After last night's primaries in DE, RI, MD, CT, and PA, it looks increasingly likely that Hillary Clinton will face Donald Trump in the general election. Hillary's strong showing puts her with a hair's breath of the delegate majority needed for the nomination, and will surely only intensify calls for Bernie Sanders to leave the race, and for his supporters to rally behind Clinton. There has been a good deal of vitriolic rhetoric regarding this last point, particularly as many recalcitrant Sanders supporters balk at the idea of supporting Clinton. Here, my own thoughts on the problem.
To begin with, the notion that one candidate is "entitled" to the support of another's voters is highly dubious, and a result mainly of our entrenched two-party system. Too often recently, voters have been asked to vote against a particularly odious candidate, rather than for one about whom they are enthusiastic. With the specter of Trump on the horizon, it seems they'll be asked to do this again. In fact, the main argument of Clinton supporters is not that she actually deserves anybody's support, but that we must do everything in our power to avoid a Trump presidency. A trump presidency is unlikely for several reasons. First, he has won only a plurality of the Republican votes in most states, and the Republican establishment is steadfastly an transparently opposed to him. More people have voted against Donald Trump in his party's own primaries than have voted for him. It is almost inconceivable that he will fare any better in the general election. The most recent poll on favorability (from early April), found that a staggering 70% of the electorate have an unfavorable opinion of Trump. That's a full 16 points higher than Clinton, a historically unpopular politician. In head-to-head polls, Clinton enjoys about a 10-point advantage, and the campaign hasn't even begun yet. Unless some new damaging information emerges on Clinton, she's got this election sewn up with or without the Sanders supporters.
As general elections have increasingly taken on the binary character of a referendum against one or the other party, it's important to realize that many Sanders supporters are not closely aligned with either party, and feel no special loyalty toward impersonal, rigid, corrupt bureaucracies. The idea that they should fall back in line with the party's nominee assumes that they were ever in line to begin with. Clinton has dominated states with closed primaries, while Sanders has won many states that allow independents to vote. The obvious conclusion is that most of Sanders's support is coming from outside the party, and that appealing to a sense of party loyalty is going to be a generally meaningless endeavor. Younger people with less political experience (and political memory) are also less likely to hold strong party loyalties. Much of Sanders's support comes from this demographic.
There have been many comparisons drawn between this election and the 2000 election, where Ralph Nader supposedly "cost" Al Gore the victory. As a reformed Nader-ite, I think that's specious reasoning. First, Sanders has given no indication of running as an independent (unlike Trump!), and will not be "stealing" any votes in November. His supporters may chose to abstain, but that's their right, and, as I mentioned above, it's very difficult to believe that Clinton will be working on such a thin margin that the minority of Sanders voters who don't vote will cost her anything. Secondly, and I know this is a belabored point, Nader didn't "cost" Al Gore the election. Al Gore was the running mate of a very popular two-term president who had presided over nearly 8 years of economic prosperity, and was running against a barely-literate failed businessman with a history of drug and alcohol abuse. There's no way that election should have been remotely close, except that Gore ran one of the single worst campaigns of the 20th century. It was possibly irresponsible for Nader not to withdraw in swing states like Florida and Ohio when it became clear they would be contested, but the bulk of the blame for that debacle has to rest with Gore (and the supreme court). I have no doubt that, should Clinton somehow find herself in a coin-flip situation, that Sanders will urge his supporters to show up for her. But this obscures the fact that it's not his responsibility to get her elected -- it's hers. One of the most common observations of Clinton's campaign by generally non-partisan observers is that she has yet to articulate a coherent, positive, message. It's unclear, in other words, why she's running for president, except that she really wants to be president. There's no mystery with Sanders. He hammers his points home in just about every speech, while Hillary offers generic talking points an piecemeal suggestions. That's not a recipe for success. She's going to have to start convincing people why they should vote for her, as opposed to against Donald Trump.
If you're wondering, I will certainly vote for Clinton in November, but I'm not going to be proud of myself. It will be another hollow victory for cynicism over idealism, disenchantment over civic engagement, and oligarchy over democracy.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Why I sympathize with Trump Supporters
I'm going to give blogging another go. Once again, I miss writing regularly, and I find that I feel better if I externalize some of the thoughts that swirl in my mind most of the day. I've decided to revive my last attempt rather than starti fresh again because I'm rather proud of some of the older posts. I've removed the ones I find especially embarrassing to maintain the illusion of consistent quality. I'll attempt to not shatter the illusion.
So, why do I sympathize with Trump supporters? I myself am adamantly not a Trump supporter, but I find much of the discussion and coverage of Trump and his followers to be somewhat paternalistic and misleading.
Here's the thing: you simply can't abuse people for decades and expect there to be no backlash. People on the bottom of the economic ladder know they're getting screwed, and they resent being told that they're not. I was shocked that the president had the audacity to say, at last year's Business Roundtable, that "America is winning right now. America is great right now." (1) It's patently false, and people know it's false, and they know he's lying to their faces. The remark was immediately, and justifiably pounced upon by the republican contenders. I used to like President Obama. I voted for him twice (more enthusiastically the 1st time), but I've never liked is rhetorical style. He often takes a condescending tone, and his his bland, faux populism is similar to that of his ignominious predecessor. It only seems more palatable to us because he's a better speaker and has better speech writers. But most people, however uneducated, can tell when they're being patronized, and it only adds to their resolve to support somebody like Trump, who allegedly "tells it like it is."
