Musicians and their politics
Ian Pace
Middle East, makes me want to address this subject in more general terms.
Reading back through some earlier posts, I find a statement by Tom Deacon
that I'm inclined in essence to agree with:
"Personally, I do not think that any musician can stand aside from his
political views; that they will always impregnate his or her playing.
You play the way you are."
The link between many aspects of music making and politics is undeniable to
me, though harder to substantiate verbally in brief, lucid phrases and
sentences. One of the many attractions of HIP performances of Beethoven
Symphonies stem from the fact that they seem to offer an alternative view of
Beethoven to that which Hitler, Churchill and Stalin were all able to
appropriate for their own ends. Beethoven's status as a radical bourgeois
can still be progressive and have relevance today, though absolutely
requires historical contextualization for this to be possible (see what I
mean about the problems with lucidity! :) ). There is something for me in a
lot of late-Romantic Russian music and Russian schools of playing that has
connotations of a nostalgia for the old feudal, pre-communist days. As a
socialist who is dissatisfied by the late-capitalist commodity culture of
today, I look in music for something that offers an alternative to this,
that which has a depth and humanity that exceeds the strait-jackets that the
'culture industry' creates, and as such is able to offer a visionary
quality.
Anyhow, more to the point, I'm interested generally in people's thoughts on
the manners by which both composers' and performers' work might be said to
reflect what we know of their political ideologies (whether conscious or
sub-conscious), and possibly the contradictions therein.
(more to post on the possible connections between the ways in which Russian
pianism is set as the standard by which to measure, and Cold War politics,
later! :)).
Best,
Ian
ulvi
news:sT2gb.751$pl5.1...@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net:
I am afraid you are barking up the wrong tree altogether. Music
is such a personal aspect of life that asking for its connections
to politics at an individual level is like trying to uncover
a deep connection between a person's sex life (with whom
and how a person falls in love and carries on affairs) and his/her
politics. More ominously, it smells an awful lot
like the machinations that tyrants from Zhdanov to Goebbels
employed, arguing that everything personal is also political
and cannot be separated; they of course wanted their ideologies
to have total control over the individual, including the most
personal corners of the individual's life.
On a more practical note, a thread like this is likely to do
not much beyond bringing back the voices of the politico-posters
in this group (most of whom are in my killfile) via quotations
in other people's posts; so from my viewpoint
it's probably doomed from the start...
Ulvi
Bob Lombard
>I am afraid you are barking up the wrong tree altogether. Music
>is such a personal aspect of life that asking for its connections
>to politics at an individual level is like trying to uncover
>a deep connection between a person's sex life (with whom
>and how a person falls in love and carries on affairs) and his/her
>politics. More ominously, it smells an awful lot
>like the machinations that tyrants from Zhdanov to Goebbels
>employed, arguing that everything personal is also political
>and cannot be separated; they of course wanted their ideologies
>to have total control over the individual, including the most
>personal corners of the individual's life.
>
>On a more practical note, a thread like this is likely to do
>not much beyond bringing back the voices of the politico-posters
>in this group (most of whom are in my killfile) via quotations
>in other people's posts; so from my viewpoint
>it's probably doomed from the start...
>
>Ulvi
I think (hope) that this notion of Ian's is of interest to him only
because he is a socialist - and to few sensible people. if I am wrong
you are doomed to materially increase the size of your killfile.
bl
Ian Pace
"ulvi" <a@b.c> wrote in message news:Xns940BBAE...@216.168.3.44...
There has been a lot more sophisticated thinking vis-a-vis the ideological
content of a work of music, and its critical relationship to culture and
society as a whole (not least from the Frankfurt School), than the appalling
didacticism, censorship (and promotion sometimes!), and bigotry enacted by
the Nazis, the Stalinists, or the CIA. Culture is political, in every
sense - Adorno might have said (this is a highly simplistic paraphrase of
his views, I know) that the more culture manages to retain some autonomy
from the mainstream of social and political affairs, the more its critical
power is increased and enhanced. Beethoven didn't have any problem with the
idea that his work was political. Music continues to be used to accompany
political propaganda - it's amenability to such ends (and it's not a totally
arbitrary thing, I believe) is an aesthetic issue worth dealing with, I
think.
Maybe quoted this one before, can't remember:
'Everything is political, right down to which side of the road upon which
you double-park your Porsche' - Angela Carter in interview not long before
her death
Best,
Ian
David Hurwitz
>I am afraid you are barking up the wrong tree altogether. Music
>is such a personal aspect of life that asking for its connections
>to politics at an individual level is like trying to uncover
>a deep connection between a person's sex life (with whom
>and how a person falls in love and carries on affairs) and his/her
>politics. More ominously, it smells an awful lot
>like the machinations that tyrants from Zhdanov to Goebbels
>employed, arguing that everything personal is also political
>and cannot be separated; they of course wanted their ideologies
>to have total control over the individual, including the most
>personal corners of the individual's life.
>
I agree with all of this, and would add one additional point. Tom's suggestion
that "politics" (or political ideology) impregnates a musician's interpretation
or manner of playing is of course unprovable one way or the other and so must
remain a matter of faith. Even so, his position assumes that the politics is
somehow an "essential" or defining characteristic of one's personality, and this
strikes me as a nonsensical (though peculiarly "leftist") position. In
particular, neither one's political views, nor one's musical outlook, are
monolithic and unchanging; and the extent to which one's political ideology is
an influential or defining force in any aspect of one's life differs from person
to person and is very much a matter of conscious choice.
I know very few people, artists or not, whose personalities are so rigid that
their views of life, art, politics, or any other subject do not change or evolve
over time, and ALL of them are expressions of a person's WHOLE personality.
Therefore, to say that the playing (that is, philosophy of art as expressed in
interpretation) encompasses a specific political ideology is meaningless (or at
best a truism), as neither one precedes the other, both are acquired through
education and experience, both may change either independently or in tandem for
any reason, and ALL are simply expressions of the artists' entire personality at
any given time.
Dave Hurwitz
David7Gable
>Symphonies stem from the fact that they seem to offer an alternative view of
>Beethoven to that which Hitler, Churchill and Stalin were all able to
>appropriate for their own ends.
I'm sorry, Mr. Pace, but I can't take seriously anybody who uses the
politically correct buzz word "appropriate" as you have in this sentence. Same
goes for its twin, "interrogate," which is now used to describe the critical
study of a text or a work of art. I don't think of a poem as a political
prisoner guilty by definition of bourgeois ideology.
On a newsgroup of this kind, it makes a certain amount of sense to use the
language shared by the other participants rather than using a kind of jargon
absolutely guaranteed to ignite resistance and cut off at the knees precisely
the kind of conversation you are theoretically interested in initiating. At
least your earnestness makes you sound endearingly ingenuous. Are you drinking
age yet?
>There is something for me in a
>lot of late-Romantic Russian music and Russian schools of playing that has
>connotations of a nostalgia for the old feudal, pre-communist days.
Unless you can demonstrate this claim convincingly and unless it is reasonably
obvious--that is, audible in performance--to a whole lot of listeners, it's
just poppycock. By the way, have you ever heard of a guy named Paderewski?
Did his playing connote a nostalgia for the old feudal days, or is it a
question of which nation's blood runs through your veins? Mercifully, I won't
be able to tell from your HIP performances that you've appropriated Beethoven's
music for the early 21st-century politically correct academic left, cadet
division.
I also don't think all forms of nostalgia are inherently evil, as many in the
academy now do. (I very much like the concerto that Berio, a left wing Italian
humanist chastened by age and experience, wrote for Rostropovitch, a bourgeois
Russian anti-Communist chastened by age and experience. It's entitled Il
Ritorno degli Snovidenia or The return of Snovidenia, which is Russian for
nostalgic dreams, and the nostalgia is quite evidently shared.)
>Anyhow, more to the point, I'm interested generally in people's thoughts on
>the manners by which both composers' and performers' work might be said to
>reflect what we know of their political ideologies
To some extent artworks may reflect aesthetic ideologies (and usually the more
consciously, narrowly, and explicitly, the more disastrously, as in the case of
Boulez's first book of Structures: as Schlegel said, it is equally fatal both
to have and not to have a system), but an impressionist painter, that is, an
artistic radical whose pictures were hung in the Salon des Independents, could
be a political conservative like Degas or a political radical like Pissarro.
There simply are not left-wing and right-wing brush strokes, although it's
certainly possible to create a progagandistic image using any number of
different artistic means. In any case, Stalin and Hitler liked the same kind
of Kitschy realism in music, literature, and painting, and so do many centrist
Republicans and Democrats.
I detest the notion current among many on the politically correct academic left
who claim that all art (but particularly Western art), like all truth, is
nothing but a fig leaf for repressive political ideologies. Talk about
paranoia! That's like finding a commie under every bed. And it denies a whole
dimension of the human, an interest in and capacity for the aesthetic. It
would make just as much sense to claim that the political ideologies of
politicians are nothing but fig leaves for aesthetic ideologies. Mercifully,
you don't go that far, but you seem to want to construe HIP performance as the
righting of incorrect political thinking.
(To his credit, that much maligned defender of elite Western culture, Edward
Said, thought views of this kind were largely nonsense and said so, nor did he
think that African-Americans or Palestinians, for example, were obligated by
their skin color or ethnicity to be interested either primarily or exclusively
in African or Arab culture, a conviction firmly held by many among the
politically correct left. I was at a lecture where a handful of politically
correct gay art historians who no doubt imagined they were storming the
Bastille loudly and disruptively protested the heterosexual speaker for
presuming to understand the art of a gay painter--to do so is to be guilty of
"appropriation," bourgeois theft of culture or intellectual property, in this
case of something that "belongs to" gays. The heterosexual art historian I was
sitting with remarked to me that, by the same token, gay art historians had
better lay off writing about heterosexual painters. Either position is
nonsense with this difference: my friend was only joking. If a painting
"belongs to" anybody, it belongs to those passionately interested in painting,
not to those who coincidentally share a painter's sexuality or vote the same
way in elections, and I hope it's clear I'm not talking about the material
ownership of property, which is a purely legal matter.)
-david gable
ulvi
news:20031006004618...@mb-m15.aol.com:
> And it denies a whole dimension of the human, an interest
> in and capacity for the aesthetic.
Borges speaks of the "aesthetic event, which does not need to be
defined. The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate,
as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, of water. We feel
poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a
mountain or a bay." But elsewhere he defines it anyway, as
"the imminence of a revelation which is never fulfilled."
Also he compares the aesthetic act to "being assaulted by
beauty, which is always waiting in ambush for us in unexpected
places."
These "definitions" sound pretty accurate to me for the
aesthetic event, which IMO is the essence of music. I also
can't conceive of anything more distant from politics than
aesthetics so defined, if I understand politics correctly
as a preoccupaton with social justice and organization.
Ulvi
Andy Evans
A lot of good words, but just as Borges stated that "beauty is always waiting
in ambush for us in unexpected
places", so politics is another thing that, unfortunately, is always waiting in
ambush for us in unexpected places. Sooner or later political events spring out
and influence artists. As Borges would clearly imagine that it was correct for
an artist to respond to beauty, how can we say that the artist is not equally
correct to respond to politics, when such events move him deeply?
=== Andy Evans ===
Visit our Website:- http://www.artsandmedia.com
Audio, music and health pages and interesting links.
Andy Evans
love, the taste of fruit, of water. We feel
poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay."
>>
If I'm reading this correctly, Borges is saying that a piece of art is
indefinable, yet also saying that it is LIKE such things as the closeness of a
woman, which are stimuli that he has defined. Would it not then be equally true
that an 'indefinable' artistic product could be LIKE the shock of war and
death. While Borges is selective in using pleasant analogies - a mountain or a
bay - we know that artists respond to life as they see it, pleasant and
unpleasant.
Andy Evans
organisation and justice. But while it is hard to imagine that rationalisations
like 'injustice' may be hard to express in music, it is easy to see that its
attendant emotion - anger - is easy to express (film scores largely express
emotions like fear, happiness, sadness etc or their sub-sets like frustration,
dread, nostalgia, as the visual stimuli suggest). Put another way, in listening
to 'Rage over a lost penny' it may be possible to empathise with the emotion of
rage, but it would be impossible, without the title, to identify a
rationalisation that the music involves the loss of units of currency.
ulvi
news:20031006040428...@mb-m18.aol.com:
> The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as
> indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, of water. We feel
> poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain
> or a bay."
>>>
>
> If I'm reading this correctly, Borges is saying that a piece of art is
> indefinable, yet also saying that it is LIKE such things as the
> closeness of a woman, which are stimuli that he has defined. Would it
> not then be equally true that an 'indefinable' artistic product could
> be LIKE the shock of war and death. While Borges is selective in using
> pleasant analogies - a mountain or a bay - we know that artists
> respond to life as they see it, pleasant and unpleasant.
Yes, true, but events are not the same thing as politics; political
thinking or actions may precipitate events that personally affect
people, obviously at times in profound ways, but this is no
different than other events such as the death of a person
who is close etc. The idea here is that politics in the sense
of ideology (not in the sense of immediate history) is
remote from the artistic or aesthetic experience.
In a way, ideology has similar roots as some of the more primitive
human instincts that underlie the urge to belong to various
abstract "communities," whether in organized religion, racial
or ethno-centric self-identification, nationalism, etc. To that
extent, allegiance to ideology (the sense of "belonging" to
a group of like-minded people, of shared common experience or
outlook, and so on) is in conflict with free thought, and therefore
also in conflict with the aesthetic experience, which requires a
mental openness to "being ambushed" by the unexpected,
unconventional, "unsharable," and quirky beauty that is
at the center of the aesthetic act.
Which doen't mean of course that people cannot live with
such conflicts, they can and often do.
Ulvi
Henk van Tuijl
"ulvi" <a@b.c> schreef in bericht news:Xns940BBAE...@216.168.3.44...
> > Anyhow, more to the point, I'm interested generally in people's
> > thoughts on the manners by which both composers' and performers' work
> > might be said to reflect what we know of their political ideologies
> > (whether conscious or sub-conscious), and possibly the contradictions
> > therein.
> >
> > (more to post on the possible connections between the ways in which
> > Russian pianism is set as the standard by which to measure, and Cold
> > War politics, later! :)).
