Against the Running Dogs of Classical Music and "High Culture"

[SuperCommissar]

The petrifying effect of European classical music on those things it touches - jazz, many folk musics, and all popular musics have suffered grievously in their contact with it - made the prospect of finding improvisation there pretty remote. Formal, precious, self-absorbed, pompous, harbouring rigid conventions and carefully preserved hierarchical distinctions; obsessed with its geniuses and their timeless masterpieces, shunning the accidental and the unexpected.

-- Derek Bailey

Classical music is an elitist, bourgeois and reactionary institution. It is socially parasitic, consuming a huge amount of resources (for theaters, equipment and above all training), and so classical performers have to justify their existence by cloaking the making of music in mystery and constructing a mythology of of their privileged independence and endowing its creators and performers with the notion of genius (Beethoven being the archetype here for the alleged "genius" in musical creation). The contrast is between classical music that is elitist tries to restrict its appeal and consumption by appeals to mysterious standards of "timeless" merit, and Jazz music that is proletarian and emphasizes technique and improvisation which the masses actively participate in.

Classical music is essentially inverted, and is more like a network of craftsman guilds that develop completely internal, hierarchical standards of merit that are not directly accessible to outsiders. Music critics use their own specialized (and ultimately evasive) terminology on deciding what is a "masterpiece" and what is not. It is essentially a sectarian and religious approach to music-making and aesthetics - the canonized works of alleged "geniuses" like Beethoven, Mozart, etc. are treated as holy writ, and the performer is only a servant who is supposed to bring out the "original intentions" of the composer (as if this is even a coherent historical concept at all).

What we now know as "classical" music is essentially what Hobsbawm calls an "invented tradition" - a social construct (like "the White race") that has no objective historical existence. Essentially the term is self-fulfilling and meaningless, since the repertoire of what is now called "classical" music was canonized (with Beethoven as helmsman) in the 19th century by reactionary Romanticists. The entire category had and has only one social function: to legitimate present-day institutions and social relations, and function as the most "prestigious" part of culture. The entire term "classical music" implies a pseudo-division between "high" and "low" art.

Contemporary musicology is a bourgeois, reactionary pseudo-science that emphasizes melody and form over rhythm and experimentation. It is essentially religious music, except with the composer sanctified instead of God. It does not try to create any music for the masses (and in fact, modern musicians are trained against improvisation), but is purely elitist justification for the existence of parasitic strata of artists - composers and performers and their running dogs.

[Red_or_Dead]

So... What do you propose? Banning it? Limiting resources? Something else?


In any case, call it classical or whatever you will, it is music. Even though it does attract people who consider themselves "elite" or the "aristocracy" (or walking-talking dungballs, would be more apropriate), it is still not to be discarded as "reactionary".

[Post-Something]

What should be done then? What about Neo classical music? What about film music? Or Socialist Classical musicians like Glenn Gould?

[Invader Zim]

What should be done then? What about Neo classical music? What about film music? Or Socialist Classical musicians like Glenn Gould?

Indeed, the premise of this thread is a stereotype and as such clearly flawed.

[Pirate Utopian]

I have no intrest at all for classical music and sure mainly rich snobs like classical music but it doesnt mean it's reactionary, their are plenty of working class people who roll over with Beethoven and think Tchaikovsky is the news.

[ships-cat]

Supercommisar, I think that your analysis is deeply flawed to the point of parody. It confuses the music in the context of its time, with a stereotyped cartoon of the people who enjoy (or perform) this sort of music today, and throws in a mish-mash of unrelated prejudices.

I could write a great deal about this, but I'll throw you just TWO questions, and lets see where it takes us.

1)By what reasoning do you declare "Jazz" to be proleterian, (with the corollary that "classical" music is elitist ? ).

2) What is classical music ?


Meow Purr.

[Red October]

I don't listen to classical music, but this thread is absurd. "Oh noez this music is bourgeois, let's complain about it on revleft!!!"

[communard resolution]

Jazz started out as music that was played in brothels to get the customers in the mood while flirting with prostitutes in the foyer. It was frowned upon as vulgar, uncultured, sleazy, pornographic, and of course 'black'. Over time, though, it acquired the status of being 'the quintessential American music'. Music for squares, if you will.

