Saturday, December 21, 2013

Update to the " 'Goldberg Variations' Variations "

[An update to this essay.]


For a quite wonderful cembalo interpretation, or re-invention, or alternative incarnation (or rather:   ennoösis) of the Goldberg Variations, performed by Wanda Landowska back in 1933, listen to this:


When listening to other pianists performing this work, it is difficult to refrain from comparing them to the classic performances of Glenn Gould.  But Landowska operates in a magical parallel dimension of unexplored topology, and thus is neither better nor worse that Gould’s take on the matter, being rather strictly incomparable:  as would be a mathematical recreation, which should embody the entire structure of that abstract work, in ways not directly intuitable to the musical mind, but which were strictly homeomorphic, or isomorphic within the mutually containing Category, whatever that (as yet unimaginable) Category might turn out to be.


.
Extradimensional entity embodied in local Minkowski space in the outward semblance of a woman

Rare footage of the prodigy at work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw3FstKlse0

[Philological footnote]
Uncomfortable with my bastard Greco-Latin chimera of a stopgap word-coinage (lexicopoesis, ahem ahem), I consulted -- as in all matters classical and spiritual -- with the official Classicsmaster of WDJ,  Dr. Keith A. Massey;  who replied by return of post, as follows:

This is tricky.

incarnation is all Latin. ennoöfication merges Greek and Latin. We don't use the Greek poiein (to make) for any coinages, so we might want to Latinate fully. But, while in-carno = become flesh, we're already using the term in-anima as "not in life" inanimate. Latin animus, mind, is related and close enough that you can't successfully coin inanimification without confusion.

I would suggest coining a different greek word:
                  ennoösis

-osis denotes becoming something or turning into something.  The parallel is theosis, becoming divine.

Theosis!  Y-y-y-YES !  I like it!   Done!
(Our introductory paragraph has been accordingly revised in the light of this guidance.)


[Update] A word on this wonder-word, ennoösis.
It is modeled on that of the noösphere;  cf.

The world we think in,  and the world we live in,  are no longer the same.
-- -- Ernest Gellner, The Psychoanalytic Movement (1985; 2nd edn. 1993), p. 132

No comments:

Post a Comment