>
> I am afraid you are barking up the wrong tree altogether. Music
> is such a personal aspect of life that asking for its connections
> to politics at an individual level is like trying to uncover
> a deep connection between a person's sex life (with whom
> and how a person falls in love and carries on affairs) and his/her
> politics. More ominously, it smells an awful lot
> like the machinations that tyrants from Zhdanov to Goebbels
> employed, arguing that everything personal is also political
> and cannot be separated; they of course wanted their ideologies
> to have total control over the individual, including the most
> personal corners of the individual's life.
IIRC Horowitz believed that his televised
program in Moscow was based on politics.
If I may believe Moguilevsky, politics
demanded that Petrov, not he, should win
the concours in Brussels.
There is a difference between "le
politique" and "la politique" in French
language. The first refers to the Greek
notion that man is a "homo politicus" -
we are always also social beings. The
second refers to what politicians do or
to what we do when we act like
politicians.
I am not sure what kind of politics Ian
has in mind.
Henk
Andy Evans
conflict with free thought, and therefore also in conflict with the aesthetic
experience>>
Yes - well expressed, no disagreement there.
Ian Pace
"Henk van Tuijl" <hvt...@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:3f814678$0$58706$e4fe...@news.xs4all.nl...
initial post, which would at least suggest that it is a topic worth
raising - will reply to them later. Anyhow, most definitely refer to 'le
politique' rather than 'la politique' - as you say, to the notion that
(wo)man's existence in, and interaction with, society is a political
phenomenon.
Quick point here: while not being a particular fan of Shostakovich, I abhor
the demands placed upon him by the Soviet regime as much as anyone does, but
his production of work that subverted the ideals of 'socialist realism' is
equally a political act, and a positive one. Same could be said about
Bartok's collecting and absorbing of folk music from many countries and
cultures, including his country's arch-enemy Roumania; such a cosmopolitan,
humane attitude, with a genuine non-fetishistic interest in the music of
rural peasants, is an equally positive political act.
Best,
Ian
Stephen North
Sorry I don't buy it.
You might equally make a case for religion colouring performance or
composition but then how would one determine which was the dominant
factor in any given piece or performance.
What's more is that the huge difference between composition (one's own
voice) and performance (composer's and performer's voice combined)
makes any consideration of both a bit more difficult.
If a musician or composer has an interest in politics (though I think
you mean here political philosophy) then all well and good, but I
don't think that any musican's interpretation is governed by their
views on Clause 4, Foundation Hospitals, the banning of hunting with
dogs or funding the Health Service - to choose four local political
topics.
S
Lena
(You know things are really bad when the killfile starts being more
interesting than the non-killfile...)
I think Ulvi is right about how much one's political views affect
one's esthetic ones. Otherwise, killfiles or no, I like having some
nonconformist posting in here... I think Ian is wrong on this one,
but he's articulate, knowledgeable, and wrong. :) Which is fine with
me.
Lena
Lena
> There has been a lot more sophisticated thinking vis-a-vis the ideological
> content of a work of music, and its critical relationship to culture and
> society as a whole (not least from the Frankfurt School), than the appalling
> didacticism, censorship (and promotion sometimes!), and bigotry enacted by
> the Nazis, the Stalinists, or the CIA. Culture is political, in every
> sense - Adorno might have said (this is a highly simplistic paraphrase of
> his views, I know) that the more culture manages to retain some autonomy
> from the mainstream of social and political affairs, the more its critical
> power is increased and enhanced. Beethoven didn't have any problem with the
> idea that his work was political.
Hmmm. He didn't pronounce a whole lot on the subject; in fact, he
disliked explicit programs and remained singularly quiet on
extra-musical things. That a composer has political opinions is not
the same as wanting to have his music viewed politically.
(Some composers of course do want their work to be viewed
politically.)
> Music continues to be used to accompany
> political propaganda - it's amenability to such ends (and it's not a totally
> arbitrary thing, I believe) is an aesthetic issue worth dealing with, I
> think.
Yes, but you can also view music entirely differently. The esthetic
effect can be pretty independent of cultural context.
> Maybe quoted this one before, can't remember:
>
> 'Everything is political, right down to which side of the road upon which
> you double-park your Porsche' - Angela Carter
I really, really disagree with Angela Carter on this one. (Being a
true centrist, I double-park my Porsche in the middle of the road. :)
)
Anyway, this whole "personal vs. political" issue has been hashed to a
well earned death in various contexts.
Lena
Henk van Tuijl
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical.recordings
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2003 1:12 PM
Subject: Re: Musicians and their politics
> "Henk van Tuijl" <hvt...@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
> news:3f814678$0$58706$e4fe...@news.xs4all.nl...
> > There is a difference between "le
> > politique" and "la politique" in French
> > language. The first refers to the Greek
> > notion that man is a "homo politicus" -
> > we are always also social beings. The
> > second refers to what politicians do or
> > to what we do when we act like
> > politicians.
> Just reading through the plentiful and often interesting responses to the
> initial post, which would at least suggest that it is a topic worth
> raising - will reply to them later. Anyhow, most definitely refer to 'le
> politique' rather than 'la politique' - as you say, to the notion that
> (wo)man's existence in, and interaction with, society is a political
> phenomenon.
It seems to be a socialist and even
fascist notion, following some of the
responses ...
Nevertheless I cannot but believe
that art is in origin a social
phenomenon, also in the sense that
art "creates" a society or group.
In that sense art has everything to
do with "le politique".
For example Athenian pottery as a
form of art.
For example religious art.
I even doubt that art can be strictly
individual if it is to be revelatory.
Henk
Bob Lombard
>(You know things are really bad when the killfile starts being more
>interesting than the non-killfile...)
>
>I think Ulvi is right about how much one's political views affect
>one's esthetic ones. Otherwise, killfiles or no, I like having some
>nonconformist posting in here... I think Ian is wrong on this one,
>but he's articulate, knowledgeable, and wrong. :) Which is fine with
>me.
>
>Lena
New revelations about his background ( a sort of modern-day Fabian
Socialist academic, steeped in the slant of political correctness
favored by that group,observing the world through burnt-sienna colored
glasses and hearing it via period-instrument eardrums) explain a
combination of attributes that produces interesting posts - and as you
say, he's usually wrong. Which is fine with me too.
bl (always right)
Ian Pace
I might point out that I'm hardly the first person to wish to explore the
ideological underpinnings of aesthetics - in the 20th century alone, one
could point to the work of Eisenstein, Lukacs, Krakauer, Adorno, Horkheimer,
Brecht, Bloch, Gramsci, Caudwell, Benjamin, Goldmann, Marcuse, Habermas,
Macherey, Althusser, Barthes, Jameson, Williams, Eagleton, and the much
derided Said, not to mention De Beauvoir, Cixous, Kristeva, Irigaray,
Millett, Greer, Showalter, etc., etc. What I have to say can't begin to
compare with the finest work from some of these figures (and that's not to
imply a necessary wholescale of endorsement of all or any of them - this is
an extraordinarily diverse group), I don't think such a body of work can be
dismissed offhand. Music or any art form does exist in society, and is
intimately tied up with all sorts of social institutions in order to simply
exist. That the art works themselves might have some non-arbitrary
relationship to these institutions and the ideologies and politics that
sustain them, hardly seems to me such an extravagant suggestion.
As for political correctness and the 'politically correct academic left',
those of you involved in academia should have an idea how academics are far
too up to their necks in mutual feuding and back-biting to be able to form
such a coherent body of opinion!
The burnt-sienna coloured glasses went into the bin a long time ago, by the
way (knew I needed new photos - will come soon)! Also, employment by an
academic institution only began for the first time earlier this year. An
interest in music and politics comes as much from working with a lot of
contemporary composers who appreciate the ideological nature of
music-making, and are interested to engage with this in a productive,
critical, and illuminating manner.
Looking through clear glass at the computer screen,
Best,
Ian
HankM219
What most political ideologues do not understand is that most people (including
most musicians) are not political ideologues. Everyone has some political
views, and some may feel more strongly about one issue or another, and a few
people have what could be called a political philosophy, that is, a coherent
approach to a group of issues, but there are very few political ideologues,
such as Ian.
First, a matter of definition. My political upbringing brought me very close
to being an idealogue, so I know one when I see (or hear) one. For an adherent
of a political ideology (not unlike an adherent of a religious ideology), every
aspect of human behavior must fit within and be explained by the ideological
framework. Thus, it is not enough to note that some Russian composers and
performers exhibit Romantacism in their music. It can't be simply that this
reflects their musical taste, or the influence of their teachers, or their
emotional make-up. It MUST be "nostalgia for the old feudal, pre-communist
days."
Nothing personal, Ian, but it's clear where this approach leads. When
ideologues control the political system, their all-encompassing view leads them
to put political labels on non-political behaviors, such as (most) musical and
artistic expressions. The result: musicians who do not exhibit the correct
behaviors are therefore labelled as political enemies, and dire consequences
follow.
Henry Maurer, Cherry Hill, NJ, USA
hank...@aol.com or Henry....@comcast.net
Ian Pace
"Lena" <len...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:6b33de45.03100...@posting.google.com...
> " Ian Pace" <i...@ianpace.com> wrote
> >
> > There has been a lot more sophisticated thinking vis-a-vis the
ideological
> > content of a work of music, and its critical relationship to culture and
> > society as a whole (not least from the Frankfurt School), than the
appalling
> > didacticism, censorship (and promotion sometimes!), and bigotry enacted
by
> > the Nazis, the Stalinists, or the CIA. Culture is political, in every
> > sense - Adorno might have said (this is a highly simplistic paraphrase
of
> > his views, I know) that the more culture manages to retain some autonomy
> > from the mainstream of social and political affairs, the more its
critical
> > power is increased and enhanced. Beethoven didn't have any problem with
the
> > idea that his work was political.
>
> Hmmm. He didn't pronounce a whole lot on the subject; in fact, he
> disliked explicit programs and remained singularly quiet on
> extra-musical things. That a composer has political opinions is not
> the same as wanting to have his music viewed politically.
There are some pretty explicit pronouncements, I think (don't have them to
hand right now). The notion of music being a political activity is
certainly not restricted to the use of programmes, texts, allusions to
events, or other extra-musical things. Beethoven's radical individualism,
his relationship with feudal institutions as compared to preceding
generations, surely that can hardly be taken in isolation from the bourgeois
revolutions that were sweeping Europe at the time? And doesn't the music
reflect this?
>
> (Some composers of course do want their work to be viewed
> politically.)
>
> > Music continues to be used to accompany
> > political propaganda - it's amenability to such ends (and it's not a
totally
> > arbitrary thing, I believe) is an aesthetic issue worth dealing with, I
> > think.
>
> Yes, but you can also view music entirely differently. The esthetic
> effect can be pretty independent of cultural context.
But when does music ever exist outside of some cultural context?
>
>
> Anyway, this whole "personal vs. political" issue has been hashed to a
> well earned death in various contexts.
>
Still hold to the idea that the personal at least can be, if not necessarily
always is, political.
Best,
Ian
Ian Pace
"Stephen North" <sgfn...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
news:2571d5c9.03100...@posting.google.com...
Surely few people would argue with the fact that religion coloured the music
of Bach or Messiaen, by no means the sole determinants, of course.
Different attitudes on the parts of the performer(s) as regards the
religious content of these works can have an effect upon the nature of the
performance.
>
> What's more is that the huge difference between composition (one's own
> voice) and performance (composer's and performer's voice combined)
> makes any consideration of both a bit more difficult.
Absolutely, extremely difficult in many ways, but not a fruitless
exploration, I think.
>
> If a musician or composer has an interest in politics (though I think
> you mean here political philosophy) then all well and good, but I
> don't think that any musican's interpretation is governed by their
> views on Clause 4, Foundation Hospitals, the banning of hunting with
> dogs or funding the Health Service - to choose four local political
> topics.
>
Well, that's to define politics in terms of specific topical issues, I'm
meaning the term in a rather broader sense. Nonetheless, highly
commercialized classical music, utterly at the behest of market forces
(Three Tenors, Kennedy, Charlotte Church, etc., etc.) does tend to
demonstrate different types of aesthetical qualities from that operating
within the public sector (in the sense of state subsidy, profit not always
being the paramount concern, etc.). This has at least a tangential
relationship to questions of public/private ownership as articulated by
Clause 4 (for those not in Britain - this was a now-disbanded clause in the
Labour Party's constitution that supported the basic principle of common
ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange). Those
writing about popular culture (in the sense of the better journalists on the
subject, rather than some of the quaint academics) generally accept the
notion that there is a link between the extent of commercialization and the
resulting product; while classical music isn't quite as heavily
commercialized as that in the popular field (though it's getting there), may
there not be a link in this field as well?
Best,
Ian
Simon Roberts
says...
>
>The heated debate about Said and his legacy, and other issues related to the
>Middle East, makes me want to address this subject in more general terms.
>Reading back through some earlier posts, I find a statement by Tom Deacon
>that I'm inclined in essence to agree with:
>
>"Personally, I do not think that any musician can stand aside from his
>political views; that they will always impregnate his or her playing.
>You play the way you are."
Oh, absolutely. I refuse to buy recordings of Beethoven piano sonatas unless
made by British Conservatives who support adoption of the Euro.
>
>The link between many aspects of music making and politics is undeniable to
>me, though harder to substantiate verbally in brief, lucid phrases and
>sentences.
If it can be clearly thought, it can expressed, maybe even "substantiated," in
"brief, lucid phrases and sentences." Long ones, too. The inability to express
it suggests....
>One of the many attractions of HIP performances of Beethoven
>Symphonies stem from the fact that they seem to offer an alternative view of
>Beethoven to that which Hitler, Churchill and Stalin were all able to
>appropriate for their own ends.
It's also probably a rather different view of Beethoven from that held by
Winston Churchill, Richard Nixon, Edward Heath, Jeremy Thorpe and Barbara
Castle.
Simon
Ian Pace
"HankM219" <hank...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20031006093427...@mb-m01.aol.com...
We are really debating here the distinction between what is explicit and
implicit, I think. Certainly compared to some of my friends and colleagues
on the far left, I don't feel myself to be an inflexible ideologue, but do
believe that ideology is about more than just that which is explicitly
stated, and clearly resonating with a familiar type of political position.
