Thought Crimes and Misdemeanors

I'm not particularly pleased with my post of last week. For starters, having noted that many music critics use hyper-specific classifications to abrogate critical judgement, I proceeded to the equally disingenuous inverse: using over-broad generic descriptors to present a false "either...or" scenario of pop vs. classical. I've done a good bit of reading in the time since my last post, and it seems to me that nearly every scholar who attempts to offer a defense of "classical" or "art" music (two obviously loaded terms) makes a similar mistake. So, I'm going to begin this post by discussing how we define genres and whether classical music can be defended without setting up a pop-music "straw man."

In the epilogue to his The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross writes that "at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the impulse to pit classical music against pop culture no longer makes intellectual or emotional sense." When I first read this I took it as a sort of capitulation to the "I'm ok, you're ok" crowd to which he sometimes panders, but the more I think on it, the more I think he might be correct, not because we should assume universal artistic validity, but because the categories of "classical" and "pop" are used so broadly as to be rendered almost meaningless.

As Richard Taruskin has pointed out on numerous occasions, the idea of the classical canon as a reified set of acknowledged masterworks dates from early- to mid-19th century Germany, and originally included only German music. In 20th-century music scholarship, the term took on a rather different meaning, and began to be used to describe the period of European music roughly coinciding with the Enlightenment (ca. 1730-1810), as exemplified by Mozart and Haydn. More recent authors (esp. Taruskin) have discouraged this treatment of music history as a succession of stylistically monolithic eras. In general non-scholarly parlance, the term is used incredibly broadly, and its meaning is extremely difficult to pin down. In general, it seems to describe the notated music of Western Europe from ca. 1000, and the American musicians who followed a similar aesthetic. The term was never intended to encompass such a diverse swath of literature, and it equates works which were written with absolutely contrary aims and purposes. An attempt to offer specific musical characteristics of a category that includes such wildly divergent elements as a Josquin mass, a Rosinni Opera, a Brahms Symphony, and The Hammer Without a Master is utterly futile.  However, it seems to me that the term is used in common parlance not so much to describe a musical aesthetic but the perceived attitudes of its devotees: snobbish, aristocratic, rarefied, learned, etc. Unfortunately, this essentially pejorative use of the term has been adopted even by those who seek to defend the music against its detractors such as Julian Johnson (Who Needs Classical Music?, Oxford: OUP, 2002) and even Lawrence Kramer (Why Classical Music Still Matters, Berkeley: UCP, 2009)

The meaning of "pop" is slightly easier to define, but no more useful as an aesthetic description than "classical."    Obviously, it means music that appeals to a substantial portion of the musical public.  By this definition, many works that now occupy places of honor in the classical canon began life as "pop" music, most notably operas. A typical Italian opera of the 17th through 19th centuries contains many of the elements we now associate with "pop" genres: lack of aesthetic pretension, frivolity, explicit sexual content, enormous spectacles, etc.  Likewise, music that is generally considered to be part of the "pop" canon may exhibit many similar characteristics to acknowledged classical masterpieces: musical complexity, emotional intensity, longer length, abstract themes, etc. In this regard one might consider some of the late Beatles "concept albums" or the works of such bands as Yes.

Perhaps the thorniest problem, in terms of categorization, is Jazz. In the span of some 60 years, Jazz went from being the archetypal "pop" genre to occupying a place of honor in musical academia and, if it is not often described as "classical," it is frequently described as an "art" genre. This is essentially the same phenomenon undergone by opera, but the speed with which it took place in Jazz lends it an unique historical precedent. If one describes Jazz as a "pop" genre, what does one make of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and John Coltrane, whose music is just as complex, risky, and intense as any European modernist? Similarly, if one follows the prevailing trend to describe it as an "artistic" (i.e. non-pop) genre, what is one to make of Chick Corea and the Jazz fusion scene, where the improvisational core of Jazz is melded with the streamlined sonic landscape of Rock&Roll?

To defend a phenomenon one must first define that phenomenon with a reasonable degree of specificity. Attempting a defense of something as unwieldy as the "classical" canon is akin to chasing one's tail, since any qualities one might draw from a particular piece in that canon are contradicted by ten others.  Thus, it seems that most people who defend "classical" music attempt to offer not concrete musical characteristics, but abstract moral generalizations. This too is an intensely problematic approach, since the moral landscape of "classical" music is just as diverse and contradictory as the stylistic one. To return to the original problem of my first post: how does one defend and justify the value of a certain group of musical works (leaving aside imprecise "classical" and "art" modifiers for now) while avoiding the mutually destructive poles of relativism and ignorant chauvinism (i.e. ethnocentrism, racism, sexism, etc.)? Can it be done? Can it actually be based on generalized musical style, or should be based on another set of criteria?


