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Orfeo
Seventy-year old avant-garde composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police outside. His DIY microbiology lab - the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to extract music from rich patterns beyond the ear's ability to hear - has come to the attention of Homeland Security. Panicked by the raid on his house, Els flees and turns fugitive, waiting for the evidence to clear him and for the alarm surrounding his activities to blow over.
But alarm turns to national hysteria, as the government promises a panicked nation that the 'Bioterrorist Bach' will be found and brought to trial. As Els feels the noose around him tighten, he embarks on a cross-country trip to visit, one last time, the people in his past who have most shaped his failed musical journey. And through the help of these people - his ex-wife, his daughter, and his longtime artistic collaborator - Els comes up with a plan to turn this disastrous collision with national security into one last, resonant, calamitous artwork that might reach an audience beyond his wildest dreams.
But alarm turns to national hysteria, as the government promises a panicked nation that the 'Bioterrorist Bach' will be found and brought to trial. As Els feels the noose around him tighten, he embarks on a cross-country trip to visit, one last time, the people in his past who have most shaped his failed musical journey. And through the help of these people - his ex-wife, his daughter, and his longtime artistic collaborator - Els comes up with a plan to turn this disastrous collision with national security into one last, resonant, calamitous artwork that might reach an audience beyond his wildest dreams.
369 pages, Paperback
First published January 20, 2014
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13124 people want to read
About the author
Richard Powers
91 books6,601 followersRichard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His book The Overstory won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.
Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
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March 18, 2019
”To Els, music and chemistry were each other’s long-lost twins: mixtures and modulations, spectral harmonies and harmonic spectroscopy. The structures of long polymers reminded him of intricate Webern variations. The outlandish probability fields of atomic orbitals--barbells, donuts, sphores--felt like the units of an avant-garde notation. The formulas of physical chemistry struck him as intricate and divine compositions.”
Peter Els was supposed to be a chemist who composed music as a hobby. Instead, he became a composer who creates bacterial cultures in his spare time. He was at university to be a chemist when he ran into a young lady named Clara. She changed his mind about music.
”At eighteen, hearing these songs while holding Clara’s breasts was like graduating from the Crayola eight-pack to the rainbow box of sixty-four.”
She was charming, inspiring, and full of advice laced with sex. She was a heady cocktail, irresistible, and so self-assured that to question her would be like questioning everything.
It was true love for him, after all, he changed the whole course of his life for her. Unfortunately, Peter was just a pit stop for Clara, there are many, many more men out there that need her particular brand of persuasion. She is a muse, but quite possibly an evil one or certainly an irresponsible one.
”How did music trick the body into thinking it had a soul?
We join Peter Els, in mandatory retirement from teaching music, working with his dog Fidelio, named for the opera by Beethoven I presume, on tonality. It seems the dog has a genius for howling to music. I can’t imagine why one of his neighbors had not visited Els with a cudgel in hand. He is also doing a lot of reading and ordering interesting things over the internet.
”It made no sense that a few staggered chords could make the brain love an unmet stranger or grieve for friends who hadn’t died. Nobody could say why Barber moved listeners and Babbitt didn’t, or whether an infant might be raised to weep at Carter. But all the experts agreed that waves of compressed air falling on the eardrum touched off chain reactions that flooded the body in signals and even changed the expression of genes.”
So maybe Els missed his calling, possibly changing the world through chemical research. He certainly didn’t make his mark as a composer. He may have been brilliant, but not in a marketable way.
”People now made music from everything. Fugues from fractals. A prelude extracted from the digits of pi. Sonatas written by the solar wind, by voting records, by the life and death of ice shelves as seen from space….Brain waves, skin conductivity, and heartbeats: anything could generate surprise melodies. String quartets were performing the sequences of amino acids in horse hemoglobin. No listener would ever need more than a fraction of the music that had already been made, but something inside the cells needed to make a million times more.”
The time NOW was tailor made for a younger Els, but he is not willing to be shelved as yet, he is working on building a DNA strand that will allow him to code music into genes. How do you learn to do something like that? Easier than learning Arabic he insists.
The cops show up and confiscate the remains of his musical dog , his chemistry set, and nearly everything else he owns. They get everything, that is, except the “Bioterrorist Bach”. Els finds himself on the run.
Researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute in England have found a way to store all of Shakespeare's sonnets on synthetic DNA that takes up a speck-sized space at the bottom of a test tube.
”No one so much as glanced in his direction, let alone pegged him as the deranged Pennsylvania bioterrorist. Bystander effect, Genovese syndrome. He was safest now in crowds. And crowds of the young, who tended to look away, embarrassed, from anyone careless enough to have let himself get old.”
Els has a lot to figure out while he is a fugitive.
Made for art, made for memory, made for poetry, made for oblivion.”
He has people to find. People to see, maybe one last time, who are scattered from the Dakotas to California. He needs to talk to them, explain things before he disappears, possibly forever into the bowels of bureaucracy. They will catch him of course, it is only a matter of time.
Richard Powers makes these wonderful connections all through this novel. You are in the brilliant mind of Peter Els, but I couldn’t help stepping back and marvelling at the brilliant mind of Richard Powers as well. I was notating, sometimes several times on the same page, interesting sentences, conceptional thoughts, some beyond my brain power. He also brought back an afternoon I spent with my son trying to expand his musical horizons.
”...the thing he knew, it was five a.m. and the clock radio was playing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit”, so soft and sad and slow and minor and faraway that the haunting tune might have been Faure’s Elegy.”
I was having limited success in convincing my son that great music existed before 2012. I was flipping through what I consider my hotlist, the playlist I put on when I’m chewing up miles and miles of highway. I was starting to despair that nothing was going to catch on with him when I put on Smells Like Teen Spirit. A half a second before he was buried in his phone answering what I’m sure was an inane text message from a friend when his head snapped over and his eyes found mine. “Who is this?”
I don’t know what those opening chords did inside his brain, but it was as if it opened up new vistas of not only music tolerance, but music enjoyment.
Richard Powers has a long neck, so he can see further than the rest of us.
Richard Powers has a BA and an MA in literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He originally had chose to pursue physics, but he discovered he loved to read. That relationship with reading is the main reason why he decided not to pursue a PHD. He observed that graduate students and professors had lost the ability to enjoy the pleasure of reading. A sin if there ever was one. He has been a finalist at all the major prizes and did win a National Book Award in 2006. What I enjoyed about this book is that he made me feel smarter, and I also loved the way he mixed, rather masterfully, the story of Peter’s life with the complexities of music and science. There will be more Powers’s books queuing up in my future reading.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Peter Els was supposed to be a chemist who composed music as a hobby. Instead, he became a composer who creates bacterial cultures in his spare time. He was at university to be a chemist when he ran into a young lady named Clara. She changed his mind about music.
”At eighteen, hearing these songs while holding Clara’s breasts was like graduating from the Crayola eight-pack to the rainbow box of sixty-four.”
She was charming, inspiring, and full of advice laced with sex. She was a heady cocktail, irresistible, and so self-assured that to question her would be like questioning everything.
It was true love for him, after all, he changed the whole course of his life for her. Unfortunately, Peter was just a pit stop for Clara, there are many, many more men out there that need her particular brand of persuasion. She is a muse, but quite possibly an evil one or certainly an irresponsible one.
”How did music trick the body into thinking it had a soul?
We join Peter Els, in mandatory retirement from teaching music, working with his dog Fidelio, named for the opera by Beethoven I presume, on tonality. It seems the dog has a genius for howling to music. I can’t imagine why one of his neighbors had not visited Els with a cudgel in hand. He is also doing a lot of reading and ordering interesting things over the internet.
”It made no sense that a few staggered chords could make the brain love an unmet stranger or grieve for friends who hadn’t died. Nobody could say why Barber moved listeners and Babbitt didn’t, or whether an infant might be raised to weep at Carter. But all the experts agreed that waves of compressed air falling on the eardrum touched off chain reactions that flooded the body in signals and even changed the expression of genes.”
So maybe Els missed his calling, possibly changing the world through chemical research. He certainly didn’t make his mark as a composer. He may have been brilliant, but not in a marketable way.
”People now made music from everything. Fugues from fractals. A prelude extracted from the digits of pi. Sonatas written by the solar wind, by voting records, by the life and death of ice shelves as seen from space….Brain waves, skin conductivity, and heartbeats: anything could generate surprise melodies. String quartets were performing the sequences of amino acids in horse hemoglobin. No listener would ever need more than a fraction of the music that had already been made, but something inside the cells needed to make a million times more.”
The time NOW was tailor made for a younger Els, but he is not willing to be shelved as yet, he is working on building a DNA strand that will allow him to code music into genes. How do you learn to do something like that? Easier than learning Arabic he insists.
The cops show up and confiscate the remains of his musical dog , his chemistry set, and nearly everything else he owns. They get everything, that is, except the “Bioterrorist Bach”. Els finds himself on the run.
Researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute in England have found a way to store all of Shakespeare's sonnets on synthetic DNA that takes up a speck-sized space at the bottom of a test tube.
”No one so much as glanced in his direction, let alone pegged him as the deranged Pennsylvania bioterrorist. Bystander effect, Genovese syndrome. He was safest now in crowds. And crowds of the young, who tended to look away, embarrassed, from anyone careless enough to have let himself get old.”
Els has a lot to figure out while he is a fugitive.
Made for art, made for memory, made for poetry, made for oblivion.”
He has people to find. People to see, maybe one last time, who are scattered from the Dakotas to California. He needs to talk to them, explain things before he disappears, possibly forever into the bowels of bureaucracy. They will catch him of course, it is only a matter of time.
Richard Powers makes these wonderful connections all through this novel. You are in the brilliant mind of Peter Els, but I couldn’t help stepping back and marvelling at the brilliant mind of Richard Powers as well. I was notating, sometimes several times on the same page, interesting sentences, conceptional thoughts, some beyond my brain power. He also brought back an afternoon I spent with my son trying to expand his musical horizons.
”...the thing he knew, it was five a.m. and the clock radio was playing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit”, so soft and sad and slow and minor and faraway that the haunting tune might have been Faure’s Elegy.”
I was having limited success in convincing my son that great music existed before 2012. I was flipping through what I consider my hotlist, the playlist I put on when I’m chewing up miles and miles of highway. I was starting to despair that nothing was going to catch on with him when I put on Smells Like Teen Spirit. A half a second before he was buried in his phone answering what I’m sure was an inane text message from a friend when his head snapped over and his eyes found mine. “Who is this?”
I don’t know what those opening chords did inside his brain, but it was as if it opened up new vistas of not only music tolerance, but music enjoyment.
Richard Powers has a long neck, so he can see further than the rest of us.
Richard Powers has a BA and an MA in literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He originally had chose to pursue physics, but he discovered he loved to read. That relationship with reading is the main reason why he decided not to pursue a PHD. He observed that graduate students and professors had lost the ability to enjoy the pleasure of reading. A sin if there ever was one. He has been a finalist at all the major prizes and did win a National Book Award in 2006. What I enjoyed about this book is that he made me feel smarter, and I also loved the way he mixed, rather masterfully, the story of Peter’s life with the complexities of music and science. There will be more Powers’s books queuing up in my future reading.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
September 18, 2023
After failing to get past the 50 page mark a few years ago, thought I would give this challenging and head scratching novel another go. Was it music to my ears?, not quite, a shame it wasn't accompanied by Orfeo: The Soundtrack. Don't think I will come across anything like this again, it's certainly original, as it's composition is made up of sounds, symphonies and germs.
Richard Powers writes of a character you can't help root for, that being the 'Bioterrorist Bach' Peter Els, a seventy-year-old Avant-Garde composer, who courses a stir for homeland security. They are spooked by the ominous-looking lab equipment he has accumulated for his hobby, the exploration of microbiological engineering, or to put it in simply terms, messing with DNA in the hope that music spreads unpredictably like a virus from human to human, expressed by a structure that moves elegantly across time, transported by a series of echoing motifs. Els's has a narcissistic Postmodern desire to make new from old, and his Romantic sensibility that soars besides images of birds, flight and song.
He flees his home and takes to the road after his equipment is seized, and a story arises that his playing around with nature had lead to people being infected by a bacterial killer bug. Here the novel takes a poignant look back over the life of Peter Els, a life fuelled by one big passion, classical music. It's evocatively written, as Els's struggle to resolve inner and outer contraries on art, life, tradition and originality, past and present. His road-trip is like a trip down memory lane and a getaway doubling as a last-gasp pilgrimage to his ex-wife, Maddy, his fractious brother-in-provocation, Richard Bonner, and, finally, his beloved, but betrayed daughter, Sara. Loved ones, who seem to have played second fiddle to his music. The book is awash with incident, both then and now, and there are sections of pages at a time when the prose seems to lift up and carry the reader as an orchestra might, the words working in perfect consort. But here lies my biggest problem, there are glorious, mend-bending, descriptive passages on music that tease and temp, you will want to stop, head to the record player and stick on a soothing, minimalistic piece by one of a number of classical geniuses. My vinyl collection is about 95% Jazz. Damn.
There was much to be impressed with, some wonderful and exuberant writing which was moving in places, but frustrating in others, to my Great annoyance. Because it's a book I so wanted to fall in love with. Like when my ears were first blessed with the sounds of Claude Debussy.
But ultimately, for me at least, the novel was too clever for it's own good, like it was written solely for a Peter Els type of person. It's not a casual read, and requires total commitment all the way. To the virtuoso reader it probably ticks most boxes.
If only the maestro had emitted organic soundscapes every time I turned a page.
May 21, 2015
Prefatory thoughts on the nature of genius
In this era of grade inflation and trophies for showing up, let’s assume that the genius label is still meant to be rare. It refers, of course, to an exceptional intellectual capacity manifesting itself in extraordinary creative works or IQ scores in the extreme right tail of the distribution.
I’ve now read two Richard Powers books and both have made me think early and often of his own rare brand of genius. Part of the pleasure in reading him is his depth of understanding in things like music, science, and the creative process. Beyond that, his word choices and analogies are consistently brilliant.
The MacArthur Foundation identifies genius in a wide variety of fields. Powers qualified in 1989 as a 32-year-old.
His topics may not always be at the fore of the popular imagination, but this is not to say that he fetishizes the obscure. (Are your ears burning, Mr. Pynchon?) Powers does not choose specialized subjects to disguise vague conclusions. I think he simply focuses on new patterns and innovative relationships that are best expressed using less common elements (e.g., avant-garde music, molecular genetics).
Certain geniuses can explicate only from within the eleventh dimension of string theory. Others can, or at least try to, convey thoughts through clear, precise language. Powers is the latter kind with an added ability to translate the former.
Powers is the type who knows how to connect. Any one of us could qualify as Salieri to his Mozart, which is no slam on us. It’s a recognizable genius – one we can appreciate even if we can’t produce it ourselves. At the same time, I can’t say for sure that there aren’t layers of smarts outside my ability to perceive. But I’m fine with bones tossed outside my reach as long as I can stretch my rope just enough to snag a few.
Roughly 80% of the time, when a writer is described as “cerebral”, it’s meant as a bad thing. All head and no heart, by implication. I like to think that with this book the word can apply without baggage. I’ll argue that human emotions do feature in this one, and work pretty darn well buttressing the brainy parts.
The premise and basic plot
Peter Els is a retired composer now in his seventies with time to experiment in his home lab on a project involving bacteria. It’s a quiet life until the day he calls 911 about his dying dog. As a follow-up to see if Els disposed of his dog properly, the two agents who visited started questioning him about the Petri dishes with mysterious cultures. The explanations Els gave did not satisfy them. The next day, while he was out, a task force in hazmat suits began removing his equipment. He might have tried intervening at that point, to explain how he was using the four building blocks of DNA to encode a musical sequence, but he felt the need to clear his head before making his case. The longer he delayed, the more Homeland Security paranoia accrued. Soon he was portrayed as a bio-terrorist. At that point, he ran.
The book was structured as a bi-linear narrative. While elderly Peter was on the lam, young Peter’s back-story unfolded, starting with an all-encompassing love of music as a child. In high school he met a girl with musical appetites matching his own and followed her to Indiana where she studied cello. As she introduced him to Mahler and second base, it “was like graduating from the Crayola eight-pack to the rainbow box of sixty-four.” She convinced him to change his major from chemistry to music composition where “harmony pushed outward in ever more daring border raids on the forbidden.” After his girlfriend left him, he went to grad school in Illinois where he met his wife-to-be (a singer) and his bigger-than-life friend and collaborator, Richard (a manic impresario). To his credit, Els knew that his greatest composition was his daughter with whom he spent many creative hours while his wife supported them. However, once Richard re-entered the picture with a big project in NY, Els could focus on nothing else, and he lost his happy home life. The rest of that earlier thread was spent catching up to the first one, with interesting musical interludes and personal connections along the way.
Therein lies the nub
Els, and to an extent Powers himself, wanted “awe… surprise… suspense.” “Refreshment, a sense of the infinite. And change; eternal mutation.” Then, finally, coming clean: “Beauty.”