The experimental jazz/fusion that Miles Davis played in the late 60s represented the absolute cutting edge of all popular music at the time - it was musically informed by jazz, rock, funk, and african styles, and spiritually by black power, psychedelic culture, the anti-Vietnam war movement. Militant Maoist groups like West Germany's Red Army Faction were listening to Miles Davis alongside the MC5 because they thought of him as a revolutionary by virtue of his music alone.

Today, their music is only ever mentioned by pretentious, bourgeois snobs. To namedrop John Coltrane and Miles Davis at a cocktail party is to demonstrate that you've mastered the necessary codes to present yourself as operating at the high end of culture.

All that snobbery was keeping me off jazz for a long, long time. I hated it. Until I actually heard Davis's '*****es Brew' and Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' albums, that is: they are just fucking unbelievable.

The extent to which jazz culture had been institutionalized and rebranded as 'high culture' led avant-jazz musician John Zorn to release an album with the title "JAZZ SNOBS FUCK OFF".

I imagine similar things happened with whatever has been canonized as classical music, which is no reason to dismiss the music as such. Are the works of Prokofiev and Shostakovich referred to as classical music? I imagine yes because 'classical' can mean pretty much anything performed by a classical orchestra. Listen to their early symphonies. They are testimony to the restless, boundary-pushing spirit of the early years of the Russian Revolution. Then listen to the later works they wrote in the 30s and 40s to appease Stalin, and you'll know what conservatism and 'socialist realism' sound like. A lot of wildly different things have been happening in so-called classical music, and maybe it's still the case in some obscure corner in the world?

As for hero & genius worship, don't tell me that hasn't been happening in rock music as well. Even punk, a genre that set out on the pretense of being opposed to mythologizing individuals, has its Great White Men.

I enjoyed reading your article, it's really well written. But I think you confuse the music with its milieu and what it represents, both of which are not rigid and subject to change. You're sounding a bit like Adorno, only upside down.

[Dean]

This is stupid. Classical music is just fine, I appreciate it very much. That said, many classical artists are bourgeois. The music is not intrinsically bourgeois, though.

[communard resolution]

Come to think of it, we've probably all fallen victim to a troll. Especially me. This is a parody.

[Random Precision]

I imagine similar things happened with whatever has been canonized as classical music, which is no reason to dismiss the music as such. Are the works of Prokofiev and Shostakovich referred to as classical music? I imagine yes because 'classical' can mean pretty much anything performed by a classical orchestra.

Actually there's really no such thing as "classical music". The term "classical" wasn't invented until the early 1900s by music critics who tried to define everything from Bach to Beethoven as a "golden age" and everything after (i.e., Romantic music) as degenerate in some sense.

Also, much new music that's labeled "contemporary classical" is not performed by an orchestra, or even instruments in the traditional sense, like Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage's sound experiments.

So, there's no "classical music", there's just "music". As the old joke goes, classical music is the kind of music they play on classical music radio stations.

[Post-Something]

Come to think of it, we've probably all fallen victim to a troll. Especially me. This is a parody.

No, no, this is an actual leftist argument. I've even heard someone hold the view that the first non-Bourgeois art was Renoir, and all fine art subsequent to that was Bourgeois. It's really strange, and at most you could use it to back up the hegemonic influence of the ruling class, but there is no way that a certain art form is reactionary. That's absurd.

[SuperCommissar]

It is interesting that the defenders of allegedly "timeless" art have nothing more to say than the above. So far I have not read one single refutation of my points. I consider myself to have won this discussion by default.

