The Tragedy of German Music

[ReinerTorheit]

Originally Posted by Balthazar

I've never heard anyone hereabouts recommend banning music, so let's step away from the hyperbole.

Hyperbole?


Hans Krasa


Pavel Haas


Viktor Ullmann.

All labelled as "degenerate" composers. A term which is witless garbage. All murdered in death camps.

Of course, they didn't ban their music immediately. First, they were fired from their jobs. Then their music was put into exhibitions of "degenerate" music. And then it's all an easy step from there.

First you find people with the foreign-sounding names. Then you put them onto no-fly lists - because of their foreign-sounding names. Once you are on a no-fly list, you are already guilty. Then when they come to arrest you, even your neighbours are cheering to find you've been taken away. And where does it all finish?



And they said it would "never happen again".

[Balthazar]

Dude.

All I meant is that no one on this board has ever, to my knowledge, recommended banning music and jailing composers.

Calm down, okay?

[ReinerTorheit]

Originally Posted by Balthazar

All I meant is that no one on this board has ever, to my knowledge, recommended banning music and jailing composers.

And all I mean is that those who have previously worked at labelling composers as 'degenerates' have a track record of subsequently banning, arresting, and murdering those composers.

The act of placing the "degenerate" label on the composer establishes their "guilt", and therefore legitimises the repression which follows.

It's not purely a trait of the Third Reich. Many composers in the People's Republic of China were locked up in the same way - some bonehead apparachik made an accusation of "decadence" or "degeneracy" about their work.

So why do you defend such labels? If they have no credibility in assessing a composer's work? If they are the cowardly backstabbing of the talentless and hopeless?

[Balthazar]

Originally Posted by ReinerTorheit

So why do you defend such labels?

You. Need. To calm. Down.

I never defended such labels. What I said was there's no way to make sense of the 20th century history of composed music without admitting that music was highly politicized throughout the century.

No one here wants to ban Richard Strauss's work, and no one's saying you can't understand his Four Last Songs except in the shadow of his position in the Third Reich. But it's worth asking whether an old fogie like Strauss would have had the influence or audience he did in his later years, or the opportunity to produce his highly respected last works, if he hadn't signed on with the Nazis long after his days as a brash young pioneer were over.

I think much the same could be said of Shostakovich. Can we really understand his career without making some effort to contextualize it in the Soviet propaganda machine? Some say he was an oppressed artist living in constant terror of being arrested, and his work was all about the atrocities of the Stalin regime. Others say he was a celebrity drunkard, who joined the Communist party long after Stalin was gone to secure a plum job that would keep him composing for as long as he wanted. Either way, you have to deal with the political realities of his time and place.

As much as I find twelve-tone music fascinating, I can't say the dodecaphonic system of composition would have amounted to much more than an exciting fad if it hadn't represented the crucible of a sort of musical Esperanto, devoid of nationalistic baggage, in the politically-charged decades following World War II.

The history of composed music, particularly in the 20th century, is tangled up with all sorts of politics. We should listen to whatever we want, but let's admit that we're not getting the full picture unless we understand the political and economic context of composed music.

[ReinerTorheit]

Originally Posted by Balthazar

The history of composed music, particularly in the 20th century, is tangled up with all sorts of politics. We should listen to whatever we want, but let's admit that we're not getting the full picture unless we understand the political and economic context of composed music.

I doubt anyone would disagree much with that.

However, that is not at all synonymous with making abstract baseless judgements about the 'moral character' of composers after the fact - and then using those moral judgments as a platform for making assessments of their music. And that is what I reject, and what any sane person would reject.

It would be very helpful at this point in the discussion if these two completely different logical positions

1. placing composers in their socio-historical context on the basis of historical factual evidence
2. making baseless personal moral assertions about the "moral character" of composers, and using these assertions to write-off composers and their works

were not conflated.

[Felix]

This time I am writing on word.

I’m inclined to agree with ReinerTorheit’s unadorned words, “Frankly I think this whole "moral" approach is witless garbage, and isn't worthy of discussion.”

Well not entirely, because I know passages in the arts that are morally uplifting, but being morally uplifted is not the same as being moralistic a characteristic of which I am almost entirely devoid. I feel morally uplifted by great music, in particular by some of Bach’s Chorale Preludes, all the other composers and sometimes by works with a negative tendency. If I cite Shakespeare and the Macbeths, I’d have to explain (which I can do). But I feel uplifted by the Mozart opera’s about immoral characters, Don Giovanni, Così van tutte, and The Marriage of Figaro, They are about human failings (or virtue?). I still know people who reject the whole of Così van tutte; in this case I insist that I find it more moral than Beethoven’s Fidelio (excepting the scene in which the prisoners come out of their dungeons). In Così, Dorabella cedes almost immediately to the ‘wrong’ lover; Fiordiligi cedes with greater, regretful reluctance – unforgettable her ambivalent cry “Giusto cielo!” I know many BC will not approve of this, but how much more exciting the gradual seduction! But then Mozart has, following the moral exigencies of his time, to end with a happy reconciliation, which comes too quickly in this opera. The reconciliation scene in the Marriage of Figaro is one of the most sublime moments in music. But I am talking about drama here, which is bound to contain moral implications, and this is not the case with absolute music, i.e. music composed only of notes.

