
“A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.” ― Henry Kissinger
Reading Notes of a Bibliophile
By Howard Nemerov
I frequently draw inspiration from writers of different genres, especially those who write outstanding books. However, in order to convey a message that has significance for readers who value the written word's creators, poetry may occasionally be necessary. The poem, "The Makers" by Howard Nemerov, makes a stronger argument for this.
We can never locate that initial item that got us going, that initial spark that spans generations. In his poem "The Makers," Howard Nemerov strives to trace the history of poetry and comes to the realization that what counts most is that all of those concrete, physical feelings are transmitted throughout time through poetic tropes and pictures. It makes no difference who the first poets were or the specific tree, rock, or star that was first mentioned. What matters most is that we can relate to each other through these descriptions. The repetition of these sensory cues reveals a fundamental truth about the human condition.
"The Makers"
Who can remember back to the first poets,
The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus?
No one has remembered that far back
Or now considers, among the artifacts,
And bones and cantilevered inference
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets,
So lofty and disdainful of renown
They left us not a name to know them by.
They were the ones that in whatever tongue
Worded the world, that were the first to say
Star, water, stone, that said the visible
And made it bring invisibles to view
In wind and time and change, and in the mind
Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world
And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers
Of the city into the astonished sky.
They were the first great listeners, attuned
To interval, relationship, and scale,
The first to say above, beneath, beyond,
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine,
Who having uttered vanished from the world
Leaving no memory but the marvelous
Magical elements, the breathing shapes
And stops of breath we build our Babels of.
The selection criterion this week is to pick a genre and list your top ten selections based on that genre.
I have chosen the Historical Fiction genre. Since I've read more than a hundred novels in this genre from a variety of authors, I have listed ten of my favorites in no particular order. They all represent historical fiction by writers that I love to read.
Top Ten Tuesday is sponsored by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl
Cloudsplitter: A Novel by Russell Banks
Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker
Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel
The Siege of Krishnapur
by J.G. Farrell
Night Soldiers: A Novel by Alan Furst
I, Claudius from the autobiography of Tiberius Claudius
by Robert Graves
Memoirs of Hadrian
by Marguerite Yourcenar
The Covenant by James A. Michener
An Instance of the Fingerpost
by Iain Pears
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
"I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in painting. Or vice versa: That I had this way as an outlet. I could renounce expressing something in words." - Arnold Schoenberg
"All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it." - Jean Cocteau
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Zemlinsky |
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), a native of Vienna, was forced to work at a bank from 1891 to 1895 after his father passed away, but he still found time to further his musical training through amateur chamber music performances and composition sessions with Alexander von Zemlinsky. The early String quartet in D from 1897, which was successfully performed, displays the influence of Dvorak and Brahms.
However, Schoenberg's subsequent piece sparked the controversy that would follow him throughout his career. The Vienna Music Association rejected the string sextet "Verklarte Nacht" (Transfigured night) due to certain uncomfortably discordant chords, despite its Romantic nature and emotional richness of harmony and color recalling Wagner and Richard Strauss. In 1901, Schoenberg wed Zemlinsky's sister and settled in Berlin. There, he orchestrated operettas in a cabaret theater to help pay for the composition of the symphonic poem "Pelleas und Melisande." On Richard Strauss's advice, he was hired to teach at Berlin's Stern Academy, saving him from this drudgery. This marked the start of Schoenberg's lengthy career as a renowned educator.
He came back to Vienna in 1903 to give private lessons. The following year, he began teaching Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who would go on to form the "Second Viennese School" alongside Schoenberg. This atmosphere of creative stimulation produced bold and rapid developments in Schoenberg's style, with the First chamber symphony pushing and the Second string quartet breaking the limits of tonality ( the traditional method of composing a piece of music in one particular key). The soprano that Schoenberg added to the quartet sings words that appear symbolic and significant: "I breathe the air from another planet."
"Pierrot lunaire", a setting of 21 poems for speaker and chamber ensemble, was premiered in Berlin in 1912 under the direction of Schoenberg, who had returned to the city. The surrealist writings of Albert Giraud, which portray the realms of latent brutality, lunacy, and desperate nostalgia that were implied in the musical worlds Schoenberg was investigating, served as the inspiration for this important work of the 20th century. Sprechgesang, a vocal production style that straddles singing and speaking, is highlighted throughout the piece. The methodology of serialism, an atonal approach in which the 12 notes of the chromatic scale are treated with equal emphasis, is the product of Schoenberg's creative experimentation. The Piano Suite and the Suite for Eight Instruments are two early examples of his compositions in this genre that date back to 1923.