Politically "Conservative" Classical Music
A. Brain
it's not off topic.
National Review has a list of top fifty
so-called "conservative" rock songs, shown below on
the NYT site. Supposedly, these embody "conservative"
values, like individualism, resistance to government
intrusion, abstinence, etc. Some puzzling entries here,
like the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil".
I know we have some "conservatives" here, but
aside from religious music praising God,
what are the poltically "conservative" classical works?
Handel's, Purcell's, and Boyce's coronation anthems
and that kind of thing I suppose.
But despite recent developments, state-sponsored
stuff celebrating the status quo does not qualify
as "conservative" in the traditional sense.
It's hard for me to think of too much in the way of
opera, unless once again you consider the religious
works like "Faust". Mostly the police are bad guys,
the aristocracy and professionals like doctors and
lawyers are buffoons or villains, and even a "villian"
like Don Giovanni is a hero of sorts.
Well, here's the National Review list, and surely
any list of pop music should be top forty not
top fifty:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/arts/music/25brockweb.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
--
A. Brain
Remove NOSPAM for email.
Josep Vilanova
Carmina Burana have been considered by many people 'fascist music'. But
fascism doesn't have any problems with government intrusion. Neither
the Coronation Anthems. Then, that list is looking for a more
contemporary version of conservatism as it is seen in the US. And I
would think this is a fairly modern phenomenon, not necessarily seen in
Classical Music.
Even Faust caused some problems in conservative areas the US (although
that was ignorance rather than conservatism).
Possibly the main source of music that would fit those values would be
any type of christian religious music, without specific references to
catholicism. Maybe things like the German Requiem and the Messiah would
fit that bill.
j
William Sommerwerck
(such as coronations) are "conservative". Other than implicitly supporting
the status quo, they make no political statement.
Bear with me, and I'll find the list of weirdly named works listed in a
Crossroads catalog. These include such marvels of Communist composition as
"Hands off Korea!" and "Eagles in Revolt".
One other point... A song can be liberal or conservative, depending on its
lyrics. But how can the music itself be politically conservative or liberal?
If it is, it would have to be in the context of how its implied emotions
interact with the current social mood.
Opinions? (I'm sure we'll have lots of examples from Shostakovich.)
alain...@gmail.com
>
> Well, here's the National Review list, and surely
> any list of pop music should be top forty not
> top fifty:
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/arts/music/25brockweb.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
>
It's odd how they define conservative, but I believe these are the type
of people who think it was the conservatives who opposed Hitler,
Franco, and Mussolini, and the left who appeased them.
ad
marce...@cpu-net.net
It's ironic that rock music would be considered 'a conservative
classic', since the whole point of rock (at its inception) was to go
against conservative norms and values, at least back in 50s and 60s.
Cherry picking parts of lyrics doesn't mean much either, and most of
the snippets of lyrics cited (it would be good to see the whole set of
lyrics) are against certain things, as opposed to being for a
particular political view. The question would be better posed to band
to see if they would be in agreement.
A lot of rock lovers would claim that most classical music is
politically conservative because it's about tradition, or because of
movie stereotypes.
Myself I can't think of any pieces which would be overtly conservative
in a political sense, except maybe some nationalistic works by
Shostakovich, and even there its more about celebrating a particular
event rather than trying to promote a conservative stance.
Maybe a list of politically conservative composers?
Marcello
Thornhill
A. Brain wrote:
> Mostly the police are bad guys,
> the aristocracy and professionals like doctors and
> lawyers are buffoons or villains, and even a "villian"
> like Don Giovanni is a hero of sorts.
Don Giovanni was most definitely not intended to be a hero. All the Da
Ponte operas are products of the Enlightenment. The villains are the
aristocracy who think because of their wealth and privilege, it's their
god-given-right to screw around with the lives of the proletariat for
their personal enjoyment. In each opera Da Ponte makes a Lockean
argument that all people are entitled to individual rights and liberty
regardless of their wealth and class.
sechumlib
<josepv...@hotmail.com> said:
> I guess part of the problem would be defining conservative. Works like
> Carmina Burana have been considered by many people 'fascist music'. But
> fascism doesn't have any problems with government intrusion. Neither
> the Coronation Anthems. Then, that list is looking for a more
> contemporary version of conservatism as it is seen in the US. And I
> would think this is a fairly modern phenomenon, not necessarily seen in
> Classical Music.
> Even Faust caused some problems in conservative areas the US (although
> that was ignorance rather than conservatism).
> Possibly the main source of music that would fit those values would be
> any type of christian religious music, without specific references to
> catholicism. Maybe things like the German Requiem and the Messiah would
> fit that bill.
How about openly patriotic music, like Randall Thompson's "Testament of
Freedom"?
It's a lot better (I guess) than Shostakovich's "Song of the Forests",
and MAYBE on the other side.
Gregory Arkadin
example, on the list for "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,"
recorded "Georgia on My Mind" to support Jimmy Carter. The editors
stripped most of the songs here of their context and appropriated them
for their own purposes. Which, I guess, should have been entirely
expected.
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:2006052609024943658-sechumlib@liberalnet:
> How about openly patriotic music, like Randall Thompson's "Testament of
> Freedom"?
How about Howard Hanson's "Song of Democracy"? Never mind that the guy who
wrote the words was a gay liberal....
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. ~ FDR (attrib.)
Paul Goldstein
says...
>
>I don't consider this a "political" thread, so
>it's not off topic.
>
>National Review has a list of top fifty
>so-called "conservative" rock songs, shown below on
>the NYT site. Supposedly, these embody "conservative"
>values, like individualism, resistance to government
>intrusion, abstinence, etc. Some puzzling entries here,
>like the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil".
>
>I know we have some "conservatives" here, but
>aside from religious music praising God,
>what are the poltically "conservative" classical works?
Brahms' "Triumphlied" probably qualifies.
Simon Roberts
says...
>It's hard for me to think of too much in the way of
>opera
There's always Rocco's aria in Fidelio....
Simon
Paul Kintzele
> I can't begin to detail all the ironies of this list.
Indeed. Early Rush I can see, those were their Ayn Rand days. But John
Cougar Mellencamp? No bloody way. My favorite:
18. "Cult of Personality," by Living Colour.
A hard—rocking critique of state power, whacking Mussolini, Stalin,
and even JFK: "I exploit you, still you love me / I tell you one and
one makes three / I'm the cult of personality."
Must...Not...Mention...Bush...Or...NSA...Or...Resistance...Failing...Failing....
And, by the way, where the heck is "Okie from Muskogee"? Clearly this
list would be less absurd if it were more country-music friendly. Not
that all country music is conservative, but plenty of it is. I mean,
Toby Keith, right there you have half your list.
Also: where's Ted Nugent?
Paul
Joe Martin
music--or more precisely, I don't think it can be answered. But I have
to say this is one of the most idiotic pop music stories I've seen in
the Times. "Rock the Casbah" is a conservative anthem? Joe Strummer
is turning in his grave.
John Harrington
<snip>
> It's hard for me to think of too much in the way of
> opera, unless once again you consider the religious
> works like "Faust". Mostly the police are bad guys,
> the aristocracy and professionals like doctors and
> lawyers are buffoons or villains, and even a "villian"
> like Don Giovanni is a hero of sorts.
Heroes usually are not dragged kicking and screaming to hell. Also, DG
was not merely a libertine but what we'd call today a rapist. No
villain a liberal would qualify with quotation marks.
> Well, here's the National Review list, and surely
> any list of pop music should be top forty not
> top fifty:
Wagner's operas, particularly the Ring cycle, whose purpose was
explicitly nationalistic and racial, are an obvious choice.
Most composers, and most musicians, at least the good ones, are not
conservatives (relative to their times, of course). Conservatism,
which I would define as an ideology that holds self-interest far
superior to compassionate concerns, is not likely to be found
cohabitating with souls that can comprehend subtlety and sentiment.
J
sechumlib
> Brahms' "Triumphlied" probably qualifies.
Which I WISH I could find a recording of! Is there one available?
Eric Grunin
> Also: where's Ted Nugent?
Or Frank Zappa! Really, he and Townsend are the only 'convervative'
rock lyricists who have any significant intellectual ability. But even
they are not so much 'conservative,' as simply pessimistic, and not a
little contemptuous of their own listeners.
Of course all such lists are a bit ridiculous, but this one is so off,
and so often, that I'm certain some of the entries are deliberately
tongue-in-cheek, trying to find 'conservative' bits in the midst of
obviously non-conservative sentiments.
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
Ian Pace
"Thornhill" <seth...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1148647911.8...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
conventional type of 'hero' (whatever that is), might even be a 'villain' in
some senses, but is portrayed with subtlety, allure and fascination by
Mozart and Da Ponte. The 'proletarian' characters (peasant characters would
perhaps be a better way of putting it) of Masetto and Zerlina could be
argued to 'come across best' in the opera, but that is by no means
unambiguous - I've read some interpretations that suggest that Zerlina is
the flip side of the Don herself, equally conniving and manipulative, and
there are possible implications of brutality in Masetto (at least some
people read him that way). One of the opera's many strengths is the way it
goes beyond simple categories of heroes and villains, instead presenting
much more complex and sophisticatedly portrayed human beings.
Which is not of course to say that class isn't a major factor in this and
other Mozart operas. But class is about power and economics, not about
essentialised identities. Class constitutes a set of relations that are in
themselves more significant than any of the individual characters in Don
Giovanni. Mozart and Da Ponte happily resist the temptation to
deindividualise their characters so as to become mere cyphers for their
class.
Ian
Ian Pace
"Paul Goldstein" <Paul_...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:e575g...@drn.newsguy.com...
Ian
Johannes Roehl
> A. Brain wrote:
> <snip>
>> It's hard for me to think of too much in the way of
>> opera, unless once again you consider the religious
>> works like "Faust". Mostly the police are bad guys,
>> the aristocracy and professionals like doctors and
>> lawyers are buffoons or villains, and even a "villian"
>> like Don Giovanni is a hero of sorts.
>
> Heroes usually are not dragged kicking and screaming to hell. Also, DG
> was not merely a libertine but what we'd call today a rapist. No
> villain a liberal would qualify with quotation marks.
>
>> Well, here's the National Review list, and surely
>> any list of pop music should be top forty not
>> top fifty:
>
> Wagner's operas, particularly the Ring cycle, whose purpose was
> explicitly nationalistic and racial, are an obvious choice.
Obviously wrong, yes. The music is obviously not conservative at all.
The Ring cycle isn't nationalistic either. It's about the end of an old
world order (which is suppressive and expoitative in many ways) and ends
with an utopian outlook to a new order where people are free. Hardly a
politcally concervative pint of view.
The only Wagner opera with some nationalist undertones is Meistersinger.
But they are not central to the plot at all, it's more the atmosphere of
late medieval Nuremberg (the role that city was to play later cannot be
balmed on Wagner). One of its main topics is a gentle polemic against
the stiff conservatism of the Meistersinger in the field of art.
Parsifal and Tristan have nothing to do with Germanic mythology anway,
Tannhaueser and Lohengrin take place in medieval Germany (or Belgium),
but I don't see any nationalistic connection there either.
Johannes
Ian Pace
"John Harrington" <bear...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1148666261....@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
conservatives relative to their time. One could make a case for including
Bach, Haydn, Brahms, Debussy, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, for starters (not
to mention highly explicit post-war conservatives such as Milton Babbitt).
But their music is not synonymous with their political outlook, as least as
far as the latter is construed.
But conservatism (and you might be surprised to hear me say this) isn't an
ideology I would condemn in all senses (neo-conservatism and, by the way I
define it, liberalism, are a different matter). Conservatives generally have
some values, some ideals they believe in, which are not necessarily simply
those of nationalism, religion or the interests of capital. Schoenberg was a
conservative in all senses politically (he said 'I am at least as
conservative as Edison and Ford have been' - in 'My Attitude Towards
Politics' (1950) in Schoenberg - Style and Idea, edited Leonard Stein,
translated Leo Black (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), p. 505 - he does point
out in this essay that in earlier life he was in sympathy to 'Marxian
theories', but turned away from them, becoming proud to serve in the First
World War, and becoming a monarchist*), but had other values, especially as
far as music was concerned, which did not seem inherently contradictory to
him (I think).