Scott in his reflections of morality brings in the subject of pornography. I do not have the slightest moral objections but it’s not really my sort of thing because it lacks eroticism. Most of what I have seen is too mechanical. After seeing a porno film I can be put off sex for a day or two. But I was once accompanied by a friend and after hearing my objections, he explained to me that some people liked this type of ‘pagan’ sex. So be it. On my Facebook I have a philosopher of pornography, and he told me I was not seeing the right videos. I haven’t bothered to find out where the right ones are. – I think a banning of pornography would be fatal as it represents an essential part of life that has been pushed into a corner: it represents an unresolved dialogue between sex and Puritanism, each as hard as nails towards the other. Puritanism is a perfect excuse for falling from ‘grace’ as I know from innumerable examples.

I’m sorry, Scott, that my last reply to you got lost again. In any case, you are my favourite contributor to BC and I have saved your longer letters on documents so I have more time to think about them. I share most of your thoughts but am puzzled by a few. I have tried a few times to hint at your critique of purely commercial music, hardly daring to do so: you have treated the subject in full. This phenomenon is destructive rather than immoral, but there are certainly moral implications in it. I hope you succeed with your children, even though we are living in an age where peer groups at school are stronger than parents. If I had children I would – unforcedly – speak to them about the peer group phenomenon.

I can’t remember now what I wrote in my last letter. I think I objected somewhat to the frequent appearance of the word ‘moral’ though you go on to reject morality applied to the arts, I went on - among other things – to cite Wagner’s music for Alberich and his mine as a brilliant evocation of evil and scurrility. Artistically valid.

Then comes John Cage and the theory of art in a vacuum. I don’t think anything in this world exists in a vacuum, not even the second coca cola bottle which he sees as different from the first. None of us can cancel memory which is a prime source of what may be entirely new in the present. People who pretend to step out entirely into the void, usually land with their arses in the past. What is entirely new has to be nurtured out of your experience. The previously unknown dimension has to grow out of your past to be convincing. Cage, no fool, was following his line and he did well to follow it to its logical conclusion – but it would be easy to show up the contradictions in his aesthetics – I have seen him appear several times in London. According to his aesthetic he should not appear at all, or issue repeatable records of his non-music, but composers like him have to survive economically, and create a mystique for which thousands are suckers. Cage writes books on Zen Bhuddism and accompanies the Merce Cunningham ballet company with sounds that are completely irrelevant to what is going on on the stage, Cunningham’s choreographies are not classical but very close to it in their elegant formality. I have seen Stockhausen illustrating his mystical philosophy physically on the stage: one drop of mysticism and you have a thousand fans at your feet. This is not meant as a criticism of those two men in their essential musicality.

Lots more to write but my letter is already too long and I have jumped over Tarantella’s interesting contrasts with you.

Museaus asked me questions about Thomas Mann which I still have to answer.

Yours devotedly,
Felix

[Musaeus]

Originally Posted by Philidor

Be nice everyone! *Runs about clucking like a chicken*

Attachment 5523

It would be fun if you would growl like a lion next time!...

[ReinerTorheit]

Originally Posted by Felix

This time I am writing on word.

I’m inclined to agree with ReinerTorheit’s unadorned words, “Frankly I think this whole "moral" approach is witless garbage, and isn't worthy of discussion.”

Well not entirely, because I know passages in the arts that are morally uplifting

But Felix, that's the whole point.

Musaeas is not talking about the moral content of works.

He is judging the "moral character" of particular composers, taken aside from all their work.

I think that's not only empty garbage - it's also reprehensible, and the methodology of the Third Reich.

[Musaeus]

Originally Posted by Tarantella

I think we are discussing two quite separate things here, Musaeus.

Go on please......... what two things??

[Musaeus]

Scott... if I may add to what T said...

[QUOTE=Scott Good;45150]

I think all people are artists, so I have an idealized position regarding humanity.

then what is the use of the word 'artist'?

I agree with Tarantella on your theory about art in a vacuum - you might as well argue that any of us exists in a vacuum.

This 3min talk from John Cage illuminates these thoughts beautifully:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2tNeoMKyq8

well, I listened, I will say that.................

It cannot be immoral because the worst it can do is cause thoughts, not infringe on rights or liberty.

Wow! And the process of influencing thoughts has no moral element?????

If the art work displayed in a way that it can be avoided - that none are forced to sit and witness the performance - that escape is always possible, then the art is not capable of being immoral.

well - this has been refuted a million times.. suppose witnesses almost want to be seduced into something morally dubious

Otherwise we are talking about thought crime

No - a work of art is much much more than a mere thought!!!

I mean Caligula is very helpful in understanding how power structures both corrupt, and attract corruption. Take these tools away, and we will be left more ignorant.

OK - but suppose a book managed to persuade some readers that everything Caligula did amounted in some sense to a highly positive achievement

Feeling and thinking are never crimes.

Issues of legality and criminality should never be confused with issues of morality - they are different spheres. This betrays a bit of a muddle

Compared to this, the art Stockhausen, Schoenberg, and the German modernists come out smelling like roses.

Yes, but surely you don't want to compare them to trash - that's taking us into pulp culture, which is a whole different debate isn't it?

enough said .....