Bach’s writing on a fugue of alien theme:

Spengler is probably alluding to the Musical Offering.  On 7 May 1747 Bach met King Frederick the Great at the King's residence in Potsdam.  Bach’s son CPE was employed there as court musician & Frederick wanted to show the elder Bach the fortepiano, only recently invented.  He owned several of these experimental instruments.  Bach, who was well known for his skill at improvising, received from Frederick a long and complex musical theme on which to improvise a 3-voice fugue.  He did so, but Frederick then challenged him to improvise a 6 voice fugue on the same theme.  Bach answered that he would need to work the score and send it to the King afterwards.  He then returned to Leipzig to write out the Thema Regium ("theme of the king").  From this emerged The Musical Offering (BWV 1079, 1747), a collection of keyboard canons and fugues and other pieces of music, all based on a single musical theme given to him by King Frederick the Great.

 

Egyptian plastic:

reference to the plastic arts of Egypt, namely free standing sculpture & relief.

 

Gothic counterpoint:

Plainsong developed during the earliest centuries of Christianity, influenced by the music of the Jewish synagogue & the Greek modal system.  It is monophonic, consisting of a single, unaccompanied melodic line.  In the late 9th century singers in monasteries such as St. Gall in Switzerland began experimenting with adding another part to the chant, generally a voice in parallel motion, singing mostly in perfect fourths or fifths above the original tune.  This development, called organum, represents the beginnings of counterpoint.  Over the next several centuries, organum developed in several ways. Around 1100 florid organum was born. Here the original tune was sung in long notes, the accompanying voice would sing many notes to each one of the original, often in a highly elaborate fashion, while emphasizing the perfect consonances (fourths, fifths and octaves).  The most famous plainsongs were Gregorian Chants.  After 1011 AD the Church standardized the Mass & chants across its empire.  Rome & Paris were the religious & political centres of Europe respectively; standardization consisted mainly of combining these two (Roman and Gallican) regional liturgies.  Pope Gregory I & Charlemagne sent trained singers throughout the Holy Roman Empire to teach this new form of chant which became known as the Gregorian Chant. 

 

art genus:

in biology genus refers to the usual major subdivision of a family or subfamily in the classification of organisms, usually consisting of more than one species; here Spengler is referencing he conventional division of the arts into painting, sculpture, architecture and so on…

 

Rembrandt Night-watchman:* see Endnote<A>

oil painting by Rembrandt completed 1642, at the peak of the Dutch Golden Age; notable for its colossal size  (12 × 14.5 ft)- the figures almost life-size; the dramatic use of light & shadow (tenebrism) and the perception of motion in what would have traditionally been a static military group portrait.  It was commissioned (around 1639) by Captain Banning Cocq and 17 members of his civic militia guards to hang in the banquet hall of the newly built Musketeers' Meeting Hall, Amsterdam.

 

Wagner’s Meistersinger:

(aka The Master-Singers of Nuremberg) music drama or opera in 3 acts by Wagner; a long operas (4.5 hours); first performed Munich, 1868.  Set in Nuremberg mid-16th century when it was a free imperial city & a centre of the Renaissance in N Europe.  It revolves around the city's guild of Meistersinger (Master Singers), an association of amateur poets & musicians, master craftsmen of various trades.  They developed a craftsman like approach to music with intricate rules for composing & performing.  The main character, the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs, is based on the historical, Hans Sachs (1494–1576), most famous of the master-singers.  Unique in Wagner's work as the only comedy of his mature operas and set in a historically well-defined time & place (not within a mythical or legendary setting).  Also unique in that it is based on an entirely original story, devised by Wagner himself, with no supernatural or magical powers.  It incorporates many of the operatic conventions he had condemned in his essays on the theory of opera (namely rhymed verse, arias, choruses, a quintet & even a ballet).

 

epochal:

see Chapter IV, page 151 ("contemporary" epochal moments”)

 

physiognomic:

interpreting meaning based on external form or outward appearance.

see Chapter I, page 49, Chapter III, pages 100, 112, 113; Chapter VI page 214

 

casualty principle:

Spengler means cause & effect, his short-hand for the scientific paradigm which contrasts his own (Becoming- Destiny concept)

see Chapter IV Synopsis (I Logic, organic and inorganic)-page 117; Time and Destiny-page 119; Space and Causality- page 119)