FROM EXPRESSION TO REVELATION

Chapter:

CHAPTER 4 Extinguishing the “Petty ‘I’ ” (Transcendentalism, I)

Source:

MUSIC IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

And yet the essential motivating metaphor that drove the more potent maximalists of the period to the limit—the aggregate harmony standing for the All, the One, the Universal, the object of all metaphysical and religious striving—was not all that different from the image of the “all-encompassing brink” that inspired Berg. The difference lay in the treatment. Rather than a playful surface ornament as it was with Berg, the aggregate harmony was for Scriabin, Schoenberg, and Ives a symbolic ideal, not to be invoked lightly but to be approached gradually, as the One was to be approached through a properly perseverant spiritual quest, and to be expressed not blatantly but latently, in a properly occult fashion.

Citation (MLA):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 4 Extinguishing the “Petty ‘I’ ” (Transcendentalism, I)." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 21 Sep. 2023. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-004003.xml>.

Citation (APA):

Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 4 Extinguishing the “Petty ‘I’ ” (Transcendentalism, I). In Oxford University Press, Music in the Early Twentieth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 21 Sep. 2023, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-004003.xml

Citation (Chicago):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 4 Extinguishing the “Petty ‘I’ ” (Transcendentalism, I)." In Music in the Early Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 21 Sep. 2023, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-004003.xml