Monday, August 01, 2005
sad to say...
Spinning a thread off of the yarns below, I’m interested in the concept S21 readers have of tragedy, of which the Mahler-Schnittke variety seems to me like just one type. When I think of tragedy, I’m more inclined toward the Oedipus-Lear model. I don’t think anyone would claim that Shakespeare suffered personal tragedies on the scale of the Holocaust or the gulags (or African slavery, to name something that took place on this soil that belongs on any short list of horrors). And yet he created stunning, shattering works that people still respond to today.
Obviously, musical tragedy is a very different thing from the theatrical kind. But I think music can have an intense level of poetic expression that has nothing to do with bathos. Here are three American works that I believe have very different but very powerful emotional impacts: The Unanswered Question, Black Angels and Different Trains. Interestingly, I don’t even have to name the composers for these -- but that’s beside the point. Getting away for a moment from how American these works might be, or whether or not you like them, what do you think of their emotional presence? Would you consider any of them tragic?
posted by Lawrence Dillon
9:52 PM
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