That sense of the infinite was something that resonated. Composition was turned into a giant search across near endless possibilities. I haven’t done the math to confirm this quote, but it’s plausible: “Even a three-minute piece could run to more permutations than there were atoms in the universe. And you got three-score years and ten, to find one that was sublime.” Then, in one of the many inserted text boxes (curiously enough, capped at 140 characters), Els asks: “Does it hurt to know that any piece of music, however sublime, can be turned into a unique large number?” I may be quote-happy in this review, but when it comes to Powers, I can’t help it: “The job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.”
Els was conflicted with his more remote niche in the music world. What’s the fear, Peter? “Failure. Success. The wisdom of crowds. Knowledge of what his notes must sound like, to everyone who isn't him.” Els wanted to stay true to his outré artistic vision, but also recognized the trade-off between that and connecting with a large audience. At one point, his wife pegged him as a closet extrovert. “You want to live in a hermitage in Times Square, with a big sign pointing to you reading, hermit.”
Relationships and metaphors, most with at least half a heart
It became pretty clear that Powers was getting at all kinds of ties – those between music, the brain, the body at its most visceral, scientific inquiry, literary fiction, and his own approach to writing. I wouldn’t try your patience with words of my own, but don’t mind lengthening this with more of his. These were responses to interview questions.
And this, when an interviewer asked about ways in which science and fiction are analogous:
That whole head over heart thing some have said Powers brings about is, to me, refuted in this work. I did care about Peter and those he was close to, and not just as abstractions. Stories effecting empathy are some of the best metaphors around, don’t you think?
Music Appreciation 401
This is not an intro course. It’s more upper level. That said, even without much of a background in music history or theory, I was completely drawn in.
Snippets covered the beauty of sounds in nature (especially bird songs), the rich overtones within a single note played on a piano, and the risky circumstances surrounding Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony in Stalinist Russia. There was also a longer, dramatic description of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time first performed in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp.
The next and penultimate quote, I swear, highlights both great advice Els gave to a student, as well as inspiring words that Powers might have applied to any number of artistic endeavors, including his own writing.
One last quote that I’m not even sure I understand, but seems appropriate:
Powers and prosody
I promised – no more quotes. But with all the ones above, you can decide for yourselves whether this guy can write. He mentioned to an interviewer that at certain stages of certain books, he dictates his words into a machine. Sound is important to him, the rhythm and the lilt. This was especially true in the parts where he described musical works.
Even before I’d read this, I felt like the artistry of his prose was another part of his genius. The fact that I was reminded of this nearly every page speaks volumes (that turned out to be a more literal statement than I intended – sorry).
The ending may not satisfy fans of resolution, but the well-chosen words packed an emotional wallop for me. I read it five times to get every crumb of meaning that Powers seemed willing to give.
Closing the sale
This was a nominee for both a National Book Award and a Booker Prize. But I won’t say it’s for everyone. If the needle on your like-meter didn’t move for any of what I’ve described, give it a pass.
At the same time, don’t necessarily be scared off by topics that look implausible, dense or remote. And know, too, that any challenges the man called “cerebral” presents are not meant to be nebulous.
As geniuses go, Powers is a generous one. Chances are you’ll feel smarter by association, not dumber by contradistinction.
In this era of grade inflation and trophies for showing up, let’s assume that the genius label is still meant to be rare. It refers, of course, to an exceptional intellectual capacity manifesting itself in extraordinary creative works or IQ scores in the extreme right tail of the distribution.
I’ve now read two Richard Powers books and both have made me think early and often of his own rare brand of genius. Part of the pleasure in reading him is his depth of understanding in things like music, science, and the creative process. Beyond that, his word choices and analogies are consistently brilliant.
The MacArthur Foundation identifies genius in a wide variety of fields. Powers qualified in 1989 as a 32-year-old.
His topics may not always be at the fore of the popular imagination, but this is not to say that he fetishizes the obscure. (Are your ears burning, Mr. Pynchon?) Powers does not choose specialized subjects to disguise vague conclusions. I think he simply focuses on new patterns and innovative relationships that are best expressed using less common elements (e.g., avant-garde music, molecular genetics).
Certain geniuses can explicate only from within the eleventh dimension of string theory. Others can, or at least try to, convey thoughts through clear, precise language. Powers is the latter kind with an added ability to translate the former.
Powers is the type who knows how to connect. Any one of us could qualify as Salieri to his Mozart, which is no slam on us. It’s a recognizable genius – one we can appreciate even if we can’t produce it ourselves. At the same time, I can’t say for sure that there aren’t layers of smarts outside my ability to perceive. But I’m fine with bones tossed outside my reach as long as I can stretch my rope just enough to snag a few.
Roughly 80% of the time, when a writer is described as “cerebral”, it’s meant as a bad thing. All head and no heart, by implication. I like to think that with this book the word can apply without baggage. I’ll argue that human emotions do feature in this one, and work pretty darn well buttressing the brainy parts.
The premise and basic plot
Peter Els is a retired composer now in his seventies with time to experiment in his home lab on a project involving bacteria. It’s a quiet life until the day he calls 911 about his dying dog. As a follow-up to see if Els disposed of his dog properly, the two agents who visited started questioning him about the Petri dishes with mysterious cultures. The explanations Els gave did not satisfy them. The next day, while he was out, a task force in hazmat suits began removing his equipment. He might have tried intervening at that point, to explain how he was using the four building blocks of DNA to encode a musical sequence, but he felt the need to clear his head before making his case. The longer he delayed, the more Homeland Security paranoia accrued. Soon he was portrayed as a bio-terrorist. At that point, he ran.
The book was structured as a bi-linear narrative. While elderly Peter was on the lam, young Peter’s back-story unfolded, starting with an all-encompassing love of music as a child. In high school he met a girl with musical appetites matching his own and followed her to Indiana where she studied cello. As she introduced him to Mahler and second base, it “was like graduating from the Crayola eight-pack to the rainbow box of sixty-four.” She convinced him to change his major from chemistry to music composition where “harmony pushed outward in ever more daring border raids on the forbidden.” After his girlfriend left him, he went to grad school in Illinois where he met his wife-to-be (a singer) and his bigger-than-life friend and collaborator, Richard (a manic impresario). To his credit, Els knew that his greatest composition was his daughter with whom he spent many creative hours while his wife supported them. However, once Richard re-entered the picture with a big project in NY, Els could focus on nothing else, and he lost his happy home life. The rest of that earlier thread was spent catching up to the first one, with interesting musical interludes and personal connections along the way.
Therein lies the nub
Els, and to an extent Powers himself, wanted “awe… surprise… suspense.” “Refreshment, a sense of the infinite. And change; eternal mutation.” Then, finally, coming clean: “Beauty.”
That sense of the infinite was something that resonated. Composition was turned into a giant search across near endless possibilities. I haven’t done the math to confirm this quote, but it’s plausible: “Even a three-minute piece could run to more permutations than there were atoms in the universe. And you got three-score years and ten, to find one that was sublime.” Then, in one of the many inserted text boxes (curiously enough, capped at 140 characters), Els asks: “Does it hurt to know that any piece of music, however sublime, can be turned into a unique large number?” I may be quote-happy in this review, but when it comes to Powers, I can’t help it: “The job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.”
Els was conflicted with his more remote niche in the music world. What’s the fear, Peter? “Failure. Success. The wisdom of crowds. Knowledge of what his notes must sound like, to everyone who isn't him.” Els wanted to stay true to his outré artistic vision, but also recognized the trade-off between that and connecting with a large audience. At one point, his wife pegged him as a closet extrovert. “You want to live in a hermitage in Times Square, with a big sign pointing to you reading, hermit.”
Relationships and metaphors, most with at least half a heart
It became pretty clear that Powers was getting at all kinds of ties – those between music, the brain, the body at its most visceral, scientific inquiry, literary fiction, and his own approach to writing. I wouldn’t try your patience with words of my own, but don’t mind lengthening this with more of his. These were responses to interview questions.
"It's that tension--between the music of pattern, the music of the cognitive brain; and the music of body, the music of pure spirit--that infects his life at every turn. Music is both those things! And human beings are both thinking creatures and feeling creatures. And the art that hits on all cylinders, the art that moves us intellectually and bodily and spiritually, is what we're after. But to capture all those things in the same vessel is a very, very difficult task."
And this, when an interviewer asked about ways in which science and fiction are analogous:
"A good novel and a well-designed experiment are both speculations into meaningful pattern. Consensual wisdom has it that science is about rigorous patterns “out there” and art about soft patterns “in here.” But I am increasingly convinced that those two vectors are hopelessly entangled with each other. Meaning in both science and art depends on a whole lot of active processes trying to unite the beautiful to the true. And both science and art make their way by lots of good-faith blundering toward the significant. I must try to show that there is in fact a solid middle ground to stand on, a shared common earth beneath the feet of all the humanists and all the scientists […] There is, I think, such a shared view of the world. It is called bewilderment."
That whole head over heart thing some have said Powers brings about is, to me, refuted in this work. I did care about Peter and those he was close to, and not just as abstractions. Stories effecting empathy are some of the best metaphors around, don’t you think?
Music Appreciation 401
This is not an intro course. It’s more upper level. That said, even without much of a background in music history or theory, I was completely drawn in.
Snippets covered the beauty of sounds in nature (especially bird songs), the rich overtones within a single note played on a piano, and the risky circumstances surrounding Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony in Stalinist Russia. There was also a longer, dramatic description of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time first performed in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp.
The next and penultimate quote, I swear, highlights both great advice Els gave to a student, as well as inspiring words that Powers might have applied to any number of artistic endeavors, including his own writing.
"Let no one persuade you of a single thing. Study your hunger and how to feed it. Trust in whatever sounds twist your viscera. Write in the cadences of first love, of second chances, of air raids, of outrage, of the hideous and the hilarious, of headlong acceptance or curt refusal. Make the bitter music of bumdom, the sad shanties of landlessness, cool at the equator and fluid at the pole. Set the sounds that angels make after an all-night orgy. Whatever lengthens the day, whatever gets you through the night. Make the music that you need, for need will be over, soon enough. Let your progressions predict time’s end and recollect the dead as if they’re all still here. Because they are."
One last quote that I’m not even sure I understand, but seems appropriate:
"[...] classical music's real crime was not its cozy relations with fascism but its ancient dream of control, of hot-wiring the soul. He pictured Faust looking at his own neurons on a monitor--his bottomless hunger laid bare, his desire for mastery swirling through his brain like cigarette smoke curling in the air. As full knowledge filled the seeker at last, Mephistopheles, at his elbow, would sing, ‘Now we're both paid in full’."
Powers and prosody
I promised – no more quotes. But with all the ones above, you can decide for yourselves whether this guy can write. He mentioned to an interviewer that at certain stages of certain books, he dictates his words into a machine. Sound is important to him, the rhythm and the lilt. This was especially true in the parts where he described musical works.
Even before I’d read this, I felt like the artistry of his prose was another part of his genius. The fact that I was reminded of this nearly every page speaks volumes (that turned out to be a more literal statement than I intended – sorry).
The ending may not satisfy fans of resolution, but the well-chosen words packed an emotional wallop for me. I read it five times to get every crumb of meaning that Powers seemed willing to give.
Closing the sale
This was a nominee for both a National Book Award and a Booker Prize. But I won’t say it’s for everyone. If the needle on your like-meter didn’t move for any of what I’ve described, give it a pass.
At the same time, don’t necessarily be scared off by topics that look implausible, dense or remote. And know, too, that any challenges the man called “cerebral” presents are not meant to be nebulous.
As geniuses go, Powers is a generous one. Chances are you’ll feel smarter by association, not dumber by contradistinction.
November 26, 2018
Music for the End of Time
If you are a music-lover, read this book for its extraordinary insight into the mind of a musician. At least listen to its sound-track.* For, as he proved in The Time of Our Singing, Richard Powers is peerless in his ability to recapture music through words. As he looks back over the life of American composer Peter Els—fictional but so possible—he tells his story as much through the music he listens to as by what he writes or does himself. He fills many pages at a time with the sound of masterpieces, some familiar, some obscure, all miraculous. I knew most of the pieces that first awaken Els to music, so I could hear them in my head: Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, Messaien's Quartet for the End Of Time. But Powers treats them with a depth of perception and breadth of reference that I know will send me back to my CDs to hear them again through his ears. His account of the genesis and performance of the Messaien in a German POW camp especially, though based upon a source that he gladly acknowledges, is twenty-five pages of sheer wonder.
Halfway through the novel, Powers mentions a piece I hadn't heard in many years: Terry Riley's In C, arguably the seminal work of American minimalism. So I found a recording on YouTube and played it as I read on, and kept doing this until the end, as he mentioned pieces by other composers such as Shostakovich, Harry Partch, or Peter Lieberson. The most striking moment was an almost hallucinatory sequence in which Els, on the run from the FBI, is in a college-town cafe. A piece is playing on the sound system: Proverb, Steve Reich's exploration of a text by Wittgenstein. I did not know this at all, so stopped to put it on. Immediately, the music and the words began to entwine with one another. Powers was writing, as it were, in real time; as I would read something, I would hear it also, without even trying to get my bearings. But he was doing a lot more than just describing a particular piece at a particular time; somehow, he could summon a whole millennium of music, wrapping its end in its beginning, casting Reich's pulsing notes as the heartbeat of eternity.
Plot-based descriptions of the novel may make Els seem like some latter-day Frankenstein, but he really isn't. All the same, let me explain. After retiring from his small college in Pennsylvania, Els goes back to his old métier as a chemist (his major in college), and experiments with home gene-splicing, which is apparently less complex than it sounds. He is trying to encode a piece of music into a strand of DNA, then splice it into a living cell which would perpetuate it for all eternity. Early in the book, unfortunately, this gets him into trouble with Homeland Security; the present-day framework of the novel spans a period of about a week while he is evading arrest as a suspected terrorist. Not so, except in the radical sense that all music is terrorism, born of the need to destroy old assumptions and open fresh possibility. Peter's gene-splicing project is both a kind of metaphor for music itself and a bid for immortality. For every single one of the pieces that form the sound-track to this extraordinary novel has to do with the passing of time and its end in death or silence.
And so it is in the plot. This is the story of an older man looking back at his life, his loves and losses, his wild inventions, all-consuming obsessions, successes and failures. Powers is not quite so good at conjuring up Els' own compositions as those of others, but he still gives a remarkable account of his progress as a composer from the radical years of the sixties through the eclecticism of the present. And he is equally fine as a novelist, showing Peter Els as a young man, discovering Mahler's music and his girlfriend's breasts at the same time, falling in love with the first singer of his Borges songs, making worlds afresh with his daughter, and then losing it all. Creation and loss and the passage of time, these are the themes of this book at every level. But Peter's road trip through America turns out to be about something else: the recapture and repair of the past; wrapping its end in its beginning, as with the Steve Reich; and like music, not ending at all.
Readers who are not musicians will probably not have read this far. And rightly so, for I am not sure this is the book for you. Powers' exploration of a man in his time and in eternity is a noble theme in any tongue, and he handles it masterfully. But he has chosen to tell it through the language of music—and that may not be equally accessible to everyone.
*Six of the works that Powers discusses have been gathered as a YouTube playlist.
======
Postscript: I am returning to this having just read Powers' Gold Bug Variations, his landmark novel of 1991, and extraordinarily similar to this one. Surely Orfeo must be a deliberate attempt to write a farewell variation on the earlier book, bringing its subject up to date and adjusting the proportions? Orfeo's Peter Els has progressed to gene splicing in his kitchen, but Stuart Ressler, the equivalent scientist-composer in GBV, fifty years earlier, works right on the edge of cracking the genetic code. The chief musical referent in GBV, as its title would indicate, is Bach's Goldberg Variations; Orfeo is immersed in modernism, the music of the postwar period. Both have to do with death, inheritance, and immortality, but Orfeo treats the theme more lyrically, with greater heartbreak. Reading GBV, it would seem that Powers was trying to get in everything he knew about everything—history, science, mathematics, linguistics, painting, philosophy—bursting at the seams as though he would never again write another novel. Orfeo is not only slimmer but more focused. Powers is still the same extraordinary polymath, but here he has chosen one medium to carry all the others. And this is music, in which he is totally superb.
If you are a music-lover, read this book for its extraordinary insight into the mind of a musician. At least listen to its sound-track.* For, as he proved in The Time of Our Singing, Richard Powers is peerless in his ability to recapture music through words. As he looks back over the life of American composer Peter Els—fictional but so possible—he tells his story as much through the music he listens to as by what he writes or does himself. He fills many pages at a time with the sound of masterpieces, some familiar, some obscure, all miraculous. I knew most of the pieces that first awaken Els to music, so I could hear them in my head: Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, Messaien's Quartet for the End Of Time. But Powers treats them with a depth of perception and breadth of reference that I know will send me back to my CDs to hear them again through his ears. His account of the genesis and performance of the Messaien in a German POW camp especially, though based upon a source that he gladly acknowledges, is twenty-five pages of sheer wonder.
