Thursday, September 15, 2011

Al Jarreau- Take Five

Nietzsche's assertion about dithyrambic music as a, "miserable copy of a phenomenon and thus infinitely poorer than the phenomenon" (BT, 83)- because of its lack of myth as such- tells the reader that mimetic music fails to evoke or mirror world- Will as Dionysian music does. Just as Schopenhauer wrote in "On the Inner Nature of Art," Nietzsche points to the nothing-left-to-the-imagination aspect of mimetic music; Dithyrambic music is Schopenhauer's wax figure, a cheap representation. "Tone-painting is thus the antithesis of the myth-creating energy of true music... whereas Dionysiac music enriches and expands the original phenomena, making it into an image of the world" (BT 83). I believe Nietzsche is contradicting himself in this comparison. Al Jarreau's "Take Five" is, to me, an example of how Apollonian "form" (within a lingusic framework) entwines with Dionysian "frenzy" (manipulating language to express musical phrases, meaningful noise) to create a conversational piece of music that appeals to the world- Will because in "copying" phenomena (I hear stomach gurgles and crashing noises in Jarreau's trampled speech), he is also appealing to what-is-familiar, or doxa, evoking primal unity while reinforcing a kind of detachment thorough the irregularities in the beat. My main concern with Nietzsche is whether or not dithyrambic music is really exclusive from the Dionysian?

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