>
> First, a matter of definition. My political upbringing brought me very
close
> to being an idealogue, so I know one when I see (or hear) one. For an
adherent
> of a political ideology (not unlike an adherent of a religious ideology),
every
> aspect of human behavior must fit within and be explained by the
ideological
> framework.
There are more sophisticated types of discourse on ideology, which privilege
precisely that which is non-subsumable within the dominant ideologies they
inhabit. To write a piece of music that pointedly refuses to engage either
by passive complicity or automatic negation with the ideological aesthetic
doctrines of an authoritarian regime (e.g. in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany)
is still a political act, and one that has much emancipatory potential; in
short the notion of 'art as a refuge from totalitarianism'.
> Thus, it is not enough to note that some Russian composers and
> performers exhibit Romantacism in their music. It can't be simply that
this
> reflects their musical taste, or the influence of their teachers, or their
> emotional make-up. It MUST be "nostalgia for the old feudal,
pre-communist
> days."
It wasn't intended as an absolute assertion, just a vague suggestion which
as I say is hard to rationalize. Romanticism certainly had political
connotations to its protagonists in the early 19th century, which took on a
quite different form in the early 20th century in a much changed world.
>
> Nothing personal, Ian, but it's clear where this approach leads. When
> ideologues control the political system, their all-encompassing view leads
them
> to put political labels on non-political behaviors, such as (most) musical
and
> artistic expressions. The result: musicians who do not exhibit the
correct
> behaviors are therefore labelled as political enemies, and dire
consequences
> follow.
>
Understand, and I have little patience with that sort of position (as found
in the work of Caudwell, the later Lukacs, arguably to some extent in Brecht
and Eisler, and certainly in the later work of Cardew), but I think the
above should suggest how the approach need not lead to such conclusions.
Best,
Ian
Bob Lombard
wrote:
>I might point out that I'm hardly the first person to wish to explore the
>ideological underpinnings of aesthetics - in the 20th century alone, one
>could point to the work of Eisenstein, Lukacs, Krakauer, Adorno, Horkheimer,
>Brecht, Bloch, Gramsci, Caudwell, Benjamin, Goldmann, Marcuse, Habermas,
>Macherey, Althusser, Barthes, Jameson, Williams, Eagleton, and the much
>derided Said, not to mention De Beauvoir, Cixous, Kristeva, Irigaray,
>Millett, Greer, Showalter, etc., etc. What I have to say can't begin to
>compare with the finest work from some of these figures (and that's not to
>imply a necessary wholescale of endorsement of all or any of them - this is
>an extraordinarily diverse group), I don't think such a body of work can be
>dismissed offhand. Music or any art form does exist in society, and is
>intimately tied up with all sorts of social institutions in order to simply
>exist. That the art works themselves might have some non-arbitrary
>relationship to these institutions and the ideologies and politics that
>sustain them, hardly seems to me such an extravagant suggestion.
Assuming that you are referring to music without words, such
relationship is indeed arbitrary.
>
[snip]
>
>The burnt-sienna coloured glasses went into the bin a long time ago, by the
>way (knew I needed new photos - will come soon)! Also, employment by an
>academic institution only began for the first time earlier this year. An
>interest in music and politics comes as much from working with a lot of
>contemporary composers who appreciate the ideological nature of
>music-making, and are interested to engage with this in a productive,
>critical, and illuminating manner.
Depending on the accuracy of your description, this 'lot of
contemporary composers' would have fit in with the plans of some
'cultural commissars' of the 1920s and 1930s. Kind of spooky, really.
>
>Looking through clear glass at the computer screen,
>Best,
>Ian
>
Best to you too,
bl
Simon Roberts
>
>
>Well, that's to define politics in terms of specific topical issues, I'm
>meaning the term in a rather broader sense. Nonetheless, highly
>commercialized classical music, utterly at the behest of market forces
>(Three Tenors, Kennedy, Charlotte Church, etc., etc.) does tend to
>demonstrate different types of aesthetical qualities from that operating
>within the public sector (in the sense of state subsidy, profit not always
>being the paramount concern, etc.). This has at least a tangential
>relationship to questions of public/private ownership as articulated by
>Clause 4
Do you read Private Eye?
Those
>writing about popular culture (in the sense of the better journalists on the
>subject, rather than some of the quaint academics) generally accept the
>notion that there is a link between the extent of commercialization and the
>resulting product
So it must be true!
Simon
Ian Pace
"Simon Roberts" <sd...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:blrsp...@drn.newsguy.com...
> In article <Tnegb.314$mc.2...@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net>, Ian Pace
says...
> >
> >
> >Well, that's to define politics in terms of specific topical issues, I'm
> >meaning the term in a rather broader sense. Nonetheless, highly
> >commercialized classical music, utterly at the behest of market forces
> >(Three Tenors, Kennedy, Charlotte Church, etc., etc.) does tend to
> >demonstrate different types of aesthetical qualities from that operating
> >within the public sector (in the sense of state subsidy, profit not
always
> >being the paramount concern, etc.). This has at least a tangential
> >relationship to questions of public/private ownership as articulated by
> >Clause 4
>
> Do you read Private Eye?
>
>
> Those
> >writing about popular culture (in the sense of the better journalists on
the
> >subject, rather than some of the quaint academics) generally accept the
> >notion that there is a link between the extent of commercialization and
the
> >resulting product
>
> So it must be true!
>
music don't have a monopoly on comprehensiveness either.
Best
Ian
Ian Pace
> In article <sT2gb.751$pl5.1...@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net>, Ian Pace
> says...
> >
> >The heated debate about Said and his legacy, and other issues related to
the
> >Middle East, makes me want to address this subject in more general terms.
> >Reading back through some earlier posts, I find a statement by Tom Deacon
> >that I'm inclined in essence to agree with:
> >
> >"Personally, I do not think that any musician can stand aside from his
> >political views; that they will always impregnate his or her playing.
> >You play the way you are."
>
> Oh, absolutely. I refuse to buy recordings of Beethoven piano sonatas
unless
> made by British Conservatives who support adoption of the Euro.
Maybe you have a certain former Conservative Prime Minister in mind? :)
>
> >
> >The link between many aspects of music making and politics is undeniable
to
> >me, though harder to substantiate verbally in brief, lucid phrases and
> >sentences.
>
> If it can be clearly thought, it can expressed, maybe even
"substantiated," in
> "brief, lucid phrases and sentences." Long ones, too. The inability to
express
> it suggests....
Another one that no doubt you'll want to relegate to Pseuds Corner is the
statement that 'language is ideological'. Different languages have
different capacities for expression of various types of thinking for reasons
that are historical, social, cultural, and yes political!
>
> >One of the many attractions of HIP performances of Beethoven
> >Symphonies stem from the fact that they seem to offer an alternative view
of
> >Beethoven to that which Hitler, Churchill and Stalin were all able to
> >appropriate for their own ends.
>
> It's also probably a rather different view of Beethoven from that held by
> Winston Churchill, Richard Nixon, Edward Heath, Jeremy Thorpe and Barbara
> Castle.
>
What was Jeremy Thorpe's line on Beethoven? :)
Best,
Ian
Ian Pace
Was a typo in the above bit that I typed before - should have said 'Anyhow,
I most definitely refer....' - might have implied that I was referring to
the views of most other posters. Any political phenomenon can be socialist,
fascist, liberal, whatever, but that's to judge the particular politics
rather than the fact of its being political.
>
> Nevertheless I cannot but believe
> that art is in origin a social
> phenomenon, also in the sense that
> art "creates" a society or group.
And there is an implicit association of different types of music with
different social classes that is held by many people. I'm not saying this
is necessary or inevitable, or even that the link is anything like as
clear-cut, but the fact that it impresses itself on so many people should be
a reason for examining it.
>
> In that sense art has everything to
> do with "le politique".
>
> For example Athenian pottery as a
> form of art.
> For example religious art.
>
> I even doubt that art can be strictly
> individual if it is to be revelatory.
>
Indeed, yes. A truly 'strictly individual' art would in all likelihood be
incomprehensible to anyone other than its creator.
Best,
Ian
Simon Roberts
>
>
>I might point out that I'm hardly the first person to wish to explore the
>ideological underpinnings of aesthetics - in the 20th century alone, one
>could point to the work of Eisenstein, Lukacs, Krakauer, Adorno, Horkheimer,
>Brecht, Bloch, Gramsci, Caudwell, Benjamin, Goldmann, Marcuse, Habermas,
>Macherey, Althusser, Barthes, Jameson, Williams, Eagleton, and the much
>derided Said, not to mention De Beauvoir, Cixous, Kristeva, Irigaray,
>Millett, Greer, Showalter, etc., etc. What I have to say can't begin to
>compare with the finest work from some of these figures (and that's not to
>imply a necessary wholescale of endorsement of all or any of them - this is
>an extraordinarily diverse group), I don't think such a body of work can be
>dismissed offhand. Music or any art form does exist in society, and is
>intimately tied up with all sorts of social institutions in order to simply
>exist.
Perhaps; but the proposition you endorsed wasn't that, but: "Personally, I do
not think that any musician can stand aside from his political views; that they
will always impregnate his or her playing. You play the way you are." This
statement, which strikes me as absurd (unless you're going to broaden "political
views" into some meaningless generalization that encompasses all of a
performer's aesthetic ideas), is hardly the equivalent of what you just said. I
would also note that all of your contributions to this thread seem (unless I've
been reading carelessly) to address composers and their works, not how musicians
interpret them, the subject of Deacon's statement.
It's also quite a step from "it's all social" to "it's all political," unless
you don't mind rendering one or other term useless.
Simon
Ian Pace
"Andy Evans" <aeatarts...@aol.comnohawker> wrote in message
news:20031006070430...@mb-m18.aol.com...
> .. allegiance to ideology (the sense of shared common experience) is in
> conflict with free thought, and therefore also in conflict with the
aesthetic
> experience>>
>
> Yes - well expressed, no disagreement there.
>
empirical notion of ideology as 'shared common experience', which doesn't
entertain the notion that an ideology might aim to transcend that which is
empirically given.
Best,
Ian
Ian Pace
OK, maybe the original premise implies a type of simple cause-effect, and
the term 'political views' is one I would use in a broader sense than is
common. The comments so far are more about composers, but I do think these
paradigms apply to some extent to performers as well (though again not
necessarily in a sense of intentional cause-effect). It's a great shame
that Adorno and Kolisch never completed their work on performance, I'm sure
it would have had a decisive effect on thinking on the subject.
>
> It's also quite a step from "it's all social" to "it's all political,"
unless
> you don't mind rendering one or other term useless.
>
The danger of 'left functionalism' (the notion that 'everything's
political') is one not to ignore, I realize, but still I'd argue that most
forms of social activity have a political dimension.
Best,
Ian
Johannes Roehl
>
> > The heated debate about Said and his legacy, and other issues related
> > to the Middle East, makes me want to address this subject in more
> > general terms. Reading back through some earlier posts, I find a
> > statement by Tom Deacon that I'm inclined in essence to agree with:
> >
> > political views; that they will always impregnate his or her playing.
> > You play the way you are."
> >
> > undeniable to me, though harder to substantiate verbally in brief,
> > performances of Beethoven Symphonies stem from the fact that they seem
> > to offer an alternative view of Beethoven to that which Hitler,
> > Churchill and Stalin were all able to appropriate for their own ends.
> > have relevance today, though absolutely requires historical
> > contextualization for this to be possible (see what I mean about the
> > problems with lucidity! :) ). There is something for me in a lot of
> > late-Romantic Russian music and Russian schools of playing that has
> > connotations of a nostalgia for the old feudal, pre-communist days.
> > As a socialist who is dissatisfied by the late-capitalist commodity
> > culture of today, I look in music for something that offers an
> > alternative to this, that which has a depth and humanity that exceeds
> > the strait-jackets that the 'culture industry' creates, and as such is
> > able to offer a visionary quality.
> >
> > Anyhow, more to the point, I'm interested generally in people's
> > thoughts on the manners by which both composers' and performers' work
> > might be said to reflect what we know of their political ideologies
> > (whether conscious or sub-conscious), and possibly the contradictions
> > therein.
> >
> > Russian pianism is set as the standard by which to measure, and Cold
> > War politics, later! :)).
>
> is such a personal aspect of life that asking for its connections
> to politics at an individual level is like trying to uncover
> a deep connection between a person's sex life (with whom
> and how a person falls in love and carries on affairs) and his/her
> politics.
I believe that this analogy is completely wrong, unless you are normally
having sex publicly in front of a paying audience :-)
I am not sure if there are always any and if what kind of connections
between political attitudes ans music, but music was for most of its
history a public art (or at least pieces like operas or orchestral or
vocal music on a similar scale) and anything public is potentially
usable for politics.
Certainly any great piece of art is never reducible to some political
function, but I do not think the political aspects of works like Moazrts
Nozze and Don Giovanni (both written on the eve of the French
Revolution) or Beethoven's Fidelio, Egmont etc. dan be denied. Romain
Rolland (IIRC) dubbed Beethoven the 'Aeschylus of the Revolution'
(Aischylos being the first dramatist who put contemporary politics, the
Persian wars on stage in Athens). Then there are connections (I do not
know much about) of early Verdi and the italian 'risorgimento' movement,
an opera by IIRC Auber is said to have set the spark for some Revolution
in 19th century Belgium and it is well known that Wagner was a political
refugee in the 1840ties.
Even baroque opera seria can be linked to the reigning princes: if you
take Handel's Caesar, Caesar is apparently the wise, benevolent,
'enlightened' prince, being fair and honorable even to his enemies
whereas Tolomeo is a villainous tyrant etc.
> More ominously, it smells an awful lot
> like the machinations that tyrants from Zhdanov to Goebbels
> employed, arguing that everything personal is also political
> and cannot be separated; they of course wanted their ideologies
> to have total control over the individual, including the most
> personal corners of the individual's life.
OTOH one could argue that at least in Germany (and maybe Austria and
Italy as well) the erroneous belief that art is private and can be
completely separated from political and public issues was one reason why
many intellectuals and artists were so unaware of the threat before the
Nazis rose to power and in their early years. But I do not want to start
those Furtwaengler discussions again...