I'm not arguing here that political ideology and aesthetic work are
unconnected; rather holding out the possibility that a composers' aesthetic
activities, informed to some extent by their wider world-view, might work
through some of the inherent contradictions in that world-view.
Ian
*Schoenberg also says at the end of this essay that 'I was never a
communist' (hard to reconcile with once being in sympathy to 'Marxian
theories'), the editor suggests that this statement 'shows Schoenberg's
sensitivity to the 'Loyalty Oath' controversy at the University of
California'. I believe it's equally important to bear in mind that he said
this during the McCarthy era, and was certainly aware of the fate of his
former student Hans Eisler (who was deported in 1948). Schoenberg had
referred again to not being a Communist in a letter to Josef Rufer of 18
December 1947 (Schoenberg - Letters, edited Erwin Stein, translated Eithne
Wilkins, Ernst Kaiser (London: Faber and Faber, 1964) describing it is
'really too stupid' of Eisler and other such artists 'to go in for theories
about reforming the world, especially when one can see from history where it
all leads' but adding (perhaps sympathetically) that 'I hope that all in all
they won't take him too seriously here.', which they certainly did.
Whatever, the earlier letter suggests that Schoenberg's anti-Communism was
sincere.
Ian Pace
"sechumlib" <sech...@liberal.net> wrote in message
news:2006052614400150073-sechumlib@liberalnet...
Philharmonische Chor Dresden with the Dresdner Philharmonies under Michel
Plasson, in a cheap EMI boxed set of Brahms choral works. The work is
too-often maligned (not least by Richard Taruskin in his Oxford History); it
has many striking qualities and a deep musical logic and invention of its
own (forget the words, it's wise!). Malcolm Macdonald has some very
interesting things to say about this in his Master Musicians volume on
Brahms (a really excellent book, I think).
Ian
Ian Pace
"Johannes Roehl" <parr...@web.de> wrote in message
news:4dp2i6F...@individual.net...
> John Harrington schrieb:
>> A. Brain wrote:
>> <snip>
>>> It's hard for me to think of too much in the way of
>>> opera, unless once again you consider the religious
>>> works like "Faust". Mostly the police are bad guys,
>>> the aristocracy and professionals like doctors and
>>> lawyers are buffoons or villains, and even a "villian"
>>> like Don Giovanni is a hero of sorts.
>>
>> Heroes usually are not dragged kicking and screaming to hell. Also, DG
>> was not merely a libertine but what we'd call today a rapist. No
>> villain a liberal would qualify with quotation marks.
>>
>>> Well, here's the National Review list, and surely
>>> any list of pop music should be top forty not
>>> top fifty:
>>
>> Wagner's operas, particularly the Ring cycle, whose purpose was
>> explicitly nationalistic and racial, are an obvious choice.
>
> Obviously wrong, yes. The music is obviously not conservative at all.
> The Ring cycle isn't nationalistic either. It's about the end of an old
> world order (which is suppressive and expoitative in many ways) and ends
> with an utopian outlook to a new order where people are free. Hardly a
> politcally concervative pint of view.
Indeed. The association of Wagner with a certain nationalism and mythical
heroism stems in large measure from his appropriation by the Nazis. These
elements do exist, certainly, or at the least Wagner engages with them, but
by no means in a one-dimensionally affirmative manner. Some people have
pointed out that Hitler must have ignored the final acts of Wagner operas,
where the heroes frequently experience their downfall. Frederic Spotts, in
his excellent book 'Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics', that after the war
turned against Germany, Goetterdaemmerung was no longer played at the War
Festivals, and after Stalingrad, Hitler could no longer bear to listen to
Wagner, consoling himself (according to the cook at his military
headquarters) simply with Lehar's The Merry Widow.
> The only Wagner opera with some nationalist undertones is Meistersinger.
> But they are not central to the plot at all, it's more the atmosphere of
> late medieval Nuremberg (the role that city was to play later cannot be
> balmed on Wagner). One of its main topics is a gentle polemic against the
> stiff conservatism of the Meistersinger in the field of art.
> Parsifal and Tristan have nothing to do with Germanic mythology anway,
> Tannhaueser and Lohengrin take place in medieval Germany (or Belgium), but
> I don't see any nationalistic connection there either.
>
It makes more sense to be critical of Wagner's mythical primitivism, really.
Ian
Johannes Roehl
I'd even say one had to know the circumstances. The words are taken from
the bible. The piece could have been an admittedly odd way of paying
hommage to Bach and Händel or celebrating some church holiday. (I
haven't listend to the piece in ages, but I didn't like it much back
then, jubilation simply isn't one of the moods Brahms can express very
well)
I wonder that apparently the music of Elgar has not been mentioned.
Although he was a kind of outsider in Victorian and Edwardian society,
they seem to affirm their values quite well (only layman' impression).
Although some, but onyl some of Vaughan Williams.
And FWIW I looked at that website with the rock songs, to me it seems
that the whole thing is supposed to be ironic. (I can't be sure as I
hardly know any of the music mentioned there)
Johannes
Ian Pace
"A. Brain" <abr...@NOSPAMatt.net> wrote in message
news:6kydg.165717$eR6....@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
>I don't consider this a "political" thread, so
> it's not off topic.
>
> National Review has a list of top fifty
> so-called "conservative" rock songs, shown below on
> the NYT site. Supposedly, these embody "conservative"
> values, like individualism, resistance to government
> intrusion, abstinence, etc. Some puzzling entries here,
> like the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil".
>
> I know we have some "conservatives" here, but
> aside from religious music praising God,
> what are the poltically "conservative" classical works?
>
> Handel's, Purcell's, and Boyce's coronation anthems
> and that kind of thing I suppose.
>
> But despite recent developments, state-sponsored
> stuff celebrating the status quo does not qualify
> as "conservative" in the traditional sense.
>
> It's hard for me to think of too much in the way of
> opera, unless once again you consider the religious
> works like "Faust". Mostly the police are bad guys,
> the aristocracy and professionals like doctors and
> lawyers are buffoons or villains, and even a "villian"
> like Don Giovanni is a hero of sorts.
>
etc.), so it becomes about music as a sonic identity, and whether political
ideologies might somehow be encoded or represented in there. In one sense,
my answer to that would be no (because I don't believe music can represent
something so concrete); what I do think is an issue is how much composers
adapt their work to the demands of commercialism (to those of the 'culture
industry', in Adorno's terms). This is not a representation of their
political views, necessarily, but a manifestation of their relationship to a
commercialised world. What precisely those demands are is of course
something that might be debated (I would suggest superficial novelty
combined with essential homogeneity, easy digestibility, reduction of inner
complexity of purpose to some manifestation of surface 'style' in a
manneristic way, and so on, are some of them). If I say that I tend to value
most that music which (to me) demonstrates a certain integrity and
individuality, as opposed to that which takes the easy route in order to
maximise short-term success and/or sales, I think that is a political
judgement.
Ian
Eric Grunin
> I know we have some "conservatives" here, but
> aside from religious music praising God,
> what are the poltically "conservative" classical works?
The most authentically conservative composer of the 20th Century was
surely Arnold Schoenberg. He attacked Stravinsky as a dilettante in his
Three Satires, Op. 28.
Steve Reich has said that western music went wrong after Perotin, and
attempted to compose 'Drumming' accordingly.
Harry Partch felt that Equal Temperament basically destroyed music, and
attempted to compose accordingly. His sometime pupil Ben Johnston feels
the same way.
George Rochberg consciously tried to turn back time from his Third
Quartet onwards. Richard Strauss did the same beginning with "Der
Rosenkavalier."
Donald Martino wrote several very angry satires against what he
considered the philistines of his time ("From the Other Side,"
"Augenmusik").
At the time of his death, J.S. Bach was still codifying and refining a
style that was decades out of date and interesting to almost no one
save his fellow composers, and precious few of them. Milton Babbit is
in the same position.
I could go on and on. These are all more truly 'conservative' than
anything on that silly rock list.
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
Ian Pace
> Ian Pace schrieb:
>> "Paul Goldstein" <Paul_...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
>> news:e575g...@drn.newsguy.com...
>>> In article <6kydg.165717$eR6....@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
>>> A. Brain
>>> says...
>>>> I don't consider this a "political" thread, so
>>>> it's not off topic.
>>>>
>>>> National Review has a list of top fifty
>>>> so-called "conservative" rock songs, shown below on
>>>> the NYT site. Supposedly, these embody "conservative"
>>>> values, like individualism, resistance to government
>>>> intrusion, abstinence, etc. Some puzzling entries here,
>>>> like the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil".
>>>>
>>>> I know we have some "conservatives" here, but
>>>> aside from religious music praising God,
>>>> what are the poltically "conservative" classical works?
>>> Brahms' "Triumphlied" probably qualifies.
>>>
>> Would you necessarily think that if you didn't know its text?
>
> I'd even say one had to know the circumstances. The words are taken from
> the bible. The piece could have been an admittedly odd way of paying
> hommage to Bach and Händel or celebrating some church holiday. (I haven't
> listend to the piece in ages, but I didn't like it much back then,
> jubilation simply isn't one of the moods Brahms can express very well)
>
Revelations 19:1-2, is 'Hallelujah! Victory and glory and power belong to
our God, for true and just are his judgements' (I don't have the German
version of this section to hand) which is followed by 'He has condemned the
great whore who corrupted the earth with her fornication, and has avenged
upon her the blood of his servants.' Brahms does not set the latter passage,
but in its place he has an all'unisono passage in the whole orchestra
exactly matching the rhythm of 'dass er die grosse Hure verurteilt hat',
with a diminished 3rd for 'Hure' - also, perhaps most significantly, Brahms
penciled the lines in question into his copy of the score. Taruskin implies
that this was a coded way of using these words to refer to the defeat of
France in the Franco-Prussian War. I'm not saying that I agree 100% with
Taruskin's interpretation of this passage, nor with his high-handed moralism
when discussing the work of any German (Taruskin seems not to have realised
that the Second World War finished a long time ago), but this information
does seem quite compelling.
Ian
John Harrington
> John Harrington schrieb:
> > A. Brain wrote:
> > <snip>
> >> It's hard for me to think of too much in the way of
> >> opera, unless once again you consider the religious
> >> works like "Faust". Mostly the police are bad guys,
> >> the aristocracy and professionals like doctors and
> >> lawyers are buffoons or villains, and even a "villian"
> >> like Don Giovanni is a hero of sorts.
> >
> > Heroes usually are not dragged kicking and screaming to hell. Also, DG
> > was not merely a libertine but what we'd call today a rapist. No
> > villain a liberal would qualify with quotation marks.
> >
> >> Well, here's the National Review list, and surely
> >> any list of pop music should be top forty not
> >> top fifty:
> >
> > Wagner's operas, particularly the Ring cycle, whose purpose was
> > explicitly nationalistic and racial, are an obvious choice.
>
> Obviously wrong, yes. The music is obviously not conservative at all.
We aren't talking about musical conservatism, but political
conservatism.
> The Ring cycle isn't nationalistic either. It's about the end of an old
> world order (which is suppressive and expoitative in many ways) and ends
> with an utopian outlook to a new order where people are free. Hardly a
> politcally concervative pint of view.
It's nationalistic in the sense of its intention of being an exquisite
example of Teutonic myth.
J
John Harrington
You're confusing fascism and nationalism (which obviously intersect but
aren't the same) and running with it. I had absolutely no thought
about the Nazis when I wrote the above.
J
John Harrington
You're apparently ignoring the definition of conservatism I gave.
Explain why you consider Bach, Haydn, and Brahms to be conservatives (I
already know what sort of argument you could make for Brahms and Bach's
musical conservatism, but obviously that's not what this thread is
about). Schoenberg wasn't in the end a leftist, perhaps, but that
doesn't make him a conservative. Stravinsky's politics seemed
non-existent, though he was certainly a faithful Catholic, although his
life is hardly an example of adherence to Catholic dogma, or spirit,
but that's true of a lot of Catholics. Babbitt I have no interest in
as a composer or a man, and Debussy not much. What is supposedly the
evidence for Debussy's conservatism?
