his sweeping, sprawling novels. In his masterpiece "War & Peace", widely regarded as the greatest novel ever written, his characters range from the aristocracy like Prince Bolkonsky & Princess Marya to humble plebeians like Platon Karateyev. In his "Anna Karenina" also, apart from the ill-fated love affair between Anna & Count Vronsky, there is the idyllic love between Levin (an alter ego surely of Tolstoy himself) & Kitty. Levin's idealistic zeal in improving the lot of his serfs acts as a counterpoint to the selfish, sensual lives of the other aristocrats.
In music also, a similar all-encompassing world view was evinced by Mahler in his nine completed symphonies. To take one example, in his third symphony (the longest symphony in popular orchestral repertoire), the six movements are titled as follows:
- Awakening of Nature from winter slumber
- Life of Flowers
- Animal World
- Man himself
- Boy's Wonderful Horn (Children's Chorus)
- Orchestral Adagio
So the whole natural world is enveloped in this "tone poem", which runs for about 100 minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment