“with numerous music
examples” - introduction
It was just an unassuming paperback I’d picked up some time
ago for a mere €2 in the second hand bookshop : “Monteverdi – His Life and Work” (1)
The frontispiece carried the promise “with numerous music examples”, a bit like an art history book touting
the number of colour illustrations.
One of the joys of reading an art history book, is of course
to have eye and mind happily consorting, creating meaning while making the
joyful connection between descriptive text and visual image. (2)
It’s quite different for music – literary
descriptions are either very general glorifications of music or else very
subjective outpourings. And objective musicological descriptions, including score
extracts with keys & notes, often scare off the un-initiated with their
technical terms. (3)
a small digression on learning
music as an adult - 2021
As to myself, having never had a musical education, the
connection between musical score and actual sounds used to elude me. So my
listening (however intense, attentive and profoundly impacting) remained mostly
intuitive, and in CD-booklets I routinely skipped paragraphs with technical
music terms.
Luckily, however, my
book-buying has always been more ambitious, overreaching my actual abilities,
and so not shying away from books including staves and notes -
implicitly assuming that one day I could still teach myself how to read
sheet music.
Which has proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy : now at last, with the help of a limpid
educational book (5) (which in 70 pages patiently explains the basic musical
elements) and following many many hours of repetition, I’m now at a point that
I can decipher (ever so slowly, ever so laboriously) what is happening on the
lines of a musical score. Ah, the joy of
recognising a b flat! The pride of
identifying an augmented fifth! (4) I’m
like a former illiterate, painstakingly deciphering a sentence word by word,
letter by letter.
a modest meditation on
the passing of time and the soul of a sentence - 1926
With my recently acquired humble musical knowledge I can now
slowly read “Monteverdi – His Life and
Work” and, for instance, ponder the timeless
meaning of “ the frequent use of augmented fifths produce effects of voluptuousness
and melancholy”.
But a rather casual, non-technical sentence sets off my
melancholy musings, making me wonder about the passing of time and styles. The
book’s author, musicologist Prunières, pays a tribute to Romain Rolland (his former
music teacher)(6) as follows: “With an intuition bordering upon genius, he
has entered into Monteverdi’s very soul and defined synthetically the essential
characteristics of his art.”
Who, these days, would still write a sentence like that?
Where (apart from in self-help tutorials) does one still find words such as
“intuition, genius, soul” used in one breath?
An entire world of high art, of
cultural reverence, of exquisite sensibilities, is evoked. While reading
the historical/biographical notes or the musicological commentaries, I
didn’t wonder about the date of writing of the book , but this one reflective sentence
made me pause and realise that the book was written in another era, almost 100
years ago.
permanent by design -
1972
As mentioned in the opening paragraph – this book I’m
blogging about really is just an unassuming paperback, published back in 1972
by Dover books (7). But it ages
particularly well, withstanding the vagaries of human use and of the elements (8) for close to 50 years.
On the back cover I read that this longevity was indeed
aimed at by the publisher, who devotes a full paragraph to their efforts to “make the best book possible”, from
choice of paper to method of sewing and binding, firmly concluding with “This is a permanent book”.
They were quite right to add a proud exclamation mark to the
heading ”A Dover edition designed for
years of use!” : their bold claim of permanence has held true so far.
They were truly ‘circular by design’ avant la lettre. Quite an
achievement, because, just think of it, which TV-set produced in 1972 would still
be used today? Which smartphone bought today will still be in use in 2071?
Free Notes without a Stave
(1)
by Henri Prunières, Translated by Marie D.
Mackie – 1972 republication of the original 1926 English language edition.
(2)
Ekphrasis,
“Greek for the written description of a work of art produced as a
rhetorical exercise, often used in the adjectival form ekphrastic. It is a
vivid, often dramatic, verbal description of a visual work of art, either real
or imagined” (Wikipedia)
(3)
“Parrot
may not learn to sing, but at least he’ll know what singing is” (J.
Winterson)
(4)
When asking Google about “literary descriptions
of music” it brings me to this very relevant blogpost : http://nachumschoffmanthoughts.com/?page=DESCRIPTIONSOFMUSICINLITERATURE
(5)
Ignace Bossuyt : ”Van noten en tonen – Wegwijs
in muzikale begrippen”
(6)
When
asking Google about ‘Romain Rolland et la musique’ : https://association-romainrolland.org/image_articles13/Jeanneret13.pdf
« Le nom de Rolland, qui suffisait entre les
deux guerres à évoquer un modèle littéraire et social est tombé dans
l’oubli », « figure effacée
de l’Europe » « le modèle d’écrivain-musicien »
(7)
Dover books still exists, but in a ‘restructured’
and slimmed down form, apperently focusing now on colouring books for adults. And
I’m not the only one paying tribute to their former sustainable publishing ethos
: https://contingentmagazine.org/2020/02/23/this-is-a-permanent-book/
(8)
“the natural elements” – we’d almost forgotten about them
in our advanced societies. To our horror we now discover our fragility, our helplessness,
for instance, in the face of floodings. The
human death toll, the destroyed houses and infrastructure of course command our
first concern, but how pitiful, too, those muddy heaps of books and paper files
spoiled by the water.
(9)
photo-disclaimer & additional book : this is
a photo of two books, the Dover book (as mentioned) and another lovely book on
Monteverdi by Actes Sud– published back in 2004, and bought second hand, still
in great condition, 17 years later. My
PC from that the early 2000s is long in the scrap yard, and the ZIP drives on
which I prudently saved my back ups are inaccessible
now.