My central point is actually very simple, and held by plenty of studies, for e.g. "The Subcultures Reader" edited by Gelder and Thornton. They talk of the "elitism" of the current state of classical music in the 20th century, and with good reason. I am not condemning the entire history of classical music, particularly the Baroque period, which focused on improvisation. Nevertheless it is a deconstruction of what classical music is, in the present tense. What you apparently do not realize is (as was made clear in "The End of Early Music" by Bruce Haynes), the entire concept of a canonized set of "classics" was a result of Romanticist ideology in the 19th century. That also established the independent status of the "composer" as some kind of creative genius and the performer as a executor who followed formal musical notation (whereas, for previous centuries "composers" were simply performers who also tend to improvise for the public, and ultimately ALL written musical works are the result of and aid for, such improvisation, and were never meant to be followed to the letter). Simply open up any popular book on classical music to verify this:

The dominance of the text. One reason Liszt wasn't welcomed into the canon was that his pieces were too obviously vehicles for a particular charismatic performer, namely himself. This reversed the proper order of things. Classical music consisted of works, a set of pieces which could be reproduced anywhere, anytime. (This is a vast generalization which skates over the importance of improvisation in Baroque and Classical music. But by the Romantic era, the text had extended its dominance and squeezed out almost every vestige of performer freedom.) Performers were no more than their humble servants. (Liszt claimed to be such a humble servant, but no one believed him.) The existence of he text pointed to a distinction between the essence of a piece, the set of formal relations which were its permanent features, and the particular inflections those relations acquired in performance. It was the way classical music could be fixed in texts, which could then be stored in libraries (or sold in shops) that removed it from the corrupting effects of time. ("Music: Healing the Rift" by Ivan Hewett)

The entire notion of attributing "musical genius" to particular composers and composers and performers in history is simply indicative of the attempt to make classical music something inherently "mysterious" and off-limits for the masses. Hence Schoenberg's saying that "if it is for all it is not art". How do you explain such quotes like this?

What I am opposed to, is the constructed, invented category of "classical" or any other music as a set of canonized works - which is how it has become in the recent century. This also applies to the absurd notion of "timeless" classics that are ahistorical, when all appreciation of art is objective and depends on knowledge of the historical conditions of its development. What I am also against is the relatively recent concept of "art" as opposed to merely aesthetics or craftsmanship (musicians in the Baroque period simply saw themselves as craftsmen, not "artists") which is a similarly artificial construction. "Art" in this sense implies high art, implies a differentiation between art and propaganda. Such an essentialist differentiation is vacuous. (For more information, see the volume "The Invention of Art: A Cultural History" Larry Shiner.)

You are probably negatively influenced by Adorno and his elitism, which holds that true "art" (and by this he includes, European classical music) involves "suffering" and since classical music makes us suffer, it is true art. But this implicitly acknowledges, again, my point that art is not different from propaganda, since such "art" again exists to elicits an emotional and therefore political reaction from the audience.

Why should "classical music" serve as canonized high culture and not jazz or hip-hop? It is exactly the culture of the pitit-bourgeoisie, who abound in "cultural capital". Classical music is just another hierarchical profession, like the academia, where practitioners have to cloud their doings in symbols of mystery to justify their existence. Except here there are no benefits except to the petit-bourgeoisie. The BBC tried to popularize classical music in the 1960s, and as a result the entire enterprise (at least in North America and the UK) is dying right now, with less and less people going to concerts, etc. That is to be expected, since we are dealing with a bifurcated bourgeoisie. When the institution is fully exposed, and state support is pulled, and the masses finally see what it is, all pretense vanishes and appeal for classical music will disappear, or be confined to some small and disconnected sects. Perhaps it will revert back to its previous (and more vigorous) state - in which case the label "classical" will be an anachronism.

[communard resolution]

Actually there's really no such thing as "classical music". The term "classical" wasn't invented until the early 1900s by music critics who tried to define everything from Bach to Beethoven as a "golden age" and everything after (i.e., Romantic music) as degenerate in some sense.

I think Beethoven is often classified as Romantic, but let's not be pedantic (note the rhyme). It doesn't really matter.


Also, much new music that's labeled "contemporary classical" is not performed by an orchestra, or even instruments in the traditional sense, like Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage's sound experiments.

So, there's no "classical music", there's just "music". As the old joke goes, classical music is the kind of music they play on classical music radio stations.Agreed and agreed.

[Random Precision]

The petrifying effect of European classical music on those things it touches - jazz, many folk musics, and all popular musics have suffered grievously in their contact with it - made the prospect of finding improvisation there pretty remote. Formal, precious, self-absorbed, pompous, harbouring rigid conventions and carefully preserved hierarchical distinctions; obsessed with its geniuses and their timeless masterpieces, shunning the accidental and the unexpected.