Things aren't great in education, and we're demonstrably not winning. The Program for International Student Assessment ranks us 35th out of 64 developed countries overall, and 27th in math and science. (2) Our own data, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, presents and even bleaker picture. (3) No more than 42% of American students are competent or better in any subject, at any grade level, and in most cases are far below. Things seemed to be improving during the 1990s and early 2000s, but have now been stagnant for about a decade. My own experience, while obviously limited and subjective, confirms these numbers. Incoming college freshmen are almost completely ignorant of basic historical facts, and their verbal and written communication skills are, to be polite, meager. Speaking of college, tuition continues to outpace inflation like the tortoise to the hare, thanks to bloated bureaucracies and presidents that are paid like CEO's.
Things aren't great in the realm of health. Children today have shorter life expediencies than their parents' generation, largely due to obesity. (4) Yet, when the World Health Organization tried to revise its dietary guidelines to reflect healthier choices, the sugar industry flexed its financial muscle to convince the government to threaten a financial boycott of WHO. (5) That was during the Bush administration, but the same groups did a similar hatchet job on Michelle Obama's well-intentioned "MyPlate" campaign. Furthermore, despite the United States spending an almost unbelievable amount on healthcare, much more by far than any other developed country, we do not enjoy comparably greater advantages (6). Nor did we before the affordable care act, for those who might be tempted to pin all the blame there. Whether you support free-market insurance, single-payer, or the Obamacare compromise, there is no debate that American healthcare costs are obscene, and that we have almost nothing to show for it. That's losing, not winning.
Perhaps most pertinently, things aren't great in the economy. The ongoing "recovery" may be swelling the Dow Jones average and lining the pockets of America's CEO's, but low and middle-income workers are hardly benefiting at all, nor have they been for almost 40 years. (7) An investigation into the demographics of Trump's supporters reveals that they are, by and large, blue collar workers who did not go to college: precisely the people who bear the brunt of each economic downturn and never seem to experience much during the upturns. (8) They can see how the Clintons' free trade agenda cost the country good manufacturing jobs. They can see that their wages never seem to rise, despite generally higher productivity. (7) They see big political donors in both parties getting ahead while they get ignored. They don't like being told that he blue car sitting right in front of them is actually red, but that they're too simple-minded to understand it.
It's futile to continue to characterize Trump supporters as racist, ignorant yokels who don't have a firm grip on reality. Actually, they have a far better grasp of what's actually happening to the majority of Americans than those in the media. There is real, palpable anger among the underclasses in the middle part of the country and, when misdirected, that anger can be extremely dangerous. Trump has succeeded in channeling it toward immigrants, when the real target should be the corporate and political oligarchy for whom the public/private division is completely permeable, and who are all too often called upon to regulate themselves and their friends. This is what Sanders's supporters understand, and they, too, are generally angry about it.
In order to deflate Trump's campaign, it's necessary to empathize with his supporters, and show them the real sources of their frustrations. It's not "the Mexicans" or "the Muslims," or any other vague stereotype. It's an immensely complex and interrelated political and economic complex that is designed to maintain power and wealth for those who have it, and keep them from those who don't. Telling people they have no reason to be angry is wrong, callous, and frankly, just what Trump is counting on. We need to focus on fixing, rather than whitewashing, the systemic problems that prevent too many people from their pursuit of happiness.
-----
(1) http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/09/16/obama_america_is_winning_right_now_americas_great_right_now.html
(2) http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/02/u-s-students-improving-slowly-in-math-and-science-but-still-lagging-internationally/
(3) http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/
(4) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/health/childrens-life-expectancy-being-cut-short-by-obesity.html
(5) http://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/apr/21/usnews.food
(6) http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/08/us-health-care-spending-is-high-results-arenot-so-good.html
(7) http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
(8) http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/who-are-donald-trumps-supporters-really/471714/
So, why do I sympathize with Trump supporters? I myself am adamantly not a Trump supporter, but I find much of the discussion and coverage of Trump and his followers to be somewhat paternalistic and misleading.
Here's the thing: you simply can't abuse people for decades and expect there to be no backlash. People on the bottom of the economic ladder know they're getting screwed, and they resent being told that they're not. I was shocked that the president had the audacity to say, at last year's Business Roundtable, that "America is winning right now. America is great right now." (1) It's patently false, and people know it's false, and they know he's lying to their faces. The remark was immediately, and justifiably pounced upon by the republican contenders. I used to like President Obama. I voted for him twice (more enthusiastically the 1st time), but I've never liked is rhetorical style. He often takes a condescending tone, and his his bland, faux populism is similar to that of his ignominious predecessor. It only seems more palatable to us because he's a better speaker and has better speech writers. But most people, however uneducated, can tell when they're being patronized, and it only adds to their resolve to support somebody like Trump, who allegedly "tells it like it is."