> On a more practical note, a thread like this is likely to do
> not much beyond bringing back the voices of the politico-posters
> in this group (most of whom are in my killfile) via quotations
> in other people's posts; so from my viewpoint
> it's probably doomed from the start...
I definitely agree here :-(
Johannes
David Hurwitz
But only when transmogrified by the ideational sublimation of synthetic
ratiocinational synoptic phenomena though neo-resyllogistic applications of
proto-phenomenological deconstructivist political post-utopian thought. Silly
boy!
Dave Hurwitz
Clovis Lark
> Lena
I note that some of us professional musicians are in many killfiles...
Ian Pace
"David7Gable" <david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20031006004618...@mb-m15.aol.com...
> >One of the many attractions of HIP performances of Beethoven
> >Symphonies stem from the fact that they seem to offer an alternative view
of
> >Beethoven to that which Hitler, Churchill and Stalin were all able to
> >appropriate for their own ends.
>
> politically correct buzz word "appropriate" as you have in this sentence.
So what word would you use for the actions that the above-mentioned
politicians did?
> Same
> goes for its twin, "interrogate," which is now used to describe the
critical
> study of a text or a work of art. I don't think of a poem as a political
> prisoner guilty by definition of bourgeois ideology.
Neither do I.
>
> On a newsgroup of this kind, it makes a certain amount of sense to use the
> language shared by the other participants rather than using a kind of
jargon
> absolutely guaranteed to ignite resistance and cut off at the knees
precisely
> the kind of conversation you are theoretically interested in initiating.
At
> least your earnestness makes you sound endearingly ingenuous.
I rest my case about language being ideological. The language used by the
various participants here is by no means a monolithic entity, anyhow;
whatever, different modes of discourse are underscored by different
assumptions about the matter being discussed. It doesn't seem that this
conversation has been 'cut off at the knees' as of yet.
> Are you drinking age yet?
For far too long! :)
>
> >There is something for me in a
> >lot of late-Romantic Russian music and Russian schools of playing that
has
> >connotations of a nostalgia for the old feudal, pre-communist days.
>
> Unless you can demonstrate this claim convincingly and unless it is
reasonably
> obvious--that is, audible in performance--to a whole lot of listeners,
it's
> just poppycock.
As I said elsewhere, that's not something that I perceive instinctively, aim
to rationalize in the future; similar connotations have been rationalized in
various discourses on the visual arts, though (on other similar types of
issues, I have written quite extensively, can send those if you wish).
Anyhow, the fact of possible connotations isn't implying blanket dismissal
by any means, just a different perspective.
> By the way, have you ever heard of a guy named Paderewski?
> Did his playing connote a nostalgia for the old feudal days, or is it a
> question of which nation's blood runs through your veins?
Nationalism can hardly be described as a non-political arena. I'm sure
there's a lot of interesting things to be written about links between
Paderewski's parallel and musical careers, and the extent to which they
might each have informed one another (maybe there already is lots such
material?).
> Mercifully, I won't
> be able to tell from your HIP performances that you've appropriated
Beethoven's
> music for the early 21st-century politically correct academic left, cadet
> division.
Do you know how totally factionalized the left is? Be hard to get them to
agree on a pub to go to for a drink, let alone a coherent ideology. An
attitude of anti-appropriation is precisely what enables art to attain an
emancipatory potential; in this sense I think a greater claim might be able
to be made for the politics of the later works of Luigi Nono ("..sofferte
onde serene....." onwards) than the more explicitly 'political' mid-period
works, whose excessive topicality seems nowadays seems less relevant than
what they achieve through sonic and musical means.
>
> I also don't think all forms of nostalgia are inherently evil, as many in
the
> academy now do. (I very much like the concerto that Berio, a left wing
Italian
> humanist chastened by age and experience, wrote for Rostropovitch, a
bourgeois
> Russian anti-Communist chastened by age and experience. It's entitled Il
> Ritorno degli Snovidenia or The return of Snovidenia, which is Russian for
> nostalgic dreams, and the nostalgia is quite evidently shared.)
Finnissy's English Country-Tunes deals with nostalgia as well; in a more
askew manner, so does some of the recent work of James Dillon. In both
cases they are able to write the ambivalence of their perspective into the
substance of the musical works, which is one of various factors that enable
them to be more than 'just nostalgia'. I haven't heard that work of Berio,
but I can't but believe something similar is likely to apply there.
>
> >Anyhow, more to the point, I'm interested generally in people's thoughts
on
> >the manners by which both composers' and performers' work might be said
to
> >reflect what we know of their political ideologies
>
> To some extent artworks may reflect aesthetic ideologies (and usually the
more
> consciously, narrowly, and explicitly, the more disastrously, as in the
case of
> Boulez's first book of Structures: as Schlegel said, it is equally fatal
both
> to have and not to have a system), but an impressionist painter, that is,
an
> artistic radical whose pictures were hung in the Salon des Independents,
could
> be a political conservative like Degas or a political radical like
Pissarro.
> There simply are not left-wing and right-wing brush strokes, although it's
> certainly possible to create a progagandistic image using any number of
> different artistic means. In any case, Stalin and Hitler liked the same
kind
> of Kitschy realism in music, literature, and painting, and so do many
centrist
> Republicans and Democrats.
Boulez's Structures Ia certainly reflects an aesthetic ideology, but the
rest of his oeuvre also reflects other types of ideologies. Propagandistic
art-work usually lacks any sort of element of self-reflexivity or critique
(perhaps with the exception of some of the immediate post-revolution work in
Russia), and as such is most amenable to fascist, Stalinist, or other
reactionary ideologies - but here we are talking about relative merits of
ideological aesthetics, rather than denying that such things exist.
>
> I detest the notion current among many on the politically correct academic
left
> who claim that all art (but particularly Western art), like all truth, is
> nothing but a fig leaf for repressive political ideologies. Talk about
> paranoia! That's like finding a commie under every bed.
I don't find that notion at all common, and it certainly isn't my position.
> And it denies a whole dimension of the human, an interest in and capacity
for the aesthetic.
For sure - but if you look again at my original post, you'll see I said:
"I look in music for something that offers an alternative to this,
that which has a depth and humanity that exceeds the strait-jackets that the
'culture industry' creates"
which I would have thought accords well with your statement. Only
difference is that I see that as being something political.
> It would make just as much sense to claim that the political ideologies of
> politicians are nothing but fig leaves for aesthetic ideologies.
Mercifully,
> you don't go that far, but you seem to want to construe HIP performance as
the
> righting of incorrect political thinking.
Would never put it anything like as simply as that. The politics of some
HIP performance has been written about before, including by Harnoncourt and
Taruskin. In Taruskin's case he construes Norrington's HIP performance of
Beethoven's Ninth almost as an attempt to try and 'censor' the work so as to
render it acceptable in today's terms. I'm just arguing that the 'original'
Beethoven that Taruskin senses the HIPsters as denying maybe has actually
more to do with certain 20th century appropriations of the music than
Beethoven's own perceptions.
>
> (To his credit, that much maligned defender of elite Western culture,
Edward
> Said, thought views of this kind were largely nonsense and said so, nor
did he
> think that African-Americans or Palestinians, for example, were obligated
by
> their skin color or ethnicity to be interested either primarily or
exclusively
> in African or Arab culture, a conviction firmly held by many among the
> politically correct left.
Sure, and I don't know why you would think that viewpoint is implied from
what I say. Said, on the other hand, would argue that the drama of marriage
(and consequently rights and ownership of private property) in Jane Austen
should be thought about in the context of that wealth being possible only as
a direct result of the exploitation of colonial labour in the West Indies,
in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, and as such we shouldn't see the events
depicted in isolation. Similarly, he certainly wouldn't suggest that
Wagner's politics have nothing at all to do with his operas, nor would he
have argued that the works are merely a passive reflection of the politics
(that would be to deny the materiality of the creative process).
I was at a lecture where a handful of politically
> correct gay art historians who no doubt imagined they were storming the
> Bastille loudly and disruptively protested the heterosexual speaker for
> presuming to understand the art of a gay painter--to do so is to be guilty
of
> "appropriation," bourgeois theft of culture or intellectual property, in
this
> case of something that "belongs to" gays. The heterosexual art historian
I was
> sitting with remarked to me that, by the same token, gay art historians
had
> better lay off writing about heterosexual painters. Either position is
> nonsense with this difference: my friend was only joking. If a painting
> "belongs to" anybody, it belongs to those passionately interested in
painting,
> not to those who coincidentally share a painter's sexuality or vote the
same
> way in elections, and I hope it's clear I'm not talking about the material
> ownership of property, which is a purely legal matter.)
>
Nothing there I'd disagree with. It can most plausibly be argued that the
perspective that a straight male has upon the work of a gay painter, or a
female painter, is different from that of a gay person or woman,
respectively. That's not to say that either is invalid, just that people
bring baggage to interpretation. The music of a group of African drummers
has a different meaning when performed in the heart of their own culture and
social practices than when placed on a Western concert hall, subject to a
different set of social/cultural practices. That doesn't make the
experience invalid by any means, just suggests that the notion of a
'neutral' perspective is less hard to maintain.
Best,
Ian
David7Gable
>politicians did?
To listen to Beethoven isn't to "appropriate" it. Of course, it's easy enough
to imagine the use of music in any number of different contexts that the
original author may not have foreseen. Bach might be surprised his cantatas
are performed in concert halls as often as in churches these days. A drinking
song was pressed into service for the American national anthem and the Sunrise
section of Also Sprach Zarathustra was used by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space
Odyssey and has been used in television commercials ever since. A piece by
Haydn became the Austrian national anthem. If anything, this only goes to show
how non-specific the extramusical content of music is.
(Hitler and Wagner is a special case, but it depends on the extramusical
dimension of Wagner's operas and on Wagner's writings: words. Moreover, the
Wagnerism of the Nazis has been exagerrated. Most in Hitler's circle were
indifferent to Wagner's music and indulged Hitler in his enthusiasm.)
Western artists, e.g., Picasso, are accused of "appropriating" non-Western art,
e.g., the African mask-like faces in Les demoiselles d'Avignon, as if this were
a heinous act of imperialism that did violence to the original, but Picasso did
no more with non-Western art than he did with Western art. As Boulez once
said, I listen to other music to see what I can steal. This kind of theft is
what constitutes traditions. To avoid this kind of appropriation, you'd have
to prevent painters from looking at anybody else's pictures.
-david gable
Stephen North
> "Stephen North" <sgfn...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
> news:2571d5c9.03100...@posting.google.com...
> > " Ian Pace" <i...@ianpace.com> wrote in message
> news:<sT2gb.751$pl5.1...@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net>...
[snipped for space - though its all good stuff]
This has at least a tangential
> relationship to questions of public/private ownership as articulated by
> Clause 4 (for those not in Britain - this was a now-disbanded clause in the
> Labour Party's constitution that supported the basic principle of common
> ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange). Those
> writing about popular culture (in the sense of the better journalists on the
> subject, rather than some of the quaint academics) generally accept the
> notion that there is a link between the extent of commercialization and the
> resulting product; while classical music isn't quite as heavily
> commercialized as that in the popular field (though it's getting there), may
> there not be a link in this field as well?
>
> Best,
> Ian
Ian
A+ for making the link, but this introduces the dark forces of the
record companies into the equation too....
Let's ask Charlotte to discuss the point in her next CD booklet -
assuming she's finished colouring it in.
S
Samir Golescu
On 6 Oct 2003, David Hurwitz wrote:
> But only when transmogrified by the ideational sublimation of synthetic
> ratiocinational synoptic phenomena though neo-resyllogistic applications of
> proto-phenomenological deconstructivist political post-utopian thought.
On the historical side, you forgot -- unpardonably, one may add -- the
dialectical interplay of the empirio-critically defined progressist social
elements (which sprang from the raising consciousness of the blooming
bourgeoisie) with the later jump from the quantitative accumulations to
the proletarian quality of thought, once the disappearance of the classes
exploitative of the masses' ignorance could be accomplished through means
specific to the "Permanent Revolution". (Yeah, I am good at this game --
as I've willy-nilly heard all this nonsensical blather all my youth from
the ubiquitous brain-dead activists --, but it can be pretty amusing to
play it when people aren't actually compelled to communicate in such
incredibly wooden ideological jargons.)
regards,
SG
whose very short-lived affaire with Marxism mercifully commenced and
expiated the very day in which the teacher presented the thematic
contrast in the Beethoven sonata form as mirroring "the class struggle";
one was 10 and didn't know yet the "trifle" of the tens of millions of
victims, but could spot on the other primordial sin of Marxism: its being
irredeemably boring.
Andy Evans
blather all my youth from the ubiquitous brain-dead activists>>
I'm afraid my youth yielded only "Yeah man, Peace, have a mushroom - make love
not war, tune in, turn on, drop out...cool baby!. out to lunch, man, dope will
get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times
of no dope", and such psychodelic neo-bohemian anti-establishment libidinous
broad-spectrum socio-anthropological pro-pacific political dogmatism.
=== Andy Evans ===
Visit our Website:- http://www.artsandmedia.com
Audio, music and health pages and interesting links.
Ian Pace
"Stephen North" <sgfn...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
news:2571d5c9.03100...@posting.google.com...
> " Ian Pace" <i...@ianpace.com> wrote in message
news:<Tnegb.314$mc.2...@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net>...
> > "Stephen North" <sgfn...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
> > news:2571d5c9.03100...@posting.google.com...
> > > " Ian Pace" <i...@ianpace.com> wrote in message
> > news:<sT2gb.751$pl5.1...@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net>...
>
> [snipped for space - though its all good stuff]
>
> This has at least a tangential
> > relationship to questions of public/private ownership as articulated by
> > Clause 4 (for those not in Britain - this was a now-disbanded clause in
the
> > Labour Party's constitution that supported the basic principle of common
> > ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange). Those
> > writing about popular culture (in the sense of the better journalists on
the
> > subject, rather than some of the quaint academics) generally accept the
> > notion that there is a link between the extent of commercialization and
the
> > resulting product; while classical music isn't quite as heavily
> > commercialized as that in the popular field (though it's getting there),
may
> > there not be a link in this field as well?
