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Chapter Five - Far Sounds in Zemlinsky and Schreker

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2023

Daniel Albright
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

Seated one day at the organ,

I was weary and ill at ease;

And my fingers wandered idly

Over the noisy keys.

I know not what I was playing

Or what I was dreaming then,

But I struck one chord of music

Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight

Like the close of an angel's psalm,

And it lay on my fevered spirit

With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow

Like love overcoming strife;

It seemed the harmonious echo

From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexèd meanings

Into one perfect peace,

And trembled away into silence

As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,

That one lost chord divine,

Which came from the soul of the organ

And entered into mine.

It may be that death's bright angel

Will speak in that chord again;

It may be that only in heav’n

I shall hear that grand Amen.

Alexander von Zemlinsky (1842–1900) lived during the great age of lost chords. When Zemlinsky was a little boy, Arthur Sullivan wrote set to music the famous poem about hearing a concord beyond all concords. But although Sullivan's piano mimics an organ swelling in rich modulations, I don't think that any specific chord could be considered a “lost” chord, or even that any chord formation would present the slightest challenge to the humblest student of Simon Sechter or Heinrich Schenker. But the text, by the poet Adelaide Anne Procter, doesn't invite any particular search for occult harmonies. A “chord divine” that links “perplexèd meanings Into one perfect peace,” a chord that is the grandest of Amens, has to be something familiar. There are plenty of lost discords, but there are no lost concords: nothing is ultraconcordant beyond the octave, the fifth, and the other very simple ratios. An Amen heard in heaven can't be more heart easing than an ordinary plagal cadence, unless transfigured ears can hear things we can't hear; a plagal cadence is exactly what Sullivan supplies at the end of his song.

Type
Chapter
Information
Music Speaks
On the Language of Opera, Dance, and Song
, pp. 72 - 93
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2009

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