John
Ian Pace
> Johannes Roehl wrote:
>> John Harrington schrieb:
>> > A. Brain wrote:
>> > <snip>
>> >> It's hard for me to think of too much in the way of
>> >> opera, unless once again you consider the religious
>> >> works like "Faust". Mostly the police are bad guys,
>> >> the aristocracy and professionals like doctors and
>> >> lawyers are buffoons or villains, and even a "villian"
>> >> like Don Giovanni is a hero of sorts.
>> >
>> > Heroes usually are not dragged kicking and screaming to hell. Also, DG
>> > was not merely a libertine but what we'd call today a rapist. No
>> > villain a liberal would qualify with quotation marks.
>> >
>> >> Well, here's the National Review list, and surely
>> >> any list of pop music should be top forty not
>> >> top fifty:
>> >
>> > Wagner's operas, particularly the Ring cycle, whose purpose was
>> > explicitly nationalistic and racial, are an obvious choice.
>>
>> Obviously wrong, yes. The music is obviously not conservative at all.
>
> We aren't talking about musical conservatism, but political
> conservatism.
Well, we're talking about conservatism as manifested in an opera, aren't we?
And if not about the music, then about the text, staging, and all the other
attributes that go to make up the opera (and to link them makes particular
sense in the case of Wagner). But those other attributes are aesthetic as
well; they may certainly be a mediated outgrowth of Wagner's political
views, but are in no sense merely identical with them. So 'conservatism' as
manifested in a text, or in staging, or whatever, is about forms of
artistically mediated conservatism, rather than simply 'political
conservatism'. Art of any type isn't simply a transparent window onto the
artist's intentions, ideologies, etc.
>> The Ring cycle isn't nationalistic either. It's about the end of an old
>> world order (which is suppressive and expoitative in many ways) and ends
>> with an utopian outlook to a new order where people are free. Hardly a
>> politcally concervative pint of view.
>
> It's nationalistic in the sense of its intention of being an exquisite
> example of Teutonic myth.
>
That doesn't in itself make it nationalistic (which term to me implies not
just national pride but also some sense of superiority over or disdain for
other nationalities).
Ian
Ian Pace
wrote the above. But I'd be surprised if anyone's perceptions of Wagner's
being nationalistic (generally seen in a derogatory way, much more so than
equal degrees of nationalism in Debussy, Mussorgsky, or whoever) haven't
been at least a little informed by both the history of German nationalism
and by Wagner's appropriation at the hands of the Third Reich.
By the way, I'm not denying that Wagner had some extremely vile political
views. Whether these are so fundamental to all of his work I'm not so sure.
Ian
Ian Pace
Sorry, you are right - I was thinking about conservative relative to one's
times. However, in the sense of basically wanting to conserve something of
the status quo, rather than being committed to radical change (which is how
I would define conservatism - there were what I would call 'conservatives'
in Eastern Bloc countries as well, who wanted to preserve the Stalinist
order), I think that's a reasonable definition of Bach, Haydn and Brahms.
But do you think all self-defined conservatives (for example, those attached
to various churches with doctrines of self-abdication, who are sincere in
their beliefs) could be defined in the terms you use; as such, is the term
'conservative' the most appropriate? (I would prefer 'liberal' for that, or
at the very least 'neo-liberal')
> (I
> already know what sort of argument you could make for Brahms and Bach's
> musical conservatism, but obviously that's not what this thread is
> about). Schoenberg wasn't in the end a leftist, perhaps, but that
> doesn't make him a conservative. Stravinsky's politics seemed
> non-existent,
That really is not the case, at least in terms of his pronouncements on
Mussolini and on Nazi Germany. I detailed these in a thread a while back -
http://tinyurl.com/k3g78
> though he was certainly a faithful Catholic, although his
> life is hardly an example of adherence to Catholic dogma, or spirit,
> but that's true of a lot of Catholics. Babbitt I have no interest in
> as a composer or a man, and Debussy not much. What is supposedly the
> evidence for Debussy's conservatism?
>
I can't remember the precise evidence in the case of Debussy, but basically
he seemed an old-fashioned French chauvinist in many ways.
Ian (who has a great deal of interest in Debussy, and a little in Babbitt)
Paul Goldstein
Nope. They could be singing the praises of FC Bayern Muenchen for all that the
music lets on.
Paul Goldstein
>
>On 2006-05-26 11:05:57 -0400, Paul Goldstein <Paul_...@newsguy.com> said:
>
>> Brahms' "Triumphlied" probably qualifies.
>
>Which I WISH I could find a recording of! Is there one available?
I just happened upon a used copy of DGG Galleria 435 066, which features
Sinopoli and the Czech PO and Prague Phil. Chorus in Brahms' vocal/orchestral
pieces. (Brigitte Fassbaender and Wolfgang Brendel are the soloists.) I'd
never heard the Triumphlied before - it's quite an interesting piece,
reminiscent of Beethoven's Weihe des Hauses in its imitation of baroque
conventions. I don't know if the disc is still available.
Thornhill
Ian Pace wrote:
> "Thornhill" <seth...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1148647911.8...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > A. Brain wrote:
> >> Mostly the police are bad guys,
> >> the aristocracy and professionals like doctors and
> >> lawyers are buffoons or villains, and even a "villian"
> >> like Don Giovanni is a hero of sorts.
> >
> > Don Giovanni was most definitely not intended to be a hero. All the Da
> > Ponte operas are products of the Enlightenment. The villains are the
> > aristocracy who think because of their wealth and privilege, it's their
> > god-given-right to screw around with the lives of the proletariat for
> > their personal enjoyment. In each opera Da Ponte makes a Lockean
> > argument that all people are entitled to individual rights and liberty
> > regardless of their wealth and class.
> >
> That is a rather one-sided view of things.
The Da Ponte operas are morality plays; the villains serve as foils to
Enlightenment ideas; they're relics of medieval times. Now I'm not
saying that the operas are not complicated -- they are complicated as a
result of this. Da Ponte also goes out of his way in the end of "Don
Giovanni" to clear up any ambiguity about how we should view Don
Giovanni; he has the cast sing: "This is the fate of miscreants/
evildoers always come/ to an equally evil end.
> Don Giovanni may not be a
> conventional type of 'hero' (whatever that is), might even be a 'villain' in
> some senses, but is portrayed with subtlety, allure and fascination by
> Mozart and Da Ponte. The 'proletarian' characters (peasant characters would
> perhaps be a better way of putting it) of Masetto and Zerlina could be
> argued to 'come across best' in the opera, but that is by no means
> unambiguous - I've read some interpretations that suggest that Zerlina is
> the flip side of the Don herself, equally conniving and manipulative, and
> there are possible implications of brutality in Masetto (at least some
> people read him that way). One of the opera's many strengths is the way it
> goes beyond simple categories of heroes and villains, instead presenting
> much more complex and sophisticatedly portrayed human beings.
>
> Which is not of course to say that class isn't a major factor in this and
> other Mozart operas. But class is about power and economics, not about
> essentialised identities.
That's my point. In the operas, Da Ponte argues that having money and
power doesn't give you special rights; the rich and poor are entitled
to the same rights; there are no second class citizens.
Edward Jasiewicz
"William Sommerwerck" <gizzle...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:QM2dnSMMBYc...@comcast.com...
> ...how can the music itself be politically conservative or liberal?
> If it is, it would have to be in the context of how its implied emotions
> interact with the current social mood.
Yes, it is an absurd notion. Nor have I been able to understand claims that
sexuality can be detected in music. I am convinced of the accuracy of
Schnabel's claim (that "music knows no sex!"), even though it may parallel
the timing (Bolero?) or associations ("stripper music") of someone's
sexuality.
-Ed
Ian Pace
>
> Ian Pace wrote:
>> "Thornhill" <seth...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:1148647911.8...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> >
>> > A. Brain wrote:
>> >> Mostly the police are bad guys,
>> >> the aristocracy and professionals like doctors and
>> >> lawyers are buffoons or villains, and even a "villian"
>> >> like Don Giovanni is a hero of sorts.
>> >
>> > Don Giovanni was most definitely not intended to be a hero. All the Da
>> > Ponte operas are products of the Enlightenment. The villains are the
>> > aristocracy who think because of their wealth and privilege, it's their
>> > god-given-right to screw around with the lives of the proletariat for
>> > their personal enjoyment. In each opera Da Ponte makes a Lockean
>> > argument that all people are entitled to individual rights and liberty
>> > regardless of their wealth and class.
>> >
>> That is a rather one-sided view of things.
>
> The Da Ponte operas are morality plays; the villains serve as foils to
> Enlightenment ideas; they're relics of medieval times. Now I'm not
> saying that the operas are not complicated -- they are complicated as a
> result of this. Da Ponte also goes out of his way in the end of "Don
> Giovanni" to clear up any ambiguity about how we should view Don
> Giovanni; he has the cast sing: "This is the fate of miscreants/
> evildoers always come/ to an equally evil end.
Well, there are those who think that's one of the weakest things in the
opera (Joseph Kerman said something along these lines, I think). Whether or
not one agrees, it's not inconceivable that the moralising at this point (at
least as Mozart sets it) might be very vaguely touched by irony? After all,
the Don has been made into a fascinating figure throughout. I find 'morality
play' a little too simplistic a definition here.
>
>> Don Giovanni may not be a
>> conventional type of 'hero' (whatever that is), might even be a 'villain'
>> in
>> some senses, but is portrayed with subtlety, allure and fascination by
>> Mozart and Da Ponte. The 'proletarian' characters (peasant characters
>> would
>> perhaps be a better way of putting it) of Masetto and Zerlina could be
>> argued to 'come across best' in the opera, but that is by no means
>> unambiguous - I've read some interpretations that suggest that Zerlina is
>> the flip side of the Don herself, equally conniving and manipulative, and
>> there are possible implications of brutality in Masetto (at least some
>> people read him that way). One of the opera's many strengths is the way
>> it
>> goes beyond simple categories of heroes and villains, instead presenting
>> much more complex and sophisticatedly portrayed human beings.
>>
>> Which is not of course to say that class isn't a major factor in this and
>> other Mozart operas. But class is about power and economics, not about
>> essentialised identities.
>
> That's my point. In the operas, Da Ponte argues that having money and
> power doesn't give you special rights; the rich and poor are entitled
> to the same rights; there are no second class citizens.
But are the Don's seductions primarily successful on grounds of having money
(power might be a different thing, though his charm isn't necessarily
predicated upon such things)?
Ian
William Sommerwerck
> Enlightenment ideas; they're relics of medieval times. Now I'm not
> saying that the operas are not complicated -- they are complicated as a
> result of this. Da Ponte also goes out of his way in the end of "Don
> Giovanni" to clear up any ambiguity about how we should view Don
> Giovanni; he has the cast sing: "This is the fate of miscreants/
> evildoers always come/ to an equally evil end.
But the Don refuses to repent. (One may interpret that as one wishes.)
>> Don Giovanni may not be a
>> conventional type of 'hero' (whatever that is), might even be a 'villain'
in
>> some senses, but is portrayed with subtlety, allure and fascination by
>> Mozart and Da Ponte.
As the Disney animators would put it -- he has "appeal".
"Don Giovanni" and "Nozze" are definitely "left of center" works.
William Sommerwerck
> 'I was never a communist' (hard to reconcile with once
> being in sympathy to 'Marxian theories'),
One can agree with Marx's analysis without agreeing with his solution.
William Sommerwerck
> etc.), so it becomes about music as a sonic identity, and whether
political
> ideologies might somehow be encoded or represented in there. In one sense,
> my answer to that would be no (because I don't believe music can represent
> something so concrete);
As I said earlier, music can convey emotions that complement or contradict
the current socio-political climate. In this sense, music can be
"political".
