3106 - Mankind and Time VI

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Evi Charitidou

To better understand Mankind’s characteristics, it is advisable to linger over the quartet “The dissonances” of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the discomfort provoked by it to its era and afterwards as well. The stumbling block was the refusal of the master’s musical assonance. “The dissonances” were considered as errors which society’s specialists were bound by duty to correct to everybody’s sake. However, no one examined his work. For, this technique had already been used in “The Magic Flute”. But, in this case it had been used within a rather clear context and based on the theme “Ordo ab chao”. Thus, they had not raised society’s suspicions in the same way. Whereas, the master demanded dissonances in the quartet in C major. He feels the need to place musical singularities, which are absolutely characteristic, in a relatively classic and conventional context. He signs his work and in this way we have a temporal signature proper to Mankind. He did not take into consideration social conventions which saw him as too complicated a musician and too an intelligent one for their taste. For, what is essential to society is not creating, but destroying. Thus, music in now way should it be engaged. Yet, claiming a creation which goes beyond social conventions to attain what it deems essential, represents questioning the social structure. A musician is not only an element amusing an audience. He has a clear thinking which does not settle for following social norms. He feels the necessity to express something more profound even if this is not immediately accessible to the majority. This does not mean, though, that he becomes a supporter of the dogma stating ‘art for art’s sake’, because this is nothing but a form of a sophisticated solipsism. Mozart’s example if not paradigm is not absolutely of this type. His quest was not esoteric only. His genius was not to analyze his own personality. Being aware of existing for the others, he took advantage of all the means at his disposal to create a work which had a meaning for Mankind and not for society he belonged to in an official way only. This difference is essential. A universal genius conveys or, to be more precise, offers to everybody, even though only certain people can have access to his work. Moreover, he uses his predecessors’ works by getting directly to the source in order to avoid the influence of social critiques which do not cease judging to interpret in their own way his work. Even if the initial manuscript was only a first draft or a note taking, it gives us more information than the superfluous comments of the so-called specialists who considered, under the pretext of living in a future society in relation to the creator, that they can grasp the essential of a work enclosed in an era. Nevertheless, a universal genius’s work does not belong to any society. It is only an indispensable element of Mankind’s structure.