Things aren't great in education, and we're demonstrably not winning. The Program for International Student Assessment ranks us 35th out of 64 developed countries overall, and 27th in math and science. (2) Our own data, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, presents and even bleaker picture. (3) No more than 42% of American students are competent or better in any subject, at any grade level, and in most cases are far below. Things seemed to be improving during the 1990s and early 2000s, but have now been stagnant for about a decade. My own experience, while obviously limited and subjective, confirms these numbers. Incoming college freshmen are almost completely ignorant of basic historical facts, and their verbal and written communication skills are, to be polite, meager. Speaking of college, tuition continues to outpace inflation like the tortoise to the hare, thanks to bloated bureaucracies and presidents that are paid like CEO's.
Things aren't great in the realm of health. Children today have shorter life expediencies than their parents' generation, largely due to obesity. (4) Yet, when the World Health Organization tried to revise its dietary guidelines to reflect healthier choices, the sugar industry flexed its financial muscle to convince the government to threaten a financial boycott of WHO. (5) That was during the Bush administration, but the same groups did a similar hatchet job on Michelle Obama's well-intentioned "MyPlate" campaign. Furthermore, despite the United States spending an almost unbelievable amount on healthcare, much more by far than any other developed country, we do not enjoy comparably greater advantages (6). Nor did we before the affordable care act, for those who might be tempted to pin all the blame there. Whether you support free-market insurance, single-payer, or the Obamacare compromise, there is no debate that American healthcare costs are obscene, and that we have almost nothing to show for it. That's losing, not winning.
Perhaps most pertinently, things aren't great in the economy. The ongoing "recovery" may be swelling the Dow Jones average and lining the pockets of America's CEO's, but low and middle-income workers are hardly benefiting at all, nor have they been for almost 40 years. (7) An investigation into the demographics of Trump's supporters reveals that they are, by and large, blue collar workers who did not go to college: precisely the people who bear the brunt of each economic downturn and never seem to experience much during the upturns. (8) They can see how the Clintons' free trade agenda cost the country good manufacturing jobs. They can see that their wages never seem to rise, despite generally higher productivity. (7) They see big political donors in both parties getting ahead while they get ignored. They don't like being told that he blue car sitting right in front of them is actually red, but that they're too simple-minded to understand it.
It's futile to continue to characterize Trump supporters as racist, ignorant yokels who don't have a firm grip on reality. Actually, they have a far better grasp of what's actually happening to the majority of Americans than those in the media. There is real, palpable anger among the underclasses in the middle part of the country and, when misdirected, that anger can be extremely dangerous. Trump has succeeded in channeling it toward immigrants, when the real target should be the corporate and political oligarchy for whom the public/private division is completely permeable, and who are all too often called upon to regulate themselves and their friends. This is what Sanders's supporters understand, and they, too, are generally angry about it.
In order to deflate Trump's campaign, it's necessary to empathize with his supporters, and show them the real sources of their frustrations. It's not "the Mexicans" or "the Muslims," or any other vague stereotype. It's an immensely complex and interrelated political and economic complex that is designed to maintain power and wealth for those who have it, and keep them from those who don't. Telling people they have no reason to be angry is wrong, callous, and frankly, just what Trump is counting on. We need to focus on fixing, rather than whitewashing, the systemic problems that prevent too many people from their pursuit of happiness.
-----
(1) http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/09/16/obama_america_is_winning_right_now_americas_great_right_now.html
(2) http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/02/u-s-students-improving-slowly-in-math-and-science-but-still-lagging-internationally/
(3) http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/
(4) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/health/childrens-life-expectancy-being-cut-short-by-obesity.html
(5) http://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/apr/21/usnews.food
(8) http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/who-are-donald-trumps-supporters-really/471714/
Friday, October 26, 2012
Killing us softly
This thing appeared in the Boston Globe a few days ago: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/10/24/revitalize-catholic-church-let-kill-all-organs/9FpzZPSQzhfd4uUeCJNDbK/story.html
Below, my response.
Dear Ms. Graham-
Below, my response.
Dear Ms. Graham-
As a professional organist and current doctoral student in the aforementioned, I was dismayed to read your recent opinion piece for the Boston Globe ("Save the church! (kill the organ)") wherein you advocate the widespread removal of the pipe organ from Christian worship in an effort to make worship services more appealing to young people. To be sure, the organ makes an easy scapegoat for observers who are unable to (or simply don't care to) take a detailed look at the many complex issues driving down attendance at American churches. That problem requires a book-length investigation, not a 750-word online-only opinion piece, and cannot be laid at the feet of any single cause. As a member of the press, you are held to a higher standard, and bear a certain responsibility to make a good-faith effort to uncover the truth, rather than resorting to tired cliches and easily digestible scapegoating. Sadly, this essay displays no commitment to this kind of responsible journalism and, as such, I feel compelled to defend my instrument, colleagues, and profession against what is in essence a baseless, childish, attack. I hope you will indulge me for a few more lines but, if you read no further than this, please know that there are hundreds of organists who have spent thousands of hours honing a beautiful craft, and to reduce our efforts to 'scary horror-movie music' is demeaning, hurtful and, frankly, ignorant. I encourage you to consider attending the weekly organ performance class at The Juilliard School, which is open to the public and occurs every Thursday of the academic year, from 11am to 1pm. I am certain it will change your opinion of the organ, and its capacity to elicit emotions other than fear and discomfort.