> >
>
> record companies into the equation too....
And a contract with one of the major record companies is the key to having a
true international success, through their sponsorship of concerts,
marketing, promotion, etc. Just as in popular music, the record companies
often call the shots, the use of their economic power is most certainly
something political.
>
> Let's ask Charlotte to discuss the point in her next CD booklet -
> assuming she's finished colouring it in.
>
Do you think they'll put her on the cover smoking a cigarette (as she now
does) in a bid to capture the 'sophisticated consumer'? :)
Best,
Ian
Samir Golescu
On 6 Oct 2003, Andy Evans wrote:
> I am good at this game -- as I've willy-nilly heard all this nonsensical
> blather all my youth from the ubiquitous brain-dead activists>>
>
> I'm afraid my youth yielded only "Yeah man, Peace, have a mushroom - make love
> not war, tune in, turn on, drop out...cool baby!. out to lunch, man, dope will
> get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times
> of no dope", and such psychodelic neo-bohemian anti-establishment libidinous
> broad-spectrum socio-anthropological pro-pacific political dogmatism.
I note that you were getting sex, though. "Ideological" advantage to you
"hippies"!
Now seriously, without descending to the depravations of popularized
Freudianism, one can't help but feel that many of these serious
totalitarian utopians dreaming of changing the world toward the right or
toward the left had some serious troubles in the shagging department so
they chose to screw the world instead.
By comparison, the "hippie" Weltanschauung, while surely not
representative of the highest glories human beings can aspire to, seems
humane, innocuous and certainly redeemable with further endeavors of
the "growing up" stage. I can easily imagine a 20 years old "hippie"
growing up and channeling that diffuse, innate generosity toward
meaningful, creative, intelligent initiatives -- provided one wants to
grow up, surely.
As for Marxists stubbornly aging in pathetic "stiffitude", there's a
priceless (if somewhat dry) Australian comedy, "Children of the
Revolution" which, knowing your taste in parodies, I highly recommend to
you, Mr. Evans, despite its being not without flaws.
regards,
SG
Dan Koren
>
> I wouldn't disagree there either, but the statement is
> predicated upon a empirical notion of ideology as 'shared
> common experience', which doesn't entertain the notion
> that an ideology might aim to transcend that which is
> empirically given.
>
A baby Kant babbling amidst us? Oh God, please spare us!
One Kant was enough -- in fact *MORE* than enough.
dk
Ian Pace
"Stephen North" <sgfn...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
news:2571d5c9.03100...@posting.google.com...
> the banning of hunting with
> dogs
On another note, I'm currently investigating how various modified forms of
music about hunting (Weber, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, later
Wolfgang Rihm) and some types of musical 'archetypes' underlying it, might
be usable in a piece of my own which also uses a spoken text to be derived
in part from various platitudes expressed in the recent debates on
fox-hunting in Britain. Not all music would do for this, the evocative
power of music intended to symbolize the hunt (and all the associated
emotions of the predator, etc.) are important. So in that sense it might
even be possible to work that particular topical debate into music? :)
Best,
Ian
Dan Koren
>
> [big chunks snipped before and after]
>
> There are more sophisticated types of discourse on ideology,
> which privilege precisely that which is non-subsumable within
> the dominant ideologies they inhabit. To write a piece of music
> that pointedly refuses to engage either by passive complicity or
> automatic negation with the ideological aesthetic doctrines of an
> authoritarian regime (e.g. in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany)
> is still a political act, and one that has much emancipatory
> potential; in short the notion of 'art as a refuge from
> totalitarianism'.
>
Baby Kant seems to be growing fast and
regurgitating some Foucault as well. I
fear his articles may soon run into
thousands of lines.
We must run for cover.
dk
PS. It is said in the Scriptures that
the appearance of a Baby Kant signals
Apocalypse is nearing.
Samir Golescu
On Mon, 6 Oct 2003, Dan Koren wrote:
> A baby Kant babbling amidst us? Oh God, please spare us!
>
> One Kant was enough -- in fact *MORE* than enough.
I take it that the syllabus of your Tel Aviv course in classical German
philosophy did not include a brush-up on name-spelling.
regards,
SG
Dan Koren
>
> And there is an implicit association of different types of
> music with different social classes that is held by many
> people.
>
Are you suggesting some of us have champagne tastes in
spite of our beer budgets? That has been known since
long before your time.
You should now return quietly to the book where you
came from.
dk
David Hurwitz
Golescu says...
Indeed, Ian's babbling sounds more like Cant to me.
Dave Hurwitz
Dan Koren
news:Pine.GSO.4.31.031006...@ux8.cso.uiuc.edu...
>
> On Mon, 6 Oct 2003, Dan Koren wrote:
>
> > A baby Kant babbling amidst us? Oh God, please spare us!
> >
> > One Kant was enough -- in fact *MORE* than enough.
>
> I take it that the syllabus of your Tel Aviv course
Didn't go to school/college/university in Tel-Aviv.
> in classical German philosophy did not include a
> brush-up on name-spelling.
?!? What misspelling ?!?
dk
Matt
> We are really debating here the distinction between what is explicit and
> implicit, I think. Certainly compared to some of my friends and colleagues
> on the far left, I don't feel myself to be an inflexible ideologue, but do
> believe that ideology is about more than just that which is explicitly
> stated, and clearly resonating with a familiar type of political position.
It is undeniably true that we are all, to some extent or another, culturally
determined. I worry, however, about any analysis that only views our actions
through one lens. To say that any and every act is a political one seems a bit
over-simplified to me. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
> There are more sophisticated types of discourse on ideology, which privilege
> precisely that which is non-subsumable within the dominant ideologies they
> inhabit. To write a piece of music that pointedly refuses to engage either
> by passive complicity or automatic negation with the ideological aesthetic
> doctrines of an authoritarian regime (e.g. in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany)
> is still a political act, and one that has much emancipatory potential; in
> short the notion of 'art as a refuge from totalitarianism'.
Again, basic agreement, but I still think your thesis is too monolithic. It
would seem to be true in direct proportion to the extent that the artist in
question actually cares about such things. It is possible to be a-political.
Depending on who you talk to, Shostakovich was thumbing his nose at Stalin, a
dedicated if skeptical Communist, or simply trying to survive. Maybe all three
were true. Our motivations are seldom clear-cut, and they often contain
contradictory impulses.
Regards,
Matt
Ian Pace
> >So what word would you use for the actions that the above-mentioned
> >politicians did?
>
> To listen to Beethoven isn't to "appropriate" it.
It wasn't merely a matter of listening to it, it was the use of this music
to accompany political propaganda.
Of course, it's easy enough
> to imagine the use of music in any number of different contexts that the
> original author may not have foreseen. Bach might be surprised his
cantatas
> are performed in concert halls as often as in churches these days. A
drinking
> song was pressed into service for the American national anthem and the
Sunrise
> section of Also Sprach Zarathustra was used by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A
Space
> Odyssey and has been used in television commercials ever since. A piece
by
> Haydn became the Austrian national anthem. If anything, this only goes to
show
> how non-specific the extramusical content of music is.
Not at all - would you really suggest that just any piece of music could
have fulfilled these functions equally well? They were all chosen with
great care. The question of the uses to which an art-work may be put is an
interesting one, and can't be totally divorced from the original work (which
is not the same thing as holding its creator 100% responsible) - Derrida has
written illuminatingly about this in the context of Nietzsche.
I'm aware how the mention of any French philosopher here is like evoking
Satan to some of the other the paranoid, xenophobic, pro-imperialist posters
(I'm not referring to you here but to others), for whom just about anything
contemporary and French, from the nation that tried to stand in the way of
America's imperial ambitions, must signify the end of civilization as they
know it (which would be no bad thing in many ways). One could hardly ask
for a more ringing endorsement of French post-structuralist thinking, German
idealist thinking, and all associated modes of discourse. than to see that
such people despise them so much. It takes only a little bit of reading to
see how clearly the same basic premises underly their thinking about music,
which should be treated with a similar degree of dismissal. One can be sure
of the positive political dimension of any art when attacked vociferously by
those of a right-wing persuasion.
>
> (Hitler and Wagner is a special case, but it depends on the extramusical
> dimension of Wagner's operas and on Wagner's writings: words. Moreover,
the
> Wagnerism of the Nazis has been exagerrated. Most in Hitler's circle were
> indifferent to Wagner's music and indulged Hitler in his enthusiasm.)
The types of coercive emotional manipulation to be found in some (not all)
of Wagner's music, utterly undialectical and un-self-reflective in nature,
bears more than a passing resemblance to the techniques of mass manipulation
that the Nazis were so adept at using - Wieland Wagner has said as much.
>
> Western artists, e.g., Picasso, are accused of "appropriating" non-Western
art,
> e.g., the African mask-like faces in Les demoiselles d'Avignon, as if this
were
> a heinous act of imperialism that did violence to the original, but
Picasso did
> no more with non-Western art than he did with Western art. As Boulez once
> said, I listen to other music to see what I can steal. This kind of theft
is
> what constitutes traditions. To avoid this kind of appropriation, you'd
have
> to prevent painters from looking at anybody else's pictures.
>
At least Boulez is honest about what he's doing, unlike others who claim to
present the essence of the cultural worlds they are appropriating. The
relative merits of appropriation of Western and non-Western art forms
wouldn't be an issue if there were some sort of 'level playing field'. To
take the cultural products of the less developed world, which have nothing
like the same degree of exposure on their own terms as corresponding Western
products do, is dangerously close to the idea of 'assmiliation' of
non-Caucasian peoples in white man's world. Saint-Saens' 'Africa' Fantasy
or 'Egyptian' concerto are prime examples of this, and I find it hard to see
how anyone could deny that the former of these does other than present the
crudest and most patronizing of stereotypes of a whole continent (or country
as that super-intelligent President Dubya seemed to think Africa was).
Again, this is not to suggest we should jettison these works, but here
Said's view takes on a huge relevance. Picasso, for all the fantastic
nature of much of his work, reinforces Western colonialist myths of the
'savage' in Les demoiselles (rather ironic at a time when Europe was about
to embark on two world wars which exhibited savagery to an unprecedented
degree).
Best,
Ian
Ian Pace
"Matt" <mld...@swbell.net> wrote in message
news:3F81F4A9...@swbell.net...
> Ian Pace wrote:
>
> > We are really debating here the distinction between what is explicit and
> > implicit, I think. Certainly compared to some of my friends and
colleagues
> > on the far left, I don't feel myself to be an inflexible ideologue, but
do
> > believe that ideology is about more than just that which is explicitly
> > stated, and clearly resonating with a familiar type of political
position.
>
> It is undeniably true that we are all, to some extent or another,
culturally
> determined. I worry, however, about any analysis that only views our
actions
> through one lens. To say that any and every act is a political one seems
a bit
> over-simplified to me. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
>
assassinating Fidel Castro). Not every act is purely a political act, even
some acts have little palpable politics at all, but most actions, existing
as they do in society and culture, can have a political dimension. To
engage with this is a valid thing (as are other modes of discourse, of
course), I think.
Yes, certainly, but an art-work isn't identical with its motivation. This
can be seen in ways that aren't necessarily obviously 'political' in the
sense some understand it - Ferneyhough talks about Schoenberg's Second
Quartet being a great success precisely because of the composer's failure to
satisfy his pupported intention to write a classical string quartet. In
many ways, the alienated quality of Schoenberg's music is something that
emerges in part despite his intentions, not necessarily because of them.
Shostakovich's work could indeed stem from all the three motivations that
you mention (and would be none the better or worse for that), but the work
itself has a semantic level to I think to some extent exceeds the composer's
capacity to totally control it (this is true of most art-works, really). So
in a sense I'm thinking in terms if the ideology of a work as something
non-identical with the composer's motivations, then also about the very
nature of this dialectic. The contradictory impulses are part of what makes
a work rich and enables it to exceed the aesthetic ideologies it inherits.
Best,
Ian
Ian Pace
>
>
> Now seriously, without descending to the depravations of popularized
> Freudianism, one can't help but feel that many of these serious
> totalitarian utopians dreaming of changing the world toward the right or
> toward the left had some serious troubles in the shagging department so
> they chose to screw the world instead.
>
of shagging problems. Much more true of sad right-wing neo-conservative men
who can't come to terms with a world in which they aren't automatically
treated with deference and assigned status. Anyhow, your comment, as is to
be expected, sees such a movement purely in terms of straight men (probably
white as well) - are you suggesting that the women or the gay men (and gay
women) have shagging deficiencies as well? That your comment automatically
assumes the protagonists to be straight men is merely indicative of the
implicitly misogynistic attitudes buried deep inside your way of thinking,
perhaps a reason why ideologies that treat the whole history of artistic
hero-figures (or for that matter heroine-figures, women only being valued to
the extent that they fulfil the terms of reference set up by men) with some
scepticism, are such a threat.
Ian
Samir Golescu
> Anyhow, your comment, as is to
> be expected, sees such a movement purely in terms of straight men (probably
> white as well) - are you suggesting that the women or the gay men (and gay
> women) have shagging deficiencies as well? That your comment automatically
> assumes the protagonists to be straight men is merely indicative of the
> implicitly misogynistic attitudes buried deep inside your way of thinking,
> perhaps a reason why ideologies that treat the whole history of artistic
> hero-figures (or for that matter heroine-figures, women only being valued to
> the extent that they fulfil the terms of reference set up by men) with some
> scepticism, are such a threat.
Wow. The Monthy Python guys would have paid heavy gold to put their
hands on this one. Rmcr *is* the place of many marvels.
regards,
SG
Simon Roberts
>
>
>Sure (unless the cigar has been set up to explode in the hope of
>assassinating Fidel Castro). Not every act is purely a political act, even
>some acts have little palpable politics at all, but most actions, existing
>as they do in society and culture, can have a political dimension. To
>engage with this is a valid thing (as are other modes of discourse, of
>course), I think.
Why don't you discuss some actual examples of this in the context of musical
interpretation and thereby demonstrate its validity (or importance etc.)?
Simon
Ian Pace
Schenker and performance are one example).
Best,
Ian
EG
> >
> incomprehensible to anyone other than its creator.
>
> Best,
> Ian
Which proves you are a true artist, for in all likelihood this idea is
incomprehensible to anyone other than its creator.
