Well, cool — this post, “We stand awed at the heights our people have achieved“, has been translated into German as “Die Höhen, die unsere Leute erreichten,” in case you’re more comfortable with that language.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I hadn’t read that post until now. Very eloquent. Simply wonderful. I read the English version though, my German’s pretty rusty.
Cool. I considered leaving a comment over at the German version, but chickened out. My college German is, shall we say, wirklich schwach.
“Die Höhen, die unsere Leute erreichten…”
The phrase would be perfect for your very own Bach-inspired, secular cantata!
Now if we could only get tristero to write it…
Chorus:
DIE HOHEN! [bom-bom-bom-bom of drums]
DIE UNSERE! [trumpets flourishing]
LEUTE! [bom-bom-bom…]
Still managed to spell your name wrong though.
Ah, but thats the way it’s spelt in German! ;-)
…or so the German would have us believe …
Glückwünsche!
Hey,it’s actually translated pretty well!(I would know,I’m German!).And as for the music,I’m thinking Wagner,not Bach…
Awesome! It has been years since I studied German, but it was fun to try to read that version, especially since I loved the English version.
I’d vote for Beethoven and a version of the “Ode to Joy” myself — I think PZ easily writes as well as Schiller.
You may be satisfied! It really is translated very well. But you missed the coolest word: Ehrfurcht (one of these German words that make one ‘harmonize’ with Kant, Goethe, Nietzsche, and indeed Wagner). That was, alas, dropped from the title but, happily, retained in the last sentence
“Ehrfürchtig bewundern wir die Höhen, die unsere Leute erreichten…”
Valerie says, “Hey,it’s actually translated pretty well!(I would know,I’m German!).And as for the music,I’m thinking Wagner,not Bach…”
I agree – its quite a good translation.
As for the music, I’m thinking something rather more like the symphonist disciple of Bach, whose music was infinitely more “innocent” than Wagner’s: Anton Bruckner.
He is often characterized as a naive simpleton prone to bombastic exhibitionism, but few composers ever achieved such a brilliant intuition and (dare I say it?) love for the sweeping grandeur and intricacy of nature (however motivated he may have been by his own very strong religious faith – he at least knew how to keep his eye on the ball of the WORKS). That fellow composed like an alien. (Strictly speaking, no, he wasn’t a German; he was an Austrian, like Mozart. But of course he spoke German and was otherwise infused within the overall Germanic culture).
With the exception of the one other true “alien composer” Bach (and others to varying degrees I won’t bother listing here) most of the rest are over-saddled with provincial concerns. (Beethoven, for example, is rightfully widely admired, but only his great 6th symphony makes an explicit statement of nature, and then it is saddled with the pedestrian human-reactionary slant, as if to say, “I’m expressing the feelings of humans when they encounter nature”). That’s very cool, but its a step short.
Whatever Bruckner himself is said to have offered as his motivations, or what critics have speculated they might have been, what I actually hear is something that suggests an immense struggle to capture NATURE, and allow the wonderment of the mystery of existence to flood out from that. Something like what scientists do. (In our semi-conscious states during the wee hours before dawn, we catch glimpses of the MAGNITUDE…the AMPLITUDE)
Bruckner’s 4th, 5th (the last movement of which is like a kind of immense Bach fugue on steroids), 7th, 8th and unfinished 9th symphonies are his finest. (A caution to those who have not yet sampled Bruckner: His work is subject to a horrid range of interpretations – the recordings of Herbert von Karajan or Daniel Barenboim, both with the Berlin Philharmonic, are among the best).
These symphonies are statements of wonder (in the form of mystery, NOT the mystical) that I think most any being in the universe might appreciate (suitably translated into the appropriately digestible form, of course): expressions of the universal, yet somehow peculiarly familiar and intimate. Whenever anybody can pull something like that off, its not a simpleton practicising mere bombastics. It’s the height of sophistication.
Its not very often pointed out, probably because people automatically restrict the responsibility to art, but I think that’s an important part of what good science and scientists achieve. That’s music too – a great collective symphony in progress. And its many movements and recurrent themes are crystalizing into ever-finer fractal resolution every day.
I hear Bruckner when I read PZ in German.
Even more strictly speaking, Mozart wasn’t an Austrian… Salzburg was ruled by a Prince-Archbishop who had nothing but God, the Pope, and maybe the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire above him.
(I know, I know. I just committed high treason.)
Even more strictly speaking, Mozart wasn’t an Austrian… Salzburg was ruled by a Prince-Archbishop who had nothing but God, the Pope, and maybe the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire above him.
(I know, I know. I just committed high treason.)