To begin with, I must question the sources on which you base your argument. The top-ten list on i-Tunes is not a valid arbiter of artistic value, as the success of Justin Bieber and others gives ample testimony. To take this radically populist approach is untenable, and incompatible with the fundamental ideal of the religion to which you adhere: that is, that there exists an absolute truth that is independent popular judgement and the fickle dictates of fashion. Are the Gospels also to be edited to be more palatable to today's children? Are Jesus's difficult demands and sometimes harsh proscriptions to be watered down for mass consumption? You say that you worry whether children will still regularly attend Mass as adults. The answer to this questions must depend on whether one as a parent is successful in instilling a respect and appreciation of Christianity and a desire to grow in a relationship with God, not on the popular or entertainment value of the worship service.
As you are obviously aware, the post-Vatican II Catholic church made a serious effort to incorporate non-traditional music and musical instruments into public worship, an effort which was copied by many protestant denominations, and is still ongoing. The steep decline in church attendance over the past 40-50 years coincides directly with the proliferation of "popular" liturgical music, not with an obstinate commitment to traditional repertories and instruments. Praise bands abound in rural and suburban parishes; music publishers are falling over themselves to turn out indistinguishable anthems, songs, and hymns of light, popular character; most clergy receive almost no training in the traditional repertoires of the Christian church. The goal of all this has been ostensibly to make Christian worship more timely, relevant, and informal, characteristics which, it is presumed, will attract the ever-elusive "young people." As the statistics demonstrate, however, these efforts have had at best a negligible effect for the so-called "mainline" Christian denominations, whose attendance continues to decline despite efforts to make worship more accessible and less demanding: efforts that go far beyond music and into the core issues of theology and morality. There's no reason to go off on a lengthy digression about the relative merits of these decisions: suffice it to say that you are not the first to have the the idea that traditional music should be banished, and that its relatively systematic application over the past 40-50 years has failed to bear any fruit other than the general feeling among young people that religion should adapt to the fashions of the day, rather than hold fast to temporally immutable truth.
It seems obvious to me that the music in your particular parish is somewhat lacking in quality, and this is a problem that can and should be addressed. The solution, however, must be better education and training of organists and choir directors, not placing responsibility for liturgical music in the hands of the totally untrained. If this is your only exposure to organ music, I can certainly understand how you would come to regard it as a tiresome nuisance but, I can assure you, this is not a ubiquitous situation (although it is an all too common one.) Once again, I invite and encourage you to attend the performance class at Juilliard. We would welcome the opportunity to change your mind about an instrument with a venerable past and, we believe, a bright future.
Sincerely,
David Crean
C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow
The Juilliard School
Monday, May 28, 2012
Something Stinks, and it's not Tchaikovsky
Well, it's not just Tchaikovsky.
For reasons that are unknown to me (although I strongly suspect it must have something to do with financial solvency), Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center is frequently rented out to groups with little or no connection to music. When I first arrived at Juilliard nearly three years ago, it seemed as though there was a red-carpet movie premiere nearly every week during the warmer months, complete with outdoor canopy and press area (which effectively blocks traffic on 65th st.). A few that stick in my memory are The Last Airbender, which included a massive stage erected literally in the middle of the street, and Michael Moore's Capitalism, a Love Story which, despite its ostensibly anti-establishment message, was presented with as much fanfare and extravagance as any other Hollywood blockbuster. More recently, the premiere of the 8th Harry Potter movie filled the street with so many slack-jawed gawkers that Juilliard students had to exit the building onto Amsterdam Ave. The movie premieres are a nuisance, but one could at least argue that cinema, however degraded its popular incarnations may be, is still a legitimate art form and not totally out of place in a performing arts center. It might be best to not cite The Last Airbender in that argument.
This past week, however, Alice Tully hosted the FiFi awards, an event billed as "the Oscars of the fragrance industry." It was certainly a star-studded event -- Nicole Richie, Chaka Khan, Martha Stewart, not to mention the inexplicably popular Jane Lynch, who hosted the festivities. As usual, pedestrians were diverted across the street by glaring security guards and traffic was backed up all the way to the Hudson. A few people stood on the grassy area next to Avery Fischer attempting to catch a glimpse of this or that B-lister.
Now, I'm not even sure why the fragrance industry needs or deserves an awards show, but that's not really the point. They needed a venue, and Lincoln Center apparently needs money, so what's the problem? The problem is that this was intended to be a place for the arts, where the various performing groups that were previously scattered throughout the city would come together to create an atmosphere of mutual support, creativity, and vitality. That's why Juilliard moved here -- it was intended to be the artistic nerve center not just of the city but of the entire country where students could learn from and observe the best of the best. To see one of its primary venues pimped out for such an orgiastic, unapologetic display of superficiality is something that should make artists, and anybody who has any respect for the arts, cringe. In this cynical and post-modern age it sounds hopelessly anachronistic to suggest that the arts (whatever that means!) should be given a place of honor and that their spaces should be sacred, but this was exactly the intent of those who donated to, and built, this complex. Less than 50 years later, however, the nerve center of the arts in New York has become a a high-class brothel of event spaces available to any disease-ridden organization that can slip a twenty to the bureaucrats whose enormous salaries necessitate the practice in the first place.
Where now is the messiah who will drive the peddlers of frivolity out of the temple of art?
