Occult traditions have inspired musical ingenuity for centuries. From the Pythagorean concept of a music of the spheres to the occult subculture of 20th-century pop and rock; music has often attempted to express mystical states of mind; cosmic harmony; the demonic and the divinemdash;nowhere more so; perhaps; than in the music for films such as The Mephisto Waltz; The Devil Rides Out; Star Trek; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; The Omen and The Exorcist. This survey explores how such film music works and uncovers its origins in Pythagorean and Platonic ideas about the divine order of the universe and its essentially numerical/musical nature. Chapters trace the influence of esoteric Freemasonry on Mozart and Beethoven; the birth of ldquo;demonicrdquo; music in the 19th century with composers such as Weber; Berlioz and Liszt; Wagnerrsquo;s racial mysticism; Schoenbergrsquo;s numerical superstition; the impact of synesthesia on art music and film; the effect of theosophical ideas on composers such as Scriabin and Holst; supernatural opera and ballet; fairy music and; finally; popular music in the 1960s and rsquo;70s.
#961665 in eBooks 2013-10-13 2013-10-13File Name: B00FFJ1GG8
Review
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. The Stories Art TellsBy Kevin L. NenstielBack around the middle 1990s; the Centre Pompidou; one of Francersquo;s nerve centers of public intellectualism; commissioned Marxist philosopher Jacques Ranciegrave;re to write mid-length essays coinciding with exhibitions of film and art; respectively. These essays provided snapshots into Ranciegrave;rersquo;s thought; without needing to grasp his exceedingly dense prose stylings. But the essays languished unreprinted; and untranslated into English; for nearly twenty years. Until now.These essays; one on historical film and one on art-on-canvas; focus a socially engaged conviction onto Twentieth Century art expression. Such artworks; Ranciegrave;re contends; represent a distinct relationship with power. This may reflect the power exhibited by traditional control centersmdash; he commences by describing a powerful general instructing peasants how to kneel before the czarmdash; or the power artists exercise in determining what does; or doesnrsquo;t; merit immortalization in art.Ranciegrave;re; whom humanist thinkers would consider a patron saint of the 1968 uprisings if sainthood didnrsquo;t require transcendence; maintains a sideline in modernist aesthetics. Yet for him; as for George Orwell; art and politics are inextricable: all art carries a message; and that message resonates with institutions of power. Art may lack political party; but it exists within a social continuum of power and subordination. Ranciegrave;re purposes to pick this continuum apart.Reading these essays involves a trade-off. Anyone familiar with Twentieth Century French philosophy knows authors pride themselves on hermetic inscrutability; finding a thesis or through-line is often prohibitively difficult. So it remains here; but in exchange; these two essays together total under 100 pages; and are essentially self-contained. This permits more casual reading; since you neednrsquo;t have savvied Ranciegrave;rersquo;s preceding corpus; though it never becomes easy.For Ranciegrave;re; ldquo;historyrdquo; isnrsquo;t some objective facts which students can memorize. We constantly make and remake history; he contends; with the stories we tell about the past. Ranciegrave;re; in the second; and probably more digestible; essay; identifies ldquo;four senses of historyrdquo; and ldquo;three forms of history [art].rdquo; Therefore; many debates active today about how to utilize history in the present exist because people donrsquo;t realize theyrsquo;re using different sense and different forms.In Ranciegrave;rersquo;s first essay; he focuses on historical representations in cinema; both documentary and artistic. The camera; he says; is essentially an instrument of power: it shows what directors; writers; and in state-controlled media; what politicians want it to show. Yet being inanimate; its power is offset by remarkable passivity. This tension comes across in storytelling techniques that combine staunch realism with novelistic narrative. The combination; he implies; sits uneasy.His second essay deals with painting; though its implications could apply to all static art. He particularly focuses on modernist aesthetic; which distorts and upends conventional historical narratives. This sometimes involves ventures into the pre-modernist milieu that nurtured modernism; he particularly appreciates the twin threads of rebelliousness and commercialism implied in Francisco Goyarsquo;s works. This reflects how art simultaneously challenges and appeases power.Ranciegrave;rersquo;s choice of source material may stymie non-Francophone readers. His film essay name-checks multiple art films; mostly French and German; mostly from the 1980s and 1990s; which yoursquo;ve probably never seen. Throughout his art essay; I recognized only two named artists; Goya and Warhol. The book provides no reference illustrations; a severe limitation; I found myself searching images on my smartphone every few minutes. Digital image-checkers will aid in reading.Nevertheless; Ranciegrave;re provides an engaging survey of how visual arts read history. His revisionist Marxist perspective shines throughout