[conservativephilosopher] New post at The Conservative Philosopher

[conservativephilosopher at lists.powerblogs.com]

Posted by Scott Campbell:
Whistle Shoenberg while you work

   The Sydney Morning Herald [1]publish a response from "publisher and
   social commentator" Richard Walsh to an [2]article they published last
   week (originally from [3]The Guardian), in which the standard claim
   that modernism had killed modern classical music was made. Even by the
   Herald's standards, it's a bad piece.

     When did serious concert music die, asked Martin Kettle in his
     jeremiad against modernism... his considered answer seems to be
     1948... Apparently modern music isn't very popular and, he hints,
     not very good.

     Not surprisingly, this is an argument that can also be levelled at
     modern literature and art - they aren't all that popular and there
     is more than the odd iconoclast who reckons they aren't much good.

   Oh come now. That sort of accusation is often made against modern art,
   but not very often against modern literature - and when it is, it's to
   nowhere near the same degree. Martin Amis may be sometimes accused of
   not turning out rattling good yarns, but no-one says he can't turn out
   an entertaining, well-crafted sentence.

     But the much more interesting question is why modern literature and
     art can survive reasonably comfortably in a fairly uncomprehending
     world while contemporary music struggles. Which may have more to do
     with the underlying economics of these cultural forms and the fact
     that those who enjoy any kind of serious music are older, and
     therefore by nature more conservative.

   The underlying economics, eh? Wonder if we'll get any explanation of
   what this means?

   And why does the fact that serious music fans are older and therefore
   more conservative mean that modern music struggles to survive? It
   can't be a hip pocket problem - older people and their high disposable
   incomes are supposed to be the reason why fossilized rock bands like
   the Rolling Stones still rake in hundreds of millions a year.

   Is the idea supposed to be that because serious music fans are older
   and thus more conservative they're less likely to enjoy experimental
   modern music? But then the argument would make no sense. It would
   amount to this:

   (1) The only people who are remotely interested in serious music are
   older people. The great majority of young people aren't interested in
   serious music (let alone modernist music).

   (2) But because the great majority of these older people are
   conservative (precisely because they are older), they aren't
   interested in modernist music either.

   The obvious conclusion to draw from (1) and (2) is this:

   (3) Almost everyone has no interest in modernist music.

   In which case Walsh's hints about it all being the fault of serious
   music fans being older and therefore more conservative are irrelevant.
   Anyway, modernism's been around for decades now, so what's the
   conservatism of old people got to do with it? If anyone should like
   it, it should be them.

     Kettle fails to mention that much of the music that people of his
     ilk enjoy today has emerged from a trough of unpopularity.
     Beethoven was regarded as a wild revolutionary and died in
     straitened circumstances, as did Vivaldi, whose ubiquitous Four
     Seasons was barely played even 50 years ago. Most people are aware
     that Carmen was booed off the Paris stage and was originally
     regarded as obscure and erudite... It is woefully ignorant to
     assert that when a cultural movement does not meet instant acclaim
     it will never find a widely appreciative response.

   Woefully ignorant Guardian writer! The poor man doesn't even know that
   some great art was unpopular for a time!

   Actually, Kettle never said that unless a cultural movement has
   instant success, it will never have a big audience. But fifty years of
   audience indifference is nevertheless a good indicator, although you
   wouldn't know that from Walsh's one-sided diet of examples. (He goes
   on to mention Shakespeare and the Impressionists, neglecting the
   thousands of artistic movements that had fifty years of audience
   indifference followed by hundreds more). Is he seriously suggesting
   that fifty years of boredom is no guide to the future at all? Will
   errand boys be whistling Schoenberg's twelve-tone symphonies one day
   after all?

   (And it's a bit rich for a man who thinks that "wild revolutionaries
   who died in straitened circumstances" is an adequate description of
   the life of Beethoven and Vivaldi and the reception of their music to
   use the phrase "woefully ignorant".)

     Kettle laments that opera as a popular art form died with Puccini's
     unfinished Turandot. He would no doubt be amazed to learn how
     regularly the Australian Opera stages works by Britten, Janacek and
     Richard Strauss, which play to hugely enthusiastic audiences.

   Well, actually, what Kettle said was that Italian opera died in 1928.
   And unless Britten, Janacek and Strauss have had posthumous Italian
   nationality conferred on them, I don't think they qualify.

   And I don't think Kettle would be that amazed to find that Britten and
   Strauss's operas are well-received these days, seeing as he wrote that
   Strauss wrote possibly the last great piece of classical music in
   1948, just before he died (and probably doesn't count as a modernist
   by his standards), and seeing as he implied that Britten was an
   exception to his "no good modern composers" claim right at the start
   of his article. (Janacek is something of an exception, yes - although
   as he died in 1928, he's not really that much of an exception.)

     But he also fails to recognise that opera's problems lie not with
     modern composers and their new-fangled ideas, but with the fact
     that it is a hybrid artform and that theatre evolved greatly in the
     20th century, making conventional opera seem hilariously
     melodramatic.