For reasons that are unknown to me (although I strongly suspect it must have something to do with financial solvency), Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center is frequently rented out to groups with little or no connection to music. When I first arrived at Juilliard nearly three years ago, it seemed as though there was a red-carpet movie premiere nearly every week during the warmer months, complete with outdoor canopy and press area (which effectively blocks traffic on 65th st.). A few that stick in my memory are The Last Airbender, which included a massive stage erected literally in the middle of the street, and Michael Moore's Capitalism, a Love Story which, despite its ostensibly anti-establishment message, was presented with as much fanfare and extravagance as any other Hollywood blockbuster. More recently, the premiere of the 8th Harry Potter movie filled the street with so many slack-jawed gawkers that Juilliard students had to exit the building onto Amsterdam Ave. The movie premieres are a nuisance, but one could at least argue that cinema, however degraded its popular incarnations may be, is still a legitimate art form and not totally out of place in a performing arts center. It might be best to not cite The Last Airbender in that argument.
This past week, however, Alice Tully hosted the FiFi awards, an event billed as "the Oscars of the fragrance industry." It was certainly a star-studded event -- Nicole Richie, Chaka Khan, Martha Stewart, not to mention the inexplicably popular Jane Lynch, who hosted the festivities. As usual, pedestrians were diverted across the street by glaring security guards and traffic was backed up all the way to the Hudson. A few people stood on the grassy area next to Avery Fischer attempting to catch a glimpse of this or that B-lister.
Now, I'm not even sure why the fragrance industry needs or deserves an awards show, but that's not really the point. They needed a venue, and Lincoln Center apparently needs money, so what's the problem? The problem is that this was intended to be a place for the arts, where the various performing groups that were previously scattered throughout the city would come together to create an atmosphere of mutual support, creativity, and vitality. That's why Juilliard moved here -- it was intended to be the artistic nerve center not just of the city but of the entire country where students could learn from and observe the best of the best. To see one of its primary venues pimped out for such an orgiastic, unapologetic display of superficiality is something that should make artists, and anybody who has any respect for the arts, cringe. In this cynical and post-modern age it sounds hopelessly anachronistic to suggest that the arts (whatever that means!) should be given a place of honor and that their spaces should be sacred, but this was exactly the intent of those who donated to, and built, this complex. Less than 50 years later, however, the nerve center of the arts in New York has become a a high-class brothel of event spaces available to any disease-ridden organization that can slip a twenty to the bureaucrats whose enormous salaries necessitate the practice in the first place.
Where now is the messiah who will drive the peddlers of frivolity out of the temple of art?
Friday, May 25, 2012
At long last, another post by me!
The old adage "he who rests, rusts" is applicable to everything. I had a teacher who used to talk about "practicing life" as if 16-yr-old hormone-crazed high-school students understood, much less cared, what he meant. What he meant, I can see now, is that literally every aspect of our existence requires practice in order to improve, or even maintain, proficiency. From behaviors we wish to adopt to skills we wish to acquire, it all requires effort -- sometimes rewarding, enjoyable effort, sometimes pure slog work; frequently a mixture of both.
This is all a roundabout way of coming to the point that my ability to write has, I believe, begun to atrophy from disuse. The reasons are not difficult to discern. Now that I am no longer forced to produce significant amounts of relatively meaningless prose on a weekly basis by any educational establishment, I've taken the liberty of producing virtually nothing for the past year. Surely the world is no worse off for this, but I am worse off because, next to performing music, writing is one of the two things that I both enjoy and at which I seem to be decently skilled. So, here I am in the blogosphere for the umpteenth time, foisting my half-baked, obsessively scrutinized opinions and ramblings on an unsuspecting, already hopelessly cluttered, internet. This time I am determined to exercise at least a modicum of self-discipline and write something -- anything -- every day, in much the same what that our more industrious ancestors kept painstakingly detailed accounts of their day-to-day activities in diaries. Some people still keep diaries. A small subset even keep private diaries. I'm old enough to remember that the phenomenon of blogging grew out of the phenomenon of the online, public journal. No more than a decade ago, most of my friends had a livejournal. Some who fancied themselves societal outsiders had deadjournals. I was one of the latter, and I recently discovered to my horror that my angsty late-teen drivel is still stored in some remote corner of that website. I can't get rid of it, as I have long since forgotten the login information to both that site and the email address I used to set it up. I hope it doesn't make it into my obituary. I hope this doesn't make it into my obituary.
Those sites still exist for some reason, though much of their purpose has been ceded to Facebook/Twitter, where people who don't really want to write anything can post brief sobriquets and exquisitely capture the mood of the moment, and to more respectable blogging sites, like Blogger and Wordpress, where people like me can flood the marketplace of ideas with cheap, disposable, kitsch. I'm sorry. No I'm not. I need to maintain my technical skill at writing just in case I am one day struck with the kind of inspiration that makes it a skill worth having. I don't have it now. I probably never will. It's ok, most people don't, but I'll wait, and pray.
If my generation had any shame, we'd hide our externalized thoughts between two pieces of leather like our ancestors, perhaps to be discovered by a distant descendant or, for the extremely fortunate, an intrepid biographer. That instinct to hide our foolishness in privacy is gone, obliterated, absolutely extinguished by social media. It's so foreign to the contemporary mind that I'm embarrassed to even admit that I remember it, because it makes me feel like an antique. An old lady will bring me on PBS and inquire about the worth of a petulant gasbag that still ruminates about meaningless notions. Worthless, she will be told. I'm certainly not going to date myself any more by actually submitting to the shame I'm ashamed to remember. No, this exercise will be public. I'm sorry. No I'm not.