-- Derek Bailey

This is blatantly false. To use one example, "classical" music has provided no end of inspiration to jazz and other "popular music". The jazz tune "Salt Peanuts" in one of its many incarnations begins with the opening notes of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, for instance. Pink Floyd was inspired in their search for a unique sound by contemporary composers like Stockhausen.


Classical music is an elitist, bourgeois and reactionary institution. It is socially parasitic, consuming a huge amount of resources (for theaters, equipment and above all training),

I don't grant that there is such a thing as "classical music", but even if there were you could say this exact same statement about modern rock music- requires a huge amount of resources, like the amphitheaters that need to be rented out, the huge amount of equipment that must be carried from place to place. As for "training", I really have no idea what you're talking about- as if jazz and rock musicians didn't have to learn their instruments as well and constantly practice and learn of emerging trends in their form of music. :rolleyes:


and so classical performers have to justify their existence by cloaking the making of music in mystery and constructing a mythology of of their privileged independence and endowing its creators and performers with the notion of genius (Beethoven being the archetype here for the alleged "genius" in musical creation).

Classical performers do not "cloak the making of music in mystery" at all. Even many of the most famous classical composers have published books about how they write their music. Rimsky-Kosakov's Principles of Orchestration and Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony are two examples that come readily to mind.


The contrast is between classical music that is elitist tries to restrict its appeal and consumption by appeals to mysterious standards of "timeless" merit, and Jazz music that is proletarian and emphasizes technique and improvisation which the masses actively participate in.

Once again this is total bullshit. There's no end of improvisation in classical music, how would you expect composers to write otherwise? Now if you're referring to spontaneity, there's plenty of that too. A couple weeks ago I was at a piano recital in which the pianist (a prize-winning Russian) performed several pieces that were pure improvisation, and when he played standard pieces he would often insert his own variations on them- to particularly interesting results when he played Mendelssohn's Wedding March.

And in any case many recent composers have placed a great emphasis on improvisation. One recent piece that I like, for solo piano, begins with the instruction: "play a theme that matches the rhythm of your body".


Classical music is essentially inverted, and is more like a network of craftsman guilds that develop completely internal, hierarchical standards of merit that are not directly accessible to outsiders. Music critics use their own specialized (and ultimately evasive) terminology on deciding what is a "masterpiece" and what is not.

But how is this any different from critics of jazz or rock music?


It is essentially a sectarian and religious approach to music-making and aesthetics - the canonized works of alleged "geniuses" like Beethoven, Mozart, etc. are treated as holy writ

... while in Jazz, the works of alleged "geniuses" like Louis Armstrong and John Coltrane are treated as holy writ...


, and the performer is only a servant who is supposed to bring out the "original intentions" of the composer (as if this is even a coherent historical concept at all).

Not true in the slightest. While it is true that some fetishize the "composer's intention", in most cases that is impossible to find. In fact many conductors pride themselves on finding innovative interpretations of classic works. While speeding up the tempo of a famous symphony may break with the composer's alleged intention, it may also bring out certain features of the work that had previously been less prominent. Just read some reviews of recent CDs by those evil music critics.


What we now know as "classical" music is essentially what Hobsbawm calls an "invented tradition" - a social construct (like "the White race") that has no objective historical existence. Essentially the term is self-fulfilling and meaningless, since the repertoire of what is now called "classical" music was canonized (with Beethoven as helmsman) in the 19th century by reactionary Romanticists. The entire category had and has only one social function: to legitimate present-day institutions and social relations, and function as the most "prestigious" part of culture. The entire term "classical music" implies a pseudo-division between "high" and "low" art.

I agree completely.


Contemporary musicology is a bourgeois, reactionary pseudo-science that emphasizes melody and form over rhythm and experimentation. It is essentially religious music, except with the composer sanctified instead of God. It does not try to create any music for the masses (and in fact, modern musicians are trained against improvisation), but is purely elitist justification for the existence of parasitic strata of artists - composers and performers and their running dogs.