William Sommerwerck
>> If it is, it would have to be in the context of how its implied emotions
>> interact with the current social mood.
> Yes, it is an absurd notion. Nor have I been able to understand claims
that
> sexuality can be detected in music. I am convinced of the accuracy of
> Schnabel's claim (that "music knows no sex!"), even though it may parallel
> the timing (Bolero?) or associations ("stripper music") of someone's
> sexuality.
Buy this man a copy of "Tristan und Isolde"!
By the way, "Tristan und Isolde" can be anagrammed to "nude rats' tin
idols".
Thornhill
> play' a little too simplistic a definition here.
I'm not trying to water it down, but place it into a genre that existed
in the 18th C. But "Figaro" is clearly more sophisticated, as it is the
proletariat who get the better of the ruling classes, while in "Don
Giovanni," super natural forces have to render justices. I've seen some
productions try to deal with this problem by not showing the
Commendatore, making it more psychological and even one where the Don
is dragged off to a mental institution, which while I'm not sure I
like, it certainly fits into the Enlightenment themes.
> >> Don Giovanni may not be a
> >> conventional type of 'hero' (whatever that is), might even be a 'villain'
> >> in
> >> some senses, but is portrayed with subtlety, allure and fascination by
> >> Mozart and Da Ponte. The 'proletarian' characters (peasant characters
> >> would
> >> perhaps be a better way of putting it) of Masetto and Zerlina could be
> >> argued to 'come across best' in the opera, but that is by no means
> >> unambiguous - I've read some interpretations that suggest that Zerlina is
> >> the flip side of the Don herself, equally conniving and manipulative, and
> >> there are possible implications of brutality in Masetto (at least some
> >> people read him that way). One of the opera's many strengths is the way
> >> it
> >> goes beyond simple categories of heroes and villains, instead presenting
> >> much more complex and sophisticatedly portrayed human beings.
> >>
> >> Which is not of course to say that class isn't a major factor in this and
> >> other Mozart operas. But class is about power and economics, not about
> >> essentialised identities.
> >
> > That's my point. In the operas, Da Ponte argues that having money and
> > power doesn't give you special rights; the rich and poor are entitled
> > to the same rights; there are no second class citizens.
>
> But are the Don's seductions primarily successful on grounds of having money
> (power might be a different thing, though his charm isn't necessarily
> predicated upon such things)?
>
His money and power provide him the means.
Think about the similarities between Don Giovanni and Count Almaviva.
david...@aol.com
"The most authentically conservative composer of the 20th Century was
surely Arnold Schoenberg. He attacked Stravinsky as a dilettante in his
Three Satires, Op. 28."
Oh, you mean THAT Schoenberg. A very different fellow from the
composer of Erwartung, who was the least conservative composer in
history. Not the least traditional, though: he simply took the
Romantic program seriously and as far as it would go.
-david gable
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in
news:1148680546....@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
> The Da Ponte operas are morality plays; the villains serve as foils to
> Enlightenment ideas; they're relics of medieval times. Now I'm not
> saying that the operas are not complicated -- they are complicated as a
> result of this. Da Ponte also goes out of his way in the end of "Don
> Giovanni" to clear up any ambiguity about how we should view Don
> Giovanni; he has the cast sing: "This is the fate of miscreants/
> evildoers always come/ to an equally evil end.
I have just a few minutes ago read Ellen Bleiler's brief and hilarious
biographical note on Da Ponte in her book on Don Giovanni, published by
Dover in 1964 (and which originally sold for $1.00!). From what I can
tell, he wrote it for the money.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. ~ FDR (attrib.)
Matthew B. Tepper
following letters to be typed in news:e57ne...@drn.newsguy.com:
Well, this one is apparently still available, and it's pretty good:
http://www.chandos-records.com/details05.asp?CNumber=CHAN%2010165
Ward Hardman
>
> You're apparently ignoring the definition of conservatism I gave.
I don't see why anybody should accept your definition of *anything*,
however your so-called "definition" was:
> Conservatism,
> which I would define as an ideology that holds self-interest far
> superior to compassionate concerns, ...
And that is totally inadequate and inaccurate.
I don't think that the contrast in classical music is between
"conservative" and "liberal," which are an unfortunate extension of
some British political labels (and the "Liberals" don't even exist
anymore, do they?), but between "conservative" and "radical."
For the purpose of considering what "politically 'conservative'" means
in the American context, I'd say that it embraces the concepts of:
- Limited government, thus permitting
- Maximal freedom, with preservation of as many liberties and
rights as possible.
Limited government will not take an excessive amount of money in
taxation from any of its citizens. So-called "compassion," which in
current political terms means buying votes for the X party by taking
money from the part of the political spectrum opposed to X, and
spending it on others who will vote for the X party in gratitude. The
Xs will tell the beneficiaries of their largesse (with Other People's
Money [OPM, pronounced "opium"], not their own) that they are
"entitled" to this kind of compassion. This creates a parasite class
which the compassionate Xs will nurture like a flower bed in order to
keep themselves in power.
One way to decide whether things have gone too far in the statist
direction is to measure the relative size of the employment in the
government and private sectors. Except for military defense forces,
the size of the bureaucracy engaged in taxation, regulation,
litigation, etc. If it gets above 5% of the population, it is getting
excessive. (And the statists can argue that a depression will ensue if
government cutbacks are attempted.)
The conservative point of view also holds that competition is a good
thing, and that many functions regarded as governmental (such as
teaching in schools) could be better and more efficiently performed by
private industry with competitive bidding.
A true conservative hates any "non-natural" (as the telephone system
used to be regarded) monopoly, including that of any unnecessary
government. Wherever we see some powerful governmental union, like
teachers and prison guards in California, that is an obvious case where
a mistake has been made in taking the path away from a competitive
environment.
As for the "self-interest" which "Harrington" decries, aren't those
public-school teachers and those prison guards acting entirely in that
way (while claiming that they have the children or the non-criminal
element of society at heart as they push their wages much, much higher
than their performance deserves)? The question: does the government
have a school system in order to make teachers prosperous or to educate
children? In California, the government and the teachers have
succeeded in the former but failed in the latter... private schools in
which the teachers receive a fraction of the state school pay produce
much better students.
---------------------
Anyway, back to music:
Musically Conservative: Bruckner, who produced symphonies like a
craftman making shoes, producing nearly the same product each time, but
with variations. (Others would compare him to a cathedral builder, who
was limited by what he could do by the necessity to conform to a
certain architecture and the need for functionality.)
Musically Radical: Wagner, Damn the expense, I don't care how much
this costs, I don't care whether this loses money (as long as it's not
my own!), I'm a Genius and I'm *entitled* to it. (Eventually though,
he built his own opera house at Bayreuth and had to take some
risk/reward himself.)
Musically Anarchist: Ives? Harry Partch? Stockhausen? Xenakis?
Politically "conservative": Haydn, who abandoned working for
nobility and ran off to London to compete in the "free market" economy.
His "product" was predictable in form, but with imaginative variations
in content and style.
Politically "liberal": Prokofiev "On Guard for Peace," "Cantata for
the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution," etc.
And something on the "pop" side for liberal Democrat Congressman
William Jefferson, Louisiana ($100,000 cool cash hidden in his fridge):
"Good Mornin' Judge."
;-)
--Ward Hardman
"The older I get, the more I admire and crave competence,just
simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology."
- H.L. Mencken
Thornhill
William Sommerwerck wrote:
> > The Da Ponte operas are morality plays; the villains serve as foils to
> > Enlightenment ideas; they're relics of medieval times. Now I'm not
> > saying that the operas are not complicated -- they are complicated as a
> > result of this. Da Ponte also goes out of his way in the end of "Don
> > Giovanni" to clear up any ambiguity about how we should view Don
> > Giovanni; he has the cast sing: "This is the fate of miscreants/
> > evildoers always come/ to an equally evil end.
>
> But the Don refuses to repent. (One may interpret that as one wishes.)
I don't see how that would make him a hero; at most an anti-hero. It's
good that you brought this up, because I think most people latch onto
this, completely forgetting what the Don has done for the previous 2+
hours.
david...@aol.com
I think Ian's and Mr. Thornhill's insistence on their categories and
genres oversimplifies Don Giovanni and especially Le nozze di Figaro.
Figaro is a richer and more multivalent work than their categories
envision, Don Giovanni a more ambiguous one.
Figaro cannot be reduced to a Marxist tract demonstrating the ultimate
victory of the proletariat over its masters. The situation that takes
pride of place at the final curtain, after all, is the reconciliation
of Count and Countess, and not even the Count is a one-dimensional
blackguard.
As for Don Giovanni, whatever Da Ponte's intentions may have been,
Mozart's opera cannot be reduced to a morality play in which the
dissolute man is punished. Mozart brought Don Giovanni so vividly to
life that no audience before the advent of a later 20th-century
political correctness could view him as unambiguously "evil." Nor
(pace Mr. Thornhill) is Don Giovanni's refusal to repent in the last
finale the only revelation of his fundamental character that has made
the Don paradoxically seem admirable despite the evidence, as it were.
Moreover, the opera exploits an equation of liberty with libertinage
that places the Don himself in the liberty camp, and when a
revolutionary hymn to liberty accompanied by trumpets and drums is
launched in the finale to the first act, it's Don Giovanni who does the
launching.
-david gable
david...@aol.com
Hardman says, among other things:
"A true conservative hates any 'non-natural' (as the telephone system
used to be regarded) monopoly, including that of any unnecessary
government."
I can only imagine your horror, then, at the far more widespread
monopolies in the private sector. Or doesn't it bother you that the
same fast food restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and motels are to be
found along the highways in all 50 states, for example, free of any
competition from the locals? Step into any mall anywhere in the USA,
and you find exactly the same stores purveying exactly the same
monopoly-produced wares.
As for "stealing" done by the state, it's nothing compared to the
stealing that corporations get away with.
-david gable
A. Brain
news:1148701868....@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> I don't think that the contrast in classical music is between
> "conservative" and "liberal," which are an unfortunate extension of
> some British political labels (and the "Liberals" don't even exist
> anymore, do they?), but between "conservative" and "radical."
Alas, in fact it is the so-called "conservatives" who are
the radicals today. They don't care about civil liberties,
the environment, big government, corporate abuses,
social integrity, common law, or anything besides money.
>
> For the purpose of considering what "politically 'conservative'" means
> in the American context, I'd say that it embraces the concepts of:
>
> - Limited government, thus permitting
> - Maximal freedom, with preservation of as many liberties and
> rights as possible.
LOL. This from a Bush supporter?
> Limited government will not take an excessive amount of money in
> taxation from any of its citizens. So-called "compassion," which in
> current political terms means buying votes for the X party by taking
> money from the part of the political spectrum opposed to X, and
> spending it on others who will vote for the X party in gratitude.
Please enlighten us on how the war is being financed.
And also how support for such an inherently risky and
suspect adventure is connected to any tradition in true
Conservatism.
> One way to decide whether things have gone too far in the statist
> direction is to measure the relative size of the employment in the
> government and private sectors. Except for military defense forces,
> the size of the bureaucracy engaged in taxation, regulation,
> litigation, etc. If it gets above 5% of the population, it is getting
> excessive. (And the statists can argue that a depression will ensue
> if
> government cutbacks are attempted.)
I'm all for government cutbacks, starting with the biggest
welfare program in the U.S., the military.
>
> The conservative point of view also holds that competition is a good
> thing, and that many functions regarded as governmental (such as
> teaching in schools) could be better and more efficiently performed by
> private industry with competitive bidding.
Oh really? How about Bush's efforts to nationalize the state
"test-taking" education reforms that have ruined education in
Texas?
> A true conservative hates any "non-natural" (as the telephone system
> used to be regarded) monopoly, including that of any unnecessary
> government. Wherever we see some powerful governmental union, like
> teachers and prison guards in California, that is an obvious case
> where
> a mistake has been made in taking the path away from a competitive
> environment.
Mostly what we have now are massive corporations that,
through lobbying and corruption of the legislatures, are
protected government-sponsored monopolies or oligopolies.