EG
Simon Roberts
>can be seen in ways that aren't necessarily obviously 'political' in the
>sense some understand it - Ferneyhough talks about Schoenberg's Second
>Quartet being a great success precisely because of the composer's failure to
>satisfy his pupported intention to write a classical string quartet.
How is that "political" in any sense that anyone understands?
Simon
Ian Pace
history are in a sense 'political'.
Ian
David Hurwitz
As others have pointed out, one of the problems with artificially constructed
"ideologies" or postulates such as those on offer here is that the tortured
logic and linguistic gymnastics that one must employ in order to make reality
"fit" the pretentious, pseudo-intellectual theory often wind up with terms
defined either so far from generally accepted usage, or so broadly that they
cease to have any meaning at all. It's the trap to which pedantry of this sort
always leads.
I vividly recall reading Robert Simpson's book on Nielsen and seeing his
puzzlement at the Sinfonia Semplice because it did not fit his "model" of what a
Nielsen symphony should be. Ultimately, in the revised edition, he decided that
it WAS indeed a Nielsen symphony because it was in reality the antithesis of the
Nielsen symphonic paradigm, and the only person who could have achieved such a
remarkable "anti-Nielsen" symphony was Nielsen himself.
And so Simpson's model--which made no allowance for the fact that a composer's
creative growth may occur in ways that involve renunciation of previous
stylistic habits and branching out on completely new paths--is preserved, but
ceases to have any relevance as a means of understanding Nielsen's last
symphony, and indeed seems more concerned with preserving its own validity than
in accurately describing its subject matter.
This sort of circular logic, a sort of reductio ad absurdem in which the
original, the personal, the surprising, the irrational, and the sheer quirky
whims (and whimsy) of the artist must all be discounted so as to be viewed
within a rigid intellectual (and non-musical) framework strikes me as a huge
waste of mental energy since it essentially self-destructs from the outset in
attempting to define its terms (if indeed it ever does define them) in ways that
have no meaning at all outside of its arbitrary and musically false parameters.
It's going to be a long couple of days....
David Hurwitz
Bob Harper
David Hurwitz wrote:
(snip)
pretentious, pseudo-intellectual theory
(snip)
>
> David Hurwitz
>
I knew there was a perfect description of the posts by this thread's
most frequent contributor.
Thanks, David.
Bob Harper
ulvi
news:20031006144227...@mb-m17.aol.com:
> I'm afraid my youth yielded only "Yeah man, Peace, have a mushroom -
> make love not war, tune in, turn on, drop out...cool baby!. out to
> lunch, man, dope will get you through times of no money better than
> money will get you through times of no dope", and such psychodelic
> neo-bohemian anti-establishment libidinous broad-spectrum
> socio-anthropological pro-pacific political dogmatism.
Has that been released on CD yet?
Ulvi
Dan Koren
"David Hurwitz" <David_...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:75474401.0...@drn.newsguy.com...
Did you mean "can't"?
dk
Dan Koren
>
> The heated debate about Said and his legacy, and
> other issues related to the Middle East, makes me
> want to address this subject in more general terms.
> Reading back through some earlier posts, I find a
> statement by Tom Deacon that I'm inclined in essence
> to agree with:
>
> "Personally, I do not think that any musician can
> stand aside from his political views; that they
> will always impregnate his or her playing. You
> play the way you are."
>
Taking TD's statement at face value, and following
it to its logical conclusion, it must then be the
case that the selection of artists for the Great
Gold and Brown Box was determined by Mr. Deacon's
political views. I'm surprised that he isn't even
smart enough to not admit this in public. What a
confession!
I hope however that there are still some pianists
whose playing is not impregnated by politics! ;-)
dk
Andy Evans
> make love not war, tune in, turn on, drop out...cool baby!. out to lunch, >>>
Has that been released on CD yet?>
It's going to be a West End musical funded by the Green Party.
john grant
> > In article <B9egb.308$mc.2...@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net>, Ian Pace
> says...
> > >
> > >
> > >I might point out that I'm hardly the first person to wish to explore
the
> > >ideological underpinnings of aesthetics - in the 20th century alone,
one
> > >could point to the work of Eisenstein, Lukacs, Krakauer, Adorno,
> Horkheimer,
> > >Brecht, Bloch, Gramsci, Caudwell, Benjamin, Goldmann, Marcuse,
Habermas,
> > >Macherey, Althusser, Barthes, Jameson, Williams, Eagleton, and the much
> > >derided Said, not to mention De Beauvoir, Cixous, Kristeva, Irigaray,
> > >Millett, Greer, Showalter, etc., etc. What I have to say can't begin
to
> > >compare with the finest work from some of these figures (and that's not
> to
> > >imply a necessary wholescale of endorsement of all or any of them -
this
> is
> > >an extraordinarily diverse group), I don't think such a body of work
can
> be
> > >dismissed offhand. Music or any art form does exist in society, and is
> > >intimately tied up with all sorts of social institutions in order to
> simply
> > >exist.
> >
> > Perhaps; but the proposition you endorsed wasn't that, but: "Personally,
I
> do
> > not think that any musician can stand aside from his political views;
that
> they
> > will always impregnate his or her playing. You play the way you are."
> > statement, which strikes me as absurd (unless you're going to broaden
> "political
> > views" into some meaningless generalization that encompasses all of a
> > performer's aesthetic ideas), is hardly the equivalent of what you just
> said. I
> > would also note that all of your contributions to this thread seem
(unless
> I've
> > been reading carelessly) to address composers and their works, not how
> musicians
> > interpret them, the subject of Deacon's statement.
>
> OK, maybe the original premise implies a type of simple cause-effect, and
> the term 'political views' is one I would use in a broader sense than is
> common. The comments so far are more about composers, but I do think
these
> paradigms apply to some extent to performers as well (though again not
> necessarily in a sense of intentional cause-effect). It's a great shame
> that Adorno and Kolisch never completed their work on performance, I'm
sure
> it would have had a decisive effect on thinking on the subject.
> >
> > It's also quite a step from "it's all social" to "it's all political,"
> unless
> > you don't mind rendering one or other term useless.
> >
> The danger of 'left functionalism' (the notion that 'everything's
> political') is one not to ignore, I realize, but still I'd argue that most
> forms of social activity have a political dimension.
>
> Best,
> Ian
No one, left, right, centre, Kantian, Marxist, Platonist, etc., denies that
"politics," "social reality," "history," "psychology," etc., etc., are
connected (causally) in numerous ways with music. The central issue,
however, is whether pure music "expresses" (to use the old lexicon)
anything. And we have to be more precise than that. Of course music, in
various senses, "expresses" many things to many people. But this is all
very subjective and arbitrary. For the theory that music (and all aesthetic
experience in some way) "expresses" something to be significant, the terms
theory must be a little bit stronger: something like the claim that music
conveys "ideas," "emotions," "experiences" that are uniquely expressed or
conveyed through music, and the unique expression of which is susceptible of
verification.
I don't mean to sound "positivist" or overly "empericist" about this, but
the project seems a hopeless task. Even if music (to cite just one
component of aesthetic experience) could express "x" uniquely and in a way
that could be verified or confirned in some way, why should that unique
expression be relevant or important to the music? Suppose it could be
established, somehow, that some aspect or passage from Bach's SMP uniquely
expressed, conveyed, or communicated some feature of Bach's political,
religious, or personal life: what difference would that make to the MUSIC?
I'm happy to concede that knowledge of this kind, if it could be had, might
be a sufficient condition of a richer appreciation of the music, and worth
having for that reason, but I do not see how it could ever be a necessary
condition. There a many folks out there for whom the political and social
"aspects" (for want of a better term) of music are irrelevant, and they
can't be said to have a poorer appreciation or understanding of the music
than the politically initiated listener, performer, or critic.
JG
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/42/john_lewis_grant.html
Henk van Tuijl
"john grant" <dohert...@sympatico.ca> schreef in bericht
news:uzvgb.5882$oO4.4...@news20.bellglobal.com...
> I don't mean to sound "positivist" or overly "empericist" about this, but
> the project seems a hopeless task. Even if music (to cite just one
> component of aesthetic experience) could express "x" uniquely and in a way
> that could be verified or confirned in some way, why should that unique
> expression be relevant or important to the music?
I don't understand this question.
Why should it be relevant to the
fourth movement of Chopin's
second sonata that it is a Presto?
Well, the fourth movement is
beyond caring, but I am not. A
Largo performance wouldn't sound
right.
I know it, because I cannot play
it any faster anymore.
Henk
HankM219
>> ideologues control the political system, their all-encompassing view leads
>them
>> to put political labels on non-political behaviors, such as (most) musical
>and
>> artistic expressions. The result: musicians who do not exhibit the
>correct
>> behaviors are therefore labelled as political enemies, and dire
>consequences
>> follow.
>>
>Understand, and I have little patience with that sort of position (as found
>in the work of Caudwell, the later Lukacs, arguably to some extent in Brecht
>and Eisler, and certainly in the later work of Cardew), but I think the
>above should suggest how the approach need not lead to such conclusions.
>
>Best,
>Ian
It's not just the "position" of assorted intellectuals. It was the policy,
backed up by the full force of the regime, in Russia, China and elsewhere.
Henry Maurer, Cherry Hill, NJ, USA
hank...@aol.com or Henry....@comcast.net
Ian Pace
"HankM219" <hank...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20031007070134...@mb-m14.aol.com...
1956 revolution. Aren't the dictates and demands of the management of
Carnegie Hall, the Royal Opera House, the National Endowment of the Arts,
the British Arts Council, equally 'policies'?
Ian
Ian Pace
"john grant" <dohert...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:uzvgb.5882$oO4.4...@news20.bellglobal.com...
Sure, but the term to 'express' has its limitations when speaking of music
as well; it tends to imply some sort of relatively objective 'meaning' which
is a problematic concept in something so abstract and ambiguous as music. I
can't imagine anyone claiming that "pure" music (i.e. not involving text,
theatre, or whatever) could express something so concrete as a political
idea. But on the other hand music and its propagation always takes place in
some sort of social arena, which contains its own ideologies and
presuppositions. To put in terms of culture in general, and making a
distinction between small 'c' culture (in the sense of most extant forms of
human activity in a particular place/time) and large 'C' Culture (in the
sense of cultural products), then I'd suggest the following as a paradigm:
Culture has the potential to passively reflect the underlying assumptions of
the prevailing culture, or to enter into some critical relationship with
them. This is a relationship that I would define as 'political' in the
broadest sense of the term. While this is highly abstract and difficult to
articulate in a concrete and meaningful form with respect to music in
particular, it is an important, indeed vital, endeavour for one reason above
all: state funding and support for Culture are in a perilous state,
especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries (which already have a much lesser
degree of such support than in continental Europe). If one is to defend the
importance of Culture against neo-conservatives who would have market forces
take over entirely, one needs to be armed with some notion of Culture's
importance and social relevance; without this the argument for subsidy is
impotent against those right-wingers who dismiss Culture as an elite and
esoteric pastime that has no right to make demands upon the public purse. A
definition that merely implies a highbrow extension of the entertainment
industry (which I fear the arguments of many defenders of "high" Culture, as
I have heard/read in countless interviews/articles/etc, are often reducible
to) can hardly stand up in this context. The arrogant and contemptuous view
of music and Culture that one finds in postings from Messrs Koren, Golescu
and Hurwitz in particular, sneering at any attempt to consider a wider
social relevance (and they are hardly unusual in this respect), is actually
the viewpoint most amenable to those on the right who would sound the
death-knell for a great deal of the Cultural activity we all regard as
important, by pulling the plug on the subsidy necessary for its very being,
just laughing at the paucity of argument amongst such people who might want
to defend it.
If, for example, we accept the fruitfulness of music as something which can
be challenging and engaging, intricate and thought-provoking, presenting
emotional worlds and trajectories that stay with one long after a concert
has finished, as opposed to mere transient titillation; in short
having an effect upon consciousness that markedly exceeds the demands of
de-humanized post-industrial capitalist society, where human beings are seen
only as producers and consumers, and thought and feeling are viewed as being
of purely utilitarian importance, then we are already a long way from the
'aesthetics of distraction', the view of Culture held by Thatcherites and
Reaganites. Thatcher was notoriously disdainful of Culture as some sort of
decadent luxury that had little place in her neo-puritanical world view, and
to a large degree her views are shared by the current New Labour
administration.
If one were to take the music of the Sex Pistols, and ignore all the words,
the image, the marketing, the profile of the members, etc., everything
except for just the sound of the music, I still think many would agree that
the aggression, the directness, the potency, even the pained nature, of the
music had a very real political meaning in the context of the society and
era from which it emerged. Tippett, in The Ice Break, contrasts two types
of music associated with the black and white groups of characters in the
opera: for the black people, a hypnotic, sexualized, voodoo-like music, for
the white people, something derived from Methodist hymns. The implications
of these different musics goes beyond their historical associations, and the
tension created when they are superimposed is electric. Throughout the
history of music for the church, there has been endless thinking about which
types of harmonies, lines, etc., are most appropriate for evoking particular
types of religious experience (and thus reinforce the the role of religious
ritual, which is never an a-political phenomenon).
Few people I speak to in Continental Europe would deny the political nature
of music and Culture in some sense similar to that which I have outlined
above. In Britain and America, though, we lack real notions of Culture and
its importance in the same way, and that is a major reason why Culture plays
a much less integral part in our societies and consequently enjoys a much
lesser degree of state support.
Some will see the value of Culture being to do with national pride, but I'd
be surprised if many people could plausibly deny that this is equally
something highly political as well (and hence why questions of
cross-fertilization between different national or ethnic musics becomes so
charged).
>
> I don't mean to sound "positivist" or overly "empericist" about this, but
> the project seems a hopeless task. Even if music (to cite just one
> component of aesthetic experience) could express "x" uniquely and in a way
> that could be verified or confirned in some way, why should that unique
> expression be relevant or important to the music? Suppose it could be
> established, somehow, that some aspect or passage from Bach's SMP uniquely
> expressed, conveyed, or communicated some feature of Bach's political,
> religious, or personal life: what difference would that make to the MUSIC?
