”
Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship
, Paule Thévenin, ed.; Stephen Walsh, trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 213.
99
. Wilhelm Langhans,
Die Geschichte der Musik des 17. 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts
(Leipzig: Verlag von F. E. C. Leuckart, 1887), Zweiter Band, p. 232.
100
. Klemperer,
The Language of the Third Reich
, p. 8.
101
. Ernst Kris and Hans Speier,
German Radio Propaganda: Report on Home Broadcasts During the War
(Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 431–32.
7. Samples
1
. W. P. Lehmann, “Decoding of the Martian Language,”
The Graduate Journal
(University of Texas at Austin) 7, no. 1 (Dec. 1965): 269. The December 1965 issue
of
The Graduate Journal
of the University of Texas at Austin was dedicated to “Planets and People”; Lehmann’s
contribution was this speculative article disguised as a science-fiction story, detailing
the efforts of future humans to decipher the musically based missives of Martians.
2
.
Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror
. Dir. John Rawlins. Universal Pictures, 1942.
3
.
Fifth Column Mouse
. Dir. I. Freleng. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1943.
4
.
Scrap Happy Daffy
. Dir. Frank Tashlin. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1943.
5
.
Ding Dog Daddy
. Dir. I. Freleng. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1942;
The Home Front
. Dir. Frank Tashlin. Warner Bros./U.S. Army Signal Corps, 1943.
6
.
Reunion in France
. Dir. Jules Dassin. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1942.
7
.
Darby’s Rangers
. Dir. William Wellman. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1958.
8
.
Verboten!
Dir. Samuel Fuller. RKO Pictures, 1959.
9
. Samuel Fuller,
A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), pp. 208–9. Fuller returned to the scene in his
1974 black-comedy thriller
Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
.
10
.
The Longest Day
. Dir. Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, and Bernhard Wicki. 20th-Century-Fox, 1962.
11
. Alan Sillitoe,
The General
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), pp. 126–27.
12
.
Counterpoint
. Dir. Ralph Nelson. Universal Pictures, 1967.
13
.
Celebrity
. Dir. Woody Allen. Miramax Films, 1998.
14
.
L.A. Story
. Dir. Mick Jackson. TriStar Pictures, 1991.
15
.
Un Grand Amour de Beethoven
. Dir. Abel Gance. Général Productions, 1936.
16
.
Immortal Beloved
. Dir. Bernard Rose. Columbia Pictures, 1994.
17
. “Occasional Notes,”
The Musical Times
(Feb. 1, 1911), p. 88.
18
. Horace,
The Works of Horace
, Christopher Smart, trans., vol. 1 (London: W. Flexney; Mess. Johnson and Co.; T.
Caslon, 1767), p. 23.
19
. Horace,
A Poetical Translation of the Works of Horace
, Philip Francis, trans. (Edinburgh: Alexander Donaldson, 1779), p. 11.
20
. For instance, compare Karl Wilhelm Ramler’s version, dating from 1769: “
Früh und spat pochet der Tod mit mächtigem Fuss an Fürstenschlosser
/
Und Schäferhütten.”
Horace,
Horazens Oden
, Karl Wilhelm Ramler, trans. (Berlin: Sandersche Buchhandlung, 1818), p. 11.
21
. Quoted in Colin Roth, “Carl Nielsen and the Danish Tradition of Storytelling,”
Carl Nielsen Studies
, vol. 4 (2009): 178.
22
. In Samuel Annesley, ed.,
A Supplement to the Morning-Exercise at Cripple-Gate
(London: Thomas Cockerill, 1674), p. 93. Jenkyn was nearly executed for his part
in Christopher Love’s plot to restore Charles II to the throne. Samuel Annesley was
the grandfather of John and Charles Wesley.
23
. Edmund S. Lorenz,
Practical Church Music: A Discussion of Purposes Methods and Plans
(New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1909), p. 65.
24
. Pat Conroy,
The Water Is Wide
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972), pp. 53–54.
25
. Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
Army Life in a Black Regiment
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1900), p. 286.
26
. John Sullivan Dwight, “Music in Boston,” in Justin Winsor, ed.,
The Memorial History of Boston, Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630–1880
, vol. 4 (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883), p. 436.
27
. Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Poems
(Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1884), p. 177.
28
. Ralph Ellison, “Living with Music,” in
Shadow and Act
(New York: Random House, 1964), p. 189.
