Notes on Listening to the Sirens, Chapter II, 1st read through

On Tchaikovsky's letter to his nephew regarding the programme behind the Sixth Symphony: "The playfully cryptic hint at a secret autobiographical program for his new composition illustrates the intersection of verbal prohibition and a compulsion to tell that produces truth. A musical revelation, over which he sheds tears (of penitence for Augustine, of catharsis for Freud), is also a work that makes him happy and productive; the confession here is a musical production that sounds the truth" (81).

My only problem with Peraino's analysis so far is that the intent is everything. I suppose all confession is fueled by intent, but because one intends to unleash a secret in musical form, is it necessarily perceivable? On the flip side, if one aims to create absolute music, the composer is still there...music cannot be entirely absolute or come from an entirely objective perspective. How much of the author exists in the composition without the intent for confession? Does the confession necessarily have to be verbal? Would musicologists have theorized about Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony displaying a confession of his sexuality and/or possible suicide had Modest Tchaikovsky not published a letter revealing his intent for confession?

On evidence that Tchaikovsky had somewhat accepted his sexual nature: "Despite this evidence, Jackson and other scholars have held fast to the idea that the Adagio lamentoso confesses Tchaikovsky's guilt and abjection regarding his sexual proclivities. Jackson argues that, 'the biographer of a composer cannot rely exclusively upon the literary evidence of letters and diaries (as Pozansky has done)....As a non-verbal medium, music provides an ideal vehicle for expressing ideas, anxieties, and emotions that must never be articulated in words' (emphasis added)" (85).

WHOA, okay, awesome next paragraph. A bite: "So, according to the epistemology of the closet, Tchaikovsky's homosexuality (that is, knowledge) 'must never be articulated in words," but, according to psychoanalysis, it must nevertheless be confessed. Music is the confession: understanding Tchaikovsky's music, then, means knowing his sexuality" (85).

I am writing Judith Peraino a thank-you note.

Before reading Peraino's analysis on how/if the Adagio lamentoso constitutes the confession of an act (such as homosexuality) as opposed to the expression of a feeling (such as guilt), I gave the movement a cursory listen, no score. A descending motif is sounded by one instrument group and repeated overlapping by another, which creates tension in the beginning, but when repeated in the basement registers of bass instruments at the end, a similar motif sounds absolutely resigned. The climax of this piece is the closest I have every experience to a musical orgasm, but the release never comes. The build-up is divine, but rather than bursting, it falls back down into a decline, and the resigned ending that echos the motifs of the beginning. I would like to look at the score, and intend to email Dr. Derry as soon as I am done reading Peraino's analysis.

Actually, I want a score in front of me before I read her analysis, because so far, I disagree. Before I argue, I need to read more about her foundations of the confessional and psychoanalysis at the beginning of the chapter; it's fantastic information that I'm going to be able to use and it's going to save me SO MUCH TIME in doing my research (I'll probably go on an ILL-ing spree on Monday).

This blows my mind, but it's bedtime!