Musical scholars of today and at that time often disregard the musical clock. It is criticized for being limited in range, high-pitched, and childish, also its ‘music’ is light weight and frivolous. However, when Mozart, the immortal genius, wrote several works for the kitsch instrument out of financial desperation, people praised laud the works to the skies. Although Mozart himself reveals that he despises the instrument in his letter to his wife, the pieces were serious works in the high style, containing learned counterpoints, fugal section, and complex harmonies. Scholars took the pieces as “incidental testimony to the genius of the composer, whose imagination and invention were able to transcend the limitations of a particularly distasteful commission” (367).
While admiring the genius of Mozart, Richards raise two big discourses of music: Nature vs the Machine, and the composition itself vs performance.
Against some philosophers who claim that the human body be considered a kind of machine, Richard insists on the significance of humanity. Even though human makes mistakes, the expression is the most significant factor of music and human decisions which are founded on reflection produce a conviction of their justness (381). Richard also describes Mozart as automatic genius, “most ‘automatic’ and at the same time most ‘natural’ of all musical instruments” (382). Do you agree with the comparison of Mozart as automatic genius? If you don’t, do you think Mozart is natural or mechanical/automatic?
The significance of expression raises another question: are mechanical virtuosity and perfect performance better than the music-making with expression and soul? In the Le Guin article, we discussed that the composition itself define the value of music today, as compared to the 18th century when performers were the main interest of music listeners. Richard mentions that people praised the greatness of Mozart’s works for music clocks, disregarding the uncultured aspects of the instrument. Do you think this is when people started valuating music separately from performance? Also, Richard cast the question, could the music machines “in fact ‘speak’ in the sense of having the rhetorical power to persuade?” (382)
Richard closes the discourse by suggesting the solution that K. 608, the piece for a mechanical instrument, is actually natural and a powerful signifier of sublime, because “its superb ‘automatic’ presentation of fugue, temporarily collapses the distinction between man and machine” (387). I personally have a difficulty with thinking fugue natural. Why is fugue natural?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
While I don’t know a whole lot about Mozart, I agree with Richard’s description of Mozart as “automatic genius” and “natural” because the evidence is persuading: Mozart was very prolific and understanding of music at a very young age – in our eyes, that is pretty much automatic, as it didn’t take much time for him to get there. He is “natural” because he is, believe it or not, a human being. While it’s easy to take this article for an exploration into the dichotomy between man and machine, I see it rather as a connection – when man and machine combine, the possibilities of sublimity expand as infinite ability is compounded with grounded reality (the natural, the human being writing and performing the work). The comparison of Mozart to a machine is a metaphor to explain his staggering genius, but also to imply the sublimity of his music due to the element of the mechanical/automatic, which is infinitely capable.
ReplyDeleteI believe that mechanical virtuosity and perfect performance cannot top the expression and “soul” of human performance, and that machines cannot “speak” in the sense of having rhetorical power to persuade, because those very elements of virtuosity, perfection, and rhetoric are derived from human ideals. Purely mechanical music is not capable of expression as it has nothing to express. However, I believe the composer who puts music to a machine still holds the element of creativity and expression through their composition, and this leads us to the discussion of performance vs. piece. This is a crucial moment in the separation between piece and performance, and though I can’t say it is when this ideal first started, it and the culture of its time lend to the possible origins of this separation.
I believe the fugue is regarded as “natural” in this article because it reflects a cycle – constantly in motion and governed by overarching laws that designate its components, we may relate it to the circle of birth, life, and death which is the law of continuity that all natural life subscribes to.