Blah. I'm bored already with this. Here's an idea for you: why don't you actually listen to some of this music? I can recommend a lot of it if you're looking for places to start.

[communard resolution]

Why should "classical music" serve as canonized high culture and not jazz or hip-hop?

As I argued in an earlier post, jazz has long been rehabilitated as 'art' and 'high culture' even though it was originally brothel music, and sooner or later this may happen to hip hop too.

[Random Precision]

It is interesting that the defenders of allegedly "timeless" art have nothing more to say than the above. So far I have not read one single refutation of my points. I consider myself to have won this discussion by default.

My central point is actually very simple, and held by plenty of studies, for e.g. "The Subcultures Reader" edited by Gelder and Thornton. They talk of the "elitism" of the current state of classical music in the 20th century, and with good reason. I am not condemning the entire history of classical music, particularly the Baroque period, which focused on improvisation. Nevertheless it is a deconstruction of what classical music is, in the present tense. What you apparently do not realize is (as was made clear in "The End of Early Music" by Bruce Haynes), the entire concept of a canonized set of "classics" was a result of Romanticist ideology in the 19th century. That also established the independent status of the "composer" as some kind of creative genius and the performer as a executor who followed formal musical notation (whereas, for previous centuries "composers" were simply performers who also tend to improvise for the public, and ultimately ALL written musical works are the result of and aid for, such improvisation, and were never meant to be followed to the letter). Simply open up any popular book on classical music to verify this:

The dominance of the text. One reason Liszt wasn't welcomed into the canon was that his pieces were too obviously vehicles for a particular charismatic performer, namely himself. This reversed the proper order of things. Classical music consisted of works, a set of pieces which could be reproduced anywhere, anytime. (This is a vast generalization which skates over the importance of improvisation in Baroque and Classical music. But by the Romantic era, the text had extended its dominance and squeezed out almost every vestige of performer freedom.) Performers were no more than their humble servants. (Liszt claimed to be such a humble servant, but no one believed him.) The existence of he text pointed to a distinction between the essence of a piece, the set of formal relations which were its permanent features, and the particular inflections those relations acquired in performance. It was the way classical music could be fixed in texts, which could then be stored in libraries (or sold in shops) that removed it from the corrupting effects of time. ("Music: Healing the Rift" by Ivan Hewett)

So essentially, you're attacking the classical music establishment more than the music itself. Why didn't you just say so in the first place?


The entire notion of attributing "musical genius" to particular composers and composers and performers in history is simply indicative of the attempt to make classical music something inherently "mysterious" and off-limits for the masses. Hence Schoenberg's saying that "if it is for all it is not art". How do you explain such quotes like this?

Every kind of art is affected by elitism in some way. But for every Schoenberg who tries to distance himself from the masses (and just because he does this does not mean his music lacks value), you will find a Copland who writes a "Fanfare for the Common Man", or a Cardew who goes out onto the street and recruits people without any musical experience into a "scratch orchestra".

[Lynx]

Why we like certain music may be due to mathematical relationships within the music itself. What music means to the masses is interesting; what it means to you personally is what counts.

[ships-cat]

Baroque music was focussed on improvisation ? Where the HECK are you getting your information from ? Baroque music was HIGHLY structured, and based on written notation given to the orchestra from the composer.

The only element of performance improvisation that I am aware of was the tradition of the harpsicord 'continuo' parts. ( I may have got the spelling of that wrong). This WAS open to improvisation, but only because the composers didn't regard it as important; continou was used to provide a sort of continous droning 'backdrop' to the main orchestra, and was usualy only employed during the 'loud' bits to add tonal colour into the background. (recall that the harpsicord in those days was a relatively "quiet" instrument. ) Hence it didn't really MATTER - within reason - exactly what was being played.


The term 'obligato' was practicaly COINED during the baroque period for pete's sake !
(e.g. an instruction to the musicians/conductors that a piece must be played AS WRITTEN... both in terms of the notes, AND the choice of instrument).

The term "classical" - as others have noted - is a misleading one, as strictly speaking musicologists use it to refer to a period roughly between 1730-1820, based on the style of composition and instrumentation. (Mozart is usualy deemed to be a Classical period musician, for example, whereas Beethoven is oft regarded as a transitionary figure between Classical and the subsequent Romantic period).