Halfway through the novel, Powers mentions a piece I hadn't heard in many years: Terry Riley's In C, arguably the seminal work of American minimalism. So I found a recording on YouTube and played it as I read on, and kept doing this until the end, as he mentioned pieces by other composers such as Shostakovich, Harry Partch, or Peter Lieberson. The most striking moment was an almost hallucinatory sequence in which Els, on the run from the FBI, is in a college-town cafe. A piece is playing on the sound system: Proverb, Steve Reich's exploration of a text by Wittgenstein. I did not know this at all, so stopped to put it on. Immediately, the music and the words began to entwine with one another. Powers was writing, as it were, in real time; as I would read something, I would hear it also, without even trying to get my bearings. But he was doing a lot more than just describing a particular piece at a particular time; somehow, he could summon a whole millennium of music, wrapping its end in its beginning, casting Reich's pulsing notes as the heartbeat of eternity.
Plot-based descriptions of the novel may make Els seem like some latter-day Frankenstein, but he really isn't. All the same, let me explain. After retiring from his small college in Pennsylvania, Els goes back to his old métier as a chemist (his major in college), and experiments with home gene-splicing, which is apparently less complex than it sounds. He is trying to encode a piece of music into a strand of DNA, then splice it into a living cell which would perpetuate it for all eternity. Early in the book, unfortunately, this gets him into trouble with Homeland Security; the present-day framework of the novel spans a period of about a week while he is evading arrest as a suspected terrorist. Not so, except in the radical sense that all music is terrorism, born of the need to destroy old assumptions and open fresh possibility. Peter's gene-splicing project is both a kind of metaphor for music itself and a bid for immortality. For every single one of the pieces that form the sound-track to this extraordinary novel has to do with the passing of time and its end in death or silence.
And so it is in the plot. This is the story of an older man looking back at his life, his loves and losses, his wild inventions, all-consuming obsessions, successes and failures. Powers is not quite so good at conjuring up Els' own compositions as those of others, but he still gives a remarkable account of his progress as a composer from the radical years of the sixties through the eclecticism of the present. And he is equally fine as a novelist, showing Peter Els as a young man, discovering Mahler's music and his girlfriend's breasts at the same time, falling in love with the first singer of his Borges songs, making worlds afresh with his daughter, and then losing it all. Creation and loss and the passage of time, these are the themes of this book at every level. But Peter's road trip through America turns out to be about something else: the recapture and repair of the past; wrapping its end in its beginning, as with the Steve Reich; and like music, not ending at all.
Readers who are not musicians will probably not have read this far. And rightly so, for I am not sure this is the book for you. Powers' exploration of a man in his time and in eternity is a noble theme in any tongue, and he handles it masterfully. But he has chosen to tell it through the language of music—and that may not be equally accessible to everyone.
*Six of the works that Powers discusses have been gathered as a YouTube playlist.
======
Postscript: I am returning to this having just read Powers' Gold Bug Variations, his landmark novel of 1991, and extraordinarily similar to this one. Surely Orfeo must be a deliberate attempt to write a farewell variation on the earlier book, bringing its subject up to date and adjusting the proportions? Orfeo's Peter Els has progressed to gene splicing in his kitchen, but Stuart Ressler, the equivalent scientist-composer in GBV, fifty years earlier, works right on the edge of cracking the genetic code. The chief musical referent in GBV, as its title would indicate, is Bach's Goldberg Variations; Orfeo is immersed in modernism, the music of the postwar period. Both have to do with death, inheritance, and immortality, but Orfeo treats the theme more lyrically, with greater heartbreak. Reading GBV, it would seem that Powers was trying to get in everything he knew about everything—history, science, mathematics, linguistics, painting, philosophy—bursting at the seams as though he would never again write another novel. Orfeo is not only slimmer but more focused. Powers is still the same extraordinary polymath, but here he has chosen one medium to carry all the others. And this is music, in which he is totally superb.
September 11, 2021
A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine chastised me for not reading any recent novels. Just a week before that, another friend had lent me this book. So I figured I’d satisfy both friends and read this.
This book is a strange mix of excellence and mediocrity. Luckily for me, in this work the two are as distinct and separate as Bach is from Björk, so it won’t be a challenge to tweeze them apart. Let me start with the bad.
Richard Powers seems to have learned to write novels by reading cheap thrillers. The characters are walking clichés, the dialogue sounds like it was transcribed from a bad cop show, the plot is filled with false excitement. Even worse, Powers has a penchant for similes and metaphors so bad that they could be used in writing classes as instructive examples.
Here is a fairly typical sentence: “Students drifted in front of his car like targets in the easy level of a video game.” Now, this sentence wouldn’t necessarily be bad if the main character was a video game addict. But Peter Els, the protagonist, is a seventy-year-old composer of avant-garde music, who has not once (so far as I can tell) set his eyes on a video game. So this comparison is obviously being supplied by Powers himself. But why? Since it has nothing to do with the character’s story or personality, it adds nothing to the characterization; it only distracts. But there’s another problem. A simile is supposed to make something vague and unfamiliar more concrete and familiar. Instead, this sentence takes something familiar—people walking aimlessly—and compares it to something that neither the character, nor even some of this book’s readers, may be familiar with.
Here’s another example: “For as long as he could, Els crept between camps like a Swiss diplomatic courier.” And how is that, exactly? How many of us have seen one of those? How does this comparison allow the reader to picture Els’s movement in her mind’s eye? It doesn’t. It only throws us off, breaking the spell of the narrative. And once again, the character himself has no experience with Swiss diplomatic couriers. This comparison wouldn’t occur to him, and means nothing to the reader. It is just Powers trying to be clever.
Another irritating element were the frequent contemporary references. Lady Gaga, tablets, mosh pits, Facebook, Twitter—doesn’t Powers know how dated these will sound in the coming years? For my part, even the references that are still current made me cringe. Apart from the specific pieces of music mentioned, these references were seldom integral to the book; most were mere name-dropping, inserted just to make the book seem relevant.
The themes suffer from the same flaw. A main theme is simply anxiety about the present day: anxiety about technology, about our new interconnectedness, about biological engineering, about terrorist attacks. All anxiety of this sort is doomed to appear absurd and hackneyed in a short while, if it doesn’t already. The world is always changing, and people are always finding new things to fear. Tomorrow, genetic engineering will seem as unremarkable as a turkey sandwich.
What saves the book are the many excellent passages on music—composing music, listening to music, playing music. Suddenly, the tone shifts from potboiler paperback to literary dazzling. What makes this doubly impressive is how effortless Powers makes it seem. For, as many of you might know, writing about music is an exacting challenge. Some writers even say it can’t be done. But Powers does it, and with aplomb. It’s an expert performance.
These many scintillating sections are spread out, interspersed throughout his lesser material. I really wish that there was some other literary form Powers could work with. He is an awful novelist, but he is an exceptional writer. He could have cut out all the story from this book, expanded the sections on music, and released it as a series of essays on music appreciation. Now that would be a good book.
It is always a tricky business psychoanalyzing an author from their work, but let me give it a try. Another one of the main themes in this book is the goal of art, the purpose of the artist. Should the artist forsake the public and write abstruse and difficult pieces, only for dedicated connoisseurs? Or should the artist try to appeal to as many people as possible? The composer, Peter Els, struggles with these questions, vacillating between high concept and a desire for simple beauty. He feels pulled between accessibility and depth, between popularity and sophistication, between shock and charm, between the old and the new.
I noticed a similar tension in the construction of this book, as the well-wrought sections on music alternated with the tawdry sections of plot. It was as if Powers was trying to have his cake and eat it too by stuffing his book full of flavors for palates of all kind, be they discerning or not. But simply jamming together high and low is not the path to greatness. Take Don Quixote. Anyone can enjoy that book, not because it conscientiously combined accessibility and sophistication, but because the two are not really opposites. If you write well enough, people will want to read your work. Great artists don't conform their work to pre-existing tastes, but conform the tastes to their work.
Another duality explored in this book is that between tradition and the new. But in art, this is a false dichotomy. Should Peter Els seek to break free of history, or should he imitate his forebears? The mistake of this question is that these aren't mutually exclusive options, and the best works do both. Read Ulysses. That book could hardly be more ensconced in tradition, and yet it is still scandalous and daring after all these years.
In the present day, we have separated ‘popular’ genres from ‘literary’ genres, thus giving people the impression that something that appeals to people can’t be refined, and something refined can’t appeal to people. The popular genres don't have traditions, they have conventions; and the literary authors try to convince themselves that they have neither traditions nor conventions, but create their work like God created the universe—from nothing. But the truth is that you're only as good as your influences. It’s a shame, really. Powers falls into this trap, and tries to dig himself out by double-dipping. It doesn’t work. Instead here we have a hybrid work, half angel, half cretin, destined for the dustbin of history.
This book is a strange mix of excellence and mediocrity. Luckily for me, in this work the two are as distinct and separate as Bach is from Björk, so it won’t be a challenge to tweeze them apart. Let me start with the bad.
Richard Powers seems to have learned to write novels by reading cheap thrillers. The characters are walking clichés, the dialogue sounds like it was transcribed from a bad cop show, the plot is filled with false excitement. Even worse, Powers has a penchant for similes and metaphors so bad that they could be used in writing classes as instructive examples.
Here is a fairly typical sentence: “Students drifted in front of his car like targets in the easy level of a video game.” Now, this sentence wouldn’t necessarily be bad if the main character was a video game addict. But Peter Els, the protagonist, is a seventy-year-old composer of avant-garde music, who has not once (so far as I can tell) set his eyes on a video game. So this comparison is obviously being supplied by Powers himself. But why? Since it has nothing to do with the character’s story or personality, it adds nothing to the characterization; it only distracts. But there’s another problem. A simile is supposed to make something vague and unfamiliar more concrete and familiar. Instead, this sentence takes something familiar—people walking aimlessly—and compares it to something that neither the character, nor even some of this book’s readers, may be familiar with.
Here’s another example: “For as long as he could, Els crept between camps like a Swiss diplomatic courier.” And how is that, exactly? How many of us have seen one of those? How does this comparison allow the reader to picture Els’s movement in her mind’s eye? It doesn’t. It only throws us off, breaking the spell of the narrative. And once again, the character himself has no experience with Swiss diplomatic couriers. This comparison wouldn’t occur to him, and means nothing to the reader. It is just Powers trying to be clever.
Another irritating element were the frequent contemporary references. Lady Gaga, tablets, mosh pits, Facebook, Twitter—doesn’t Powers know how dated these will sound in the coming years? For my part, even the references that are still current made me cringe. Apart from the specific pieces of music mentioned, these references were seldom integral to the book; most were mere name-dropping, inserted just to make the book seem relevant.
The themes suffer from the same flaw. A main theme is simply anxiety about the present day: anxiety about technology, about our new interconnectedness, about biological engineering, about terrorist attacks. All anxiety of this sort is doomed to appear absurd and hackneyed in a short while, if it doesn’t already. The world is always changing, and people are always finding new things to fear. Tomorrow, genetic engineering will seem as unremarkable as a turkey sandwich.
What saves the book are the many excellent passages on music—composing music, listening to music, playing music. Suddenly, the tone shifts from potboiler paperback to literary dazzling. What makes this doubly impressive is how effortless Powers makes it seem. For, as many of you might know, writing about music is an exacting challenge. Some writers even say it can’t be done. But Powers does it, and with aplomb. It’s an expert performance.
These many scintillating sections are spread out, interspersed throughout his lesser material. I really wish that there was some other literary form Powers could work with. He is an awful novelist, but he is an exceptional writer. He could have cut out all the story from this book, expanded the sections on music, and released it as a series of essays on music appreciation. Now that would be a good book.
It is always a tricky business psychoanalyzing an author from their work, but let me give it a try. Another one of the main themes in this book is the goal of art, the purpose of the artist. Should the artist forsake the public and write abstruse and difficult pieces, only for dedicated connoisseurs? Or should the artist try to appeal to as many people as possible? The composer, Peter Els, struggles with these questions, vacillating between high concept and a desire for simple beauty. He feels pulled between accessibility and depth, between popularity and sophistication, between shock and charm, between the old and the new.
I noticed a similar tension in the construction of this book, as the well-wrought sections on music alternated with the tawdry sections of plot. It was as if Powers was trying to have his cake and eat it too by stuffing his book full of flavors for palates of all kind, be they discerning or not. But simply jamming together high and low is not the path to greatness. Take Don Quixote. Anyone can enjoy that book, not because it conscientiously combined accessibility and sophistication, but because the two are not really opposites. If you write well enough, people will want to read your work. Great artists don't conform their work to pre-existing tastes, but conform the tastes to their work.
Another duality explored in this book is that between tradition and the new. But in art, this is a false dichotomy. Should Peter Els seek to break free of history, or should he imitate his forebears? The mistake of this question is that these aren't mutually exclusive options, and the best works do both. Read Ulysses. That book could hardly be more ensconced in tradition, and yet it is still scandalous and daring after all these years.
In the present day, we have separated ‘popular’ genres from ‘literary’ genres, thus giving people the impression that something that appeals to people can’t be refined, and something refined can’t appeal to people. The popular genres don't have traditions, they have conventions; and the literary authors try to convince themselves that they have neither traditions nor conventions, but create their work like God created the universe—from nothing. But the truth is that you're only as good as your influences. It’s a shame, really. Powers falls into this trap, and tries to dig himself out by double-dipping. It doesn’t work. Instead here we have a hybrid work, half angel, half cretin, destined for the dustbin of history.
September 1, 2016
“What is it you wanted from…[music, fiction, art?]”
“Awe. Surprise. Suspense. Refreshment. A sense of the infinite. Beauty.”--from Orpheo
I always receive news of a new Powers novel with excitement. I think to enjoy his novels you must just allow yourself to be led, just for a little while. He is telling you a story that requires you to make connections. Powers has the heart of a musician and the soul of a scientist but his mode of communication is language.
This novel is about art, and what it means for our lives today, and what the boundaries are. Peter Els is a seventy-something musician who gave up everything, including his wife and daughter, for his music. He created music that people often didn’t like, and couldn’t follow. When he did finally create music that was meaningful to people, he refused to have it performed because it felt exploitative.
There are two threads in this novel. One is El’s regret for having missed the central meaning of life—to be with people you love. Els began to see that one can hear music everywhere, in ordinary outside noises, and that losing his family was the big regret of his life. The second thread is that Els, now in old age and at the end of his time on earth, wants to create music that transcends the time in which we live and changes as our lives change. This, he feels, will be a more permanent legacy than any music he could create for now which bridges past and future. He wants to connect that past with the present and the future. He conceives of the idea to implant a musical phrase into living bacteria so that it will evolve with the times. This is perceived by government regulators as subversive and he is pursued.
Ideas about art, how it is created, how it is perceived, what constitutes art are all central to this novel. In addition, Powers muses about plentitude, and solitude, and how we can manage either, or both, and what they mean for our perception of art. When you have ALL music to listen to at any time in any place, can you hear anything? Attention is harder to get, harder to keep. Powers says, paraphrasing from his interview with Nancy Pearl, “The challenge of today’s human is in meeting the increase in capacity of what we are able to do.”
Orfeo almost seems like it is written in another language. Just like music is a language, this book has pauses, codas, interwoven threads for different voices, all adding up to a larger piece…
Powers shares stories, partially made up but based in history, of composers and the act of creation and how certain pieces come into being, notably Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps or Quartet for The End of Time. The emotions and feelings of the composer are in the music that we hear and that our bodies feel. In an interview with Nancy Pearl, Powers asks the question, “There is something about a pattern of sounds that compels our bodies. Is it in the physics of creation or is it learned?”
These stories about creation and the meaning behind the music are riveting and meaningful and add immeasurably to our understanding of, and appreciation of, the pieces. On his website, Powers shares a link to the music mentioned in Orfeo, a list of the more important pieces and suggested renderings of that music.
In a series of interviews conducted after the publication of this book, Powers tells Salon.com that his “alternate career” would have been music. He tells Nancy Pearl that he began studies as a physicist:
Salon interviews Richard Powers
Washington Independent Review of Books Beth Kingsley writes a review of Orfeo
Nancy Pearl talks with Richard Powers
Richard Powers introduces his novel
I want to tell you in advance that these referrals to articles and interviews may not help you understand or appreciate the novel. What they do is enhance your experience of the novel. If you didn’t enjoy the mind of Powers by reading his novel, you may be even more confused by the man in person. He goes deep and one has to listen with both ears and full mind, not with divided attention. I am not criticizing divided attention. We all have that. But one must sink into this novel and into his interviews with a willing resignation. A second read, a second listen may yield greater understanding. Don't be frustrated. Be intrigued. If you do take the time, you may find something very special, unique, and powerful. This is a man who could, perhaps, have been anything, but he chose to tell stories. Following him is a remarkable journey.
“If no one is listening, your art is set free.”
“Awe. Surprise. Suspense. Refreshment. A sense of the infinite. Beauty.”--from Orpheo
Orpheus could make the stones weep, animate the inanimate. The love of his life is taken to the underworld. Orpheus tries to get her back and creates music to tame the underworld, but he dies at the hands of those that cannot hear his divine music.
I always receive news of a new Powers novel with excitement. I think to enjoy his novels you must just allow yourself to be led, just for a little while. He is telling you a story that requires you to make connections. Powers has the heart of a musician and the soul of a scientist but his mode of communication is language.