Private litigation, the traditional method of policing abuses,
is increasingly curtailed by government. Here in Texas,
the so-called "conservatives" pushed through an amendment
to the Texas constitution, eviscerating one of its most important
provisions, "open courts", so as to protect special corporate
and insurance interests.
> As for the "self-interest" which "Harrington" decries, aren't those
> public-school teachers and those prison guards acting entirely in that
> way (while claiming that they have the children or the non-criminal
> element of society at heart as they push their wages much, much higher
> than their performance deserves)? The question: does the government
> have a school system in order to make teachers prosperous or to
> educate
> children? In California, the government and the teachers have
> succeeded in the former but failed in the latter... private schools in
> which the teachers receive a fraction of the state school pay produce
> much better students.
I agree that in some things, minimal regulation of private
enterprise would be better than government run programs,
including education. And aside from some necessary regulation,
the best energy policy is to have none. Like some of the
so-called "radical" GOP, I would abolish the Depts. of Energy
and Education. Commerce and a couple others as well.
[snip]
>
> Politically "liberal": Prokofiev "On Guard for Peace," "Cantata for
> the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution," etc.
I would call those "politically conservative" in the sense of
today's so-called "conservatives" who do not object
to anything their "Dear Leader" does. The liberals in the U.S.S. R.
were the opposition, with the exception of a few oddities
such as Solzhenitsyn.
--
A. Brain
Remove NOSPAM for email.
William Sommerwerck
>> was surely Arnold Schoenberg. He attacked Stravinsky as a dilettante
>> in his Three Satires, Op. 28."
> Oh, you mean THAT Schoenberg. A very different fellow from the
> composer of Erwartung, who was the least conservative composer
> in history.
One might argue that by carrying chromaticism to its logical conclusion, he
was highly conservative.
William Sommerwerck
>> holds self-interest far superior to compassionate concerns, ...
> And that is totally inadequate and inaccurate.
As a liberal, I agree. This is what conservatism has become (hence W's need
to describe himself as a "compassionate" conservative), but there was a time
when people we today call conservatives considered themselves progressive.
William Sommerwerck
> in the American context, I'd say that it embraces the concepts of:
> - Limited government, thus permitting
> - Maximal freedom, with preservation of as many liberties and
> rights as possible.
Unless it's a liberty or right YOU don't approve of, such as the right to
choose to have an abortion, or the freedom to marry someone of the same sex.
One of the purposes of government -- and the Founding Fathers explicitly
declared this -- was to protect individual rights. They were fully aware of
how people use personal freedom as an excuse to abuse and exploit others.
They were well aware, too, of how republican government can be manipulated
to allow one group to gain advantages at the expense of another.
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148712757.8...@j55g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> I think Ian's and Mr. Thornhill's insistence on their categories and
> genres oversimplifies Don Giovanni and especially Le nozze di Figaro.
> Figaro is a richer and more multivalent work than their categories
> envision, Don Giovanni a more ambiguous one.
I'd just like to point out that I'm arguing *against* reducing Don Giovanni
to any such known (insert the 'r'-word here) category or genre, and am in
agreement for the most part with the type of perspective you offer below.
That said, associating liberty with libertinage is a point of view that
seems hopelessly dated nowadays, though is reasonably consistent with
revolutionary bourgeois ideology.
Ian
Ian Pace
commentators (including Kierkegaard; that Liszt both begins and ends his Don
Juan fantasy with this scene suggests a comparable fascination). Not sure if
Nietzsche had anything to say about it (he did have some interesting
comments on the Stone Guest in 'Nietzsche Contra Wagner') but I'm sure it
would have appealed to him. Mozart/Da Ponte's opera remains so challenging
because it forces the listener/viewer to confront the conflicting forces of
rational ethics and irrational sexuality. The character of the Don engages
both of these things in a way that is not easy to resolve. In that sense it
(to put it slightly crudely) stands as a pivotal work between the ideals of
the Enlightenment and those of Romanticism, into which I would read wider
political/moral issues of the time. The ethical dimension of Don Giovanni is
much less vividly portrayed in a lot of 19th century opera, so the conflict
is less pronounced - one of the reasons that I think its radicalism remains
so powerful. It is neither a morality play nor a Byronic tale of a decadent
hero pure and simple, but it is also both of these things.
Ian
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148714200.6...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
> In painting his idyllic portrait of the American conservative, Ward
> Hardman says, among other things:
>
> "A true conservative hates any 'non-natural' (as the telephone system
> used to be regarded) monopoly, including that of any unnecessary
> government."
(in reply to Ward Hardman) - government is at least subject to some
democratic control, ideally, corporate power has no such accountability.
That is why Thoreau's comment 'the best form of government is no government
at all' (often quoted by Cage) isn't so far away from the sentiments of
Ronald Reagan.
>
> I can only imagine your horror, then, at the far more widespread
> monopolies in the private sector. Or doesn't it bother you that the
> same fast food restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and motels are to be
> found along the highways in all 50 states, for example, free of any
> competition from the locals? Step into any mall anywhere in the USA,
> and you find exactly the same stores purveying exactly the same
> monopoly-produced wares.
Alas it's not just within the USA. Walk along any high street in most
European cities and you'll similarly find the same chains everywhere,
producing the same products (give or take a little cosmetic local
adjustment - Naomi Klein has interesting things to say about this). This is
the reality of globalisation, promising some global village and 'diversity',
in reality delivering a world in which the big corporations control and
homogenise everything for their own purposes. With the withering away of the
power of states, the power of morals, the power of aesthetic values (for all
these things need continual reinvestigation and modification) comes the
total power of the corporations and of international capital.
>
> As for "stealing" done by the state, it's nothing compared to the
> stealing that corporations get away with.
>
Absolutely - and the corporations have as much control over the state (and
states) as vice versa.
Ian
Eric Grunin
Are you suggesting that the Schoenberg of Op. 23 had more in common
with the Strauss of Der Rosenkavalier than either of them had with the
composers of Erwartung and Elektra?
An interesting thesis.
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
Ian Pace
"Eric Grunin" <gru...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1148759397.1...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
of the Three Satires (hardly the most characteristic of his works - comedy
was not perhaps Schoenberg's strongest suit, listening to Von Heute auf
Morgen for laughs may not be the most rewarding approach (though it's a
wonderful opera)) is 'very different' from the Schoenberg of Erwartung?
Strauss was a different individual.
Ian
david...@aol.com
"That said, associating liberty with libertinage is a point of view
that seems hopelessly dated nowadays,"
How so? In the so-called culture wars in the United States today, a
fear of something akin to "libertinage" is precisely what the religious
right fears most on the left. Gay marriage, Monica-gate, a general
relaxation of sexual mores: these are just the sort of "licenses" that
many religious conservatives fear most. They're far less bothered by,
say, the Iran-Contra scandal.
"revolutionary bourgeois ideology"
Too bad I have no idea what this fancy oxymoron means.
-david gable
david...@aol.com
"Are you suggesting that the Schoenberg of Op. 23 had more in common
with the Strauss of Der Rosenkavalier than either of them had with the
composers of Erwartung and Elektra? An interesting thesis."
In some respects, yes. Or rather I'm suggesting an idea that is hardly
original with me although extremely obvious to anybody who spends
enough time with the art of the period: that almost everybody in the
whole generation reacted against their earlier most radical and
original work and turned more conservative, and not only Strauss,
Stravinsky, and Schoenberg but painters and writers, too. In France
there was a reaction against Debussy in favor of "clarity," Cocteau
issued a rappel a l'ordre, Stravinsky, Eliot, and Picasso began calling
themselves neoclassicists, Kandinsky and Schoenberg being searching for
the underlying laws governing their more radical work from the period
before the war, which lead to the parallel developments of geometric
abstraction and serialism, etc etc. etc.
Schoenberg's explicit frame of reference changed radically at a certain
point. In the period from about 1908 to the first World War, he's
forever quoting Liszt and talking about intuition. After the war he
becomes a Brahmsian neoclassicist trying to restore law and order.
Journalistic accounts of Schoenberg virtually always reduce Schoenberg
to the conservative developer of serialism, while many of the
performers and listeners most passionate about Schoenberg's music
prefer the "freely atonal" expressionist music of the period before the
war (e.g., somebody on this newsgroup just the other day).
-david gable
david...@aol.com
"Byronic tale of a decadent hero pure and simple"
Give me an example. The Byron I know is a moralist.
-david gable
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148777868....@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Ian writes:
>
> "That said, associating liberty with libertinage is a point of view
> that seems hopelessly dated nowadays,"
>
> How so? In the so-called culture wars in the United States today, a
> fear of something akin to "libertinage" is precisely what the religious
> right fears most on the left. Gay marriage, Monica-gate, a general
> relaxation of sexual mores: these are just the sort of "licenses" that
> many religious conservatives fear most. They're far less bothered by,
> say, the Iran-Contra scandal.
Well, I think we locate the 'right' and 'left' at somewhat different points
along the political spectrum. The religious right isn't so significant
outside of America, and do you think they are that representative of the
right in general? Are corporate interests (which of course are behind many
politicians of both the Republicans and the Democrats) that threatened by
gay marriage, sexual freedom, etc. (after all, sexuality and gayness can be
useful advertising tools)? Aren't threats to, for example, the conditions
under which the corporations can operate in foreign countries (such as those
in Latin America), levels of wages they have to pay workers, demands for
more stringent conditions on their employment practices, etc., more of a
threat? I know these affect the corporations more directly than the
politicians, but how significant are the politicians as an autonomous entity
in the US, really?
But with respect to the association of liberty with libertinage, I find it
unconvincing. Sexual freedom is an absolutely necessary right, of course,
but when sex and sexuality become relentlessly appropriated to sell
products, and the fashion industry attempts to sexualise ever younger
children, I find it hard to associate it with any other form of 'liberty'.
Unless one is a libertarian, of course (I'm not, that's not how I conceive
'liberty', I see it more in terms of freedom from need, poverty, lack of
educational provision, lack of opportunities to progress, etc.).
>
> "revolutionary bourgeois ideology"
>
> Too bad I have no idea what this fancy oxymoron means.
>
Simply the ideology of the middle classes when they were in the process of
supplanting aristocratic rule (as most notably in the French Revolution).
And arguably manifested in a new sense of compositional independence, most
obviously in Beethoven - don't you find some of those qualities in his work?
Ian
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148779172.7...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Ian refers to the genre of the:
>
> "Byronic tale of a decadent hero pure and simple"
>
> Give me an example. The Byron I know is a moralist.
>
these cases, however (I don't think he can simply be categorised as a
'moralist' either, though). My reference was really to the popular
conception of the 'Byronic hero'.
Ian
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148778907.4...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
> Eric Grunin remarks:
>
> "Are you suggesting that the Schoenberg of Op. 23 had more in common
> with the Strauss of Der Rosenkavalier than either of them had with the
> composers of Erwartung and Elektra? An interesting thesis."
>
> In some respects, yes. Or rather I'm suggesting an idea that is hardly
> original with me although extremely obvious to anybody who spends
> enough time with the art of the period: that almost everybody in the
> whole generation reacted against their earlier most radical and
> original work and turned more conservative, and not only Strauss,
> Stravinsky, and Schoenberg but painters and writers, too. In France
> there was a reaction against Debussy in favor of "clarity," Cocteau
> issued a rappel a l'ordre, Stravinsky, Eliot, and Picasso began calling
> themselves neoclassicists, Kandinsky and Schoenberg being searching for
> the underlying laws governing their more radical work from the period
> before the war, which lead to the parallel developments of geometric
> abstraction and serialism, etc etc. etc.
Sure. One could trace some other rather distinct manifestations of this
process, especially in Weimar Germany, with the bitterly satirical work of
Kraus, Grosz, Brecht, Weill, Eisler etc. They also turned away from
expressionism towards the ideals of clarity associated with the Neue
Sachlichkeit, but not in a way I think it's meaningful to call
'conservative', not least in terms of their political motivations (though
Adorno would disagree here, seeing as he did 'political' art as ultimately
benefiting the system it's supposed to attack).