Anway, I'm going to make this go this time. I swear. I can't vouch for the content, but the form will be excellent.
Friday, July 22, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Why do we play? Why do we teach?
A few years ago, the organ pedagogue Sandra Soderlund published a voluminous encyclopedia of keyboard performance practice entitled How did they play? How did they Teach? (Chapel Hill: Hinshaw, 2006). It's a first-rate volume, as these things go: painstakingly researched with ample illustrations and clear, concise prose. It succeeds brilliantly in answering the questions posed by its somewhat unusual title. Having dealt with the "how" of (keyboard) music, we need to examine the altogether more pressing question of "why?" Why do we, as "classical" musicians and scholars, persevere in ministering to a culture that regards as, at best, misguided antiquities, and at worst, ethically dubious figures on the fringes of society? (With regard to the latter, the critic Alex Ross is fond of citing the fact that, for the past 40 or so years, "when any self-respecting Hollywood archcriminal sets out to enslave mankind, he listens to a little classical music to get in the mood"). Bluntly put: why do we, and why should we, defend the heritage of western art music against a merciless onslaught of banality? Is it worth the sacrifices we make? If the answer is yes (and, presumably it would be for most professional musicians), what makes it so?
To be frank, the situation of music in America is disgusting. There is no reason to single out America for damnation, and I suspect one could extend this sentiment at least to "music in the industrialized world," if not "music in the world." However, as an American who has never spent any significant period of time abroad, I feel I am only qualified to comment on the environment with which I am most familiar. I don't believe I am alone in my disgust, but what surprises me most of all is that the discourse surrounding music in society is at least as disappointing as the phenomenon itself. The level of technical virtuosity of young musicians is, by any measure, absolutely unprecedented. Yet, as our technical proficiency has increased exponentially, our willingness to take bold and principled stands in defense of our art seems to have virtually disappeared. In the interest of maintaining an atmosphere of tolerance, accessibility, and collegiality, we have ceded more and more of our legitimacy to popular culture. So much so, in fact, that it is now we who must justify our right to exist in the court of popular opinion. The loudest voices in defense of classical music are music critics: not professional players of composers but highly-educated connoisseurs. Anthony Tommasini, the head music critic of the New York Times, recently displayed his cultural authority by loudly and laboriously compiling a Letterman-style "Top 10 list:" in this case, the ten greatest composers of western music. Performers and (to a lesser degree) composers have fallen disturbingly silent.
The cause of this silence is not easy to determine, but a number of reasons suggest themselves. For as long as I have been in music school, I have been intrigued by the extant to which so many music students maintain "split musical personalities." It is as if, after a day at the office "working" on Bach, Beethoven, and Co., they come home to the vernacular music that they personally love. Music school then, takes on a rather laboratory-like atmosphere, with emotionally detached technicians obediently performing the duties their teachers expect of them. Why would one undertake the rigors of music school (and particularly graduate school) for a cause to which one was not entirely committed? It certainly would not be for money or prestige. And if they are committed, what accounts for the "escapism?" Is it merely to project an aura of tolerance, hipness, or populism? Obviously not. Musicians, by and large, are an intelligent and honest lot, unlikely to put on airs simply for the sake of fitting in. How is it, then, that one can spend one's days "up to one's elbows" in the greatest masterpieces of western culture, and return home at night to be contentedly besotted with the products of the culture industry? How can one value both equally?
At this point, I am doubtless opening myself up to charges of gross intolerance, chauvinism, and the like, against which I should say a few words. The simple fact is that much popular music is enjoyable. If it were not so, it would not be popular. I'm not ashamed to say that I enjoy much popular music, although admittedly my interests tend toward the older repertoires. However, to paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay, enjoyment "is not all, it is not meat nor drink." To say that something has a value does not imply that it has as much value as anything else. To take a probably overused metaphor: most people like chocolate. However, consuming nothing but chocolate will quickly kill the body. Likewise, consuming nothing but the immediate stimulation provided by popular culture will eventually kill the soul.