This novel is about art, and what it means for our lives today, and what the boundaries are. Peter Els is a seventy-something musician who gave up everything, including his wife and daughter, for his music. He created music that people often didn’t like, and couldn’t follow. When he did finally create music that was meaningful to people, he refused to have it performed because it felt exploitative.
There are two threads in this novel. One is El’s regret for having missed the central meaning of life—to be with people you love. Els began to see that one can hear music everywhere, in ordinary outside noises, and that losing his family was the big regret of his life. The second thread is that Els, now in old age and at the end of his time on earth, wants to create music that transcends the time in which we live and changes as our lives change. This, he feels, will be a more permanent legacy than any music he could create for now which bridges past and future. He wants to connect that past with the present and the future. He conceives of the idea to implant a musical phrase into living bacteria so that it will evolve with the times. This is perceived by government regulators as subversive and he is pursued.
Ideas about art, how it is created, how it is perceived, what constitutes art are all central to this novel. In addition, Powers muses about plentitude, and solitude, and how we can manage either, or both, and what they mean for our perception of art. When you have ALL music to listen to at any time in any place, can you hear anything? Attention is harder to get, harder to keep. Powers says, paraphrasing from his interview with Nancy Pearl, “The challenge of today’s human is in meeting the increase in capacity of what we are able to do.”
Orfeo almost seems like it is written in another language. Just like music is a language, this book has pauses, codas, interwoven threads for different voices, all adding up to a larger piece…
Powers shares stories, partially made up but based in history, of composers and the act of creation and how certain pieces come into being, notably Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps or Quartet for The End of Time. The emotions and feelings of the composer are in the music that we hear and that our bodies feel. In an interview with Nancy Pearl, Powers asks the question, “There is something about a pattern of sounds that compels our bodies. Is it in the physics of creation or is it learned?”
These stories about creation and the meaning behind the music are riveting and meaningful and add immeasurably to our understanding of, and appreciation of, the pieces. On his website, Powers shares a link to the music mentioned in Orfeo, a list of the more important pieces and suggested renderings of that music.
In a series of interviews conducted after the publication of this book, Powers tells Salon.com that his “alternate career” would have been music. He tells Nancy Pearl that he began studies as a physicist:
paraphrased: ‘As a young man, I always wanted to be a scientist, but I discovered as I grew older that to be successful as a physicist, one has to specialize narrowly. At the same time I fell under the spell of [a great teacher of literature] and I realized that there is one field that encompasses all fields, and that is writing.’
Salon interviews Richard Powers
Washington Independent Review of Books Beth Kingsley writes a review of Orfeo
Nancy Pearl talks with Richard Powers
Richard Powers introduces his novel
I want to tell you in advance that these referrals to articles and interviews may not help you understand or appreciate the novel. What they do is enhance your experience of the novel. If you didn’t enjoy the mind of Powers by reading his novel, you may be even more confused by the man in person. He goes deep and one has to listen with both ears and full mind, not with divided attention. I am not criticizing divided attention. We all have that. But one must sink into this novel and into his interviews with a willing resignation. A second read, a second listen may yield greater understanding. Don't be frustrated. Be intrigued. If you do take the time, you may find something very special, unique, and powerful. This is a man who could, perhaps, have been anything, but he chose to tell stories. Following him is a remarkable journey.
“If no one is listening, your art is set free.”
January 7, 2016
Not quite my tempo.
June 27, 2014
His lush descriptions of each symphony and opera had me YouTube'ing each piece to play as I read along. Magnificent writing. Peter was such a tragic figure. Loved the plot, narrative and ending.
November 30, 2015
“Only keep still, wait, and hear, and the world will open.”
― Richard Powers, Orfeo
All my life I thought I knew what music was. But I was like a kid who confuses his grandfather with God @Terrorchord
No. Not everybody's jam, but for me it resonnated perfectly. It was like Powers gradually tightened the D-string on this novel, page-by-page, pushing the natural frequencies, abusing the pitch, gradually twisting the wave harmonics of his prose to a point where the novel and its narrative explode and break at the very end. I will write more (add more pictures perhaps), yes I must write more tomorrow after I've thought about as I fall asleep. I want to think about it as I wake at 2 am to pee. For now? I need to wind-down. Deflate. Diminuendo.
Just know this book is a stage where Powers is able to exhibit his love for classical music and his theory that life, love, nature is a giant work of performance art with an infinite number of progressions, fugues, loops, expositions, derivatives, etc. All we need to do is to stop, listen and hear the music behind the silence, the songs stacked behind the infinite, the opera playing on the rocks that makes our cells vibrate together in a symphony of life and orchestration of possibility. Yes, I loved it.
― Richard Powers, Orfeo
All my life I thought I knew what music was. But I was like a kid who confuses his grandfather with God @Terrorchord
No. Not everybody's jam, but for me it resonnated perfectly. It was like Powers gradually tightened the D-string on this novel, page-by-page, pushing the natural frequencies, abusing the pitch, gradually twisting the wave harmonics of his prose to a point where the novel and its narrative explode and break at the very end. I will write more (add more pictures perhaps), yes I must write more tomorrow after I've thought about as I fall asleep. I want to think about it as I wake at 2 am to pee. For now? I need to wind-down. Deflate. Diminuendo.
Just know this book is a stage where Powers is able to exhibit his love for classical music and his theory that life, love, nature is a giant work of performance art with an infinite number of progressions, fugues, loops, expositions, derivatives, etc. All we need to do is to stop, listen and hear the music behind the silence, the songs stacked behind the infinite, the opera playing on the rocks that makes our cells vibrate together in a symphony of life and orchestration of possibility. Yes, I loved it.
March 8, 2014
In a true Olympic fashion, I had difficulty and controversy with my reading and ranking of the latest from Richard Powers. A much younger Jon would've been wowed by Powers' aplomb navigating the higher harmonies of music and chemistry. In fact he treats them as twin summits. Grumpy Jon of the present offers a sigh. There were times in Orfeo when the pages crackled, the meditation on Messiaen was marvelous and the backtracking through the new music of the 60s and 70s was a historic quilt of perfection. My chief complaint was of the Powers template rather than the story revealed here. We begin our narrative with Peter Els, a composer and scientist. This is established as if it were the most natural state of the world. I kept waiting for him to encounter a computer engineer who was also an expert in Flemish art history. I am serious about that. Powers illuminates the world of the brainy and geeky. He allows such a platform without guile, thus it is practically fantasy. I have deeply enjoyed most of Powers work over the last 15 years but I am sensing a constraint on the part of the author. Do we need more tales of lost love and the jarring confrontation with history and the lesser angels of our natures?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSVu1...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5lgAU...
These are a pair of reasons to embrace this novel.
postscript
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSVu1...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5lgAU...
These are a pair of reasons to embrace this novel.
postscript
March 31, 2022
"How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!"
The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers in my opinion is one of the best books of the last decades, and to a lesser extent I also appreciated The Echo Maker and Generosity: An Enhancement, but this novel didn’t do it for me. Probably that’s because I am not really a melomaniac and have only a basic knowledge of the technical aspects of music. And then it becomes difficult to tackle this book.
The author regularly fires a salvo of musicological terms that really made me dizzy; and he does the same with chemical-biological terms (because this novel also has a counterpart in that field). I can understand that people with a musical passion and with a lot of knowledge of the technical aspects of musicology are lyrical about this book, but for me his language register was regularly so overdone that it became a let down. If Power's intention was to evoke the same experience of confusion and disorientation in the reader as with the listener of experimental music, then he has certainly succeeded in doing so.
Let me put this into perspective right away: I must admit that I regularly was charmed by the description and analysis of the pieces of music protagonist Peter Els listens to; Powers does that in a very lyrical way and knows how to convey the appeal of the music involved. That even drove me to look up the works on YouTube, such as the wonderful 'Proverb' by Steve Reich, an ingenious variation on Wittgenstein's statement “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life! " So in that sense I think Powers' introduction to various, rather eccentric pieces of music sometimes was a success.
But then the story as such: the 70-year-old Peter Els, a former music teacher and passionately engaged in experimental music, has ended up completely in marginality, and even more when he starts as an amateur geneticist and at home experiments in trying to introduce a musicale partiture into the genetic code of bacteria. Powers several times tries to convey the connection between musical and genetic codes, being of the same extraordinary complexity, but for me that remained rather far-fetched. And also the whole chase part (Els is seen as a dangerous bio-terrorist and is chased by just about all US secret services) didn’t really work for me; it was a very weak basis to carry the weight of the story. Moreover, for the umpteenth time in his novels, Powers presents an elder male protagonist who regrets he has ruined his live, blinded by some delusion; this has become a cliché-element in his novels. So no, for me, apart from a few aspects, this novel didn’t really resonate.
The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers in my opinion is one of the best books of the last decades, and to a lesser extent I also appreciated The Echo Maker and Generosity: An Enhancement, but this novel didn’t do it for me. Probably that’s because I am not really a melomaniac and have only a basic knowledge of the technical aspects of music. And then it becomes difficult to tackle this book.
The author regularly fires a salvo of musicological terms that really made me dizzy; and he does the same with chemical-biological terms (because this novel also has a counterpart in that field). I can understand that people with a musical passion and with a lot of knowledge of the technical aspects of musicology are lyrical about this book, but for me his language register was regularly so overdone that it became a let down. If Power's intention was to evoke the same experience of confusion and disorientation in the reader as with the listener of experimental music, then he has certainly succeeded in doing so.
Let me put this into perspective right away: I must admit that I regularly was charmed by the description and analysis of the pieces of music protagonist Peter Els listens to; Powers does that in a very lyrical way and knows how to convey the appeal of the music involved. That even drove me to look up the works on YouTube, such as the wonderful 'Proverb' by Steve Reich, an ingenious variation on Wittgenstein's statement “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life! " So in that sense I think Powers' introduction to various, rather eccentric pieces of music sometimes was a success.
But then the story as such: the 70-year-old Peter Els, a former music teacher and passionately engaged in experimental music, has ended up completely in marginality, and even more when he starts as an amateur geneticist and at home experiments in trying to introduce a musicale partiture into the genetic code of bacteria. Powers several times tries to convey the connection between musical and genetic codes, being of the same extraordinary complexity, but for me that remained rather far-fetched. And also the whole chase part (Els is seen as a dangerous bio-terrorist and is chased by just about all US secret services) didn’t really work for me; it was a very weak basis to carry the weight of the story. Moreover, for the umpteenth time in his novels, Powers presents an elder male protagonist who regrets he has ruined his live, blinded by some delusion; this has become a cliché-element in his novels. So no, for me, apart from a few aspects, this novel didn’t really resonate.
January 5, 2014
This was a reading experience unlike any other I can recall. I felt like an anthropologist walking into a lost civilization or a birder spotting an extinct species. Richard Powers' novel is fresh, original, and a totally unexpected gift.
It takes a prodigious talent to tackle an esoteric subject like music composition while still allowing the subject to be accessible to those not literate in its unique language. This story was captivating, challenging, awe-inspiring and tender. I just found it amazing.
One of the elements that engaged me so much was the protagonist's total dedication to his vocation. It was stimulating and thought provoking to follow this character as he allowed his life to be totally subservient to his passion to create (or, perhaps, release) music. Powers is an inventive writer and the language of his novel is beautiful, yet never overblown.
It is wonderful to discover a contemporary writer with such an original mind. I was very fortunate to be introduced to Powers through FirstReads. Don't miss this book.
It takes a prodigious talent to tackle an esoteric subject like music composition while still allowing the subject to be accessible to those not literate in its unique language. This story was captivating, challenging, awe-inspiring and tender. I just found it amazing.
One of the elements that engaged me so much was the protagonist's total dedication to his vocation. It was stimulating and thought provoking to follow this character as he allowed his life to be totally subservient to his passion to create (or, perhaps, release) music. Powers is an inventive writer and the language of his novel is beautiful, yet never overblown.
It is wonderful to discover a contemporary writer with such an original mind. I was very fortunate to be introduced to Powers through FirstReads. Don't miss this book.
February 24, 2014
Being a Richard Powers fan has never been a difficult task. It isn't akin to being a N.Y. Mets fan in baseball where bearing disappointment becomes a war-scarred tattoo of bravery and resilience. Speaking in his resonant voice he captured knowledge of subjects; math, neurology, computer science as tools to weave his literature around and within. This has been a successful mixture in the past not only for its jolt of uniqueness but its parts sewn together into a unified work of literary accomplishment.
Orfeo places his vast intelligence on display regarding music and bio-sciences. The man is brilliant. What is brilliant though and what is its contribution to a piece of literary work? This is a tricky bit of conjuring. The workings of the treasure-trove of non-fictional facts must be handled in a manner in which it joins fictional elements in enterprising means of driving the narrative forward. Orfeo's patchwork quilt doesn't come together, the needle and thread remains within sight, patches, though pleasing in and of themselves show little thought in their placement, more concerned with the artist's pre-arranged intent, met or not.
I believe his intent was a third person narrative with a distant focus, engagement with a character whose main style is a vagueness which leaves him relating to the world in abstract musical presentiments, searchings, and an elliptical style which eyes a complete 360 degree fulfillment.
This is a large circle and requires Power's to shift from present to past at rapid time speed with hopes that at the end the past will catch up to the present and the antic sentimental ending will cinch together. It is clear from the beginning Powers' is not comfortable this time with the format as he relies on similes to an exhaustive degree-some heavy-laden clunkers that disrupt the narrative-pointing to a lack of confidence in his material or readership. Further reinforcing this is the awkward, repetitive pounding of certain key points he is hoping his readers eventually get.
I admired the central tenet of times twisting in on itself as it passes. At his best, feeling the old Powers' confidence, he portrayed what is revolutionary at the moment becomes stale and old fashioned as new generations take their rightful ownership of time and its own history soon to pass. Also I enjoyed the passage through life of the protagonist starting off at the elder retired part of life engulfed in trying to find the answers to life's quest through the materialistic exploration of cells, how they can be arranged and rearranged into new configurations as musical notes can. It results in the authorities believing he is attempting to create a pathogen to be unleashed upon the fearful public. He goes on the lamb afraid to give himself up and explain his harmless innocence. His journey of evasion follows his choice of living, as we scuttle back and forth in time, in the search of musical configurations to the exclusion of responsibilities in the concrete world. The artist committed to their art to the exclusion of the world has been an enticing story for me. However, not when others get hurt. Also not when the attempt to portray it is bumbled over and over and over, again. This was a well contrived opportunity I believe Powers' fumbled.
I give it 3 stars because much of my anguish may be due to the despair of disappointment with so much excitement and expectation of the arrival of a new Power's book. My largest difficulty may evolve from Powers' sheer joy and knowledge of music and my astounding ineptness and ignorance. If my understanding of music was greater I may have thought this novel superb? It is possible I missed the whole thing?
All that I can do is attest to how I see it. Throughout the book I felt the usually sure hand of Powers struggling. The old formula of wrapping the plot and its underlying message with a portion of science or slice of concrete culture, as he did with the effects of a rare neurological disorder successfully in the The Echo Maker, did not work this time. It wavered lost, by the end fading to slapstick, sentimentality, and other maneuvers to tie things together. My heroes are not supposed to fail me. That is why I pay them to be heroes. I expect Powers' to regain the comfort of his voice and allow himself the uniqueness of moving beyond the formula and not worrying about the closure of perfect circles but exploring the inner richness of his amazing mind.
Orfeo places his vast intelligence on display regarding music and bio-sciences. The man is brilliant. What is brilliant though and what is its contribution to a piece of literary work? This is a tricky bit of conjuring. The workings of the treasure-trove of non-fictional facts must be handled in a manner in which it joins fictional elements in enterprising means of driving the narrative forward. Orfeo's patchwork quilt doesn't come together, the needle and thread remains within sight, patches, though pleasing in and of themselves show little thought in their placement, more concerned with the artist's pre-arranged intent, met or not.
I believe his intent was a third person narrative with a distant focus, engagement with a character whose main style is a vagueness which leaves him relating to the world in abstract musical presentiments, searchings, and an elliptical style which eyes a complete 360 degree fulfillment.
This is a large circle and requires Power's to shift from present to past at rapid time speed with hopes that at the end the past will catch up to the present and the antic sentimental ending will cinch together. It is clear from the beginning Powers' is not comfortable this time with the format as he relies on similes to an exhaustive degree-some heavy-laden clunkers that disrupt the narrative-pointing to a lack of confidence in his material or readership. Further reinforcing this is the awkward, repetitive pounding of certain key points he is hoping his readers eventually get.
I admired the central tenet of times twisting in on itself as it passes. At his best, feeling the old Powers' confidence, he portrayed what is revolutionary at the moment becomes stale and old fashioned as new generations take their rightful ownership of time and its own history soon to pass. Also I enjoyed the passage through life of the protagonist starting off at the elder retired part of life engulfed in trying to find the answers to life's quest through the materialistic exploration of cells, how they can be arranged and rearranged into new configurations as musical notes can. It results in the authorities believing he is attempting to create a pathogen to be unleashed upon the fearful public. He goes on the lamb afraid to give himself up and explain his harmless innocence. His journey of evasion follows his choice of living, as we scuttle back and forth in time, in the search of musical configurations to the exclusion of responsibilities in the concrete world. The artist committed to their art to the exclusion of the world has been an enticing story for me. However, not when others get hurt. Also not when the attempt to portray it is bumbled over and over and over, again. This was a well contrived opportunity I believe Powers' fumbled.
