| | The reference that follows is to Tristram Shandy by the Irish novelist Laurence Sterne (1713–1768), a novel that TM had read in 1941–42. |
| | In the German educational system of the Wilhelmine period, elite “humanistic” high schools (Gymnasien) focused on ancient languages, not on modern ones. TM criticized this tendency in his 1936 lecture “Humaniora und Humanismus.” |
| Shakespeare and Beethoven […] binary star | These two men were the self-avowed lodestars also of Richard Wagner. |
| all the notes of the chromatic scale | L.’s attempts to incorporate all twelve notes of the chromatic scale into an ordered progression foreshadow his later discovery of the twelve-tone system. |
| identity of the horizontal and vertical | Another foreshadowing of twelve-tone composition, in which the tone row governs both the melodic (horizontal) and harmonic (vertical) structure of a composition. |
| each note […] itself a chord | Every real-world tone contains within itself resonant frequencies at a higher pitch level. Played sequentially, these so-called “overtones” can be rearranged to form a scale. |
| chord is the result of polyphonic | L. is developing a theory of voice leading that de-emphasizes harmony and emphasizes the roots of classical and post-classical music in early modern polyphony. |
| Dissonance […] polyphonic merit | L. linking of polyphony and dissonance would surely astonish any Renaissance composer but is crucial for the overall argument of DF that twelve-tone music is not so much a modernist advance as a regression to a pre-modern (“cultic”) mindset. TM took this idea (like much else in this chapter) from Adorno’s Philosophy of New Music (1949). |
| | The church modes were systems of pitch organization in use from the early Middle Ages to roughly the sixteenth century, when they were displaced by the major and minor scales. The tone rows that L. will eventually invent are a system of pitch organization as well. |
| | TM took the somewhat odd term “al fresco chord” from Paul Bekker’s The Story of Music (German original 1926), which provided another important source for this chapter. |
| Michaelmas […] Der Freischütz | The Feast Day of Saint Michael on September 29. Saint Michael (also called the Archangel Michael) is principally known for his role in suppressing the devil. Having his protagonist travel on Michaelmas to hear Der Freischütz, an opera about a devil’s pact by Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826), is a good example of the irony with which TM heavily laces his text. |
| Hans Heiling […] Dutchman | Demonic protagonists, respectively, of the Romantic operas Hans Heiling (premiered 1833) by Heinrich Marschner (1795–1861) and The Flying Dutchman (premiered 1843) by Richard Wagner. |
| | The only opera by Beethoven, premiered in 1805. A major theme of Fidelio is the overcoming of injustice and arbitrary power through human solidarity. Within the thematic structure of DF, this lifts it into the vicinity of the Ninth Symphony. See also 22/50. |
| | Also known as the “Leonore Overture No. 3” and frequently performed as a solo work. The fact that it is in C major not only signals purity but, within DF, also moves it into the vicinity of the Freischütz overture. |
| peculiar about your music | The pronoun in the original German is in the plural. L. is speaking as though he were not a part of humanity. |
| | The German original has an sich—a reference to the Kantian concept of the Ding an sich or “thing-in-itself.” |