29
. James Alan McPherson, “Indivisible Man” (1969), in Maryemma Graham and Amritjit
Singh, eds.,
Conversations with Ralph Ellison
(University Press of Mississippi, 1995), p. 181.
30
. Arnold Rampersad,
Ralph Ellison: A Biography
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), pp. 41–42.
31
. Ralph Ellison, “The World and the Jug,” in
Shadow and Act
, p. 135.
32
. Ellison, “Living with Music,” in ibid., p. 190.
33
. Ellison,
Invisible Man
(New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 232.
34
. Ellison, “Richard Wright’s Blues,” in
Shadow and Act
, p. 94.
35
. Ellison, “The World and the Jug,” in ibid., p. 137.
36
. Jerry Gafio Watts,
Heroism and the Black Intellectual: Ralph Ellison, Politics, and Afro-American Intellectual
Life
(University of North Carolina Press, 1994), p. 110.
37
. Ralph Ellison, “The World and the Jug,” in
Shadow and Act
, p. 132.
38
. Ellison,
Invisible Man
, p. 8.
39
. Nadine Gordimer, “Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black,” in
Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black and Other Stories
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), p. 7.
40
. Alex Haley, “Playboy Interview: Malcolm X,”
Playboy
(May 1963), p. 53.
41
. Charles Schulz,
Peanuts
, July 7, 1969.
42
. J. A. Rogers,
Sex and Race: Volume III: Why White and Black Mix in Spite of Opposition
(New York: J. A. Rogers, 1944), p. 306.
43
. Quoted in Dominique-René de Lerma, “Beethoven as a Black Composer,”
Black Music Research Journal
10, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 120.
44
. And, perhaps, a
specifically
American clash; a 2004 advertisement for the Belgian radio station Klara similarly
put Beethoven in blackface (with the tagline “New, Jazz on Your Classical Radio”),
with apparently little or no outcry. See Corey Keating, “WEBeethoven: Advertimento,”
The Beethoven Journal
25, no. 1 (Summer 2010): 44.
45
. Adrian Piper, “Passing for White, Passing for Black,”
Transition
58 (1992): 20.
46
. Hoffmann, E. T. A., “Review,” in Senner et al.,
The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries
, vol. 2, p. 98.
47
. Steve Cannon et al., “A Very Stern Discipline: An Interview with Ralph Ellison,”
in Graham and Singh,
Conversations with Ralph Ellison
, p. 132.
48
. Nathan Hare, “The Black Anglo-Saxons.”
Negro Digest
11, no. 7 (May 1962): 55.
49
. LeRoi Jones,
Four Black Revolutionary Plays
(Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1969), pp. 76, 83.
50
. de Lerma, “Beethoven as a Black Composer,” p. 120.
51
. Martin Luther King Jr., “Some Things We Must Do,” in
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Volume IV: Symbol of the Movement, January
1957–December 1958
, Clayborne Carson et al., eds. (University of California Press, 2000), p. 338. King
also used the trope in his sermon “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life.” He credited
it to one of his mentors, Dr. Benjamin Mays.
52
. “Spotlight Winners of the Week,”
Billboard
, May 1, 1961, p. 21.
53
. For the history of Ekseption, see Alex Gitlin’s
Nederpop
page on Trace (Rick van der Linden’s follow-up band):
http://www.alexgitlin.com/trace.htm
. See also Ralf Hoffmann,
“Der Grenzgänger”
(interview with Rick van der Linden),
Okey!
, July-August 2001,
http://www.okey-online.com/artikel/041_report/index.html
.
54
. Apollo 100’s version of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” was, in fact, nearly identical
to one recorded by the group Jigsaw two years earlier.
55
. Patrice Eyries et al, “Private Stock Album Discography,”
http://bsnpubs.com/nyc/privatestock/privatestock.html
.
56
. Fred Bronson,
The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits
(New York: Billboard Books, 2003), p. 444.
57
. Quoted in Ken McLeod, “ ‘A Fifth of Beethoven’: Disco, Classical Music, and the
Politics of Inclusion,”
American Music
24, no. 3 (Autumn 2006): 352.
58
. Robert Christgau,
Rock Albums of the ’70s: A Critical Guide
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1990), p. 271.
59
. For a further take on this idea, see McLeod, “ ‘A Fifth of Beethoven.’ ”
60
. Richard Dyer,
Only Entertainment
(London: Routledge, 2002), p. 156.