I give it 3 stars because much of my anguish may be due to the despair of disappointment with so much excitement and expectation of the arrival of a new Power's book. My largest difficulty may evolve from Powers' sheer joy and knowledge of music and my astounding ineptness and ignorance. If my understanding of music was greater I may have thought this novel superb? It is possible I missed the whole thing?
All that I can do is attest to how I see it. Throughout the book I felt the usually sure hand of Powers struggling. The old formula of wrapping the plot and its underlying message with a portion of science or slice of concrete culture, as he did with the effects of a rare neurological disorder successfully in the The Echo Maker, did not work this time. It wavered lost, by the end fading to slapstick, sentimentality, and other maneuvers to tie things together. My heroes are not supposed to fail me. That is why I pay them to be heroes. I expect Powers' to regain the comfort of his voice and allow himself the uniqueness of moving beyond the formula and not worrying about the closure of perfect circles but exploring the inner richness of his amazing mind.
December 24, 2015
3 or 5 stars. I hesitated to write this review. How to begin?
I consider that " The time we are singing " as a masterpiece. I like Richard Powers even if I find his following books less good. I was excited enough by this new novel. Powers is the only one capable of writing such a book.
His knowledge in musics allow him to master the subject. He wrrite on contemporary music. It is less glamorous than the baroque. We know from the beginning that he is going to write an history of the contemporary music.
First stumbling block, in any rigor, the history should begin in Darmstadt in Germany. It is here that from the end of 50th to the beginning to the 70th had been theorized this music. Stockhausen, Nono, Boulez, Cage, Roll, Ligeti … Wolfgang Steinecke invited them every 2 years for a workshop. From their oppositions were born the various currents of the contemporary music. If the character Els had gone to Darmstadt, it would have aged and Powers was complained to modify the course of the novel.
After hundred pages, the novel takes a formal character. In fact there are two accounts, an history of the contemporary music seen by Els and a biotech thriller. The problem it is that the two stories are not linked. And we have the impression that it is a mix of " Generosity " and " Time we are singing ". The construction of the novel is too visible. It is as we see a house foundations and its roof. I almost gave up.
And the book moves forward. The talent of Powers operates. It is an immense stylist. And the end is really astonishing. The quest of Els for the perfect music makes sense. DNA and harmony is a beautiful image.
The choice of the serratia is interesting. I remember my old Prof. of bacteriology, laic and anticlerical who explained us, not without pleasure, that the hosts of blood were contaminated by this bacterium. I do not like too much the description of Messiaen. He defined himself as bird-trapper (oiseleur) and not musician on his visit card. He was a great mystic, a little bit lunar. The comparison with François d' Assise is obvious. His only opera is inspired by the Fioretti. It is during an entract (it is a long opera) that I heard that I was going to be a father. I have a particular tenderness for Messiaen.
Thus 5 stars because Powers has really too much talent.
I consider that " The time we are singing " as a masterpiece. I like Richard Powers even if I find his following books less good. I was excited enough by this new novel. Powers is the only one capable of writing such a book.
His knowledge in musics allow him to master the subject. He wrrite on contemporary music. It is less glamorous than the baroque. We know from the beginning that he is going to write an history of the contemporary music.
First stumbling block, in any rigor, the history should begin in Darmstadt in Germany. It is here that from the end of 50th to the beginning to the 70th had been theorized this music. Stockhausen, Nono, Boulez, Cage, Roll, Ligeti … Wolfgang Steinecke invited them every 2 years for a workshop. From their oppositions were born the various currents of the contemporary music. If the character Els had gone to Darmstadt, it would have aged and Powers was complained to modify the course of the novel.
After hundred pages, the novel takes a formal character. In fact there are two accounts, an history of the contemporary music seen by Els and a biotech thriller. The problem it is that the two stories are not linked. And we have the impression that it is a mix of " Generosity " and " Time we are singing ". The construction of the novel is too visible. It is as we see a house foundations and its roof. I almost gave up.
And the book moves forward. The talent of Powers operates. It is an immense stylist. And the end is really astonishing. The quest of Els for the perfect music makes sense. DNA and harmony is a beautiful image.
The choice of the serratia is interesting. I remember my old Prof. of bacteriology, laic and anticlerical who explained us, not without pleasure, that the hosts of blood were contaminated by this bacterium. I do not like too much the description of Messiaen. He defined himself as bird-trapper (oiseleur) and not musician on his visit card. He was a great mystic, a little bit lunar. The comparison with François d' Assise is obvious. His only opera is inspired by the Fioretti. It is during an entract (it is a long opera) that I heard that I was going to be a father. I have a particular tenderness for Messiaen.
Thus 5 stars because Powers has really too much talent.
August 14, 2016
Brilliant! Richard Powers does the almost impossible: explaining how an avant-garde composer comes to be. It’s a story of Peter Els, a retired composer who decides he wants to write music that will change it’s listeners: bring them to something outside of themselves. He combines his innate science ability with music composition. He creates a microbiology lab in his home, trying to isolate and create a new bacteria strain with a new DNA. He wants to compose in DNA: to put music files in living cells. Through an unexpected event, Homeland Security becomes involved and hapless Els finds himself running from the law as a potential bio-terrorist(he wonders, at a point in the novel, if any of his music compositions would be deemed “terrorist” fodder). While he’s on the lam, he ruminates as to how he got to this place in his life. The reader learns how a boy who planned to be a chemist became a music composer. Powers mixes science with art and pop culture along with current events to create a sometimes madcap and sometimes touching story of a flawed man. Els journey leads him to visit the mistakes he’s made in his life. The journey allows the reader to understand not only music composition, but how artists become “edgy”. Although Powers is writing about music composition, there are many similarities to writing. “Art was a combat, an exhausting struggle…Even the most magnificent piece would end up as collateral damage in the endless war over taste.” This isn’t a book for everyone. It’s not to be read while tired. It’s pure literature at it’s finest. It will be on the “Best of 2014” book lists.
October 4, 2014
This is a unique, almost Kafkaesque novel about Peter Els, a retired musician/amateur chemist who is suspected by the Department of Homeland Security of being a terrorist. The book skips back and forth between the present day, and a step-by-step retelling of his life. Els is an avant-garde composer with a vivid bent toward creating experimental music.
The language of music permeates the entire novel. In fact, perhaps half of the novel is a detailed description of musical compositions, some composed by Els but mostly by others. As a composer myself, I found the book to be extraordinary. You will never find a more detailed description of music compositions in a fiction novel. A non-musician might have a bit of difficulty with some of the concepts, and might become bored with the descriptions. The plot moves slowly--you can't read this novel for the plot--it's about the musical imagery and metaphors.
Els' problem is that he loves music more than people. He leaves all the people he loves, including his wife, daughter, and his best friend. In retirement, he designs a bizarre experiment that might immortalize his music, making it permanent for the ages.
I didn't read this book--I listened to it as an audiobook, narrated by Christopher Hurt. The narration is excellent, with just enough intonation to help the listener understand who is talking.
The language of music permeates the entire novel. In fact, perhaps half of the novel is a detailed description of musical compositions, some composed by Els but mostly by others. As a composer myself, I found the book to be extraordinary. You will never find a more detailed description of music compositions in a fiction novel. A non-musician might have a bit of difficulty with some of the concepts, and might become bored with the descriptions. The plot moves slowly--you can't read this novel for the plot--it's about the musical imagery and metaphors.
Els' problem is that he loves music more than people. He leaves all the people he loves, including his wife, daughter, and his best friend. In retirement, he designs a bizarre experiment that might immortalize his music, making it permanent for the ages.
I didn't read this book--I listened to it as an audiobook, narrated by Christopher Hurt. The narration is excellent, with just enough intonation to help the listener understand who is talking.
January 7, 2016
(4.5) A retired composer and amateur biochemist finds himself on the run from the police in small-town America. A timely, highly cerebral satire on anti-terrorism paranoia, yet still witty and full of heart.
Music provides not just the novel’s content but also its symbolic language. Powers carefully links music and chemistry through his metaphors. However, for someone without specialist knowledge, it can be difficult to follow Powers down esoteric musical pathways. Still, I have great admiration for his clever writing, even if in the end I prefer the simplicity of Els’s contemporary, Twitter-documented odyssey to his nostalgia for past compositions.
There is something Kafkaesque about the absurdity of Els’s predicament, and the parallels with the Orpheus myth (plus an inconclusive ending) left me troubled, despite Els’s comforting maxim that “even the least threatening tune will outlast you by generations. There’s pleasure in knowing that, too.”
(See my full review at The Bookbag.)
Music provides not just the novel’s content but also its symbolic language. Powers carefully links music and chemistry through his metaphors. However, for someone without specialist knowledge, it can be difficult to follow Powers down esoteric musical pathways. Still, I have great admiration for his clever writing, even if in the end I prefer the simplicity of Els’s contemporary, Twitter-documented odyssey to his nostalgia for past compositions.
There is something Kafkaesque about the absurdity of Els’s predicament, and the parallels with the Orpheus myth (plus an inconclusive ending) left me troubled, despite Els’s comforting maxim that “even the least threatening tune will outlast you by generations. There’s pleasure in knowing that, too.”
(See my full review at The Bookbag.)
December 26, 2014
I am very impressed by the Booker longlist this year. And this was my first experience with Richard Powers, and he is someone I'll read more of.
"I wanted music to be the antidote to the familiar. That's how I became a terrorist."
A lot of what I liked about this book is personal, and I can't expect most people to have the same experience. If you majored in music, this is definitely going to resonate with you on more levels.
Those elements:
-Musical language, well it permeates everything. The main character is a composer, not necessarily all that successful. Entire descriptions of compositions that you only can hear in your head, plus a very lovely telling of the first performance of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time.
-Bloomington! There is more than one connection to the town, but that's where he lives in the present day, and he names places I have been.
-Synaesthesia and composing to cause change in the world - sounds like Scriabin although he's never named. Ironic, because one of the papers I submitted that successfully got me into a PhD program at Indiana was on this topic.
-George Crumb, who I met a few years ago. His philosophy is quoted extensively near the beginning, alongside John Cage who I wish I had met.
-A major and attempted career in music, only to feel deep down it should have been the hobby....
Somehow all of this is wound around a story about a composer who retires and starts manipulating DNA, and is on the run from the FBI for bio-terrorism. The ending was satisfying and I enjoyed the story along the way. I stayed up until midnight reading "the last 300 pages."
There are no chapters. Just almost 400 pages with no break, but that goes along with how the story is told, backwards and forwards in time. There are little excerpts that are explained later, and I won't ruin that surprise.
"Be grateful for anything that still cuts. Dissonance is a beauty that familiarity hasn't yet destroyed."
"To call any music subversive, to say that a set of pitches and rhythms could pose a threat to real power... ludicrous. And yet, from Plato to Pyongyang, that endless need to legislate sounds. To police the harmonic possibilities as if there were no limits to music there."
Discussed on Episode 012 of the Reading Envy Podcast.
"I wanted music to be the antidote to the familiar. That's how I became a terrorist."
A lot of what I liked about this book is personal, and I can't expect most people to have the same experience. If you majored in music, this is definitely going to resonate with you on more levels.
Those elements:
-Musical language, well it permeates everything. The main character is a composer, not necessarily all that successful. Entire descriptions of compositions that you only can hear in your head, plus a very lovely telling of the first performance of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time.
-Bloomington! There is more than one connection to the town, but that's where he lives in the present day, and he names places I have been.
-Synaesthesia and composing to cause change in the world - sounds like Scriabin although he's never named. Ironic, because one of the papers I submitted that successfully got me into a PhD program at Indiana was on this topic.
-George Crumb, who I met a few years ago. His philosophy is quoted extensively near the beginning, alongside John Cage who I wish I had met.
-A major and attempted career in music, only to feel deep down it should have been the hobby....
Somehow all of this is wound around a story about a composer who retires and starts manipulating DNA, and is on the run from the FBI for bio-terrorism. The ending was satisfying and I enjoyed the story along the way. I stayed up until midnight reading "the last 300 pages."
There are no chapters. Just almost 400 pages with no break, but that goes along with how the story is told, backwards and forwards in time. There are little excerpts that are explained later, and I won't ruin that surprise.
"Be grateful for anything that still cuts. Dissonance is a beauty that familiarity hasn't yet destroyed."
"To call any music subversive, to say that a set of pitches and rhythms could pose a threat to real power... ludicrous. And yet, from Plato to Pyongyang, that endless need to legislate sounds. To police the harmonic possibilities as if there were no limits to music there."
Discussed on Episode 012 of the Reading Envy Podcast.
October 10, 2018
Orfeo: personaggio della mitologia greca, figlio di Eagro (Οἴαγρος, il "solitario agreste"), e di una delle Muse (Polinnia o Calliope), cantore che piega al suono della sua lira gli animali e tutta la natura. (Treccani)
Peter Els, il nostro protagonista, è una persona che fin dalla tenera età scopre di avere una predilezione per la musica, la musica nel senso di una sperimentazione di ciò che è la natura e ciò che ci dice ogni attimo della nostra vita, questo, ovviamente, lo capirà col tempo, però la scintilla c'è ed è molto forte. Els rimanendo in silenzio in casa, riesce a captare suoni che la maggior parte della gente nemmeno si sognerebbe di sentire, in giro per strada, nei bar, al parco, con la pioggia, con la neve... insomma la musica, il suono semplice e puro della natura lo ammanta, lo colpisce, lo sradica dal normal vivere. Così decide...
Tra citazioni di opere musicali, liriche, da camera, classiche, sperimentali, tra cui:
- Dmitrij Šostakovič - Quartetto per archi N° 3 --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3C5r...
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Jupiter --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz8Ns...
- Krzysztof Penderecki - Trenodia per le vittime di Hiroshima --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp3Bl...
- Gabriel Fauré - Elegia --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPqto...
- Frédéric Chopin - Prelude in E-Minor --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef-4B...
Richard Powers ci accompagna, letteralmente, perchè ci fa da narratore esterno della vita di Els. La scrittura è straordinaria, mi sono sentito parte del racconto da subito, ne leggevo poco alla volta proprio per non finirlo subito, ma le parole scorrevano così come le pagine ed ero lì spettatore/protagonista di ciò che veniva raccontato.
La musica come fondamento della vita stessa, di tutto ciò che ci circonda!
Regola della creazione numero uno. Fai zag quando si aspettano che fai zig.
Peter Els, il nostro protagonista, è una persona che fin dalla tenera età scopre di avere una predilezione per la musica, la musica nel senso di una sperimentazione di ciò che è la natura e ciò che ci dice ogni attimo della nostra vita, questo, ovviamente, lo capirà col tempo, però la scintilla c'è ed è molto forte. Els rimanendo in silenzio in casa, riesce a captare suoni che la maggior parte della gente nemmeno si sognerebbe di sentire, in giro per strada, nei bar, al parco, con la pioggia, con la neve... insomma la musica, il suono semplice e puro della natura lo ammanta, lo colpisce, lo sradica dal normal vivere. Così decide...
Tra citazioni di opere musicali, liriche, da camera, classiche, sperimentali, tra cui:
- Dmitrij Šostakovič - Quartetto per archi N° 3 --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3C5r...
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Jupiter --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz8Ns...
- Krzysztof Penderecki - Trenodia per le vittime di Hiroshima --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp3Bl...
- Gabriel Fauré - Elegia --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPqto...
- Frédéric Chopin - Prelude in E-Minor --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef-4B...
Richard Powers ci accompagna, letteralmente, perchè ci fa da narratore esterno della vita di Els. La scrittura è straordinaria, mi sono sentito parte del racconto da subito, ne leggevo poco alla volta proprio per non finirlo subito, ma le parole scorrevano così come le pagine ed ero lì spettatore/protagonista di ciò che veniva raccontato.
La musica come fondamento della vita stessa, di tutto ciò che ci circonda!
Regola della creazione numero uno. Fai zag quando si aspettano che fai zig.
November 20, 2017
Something that now sounds unbelievable to me is that in 2014 when Orfeo was long listed for the Man Booker Prize, I had not heard of Richard Powers. I read this book and immediately set out on a journey to read all his other novels. That journey finished just over a year ago when I completed The Echo Maker. Since then, I have been a bit busy reading other books, but it has always been my intention to re-read everything Powers has written. And I am very excited that a new book is arriving in April next year.
That sets the scene for this review and lets you know which direction it is heading in.
In the very first paragraph of Orfeo, Powers tells us that the book is set "in the tenth year of the altered world." In one short phrase, he tells us that the book’s present is 2011 and that it is a post-9/11 story. From that point, the story branches out into two intertwined narratives. Peter Els is an elderly man who was a composer of music. When we meet him at the start of the book, he is working on his retirement hobby which is garage biotechnology. When he calls 911 because his dog has died, the police visit and are suspicious of what they see (remember: this is a post-9/11 book). When Els goes out for his usual early morning walk, he returns to find his house being ransacked by government agents searching for evidence that he is a bioterrorist. He decides to flee. Intertwined with the story of his flight, we read his history from childhood through his first love to his marriage, fatherhood and divorce. This history is the history of his musical compositions and his struggle to write the music he longs to hear.