In the more common parlance, 'Classical' is often taken as meaning "long lasting". There where many composers operating in the "Classical" PERIOD, who's music has not lasted simply because it wasn't THAT good. (hands up all of those who have heard of Muzio Clemmenti, for example.. and he is deemed one of the BETTER "Classical period" composers). Hence the badge is one of Durability, not some sort of artificial social elitism structure.

250 years after his death, you can still hear the structures pioneered by J.S. Bach in anything from Deep Purple (the rock band, not the song) to the Eurythmics to - yes - Jazz.

You say that hip-hop (to give one of your examples) should be given the same gravitas as "classical music". Well... lets see if the influences of hip-hop are still around in ten years time, let alone 250.

And anyway, non of it matters. Music is music. Any attempt to try and force it into some sort of dialetical model is an excercise in synaesthesia at best, and blind structural fanaticism at worse. What's next ? Butterflies as an example of bourgouise conspiracy ? Gravity as an instrument of worker oppression ?

Meow Purr :)

[SuperCommissar]

Let's backtrack a bit and split this into separate issues:

* Do you agree with Schoenberg's statement that "if it is for all it is not art"? (Do you agree that such sentiments are held by the majority in the classical music community?)

* Do you agree that "classical music" as we conceive it is not just any genre of music, but an institution and cult that engages mostly in self-promotion and the deification of previous artists?

* Do you agree, that the entire concept of "classical music" also involves canonical "high art", and that both of these notions were constructed by strictly ideological motivations?

First of all, there is a straw man mentioned in this thread that has to be gotten out of the way first: I mean the obvious truism that musical appeal is a matter of "taste" and there can be no intrinsically "bourgeois" element in the formal composition itself (this is evident from the fact that other genres of music have borrowed tunes from classical pieces). But I am referring to the understanding of music, and therefore second-order appreciation, not immediate psychological reactions to the music itself. Enthusiasts of classical music do not merely "enjoy" its sensuality but also are convinced that it is "profound" and timeless. Enjoyable it may be - and very well it may not. But why does he think it is timeless? (And what could he possibly mean?)

To re-state: What I am attacking is not particular works of music arbitrarily defined as "classical", but a certain approach to music-making that has gained ascendancy in modern times, and which arose, again, institutionally and historically, out of the entire concept of "classical music".

To speak in a historically meaningful way, "classical music" is not merely a genre of music, a convenient category for that hodgepodge of traditional, religious and bourgeois pieces, but also a canonized cult. Classical music evolved from low-level aestheticism from the 16th-18th century, to its status as a full-fledged cult in the 19th century with the ascendancy of Romanticism. The cult of classical music only survives at all for the same reason why religions themselves survive. Nor is there anything tendentious in such a label - classical performers and composers themselves are extremely sectarian and believe themselves to be embodying a kind of almost religious exaltation. Only they will call someone like Beethoven or Bach "the greatest artistic genius of all time", which is deification and not merely hero-worship.

Never mind that cognitive science has proved, that machines (software like Cope's "Emmy") can compose in the style of Mozart or Bach (with such techniques as old as neural networks, using data encoding, melodic and harmonic analysis, tempo signature analysis and pattern matching) - the label "genius" is simply given to uphold the essential "mysteriousness", again, of the entire enterprise. It is no coincidence that modern "classical" music evolved from religious music, and had similar motivations. You may be something of a heretic in your own field, but you have only to criticize Beethoven, Brahms and other grisly objects of middle-brow piety to remember what the term "blasphemy" means. These running dogs of cultural fetishism tend to be invincibly ignorant of other branches of music, musical schools and traditions, as well as fundamentally different approaches to music-making.

