SO OLD IT’S NEW

Chapter:

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

Source:

MUSIC IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

In language that seems as if borrowed from the Russian mystical symbolists who inspired (and were inspired by) Scriabin, Messiaen writes that one of his primary aims in composing as he does is “l’atrophie du moi”—the atrophy, or wasting away, of the “I,” the petty self. It will not be difficult to discover in his musical methods (to quote the English composer Wilfrid Mellers, one of Messiaen’s most sympathetic critics) the means toward the “complete reversal of the will-domination of post-Renaissance Europe.”²⁸ One aspect of this reversal was simply and literally the revival of pre-Renaissance practices long since considered obsolete by musicians caught up in the flux of history.

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-div1-004011.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-div1-004011.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-div1-004011.xml