Gradually, the stories converge.
There are no chapters, but every few pages there is a short quote or message that breaks into the text. Often these are the points where the narrative switches between its two threads. It is only as the narratives converge at the end of the book that we learn the significance of these short interruptions.
The story of a frail, elderly man on the run from the government. The story of his history: his loves, his music. Powers is often accused of having no emotion or heart in his writing, but this book contradicts all of that. It is powerfully emotional.
But the story is only half of what is going on here. In reality, this is a book that gives Powers the chance to write about music. And no one can write about music like Powers can write about music. Those who have read others of his books will know this already from, as examples, The Gold Bug Variations and from Powers’ (in my opinion) masterpiece The Time of Our Singing. In fact, Orfeo is almost “The Gold Bug Variations - The Sequel”.
He combs through the changing harmonies, now and then hearing secret messages float above the fray.
Isn’t the point of music to move listeners? Mattison smiled. No. The point of music is to wake listeners up. To break all our ready-made habits.
And after listening to Messaien’s Quartet For The End Of Time (which was the major musical discovery for me whilst reading this and which I have listened to at least twice every day while reading the book):
Well, he began. But someone shushed him. Lisa Keane held up one palm. Could we please just . . . ? Paulette Hewerdine pressed three fingers over her mouth, ambushed by the thought of an old and careless cruelty. Shields swung his head like a searchlight. Each held on, a little longer, to the silence of their choosing. The engineer Bock was first to speak. Holy crap. That was fifty minutes? I now know how to double my remaining life. No one seemed to need anything more from Els. For the better part of an hour, they’d done nothing but listen. There was nothing to do now but come up slowly enough to avoid the bends.
I made a list as I read of all the music mentioned, from Mozart via Mahler via Cage via Bill Haley via Nirvana to Radiohead (I put them last because they are my favourites!). The list of pieces is too long to include here, but I am very glad to have discovered the Messaien as part of this re-read. It includes music history, such as the tale of how Messaien’s piece came to be written in a POW camp and premiered on broken instruments before a crowd of bemused prisoners and guards. It includes a discussion of Shostakovich which is in essence a summary of Julian Barnes’ The Noise of Time but written a few years before that (even down to Shostakovich sitting waiting for the middle of the night visit that will take him away).
There is a repeated motif in the book where students listen to a single note being played and gradually learn to hear the harmonies that hide behind the main note. First the obvious ones - the octaves. But then the more obscure intervals. The book feels something like that: all the time you are reading it, you feel that there is more going on, there are things you could hear if your ear or imagination was up to the task.
I am not sure whether a knowledge of music and music theory is necessary for reading this book. I am sure it helps. I am sure that a love for music at some level is required: it is a feast of musical interpretation and description.
That said, if you love music and you love books, this is pretty close to perfect.
That sets the scene for this review and lets you know which direction it is heading in.
In the very first paragraph of Orfeo, Powers tells us that the book is set "in the tenth year of the altered world." In one short phrase, he tells us that the book’s present is 2011 and that it is a post-9/11 story. From that point, the story branches out into two intertwined narratives. Peter Els is an elderly man who was a composer of music. When we meet him at the start of the book, he is working on his retirement hobby which is garage biotechnology. When he calls 911 because his dog has died, the police visit and are suspicious of what they see (remember: this is a post-9/11 book). When Els goes out for his usual early morning walk, he returns to find his house being ransacked by government agents searching for evidence that he is a bioterrorist. He decides to flee. Intertwined with the story of his flight, we read his history from childhood through his first love to his marriage, fatherhood and divorce. This history is the history of his musical compositions and his struggle to write the music he longs to hear.
Gradually, the stories converge.
There are no chapters, but every few pages there is a short quote or message that breaks into the text. Often these are the points where the narrative switches between its two threads. It is only as the narratives converge at the end of the book that we learn the significance of these short interruptions.
The story of a frail, elderly man on the run from the government. The story of his history: his loves, his music. Powers is often accused of having no emotion or heart in his writing, but this book contradicts all of that. It is powerfully emotional.
But the story is only half of what is going on here. In reality, this is a book that gives Powers the chance to write about music. And no one can write about music like Powers can write about music. Those who have read others of his books will know this already from, as examples, The Gold Bug Variations and from Powers’ (in my opinion) masterpiece The Time of Our Singing. In fact, Orfeo is almost “The Gold Bug Variations - The Sequel”.
He combs through the changing harmonies, now and then hearing secret messages float above the fray.
Isn’t the point of music to move listeners? Mattison smiled. No. The point of music is to wake listeners up. To break all our ready-made habits.
And after listening to Messaien’s Quartet For The End Of Time (which was the major musical discovery for me whilst reading this and which I have listened to at least twice every day while reading the book):
Well, he began. But someone shushed him. Lisa Keane held up one palm. Could we please just . . . ? Paulette Hewerdine pressed three fingers over her mouth, ambushed by the thought of an old and careless cruelty. Shields swung his head like a searchlight. Each held on, a little longer, to the silence of their choosing. The engineer Bock was first to speak. Holy crap. That was fifty minutes? I now know how to double my remaining life. No one seemed to need anything more from Els. For the better part of an hour, they’d done nothing but listen. There was nothing to do now but come up slowly enough to avoid the bends.
I made a list as I read of all the music mentioned, from Mozart via Mahler via Cage via Bill Haley via Nirvana to Radiohead (I put them last because they are my favourites!). The list of pieces is too long to include here, but I am very glad to have discovered the Messaien as part of this re-read. It includes music history, such as the tale of how Messaien’s piece came to be written in a POW camp and premiered on broken instruments before a crowd of bemused prisoners and guards. It includes a discussion of Shostakovich which is in essence a summary of Julian Barnes’ The Noise of Time but written a few years before that (even down to Shostakovich sitting waiting for the middle of the night visit that will take him away).
There is a repeated motif in the book where students listen to a single note being played and gradually learn to hear the harmonies that hide behind the main note. First the obvious ones - the octaves. But then the more obscure intervals. The book feels something like that: all the time you are reading it, you feel that there is more going on, there are things you could hear if your ear or imagination was up to the task.
I am not sure whether a knowledge of music and music theory is necessary for reading this book. I am sure it helps. I am sure that a love for music at some level is required: it is a feast of musical interpretation and description.
That said, if you love music and you love books, this is pretty close to perfect.
September 14, 2014
Richard Powers has written an engaging story about an aging avant-garde musician on the run from the authorities. Modern science and technology combine with the soaring beauty of music and art in this remarkable book.
Peter Els calls 911 when his dog dies, and the police officers notice he has a room full of lab equipment that he bought online. Els is attempting to insert a sequence of musical patterns into the DNA of a common bacteria that thrives around water sources, Serratia marcescens. A few days later when Els returns to his house after jogging, he sees a biohazard team from the Joint Security Task Force confiscating his lab. Fearing arrest, Els drives on by and finds he's already being called a dangerous bioterrorist by the media.
The book moves forward as Els travels west visiting meaningful places, and making peace with the people he loved the most in his life (like the journey of the musical Orpheus from Greek mythology.) At the same time, flashbacks give us the story of Peter's life as a child through his adult years as a composer and a professor. The book is not divided into chapters, but the parts are separated by Tweet-length epigraphs.
Powers has written some beautiful poetic prose as he describes Els listening to pieces of music that had deep meaning in his life. Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," which was written and performed for the first time in a Nazi POW camp, was especially unforgettable. His descriptions of the voices of Steve Reich's "Proverb" was absolutely gorgeous, and sent me to you.tube to listen to the music. Even the picture of Els listening to a bird chirping in a tree made me smile.
This was a moving story about the life of a man with the gift of special musical abilities. For years Els put his musical compositions ahead of his personal relationships, so his trip was a journey of redemption. "Orfeo" is especially recommended for those that love music and literary fiction.
Peter Els calls 911 when his dog dies, and the police officers notice he has a room full of lab equipment that he bought online. Els is attempting to insert a sequence of musical patterns into the DNA of a common bacteria that thrives around water sources, Serratia marcescens. A few days later when Els returns to his house after jogging, he sees a biohazard team from the Joint Security Task Force confiscating his lab. Fearing arrest, Els drives on by and finds he's already being called a dangerous bioterrorist by the media.
The book moves forward as Els travels west visiting meaningful places, and making peace with the people he loved the most in his life (like the journey of the musical Orpheus from Greek mythology.) At the same time, flashbacks give us the story of Peter's life as a child through his adult years as a composer and a professor. The book is not divided into chapters, but the parts are separated by Tweet-length epigraphs.
Powers has written some beautiful poetic prose as he describes Els listening to pieces of music that had deep meaning in his life. Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," which was written and performed for the first time in a Nazi POW camp, was especially unforgettable. His descriptions of the voices of Steve Reich's "Proverb" was absolutely gorgeous, and sent me to you.tube to listen to the music. Even the picture of Els listening to a bird chirping in a tree made me smile.
This was a moving story about the life of a man with the gift of special musical abilities. For years Els put his musical compositions ahead of his personal relationships, so his trip was a journey of redemption. "Orfeo" is especially recommended for those that love music and literary fiction.
November 18, 2021
"Orfėją" skaičiau ilgai - tikrai viena iš sudėtingesnių pastarojo meto knygų - bet buvo verta pasistengti. Pirma pažintis su Powersu, taigi negaliu palyginti su The Overstory, bet, kaip suprantu, čia iš dalies lokalesnė istorija - ne globalinės bėdos, o estetikos + gyvenimo pusiau drama, pusiau istorija.
Siužetas: senas genijus kompozitorius eksperimentuoja su bakterijom, nori į jų DNR įrašyti muzikines kompozicijas. Nieks jo nesupranta ir FTB pradeda ieškot kaip biologinio teroristo. Jis bėga nuo teisėsaugos, paraleliai mums pasakojamas gyvenimas "iki to".
Pagrindinis teksto bruožas, galintis jį ir atvert, ir uždaryt, - MUZIKA. Neturiu muzikinio išsilavinimo, tai vos ne fiziškai jaučiau, kuriose vietose negaliu pakaifuoti iš atpažinimo džiaugsmo: nei dėl kūrinio kompozicijos, kuri garantuotai yra muzikinė, su atliepais didžiosiomis raidėmis, šuoliais iš vienos laiko plotmės į kitą; nei dėl visų pagr. veikėjo Elso pamąstymų apie gyvenimą, muziką, įvairius sąskambius, disonansus, kaip juos atpažinti, kiek dalykų telpa viename garse. Bet net ir suvokiant, kad tau labai daug iš to, ką skaitai, lieka nepažinu, vis tiek įdomu gilintis, kaip jis rašo apie muziką, tiek kokią nors klasiką, tiek išgalvotas pagr. veikėjo sukurtas operas. Neįtikėtinai gražu ir užburia, nė vienam puslapy negalvojau, kad ko nors yra per daug, kas nors pertekliška - o kai nepagauni knygos kodo, juk visada taip galvoji. Patiko ir muzikinis bendravimas su dukra, ir žmona/balsas/muzikos žanras, ir chaotiškas draugas, sugriaunantis gyvenimą, vos tik pasirodo. Galbūt visą tekstą galima perskaityt ir kaip skirtingus balsus / instrumentus / audiovizualikos komponentus - tiek jau nesuprantu. Jis yra milijonais sluoksnių protingesnis negu aš. Ir vis tiek teikia džiaugsmo.
Citatos atsitiktinės, sunku išsirinkti:
Skaitydama prisiminiau du dalykus:
1. Enard'o Kompasą, kuris irgi kažkaip panašiai aprėpia pasaulį, bet kuriame vis dėlto per daug to egocentrizmo, kai palygini, kaip grakščiai tą galima padaryti,
2. Glasso albumą "Book of Longing" pagal ne tokius ypatingus Coheno tekstus, kažkada visas buvo prieinamas youtube, dabar tik pora dainų: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAn8s..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DHGa..., https://www.shazam.com/track/56371814..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxS0y...
-1 žvaigždutė už tai, kad genijaus (dar neegzistuojančio) istorija, nemėgstu :D
+1 žvaigždutė už visas kitas istorijas: konclageryje sukurtą "Kvartetą laiko pabaigai", kompozitorius pabėgėlius, gyvą sudegintą sektą ir ją ataidinčią operą apie Miunsterio apsiaustį, visas bakterijas, kalinius ir senelius, klausančius muzikos ir ją kažkaip atkartojančius
Siužetas: senas genijus kompozitorius eksperimentuoja su bakterijom, nori į jų DNR įrašyti muzikines kompozicijas. Nieks jo nesupranta ir FTB pradeda ieškot kaip biologinio teroristo. Jis bėga nuo teisėsaugos, paraleliai mums pasakojamas gyvenimas "iki to".
Pagrindinis teksto bruožas, galintis jį ir atvert, ir uždaryt, - MUZIKA. Neturiu muzikinio išsilavinimo, tai vos ne fiziškai jaučiau, kuriose vietose negaliu pakaifuoti iš atpažinimo džiaugsmo: nei dėl kūrinio kompozicijos, kuri garantuotai yra muzikinė, su atliepais didžiosiomis raidėmis, šuoliais iš vienos laiko plotmės į kitą; nei dėl visų pagr. veikėjo Elso pamąstymų apie gyvenimą, muziką, įvairius sąskambius, disonansus, kaip juos atpažinti, kiek dalykų telpa viename garse. Bet net ir suvokiant, kad tau labai daug iš to, ką skaitai, lieka nepažinu, vis tiek įdomu gilintis, kaip jis rašo apie muziką, tiek kokią nors klasiką, tiek išgalvotas pagr. veikėjo sukurtas operas. Neįtikėtinai gražu ir užburia, nė vienam puslapy negalvojau, kad ko nors yra per daug, kas nors pertekliška - o kai nepagauni knygos kodo, juk visada taip galvoji. Patiko ir muzikinis bendravimas su dukra, ir žmona/balsas/muzikos žanras, ir chaotiškas draugas, sugriaunantis gyvenimą, vos tik pasirodo. Galbūt visą tekstą galima perskaityt ir kaip skirtingus balsus / instrumentus / audiovizualikos komponentus - tiek jau nesuprantu. Jis yra milijonais sluoksnių protingesnis negu aš. Ir vis tiek teikia džiaugsmo.
Citatos atsitiktinės, sunku išsirinkti:
Antra daina rėmėsi dviem motyvais: punktyriniu ritmu, lyg išsiderinusiu metronomu, tiksinčiu skirtingais intervalais, ir ciklu neakordinių tonų, susiduriančių su kitais neakordiniais ir niekada nepereinančių į akordo toną. Madė gūžėsi, tiesėsi, linko į priekį ir, svirdama atgal, tiesė rankas į priekį, nestygo vietoje, lyg įkalinta svetimame kūne.
Laikas - tai upė, nešanti mane.
Dainavo ji vienoda tonacija, primenančia bažnytinę giesmę. Paskui trumpas lyrinis atsakymas į tą ilgą frazę:
Bet aš esu upė.
Per kiekvieną pertraukėlę muzikantai suko virš galvų įvairiaspalvius balionus, išmargintus ištįsusiais arba suplotais laikrodžiais, virpančiomis oscilografo kreivėmis, atomų branduoliais, skriejančiomis galaktikomis. Vėl skamba ta pati natų serija, transponuota ir apversta.
Laikas - tai tigras, ryjantis mane.
Atsakė kantilena:
Bet tas tigras - tai aš.
Sulig trečiu posmu ant muzikantų ir ant galinės sienos plūstelėjo vaizdai: maištininkai Biafroje, riaušės Detroite, Danango bombardavimas ir jaunasis Če, žuvęs vos prieš kelis mėnesius. Madė, sutramdžiusi virpančias rankas ir kojas, uždainavo kaip niekad:
Laikas - tai ugnis, ryjanti mane.
Bet ta ugnis - tai aš.
(p. 171-172)
Žmonės kūrė muziką kaip įmanydami. Fugas iš trupmenų. Preliudą iš pi. Sonatas iš saulės vėjo, rinkimų rezultatų, ledo šelfų įtrūkių ir tirpimo, stebimų iš kosmoso. Taigi visiškai logiška, kad apie biomuziką susikūrė ištisa mokykla su savo asociacija, laikraščiu ir kasmetinėmis konferencijomis. Smegenų bangos, odos laidumas ir širdies ritmas: bet kas galėjo įkvėpti negirdėtą muziką. Styginių kvartetas grojo amino rūgščių sekos arklių hemoglobine sekvencijas. Nė vienas žmogus nepageidavo muzikos nė trupučio daugiau, nei būta, tačiau ląstelių gilumoje kažkas troško kurti milijonus kartų daugiau melodijų.
