I got the feeling OM was trying to strike a balance between his "keyboard
of references", on the one hand, and the "gait", or movement of the whole.
& yes, when he emphasizes the tearing around from one image to another
as a kind of differential/speed, you might get the sense he is downplaying
counterpoint. But I don't think that's the case at all. In other parts
of the essay he talks of Dante's keyboard as a huge Bach organ with
thousands of stops. But one of his aims in this essay was to counterpoint
the standard image of Dante as formidable, erudite, and solemn. He was
have a "conversation" about a "contemporary". He wanted to give an
impression of Dante's racing, vivid speed.
I don't think his "three-part orchestra" has much to do with "three-part
chords": he's thinking, again, of the 3-part total futurist "orchestra"
of the Divina Commedia itself. (I don't quite get what you're saying
about the blues here: it's usually based on 3 chords. I've played a lot
of it myself.)
I like what you're saying though about listening to allusions, as the
subtext plays off against the text, as a kind of counterpoint: that's
true.
- Henry
Joanna wrote:
But then what would take the viola part? Even if its harmonic part could be
indicated (and I say no more than that) by these so-say superior violins,
the idiosyncratic richness of its tone would be lost. And as for this
"homophonic 3-part orchestra of the future", it's been an awful long time
since harmony could be stripped down to 3-part chords; to go there again
would be not an advance but a loss. (You'd lose the blues, for one thing!)
I am talking both literally and metaphorically here, as are presumably both
Mandelstam and Henry, and I do realise that the modern ear is not the
contemporary ear. But the resonances in Dante _at the time of writing_ must
surely have echoes for us today, _in addition_ to what the centuries have
added. It is in this awareness, I suppose, that Candice and others are
striving to tune into the "voices" in Prynne's work, those echoes of
meaning, those texts and subtexts, that are the close equivalent in poetry
of musical counterpoint.
If "hearing Dante properly" means losing out on counterpoint, musically or
poetically, then you can stuff it, I don't want to know.
Joanna
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