Too much going on at once

Frédéric Chopin

In a recent post about alliterative effects in poetry I mentioned a sort of effect which "gets under your skin, or beneath your analytic defences; it sneaks into the brain directly like perfume, or music with too many things going on at once." This type of too-much-going-on-at-once is beautifully described by Douglas Hofstadter in a piece he wrote about Chopin:

"In that same year, Chopin wrote what some admirers consider to be his greatest work: the fourth Ballade in F minor. This piece is filled with noteworthy passages, but one in particular had a profound effect on me. One day, long after I knew the piece intimately from recordings, a friend told me that he had been practising it and wanted to show me "a bit of tricky polyrhythm" that was particularly interesting. I was actually not that interested in hearing about polyrhythm at the moment, and so didn't pay much attention when he sat down at the keyboard. Then he started to play. He played just two measures, but by the time they were over, I felt that someone had reached into the very center of my skull and caused something to explode deep down inside. This "bit of tricky polyrhythm" had undone me completely."

He goes on to describe that at one scale there is a rhythmic pattern of 2-against-3, but that by accenting every fourth triplet this creates a simultaneous pattern of 3-against-8 at a larger scale. This seems to me to be an excellent example of a general principle about the role of technique in the arts. And the principle is this: the conscious mind under normal circumstances intermediates reality, constructing what is perceived and including its own interpolations and interpretations as part and parcel of our experience of the world.  Thus the role of the conscious analytical computing mind serves to slightly distance us from what we experience: experience is not direct in normal circumstances. When experience is direct we are swept off our feet by the force of it; in this category of experience we might well find certain religious experiences, love at first sight, various psychotic episodes, moments of inspiration or insight, sudden epiphanies, and so forth. Technique is art can so overwhelm the analytical, keeping-track, I-know-what-I-am-experiencing brain that the consructing/interpolating/interpreting processes become overloaded and simply give up and the perceptual experience bypasses all the filters and hits us directly. This is what Hofstadter describes when he says "I felt that someone had reached into the very center of my skull and caused something to explode deep down inside."

Time's pupils

One of Berlioz's most famous quotes comes from a letter: "Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur est qu'il soit un maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves." - Time is a great teacher, they say, the misfortune is that it is an inhuman teacher who kills his pupils.

I remember seeing a note from Berlioz in the Chopin museum, Warsaw, which began with the playful and punning "Chopinetto, mio".

Chopinetto mio, si fa una villégiatura da noi, à Montmartre rue St. Denis No 10; spero che Hiller, Liszt e Devigny seront accompagnés de Chopin. Enorme Bêtise Tant pis. H.B.

"Choupinette" is a term of endearment, like "sweetie", I guess it's a form of "choupette" which is also used as a pet-name for loved ones, and refers - I think - to a ribbon tied in a girl's hair to make a tuft of hair? - but it is also reminiscent of the pet-name "chou" - which literlally is not one presumes the cabbage, but rather the delicious knobbly sweet bun that is cut in half and stuffed with cream - the chou à la crème; with food like that no wonder there are terms of endearment such as "mon petit chou" and "mon gros"! Perhaps "honeybun" is a good translation of "choupinette".

It seems that the Chopin Museum has been relaunched as an up-to-date museum - which will no doubt attract many more visitors - but I remember fondly the very old-world style of the place - very cheap entry, a few rooms of exhibits under glass cases, watched over by elderly attendants. Although I see that some things in Poland don't change so quickly ... the "regulamin" or "rules" of the museum are posted on its new website, in that splendid Polish-for-contracts with the standard notariusz-approved translation into weird English. Hopefully Warsaw's Muzeum Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie still retains its dull old-world charm.