>
> Schoenberg's explicit frame of reference changed radically at a certain
> point. In the period from about 1908 to the first World War, he's
> forever quoting Liszt and talking about intuition. After the war he
> becomes a Brahmsian neoclassicist trying to restore law and order.
Indeed. Would you not agree that all these shifts, artistically, have
something to do with the wider social and political climate, the
disillusionment following on from the barbarism of World War 1, etc.,
though?
> Journalistic accounts of Schoenberg virtually always reduce Schoenberg
> to the conservative developer of serialism, while many of the
> performers and listeners most passionate about Schoenberg's music
> prefer the "freely atonal" expressionist music of the period before the
> war (e.g., somebody on this newsgroup just the other day).
>
There's not that much of the later Schoenberg that can quite match the
Second String Quartet, Five Pieces for Orchestra or Herzgewaechse for me,
though I love many of the later works such as the Third and Fourth Quartets,
Moses und Aron, the Op. 33 piano pieces, Kol Nidre, A Survivor from Warsaw,
or the String Trio. What do you feel about the view that says that by the
very late works, Schoenberg managed to effect a certain reconcilation of his
free pan-tonal and early dodecaphonic works?
As far as the 'conservative' works are concerned, there aren't that many of
them, really. The Op. 25 Suite, the Wind Quintet, maybe the Op. 29 Suite (a
piece I don't know quite so well)? Certainly by the time of the Op. 31
Variations for Orchestra, Schoenberg's absorption of dodecaphonic technique,
and ability to exploit it with vast imagination, has reached such a level
that to consider him a conservative (whatever that really means in an
absolute sense, musically) or even an 'objectivist' makes little sense. The
caricature of Schoenberg tends to come from those people who have mostly
read and reiterated stereotypical views, and not listened enough to the
actual music.
Ian
Ian Pace
>
> "Are you suggesting that the Schoenberg of Op. 23 had more in common
> with the Strauss of Der Rosenkavalier than either of them had with the
> composers of Erwartung and Elektra? An interesting thesis."
>
> In some respects, yes. Or rather I'm suggesting an idea that is hardly
> original with me although extremely obvious to anybody who spends
> enough time with the art of the period: that almost everybody in the
> whole generation reacted against their earlier most radical and
> original work and turned more conservative, and not only Strauss,
> Stravinsky, and Schoenberg but painters and writers, too.
Just one other thought - I've heard the opinion expressed that the real
shift in Strauss's output came not so much with Rosenkavalier of 1910 (which
was of course written over 10 years before Schoenberg wrote Op. 23 - the
works lie on either side of WW1) but with Die Frau ohne Schatten of 1918.
Not being that much of a Straussian (at present), and little familiar with
the later operas (I know Die Frau ohne Schatten, but not that well - ages
since I saw it), I'm interested in yours and other people on here's thoughts
on this.
Ian
david...@aol.com
"The religious right isn't so significant outside of America,"
Sure it is. Ever heard of Islamic fundamentalism? The point is, the
fear that too much liberty leads to "libertinage" still exists in the
modern world.
"do you think they are that representative of the right in general?"
They don't have to be for my point to be well taken. (It's quite
obvious that "conservatism" in this case refers to cultural and not,
say, economic conservatism.)
-david gable
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148780930....@j55g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Ian writes:
>
> "The religious right isn't so significant outside of America,"
>
> Sure it is. Ever heard of Islamic fundamentalism? The point is, the
> fear that too much liberty leads to "libertinage" still exists in the
> modern world.
OK - I was referring to the Western world. I really don't believe what you
describe above is that significant a fear elsewhere. A little, but not so as
to be a major political force.
>
> "do you think they are that representative of the right in general?"
>
> They don't have to be for my point to be well taken. (It's quite
> obvious that "conservatism" in this case refers to cultural and not,
> say, economic conservatism.)
>
Well, I can see how libertinage can be compatible with other forms of
cultural conservatism - but I would call the values of the me-generation
'conservative' (though at this point a distinction between 'conservative'
and 'liberal' becomes rather meaningless - however, I don't believe that's
in any case a particularly important distinction) as they embrace the ideals
of high consumerism (precisely what the corporations want) so eagerly.
Ian
david...@aol.com
Ian writes:
"I've heard the opinion expressed that the real shift in Strauss's
output came not so much with Rosenkavalier of 1910 (which was of course
written over 10 years before Schoenberg wrote Op. 23 - the works lie on
either side of WW1) but with Die Frau ohne Schatten of 1918."
The most self-consciously doctrinaire "neoclassical" work of Strauss
was, of course, Ariadne auf Naxos, premiered in 1912, and, in a revised
version, in 1916. (Have you ever heard the music Strauss wrote for Le
bourgeois gentilhomme?)
Strauss and Stravinsky moved into their "neoclassicism" by degrees and
at first without the conscious intention of a radical shift in
direction. Having written Salome and Elektra, Strauss tried something
different with Rosenkavalier, but without any specifically neoclassical
"program" in mind. But he never pursued the path opened by Salome and
Elektra further, and he increasingly distanced himself from those works
as time went on. Stravinsky stumbled onto his neoclassicism at first
almost by chance when asked to make the arrangements that ended up as
Pulcinella, only becoming a more explicitly doctrinaire neoclassicist
later on. In Schoenberg's case, there is a long period during which he
didn't complete any works separating his expressionist period from the
neoclassicizing serial works written after the war.
Debussy's development was not dissimilar. In the period before the
war, there's an evolution from La mer (1905), a disguised would be
anti-classical symphony (1905) to Jeux (1912), the most complex and
freewheeling form Debussy ever created. Then, right after the war, he
sets out to write half a dozen "sonatas" that embody some degree of
neoclassicizing rapprochement with the 18th century. (The ensemble for
one of the unwritten sonatas was even to have included a harpsichord.)
-david gable
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148783481.1...@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Ian writes:
>
> "I've heard the opinion expressed that the real shift in Strauss's
> output came not so much with Rosenkavalier of 1910 (which was of course
> written over 10 years before Schoenberg wrote Op. 23 - the works lie on
> either side of WW1) but with Die Frau ohne Schatten of 1918."
>
> The most self-consciously doctrinaire "neoclassical" work of Strauss
> was, of course, Ariadne auf Naxos, premiered in 1912, and, in a revised
> version, in 1916. (Have you ever heard the music Strauss wrote for Le
> bourgeois gentilhomme?)
Yes, not for a long time, though.
>
> Strauss and Stravinsky moved into their "neoclassicism" by degrees and
> at first without the conscious intention of a radical shift in
> direction. Having written Salome and Elektra, Strauss tried something
> different with Rosenkavalier, but without any specifically neoclassical
> "program" in mind. But he never pursued the path opened by Salome and
> Elektra further, and he increasingly distanced himself from those works
> as time went on. Stravinsky stumbled onto his neoclassicism at first
> almost by chance when asked to make the arrangements that ended up as
> Pulcinella, only becoming a more explicitly doctrinaire neoclassicist
> later on. In Schoenberg's case, there is a long period during which he
> didn't complete any works separating his expressionist period from the
> neoclassicizing serial works written after the war.
>
> Debussy's development was not dissimilar. In the period before the
> war, there's an evolution from La mer (1905), a disguised would be
> anti-classical symphony (1905) to Jeux (1912), the most complex and
> freewheeling form Debussy ever created. Then, right after the war, he
> sets out to write half a dozen "sonatas" that embody some degree of
> neoclassicizing rapprochement with the 18th century. (The ensemble for
> one of the unwritten sonatas was even to have included a harpsichord.)
>
Yes, I'm perfectly aware of all that (please, there is no need to lecture
when you here, certainly not to me). How about your thoughts on Die Frau
ohne Schatten?
Ian
david...@aol.com
"as they [members of the human race] embrace the ideals of high
consumerism (precisely what the corporations want) so eagerly."
Corporations didn't invent the human psychology at work here. Human
beings by their very nature desire and have ever since Adam and Eve
wanted to taste the apple.
-david gable
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148785056.8...@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
And, by the way, this 'human psychology' that you imply is innate is by no
means so simple. In consumer culture, desires are induced rather than simply
responded to, as everyone in marketing and advertising knows (though of
course they perpetuate an ideology that insists that the latter is the
case).
I can't recommend enough reading Edward Bernays' book 'Propaganda' on this
subject. He was the father of modern PR and marketing. Read his stuff on how
a campaign was successfully run to persuade women to smoke, for example.
Ian
Ian Pace
"Ian Pace" <i...@ianpace.com> wrote in message
news:Ep8eg.3341$Z7....@newsfe1-win.ntli.net...
>
> <david...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:1148785056.8...@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> Ian writes:
>>
>> "as they [members of the human race] embrace the ideals of high
>> consumerism (precisely what the corporations want) so eagerly."
>>
>> Corporations didn't invent the human psychology at work here. Human
>> beings by their very nature desire and have ever since Adam and Eve
>> wanted to taste the apple.
>>
> Do you think Adam and Eve wanted an apple with a designer label on it?
>
most reliable source from which to derive universalising statements about
human beings.
Ian
david...@aol.com
Ian, human beings can be induced to desire. Ultimately, that depends
on something innate. Exploitation of desire was not pioneered by
corporations either. It's inherent in any market place where there are
competing goods or products.
-david gable
david...@aol.com
"Well, I can see how libertinage can be compatible with other forms of
cultural conservatism -"
That's not what I wrote. "Libertinage" is a consequence of "excessive"
liberty FEARED by the religious right.
-david gable
david...@aol.com
"Should add, by the way, that I don't believe biblical tales are
exactly the most reliable source from which to derive universalising
statements about human beings. "
Sure they are. The story of Adam and Eve demonstrates that at least as
early as the first written texts within a certain tradition, the
concept of desire was well known and well understood.
-david gable
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148786015.4...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
becomes more concentrated.
What the 'something innate' is is not by any means clear. If you mean
'desire' in the broadest sense, then that doesn't necessarily equate with a
wish to accumulate, nor that to define one's whole self by one's consuming
choices (one of the few avenues that remain for self-expression (or
pseudo-self-expression) under late capitalism).
It's one of the mantras of high capitalism, that producers are only
responding to a desire that's already there. Desire in the abstract can take
many forms, not by any means necessarily consumerist (though other forms of
desire, including sexual desire, can of course be appropriated and
commodified). A desire for various types of consumption is created rather
than innate. Advertising preys upon insecurities, stokes them, and promises
redemption through consumption (though of course this redemption must needs
be temporary, or else people might stop consuming). Hence we have the
obscene contemporary concept of 'retail therapy'.
Ian
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148786280.2...@j55g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
rather than being created to perpetuate certain ideologies?
Ian
david...@aol.com
Ian claims, "What the 'something innate' is is not by any means clear."
It's clear enough to me. Ever seen a toddler in a grocery store?
Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. That's innate. Why aren't you content
with the CD's you already own? Why do you desire more? Do you "need"
them? Do you "need" any?
In any case, corporations cannot induce anybody to do anything that,
for innate reasons, no human being could ever be induced to do.
Corporations exploit human nature.
-david gable
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148786128.6...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> How so? In the so-called culture wars in the United States today, a
> fear of something akin to "libertinage" is precisely what the religious
> right fears most on the left. Gay marriage, Monica-gate, a general
> relaxation of sexual mores: these are just the sort of "licenses" that
> many religious conservatives fear most. They're far less bothered by,
> say, the Iran-Contra scandal
Then I responded with (amongst various other things, but this was the one
bit you responded to):
"The religious right isn't so significant outside of America,"
Your response:
Sure it is. Ever heard of Islamic fundamentalism? The point is, the
fear that too much liberty leads to "libertinage" still exists in the
modern world.
Then:
Me: "do you think they are that representative of the right in general?"
David: They don't have to be for my point to be well taken. (It's quite
obvious that "conservatism" in this case refers to cultural and not,
say, economic conservatism.)
You were referring to cultural conservatism and its fear of "libertinage".
