From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. (dfsiemensjr@juno.com)
Date: Sun Aug 24 2003 - 20:21:19 EDT
On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 11:46:56 +0100 "Iain Strachan"
<iain.strachan.asa@ntlworld.com> writes:
in part
> David,
>
> Thanks for these comments. A few observations in response:
>
> You replied:
>
> > The question is composite. Mozart's music is a gift to others,
> certainly.
> > To himself? Apparently he enjoyed his facile improvisation, and
> the fact
> > that it gave him entree to palaces. Did he enjoy the occasional
> > obsessiveness? There must have been some positive feeling, unless
> we
> > attribute it totally to obsessive compulsion, just more complex
> than
> > hand-washing. If pleasurable, how intense vs. negative
> consequences?
> > There is no easy answer, and probably great difficulty in trying,
> at this
> > late date, to disentangle the many factors. Consider also whether
> Mozart
> > would have developed as he did without his father's continual
> pressure.
> > What endowments and environmental factors caused his development?
> To what
> > extent was it pleasurable as opposed to avoidance of pain?
> >
>
> I think really that he didn't have much choice about it.
In that case, the question is moot.
> I've often
> read
> the same about poets; they HAVE to write. So one has to ask the
> question
> whether such gifts are bestowed by God for a purpose (for others).
> D. M.
> Thomas writes in his introduction to the translations of selected
> poems of
> Anna Akhmatova (Akhmatova and Shostakovich were mutual admirers),
> the
> following:
>
> "Can it be by chance that the worst of times found the best of poets
> to wage
> the war for eternal truth and human dignity?"
>
> (Akhmatova's famous poem "Requiem" describes the 300 days she spent
> in
> queues outside prisons in Leningrad waiting for news of her son -
> who
> eventually went to labour camp. It was too risky to leave the poem
> in any
> form lying around during the Stalin terror, so AA whispered it to
> trusted
> friends in the privacy of her flat, and they all committed it to
> memory.
> Then all copies of the script were destroyed & it was only
> reconstructed
> from their collective memories and published in the 1960's when it
> became
> possible to say such things. In the poem, she describes herself as
> "an
> exhausted mouth through which hundreds of millions of my people are
> crying
> out".
>
You're talking about a pain so severe that the poet has to react as a
poet, but circumspectly. Those who committed the poem to memory were also
endangering themselves. Others, faced with problems this severe, lose
their minds or commit suicide.
> I wrote:
> > Is
> > > there an element here of suffering to bring happiness
> (salvation) to
> > > others;
> > > eg Elgar's music uplifting others, but not himself.
> Shostakovich
> > > once said
> > > that even if they cut off his hands he would continue to write
> > > music, if
> > > necessary holding the pen in his mouth. It was his mission;
> his
> > > destiny in
> > > life to compose music; and in doing so, many found temporary
> release
> > > from
> > > the appalling business of living under Stalin. I just wonder
> if
> > > there isn't
> > > something a bit Christ-like in all this.
> > >
> > > Iain
> >
> > As for Elgar, Beethoven was a gift to him, but I don't know if his
> music
> > was a gift to himself. It is a gift to us, surely, but would he
> have
> > suffered less by not being involved. Shostakovich indicates that
> he had
> > to compose. Would trying to break the pattern have produced
> greater
> > happiness for him, whatever it did for others? Getting away from
> Stalin
> > is another matter.
> >
> > There are a host of different compulsions, to success in business
> > (sometimes at all costs), to theft, to family (parents, wife,
> children,
> > relatives--sometime mutually exclusive), to power, to
> self-abnegation,
> > etc. To what extent can we ascribe Christlikeness to all these
> > manifestations? What reflects loving a neighbor as oneself,
> perhaps. But
> > is this adequate in failure to love God? Finding a similarity in
> one
> > factor does not give much evidence for an identity, or even a
> broad
> > similarity.
>
> I wasn't trying to indicate that either Mozart,Elgar, or
> Shostakovich were
> Christians.
Where do you get an indication of Christianity in "compulsions, to
success in business
(sometimes at all costs), to theft, to family (parents, wife, children,
relatives--sometime mutually exclusive), to power, to self-abnegation,
etc. "
> Apparently Mozart was, but the other two are
> ambiguous.
> According to the Elgar society website, E did not (certainly in
> later life)
> believe in an afterlife. Shostakovich was publicly an atheist, but
> certain
> letters and comments by his son, the conductor Maxim Shostakovich,
> seem to
> imply that maybe the situation wasn't as clear cut as that. In a
> letter to
> his life-long friend Isaak Glikman (Glikman published these as a
> book),
> Shostakovich indicates that he is "a great admirer of Jesus Christ",
> and
> held as very important the Christian principle of forgiveness. This
> of
> course doesn't make him a believer in Jesus Christ, but he also told
> Glikman
> that he tried to avoid joining the Communist party "on account of
> my
> religious beliefs". However, elsewhere, he indicates that he does
> not
> believe in God "but I'm very sorry about it".
>
> However, it's very clear that Shostakovich took enormous risks in
> writing
> some of the music he did; much of it again was deliberately
> ambiguous, and
> people took out of it what they wanted. The authorities could see it
> as
> pro-state, but many of the audiences heard protest. A case in point
> is his
> eleventh symphony, subtitled "The Year 1905", ostensibly documenting
> the
> 1905 uprising (with movement titles to match). It was written for
> the 40th
> Anniversary of the Revolution in 1957. However, many people who
> heard it
> saw it as a deliberate and principled protest against the Soviet
> crushing of
> the Hungarian uprising that had taken place in 1956. In the brutal
> second
> movement, describing the battle on the ice outside the Tsar's
> palace, many
> people "heard" the sound of Soviet tanks rolling up the streets in
> Budapest.
> In fact the composer's son, who was a boy at the time said "Will
> they not
> hang you for this, papa?".
>
> The point I'm trying to make is perhaps an extrapolation of what
> D.M. Thomas
> said above; that creative geniuses are maybe put there in order to
> tell the
> truth.
This gets us into aesthetic theory. Music communicates something, but I
do not know how it can be truth. Critics come up with lengthy analyses of
works of art. Most of them seem to me to be pompous gibberish. I doubt
that several critics, isolated from each other and faced with a new work
by an artist whom they can't identify, would come close to agreeing on
that it "says." Most of what they get out of a work is themselves.
> But part of this creative outpouring involves suffering for
> what one
> has done (e.g. Shostakovich was severely criticized in 1936 and
> 1948, lost
> his post as Professor at the conservatory & from 1948-1953 was not
> able to
> publish anything serious - Elgar's obsessive nature which led to his
> genius,
> also led to intense depression). And this, surely is a reflection
> (albeit a
> dim one) of the supreme sacrifice and suffering of the Creator who
> died on
> the cross in order to redeem His creation.
>
> Iain
>
In what way is obsession, genius and depression reflective of Calvary?
Jesus seems a cheerful guy, a great story teller. He must have had a
twinkle in his eye as he talked of the tiniest speck and the 12x12 timber
in an eye. As he took on himself our sins and faced the cross, the
pressure was killing. But the ending agony was not usually expressed
beforehand.
I grant that Shotakovich reacted bravely. Given extreme pressure, a man
either battles back or lies down in surrender. How is either a reflection
of redemption? Jesus unflinchingly went to the cross. Shostakovich
covertly inserted that which some people thought was subversive into his
music. What is the ratio? Or are they incommensurable? I, at least, do
not see a real similarity.
Dave
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