Mann-Hindemith

There's such an apt description of a Schubert lied in "Magic Mountain" (this book has been occupying my brain this entire summer. I read that when Thomas Mann was asked what the book "meant," if all its implied symbolism was literal, his reply was a suggestion to read it again. that scares me, considering how long this first run is taking me). It comes just after the main character has been introduced to a record player for the first time, and becomes obsessed with it, "letting the fullness of harmony spill over him." Doesn't that make you want to sit and listen to records all day? The song in question is "Der Lindenbaum," and after reading the lyrics, I'm inclined to continue with my hunch that the symbolism is indeed all literal. But anyway, Mann's main character Hans discovers that the magic of this song is in Schubert's tweaking of a familiar folk melody, moving it back and forth between major and minor. Hans learns to love the song more as he devotes more thought to it. Since the beginning of the book, he has become more thoughtful,
"an intuitive critic of this world, of this absolutely admirable image of it (Schubert's song), of his love for it-- (he had become) capable, that is, of observing all three with the scruples of conscience.
Anyone who would claim that such scruples are detrimental to love surely understands absolutely nothing about love. On the contrary, they are its very roots. They are what first add the pinch (the word in my translation is prick, but let's try and be grown-ups here) of passion to love, so that one could define passion as scrupulous love."
As I type this I see just how difficult this book has been for me. Even these phrases and paragraphs that stick in my mind, when I go back to them they elude me. I mean, yes, it's clear he's saying something along the lines of "the unexamined life is not worth living" albeit in much thornier and more elegant prose. But what comes next after this aphorism? Mann basically says that what is underlying the main character's love for this song is love for death. He follows this surprising switch with incredulous questions his readers might ask. Maybe that's what's so time consuming about this book: it often portrays the assumed reader's assumed responses, so that the real reader has all these other points of view, outside of the narrative, to contend with.
Anyway.
I started to write about Mann because I had this little revelation about Hindemith tonight. I decided to play through one of my all time top-10-list favorite pieces to play: his "Der Schwanendreher" (isn't this the post for the germanophiles?) Which was written in 1935, after Hindemith had already been denounced as a degenerate by the Nazis. The piece is a viola concerto based on German folk melodies, but is at turns angular and militaristic, free and improvisatory, and so deeply nostalgic, it's easy to forget what's at the heart of it until one of those folksongs comes back, all humorous and even corny. As I played I started thinking about Mann's assessment of German culture and history in both "Doktor Faustus" and "Magic Mountain": it's cold and harsh, but also clearly nostalgic for something he's almost afraid to admit to because of how it's been transformed by the nationalists of his time. Hindemith seems to not have taken himself so seriously, saying early in his career that he wrote music to be played and then thrown away. Still, thinking about his music as a message from his time, it's almost more meaningful to play it or listen to it than to read Mann. The melodies, the medieval characters, are just as real as ever, as is the sadness and nostalgia for the country he eventually left for good.
So, little non-sequitur, though just as nerdy. I just listened to that amazing recording of Schubert's 15th quartet by the apparently one-night-stand-only group of Gidon Kremer, Daniel Phillips, Kim Kashkashian and Yo Yo Ma. It's a live recording, with coughs in the audience, totally unedited, and sounds like the most compelling concert you could ever be at. The tension is tangible, almost beyond audible. I just thought how sad it was that two of my all time top-10-list favorite string quartets are this group, and the group that Sascha Schneider put together. My Dad loves telling me about how after Schneider left the Budapest Quartet, with whom he'd played second violin for years, he immediately booked some concert halls to play the complete Bach music for solo violin. Then he formed his own quartet, playing first violin this time, with Isidore Cohen, Karen Tuttle and Madeleine Foley. First of all, that he hired two women in the band, in the early 50's, that's just cool. Second of all, the records are out of print. I don't know how lucky I was to be born to a Dad who had those records. The Schneider Quartet recorded all the Haydn quartets, and then split. Schneider went back to the Budapest, Isidore Cohen joined the Juilliard, Karen Tuttle went back to being a bad-ass viola goddess, and Madeleine Foley went back to, I don't know, being a bad-ass in her own way I guess. If SNL were made by music dorks, they'd have a sketch someday about this supergroup meeting up in heaven, with Val Kilmer playing Sascha, Kirsten Dunst as Tuttle, and Tracy Morgan as Izzy. I'm copyrighting that idea, by the way.