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The strength of Music in Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Gentleman
In Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Gentleman, the narrator is able to get married to the two halves of his musical identification in a way that he is unable to perform with his racial identity. Whether it is the grayscale white secrets of the keyboard, classical or popular music, or high art versus low fine art, dichotomous musical relationships co-exist harmoniously in the novel. This is certainly evidenced by narrator’s powerful performance of his “ragtime transcription of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March” (118). Ragtime music is grounded in Africa rhythms although Mendelssohn’s piece comes from traditional European customs, and the narrator’s successful combination of both black and white music earns him a “round of nice applause” (119). The power of art, and more especially, the power of music are proved by the narrator’s musical ability and accomplishment. Johnson uses music to make a world that sees past one’s competition, ethnicity, course, and sexuality. As readers, we are deeply in tune while using narrator’s musical endeavors, it is the kind of wall socket he finds from “all the little tragedies of [his] life” (3). As stated by the millionaire good friend, “Music is a universal skill, anybody’s music belongs to everyone, you can’t limit it to race or country” (144). The idealization of fine art and music provides rest from the novel’s melodramatic inclinations and the tragic mullatta-like factors it contains. Music is more than a commentary on the narrator’s life, rather, it is the glue that holds together the pieces of his shattered identity.
The narrator’s music identity reveals an interesting rapport to his racial personality. During his musical training, he selects not to always be “hampered” by simply notes and tries to “reproduce the required sounds without the slightest recourse to the written characters” (9). The ease when the narrator may manipulate music to cater to his likes is evidenced by the way he “involuntarily near[es] Chopin’s 13th nocturne with [a] significant triad” (209) and makes accelerandos and rubatos right into a piece when he sees fit. The ex-colored man selects to “break” the rules in terms of music but chooses to “follow” the guidelines when he feels that his racial id is being sacrificed. With music, the narrator never feels as though he must choose between becoming white and black. He’s often “lost to all other thoughts inside the delights of music and love” and unconsciously plays with good musical feeling and efervescencia (37). These unconscious thoughts often go against sb/sth ? disobey the narrator’s intense consciousness on his physiognomy, being the “ivory whiteness of [his] skin, the beauty of [his] mouth area, or “the size and liquid night in [his] eyes” (17). The ease of creating a music identity compared to complexity of constructing a racial is apparent in Johnson’s novel, where the creator uses music to transcend one’s identity and further magnify music’s efficiency.
The ex-colored gentleman attempts to cross various lines both equally literally and metaphorically, yet only through music can he successfully break through boundaries. Since music provides the narrator the to complete his personality, it is important to measure the point at which he chooses to abandon his roots to start with. The lynching scene is known as a pivotal moment in the novel, not only does this cause the narrator to deny his black heritage but it also leads him to fully abandon his musical goals. In this picture, Johnson shows the “cruel and ludicrous” (190) actions of the Southern whites, yet more importantly, he illustrates the dehumanization of blacks, who were “treated worse than animals” (191). This lynching scene is the best turning point in the novel and transforms the narrator by hopeful to cynical. World acknowledges and embraces musical hybridity within this violent instance, the public quickly draws the queue between the narrators dual identity. The narrator is torn between his love intended for black music and the convenience of being a white-colored man. The narrator’s continuous failure could be frustrating to contemporary visitors, but it is very important to remember that there was no society that embraced the two black and white colored the way there is today. In the novel, world forces the narrator being either dark-colored or white, something music never really does.
The novel is made up of several melodramatic episodes, and the narrators desertion of his musical goals conveniently makes his existence more tragic. By the end with the novel, music becomes “tangible remnants of “a vanished dream, a dead ambition, and a lost talent” (211). It becomes simply a far away memory that the narrator can idealize through his memories. But inspite of the tragic result of his life, the ex-colored man’s musical intuitions never keep him. Possibly by the end in the novel, that still supplies the man which has a promise of hope. This is certainly evidenced in the scene with the white girl, as the narrator manipulates Chopin’s thirteenth nocturne by simply ending that on a major triad rather than minor triad. The narrator re-writes the ending of the piece with a cheerful sounding blend in hopes of washing apart the despair that has occurred in his lifestyle. The original end of Chopin’s piece sounded menacing within a minor essential, inspiring a darker mood. This shows that for the narrator, music supplies the means for hope, as he states how the “few years of [his] married life were supremely happy” (209). Music offers the narrator the kind of truth he desires to see. Music’s presence attracts him to his partner and is the fuel to get happiness in their marriage.
In assessing the narrator’s life to his music, Johnson shows that it is existence that falls flat him, certainly not music. For example , he views the nights when his mother opened the piano as the “happiest hours of [his] childhood” (9) and is the winner the affection of his father if he plays a Chopin waltz. The narrator also applied music to express his boyhood feelings of love, remembering, “when I enjoyed the piano, it was to her” (30). In a advantage concert to honor his mother’s passing, it is his stirring overall performance of Beethoven’s Pathetique that allows him to make enough funds to attend university. Moreover, the narrator detects economic achievement by educating a couple of music pupils through the night and detects greater chances by playing privately intended for his uniform friend while traveling throughout The european union. The narrator’s musical interests allow him to receive love and adoration by his father and mother and to express his ardent love for others. It also provides him with a stable income for vast majority of his life. However, it is the conditions of his life that negates each of the narrator’s musical technology success, by having his money thieved for college to the misfortune of his wife’s early passing. In this respect, Johnson leads the reader to sympathize with his protagonists bad luck. Although music cannot change the downward flight of the ex-colored man’s lifestyle, it does help him manage many of his misfortunes. Music is the simple, unobjective wall socket for the narrator, they can easily replace the outcome of a piece like Chopin’s nocturne to suit his sentiments, even if he cannot change the incidents that triggered them.
Tragedy is definitely an inevitable part of existence. Whether or not a person is as musically inclined as the narrator, music even now provides the sort of escape that human beings look for from the severe realities of life. To get the narrator, it enables society’s hard-lined stance in race to merge into shades of gray. Only through music can the narrator “go back into the actual heart from the South” to revive “the older slave songs” (142-143) and play Beethoven’s Pathetique within a manner as he “could hardly ever play it again” (51). The idealization of skill as a way for someone to come to terms with his or her identity features supreme importance in Johnson’s novel. The failed assurance of the narrators life opposes music’s assure of desire. Music comprises the fact of the narrator’s identity and hope for the sort of life this individual wishes to live. The ex-colored man in person interprets an item of music as it caters to his thoughts and “play[s] [it] with feeling” (26). Music allows him to play therefore passionately that he simply cannot “keep the tears which in turn form[s] in [his] eyes from rolling down [his] cheeks (27). As Walt Pater once wrote, “All art plans to the current condition of music. inch If there are no music instances inside the novel, it will become very clear how important it truly is to the narrators trajectory.