David Marjanović says, “Even more strictly speaking, Mozart wasn’t an Austrian… Salzburg was ruled by a Prince-Archbishop who had nothing but God, the Pope, and maybe the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire above him. (I know, I know. I just committed high treason.)”
Nah, not at all. Point well taken. You are correct. I like precision. In my oblique mention of Mozart’s origin, I didn’t consider it vitally important to make any specific distinction other than that he came from Salzburg, near enough to Linz in what is TODAY Austria, that’s all.
On the other hand, if you know about the culture of the region (which I do, having strong roots there and in Hungary) one would realize that the (changeable) “nationality” gig is not nearly as potent as the culture – especially that within the hinterland villages of the peasantry. That region swapped national “allegiance” quite a few times, and like so many other similar circumstances elsewhere in the world, the more rural-based culture had (until most recently, granted) stubbornly persisted relatively unswerved. The point is that the rural base remained pretty much intact between the time of Mozart and Bruckner. Whoever or whatever “ruled” that region had less impact on the people than one might suppose.
Mozart’s origins (he was born in 1756) came from rather slightly more advantage. His father was a kapellmeister and fairly well known in Europe’s musical culture, and was sufficiently well-exposed to the upper classes to motivate his vicarious ambitions through his son. Many have lamented over his early demise, but whatever his undisputed genius, at least his easy coasting along formulaic lines was replaced with the truly original only well within the final decade of his life. I can’t understand why Mendelssohn’s music, who had a similarly short life, and was every bit the early prodigy that Wolfgang was, doesn’t merit the same popular esteem…but then, its quite possible that people are better at pointing at quantity as a criterion for quality…
Just a quick quibble: if everybody in that generally historically-lousy movie “Amadeus” properly pronounces “Mozart” with a “TZ” sound for the “Z”, why the hell weren’t those actors coached to pronounce “Salzberg” properly??? It renders the film nearly unwatchable.
Bruckner came from little more than peasant stock in the village of Ansfelden near Linz. His father was a schoolmaster (but Ansfelden was a backwater village to Linz, and Linz itself could not match Salzberg let alone approach Vienna in cultural magnitude).
He was born in 1824, and as Wikipedia correctly reports, “Many anecdotes portray Bruckner as a country bumpkin, with conservative manners and mores that were strikingly out of step with those of cosmopolitan Vienna.” That’s a veiled but very common sentiment of his supposed backwardness. Yet that guy could astonish the finest music minds of the time with his apparently limitless capacity for creatively original elaboration on any theme given to him.
The great conductor and symphonist Gustav Mahler is said to have remarked “coldly”: “Bruckner: half simpleton, half God.” I think it was meant as a compliment; if so, that sounds about right! Mahler was one who championed Bruckner’s music as a conductor (Perhaps somewhat begrudgingly, due to the popular opposition as much as the difficulty). However, in my opinion, Mahler himself never escaped from the restrictive malaise of excessive provincialism in his own symphonies. I don’t think he ever understood what Bruckner did. I’m not sure anybody else but Bach understood that particular.
To those who are musicologists or simply observant, there is ample evidence that Mahler perloined from Bruckner’s 5th. I tend to think it was his way of bestowing honor onto Bruckner (“imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, and so on). Some have speculated perhaps it is because Mahler thought the “bumpkin’s music” might never become popular, and did so in order to buttress his fifth – yes, FIFTH – movement of his own massive 7th symphony.
Unfortunately, that work – Mahler’s only “non-programmatic” symphony, and my personal favorite of his – is inundated by a magisterial pomposity made all the more irksome with an easy array of tinkling percussion instruments that add little more than a cosmetic facade, obscuring all the goodies. Against that, Bruckner’s “naive simplicity and bombasm” are downright refreshing.
At any rate, one must remember that at that time most intellectuals (including those in the arts) were still strongly smitten by an enlightenment vision of nature as more clockwork-orderly and well-behaved. They didn’t yet grasp the extent to which randomicity or extreme violence plays a role in the order of nature. But when I listen to Bruckner, I can hear the dispassionate violence of exploding stars, quasar outbursts and gamma ray bursts, not to mention relatively “minor” catastrophies such as massive impacts, which may well have extinguished many a living planet in the cosmic bat of an eye. He somehow foresaw what we have now uncovered of the literally terrific amplitude in nature.
Yes, yeah, and sure enough, Bruckner was an extremely “pious” person. But when I hear his music, I hear his forecast of the way we have found nature to be. Maybe it was because he was a GENUINE “simpleton” that he managed his compositions without the polluting influence of religion: WHATEVER he believed, he was inspired by the “works” – he kept his eye on the ball.
Can’t even say that of some SCIENTISTS, like Tippler, for example.