When we speak of value, it seems we approach the heart of the problem. If the 20th century has taught us anything, it is that convictions and opinions are dangerous. Opinions can lead to resentment, resentment can lead to violence, and violence can lead to 12 million disfigured corpses. It need not be so however. Passing judgment is part of human nature, and we do it every day in various and diverse ways. In the realm of more mundane value judgments, loyalty to sports teams is accepted an encouraged, however tremulous the underlying logic. We are not only expected, but required to make value judgments in the political arena. Any pundit who claimed that a particular candidate was no better or worse than his opponent, only different, would be justly derided. And yet, value judgments in the cultural arena have been disallowed, and anyone naive enough to suggest, in a public forum, that western classical music should be at the top of the food chain, will quickly be called onto the carpet as an elitist, snob, egoist, or, at worst, a racist. Since late capitalism has failed to provide political or economic equality, our egalitarian aspirations have been transferred to the realm of culture. This is nowhere more baldly displayed than in modern Christian church music, where the elevation of various world musics to equal validity with Bach and Palestrina is intended to somehow compensate for the vicious realities of global capitalism. By some twisted logic, we can compensate for real economic and political oppression by offering the cold comfort of cultural equality -- nevermind that the composer of that African hymn you just sang spent his life working for nothing in a factory that makes our polo shirts. Sadly, questioning the equality of cultural artifacts has become the conceptual equivalent of questioning the equality of the human races (this may be part of our dubious inheritance from Richard Wagner, by way of Adolf Hitler, but's a question for another time.) To be sure, asserting the superiority of a particular cultural phenomenon can, and often has, taken on nasty racist overtones. Yet the illusion of absolute cultural equality is no less capable of perpetuating sexism, ethnocentrism, and racism. To take a more or less random example, in his well-respected 2007 book The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross asserts that "Public Enemy's 'Welcome to the Terrordome' is the Rite of Spring of Black America." "Welcome to the Terrordome" is a masterwork of hip-hop, and a potent monument to the African American struggle, but The Rite is an immensely nuanced, incredibly complex piece of nearly 30 minutes' duration that ranks as one of the most beloved and influential pieces of music on the 20th century, if not music in general. To equate them is manifestly unfair to both, and condescending toward Public Enemy. The suggestion that "Terrordome" is the Rite of Black America implicitly suggests that Black America is incapable of producing anything of the magnitude of the Rite, the attitude taken by most white composers toward their black colleagues in the early years of the last century (interestingly enough, Ross's book is one of the few to deal with that phenomenon.) Furthermore, it implies that The Rite would never appeal to Black America, which must construct its own version, raising the problematic notion that a work of art is only meaningful to its intended audience. The ludicrousness of the enterprise is brought into even sharper relief if we consider of pop piece of substantially lesser quality. One could just as easily say that "Friday" by Rebecca Black is The Rite of Spring of bubble-gum pop.
We do what we do because it is not only valuable, but it is necessary. We must not retreat from this belief, even though it is likely to offend a large segment of the population. To be honest, one of the reasons that cultural judgments frequently resort to the intellectual thuggery of racism and sexism is that providing a remotely objective justification for them is extraordinarily difficult. In my opinion the value of art music cannot be explained, but must be experienced. Analogies such as the one I made earlier with food may elucidate an aspect of what we're after, but experience is the only real teacher.
An oft-quoted quip of John cage, one of the most poetic and convincing relativists of all time, instructs the reader to listen to something he/she finds unpleasant 10 times, then 100 times, until he/she realizes that there is no reason it is not beautiful. This is, more or less, the basis of the culture industry. Rather than expanding one's definition and appreciation of beauty, the end result of Cage's suggestion is likely to be that the listener no longer cares whether the sound in question is beautiful or not -- they have simply become desensitized and habituated. Classical musicians have the power to reawaken the awe that once gripped people in the presence of great art, but we must not shrink from our convictions. Music critics abrogate their evaluative responsibility through obsessive subdividing of genres. Categorization allows the avoidance of comparison. Comparing a punk band to post-punk band or thrash metal to death metal would be, naturally, like comparing apples and oranges. When a genre becomes so large that it looks as if a hierarchy may emerge, it is time to establish a new genre. Musicians must be willing to compare apples to wax apples, to extend (and murder) the metaphor. We will never prosper by assuming an egalitarian position. If a 3 minute pop song is, in terms of utility, equivalent to a 65-minute Mahler Symphony, Mahler is going to lose every time. If we retreat any further, we will be retreating into our own graves.
To be frank, the situation of music in America is disgusting. There is no reason to single out America for damnation, and I suspect one could extend this sentiment at least to "music in the industrialized world," if not "music in the world." However, as an American who has never spent any significant period of time abroad, I feel I am only qualified to comment on the environment with which I am most familiar. I don't believe I am alone in my disgust, but what surprises me most of all is that the discourse surrounding music in society is at least as disappointing as the phenomenon itself. The level of technical virtuosity of young musicians is, by any measure, absolutely unprecedented. Yet, as our technical proficiency has increased exponentially, our willingness to take bold and principled stands in defense of our art seems to have virtually disappeared. In the interest of maintaining an atmosphere of tolerance, accessibility, and collegiality, we have ceded more and more of our legitimacy to popular culture. So much so, in fact, that it is now we who must justify our right to exist in the court of popular opinion. The loudest voices in defense of classical music are music critics: not professional players of composers but highly-educated connoisseurs. Anthony Tommasini, the head music critic of the New York Times, recently displayed his cultural authority by loudly and laboriously compiling a Letterman-style "Top 10 list:" in this case, the ten greatest composers of western music. Performers and (to a lesser degree) composers have fallen disturbingly silent.
The cause of this silence is not easy to determine, but a number of reasons suggest themselves. For as long as I have been in music school, I have been intrigued by the extant to which so many music students maintain "split musical personalities." It is as if, after a day at the office "working" on Bach, Beethoven, and Co., they come home to the vernacular music that they personally love. Music school then, takes on a rather laboratory-like atmosphere, with emotionally detached technicians obediently performing the duties their teachers expect of them. Why would one undertake the rigors of music school (and particularly graduate school) for a cause to which one was not entirely committed? It certainly would not be for money or prestige. And if they are committed, what accounts for the "escapism?" Is it merely to project an aura of tolerance, hipness, or populism? Obviously not. Musicians, by and large, are an intelligent and honest lot, unlikely to put on airs simply for the sake of fitting in. How is it, then, that one can spend one's days "up to one's elbows" in the greatest masterpieces of western culture, and return home at night to be contentedly besotted with the products of the culture industry? How can one value both equally?