Bailey says (in "Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music") that:

Any sort of strict classical training does seem to be the biggest single handicap to improvising. The standard instrumental technique itself probably contains certain disadvantages but the main block is the instilled attitude towards music-making which seems to automatically accompany this type of education. An attitude which could not appreciate something like 'You hear people trying out things, they make a mistake and they perhaps even develop that mistake and work out something nice from that which happened without them meaning it to.' Paco Pena here does not indicate any lack of responsibility towards the music he plays or any reduced concern for the quality of the performance. He is expressing a recognition that music is, of its nature, not fixed and is always malleable, changeable. Performance in classical music seems designed to disprove that idea. In the straight world the performer approaches music on tiptoe. Music is precious and performance constitutes a threat to its existence. So, of course, he has to be careful. Also, the music doesn't belong to him. He's allow to handle it but then only under the strictest supervision. Somebody, somewhere, has gone through a lot of trouble to create this thing, this composition, and the performer's primary responsibility is to preserve it from damage. At is highest, music is the divine idea conceived by a super-mortal. In which case performance becomes a form of genuflection.

It is understandable that for many musicians, performing music is a matter of being a highly skilled executant in a well-reheased ensemble, and it is also true that this role has its satisfactions. But it does seem that to be trained soley for that role is probably the worst possible preparation for improvisation. And the biggest handicap inflicted by that training is the instilling of a deeply reverential attitude towards the creation of music, an attitude which unquestioningly accepts the physical and hierarchical separation of playing and creating. From this stems the view of improvisation as a frivolous or even a sacrilegious activity.

Nor is there any question that classical music has served as a bulwark of class privilege and (on the other side) a means whereby other social barriers could be overcome. African-Americans have worked to defeat racist essentialism by proving their ability to write and perform European concert music. Jazz in its early days (with people like Duke Ellington) was influenced by and tried to gain some of the prestige of classical music.

Of course it is a truism to stipulate that things may be different in the future - as it was in the past. I won't be so cynical as to insist that maybe the critics are right, and classical music (with such a long history) had simply ran out of steam by the 19th century. Nevertheless I suspect they are right, if current trends continue.

I agree that jazz and other genres of music have also deteriorated in the past few decades, particularly after the 1970s. But classical music by by far the most degenerate, and does almost nothing than constantly wax praise on the "great" artists of the past, by replaying the same pieces over and over again. My critique, if provocative, is nevertheless a good thing, since it exposes the charlatanry of the entire enterprise. In any case, this is all the more excuse to revive all genres of music, by (1) pulling state support for fixed, hierarchical institutions, (2) elimination of the profit motive, and (3) essentially state promotion of audience-centered modes of quality control for the production of music, instead of that (like in the classical music community) which is centered around musical producers.

[communard resolution]

* Do you agree with Schoenberg's statement that "if it is for all it is not art"? (Do you agree that such sentiments are held by the majority in the classical music community?)a) A clear no. I read that Schoenberg quote many times before, but how can we be certain about the context in which he made that statement? Did he utter this sentence calmly in an interview, or did he shout it in anger about some particular situation? That would make a difference.

b) Such sentiments may be held by the majority in the classical music community, but they are also held by a majority of the Jazz community and by fans of most non-mainstream and 'underground' currents of rock music. Seeing as you quote from sociological essays, you will be familiar with the term 'subcultural capital'.


* Do you agree that "classical music" as we conceive it is not just any genre of music, but an institution and cult that engages mostly in self-promotion and the deification of previous artists?Again, this also applies to rock and jazz.


* Do you agree, that the entire concept of "classical music" also involves canonical "high art", and that both of these notions were constructed by strictly ideological motivations?As mentioned before, what is and what isn't 'high art' is not rigid and subject to change. A lot of modern art that is exhibited in galleries around the world today and therefore part of the 'high art' canon was anti-bourgeois in its original intention and viewed as a charade at best and degenerate at worst in the early-mid 20th century.

Your arguments make for an interesting read, but you don't seem to be engaging with the points that any of us have made in response to your posts.

[Lynx]

My approach to 'fandoms' is to ignore those which don't interest me and participate in those that do. Naturally, I would allow other people the same freedom to do the same.

Question: which genre gets you the most agitated - classical music, opera, or Nazi exploitation flicks? Just wondering...

[ships-cat]

Oooookaaay....


