From Too Many Notes to Silence

Figure 1: Joseph II / Figure 2: Mozart / Figure 3: John Cage 

                           

 

I.

 

Following the premier of Entführung aus dem Serail [1] in the summer of 1782, at the Burgtheater (Vienna), Mozart famously had an exchange with the man who had commissioned the work, Emperor Joseph II. 

 

Whilst the latter lavishy praised the three-act comic opera, he suggested that there were times when the music became too convoluted and contained, as it were, too many notes ... [2]

To be fair to Joseph - who was by no means musically illiterate or some kind of Bildungsphilister - the complexity of Mozart's work had been noted by others - including Goethe - and what he actually said was: Zu schön für unsere Ohren, und gewaltig viel Noten, lieber Mozart!

This might more accurately be translated into English as: 'Too beautiful for our ears, and a great many notes, dear Mozart!' 

 

Such a translation doesn't unfairly portray the Emperor in a foolish light - although it does, of course, rob the story of its humorous aspect.     

II.

I thought of this the other day when trying to read what was, in my view, a long and overly wordy poem, written by someone (about a pet parrot of all things) who has argued in the past in favour of pleonasm (i.e., an excess of language). 

 

Rightly or wrongly, however, like the Holy Roman Emperor of anecdote and cinematic fiction, I do think that a poem can have too many words and that often it's what is not said that matters most; i.e., the space between words is the true space of poetry. 

 

Thus, for me, the task of the poet is not to assemble words, but to take language apart and show its limitations; to erase meaning and return us to lovely silence, the great bride of all creation [3]. 

 

Perhaps the perfect poem is ultimately the one that remains unspoken, unwritten; just as the perfect piece of music is the one with no notes, performed by no instruments, à la John Cage's 4'33" [4].      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Known in Engish as The Abduction from the Seraglio, the work is a German-language music drama, known as a Singspiel. 

 

[2] This exchange between composer and monarch was nicely dramatised in the 1984 film Amadeus (dir. Miloš Forman), with Tom Hulce as Mozart and Jeffrey Jones as Emperor Joseph II: click here.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Silence', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 612.

 

[4] 4′33″ is a three-movement work by American experimental composer John Cage. It was written in 1952, for any instrument or combination of instruments, and the score instructs performers to remain silent during the entire duration of the piece. One wonders what Emperor Joseph II would make of this ...? (Not enough notes, Mr. Cage!) My concern is that the composition only gives us a negative representation of silence; silence as a lack or absence of sound.

      To watch the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lawrence Foster, give their interpretation of the work at the Barbican, London, in 2013, click here.