Word: sonata
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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BRUCKNER found in his religious orthodoxy the same resonance of tradition and invitation to humanism, the same sustenance of spiritual and intellectual resolution, which he found in classical sonata form. His music proceeds with the deliberateness, comprehensiveness, mystical assurance, and formal clarity of the Mass. His symphonies are celebratory but never indulge in an easy rapture of tonal staleness or facile dramaturgy. Mahler learned much from Bruckner, primarily thematic linking of unprecedented subtlety among movements, the proliferation of material in the second thematic group, the immediate juxtaposition of radically differing elements (here Mahler extended Bruckner's simpler process of motto...
Nonetheless, the Harvard Summer School concert last week provided an example of last century's understanding of Bach. Pina Carmirelli, in a long black, sequined dress, exemplified the Romantic spirit in her performance. During the Bach violin-piano sonata in E minor, she presented one of the last Romantic interpretations of Bach. Schweitzer thinks that the sonata is unplayable today. He says that is can be played on a harpsichord and a violin with loosened bow to bring out the full flavor of the double-stopping. Wagner felt that the timber of the violin and the piano are naturally incompatible...
Madame Carmirelli attacked the first movement of the sonata at break-neck speed, despite the fact tat in Bach's time, both tempo and dynamics were much less varied than they have been since. Then, the slow movements and thew allegros more closely resembed each other in speed. In dynamics, Bach conceived of his works as built of solid, steady blocks of sound. Madame Carmirelli constantly shifted from pianist to forte and from slow to fast. It is true Bach wrote the sonatas as little "soul-states" as Schweitzer says, but he writes with polyphone rather than her extremes...
...rest of the program matched Madame Carmirelli's Romantic tastes. It included a modern Italian violin sonata and a piano-violin sonata by Ferruccio Busoni. The Busoni piece went smoothly, with thematic-seeming material floating by with all of the grace of the turn of the century. Someone once said of Busoni that "he was hopelessly ahead of his time when he was writing and is now hopelessly Romantic." That adequately describes his sonata. It probably says a lot about the program and the performance at the concert as well...
...couple to pay attention to natural forms (pebbles, grass) to find their meanings, is set afire after she declares "End the daily murder! Cover flowers with flames!" In this sequence--as in sequences where they ignore a figure reading Rousseau, and interrupt a beautiful rendition of a Mozart sonata--the characters are merely destroying the cultural background of their bourgeois society. The beauty of Godard's compositions and camera motions in these sequences in undermined by their violent, petty responses, which begin to pull the film apart. In Godard's other films such scenes give the characters an opportunity...