Earlier this week, I happened upon a review of three books by Richard Taruskin, published in The New Republic as "The Musical Mystique" (22 Oct, 2007) [read it here]. The review deals with three similarly themed book, two of which I've mentioned already: Julian Johnson's Who Needs Classical Music?, Lawrence Kramer's Why Classical Music Still Maters, and Classical Music: Why Bother? by Joshua Fineberg (Routledge, 2006). Clearly incensed, Taruskin is absolutely ruthless in eviscerating the three authors whom, according to him, indulge in "pious tommyrot, double standards, false dichotomies, smug nostalgia, utopian delusions, social snobbery, tautology, hypocrisy, trivialization, pretense, innuendo, reactionary invective, or imperial haberdashery." Taruskin has been one of my favorite writers on music for a while but, while many of the points he makes in this piece are good, I find it nearly as dysfunctional as the books he lambastes. Even in his monumental 5-volume History of Western Music (Oxford, 2005), one detects deep ambivalence in Taruskin's attitude toward his chosen repertoire. He is clearly deeply enamored with Western music, and his imposing intellect allows him to engage with it on a level that few could equal, but this commitment brings him into conflict with his professed egalitarian beliefs: an unresolved tension that simmers just below the surface of his writing. The New Republic review is no different. Taruskin is quick to assert his commitment to the repertoire in question, referring to it as his "beloved repertoire," but his relativistic streak quickly emerges. While discussing the attitude of past US presidents toward music, he notes with appreciation that Bill Clinton's greater admiration of Joni Mitchell than J.S. Bach "is a positive change in our culture, connected to the generally enhanced level of seriousness with which America has been taking its professed social egalitarianism since the 1960s." This is pure self-deception, indicative of the hypothesis I discussed in my previous post, whereby the stunted egalitarian aspirations of liberal capitalism are played out in the ephemeral realm of culture. As any economist will tell you, the gap between rich and poor is larger than ever in America, and to deny that racism and sexism still persist is, in Taruskin's own words, a "utopian delusion."

Taruskin is most critical of Julian Johnson, who he views as simply offering another justification of the Germanic Romantic aesthetic ideal, as exemplified in the writings of Hoffman, Kant, and Adorno, and steeped in the rhetoric of moral imperative. Several quotations offered by Taruskin seem to suggest that Johnson's argument is fairly typical: Classical music requires thought rather than mindless sensuality, doesn't rely on mass spectacle, etc. Taruskin eviscerates Johnson for offering such a contextualized vision of art as a universal truth, and quotes the smugly sarcastic quip of Stanley Hoffman: "There are universal values, and they happen to be mine." This quote, in sum, denies the existence of universal values and renders the rest of the debate, at least for Taruskin, essentially moot. If there were such a thing as a universal value, somebody would obviously have to discover and believe in it. However, this discovery is an act of contextualization (obviously a condition of any human phenomenon) and renders the value suspect and subjective. It is a classic catch-22: universal values could conceivably exist, but any value held by a person is subjective and contextual therefore disqualified from universal validity. It's a common post-modern argument, and one that I suspect most people would agree with. But is it valid? (Can one even ascertain the validity of a statement that denies validity?) Religion offers a potential way out: there are universal truths, but they have been given by a divine power and not discovered through human reason. Rather than get completely sidetracked by a debate on the (non?)existance of universal values, I will content myself simply with pointing out the implication of Taruskin's assertion.

After drawing somewhat dubious comparisons between Johnson's rhetoric of artistic transcendence and Wagner's famous Das Judenthum in der Musik, Taruskin asserts (with, it should be noted, not a little self-righteousness) that "to cast aesthetic preferences as moral choices at the dawn of the twenty-first century is an obscenity." A charge of racism is always the trump card of the relativist, and its use in this instance indicates the intensity of Taruskin's righteous indignation at this (admittedly weak) challenge to prevalent relativism. His parting shot is equally problematic and indicates fundamentally differing conceptions of the nature of music. Oddly enough, Taruskin seems to be advocating a view of art as an ethically independent aesthetic object -- a view that seems to contradict much of his writing, where he is keen to criticize ideas of artistic autonomy.

All this his been a very roundabout way of coming to a central point, I think. Leo Tolstoy, in What is Art? (1897), attempts to detach the value of an art-object from its mode of discourse (i.e. style). For Tolstoy, art is embodied human communication and the crucial question is not the method of communication, but the content of the communication. For Tolstoy, "good" art is quite simply art that promotes the ideals of the religion of a culture (a conjecture I won't deal with now) and "bad" art is art that promotes either anti-religious values or promotes nothing other than aesthetic pleasure. This definition is especially useful because it negates the endless debate over the validity of specific musical languages. If one agrees with Tolstoy's definition of art as stylized and embodied communication (which I do, and I suspect Taruskin would) then it seems that it is impossible to talk of art without speaking of moral choices. Either art communicates nothing, or it communicates something, and if it communicates something then what is that something, and how is one to judge it? Here we encounter yet another knotty problem: is it possible to determine exactly what a piece of art communicates, or is this too contextual? Could one adequately describe what Mahler 5 communicates? How could one possibly deal with Wagner? Perhaps we ought to retreat one step to the distinction between communicative and non-communicative aesthetic objects (Tolstoy's distinction between art and non-art). Is it appropriate to prioritize communication over self-indulgent pleasure?

I tend to believe we should prioritize communication over self-indulgence (although it may be beautiful to behold), but I fear I've already rambled enough in this post. I'm going to to continue to think about these issues and would welcome any feedback on anything I've brought up.