   So let me get this straight. Conventional opera is unpopular mainly
   because it looks silly on stage compared to the modern theatre. But
   it's the old-fashoned, melodramatic operas that get the biggest
   audiences. Modernist opera, despite having had more access to modern
   theatrical techniques, hardly attracts anyone. So how can the lack of
   popular appeal of modernist music be anything to do with looking
   melodramatic on stage?

     Whatever decline opera has suffered has been more than compensated
     for by the rise of musical theatre as an art form and by the
     contributions of composers such as Kurt Weill and Stephen Sondheim,
     as well as the more popular Bernstein, Gershwin, Lloyd Webber and
     others.

   But it's precisely Kettle's point that modernism drove away audiences
   to popular, commercial music!

     The really sad thing is that the economics of modern publishing
     allow the plotless Salman Rushdies and Garcia Marquezes to live in
     relative luxury. Modern abstract artists, with a bit of luck, can
     become squillionaires... one dare not ask about the earnings of a
     Henryk Gorecki or Arvo Part, whose sublime music surely will
     resonate in the ears of countless generations to come.

   There goes those economics again, "allowing" people to live in luxury.
   Nothing to do with the fact that however pretentious Rushdie and
   Marquez are, their books do actually sell. No, apparently they're
   getting away with something, because this economics thing "allows"
   them to. And Walsh finds it inconvenient to mention the tens of
   thousands of authors who don't live in luxury, or even make more than
   a few hundred a year from their books, which sell in tiny quantities.
   Nor does he mention that the vast majority of abstract artists don't
   make much money, let alone squillions, and many that do manage to make
   ends meet do so only because we already help them out with public
   funding.

   Couldn't be that he's leading up to a funding pitch, could it?

     It is pitiful enough that such geniuses must tolerate so great an
     inequity without loading them up with Kettle's prattle as well [my
     italics].

   Looks like he is, then...

     Australia's contemporary musicians, who are experiencing a
     fabulously fertile period at the moment, are forced to eke out
     precarious livelihoods, dependent on intermittent commissions from
     our fine orchestras and ensembles, plus those from enlightened
     film, theatre and ballet companies. They deserve both respect and
     greater financial support [my italics].

   Who forced them to eke out their livings this way? Did the government
   single them out as children, and tell them they had to become
   composers, and that they wouldn't be allowed to do anything else?

   Why not write the pragaraph this way?

     Australia's contemporary musicians choose to work in a field that
     is highly competitive and where work is sporadic (a fact that they
     have always been aware of), and as a result they don't make quite
     as much as the rest of their upper-middle class friends. They
     already receive a great deal of their money through public funding,
     but they feel that they are entitled to a whole lot more. In return
     the taxpayer will get either of two results. If we 're lucky, we'll
     get a reasonably good and tuneful piece of classical music that a
     tiny number of well-off people will want to listen to (and any such
     performances will themselves be subsidized by taxpayers). If we're
     unlucky we'll get a dire, tuneless, modernist dirge that symbolizes
     American hegemony that even less people will want to listen to.

   Update: Pomposity abounds in responses in The Guardian's [4]letter's
   pages:

     The 20th-century was a period of unprecedented global insanity: two
     world wars, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Soviet Russia, Maoist China.
     Looking back it seems miraculous that we survived. And how would we
     have preferred our composers to respond? With denial?

   Er, how about with some enjoyable music?

   And apparently it's all relative anyway:

     Those brought up in a harmonic tradition find dissonance hard to
     swallow. Yet there is nothing inherently more attractive in the
     classical idea of tonality; the proof of that is how little other
     musical traditions bear in common with western notions of harmony.
     It's a matter of educating your palate to appreciate the
     unfamiliar.

   But the fact that there is some elasticity in our musical apprecation
   doesn't mean it's infinitely elastic, and it doesn't mean that our
   palettes can be "educated" to appreciate anything. Otherwise, why
   couldn't we educate our palates to appreciate random electronic
   squeals as wonderful music? Why wouldn't this be as inherently
   attractive as Bach? (And to think some people deny that such
   simple-minded relativism really exists).

   Finally, if you can stand the "trendy vicar" writing style, a modern
   composer named John Woolrich responds [5]here:

     Martin Kettle is afraid of those unknown bits of the old maps that
     said "here be monsters".

   Or, perhaps, Martin Kettle has actually visited the area and found a
   lot of monstrous old bores?

   (They're not all monstrous old bores, of course - and I quite like a
   bit of modernist music myself - but a lot of them are).

   [6]Cross-posted at [7]Blithering Bunny.

References

   1. http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/There-are-geniuses-at-work-but-they-could-do-with-some-support/2005/02/24/1109180038448.html
   2. http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/20/1108834658986.html
   3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1402921,00.html
   4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1406333,00.html
   5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1407965,00.html
   6. http://www.blitheringbunny.com/archive/feb05.html#whistle
   7. http://www.blitheringbunny.com/