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Post by Deleted on Nov 21, 2014 1:58:11 GMT -5
Franz Kafka said that he could not distinguish between The Merry Widow and Tristan and Isolde. He was proud of his tin ear. Can members distinguish between The Merry Widow and Tristan, and if so, do they, and if so, how do they relatively rate them? Furthermore, was Kafka right to have asked for his unfinished Trial to be destroyed? Or was it a good thing that it was not? Turn those questions over in your minds members.
P.S. I have just visited the R3notsook for the first time in years. I see Mr. Stewart is letting himself go these days! But unfortunately that appalling woman is still there desperately clutching at people's bootstraps.
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Post by ahinton on Nov 21, 2014 2:46:14 GMT -5
Franz Kafka said that he could not distinguish between The Merry Widow and Tristan and Isolde. He was proud of his tin ear. Can members distinguish between The Merry Widow and Tristan, and if so, do they, and if so, how do they relatively rate them? The former was one of its composer's most successful creations and the work by which he's best known even today and it's a fine example of its genre; the latter strikes me - along with its composer's Ring cycle - as one of the greatest operas of the 19th century. Since you ask, I can indeed distinguish between them (how could it be otherwise?!); I'm less certain, however, that I can distinguish between sydgrew and gerard... Furthermore, was Kafka right to have asked for his unfinished Trial to be destroyed? Or was it a good thing that it was not? The latter. P.S. I have just visited the R3notsook for the first time in years. I see Mr. Stewart is letting himself go these days! But unfortunately that appalling woman is still there desperately clutching at people's bootstraps. No comment about Mr. Stewart. Even less about the person whom you describe here as "that appalling woman", since what is beneath contempt deserves to remain there. My only comment about "bootstraps" is that I have none. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 21, 2014 4:28:14 GMT -5
An interesting view: some value would seem to inhere in the incomplete . . . Actually the reason I ask about the Trial is that it has been turned into a kind of "opera" by horrid Mr. Glass, who is, I understand, leader of the northern american infantile school. The reviewer in the TLS, Miss Picard, a lady well-known in London musical circles, says that this "Glass person pegs notes to the staff like washing on a line." She adds that he is just the man to set the Trial to music because his ear is undoubtedly as tinny as Kafka's was. Apparently Kafka once attended a recital of Brahms's Lieder and only "endured a sense of confinement": so there is no real possibility of taking him seriously is there. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 21, 2014 10:47:56 GMT -5
I should just like to defend "that appalling woman". I commend her to everyone reading 'The Third'. Perhaps she is like the Merry Widow, or even Isolde, Sydney! Like ahinton, I rate Tristan rather more highly the Merry Widow!
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Post by ahinton on Nov 21, 2014 11:48:23 GMT -5
Actually the reason I ask about the Trial is that it has been turned into a kind of "opera" by horrid Mr. Glass, who is, I understand, leader of the northern american infantile school. But surely it IS a trial - to listen to, that is?! Mr Glass (if Glass, then Louis, methinks) neither leads nor especially belongs to any particular school and I've never in any case heard of the one that you mention here. I have to admit, however, that, in the case of most of his work that I have heard, the ears glaze over quite quickly when listening, but I'm sure that this has been said many a time before I first did... The reviewer in the TLS, Miss Picard, a lady well-known in London musical circles, says that this "Glass person pegs notes to the staff like washing on a line." How hard I would find it to disagree - and how much better it would usually have been had he popped them into a tumble drier instead, thereby sparing us the need to listen... She adds that he is just the man to set the Trial to music because his ear is undoubtedly as tinny as Kafka's was. That's just sour grapes, although nevertheless offering sufficient amusement as to persuade me that there are times when that's just how some grapes (including, for example, those of wrath) need to be. Apparently Kafka once attended a recital of Brahms's Lieder and only "endured a sense of confinement": so there is no real possibility of taking him seriously is there. Why on earth not?! Who knows? - the singing or the piano playing or both might have been inadequate and/or Kafka simply did not respond to Brahms' lieder, in which he would hardly be alone, not least because most of them are hardly among Brahms' best works... |
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