At this point, I am doubtless opening myself up to charges of gross intolerance, chauvinism, and the like, against which I should say a few words. The simple fact is that much popular music is enjoyable. If it were not so, it would not be popular. I'm not ashamed to say that I enjoy much popular music, although admittedly my interests tend toward the older repertoires. However, to paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay, enjoyment "is not all, it is not meat nor drink." To say that something has a value does not imply that it has as much value as anything else. To take a probably overused metaphor: most people like chocolate. However, consuming nothing but chocolate will quickly kill the body. Likewise, consuming nothing but the immediate stimulation provided by popular culture will eventually kill the soul.
When we speak of value, it seems we approach the heart of the problem. If the 20th century has taught us anything, it is that convictions and opinions are dangerous. Opinions can lead to resentment, resentment can lead to violence, and violence can lead to 12 million disfigured corpses. It need not be so however. Passing judgment is part of human nature, and we do it every day in various and diverse ways. In the realm of more mundane value judgments, loyalty to sports teams is accepted an encouraged, however tremulous the underlying logic. We are not only expected, but required to make value judgments in the political arena. Any pundit who claimed that a particular candidate was no better or worse than his opponent, only different, would be justly derided. And yet, value judgments in the cultural arena have been disallowed, and anyone naive enough to suggest, in a public forum, that western classical music should be at the top of the food chain, will quickly be called onto the carpet as an elitist, snob, egoist, or, at worst, a racist. Since late capitalism has failed to provide political or economic equality, our egalitarian aspirations have been transferred to the realm of culture. This is nowhere more baldly displayed than in modern Christian church music, where the elevation of various world musics to equal validity with Bach and Palestrina is intended to somehow compensate for the vicious realities of global capitalism. By some twisted logic, we can compensate for real economic and political oppression by offering the cold comfort of cultural equality -- nevermind that the composer of that African hymn you just sang spent his life working for nothing in a factory that makes our polo shirts. Sadly, questioning the equality of cultural artifacts has become the conceptual equivalent of questioning the equality of the human races (this may be part of our dubious inheritance from Richard Wagner, by way of Adolf Hitler, but's a question for another time.) To be sure, asserting the superiority of a particular cultural phenomenon can, and often has, taken on nasty racist overtones. Yet the illusion of absolute cultural equality is no less capable of perpetuating sexism, ethnocentrism, and racism. To take a more or less random example, in his well-respected 2007 book The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross asserts that "Public Enemy's 'Welcome to the Terrordome' is the Rite of Spring of Black America." "Welcome to the Terrordome" is a masterwork of hip-hop, and a potent monument to the African American struggle, but The Rite is an immensely nuanced, incredibly complex piece of nearly 30 minutes' duration that ranks as one of the most beloved and influential pieces of music on the 20th century, if not music in general. To equate them is manifestly unfair to both, and condescending toward Public Enemy. The suggestion that "Terrordome" is the Rite of Black America implicitly suggests that Black America is incapable of producing anything of the magnitude of the Rite, the attitude taken by most white composers toward their black colleagues in the early years of the last century (interestingly enough, Ross's book is one of the few to deal with that phenomenon.) Furthermore, it implies that The Rite would never appeal to Black America, which must construct its own version, raising the problematic notion that a work of art is only meaningful to its intended audience. The ludicrousness of the enterprise is brought into even sharper relief if we consider of pop piece of substantially lesser quality. One could just as easily say that "Friday" by Rebecca Black is The Rite of Spring of bubble-gum pop.
We do what we do because it is not only valuable, but it is necessary. We must not retreat from this belief, even though it is likely to offend a large segment of the population. To be honest, one of the reasons that cultural judgments frequently resort to the intellectual thuggery of racism and sexism is that providing a remotely objective justification for them is extraordinarily difficult. In my opinion the value of art music cannot be explained, but must be experienced. Analogies such as the one I made earlier with food may elucidate an aspect of what we're after, but experience is the only real teacher.
An oft-quoted quip of John cage, one of the most poetic and convincing relativists of all time, instructs the reader to listen to something he/she finds unpleasant 10 times, then 100 times, until he/she realizes that there is no reason it is not beautiful. This is, more or less, the basis of the culture industry. Rather than expanding one's definition and appreciation of beauty, the end result of Cage's suggestion is likely to be that the listener no longer cares whether the sound in question is beautiful or not -- they have simply become desensitized and habituated. Classical musicians have the power to reawaken the awe that once gripped people in the presence of great art, but we must not shrink from our convictions. Music critics abrogate their evaluative responsibility through obsessive subdividing of genres. Categorization allows the avoidance of comparison. Comparing a punk band to post-punk band or thrash metal to death metal would be, naturally, like comparing apples and oranges. When a genre becomes so large that it looks as if a hierarchy may emerge, it is time to establish a new genre. Musicians must be willing to compare apples to wax apples, to extend (and murder) the metaphor. We will never prosper by assuming an egalitarian position. If a 3 minute pop song is, in terms of utility, equivalent to a 65-minute Mahler Symphony, Mahler is going to lose every time. If we retreat any further, we will be retreating into our own graves.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)