[lit-ideas] Re: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 05:46:50 EST
In a message dated 3/5/2009 4:30:57 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
cblists@xxxxxxxx writes:
> ... Oddly 'kleine' means _clean_.
Oddly indeed - but not in German ...
----
I take the bit about 'musiken'. Indeed, 'music' is a confused concept in
English, and I'm glad the Germans found clarity for it.
"I love that song," she said -- after I played the Brahms piece of piano
variation on a theme by Bellini.
"I love Mendelsohn's 'wordless' song".
Etc.
----
To consider the fossilised implicature in German we need some background:
English 'clean'.
From a Common Teutonic root.
Old English clne:
preh.
from hypothetical cláni-
Cfr. West Ger. hypothetical form *klaini:
cf. Old Saxon clêni, cleini,
Old Frisian clêne, cleine,
Middle Dutch Middle Low German cleine, clêne,
Low German. and Dutch kleén, klein,
Old High German chleini clear, pure, CLEAN, neat, delicate, fine, tiny,
small, puny,
Middle HIgh German. klein(e, mod.German klein.
Also Icelandic klénn snug, little, puny, Swedish klen thin, slight, weak,
Danish klein, weak.
The OED is clear about it:
"The original [and only. JLS -- 'do not multiply senses beyond necessity'
Grice]
sense was ‘clear, pure’ ("Cleanliness is next to Godliness")
Old High German shows how this passed [via conversational implicature, but
never part of the 'sense' JLS] into the modern German [non-standard 'use'].
The orig. sense is more nearly retained in English.
Since "Music" just means (originally and uniquely) 'something related to the
Greek Mousai, the purest of goddesses, I take the 'pure and clean' sense
even more seriously.
How the conversational implicature arose.
(ONLY in High German) -- via 'metaphor' which is a 'narrowing' or
'broadening' of the original concept.
If something (x) is clean, x is _small_. Every person involved in home
cleaning services understands that. ("It's impossible to keep this huge
mansion
totally clean -- I need to hire like 5 workers to do the job -- every day").
Now Dallapiccola was trying to be fun when he wrote the piccola musica
notturna.
Cheers,
JL
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