2009 metų rudenį, sparčiais žingsniais vedžiodamas Fideliją ilga tako kilpa po botanikos sodą, Elsas pastebėjo tiesiai į jį skrendant drėgną ąžuolo lapą. Po akimirkos, nuėmęs nuo striukės prikibusį lapą, apžiūrėjo jį ir gyslelių raizginyje pamatė įrašytus ritmus. Šiek tiek apdujęs atsisėdo ant didelio akmens palei taką. Delnu glostydamas akmenį, pajuto, kaip šiurkštus paviršius groja natas nelyginant mechaninio pianino volas. Jis pakėlė akis: muzika sklandė padangėje debesų kamuoliais, o dainos sklaidėsi virš artimiausio namo, nuguldamos stogo malksnas. Gausus slaptas choras aplink jį, užrašytas nežinoma notacija, kantriai laukė transkripcijos. (p. 353)
Skaitydama prisiminiau du dalykus:
1. Enard'o Kompasą, kuris irgi kažkaip panašiai aprėpia pasaulį, bet kuriame vis dėlto per daug to egocentrizmo, kai palygini, kaip grakščiai tą galima padaryti,
2. Glasso albumą "Book of Longing" pagal ne tokius ypatingus Coheno tekstus, kažkada visas buvo prieinamas youtube, dabar tik pora dainų: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAn8s..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DHGa..., https://www.shazam.com/track/56371814..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxS0y...
-1 žvaigždutė už tai, kad genijaus (dar neegzistuojančio) istorija, nemėgstu :D
+1 žvaigždutė už visas kitas istorijas: konclageryje sukurtą "Kvartetą laiko pabaigai", kompozitorius pabėgėlius, gyvą sudegintą sektą ir ją ataidinčią operą apie Miunsterio apsiaustį, visas bakterijas, kalinius ir senelius, klausančius muzikos ir ją kažkaip atkartojančius
December 19, 2017
“Let’s make something, Daddy. Something good.”
The mythical Greek poet Orpheus (Orfeo in Italian) inspired a sort of religion around his poetry called Orphism, in which the human soul is considered divine, but doomed to come back over and over in multiple lives. The stories inside this story feel like multiple lives going on at the same time, kind of like an orchestral performance.
There a musical story running throughout—sometimes background, sometimes foreground, just like the music in our lives. We see how it’s always there. “Will the road lead back to E-flat minor, or leap free into a wilder place?” We begin to get it. “But music doesn’t do. It is.”
There’s a political story, primarily dealing with the age of paranoia we are currently in--all the disasters that led up to it, and what it can lead to.
There’s a family, love and friendship story, about what brings people together and what sometimes pushes them apart.
And at the heart of it is a life story. The life of Peter Els. Musician. Scientist. Seeker. Mistake-maker. Maestro. We watch him discover how our understanding changes at different ages and stages of life. And I believe he is one of the most sympathetic and interesting characters I have ever read.
Now I want to read more Richard Powers, read all of Richard Powers. He made something good here. “A rose no one knows.”
The mythical Greek poet Orpheus (Orfeo in Italian) inspired a sort of religion around his poetry called Orphism, in which the human soul is considered divine, but doomed to come back over and over in multiple lives. The stories inside this story feel like multiple lives going on at the same time, kind of like an orchestral performance.
There a musical story running throughout—sometimes background, sometimes foreground, just like the music in our lives. We see how it’s always there. “Will the road lead back to E-flat minor, or leap free into a wilder place?” We begin to get it. “But music doesn’t do. It is.”
There’s a political story, primarily dealing with the age of paranoia we are currently in--all the disasters that led up to it, and what it can lead to.
There’s a family, love and friendship story, about what brings people together and what sometimes pushes them apart.
And at the heart of it is a life story. The life of Peter Els. Musician. Scientist. Seeker. Mistake-maker. Maestro. We watch him discover how our understanding changes at different ages and stages of life. And I believe he is one of the most sympathetic and interesting characters I have ever read.
Now I want to read more Richard Powers, read all of Richard Powers. He made something good here. “A rose no one knows.”
February 9, 2019
Last year I read The Overstory. I was majorly impressed. I had not read Richard Powers before but the minute I finished that novel I wanted to read everything he wrote. Rather than go back to his first novel and read forward, as I usually do with an author, I decided to do the opposite. I created a personal challenge to read his novels in reverse order of publication, one per month throughout 2019. Orfeo is the novel that preceded The Overstory.
I loved this one as much though for different reasons, the main one being it is centered around music, the deepest love of my life. Peter Els is a composer, just about my age. The novel begins in the present time of post 9/11 days with a catastrophe and then proceeds forward with interspersed sections that trace Peter's entire life. I loved that too because it was like looking at a parallel history to my own.
Catastrophe, mostly self-created, has defined his life. His goals have included composing music that pushes boundaries, seeking connection between music and science (he is also a biologist), and loving his wife and daughter.
These goals clash and bring about a desperate friction between his drive to create and his need for love and human connection. That line from Joni Mitchell: "Caught in my struggle for higher achievement and my search for love" (from the song "Same Situation" on Court and Spark.)
Due to his latest experiment in his home microbiology lab, Peter is being pursued by Homeland Security as a possible terrorist. He goes on the lam, hoping to tie up the loose ends of his life or even possibly escape capture.
After completing this one, I see that to read Richard Powers you must be in shape as a reader. Like being trained for a marathon because you need fitness and stamina. Reading him is exhausting, though in a good way. You must be willing to learn stuff you didn't know before and to suspend disbelief to the utmost.
The reward is to have your thinking opened wide, possibly disarranged, and to find yourself with more ways than previously conceived of looking at life, people, history, science, and the world we live in today.
Not for everyone, I concede, but I love that.
August 6, 2018
Orfeo’s protagonist Peter Els, a composer and all-round iconoclast, is lying in bed with his soon-to-be wife when he says:
The story of Peter Els in Orfeo is more uneven, alternating between present seventy-year-old Els in a tale of intrigue and musical mayhem, and the development of his younger self, as well as a big story chunk in a concentration camp during WWII when a pivotal piece of music called Quartet for the End of Time was written by French composer Olivier Messiaen.
The present story is strong and compelling but past stories are sometimes so awash in musical descriptions and technical lingo that, although the writing excites me, I got tired. I love music and have been known to listen repeatedly to the same pieces, but I’m an ignorant appreciator and do not have a musical education. I listened to recordings of some of the music in Orfeo, but that didn’t help the narrative come alive. For musicians, the lingo may work. For me, it spirals out of conversation with the reader in a way that I’ve experienced several geniuses spiral: it’s as if they have a brain spasm of brilliance that takes them out of relationship in the middle of a conversation and suddenly you are being talked at rather than with. Despite all the science lingo in The Overstory, this never happened because Nature was such a strong character. Between the science and musicology in Orfeo, I began to feel like a witness to genius but without a relationship to it.
Nevertheless the brilliance is so bright and exciting, I kept reading, and eventually relationships did return between the characters: young Els and his wife and daughter became wrenchingly real, and I realized that the very spiraling out of relationship that I experienced as a reader is what drives young Els to destroy his marriage. How do you write that without also alienating the reader? That’s a real question I don’t know the answer to. Of one of young Els’s musical compositions, a critic writes “evasive, anachronistic, and at times oddly bracing. But this reviewer admits to leaving after an hour and fifty-three minutes. (216)” That perfectly describes the problem and wonder of this book.
But all this changes and by the latter third of the book, old Els and his friends were equally engaging, and the last 40 pages exploded in such transcendent meaning, humor, and sadness that I was embarrassed by my former criticisms.
I want to write music that will change its listeners.After having read The Overstory by Richard Powers, as well as a bunch of his interviews, I would say this is the writer’s desire voiced through his character. In the mighty The Overstory, he certainly succeeds, giving Nature (trees) a microphone and readers an immersive experience of being both Nature and its champion—bringing us to something much larger than what we normally are.
Change how?
Move them beyond their private tastes. Bring them to something outside themselves. (130)
The story of Peter Els in Orfeo is more uneven, alternating between present seventy-year-old Els in a tale of intrigue and musical mayhem, and the development of his younger self, as well as a big story chunk in a concentration camp during WWII when a pivotal piece of music called Quartet for the End of Time was written by French composer Olivier Messiaen.
The present story is strong and compelling but past stories are sometimes so awash in musical descriptions and technical lingo that, although the writing excites me, I got tired. I love music and have been known to listen repeatedly to the same pieces, but I’m an ignorant appreciator and do not have a musical education. I listened to recordings of some of the music in Orfeo, but that didn’t help the narrative come alive. For musicians, the lingo may work. For me, it spirals out of conversation with the reader in a way that I’ve experienced several geniuses spiral: it’s as if they have a brain spasm of brilliance that takes them out of relationship in the middle of a conversation and suddenly you are being talked at rather than with. Despite all the science lingo in The Overstory, this never happened because Nature was such a strong character. Between the science and musicology in Orfeo, I began to feel like a witness to genius but without a relationship to it.
Nevertheless the brilliance is so bright and exciting, I kept reading, and eventually relationships did return between the characters: young Els and his wife and daughter became wrenchingly real, and I realized that the very spiraling out of relationship that I experienced as a reader is what drives young Els to destroy his marriage. How do you write that without also alienating the reader? That’s a real question I don’t know the answer to. Of one of young Els’s musical compositions, a critic writes “evasive, anachronistic, and at times oddly bracing. But this reviewer admits to leaving after an hour and fifty-three minutes. (216)” That perfectly describes the problem and wonder of this book.
But all this changes and by the latter third of the book, old Els and his friends were equally engaging, and the last 40 pages exploded in such transcendent meaning, humor, and sadness that I was embarrassed by my former criticisms.
September 12, 2021
Richard Powers has this brilliant ability to grasp my attention, not because of his plotlines (I usually couldn't care less) but due to the themes he so skillfully introduces in his novels, be it music like here or the life of trees like in his most well known "Overstory".
He is not blessed with the most gentle hand when serving his ideas tough, to say the least. Those are often quite didactical. That is his weakness, but, generally, I don't mind that too much.
Here though, after being fascinated with discovering through this book so many fantastic pieces of experimental classical music, I was left bewildered by the growing pompousness and naivety of the main plotline. When his main character started using Twitter with the eagerness of early adopters, I just couldn't handle that anymore and was waiting for this whole thing to end. But the ending.... Jesus Christ, my head hurt.
Quite a few beautiful lines though.
He is not blessed with the most gentle hand when serving his ideas tough, to say the least. Those are often quite didactical. That is his weakness, but, generally, I don't mind that too much.
Here though, after being fascinated with discovering through this book so many fantastic pieces of experimental classical music, I was left bewildered by the growing pompousness and naivety of the main plotline. When his main character started using Twitter with the eagerness of early adopters, I just couldn't handle that anymore and was waiting for this whole thing to end. But the ending.... Jesus Christ, my head hurt.
Quite a few beautiful lines though.
December 20, 2015
Just before and after the announcement of last year's Booker longlist (for which Orfeo was correctly tipped), I read several interviews with Richard Powers. Here was an author I'd never taken any notice of before, but was worth getting excited about. He said things I'd thought and hadn't quite managed to articulate, and put them so very so well, and added more to the mix. Someone eruditely familiar with multiple academic disciplines, not stuck in the literary hall of mirrors. I had a brief crush on him, until I saw some more recent photo, or one from a less flattering angle. Afterwards, as with Will Self (where the unfancying process took over 15 years), he still makes my brain fizz. The writing was sexy regardless of its subject being a classical composer who in person must have been on the nerdy, unassuming side, quietly brilliant and often solitary, not the sort of musical genius who'd have had an interest in groupies even if they'd been there. Nearing retirement, there's some spark with an exceptional female student - but this character, and this writer, don't do what so many others have in novels. The world of sound and what can be done with it is so vibrantly alive through Powers' descriptions that those other things things don't seem very important to the immersed reader, just as they didn't to Peter Els.
Els' obliviousness to aspects of the external world is what puts him at the eye of a nightmarish civil liberties storm; he has been indulging his other great talents, for maths and chemistry, in retirement, playing with the music-like patterns of nature in experimental composing with common bacterial DNA in a home lab. Wrongfully suspected of terrorism, his road-trip flight across America and the scenes and friends of his younger years isn't North by Northwest in terms of pure action, but the tension is ever present. Like Harold Fry and The Hundred Year Old Man - fellows in a recent minor literary trend - his old age and previous professional credentials make him a harmless yet competent eccentric in the reader's eyes. (Els' situation was, frighteningly, based on a real case, that of artist Steve Kurtz, who's obliquely referred to by Els' daughter in the book.)
The descriptions of music, content and experience, are superlative. After reading a clutch of 33 1/3s recently, it became obvious that descriptions of music - beyond writing down structures and instruments and production techniques, which I wish I could also pinpoint so clearly - are also interpretations. Listening to the music whilst reading some of the 33 1/3 descriptions made me argue with the word (which lost their former beauty), and distracted me from the music. I don't know or have much of the classical music referenced in Orfeo, but it didn't matter if intentionally reading the descriptions silently, enjoyed best as a form of imagined music themselves. (I was most sorely tempted, though, during a scene using Steve Reich's Proverb, and would have broken if it hadn't turned out I didn't have the piece.) Powers' narrative is, in any case, wise enough to acknowledge that people hear differently. I understood Els' physically and mentally transcendent experience of Mozart's Jupiter symphony via my own with 'Night' by The Field on Sound of Light/Nordic Light Hotel. (He's not a real person, but it's still a shame he didn't know not to overdo it and wear out the effect. I've often thought I wouldn't want to describe how and what that piece is to me in case verbalising it, fully and publicly, robbed it of its power. And others might then listen to it and be underwhelmed, 'meh' - just because, or because of bad equipment. It's unusually personal, something I didn't think or expect could be understood even by those I've been closest to. Though if it were possible to describe it so well as is done here, it might be.)
The novel is partly the story of Els' life, and with it of American avant-garde classical in the second half of the twentieth century; I've enjoyed some of this music in a haphazard way and wasn't previously aware of a 60s counterculture in classical as well as pop - one of which John Cage was part. (Unfortunately I've never stopped picturing the Ally McBeal character in response to the name, despite getting to know some of his music since.) Powers is one of those writers who imparts information seamlessly and comfortably, like listening to an erudite friend talk about their enthusiasms, though more elegantly phrased on the page than is conversation. I'm rarely moved to tears by books, but his account of Messiaen's creation of Quartet for the End of Time in a Nazi labour camp very nearly managed it. There are complex juxtapositions (counterpoints?) here on the idea of risk-taking in art, but never done so as to obviously belittle contemporary meanings of the phrase. Els' enfant terrible collaborator Richard Bonner pisses off a lot of people, but he doesn't run the risks of Shostakovich under Stalin. (The account, and the feat, of Shostakovich's Fifth, is breathtaking - a composition just conventional enough to allow him to survive; to convict Shostakovich for speaking out, the state would have had to admit crimes worthy of this Largo.) Whereas Els and Steve Kurtz ... Powers seems to indicate a new age of restriction, though with different dimensions. Mere classical music isn't taken as a threat; it's too obscure in form and audience. Near the end
There's something worthwhile - if slippery - here about politics. His gloom about the C21st world in other, cultural ways is very seductive; I agree but think it should also be questioned. (That he should question it? That I hope he's clever enough to say something more original, after having more time to think? There's something here - below - I puzzle over and want to answer, or want someone to answer. Perhaps only time can.) What I'd pasted last summer:
“Suppose you were born in 1962 and you are coming into your own and music starts to become essential to you,” says Powers. “You are right on the tail end of that sort of folk rock thing, but you are aware historically of how these guys were revolting in a way against the previous generation. And because of the nature of the distribution mechanisms that you talk about, where it’s two radio stations and one record store, there’s a saturation effect for whatever is in vogue and there has to be a countervailing cultural move just to refresh our ears. And that’s the start of punk.
“So you can see these revolutions and counter-revolutions and you can see a historical motion to popular music and it’s thrilling and you want to know what happens next. The state that you just described of permanent wonderful eclectic ubiquitous interchangeable availability — there’s no sense of historical thrust.”
Now, I’m starting to get it. Universal ubiquity has blown up the narrative.
“When all music is available to everybody all the time,” says Powers, “first of all, there can be no sense of something radically new and, second, you may never have the capacity to focus and concentrate yourself, a process which requires really filtering out a lot of noise in order to see the urgency of any particular utterance.”
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/09/the_a... *
For the moment, young artists seem to find excitement in it, and there's some degree of breakdown of tribalism (which is depressing to those of us who grew up defining ourselves by these things. But these musical tribes were after all mostly a manifestation of the mid-to-late C20th in certain countries; even reading about Eastern Europe in the 60s and 70s shows a different parallel world. There are positive arguments for this alleged breakdown of groupings too, but their complete demise is, I suspect, exaggerated.) Hasn't nearly all art always come from something else, and it just seems radically new because we personally haven't heard its predecessor yet? (A minor example I discovered a few weeks ago, prompted by one of those 33 1/3's: if I'd heard Eno's Another Green World - beyond the Arena theme - as a teenager, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci wouldn't have sounded odd in the slightest, rather brazenly derivative and almost pointless. Less and less sounds new as we age because we know more of what came before. The last time when I listened to much new music, there were plenty of interviews with keen multi-instrumentalist youngsters who'd grown up with music of all eras on tap, not knowing what they were 'supposed' to think of it, like Grimes or Melody's Echo Chamber (who may or may not still be around)... something new was/is happening now as a result of music-like-water. I can't help but feel this itself has to be a stage which will grow stale, that there will eventually be some reset somewhere, or that people will do it for themselves. Or everything will be a different shape from before and people will be okay with that, even if some of us find this everythingness everywhere tiring or unwelcome. (Hm. I really need to read Retromania.)