Thanks for that clarification SuperCommissar...I think I was in error by jumping in on specifics of your original (and second) post without considering them in their whole, however...
Bleedin' 'ell... your post opens multiple issues, each of which would justify a thread all of their own. How can anyone debate this coherently ? There are issues of how musicians operated in their day, against how they are percieved NOW. The issue of - for want of a better word - 'hijacking' the genre of "classical music" as a "social-circle-snobbery" phenomena. A debate on attitudes of today's musicians, and the effects of their training. I could go on.
History of music and revisionism.

I could go on, and that's just defining unique ASPECTS of the debate, without even beginning to debate them.

Couldn't you have posted something simpler ? Dunno... Isreal/Palestine or something ? :p

I think I can see SOME of 'where you are coming from'. I would catagorise Opera (in the "classical" [oh dear] sense of the term), as being an artificialy-supported art form, with exceedingly limited mass appeal, and with a GREAT deal of snobbery associated with it. But then


That's just MY opinion.
There's a big hole in the side of my ship called "Lloyd Webber" (Yeah, I KNOW that's a trite example, but we've got to start SOMEWHERE) and it's letting all the water in.

Joking apart... I think this thread would benefit from being split into multiple debates.

Cat goes away in confusion to Pondurrrr.

Meow Purr.

[Lynx]

Here is someone the classical music establishment may choose to praise or forget about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Greenberg

[proudcomrade]

I am a trained classical pianist, myself. I will not start into some crazy page-long rant response; but I will quickly offer the following: Classical music is an excellent (and when done resourcefully, dirt-cheap) way to train the mathematical and logical aptitude, condition fine musculature of the hands, arms and back, improve linguistics ability and hearing range, and explore part of Europe's history in a hands-on way that jumps off of the printed page alone. To play a thrifted instrument classically, and obtain the public-domain score music for free, is a great help to the development and maintenance of children, the disabled, the elderly, and anyone else with the inclination to try it. If a person does not intend on a professional career at it, the practice-time required to develop good skill can take as little as an hour per day, done patiently as a hobby over a period of years. Classical music has also been shown to help reduce blood pressure and psychological stress in vulnerable groups. Finally, it was classical that enabled the springing-off of many musical forms of cultural solidarity and resistance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ex., klezmer among oppressed Jews in shtetls, czardas music among Romani and other poor Hungarians, etc.

What is the problem with the coexistence of classical alongside the more contemporary and culturally-inclusive new musics? I see none. Furthermore, the contrast against jazz is an apples-and-oranges argument; they are simply two vastly different musics. Jazz is specifically good for things that classical lacks, in spatial reasoning, artistic ingenuity and tonal harmonies not found in the more rigidly-structured patterns characteristic of classical. Jazz is a tremendous intellectual exercise as well, but for different reasons. Jazz is also a living history, that of oppressed people of color in the USA, this being every bit as valid as classical's human side in poor Europe of earlier times.

OK, there you have my thoughts on the subject; I'll quit rambling here. Thanks for your time.

[political_animal]

So if classical music is bourgeois and off-limits to the working class because it is elitist, presumably, we should all be praising dull, bland pop music because it sells to the masses. All hail the winners of X Factor - true proletarian music. After all, they sell millions of copies, so they must be providing a daily dose of true working class representation. We can't be having any music that a huge majority of people can't relate to. So along with classical, we need to dump opera. Oh and as for you Alec Empire, there are only a select few that like your Digital Hardcore, so sorry, but take your pretend revolutionary lyrics back to Berlin, we have no need for you here. What's that? Woody Guthrie? Nope, too few people bother with him. Don't care if he has a machine that kills fascists, he isn't popular enough to represent the working class. In fact, whist we're at it, do away with ALL music, it's the only answer and...what? Yeah, let's dump all that pretentious 'art' bollocks as well. Painting is a proper bourgeois hobby. Should be concentrating on toiling in a factory instead of poncing around with a paintbrush or a guitar. Get it out of here. Bloody 'artists', bloody 'musicians'. Get rid of the lot of them. Anyone so much as even humming a tune will be shot on the spot.

Now you lot, stop pissing around on Revleft and get some bloody work done, you work-shy wannabe bourgeois musicians...and don't even think of writing a song about your day.