Slavoj Zizek: The music that made me is Schoenberg

Slavoj Zizek: The music that made me is Schoenberg

Daily Comfort Zone

norman lebrecht

April 28, 2024

The Slovene public intellectual has issued a video on his major musical influences.

If he could only have one piec e of music to live with it would be Gurrelieder.

Comments

  • yaron says:

    Schoenberg himself would have found it hard to believe.

  • PS says:

    Is that what we’re calling Communista now, public intellectuals? These campus protests are full of very public intellectuals. He claims to be a fan of Wagner. If he paid more attention, perhaps he’d find his way out of “Christian atheism,” whatever the Hell that is. Jack Posobiec has a book coming out, Unhumans, about defeating these rats. Maybe he’ll respond to it as a Public Intellectual. Good grief.

  • Ich bin Ereignis says:

    This made my day, as I truly respect Mr. Zizek, and Gurrelieder is too at the very top of my favorites, although I would have to add Parsifal, as well as a specific Bach cantata.

  • Just sayin says:

    That explains everything. That, and the tics and the sniffling.

  • Lost and found says:

    Oh dear, he doesn’t like Bach.

  • Pianofortissimo says:

    I did not know Mr Zizek before. He must be constantly tormented. Poor man.

  • A.G. says:

    I do have my criticisms of Schönberg, but to call his music “that what made Žižek” is quite unfair.

  • John Borstlap says:

    Mmmmm…… Bach and Mozart being nice background music… working better with difficult background music….. like Gurrelieder…..

    And why does a fervent neomarxist live in an immense estate?

  • Murray Citron says:

    Interesting how people untrained in music often get closer to the heart or nub of the matter than analysts/musicologists…in my course on Ives at CUNY, we tried to surgically dissect his pieces, analyzing every layer to determine the hymns, patriotic tunes, etc. that were in residence…and then an apparently “layperson” (no pejorative meaning intended) told me Ives’ music seemed to her just a mishmash of different things and
    bingo! She seemed closer to the real effect!

  • Dr. Jim says:

    Make mine Pierrot Lunaire.

  • Max Raimi says:

    He wrote what may be the most idiotic take on Beethoven’s Ninth I have ever encountered– granted, there’s a lot of competition. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/opinion/24zizek.html

    Just as George Will (with his prissy bow tie, stilted delivery, arcane, pointless allusions, and fondness for $40 words when a perfectly good fifty-center is available) epitomizes many conservatives’ idea of what an intellectual should be, without the actual intellect, Zizek serves the same role for many on the left. He has the rumpled professor look down, and the luscious Eastern European accent, and the quirky affect. It’s just the actual ideas that fall short.

  • Sue Sonata Form says:

    He has good taste, even though he is extremely annoying when he opens his mouth.

  • Mike Shadow says:

    Made him what?

  • Alan says:

    Poor man.

  • Vincent Ellin says:

    I have to agree with Mr. Zizek. I love Gurrelieder!!

  • Yaron says:

    “made by music? Where were his parents?

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