his telling; for him; aesthetics inevitably reflect power structures; an interpretation that certainly wonrsquo;t sit with the ldquo;I just want to be entertainedrdquo; crowd. However; as he carefully dismantles the unspoken assumptions permeating artrsquo;s sweeping gestalt; itrsquo;s hard to deny his viewpoint may have some legitimate foundation.This book strikes a difficult balance. It isnrsquo;t easy fun-time reading; certainly. But compared to most philosophy by living thinkers; Ranciegrave;re included; itrsquo;s remarkably accessible; with an eye toward audiences who havenrsquo;t already exhaustively read Ranciegrave;rersquo;s back catalog. This makes an interesting introduction to contemporary Marxist aesthetic; or an alternate viewpoint for art and film buffs. But however you elect to read it; rest assured; it asks questions yoursquo;ll struggle to answer.3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. An interesting study of the relation between visual art and the truth of historyBy Robert MooreIn this new book; Jacques Ranciegrave;re raises questions about the relationship between art and history; and in particular whether art validates or interrogates official narratives ldquo;what really happened.rdquo; This does not mean that the particular artists were aware or conscious about what role their work of art played is supporting or denying official versions. In fact; for many artists; they simply paint or make a film with other goals in mind. Other artists or filmmakers only accidentally record counter narratives that challenge received of official versions. Ranciegrave;regoes back and forth between the work of artists such as Claude Lanzmann; Goya; Manet; Kandinsky and Barnett Newman; and a variety of films that in the US would be considered ldquo;Art Houserdquo; directors; many of them quite unknown; others known to film students and movie buffs; but not house hold names; such as Chris Marker; Farocki; Alain Renais; Godard; and Robert Siodmak; among others.One could supplement much of what Ranciegrave;re says with many of the theses contained in Fredric Jamesonrsquo;s book THE POLITICAL UNCONSCIOUS; in which he shows how many works of are unwittingly written in dialogue with the political background of the day. The political situation; as it were; provides the atmosphere in which the works of art ndash; Jameson deals with novelists instead of visual artists; but the effect is largely the same.The importance of these works of art comes in making it difficult or impossible for certain groups to deny historical truths. An obvious example is with holocaust deniers; but it can apply to any attempt to deny or redescribe what actually happened in the past in case the real events are found to be inconvenient or critical of the current regime.This book is not particularly easy to read; though I believe its contents are important. I mentioned Fredric Jameson above; his account of things is much better written; even allowing for the vagaries of translation. The book is not nearly as compelling as Jamesonrsquo;s work. Nonetheless it is a worthy read and typical of the excellent publications of Polity.2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. A thoughtful set of essays on the question how art links up with history; and how it shows what is "unshowable"By NateFigures of History collects two essays by Ranciegrave;re; linked together loosely by the question how art both belongs to and "makes" history; and by the theme of how art responds to and aims to show what cannot be shown. Both essays work out a response to Adornos famous pronouncement that there can be no art in the wake of Auschwitz.The essays are dense; drawing upon a wide range of historical; theoretical; philosophical and artistic examples; but without doing much in the way of saying what these references are. They are aimed; then; at a reader with a broad background in history; philosophy; and aesthetics. Sometimes the arguments go a bit too far; but they are never less than provocative and interesting. For example; he suggest that the first film by the Lumiere brothers; which shows a group of workers leaving a factory; established a precedent for all films afterwards: film would never truly show what goes on inside the factory; would tacitly presume that the mechanisms of capital cannot be shown.The first essay "The Unforgettable" focuses on film; and poses the question whether film has the capacity to overcome denials of the past (especially focused on those who would deny the Holocaust: and are able to do so in part because part of the work of those who perpetrated the Holocaust was to work to make it invisible). The second essay focuses on the relation between history and painting; and aims to show how different approaches to painting can be understood as responses to different senses of history.Overall; it is a provocative book; and I found much in there to think about. I dont know much about Ranciegrave;re other than that he studied under Althusser; and that he has written quite a bit about the relationship between art and politics and about the question what it means for art to be political. I do expect Ill read more of his work after this; and that Ill come back to this one. Recommended for those interested in art; art theory; and history; and especially for those interested in the way art both depicts and contributes to history.