DAILY DOSE of BEETHOVEN (June 8, 2020)
Welcome to our continuation of a poetical and philosophical approach to comprehending the Grosse Fuge.
The famous composer, Igor Stravinsky, claimed to love the Grosse Fuge. But he called it pure interval music, which suggests a limited understanding on his part. To truly comprehend this composition, one has to move outside the realm of music, and into the realm of the poetical-philosophical. Therefore, we will attempt that here—rigorously.
The eerie dissonance that ended the Ab fugue, is succeeded by a sublime moment, also marked meno mosso e moderato (less motion and moderate), that comprises the very heart and soul of the Grosse Fuge. That moment was not accomplished by following the fugal logic of the intervals—Love intervened from outside of logic without ever losing science and rationality, and changed the outcome.
Now, both fugue subjects are present, but in a changed way. The loving relationship expressed, makes it more difficult to separate them, and Shakespeare's poem The Phoenix and the Turtle, which sees these lovers as representing Truth and Beauty, captures it well:
So they lov'd, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance and no space was seen
'Twixt this Turtle and his queen:
But in them it were a wonder.
So between them love did shine
That the Turtle saw his right
Flaming in the Phoenix' sight:
Either was the other's mine.
"Either was the other's mine" is one of the most beautiful puns ever made. We ask you, the readers to figure it out!
Next, imagine a divorce lawyer, trying to argue for party of the first, and party of the second:
Property was thus appalled
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was called.
Then, substitute "logic" for Shakespeare's "reason", and you find the problem we identified:
Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together,
To themselves yet either-neither,
Simple were so well compounded;
Last comes the transcendent moment of breakthrough that should remind us of the same thing in the discovery of the choral double fugue, in the Ninth Symphony:
That it cried, "How true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love has reason, reason none,
If what parts can so remain."
We provide a 10-minute audio that addresses all of this, including how the beautiful transformation is lost, if you simply rush through it.
https://soundcloud.com/user-385773006/the-grosse-fuge-part-7-the-sublime-moment