XXXIV (conclusion)
Z. offers a detailed description of the Apocalipsis cum figuris, a work in which the earliest and most barbaric forms of sound production seem to recur in transmuted form as avant-garde musical expression.
Time of composition: as above. Time of narration: In or after July 1944. Narrated time: 1919.
| And now before my eyes the dramatic form was being superseded […] | Z. here draws an explicit connection between L.’s musical modernism and the end of the bourgeois period in the years following the First World War. |
| “harmonic subjectivity” […] ”polyphonic detachment” | |
| “great multitude, which no man could number […]” | Revelation 14:1. See also Fig. 7. |
| the antithesis that would replace bourgeois culture was not barbarism, but community | |
| We all know that the first concern […] was to separate sound from nature | Z.’s reflections on the development of music in pre-modern times were heavily influenced by Paul Bekker’s The Story of Music, which had already been a foundational text for chapters VIII and IX. |
| their distant classical model […] the St. Matthew Passion | By Bach, written in 1727. |
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| curvature of the world, which allows the earliest things | A reference to Kleist’s “On the Marionette Theater,” which had served as L.’s inspiration for Gesta Romanorum. |
| International Society for New Music | Possibly a reference to the “International Society for Contemporary Music,” which held a festival in Frankfurt am Main in 1927 and is mentioned in Riemann’s Musical Encyclopedia, a work that TM frequently consulted. |
| | Otto Klemperer (1885–1973) was one of the most distinguished conductors of the twentieth century and especially renowned for his patronage of modern music during the 1920s. From 1933 to 1940 he was the chief conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic; TM repeatedly met him on social occasions. Karl Erb (1877–1958) was a tenor known especially for his performances as testo in Bach’s Passion oratorios. The fact that his last name appears as “Erbe” in DF could be either an oversight or a sly joke: “Erbe” means “heritage” or “inheritance” in German. |
| jazz sounds for purely infernal purposes | Theodor W. Adorno was a notedly acerbic detractor of jazz. |
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| | Latin: “delight.” “Gehenna” is a valley west of Jerusalem, and is described in both Old and New Testament as a place of divine punishment. |