The very fact that the music does have some relevance outside of the social
institution (the church) for which it was written already tells us something
which is in a sense 'political'
> I'm happy to concede that knowledge of this kind, if it could be had,
might
> be a sufficient condition of a richer appreciation of the music, and worth
> having for that reason, but I do not see how it could ever be a necessary
> condition. There a many folks out there for whom the political and
social
> "aspects" (for want of a better term) of music are irrelevant, and they
> can't be said to have a poorer appreciation or understanding of the music
> than the politically initiated listener, performer, or critic.
>
Certainly they don't have a poorer appreciation, I'm just arguing that their
view of music isn't necessarily 'a-political' either. In this day and age,
'classical' music per se is widely viewed as a predominantly middle class
activity, as opposed to popular music, jazz, etc. Much of the marketing of
classical music is bound up with promoting a type of 'lifestyle', a sense of
its endowing the listener with a veneer of sophistication that allows them
to rise above the mere rabble, etc. Radio stations such as Classic FM in
Britain present the most limited repertoire of popular classics in extracts,
'bite-sized chunks', almost like fast food. A piece of fluff by Sarasate,
Moszkowski, or whoever, is much more amenable to this purpose than a late
Beethoven string quartet, for example. In this sense, music is enlisted to
the service of consumer culture, producing nothing more than superficial
short-term gratification. If listeners become more aware of the extent to
which the whole smooth-running of their society requires to a greater or
lesser degree the relinquishment of all wider Cultural possibility in favour
of some narrow consumerist view, then they might begin to apprehend more
closely the very limitations of much about the system that is predominant.
Best,
Ian
john grant
I have no difficulty with the idea that music has extra-musical relevance in
many, many ways, including even "political," and there is much work still to
be done discovering what precisely that relevance is (or can be). But,
just being perfectly honest here, I have trouble with the following sort of
claim:
"If one were to take the music of the Sex Pistols, and ignore all the words,
the image, the marketing, the profile of the members, etc., everything
except for just the sound of the music, I still think many would agree that
the aggression, the directness, the potency, even the pained nature, of the
music had a very real political meaning in the context of the society and
era from which it emerged."
Agreed: there are "canons" of interpretation, if you will, that permit some
listeners to appreciate the "meaning" or subtext of the music of the Sex
Pistols, even without the words. (I confess, personally, to not being
well-acquainted with the code.) But I have trouble with the notion that
such "meaning" can be *musical* meaning or, alternatively, that the meaning,
if it is extra-musical, has any necessary connection tto the music itself.
(Sufficient yes, necessary no.)
There are at least two problems: 1) the nature of the signification or
language that must express the meaning; and 2) the "thing" or "concept" that
is expressed. These are old objections, as old as "expression theory"
itelf, (best articulated in Croce and Collingwood; further elaborated on in
a Kantian form by S.K. Langer and others; and still further elaborated on by
Post Modernist approaches) which objections I don't think have yet been met.
The theories are interesting and tell us much about culture (and more
generally the nature of aesthetic experience); but I am not convinced that
they are "true" or "plausible."
Re: the neo-con and right-wing Labour tendency to reach for their guns
whenever confronted by anything resembling "Culture," I'm not sure ANY
arguments, no matter how cogent, can prevail against them. We may take
solace in the fact that educational theorists, no matter what their
politics, agree that an education in music (to take only one example) is an
excellent cognitive exercise, and bears fruit in other spheres. I'm not
sure whether the curriculum at Eton still consists in a heavy dose of Latin
and Greek, but there's a parallel. Who would have thought that studying
dead languages could do anything for the brain; yet it did, producing good
minds in mathematics, medicine, art history, philosophy, etc., etc. Will
the neo-cons listen? I don't think it's in their interests to.
JG
Simon Roberts
[snip]
To put in terms of culture in general, and making a
>distinction between small 'c' culture (in the sense of most extant forms of
>human activity in a particular place/time) and large 'C' Culture (in the
>sense of cultural products), then I'd suggest the following as a paradigm:
>Culture has the potential to passively reflect the underlying assumptions of
>the prevailing culture, or to enter into some critical relationship with
>them. This is a relationship that I would define as 'political' in the
>broadest sense of the term. While this is highly abstract and difficult to
>articulate in a concrete and meaningful form with respect to music in
>particular, it is an important, indeed vital, endeavour for one reason above
>all: state funding and support for Culture are in a perilous state,
>especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries (which already have a much lesser
>degree of such support than in continental Europe). If one is to defend the
>importance of Culture against neo-conservatives who would have market forces
>take over entirely, one needs to be armed with some notion of Culture's
>importance and social relevance; without this the argument for subsidy is
>impotent against those right-wingers who dismiss Culture as an elite and
>esoteric pastime that has no right to make demands upon the public purse.
But surely you don't think that if you tell such politicians that "Culture has
the potential to passively reflect the underlying assumptions of the prevailing
culture, or to enter into some critical relationship with them" they will start
handing out cheques.... The exact opposite, I would have thought.
Simon
Simon Roberts
Is there anything done by a human being that can't be deemed a "dialectical
interaction with history"? If yes, why not the example above? If no,
"political" is meaningless.
Simon
Dan Koren
"Political" is (or should be) meaningless.
Politics (of any kind) should be outlawed.
dk
Ian Pace
from right-wing politicians and convince the public as a whole.
Best,
Ian
Ian Pace
issue. Which is why I believe most areas of human activity to be political.
Best,
Ian
Alan Watkins
Chap is going to lower the tone of the whole thing.
Born in Republican Ireland, brought up from aged six in Conservative
Britain, paid by Communists from his late teens, then paid by
neo-Communists who pretended to be Communists but secretly were not,
then paid by Communists who came back again (in force, with tanks to
prove it and who REALLY were Communists), then paid again by people
who were neo-Communists AGAIN (but they didn't let on so much the
second time around), finally paid by people who are NOT Communists and
who next year will be in the European Union.
Am I confused, or what?
If you play in an orchestra I would humbly suggest that the "politics"
of the piece takes a considerable back seat to the technical
requirements of the piece.
I cannot remember being influenced by a political message
ever....subliminal or not.
For example, if you are confronted with the snare drum part of
Shostakovich 10 (the Scherzo of which has been said to represent
Stalin's brutality), I am not concerned with Mr Stalin. I am
concerned with a difficult part in a quite difficult metre and whether
or not I get my counting spot on, not what Mr S intended to represent
in writing it.
In the Leningrad Symphony, I am (personally) not so concerned about
German tanks as I am about whether all four of us are absolutely
together and at the same volume.
It might be that a Jewish timpanist would have his own views about
Wagner, for example, but I cannot believe that any of the great past
and present Jewish timpanists (and there are and have been many) would
play him any differently from any non-Jewish timpanists. My bet is
that they would play him to the best of their ability and be more
concerned with representing their INSTRUMENTS than the politics of the
person who wrote for them.
I can only speak for me but during several performances of "The Sun
Shines Over Our Motherland" I was only concerned with realising a half
decent timpani part but personally (politically?) I remain unconvinced
about the benefits of nuclear power.
Neither opinion collided in the performances. Yes, I have political
opinions, of course, but I have never found a way of replicating them
on my treasured instrument and, on the whole, I think that is probably
a good thing.
I would humbly suggest that composers are one thing and that players
(the executants) are entirely another. It may be that Mr S believed
in (or was "forced" to believe in) nuclear power stations but it has
not been my experience that either viewpoint is necessary to play it
to the best of your ability.
Kind regards,
Alan M. Watkins
Henk van Tuijl
"Alan Watkins" <alanwa...@aol.com> schreef in bericht
news:62c8649c.03100...@posting.google.com...
[snipped many interesting examples]
> I would humbly suggest that composers are one thing and that players
> (the executants) are entirely another. It may be that Mr S believed
> in (or was "forced" to believe in) nuclear power stations but it has
> not been my experience that either viewpoint is necessary to play it
> to the best of your ability.
You know Richter's famous story
about Yudina playing Bach.
When asked why she played it
the extraordinary way she did,
she answered that it was
because of the war.
Musicians and their politics
is perhaps far more complex than
just playing the right notes at
the right time.
From one Old Chap to another,
kind regards,
Henk
Alan Watkins
> Musicians and their politics
> is perhaps far more complex than
> just playing the right notes at
> the right time.
>
> From one Old Chap to another,
> kind regards,
>
> Henk
Point taken, but not on the night :):) You might think about what it
all means at some other time but not when you are playing
it...............
Henk van Tuijl
"Alan Watkins" <alanwa...@aol.com> schreef in bericht
news:62c8649c.03100...@posting.google.com...
> >
Aha, that is experience talking!
Who am I to protest ...
Kind regards,
Henk
Wayne Reimer <wrdsl
<...>
>
> "Political" is (or should be) meaningless.
>
> Politics (of any kind) should be outlawed.
>
>
>
> dk
>
Seems like a good idea. But, of course, without the politics to support them,
the laws outlawing politics wouldn't work. I'm afraid that, like the idea of
nuclear fission, once politics is out of the bag, it can't be put back until
everyone's dead.
wr
Wayne Reimer <wrdsl
<...>
>
> It's going to be a long couple of days....
>
> David Hurwitz
>
>
wouldn't.
wr
der...@mil.kar.net
Henk van Tuijl wrote:
>
> "Alan Watkins" <alanwa...@aol.com> schreef in bericht
> news:62c8649c.03100...@posting.google.com...
>
> [snipped many interesting examples]
>
> > I would humbly suggest that composers are one thing and that players
> > (the executants) are entirely another. It may be that Mr S believed
> > in (or was "forced" to believe in) nuclear power stations but it has
> > not been my experience that either viewpoint is necessary to play it
> > to the best of your ability.
>
> You know Richter's famous story
> about Yudina playing Bach.
>
> When asked why she played it
> the extraordinary way she did,
> she answered that it was
> because of the war.
Do you really think, Henk, it has anything to do with politics? :)
However those who do not have that or similar feeling (direct or
inherited from parents) may keep thinking it was politics... there is no
guilt in not having that feeling - much too much time passed since then.
Besides, it makes no sense when stated as indirect speech. Her answer
was sharp and quick. Perhaps the only word WAR is the best translation
into English of her answer.
I believe Yudina would have been a bad timpanist - the worst of any
four ! ... despite she not only played in ensembles but also taught
ensemble playing in the Gnessin Institute....
When I happened to read Kant and Adorno (in Russian translation though)
there were no problem with understanding of the notion of politics...
(unlike many other terms and categories....)
But now when I read this thread I realize that the term "politics" is
much wider than I had thought and it turned out the politics was the
main implicit category of Kantian and neo Kantian schools.
Could it be a translation problem caused by semantic nuances in German,
English, Russian that made such a confusion?
We didn't communicate for a while.How is going on?
Did the Americans resume eating your cheese (or was it just a
restriction of the French one?) and may the Germans visit Italian sea
coasts these days?
And what is the most appropriate music for both occasion?
Sorry - too much questions
Cheers!
Boris
Henk van Tuijl
<der...@mil.kar.net> schreef in bericht
news:3F88D50A...@mil.kar.net...
>
>
> Henk van Tuijl wrote:
> >
> > "Alan Watkins" <alanwa...@aol.com> schreef in bericht
> > news:62c8649c.03100...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > [snipped many interesting examples]
> >
> > > I would humbly suggest that composers are one thing and that players
> > > (the executants) are entirely another. It may be that Mr S believed
> > > in (or was "forced" to believe in) nuclear power stations but it has
> > > not been my experience that either viewpoint is necessary to play it
> > > to the best of your ability.
> >
> > You know Richter's famous story
> > about Yudina playing Bach.
> >
> > When asked why she played it
> > the extraordinary way she did,
> > she answered that it was
> > because of the war.
>
>
> Do you really think, Henk, it has anything to do with politics? :)
> However those who do not have that or similar feeling (direct or
> inherited from parents) may keep thinking it was politics... there is no
> guilt in not having that feeling - much too much time passed since then.
> Besides, it makes no sense when stated as indirect speech. Her answer
> was sharp and quick. Perhaps the only word WAR is the best translation
> into English of her answer.
Boris, good to hear from you again!!
You mean that Yudina could have referred to war in a metaphorical
sense? That leaves us with many - too many - possibilities, starting
with Heraclitus ...
> I believe Yudina would have been a bad timpanist - the worst of any
> four ! ... despite she not only played in ensembles but also taught
> ensemble playing in the Gnessin Institute....
>
> When I happened to read Kant and Adorno (in Russian translation though)
> there were no problem with understanding of the notion of politics...
> (unlike many other terms and categories....)
> But now when I read this thread I realize that the term "politics" is
> much wider than I had thought and it turned out the politics was the
> main implicit category of Kantian and neo Kantian schools.
> Could it be a translation problem caused by semantic nuances in German,
> English, Russian that made such a confusion?
I am not familiar with Adorno. Kant has written a few texts on the
subject of political philosophy. As a representative of the
Enlightenment his philosophy is said to have been - indirectly -
a factor in the politics before and after the French Revolution. There
is a tendency lately to read his Critiques as a politics of critique.
The confusion is the same as with all great texts. Their
interpretation changes with time.
There is of course always also the problem of translation.
> We didn't communicate for a while.How is going on?
> Did the Americans resume eating your cheese (or was it just a
> restriction of the French one?) and may the Germans visit Italian sea
> coasts these days?
> And what is the most appropriate music for both occasion?
>
The Americans don't only pay for the cheese but even approved
significant cuts in Dutch defense costs. It is very profitable these
days to be one of Bush's "allies". The Germans and Italians need
each other and are on speaking terms again.
I associate Americans/Dutch cheese with Mondriaan rather than
with music - and the Adriatic/Germans with Pavarotti in one of his
countless worst moments.
> Sorry - too much questions
Hoping to hear soon from you again - and very patiently waiting
for the good news about Ginsburg.
Best regards,
Henk
der...@mil.kar.net
Henk van Tuijl wrote:
>
>
> You mean that Yudina could have referred to war in a metaphorical
> sense? That leaves us with many - too many - possibilities, starting
> with Heraclitus ...
>
Well, perhaps "metaphorical" is a more appropriate word then "political"
because IMO "metaphor" as such has much more in common with art than
politics has :)
I really can't figure what one meant by saying "Yudina referred to war
in political sense". Can you? To me it is a nonsense - just as usage of
the word "politics" (with numerous examples) in this thread.