I'm pointing out that the two things can be reconciled. But I think we have
different ideas of what constitutes cultural conservatism, something I do
associate with the right in general, not just the religious nuts.
Ian
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148786844.1...@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Ian claims, "What the 'something innate' is is not by any means clear."
>
> It's clear enough to me. Ever seen a toddler in a grocery store?
> Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. That's innate.
How toddlers act isn't synonymous with how adults act. And many toddlers
grow up in parts of the world where grocery stores aren't to be found often.
> Why aren't you content
> with the CD's you already own? Why do you desire more? Do you "need"
> them? Do you "need" any?
If I could listen to the music whenever I wanted to without having to
accumulate CDs, I'd be perfectly happy.
>
> In any case, corporations cannot induce anybody to do anything that,
> for innate reasons, no human being could ever be induced to do.
That in no sense contradicts my point, it's a merely tautological statement.
> Corporations exploit human nature.
>
Which, as I've said on many occasions, is the biggest ideology of all.
Ian
david...@aol.com
Ian asks, "How do you know that those texts reflected reality or even
its perception,
rather than being created to perpetuate certain ideologies?"
Your question is typical post-modern excessively skeptical
epistemological nonsense, which means it's time for me to exit from
this thread. Even if the Genesis story were "created to perpetuate
certain ideologies," the story of Adam and Eve and the apple would
demonstrate that the nature of desire was known and understood by the
anonymous author of the text and his readers. (For example, the author
doesn't feel that desire has to be explained to the potential reader.
He quite reasonably presumes that what is written is transparently
intelligible. As, of course, it is to all but late 20th-century
post-modern Marxist theorists.)
-david gable
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148787413....@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Ian asks, "How do you know that those texts reflected reality or even
> its perception,
> rather than being created to perpetuate certain ideologies?"
>
> Your question is typical post-modern excessively skeptical
In no sense am I a post-modernist or an excessive sceptic. You should see
the amount I write attacking post-modernist relativism.
> epistemological nonsense, which means it's time for me to exit from
> this thread. Even if the Genesis story were "created to perpetuate
> certain ideologies,"
Do you not think that's true of the bible in general, and other sacred
texts? For example the passages on homosexuality?
> the story of Adam and Eve and the apple would
> demonstrate that the nature of desire was known and understood by the
> anonymous author of the text and his readers.
That by no means necessarily follows. Temptation as a concept may not have
existed in any meaningful form before shaped in the bible. Of course also it
may have done, but there is no way of knowing other than perhaps through
some very clever archaeology/ancient cultural/linguistic/psychological
history (God knows how it would be possible).
> (For example, the author
> doesn't feel that desire has to be explained to the potential reader.
> He quite reasonably presumes that what is written is transparently
> intelligible.
Positivistic nonsense. Writing creates, not simply reflects.
> As, of course, it is to all but late 20th-century
> post-modern Marxist theorists.)
>
In my book, post-modernism and Marxism are quite incompatible. Of course
that depends how one defines post-modernism. Jean-Francois Lyotard, the
major theorist of intellectual post-modernism, defined it as an
intellectual/cultural situation which witnesses the break down of
'metanarratives' - all-encompassing intellectual paradigms of the world. As
Marxism is one such narrative (or, at least, generally regarded as such by
post-modernists), the two theories are significantly at cross-purposes. That
said, post-modernism is self-undermining as it is itself a meta-narrative
par excellence, specifically the meta-narrative of global capital.
Ian
david...@aol.com
"How toddlers act isn't synonymous with how adults act."
Sure it is. Only adults are socialized to disguise their desires with
a veneer of politesse. Do you consume your nutrition via flavorless
pills, or do you desire food? Do you ever say things like, "I'm dying
to have Chinese tonight"? Or have you socialists transcended the
material plane?
"And many toddlers grow up in parts of the world where grocery stores
aren't to be found often. "
God, you are maddeningly literal minded. The point of the grocery
store anecdote was to call to mind a scene that virtually any reader of
this newsgroup would be familiar with, even you. The behavior I had in
mind is certainly characteristic of toddlers in cultures without
grocery stores when they are in the vicinity of enticing foodstuffs.
-david gable
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1148788118....@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Ian,
>
> "How toddlers act isn't synonymous with how adults act."
>
> Sure it is. Only adults are socialized to disguise their desires with
> a veneer of politesse.
No, I do not accept that model of human behaviour at all. Human beings
develop as they progress in life, desires and other things change. One
rather obvious case is the fact that humans develop desires for one of the
other sex.
> Do you consume your nutrition via flavorless
> pills, or do you desire food? Do you ever say things like, "I'm dying
> to have Chinese tonight"? Or have you socialists transcended the
> material plane?
Of course I desire to eat (or to listen to music, or whatever). That's not
the same thing as consumerism. Try
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-consumerism
>
> "And many toddlers grow up in parts of the world where grocery stores
> aren't to be found often. "
>
> God, you are maddeningly literal minded. The point of the grocery
> store anecdote was to call to mind a scene that virtually any reader of
> this newsgroup would be familiar with, even you. The behavior I had in
> mind is certainly characteristic of toddlers in cultures without
> grocery stores when they are in the vicinity of enticing foodstuffs.
>
A desire to eat (which would be better described as a physical necessity) is
not the same as a desire to accumulate. Everyone has to eat, by no means
does everyone have to sport designer labels.
Ian
Ian Pace
>
> No, I do not accept that model of human behaviour at all. Human beings
> develop as they progress in life, desires and other things change. One
> rather obvious case is the fact that humans develop desires for one of the
> other sex.
>
'desires for one or the other sex'.
Ian
Eric Grunin
> Eric Grunin remarks:
>
> "Are you suggesting that the Schoenberg of Op. 23 had more in common
> with the Strauss of Der Rosenkavalier than either of them had with the
> composers of Erwartung and Elektra? An interesting thesis."
>
> In some respects, yes. Or rather I'm suggesting an idea that is hardly
> original with me although extremely obvious to anybody who spends
> enough time with the art of the period: that almost everybody in the
> whole generation reacted against their earlier most radical and
> original work and turned more conservative, and not only Strauss,
> there was a reaction against Debussy in favor of "clarity," Cocteau
> issued a rappel a l'ordre, Stravinsky, Eliot, and Picasso began calling
> themselves neoclassicists, Kandinsky and Schoenberg being searching for
> the underlying laws governing their more radical work from the period
> before the war, which lead to the parallel developments of geometric
> abstraction and serialism, etc etc. etc.
>
> point. In the period from about 1908 to the first World War, he's
> forever quoting Liszt and talking about intuition. After the war he
> becomes a Brahmsian neoclassicist trying to restore law and order.
> to the conservative developer of serialism, while many of the
> performers and listeners most passionate about Schoenberg's music
> prefer the "freely atonal" expressionist music of the period before the
> war (e.g., somebody on this newsgroup just the other day).
[I'm going to state some things verbosely to avoid losing 100% of the
onlookers.]
I consciously excluded Stravinsky from my list, because I consider the
nature of his stylistic change(s) significantly different.
By the time of the Octet Stravinsky had simplified just about
everything except his chords, which still tended to be rather thick.
'Putting on' classical gestures was an ingenious way to use simpler
chords without sounding trivial. Note that I am saying 'chords', not
'harmonies.' Stravinsky's harmonic complexity remained essentially
unchanged. Note also that the rate of change in Stravinsky's music
within a piece (i.e, changes of harmony, texture, mood) remained
constant, which was absolutely not true across Schoenberg's
before-and-after-WW1 change.
Off the top of my head I put Picasso in the Stravinsky camp, and my
feelings about Eliot are too complicated to go into here; but I agree
that Kandinsky's shift, like Schoenberg's, gives a feeling that the
artist is drawing back in fear from an abyss.
This isn't about 'free atonality' vs the twelve-tone method, either.
Wozzeck and Lulu are clearly siblings (egad what a hellacious thought),
Eisler's 'atonal' and 'twelve-tone' works are almost indistinguishable,
and although Webern did have to invent a new gestural vocabulary
between the almost-nonexistent Cello Pieces Op.11 and the more
conventional String Trio Op.20, it doesn't feel like a fearful retreat
from chaos as much as an essential rebuilding to avoid total silence.
(I find Webern's early, stuttering twelve-tone pieces less 'music' than
'interesting quasi-music', but that's a whole other discussion.)
But getting back to Schoenberg: maybe instead of thinking of him as
'conservative' he merely had a conservative 'phase' that produced a
hole in the middle of his output, from the 1920/23 Piano Pieces Op. 23
to the 1928 Von Heute auf Morgen, whose libretto is also
quasi-reactionary. (I don't mind the piano pieces, particularly Op. 25,
but the Wind Quintet is almost unbearable.)
After this the 'free period' vigor returns, but there's also a lot of
clutter. I don't think my opinions here are unusual (dates taken from
Schoaf's discography):
Brilliant:
2 Stücke, op. 33a (1928) & 33b (1931)
Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, op. 34 (1930)
6 Stücke, op. 35 (1930) (male chorus)
Moses und Aron (1930/32)
Less so:
Violin Concerto, op. 36 (1934/36)
Quartet no. 4, op. 37 (1936)
Dull, or worse:
Kammersymphonie no. 2, op. 38 (1906/39)
Kol nidre, op. 39 (1938)
Variations on a recitative, op. 40 (1941)
Brilliant again:
Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, op. 41 (1942)
Piano Concerto, op. 42 (1942)
Dull:
Theme and variations, op. 43a (1943)
Brilliant:
Trio, op. 45 (1946)
A Survivor from Warsaw, op. 46 (1947) [though I find the choral section
interminable]
Phantasy, op. 47 (1949)
Dull:
Dreimal tausend Jahre, op. 50a (1949)
Psalm 130 "De profundis", op. 50b (1950)
Modern psalm, op. 50c (1950, unfinished)
So, to take this about as far as it should go (and probably farther),
the composer of the String Trio has much more in common with the
composer of Erwartung than that of Von Heute auf Morgan.
david...@aol.com
Eric,
Excellent post. Thanks for the brilliant summing up. There's plenty
here that it would be extremely interesting to discuss with you, but
this may not be the right forum for it.
A couple of minor quibbles. I would say that, as compared to Wozzeck,
Lulu is a comparatively "neoclassicizing" work, and I rate Schoenberg's
Violin Concerto much higher than the Piano Concerto.
"[T]o take this about as far as it should go (and probably farther),
the composer of the String Trio has much more in common with the
composer of Erwartung than that of Von Heute auf Morgan."
Yes, indeed. These works (and the Film Scene, too) come as close as
the later Schoenberg ever got to rejoining the great expressionist
style.
Finally, I don't see the 3rd Qtet or Variations for Orchestra in your
Schoenberg chronology. Curious how you rate them.
-david gable
Eric Grunin
> A couple of minor quibbles. I would say that, as compared to Wozzeck,
> Lulu is a comparatively "neoclassicizing" work
Looking at the dates, it would actually appear that Berg's embrace of
'classical' elements happened concurrently with Schoenberg's. It's a
huge step from the meditations on chaos of the Three Pieces for
Orchestra (finished 1915) to the series of discrete, well-defined forms
comprising Wozzeck (finished 1922).
> and I rate Schoenberg's
> Violin Concerto much higher than the Piano Concerto.
I'm tempted to suggest that the Violin Concerto is better than it
sounds; I'd like to say that it's more enjoyable to read than to listen
to, except that reading it fills me with terror for the poor violinist.
But it's been a while, maybe it's time for another listen. I admit that
the Piano Concerto is less ambitious, but Schoenberg's readmission of
the octave to his palette at least lets him write for the instrument
rather than against it.
> Finally, I don't see the 3rd Qtet or Variations for Orchestra in your
> Schoenberg chronology. Curious how you rate them.
For what it's worth, here are the works from the 1920s:
Interesting quasi-music:
5 Stücke, op. 23 (1920/23)
Serenade, op. 24 (1920/23)
Suite, op. 25 (1921/23)
Music for the deaf:
Quintet, op. 26 (1924)
4 Stücke, op. 27 (1925)
3 Satiren, op. 28 (1925/26)
Real (good) music, but through a glass darkly:
Suite, op. 29 (1925)
Quartet no. 3, op. 30 (1927)
Variations, op. 31 (1926/28)
Burn the libretto and write a new one and I'll listen to it again:
Von heute auf morgen, op. 32 (1929)
But...
