The Role of Music in Gabriel Josipovici's Goldberg: Variations
2003; University of Arkansas Press; Volume: 37; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2374-6629
Autores Tópico(s)European Cultural and National Identity
ResumoIntroduction: Goldberg: Variations and Tradition of Art Aspir[ing] towards Condition of All art constantly aspires towards condition of music--like many sweeping aesthetic statements this famous dictum of Walter Pater's (45) constitutes more an instance of a particular aesthetic program than a characterization of art in general. Yet, at least as far as verbal art and in particular history of novel after Modernism is concerned, a development can be observed that justifies Pater's statement to a certain extent: as opposed to previous periods there is in fact an increasing number of authors of who purport to approach the condition of in their writings in some way or other: Thomas Mann (with Tonio Kroger and Der Zauberberg), James Joyce (with Sirens chapter of Ulysses), Virginia Woolf (with The String Quartet and Waves), Aldous Huxley (with Point Counter Point), Anthony Burgess (with Napoleon Symphony), and Robert Pinget (with Passacaille), to name but a few. (1) This development is embedded in a more general tendency of avant-garde written since 1920s and notably affects published over past few decades, which has been said to testify to an intermedial turn: a marked trend to transgress boundaries of fiction's own verbal and narrative medium by referring to other media in various ways (Lagerroth and Hedling 8, 13; cf. also Nunning 177-80). One of most recent corroborations of this general trend and also one of most remarkable additions to field in which attempts to meet music is recent novel by Gabriel Josipovici, who has justly been hailed as belonging to leading British authors of fiction of out rime (Fludernik, preface) and whose writings have repeatedly been inspired by other arts. (2) In Goldberg: Variations (2002), Josipovici not only discusses music, as countless other authors before him have done, mostly on basis of fictional biographies of musicians and composers (recently, e.g., Rose Tremain in Music and Silence [1999], Vikram Seth in An Equal Music [1999], and Salman Rushdie in Ground Beneath Her Feet [1999]), but he also aspires to condition of music in his in a much subtler way and moves beyond a merely plot-related concentration on music. In following I propose to explore to what extent he does so and above all what role music plays in his novel. Manifestations of Music in Goldberg: Variations Music appears mainly in three different forms in Goldberg: Variations: in indirect form of references to a composer's biography, in direct discussions of musical aesthetics and musical forms, and in structural analogies between textual and musical form. (3) On reading first chapter of novel, entitled (previously published as a short story (4)), most immediate and obvious reference to music is an indirect, biographical one. This is at least true for anyone familiar with a famous episode in Johann Sebastian Bach's life, reported by his biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel. According to Forkel, Bach's Goldberg Variationen (composed presumably in second half of 1730s) were commissioned by Russian ambassador in Saxonia, Count Kaiserling, who suffered from insomnia and wanted his harpsichordist, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, a pupil of Bach' s, to play some of master's compositions to help him through his periods of sleeplessness. (5) In Josipovici's novel whole scene is clearly recognizable, albeit transposed from Saxonia of 1730s to an English country house around 1800. insomniac is Tobias Westfield, a member of landed gentry, and there is also a harpsichord player, although he has already been dismissed for having failed in his attempt to send Westfield to sleep. To replace him eponymous character Goldberg arrives. However, he does not represent music, but rather literature, as he is a well-known Jewish novelist like Josipovici himself. …
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