61
. See Editha and Richard Sterba,
Beethoven and His Nephew: A Psychoanalytical Study of Their Relationship
(New York: Schocken Books, 1971), particularly pp. 97–111.
62
. Philip Brett and Elizabeth Wood, “Lesbian and Gay Music,” in Brett et al.,
Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology
(New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), p. 371.
63
. See the cover of
Rolling Stone
, Feb. 9, 2006.
64
. Maria Aspan, “BET Says Cartoon Was Just a Satire,”
The New York Times
, August 27, 2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/business/media/27bet.html
.
65
. “Man Behind BET’s ‘Read a Book’ Responds to Critics,”
Tell Me More
, National Public Radio, Sept. 17, 2007,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14466377
.
66
. A House, “Endless Art,”
I Am the Greatest
(recording), songs by A House, produced by Edwyn Collins. Setanta Records SETLP3
(1992).
67
. Peter Ustinov,
Beethoven’s Tenth: A Comedy in Two Acts
(New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1985), pp. 7, 49.
68
. James H. Collins, “Beethoven Gets a Public Relations Job,”
Public Utilities Fortnightly
41, no. 9 (April 22, 1948): 546.
69
. Ibid., p. 548.
70
. A similar ad made reference to Stradivarius violins. During the recording session,
Welles balked: “Come on, gentlemen, now really! You have a nice, pleasant little cheap
wine here. You haven’t got the presumption to compare it to a Stradivarius violin.
It’s odious.” See Barbara Leaming,
Orson Welles
(New York: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 490.
71
. Al DiOrio,
Bobby Darin: The Incredible Story of an Amazing Life
(Philadelphia: Running Press, 2004), p. 42.
72
. Jean Halliday, “Hyundai Push Not for Classical-Music Purists,”
Advertising Age
, July 19, 2007.
http://adage.com/article?article_id=119412
.
73
. “Hyundai’s ‘Big Duh’ Campaign Snares Top Spots in Consumer Recall Study,” press
release, March 31, 2008.
http://www.hyundainews.com/Corporate_News/Corporate/03_31_2008_2774.asp
.
74
. As noted by Jeffrey Rowe, who portrayed Beethoven in the commercial: “Yamadai Sugomen
TVCM,”
Jetset
, June 20, 2008,
http://jeff.jetsets.jp/?p=75
.
75
. General Instrument,
Microelectronics Data Catalog
(1982): 5–26.
76
. See, for example, Steve Ciarcia, “Ciarcia’s Circuit Cellar: A Musical Telephone
Bell,”
Byte
9, no. 7 (July 1984), pp. 125–33.
77
. Dan Briody, “Thou shalt learn and abide by the Ten Commandments of cell-phone etiquette,”
InfoWorld
(June 12, 2000): 59B.
78
. Christopher Reich,
The First Billion
(New York: Random House, 2003), p. 385.
79
. Beth Harbison,
Shoe Addicts Anonymous
(New York: Macmillan, 2008), p. 151.
80
. Caroline B. Cooney,
Hit the Road
(New York: Random House, 2005), p. 16.
81
. E. R. Webb,
Gemini’s Cross
(Tate Publishing, 2007), p. 276.
82
. Jonathan Kellerman,
Rage
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2005), p. 127.
83
. Linda Ladd,
Die Smiling
(Pinnacle Books, 2008), p. 13.
84
. Christine McGuire,
Until Judgment Day
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), pp. 255–56.
85
. Peggy Gifford,
Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Writing Thank-You Notes
(New York: Random House, 2008), p. 51.
86
.
A Clockwork Orange
. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1971.
87
.
Bara no Soretsu
. Dir. Toshio Matsumoto. Art Theatre Guild, 1969.
88
.
The Goddess of 1967
. Dir. Clara Law. New South Wales Film & Television Office, 2000.
89
. Jon Nelson, “Stock, Hausen & Walkman,”
Some Assembly Required
, Oct. 31, 2009,
http://www.blog.some-assembly-required.net/2009/10/stock-hausen-walkman.html
.
90
. Bill Odenkirk, writer; Matthew Nastuk, director, “The Seven-Beer Snitch,”
The Simpsons
, season 16, episode no. 349 (first aired April 3, 2005).
91
. Theodor W. Adorno, “A Social Critique of Radio Music,”
Kenyon Review
7, no. 2 (Spring 1945): 214.