It reminds me the early years of Soviet criticism when aggressive
proletarian critics used to build semantic bridges between incompatible
matters basing on the idea of universal interdependence.
Certainly Yudina meant the p-a-r-t-i-c-u-l-a-r war, the greatest tragedy
she shared with her people, the war that filled every minute of
then-existence of her with sorrow and troubles of her loved ones, her
friends and millions victims unknown to her. As a human being with
strong moral and religious background and - the most important - a
tremendous sensitivity and emotionality ("hyper-" as we may say now) she
couldn't help reacting emotionally to the great tragedy and obviously
it reflected on her interpretation. Not in the mechanical way as some
people here suggested for similar cases. Those people deceive themselves
claiming that they focus on le politique while they permanently are
trying to reduce the matter to la politique! А particular artistic and
psychological microcosm is what does count when art concerns. While la
politique is limited by countable and quite limited (typical) variants
of social behaviour that has little to do with uniqueness of a creator
and his creation!
> > I believe Yudina would have been a bad timpanist - the worst of any
> > four ! ... despite she not only played in ensembles but also taught
> > ensemble playing in the Gnessin Institute....
> >
> > When I happened to read Kant and Adorno (in Russian translation though)
> > there were no problem with understanding of the notion of politics...
> > (unlike many other terms and categories....)
> > But now when I read this thread I realize that the term "politics" is
> > much wider than I had thought and it turned out the politics was the
> > main implicit category of Kantian and neo Kantian schools.
> > Could it be a translation problem caused by semantic nuances in German,
> > English, Russian that made such a confusion?
>
> I am not familiar with Adorno. Kant has written a few texts on the
> subject of political philosophy. As a representative of the
> Enlightenment his philosophy is said to have been - indirectly -
> a factor in the politics before and after the French Revolution. There
> is a tendency lately to read his Critiques as a politics of critique.
>
> The confusion is the same as with all great texts. Their
> interpretation changes with time.
>
> There is of course always also the problem of translation.
Henk, actually I was trying to mock of that vulgarization of philosophy.
Looks like I failed :)
Sure Kant contributed to political philosophy by a number of works, "Zum
ewigen Frieden" in particular, elaborating his categorical imperative
into social realm.
But I am not sure that homo politicus is a mainstream notion of Kantian
philosophy as some try to persuade us. And again - to me the influence
of this aspect of human being upon individual artistic nature is
profaned a great deal in this thread.
OFF TOPIC: Don't miss Adorno's texts- on music, in particular - a great
reading!
>
> I associate Americans/Dutch cheese with Mondriaan rather than
> with music - and the Adriatic/Germans with Pavarotti in one of his
> countless worst moments.
>
LOL!
> Hoping to hear soon from you again - and very patiently waiting
> for the good news about Ginsburg.
>
Soon or never!
best
Boris
Henk van Tuijl
<der...@mil.kar.net> schreef in bericht
news:3F89F69A...@mil.kar.net...
>
> Those people deceive themselves
> claiming that they focus on le politique while they permanently are
> psychological microcosm is what does count when art concerns. While la
> politique is limited by countable and quite limited (typical) variants
> of social behaviour that has little to do with uniqueness of a creator
> and his creation!
Aesthetics perhaps precedes ethics but they
cannot be completely seperated. However,
this is certainly not the right place to
discuss how they might be linked - and I am
most certainly not the right participant in
such a discussion.
> Henk, actually I was trying to mock of that vulgarization of philosophy.
> Looks like I failed :)
> Sure Kant contributed to political philosophy by a number of works, "Zum
> ewigen Frieden" in particular, elaborating his categorical imperative
> into social realm.
I was answering in kind, even extending
my mockery to philosophers like Lyotard
- and seem to have failed in my turn.
<g>
> But I am not sure that homo politicus is a mainstream notion of Kantian
> philosophy as some try to persuade us. And again - to me the influence
> of this aspect of human being upon individual artistic nature is
> profaned a great deal in this thread.
There is a Kant for everyone who reads
him. For me Kant is his first Critique.
> OFF TOPIC: Don't miss Adorno's texts- on music, in particular - a great
> reading!
Adorno and the other representatives of
the Frankfurter Schule are looking for
answers to questions I don't ask myself.
> > Hoping to hear soon from you again - and very patiently waiting
> > for the good news about Ginsburg.
> >
>
> Soon or never!
>
Boris, that sounds very hopeful!
Regards,
Henk
Bob Lombard
<hvt...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
><der...@mil.kar.net> schreef in bericht
>news:3F89F69A...@mil.kar.net...
>> > Hoping to hear soon from you again - and very patiently waiting
>> > for the good news about Ginsburg.
>> >
>>
>> Soon or never!
>>
>Boris, that sounds very hopeful!
>
>Regards,
>Henk
>
Boris told me "Soon or never" a couple months ago. Perhaps because of
a more confining concept of 'soon', I am not so hopeful. In the
'november' of a lifespan, time within the spark shrinks.
bl
Henk van Tuijl
"Bob Lombard" <thor...@adelphia.net> schreef in bericht
news:r78lov0hmcs2t2vso...@4ax.com...
<g>
Bob, you really do know how to give a
dramatic turn to our "Waiting for
Ginsburg"!
Henk
der...@mil.kar.net
Bob, Henk does know what he says! He was waiting for Yudina twofer to be
sent by Mr. Baley for a half of year or so. And, besides, he had a
deeper feeling of that drama of waiting having prepaid the purchase (It
was me who consoled him once or twice a month and kept up his hope!) .
Perhaps I should have asked you to pay in advance.... But.... things are
not so plain... You see, Henk's catharsis (after listening that twofer)
stipulated by such a long waiting and a clear perspective to lose 25
bucks was so hard that he lost interest in Yudina at all and removed
her from his "Philips" list.
I promise I won't treat you that way!
b
Edward G. Nilges
> <der...@mil.kar.net> schreef in bericht
> news:3F89F69A...@mil.kar.net...
> >
> > Those people deceive themselves
> > claiming that they focus on le politique while they permanently are
> > trying to reduce the matter to la politique! á particular artistic and
> > psychological microcosm is what does count when art concerns. While la
> > politique is limited by countable and quite limited (typical) variants
News to me. If the manifestations of human personality are potentially
nondenumerably infinite it follows that political behavior would be
likewise, potentially at least, nondenumerably infinite.
Of course, in the interests of manageability, politicians try to
create oversimplified blocs. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, both the UN and
the Srpska Republica tried to carve out districts of people separated
by ethnic identity so that the political possibilities became
"manageable" by ignorant thugs who are unequal to anything like
nuance.
Likewise, here in America, in our Texas, Rep. Delay has used the SAME
sort of redistricting to separate white, black and hispanic voters. He
is too ignorant, of course, to realize that he is playing the same
game as was Karadzic and Milosevic. Since America has destroyed its
financial future as far as I can tell with the occupation of Iraq, it
is now possible we will go the way of Yugoslavia ten years on...in a
race war.
In Israel, Sharon's "answer" is a new Berlin Wall and it shows the
same instinct to limit politics to predefined variants.
> > of social behaviour that has little to do with uniqueness of a creator
> > and his creation!
>
> Aesthetics perhaps precedes ethics but they
> cannot be completely seperated. However,
> this is certainly not the right place to
> discuss how they might be linked - and I am
> most certainly not the right participant in
> such a discussion.
>
Adorno's question "how can, can one, write poetry after the Holocaust"
is the key bridge-question linking ethics to aesthetics.
> > Henk, actually I was trying to mock of that vulgarization of philosophy.
> > Looks like I failed :)
> > Sure Kant contributed to political philosophy by a number of works, "Zum
> > ewigen Frieden" in particular, elaborating his categorical imperative
> > into social realm.
>
Also please see the phamplet he wrote whose English title is "On the
Old Saw: 'That Might Work Well in Theory but It Won't Work in
Practice".
> I was answering in kind, even extending
> my mockery to philosophers like Lyotard
> - and seem to have failed in my turn.
> <g>
>
> > But I am not sure that homo politicus is a mainstream notion of Kantian
> > philosophy as some try to persuade us. And again - to me the influence
> > of this aspect of human being upon individual artistic nature is
> > profaned a great deal in this thread.
>
> There is a Kant for everyone who reads
> him. For me Kant is his first Critique.
>
> > OFF TOPIC: Don't miss Adorno's texts- on music, in particular - a great
> > reading!
For English readers I recommend the Stanford University Press series
translated by Edmund Jephcott. They have shown me that any claim about
Adorno's density or complexity is without merit. His reputation in the
USA was damaged by bad translations in the 1970s from Continuum of
Dialectic of Enlightment and Negative Dialectics.
>
> Adorno and the other representatives of
> the Frankfurter Schule are looking for
> answers to questions I don't ask myself.
Pity.
HPLeft
> The heated debate about Said and his legacy, and other issues related to
the
> Middle East, makes me want to address this subject in more general terms.
> Reading back through some earlier posts, I find a statement by Tom Deacon
> that I'm inclined in essence to agree with:
>
> "Personally, I do not think that any musician can stand aside from his
> political views; that they will always impregnate his or her playing.
> You play the way you are."
Can't agree at all. I can think of many musicians whose style in
performance was radically different than their politics. For instance,
Toscanini was as anti-fascist as you can get, and an absolute dictator on
the podium - and IMHO, he was correct on both counts.
Matt C
Simon Roberts
Right, but isn't Mr. Deacon's point that their politics "impregnates" their
*interpretations*? That's just as wrong. Does Toscanini's Beethoven sound like
the Beethoven of an anti-fascist? Is there anything at all in common
interpretatively among the Beethoven performances of anti-fascists? If so,
what? Do performances of the Goldberg Variations by pianists who are in favor
of capital punishment sound similarly different from performances by pianists
who don't or who can't decide?
Simon
Samir Golescu
On 14 Oct 2003, Simon Roberts wrote:
> Do performances of the Goldberg Variations by pianists who are in favor
> of capital punishment sound similarly different from performances by
> pianists who don't or who can't decide?
According to a study published by New Yorker, pianists in favor of capital
punishment are proner to take all the repeats than the others.
regards,
SG
HPLeft
their
> *interpretations*? That's just as wrong.
I agree. I'd more buy into the notion that their psychology might
impregnate their interpretations, but politics and psychology are very
different things - and I absolutely don't think that you can equate
personality traits with specific political points of view. One of the
fascinating elements of this group remains the wide range of political
opinions. But just think how the average non-classical observer might
generalize about our politics? Shockingly, depending on their political
bias, they might assume that we were all part of the Northeastern Liberal
Elite or some Right-Leaning, Authoritarian, Privileged Class.
Matt C
deac...@yahoo.com
wrote:
Death by the complete Goldberg Variations.
In the instance, Madame Tureck was against capital punishment.
I am always interested in hearing music performed by those who are in
FAVOUR!!!
People are never able to conceal their closely held views on humanity
in their playing, despite all efforts to do so.
TD
Ian Pace
Hantai, Gilbert, Ross and many others all oppose the electric chair*
Best,
Ian
Ian Pace
"HPLeft" <mattN...@hpleft.com> wrote in message
news:Mt-cnYgzspK...@giganews.com...
musicians and music-lovers outside of internet forums.
Best,
Ian
Henk van Tuijl
>> Aesthetics perhaps precedes ethics but they
>> cannot be completely seperated. However,
>> this is certainly not the right place to
>> discuss how they might be linked - and I am
>> most certainly not the right participant in
>> such a discussion.
> Adorno's question "how can, can one, write poetry after the Holocaust"
> is the key bridge-question linking ethics to aesthetics.
Are you referring to Adorno's blunt
statement that it is barbaric to write
a poem after Auschwitz?
I prefer your paraphrase.
It is more fundamental - if writing
poetry is revelatory in the sense that
it helps to understand ourselves and
the world, then how can we, can we,
... ?
Henk
der...@mil.kar.net
"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
>
> "Henk van Tuijl" <hvt...@xs4all.nl> wrote in message news:<3f8a747a$0$58710$e4fe...@news.xs4all.nl>...
> > <der...@mil.kar.net> schreef in bericht
> > news:3F89F69A...@mil.kar.net...
> > >
> > > Those people deceive themselves
> > > claiming that they focus on le politique while they permanently are
> > > trying to reduce the matter to la politique! А particular artistic and
> > > psychological microcosm is what does count when art concerns. While la
> > > politique is limited by countable and quite limited (typical) variants
>
> News to me. If the manifestations of human personality are potentially
> nondenumerably infinite it follows that political behavior would be
> likewise, potentially at least, nondenumerably infinite.
1) Are there any nondenumerably finite sets there :))))) Sorry Edward,
English is not my native and I could be well wrong with interpretation
and usage of terms....
2) if we agree to assume (quite roughly) that la politique being applied
to an individual behaviour means a FUNCTION of human microcosm what then
makes you believe that its domain and its codomain must have the same
cardinal number?! :) The variety of colours of human eyes is quite
limited and no one seems to insist that those colours adequately reflect
the whole variety of personal features. Politics always assume a
purpose, a goal to reach. Besides this goal is a group one so that it
furls individual specifics in favour of the Collective. One may either
obey (support) or disobey (protest) or try to keep indifference towards
a political phenomenon. Are there so many DIFFERENT implementations of
human political behaviour? A great variety of acts of violence, or the
whole set of deeds developed into the Institute of Democracy?? You may
argue that there were great politics whose behaviour seem not to be so
easily reduced to this simplified model. In reply I would say that I
don't consider their deeds and thoughts as mere political in the sense
of individual political behaviour. Those rather belong to the art of
diplomacy or war or social analyses etc., i.e. the realms that
STIPULATE political behaviour in a strict sense, the realms that needs
individuality while political behaviour itself is just a projection of
The Collective on to individual. In this sense all of us are football
(soccer :))))) ) fans while manifesting the most interesting individual
features "elsewhere but here" :) This group has proved my thesis
perfectly!
As it concerns Adorno I meant his brilliant texts on music like
Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie and Moments musicaux. The latter
collection is just a delicious reeading regardless the questions the
Frankfurters were trying to answer to! :)
Cheers
Boris