These are, more or less, the rants of the grumpy and old(er - at any rate not those still in the teens and early twenties where so much is new.) And Orfeo is very good, and poignant, about age. The sense of once having been able to do things, to remember with many layers of being what that was like, yet that doesn't help; now you can't do them regardless. Mostly in spoiler tags as it's near the end of the book.
Uncomfortable and jangly-paranoid the book may sometimes be - there's always a story about the past, or some music to lose oneself in though - it was in the end a small, individual-human, thing that made me angry. Because that's easier?
Whilst I compared Richard Powers to Will Self near the beginning of the post, Orfeo doesn't need as much looking-things-up as the typical Will Self novel (those music theory grades had some use) and he's a more conventional storyteller, in structure, in using a bit of movie-like suspension of disbelief. The erudition isn't via a load of vocab from eighteenth century novels, instead it's multidisciplinary. Discomfort and relevance, and political and cultural stances both would probably agree on are here, though this is a novel that considers itself entertainment too: and as such there is some there there.
* This interview, though, is just wow: http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...
Not too happy with this post; it doesn't do justice to the first 5-star book I've read this year, but I haven't yet worked out what to change.
Els' obliviousness to aspects of the external world is what puts him at the eye of a nightmarish civil liberties storm; he has been indulging his other great talents, for maths and chemistry, in retirement, playing with the music-like patterns of nature in experimental composing with common bacterial DNA in a home lab. Wrongfully suspected of terrorism, his road-trip flight across America and the scenes and friends of his younger years isn't North by Northwest in terms of pure action, but the tension is ever present. Like Harold Fry and The Hundred Year Old Man - fellows in a recent minor literary trend - his old age and previous professional credentials make him a harmless yet competent eccentric in the reader's eyes. (Els' situation was, frighteningly, based on a real case, that of artist Steve Kurtz, who's obliquely referred to by Els' daughter in the book.)
The descriptions of music, content and experience, are superlative. After reading a clutch of 33 1/3s recently, it became obvious that descriptions of music - beyond writing down structures and instruments and production techniques, which I wish I could also pinpoint so clearly - are also interpretations. Listening to the music whilst reading some of the 33 1/3 descriptions made me argue with the word (which lost their former beauty), and distracted me from the music. I don't know or have much of the classical music referenced in Orfeo, but it didn't matter if intentionally reading the descriptions silently, enjoyed best as a form of imagined music themselves. (I was most sorely tempted, though, during a scene using Steve Reich's Proverb, and would have broken if it hadn't turned out I didn't have the piece.) Powers' narrative is, in any case, wise enough to acknowledge that people hear differently. I understood Els' physically and mentally transcendent experience of Mozart's Jupiter symphony via my own with 'Night' by The Field on Sound of Light/Nordic Light Hotel. (He's not a real person, but it's still a shame he didn't know not to overdo it and wear out the effect. I've often thought I wouldn't want to describe how and what that piece is to me in case verbalising it, fully and publicly, robbed it of its power. And others might then listen to it and be underwhelmed, 'meh' - just because, or because of bad equipment. It's unusually personal, something I didn't think or expect could be understood even by those I've been closest to. Though if it were possible to describe it so well as is done here, it might be.)
The novel is partly the story of Els' life, and with it of American avant-garde classical in the second half of the twentieth century; I've enjoyed some of this music in a haphazard way and wasn't previously aware of a 60s counterculture in classical as well as pop - one of which John Cage was part. (Unfortunately I've never stopped picturing the Ally McBeal character in response to the name, despite getting to know some of his music since.) Powers is one of those writers who imparts information seamlessly and comfortably, like listening to an erudite friend talk about their enthusiasms, though more elegantly phrased on the page than is conversation. I'm rarely moved to tears by books, but his account of Messiaen's creation of Quartet for the End of Time in a Nazi labour camp very nearly managed it. There are complex juxtapositions (counterpoints?) here on the idea of risk-taking in art, but never done so as to obviously belittle contemporary meanings of the phrase. Els' enfant terrible collaborator Richard Bonner pisses off a lot of people, but he doesn't run the risks of Shostakovich under Stalin. (The account, and the feat, of Shostakovich's Fifth, is breathtaking - a composition just conventional enough to allow him to survive; to convict Shostakovich for speaking out, the state would have had to admit crimes worthy of this Largo.) Whereas Els and Steve Kurtz ... Powers seems to indicate a new age of restriction, though with different dimensions. Mere classical music isn't taken as a threat; it's too obscure in form and audience. Near the end
There's something worthwhile - if slippery - here about politics. His gloom about the C21st world in other, cultural ways is very seductive; I agree but think it should also be questioned. (That he should question it? That I hope he's clever enough to say something more original, after having more time to think? There's something here - below - I puzzle over and want to answer, or want someone to answer. Perhaps only time can.) What I'd pasted last summer:
“Suppose you were born in 1962 and you are coming into your own and music starts to become essential to you,” says Powers. “You are right on the tail end of that sort of folk rock thing, but you are aware historically of how these guys were revolting in a way against the previous generation. And because of the nature of the distribution mechanisms that you talk about, where it’s two radio stations and one record store, there’s a saturation effect for whatever is in vogue and there has to be a countervailing cultural move just to refresh our ears. And that’s the start of punk.
“So you can see these revolutions and counter-revolutions and you can see a historical motion to popular music and it’s thrilling and you want to know what happens next. The state that you just described of permanent wonderful eclectic ubiquitous interchangeable availability — there’s no sense of historical thrust.”
Now, I’m starting to get it. Universal ubiquity has blown up the narrative.
“When all music is available to everybody all the time,” says Powers, “first of all, there can be no sense of something radically new and, second, you may never have the capacity to focus and concentrate yourself, a process which requires really filtering out a lot of noise in order to see the urgency of any particular utterance.”
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/09/the_a... *
For the moment, young artists seem to find excitement in it, and there's some degree of breakdown of tribalism (which is depressing to those of us who grew up defining ourselves by these things. But these musical tribes were after all mostly a manifestation of the mid-to-late C20th in certain countries; even reading about Eastern Europe in the 60s and 70s shows a different parallel world. There are positive arguments for this alleged breakdown of groupings too, but their complete demise is, I suspect, exaggerated.) Hasn't nearly all art always come from something else, and it just seems radically new because we personally haven't heard its predecessor yet? (A minor example I discovered a few weeks ago, prompted by one of those 33 1/3's: if I'd heard Eno's Another Green World - beyond the Arena theme - as a teenager, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci wouldn't have sounded odd in the slightest, rather brazenly derivative and almost pointless. Less and less sounds new as we age because we know more of what came before. The last time when I listened to much new music, there were plenty of interviews with keen multi-instrumentalist youngsters who'd grown up with music of all eras on tap, not knowing what they were 'supposed' to think of it, like Grimes or Melody's Echo Chamber (who may or may not still be around)... something new was/is happening now as a result of music-like-water. I can't help but feel this itself has to be a stage which will grow stale, that there will eventually be some reset somewhere, or that people will do it for themselves. Or everything will be a different shape from before and people will be okay with that, even if some of us find this everythingness everywhere tiring or unwelcome. (Hm. I really need to read Retromania.)
These are, more or less, the rants of the grumpy and old(er - at any rate not those still in the teens and early twenties where so much is new.) And Orfeo is very good, and poignant, about age. The sense of once having been able to do things, to remember with many layers of being what that was like, yet that doesn't help; now you can't do them regardless. Mostly in spoiler tags as it's near the end of the book.
Uncomfortable and jangly-paranoid the book may sometimes be - there's always a story about the past, or some music to lose oneself in though - it was in the end a small, individual-human, thing that made me angry. Because that's easier?
Whilst I compared Richard Powers to Will Self near the beginning of the post, Orfeo doesn't need as much looking-things-up as the typical Will Self novel (those music theory grades had some use) and he's a more conventional storyteller, in structure, in using a bit of movie-like suspension of disbelief. The erudition isn't via a load of vocab from eighteenth century novels, instead it's multidisciplinary. Discomfort and relevance, and political and cultural stances both would probably agree on are here, though this is a novel that considers itself entertainment too: and as such there is some there there.
* This interview, though, is just wow: http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...
Not too happy with this post; it doesn't do justice to the first 5-star book I've read this year, but I haven't yet worked out what to change.
April 21, 2021
„Ketvirtoji kūrybos taisyklė. Mažylei, pasigedusiai klausytojų: kol niekas tavęs nesiklauso, esi daugiau nei saugi. Esi laisva.“
Muzika čia sklando ore. Ji girdima medžių lapų šnaresyje, namų tyloje, nusėdančiose dulkėse ir tiesiog mintyse. Vis negalėjau atsistebėti, kad R. Powers taip stipriai gyvena muzika, tačiau sužinojusi, kad dar jaunystėje rašytojas išmoko groti violančele, gitara, saksofonu ir klarnetu, viskas pasidarė kiek aiškiau. Mat „Orfėjas“ man skambėjo kaip muzikantu netapusio, tačiau kažkur giliai apie tai vis dar svajojančio rašytojo širdies atvėrimas.
Kūrinio centre – kompozitorius nenusisekusia karjera. Šiek tiek snobas, šiek tiek mėgstantis vaidinti auką, šiek tiek užknisantis, bet visgi be galo įdomus personažas. Daug puikių pasvarstymų apie klasikinę muziką ir jos svarbą šiais laikais, apie tai, kaip dabar esame paskendę muzikos jūroje ir atsirinkti darosi vis sunkiau. Autorius moka kurti be galo įvairialypius ir tikrus veikėjus, nepaisant to, kad jų pasaulis siaubingai skiriasi nuo tavojo. Ir jis išmano santykius – supranta juos iki pat gelmių, o tai pasakiškai atsiskleidžia jo kūryboje. Jis moka būti jautrus ir išlaikyti humoro jausmą, ką labiausiai ir vertinu. Be galo subtiliai pagauna dviejų žmonių ryšį, vaiko ir tėvo santykius, kartais toksiška tapusia draugystę – jei ne tai, kažin ar būčiau įveikusi šį tikru iššūkiu tapusį romaną.
Powersas neabejotinai turi talentą. Jis sąmojingas, kur reikia – ironiškas arba jautrus, o ir akivaizdžiai be galo išsilavinęs. Šiame romane jis supina dvi be galo skirtingas (bet ar tikrai visai nesusijusias..?) temas – chemiją ir muziką. Nė vienos jų neišmanau ir tas, tikiu, nemenkai kišo koją norint patirti pilną kūrinio malonumą. Mat specifikos čia pilna – pradedant nuo profesionalių muzikinių terminų, klasikinių kompozitorių ir nuorodų į jų kūrinius, ir baigiant DNR bei bakterijų kūrimu. Kai kurių kūrinio pastraipų net negalėjau pradėti mėginti suprasti, mat tai užtruktų kokius tris kartus daugiau nei pats skaitymas, o grožinę literatūrą į rankas imu visgi ne dėl to. Ir tikiu, kad visa tai galima ignoruoti, kad kai kurie skaitytojai moka mėgautis paprasčiau, mažiau gilindamiesi, atsiduodami teksto grožiui ir kartais numodami ranka į tai, ko nesupranta, tačiau aš ne iš tų. Kadangi apie pusę kūrinio sudarė ištisi melodijų narstymai po kaulelį, visur buvo pilna nuorodų, kurių nesuvokiau, tai galiausiai ėmė varginti. Tikrai mėgstu jaustis kvailesnė už autorių, bet šį kartą tas kvailumas erzino ir galo jam, atrodo, nebuvo.
Vienas tų kūrinių, kurį be galo sunku rekomenduoti lengva ranka – nedrįsčiau jo įvardyti kaip blogo, mat Powerso rašymo stilius beprotiškai stiprus ir tikiu, kad jame galima atrasti labai daug gėrio, bet turbūt supratau, kad visgi jo specifinės temos ne man. Bet jei kvėpuojate ir gyvenate muzika – tikrai ja gyvenate – knyga gali tapti nuostabiu atradimu. To ir linkiu – kad ją atrastų tie, kurie galės pilnai pasimėgauti.
Muzika čia sklando ore. Ji girdima medžių lapų šnaresyje, namų tyloje, nusėdančiose dulkėse ir tiesiog mintyse. Vis negalėjau atsistebėti, kad R. Powers taip stipriai gyvena muzika, tačiau sužinojusi, kad dar jaunystėje rašytojas išmoko groti violančele, gitara, saksofonu ir klarnetu, viskas pasidarė kiek aiškiau. Mat „Orfėjas“ man skambėjo kaip muzikantu netapusio, tačiau kažkur giliai apie tai vis dar svajojančio rašytojo širdies atvėrimas.
Kūrinio centre – kompozitorius nenusisekusia karjera. Šiek tiek snobas, šiek tiek mėgstantis vaidinti auką, šiek tiek užknisantis, bet visgi be galo įdomus personažas. Daug puikių pasvarstymų apie klasikinę muziką ir jos svarbą šiais laikais, apie tai, kaip dabar esame paskendę muzikos jūroje ir atsirinkti darosi vis sunkiau. Autorius moka kurti be galo įvairialypius ir tikrus veikėjus, nepaisant to, kad jų pasaulis siaubingai skiriasi nuo tavojo. Ir jis išmano santykius – supranta juos iki pat gelmių, o tai pasakiškai atsiskleidžia jo kūryboje. Jis moka būti jautrus ir išlaikyti humoro jausmą, ką labiausiai ir vertinu. Be galo subtiliai pagauna dviejų žmonių ryšį, vaiko ir tėvo santykius, kartais toksiška tapusia draugystę – jei ne tai, kažin ar būčiau įveikusi šį tikru iššūkiu tapusį romaną.
Powersas neabejotinai turi talentą. Jis sąmojingas, kur reikia – ironiškas arba jautrus, o ir akivaizdžiai be galo išsilavinęs. Šiame romane jis supina dvi be galo skirtingas (bet ar tikrai visai nesusijusias..?) temas – chemiją ir muziką. Nė vienos jų neišmanau ir tas, tikiu, nemenkai kišo koją norint patirti pilną kūrinio malonumą. Mat specifikos čia pilna – pradedant nuo profesionalių muzikinių terminų, klasikinių kompozitorių ir nuorodų į jų kūrinius, ir baigiant DNR bei bakterijų kūrimu. Kai kurių kūrinio pastraipų net negalėjau pradėti mėginti suprasti, mat tai užtruktų kokius tris kartus daugiau nei pats skaitymas, o grožinę literatūrą į rankas imu visgi ne dėl to. Ir tikiu, kad visa tai galima ignoruoti, kad kai kurie skaitytojai moka mėgautis paprasčiau, mažiau gilindamiesi, atsiduodami teksto grožiui ir kartais numodami ranka į tai, ko nesupranta, tačiau aš ne iš tų. Kadangi apie pusę kūrinio sudarė ištisi melodijų narstymai po kaulelį, visur buvo pilna nuorodų, kurių nesuvokiau, tai galiausiai ėmė varginti. Tikrai mėgstu jaustis kvailesnė už autorių, bet šį kartą tas kvailumas erzino ir galo jam, atrodo, nebuvo.
Vienas tų kūrinių, kurį be galo sunku rekomenduoti lengva ranka – nedrįsčiau jo įvardyti kaip blogo, mat Powerso rašymo stilius beprotiškai stiprus ir tikiu, kad jame galima atrasti labai daug gėrio, bet turbūt supratau, kad visgi jo specifinės temos ne man. Bet jei kvėpuojate ir gyvenate muzika – tikrai ja gyvenate – knyga gali tapti nuostabiu atradimu. To ir linkiu – kad ją atrastų tie, kurie galės pilnai pasimėgauti.
April 21, 2014
I enjoyed Orfeo fairly well because I majored in music and therefore studied many of the composers and pieces mentioned in the book. But frankly I'd be curious how comprehensible it would be to someone unfamiliar with the history of 20th century art music. It reads like one long inside joke for composition students.
The book's strong points are its description of musical pieces (in particular I liked the multi page mediation on Reich's Psalm) and the story of Peter Els and his various loves throughout life. On the other hand, I found the framing device, in which he's being chased by police for bioterrorism, to be a bit implausible, frustrating, and boring.
There were occasional moments of brilliance drowned in a sea of excess. I disliked the use of present tense writing, and I thought the last twenty pages were a complete letdown.
The book's strong points are its description of musical pieces (in particular I liked the multi page mediation on Reich's Psalm) and the story of Peter Els and his various loves throughout life. On the other hand, I found the framing device, in which he's being chased by police for bioterrorism, to be a bit implausible, frustrating, and boring.
There were occasional moments of brilliance drowned in a sea of excess. I disliked the use of present tense writing, and I thought the last twenty pages were a complete letdown.
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