This morning at City Lit, one of the students in my Franz Schreker class asked about my use of the word 'soundworld'. Truth be told I use it a bit too much, but only because I think it's such a fantastic noun, which works brilliantly for describing the combination of sounds and ideas that makes up a composer's individual language. It is perhaps the musical and highly subjective manifestation of the philosophical idea of the Weltanschauung. Schreker's 'Klang' is in itself a 'soundworld', beckoning us into its phantasmagoric ways. Mahler too has a 'soundworld', with its evanescent melodies, fading militarism and hopeful (if futile) climaxes. I suppose, ultimately, 'soundworld' is shorthand for the phenomenon of knowing who wrote what you're hearing, even if you no have recourse to written material. In the dying moments of Schreker's Christophorus, oder die Vision eine Oper, there is a passage describing 'a faraway promise, the dream of a power without lies or falsehood'. At that moment, Schreker invokes a sequence of chords first evoked in his own Der ferne Klang. In the opera within an opera drama of Christophorus this becomes an extra metatheatrical act in which Schreker acknowledges the creation and individuality of his own soundworld.
Soundworld
This morning at City Lit, one of the students in my Franz Schreker class asked about my use of the word 'soundworld'. Truth be told I use it a bit too much, but only because I think it's such a fantastic noun, which works brilliantly for describing the combination of sounds and ideas that makes up a composer's individual language. It is perhaps the musical and highly subjective manifestation of the philosophical idea of the Weltanschauung. Schreker's 'Klang' is in itself a 'soundworld', beckoning us into its phantasmagoric ways. Mahler too has a 'soundworld', with its evanescent melodies, fading militarism and hopeful (if futile) climaxes. I suppose, ultimately, 'soundworld' is shorthand for the phenomenon of knowing who wrote what you're hearing, even if you no have recourse to written material. In the dying moments of Schreker's Christophorus, oder die Vision eine Oper, there is a passage describing 'a faraway promise, the dream of a power without lies or falsehood'. At that moment, Schreker invokes a sequence of chords first evoked in his own Der ferne Klang. In the opera within an opera drama of Christophorus this becomes an extra metatheatrical act in which Schreker acknowledges the creation and individuality of his own soundworld.
0 Response to "Soundworld"
Post a Comment