* Boulez has done great things with the Suite Op. 29.
* By all rights Op.25 ought to sound like a deranged cuckoo clock, but
several pianists (not all!) transcend that.
* I've always had a soft spot for the Variations, meaning I'm
consistently a little disappointed but I keep going back to give it
another chance, not sure why.
* I guess I'll put the 3rd Quartet in the Inbox with the Violin
Concerto.
* None of these is as bad as the Variations on a Recitative, one of the
three pieces of music that has actually made me feel physically ill. No
kidding.
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:1148910297.724633.264960
@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> * None of these is as bad as the Variations on a Recitative, one of the
> three pieces of music that has actually made me feel physically ill. No
> kidding.
What are the other two?
I heard stories years ago about a New York piano teacher whose cat would
wander away and throw up whenever anybody (the teacher or any of his
students) played Copland's Piano Variations. The cat would do this in
reaction to the Copland work unfailingly, and for no other music.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. ~ FDR (attrib.)
Bob Harper
> Ian, human beings can be induced to desire.
> Ultimately, that depends
> on something innate.
Yes; see St. Augustine: 'Our hearts are restless 'til they find their
rest in Thee.'
Whether or not one accepts the thought behind this statement, can there
be any doubt that it is in the nature of human beings to want more?
Bob Harper
William Sommerwerck
> wander away and throw up whenever anybody (the teacher or any of his
> students) played Copland's Piano Variations. The cat would do this in
> reaction to the Copland work unfailingly, and for no other music.
Fascinating... But could it be that this work containss a "brown note" or
"brown chord"?
Matthew B. Tepper
I've never heard of any real evidence for the "brown note." Another rumor
involves something called the "scare note."
Eric Grunin
> "Eric Grunin" <gru...@hotmail.com> appears to have caused the following
> letters to be typed in
> > * None of these is as bad as the Variations on a Recitative, one of the
> > three pieces of music that has actually made me feel physically ill. No
> > kidding.
> What are the other two?
I should say first that these were repeatable results.
#2) Pierre Bartholomee: "Le Tombeau de Marin Marais," Wergo.
For gambas tuned in microtones. I have no problem with microtonal
music, but this was like Ligeti's 'Lux Aeterna' sung by clones of
Florence Foster Jenkins.
#3) Alvin Lucier, "Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of
Hyperbolas," for standing waves and unattended percussion. Live
performance ca.1973 at WBAI.
An unattened electronic device produces static drones at high volumes,
possibly high enough to cause hearing damage but definitely high enough
to induce nausea. After a while people began leaving to wait it out in
the vestibule, eventually including the composer, who went back in
after 25 minutes to turn it off.
#4) There's actually one more. It's a tape piece which contained a
particular sound, not loud or otherwise obviously bothersome, that
produced a sharp pain about 2 inches above my right ear. A week later I
listened to it again, just to see if the effect was repeated: it was.
Very, very strange. The piece was included in a mid-70s promotional
exhibit entitiled "Young German Composers." It was sponsored by the
Goethe Institute, and I still have the brochure here somewhere.
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
Thomas Wood
Tom Wood
John_H...@msn.com
Ward Hardman wrote:
> "John Harrington" wrote:
> >
> > You're apparently ignoring the definition of conservatism I gave.
>
> I don't see why anybody should accept your definition of *anything*,
> however your so-called "definition" was:
>
> > Conservatism,
> > which I would define as an ideology that holds self-interest far
> > superior to compassionate concerns, ...
>
> And that is totally inadequate and inaccurate.
>
> I don't think that the contrast in classical music is between
> "conservative" and "liberal," which are an unfortunate extension of
> some British political labels (and the "Liberals" don't even exist
> anymore, do they?), but between "conservative" and "radical."
>
> For the purpose of considering what "politically 'conservative'" means
> in the American context, I'd say that it embraces the concepts of:
>
> - Limited government, thus permitting
> - Maximal freedom, with preservation of as many liberties and
> rights as possible.
>
> Limited government will not take an excessive amount of money in
> taxation from any of its citizens. So-called "compassion," which in
> current political terms means buying votes for the X party by taking
> money from the part of the political spectrum opposed to X, and
> spending it on others who will vote for the X party in gratitude. The
> Xs will tell the beneficiaries of their largesse (with Other People's
> Money [OPM, pronounced "opium"], not their own) that they are
> "entitled" to this kind of compassion. This creates a parasite class
> which the compassionate Xs will nurture like a flower bed in order to
> keep themselves in power.
>
> One way to decide whether things have gone too far in the statist
> direction is to measure the relative size of the employment in the
> government and private sectors. Except for military defense forces,
> the size of the bureaucracy engaged in taxation, regulation,
> litigation, etc. If it gets above 5% of the population, it is getting
> excessive. (And the statists can argue that a depression will ensue if
> government cutbacks are attempted.)
>
> The conservative point of view also holds that competition is a good
> thing, and that many functions regarded as governmental (such as
> teaching in schools) could be better and more efficiently performed by
> private industry with competitive bidding.
>
> A true conservative hates any "non-natural" (as the telephone system
> used to be regarded) monopoly, including that of any unnecessary
> government. Wherever we see some powerful governmental union, like
> teachers and prison guards in California, that is an obvious case where
> a mistake has been made in taking the path away from a competitive
> environment.
>
> As for the "self-interest" which "Harrington" decries, aren't those
> public-school teachers and those prison guards acting entirely in that
> way (while claiming that they have the children or the non-criminal
> element of society at heart as they push their wages much, much higher
> than their performance deserves)? The question: does the government
> have a school system in order to make teachers prosperous or to educate
> children? In California, the government and the teachers have
> succeeded in the former but failed in the latter... private schools in
> which the teachers receive a fraction of the state school pay produce
> much better students.
>
> ---------------------
>
> Anyway, back to music:
>
> Musically Conservative: Bruckner, who produced symphonies like a
> craftman making shoes, producing nearly the same product each time, but
> with variations. (Others would compare him to a cathedral builder, who
> was limited by what he could do by the necessity to conform to a
> certain architecture and the need for functionality.)
> Musically Radical: Wagner, Damn the expense, I don't care how much
> this costs, I don't care whether this loses money (as long as it's not
> my own!), I'm a Genius and I'm *entitled* to it. (Eventually though,
> he built his own opera house at Bayreuth and had to take some
> risk/reward himself.)
> Musically Anarchist: Ives? Harry Partch? Stockhausen? Xenakis?
>
> Politically "conservative": Haydn, who abandoned working for
> nobility and ran off to London to compete in the "free market" economy.
> His "product" was predictable in form, but with imaginative variations
> in content and style.
>
> Politically "liberal": Prokofiev "On Guard for Peace," "Cantata for
> the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution," etc.
> And something on the "pop" side for liberal Democrat Congressman
> William Jefferson, Louisiana ($100,000 cool cash hidden in his fridge):
> "Good Mornin' Judge."
>
> ;-)
>
> --Ward Hardman
>
> "The older I get, the more I admire and crave competence,just
> simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology."
> - H.L. Mencken
Wish I could agree seeing how government has grown so huge under
Republican administrations; and about teaching: how private schools are
allowed to get rid of "troublesome" students - no wonder they succeed!
Hauser
david...@aol.com
Eric Grunin wrote:
> Looking at the dates, it would actually appear that Berg's embrace of
> 'classical' elements happened concurrently with Schoenberg's. It's a
> huge step from the meditations on chaos of the Three Pieces for
> Orchestra (finished 1915) to the series of discrete, well-defined forms
> comprising Wozzeck (finished 1922).
The discrete traditional forms can certainly be viewed as a symptom of
a neoclassical approach, and the formal organization of Lulu is
obviously a further development of the ideas underlining the formal
organization of Wozzeck. But Wozzeck doesn't seem to me to exhibit the
sort of conservative or even reactionary neoclassicizing attitude
characteristic of Ariadne auf Naxos or Schoenberg's works from the
early 20's. And what about Pierrot lunaire? Surely nobody would push
the advent of Schoenberg's "neoclassicism" back to 1912. I know I
wouldn't. (This all goes to show just how problematic the application
of conventional labels for stylistic developments can be.)
-david gable
Eric Grunin
> Eric Grunin wrote:
> > Looking at the dates, it would actually appear that Berg's embrace of
> > 'classical' elements happened concurrently with Schoenberg's. It's a
> > huge step from the meditations on chaos of the Three Pieces for
> > Orchestra (finished 1915) to the series of discrete, well-defined forms
> > comprising Wozzeck (finished 1922).
> The discrete traditional forms can certainly be viewed as a symptom of
> a neoclassical approach, and the formal organization of Lulu is
> obviously a further development of the ideas underlining the formal
> organization of Wozzeck. But Wozzeck doesn't seem to me to exhibit the
> sort of conservative or even reactionary neoclassicizing attitude
> characteristic of Ariadne auf Naxos or Schoenberg's works from the
> early 20's.
I meant to implicitly contrast Berg's playful use of preexisting forms
as convienient armature versus Schoenberg's anxious use of preexisting
forms as defensive exoskeleton. But I was also suggesting that there
was more than coincidence in the timing of these choices.
> And what about Pierrot lunaire?
I'm not sure why you mention Pierrot, as the nods to old forms strike
me as parodistic rather than structural. Or am I forgetting?
Regards
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
david...@aol.com
Eric Grunin wrote:
> I'm not sure why you mention Pierrot, as the nods to old forms strike
> me as parodistic rather than structural. Or am I forgetting?
But they are the forms of the piece nonetheless, which makes them
structural as well as parodistic in my book.
-david gable
Eric Grunin
A parody encases its subject in something new, a superset of the
original idea, and implies an assertion of independence from it. Thus
Valse de Chopin, like La Valse, is a parody -- they are both about the
*idea* of the waltz -- but the Rosenkavalier Waltzes are not.
Similarly, 'Night' is a dream of a passacaglia, a memory, while that of
Wozzeck uses a perfectly proper one.
Perhaps this is what makes Schoenberg's Op 23 and 25 uniquely
disturbing (and so attractive to Glenn Gould): their waltzes and gigues
are neither parodies nor the real thing, but sit anxiously in between.
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
Ian Pace
"Eric Grunin" <gru...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1149100366....@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> david...@aol.com wrote:
>> Eric Grunin wrote:
>>
>> > I'm not sure why you mention Pierrot, as the nods to old forms strike
>> > me as parodistic rather than structural. Or am I forgetting?
>
>> But they are the forms of the piece nonetheless, which makes them
>> structural as well as parodistic in my book.
>
> A parody encases its subject in something new, a superset of the
> original idea, and implies an assertion of independence from it.
That only makes sense if you can define an 'it'. Those forms are fluid
things and every enactment of them has a degree of individuation of its own
which could be called 'an assertion of independence'. Are old forms really
'things'? Or do they only become so retrospectively (as with 'sonata form')?
(the 'r' word is lurking in the shadows here)
> Thus
> Valse de Chopin, like La Valse, is a parody -- they are both about the
> *idea* of the waltz -- but the Rosenkavalier Waltzes are not.
Could you be more specific in musical terms about what the Valse de Chopin
or La Valse do to make them 'about the *idea* of the waltz* rather than
being waltzes? Best of all, what exactly the Rosenkavalier Waltzes *don't*
do?
> Similarly, 'Night' is a dream of a passacaglia, a memory, while that of
> Wozzeck uses a perfectly proper one.
Again, what specific musical attributes, in your view, make one a memory,
the other a passacaglia proper?
>
> Perhaps this is what makes Schoenberg's Op 23 and 25 uniquely
> disturbing (and so attractive to Glenn Gould): their waltzes and gigues
> are neither parodies nor the real thing, but sit anxiously in between.
>
But what is 'the real thing'?
Ian