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Musical Culture and the Modernist Writer

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Musical Culture and the Modernist Writer SUBLIME NOISE: MUSICAL CULTURE AND THE MODERNIST WRITER By Joshua Benjamin Epstein Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in ENGLISH December, 2008 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Mark Wollaeger Professor Carolyn Dever Professor Joy Calico Professor Jonathan Neufeld ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First thanks go to the members of my incomparable dissertation committee. Mark Wollaeger's perceptive critiques and (somehow) relentless optimism have been deeply appreciated, and Carolyn Dever's clarifying questions and sound advice have proven invaluable. As teachers, mentors, and readers of my work, Mark and Carolyn have been models of professionalism and generosity since I first arrived at Vanderbilt. Joy Calico's near-omniscience and keen critical eye have aided this project from its inception, and she has graciously tolerated my encroachment on her disciplinary terrain. Jonathan Neufeld has in many ways helped me grapple with the complex philosophical issues at stake (more complex than I had imagined!). To all four, I extend my sincere gratitude. My research has been funded by a grant from the College of Arts and Sciences; by the Robert Manson Myers Graduate Award in English; and by a year-long fellowship at Vanderbilt's Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities. Mona Frederick, Galyn Martin, and Sarah Nobles have worked tirelessly to make the Warren Center a pleasant and intellectually vibrant environment, and while a fellow there I benefited greatly from the collegiality and wisdom of Michael Callaghan, Megan Moran, George Sanders, Nicole Seymour, David Solodkow, and Heather Talley. My thanks and best wishes to all of them. It has been a privilege to spend graduate school surrounded by such an extraordinary group of graduate-student colleagues: energetic intellectual fellow-travelers and first-class friends. Starting with the colleagues who shared my entire journey through graduate school— Nicole, Katherine Fusco, Ben Graydon, Christian Long, and Jeff Menne—I wish to acknowledge and thank Beau Baca, Yeo Ju Choi, Emily Hines, and Brian Rejack for their wisdom and ii friendship. Rebecca Chapman, Sarah Kersh, and John Morrell, terrific friends by any measure, deserve special thanks for carting me around Nashville after Beau's air-tight perimeter defense left me temporarily immobilized. Diana Bellonby, Brian Essex, and Megan Minarich offered useful and surprising contributions to my research; and during the late stages of writing and revision, I was enormously grateful for the brilliance and big-heartedness of Tom "o' Bedlam" Armstrong and Caroline "C-Lion" Heaton. The Vanderbilt English Department has consistently encouraged and supported my work. Every conversation I have had with Jay Clayton, Roy Gottfried, or Paul Young has taught me something important about modernism. While researching at King's College, Cambridge, I benefited from the generosity of Bridget Orr and Jonathan Lamb. I have much admired Lynn Enterline's Ovidian wisdom, and always appreciated the patient and cheerful assistance of Donna Caplan, Sara Corbitt, Carolyn Levinson, Janis May, and Dori Mikus. And a tip of the hat to the undergraduates on whom I have inflicted these texts and arguments; they have responded with curiosity, insight, panache, and good humor. My debts extend even beyond the boundaries of Music City: Marsha Bryant, Natalie Gerber, Chris Goddard, Scott Klein, Patricia Maguire, Wendy Moffat, and Matthew Smith have all allowed me to draw on their time and energies. I frequently recall and appreciate the wisdom of my professors and mentors from the University of Puget Sound, particularly those who instructed me in the ways of words and music: Douglas Cannon, Peter Greenfield, Duane Hulbert, Priti Joshi, David Lupher, and J. David Macey Jr. Finally, I wish to express heartfelt thanks to my father, Richard Epstein, for his unflagging assistance with the work of personhood over the last twenty-seven years. To him this dissertation is dedicated with love and appreciation. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...................................................................................................ii PREFACE .......................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................................... xx Chapter I. INTERPRETING MODERNIST BODIES: MUSICAL CULTURE AND THE ARTS OF NOISE ................................................................................................... 1 Interpreting Writers Interpreting Music............................................................ 5 Noise, Music, and Culture............................................................................... 13 Modernist Vibrations: Russolo, Cowell, and Schopenhauer........................... 16 Musical Noise After Russolo.......................................................................... 24 Theoretical Indiscipline: Attali's Noise ........................................................... 30 The "Supervention of Novelty": Dissonance and Tradition............................ 33 The Rhythms of Modernist Culture................................................................ 41 II. HEARING THE KEY: ELIOT, ADORNO, AND ALLEGORICAL EMBODIMENT.................................................................................................... 51 Wagner and the Syphilitic Body..................................................................... 58 Stravinsky, Jazz, and the Music Hall.............................................................. 70 "Changing Forms": From "Portrait of a Lady" to The Waste Land ................ 77 The Roots of Eliot's Rhythm: Symons and the Wagnerian Symbolist............ 83 The Waste Land and The Tempest , Revisited.................................................. 89 What the Gramophone Says............................................................................ 93 III. THE ANTHEIL ERA.......................................................................................... 101 The Bad Boy of Music: A Sensation Materializes........................................ 112 Boilerplate: Pound, Antheil, and the Pianola................................................ 118 Pound and the Noise of Impressionism......................................................... 126 Time Travel: Futurism, Primitivism, and Ballet Mécanique ........................ 134 Tricks of Time: A Brief Excursus on Death in the Dark .............................. 142 iv IV. JOYCE'S PHONEYGRAPHS: NOISE, MUSIC, AND NOISE-MUSIC FROM CHAMBER MUSIC TO ULYSSES ......................................................... 151 Outside the Chamber : Music and Politics..................................................... 160 Musical Phrasemongering and Performance in Dubliners ............................ 166 No Noiseless Existence: Music and Musical Language in Portrait.............. 174 "Ready-Made Phrases" and Musical Rhetoric in Ulysses ............................. 181 V. PERFORMING PUBLICITY: AUTHENTICITY, INFLUENCE, AND THE SITWELLIAN COMMEDIA .............................................................................. 197 Walton, Modern Music, and English Cosmopolitanism............................... 210 Façade : From Noise to Rhythm.................................................................... 216 Bernays, the Ballets Russes, and the Aesthetics of Publicity........................ 218 The Parade Behind the Façade .................................................................... 230 The Profession of Personality: Commedia Dell'Arte .................................... 237 "Punch and Judy Show": Sitwell on Puppetry and the Commedia ............... 246 The Sitwells, the Mask, and the Russian Ballet............................................ 250 VI. ARISTOCRACY OF THE DISSONANT: THE "SUBLIME NOISE" IN FORSTER AND BRITTEN................................................................................ 268 "A Muddle and a Noise": "Broadcasting" Music in Forster ......................... 274 Who Shall Inherit Britten?............................................................................ 291 Britten's Ninths: Peter Grimes , Dissonance, and the Art of Rumor ............. 295 The Spellbinding Music of Billy Budd .......................................................... 301 AFTERWORD................................................................................................................ 316 WORKS CITED.............................................................................................................. 323 v PREFACE Literary modernism, driven by a desire to fragment and then reassemble artistic form, turns and returns to music: a "universal language" and a provincial one; sometimes a call to reflection and sometimes a call to arms; resistant to explanation and, for that very reason, the subject of constant inquiry. Alongside the modern soundscape of urban traffic, new media and recording technologies, and the sounds of warfare, the seemingly numinous qualities of music acquire specific and material kinds of significance. This dissertation argues that modernist writing interprets and engages with modernist music as an art form with a range of cultural and institutional effects. It contends that a chief ambition of modernist writing and music is to critique and
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