# Classical music (art) is doomed, annex



## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

NishmatHaChalil said:


> Either way, let me know if you are interested


Thank you for the update, and I will absolutely let you know when and if I want to get involved with any of the post-IMDB groups; currently I'm involved with none of them, as I find I'm spending more time than I should on the internet ALREADY.



NishmatHaChalil said:


> Regarding my thoughts on Byron, I have summarized them, and all that is left is for me to write them down in English. Since there is a lot, I may feel more comfortable in posting them one at a time, rather than all at once, but, even if in this manner, I should be able to do so in the recent future. God, there were a lot of embarrassing annotations, but I think I have been able to select the most interesting points. You are probably going to like some links I traced or conjectured. There are others which would be closer to your interests, but the one which left me the most startled was his influence over a major piece by Leopardi, and I'm completely sure about it. Leopardi's chief poem, La ginestra, is modeled on Darkness! This should be better known. Many consider La ginestra the best Italian poem of the 19th century, very important for their national identity, and its depiction of nature went on to influence the worldviews of both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Leopardi gave the poem a very special flavor and rich allusive enrichments, linking it to Italian history and his personal philosophy in many different levels. He presented Italian civilization and, by extension, humanity, as small ants waiting to be crushed by the passive and unresponsive power of nature, represented by Mount Vesuvius.


I had no idea! I'm embarrassed to say that while I know who Leopardi is, I'm not sure I've ever read a single line of his. Well I suppose I'll remedy that starting with "La ginestra."



NishmatHaChalil said:


> Thank you very much, as well, for showing interest in my writing before! I'm not good in English composition, but I would love to attempt translating some passages of that poem for you in the future, as well as some of my shorter poems. That is, if you are still interested.


I am absolutely interested! And as I may or may not have said before, I am on the one hand extremely grateful for such translations as you are inclined to provide, I would on the other hand also be interested in trying to get whatever I can out of the text in the original language.



NishmatHaChalil said:


> I think one possible answer may be a rising literate class, supported by a lot of investment in new ideas and intellectual pursuit, the need for cultural justification and the space for this class to affirm itself and escape censure.


It may indeed come down to that after all. This would leave the question of what artists are supposed to do AFTER their class has risen. (Find a new rising class to attach themselves to, I suppose.)



NishmatHaChalil said:


> Another important factor is the fact that our current society gives very little value to art. In capitalist society, literature is underrepresented in curricula, while economical liberalism and neoliberalism are more representative of the values most expressed in education. Meanwhile, in previous socialist governments, free thought was harshly censured and purged. In both fronts, artists as a class found inhospitable conditions.


This is an interesting idea: as if, somehow or other, a situation arose in the 20th century where only highly authoritarian societies were capable of creating a really strong demand for high art, but by their nature, those authoritarian societies practiced a degree of censorship that was, more or less, just as much an impediment to creativity as the scramble for sponsorship in the liberal capitalist world.



NishmatHaChalil said:


> Despite embarrassing decisions in style and awkward generalizations [...]


Your assessment agrees with my own, though on the subject of politics I should say, in her defense, that she's not as perhaps not _as_ conservative as she sometimes gives the impression of being (she's announced the intention of voting for Democratic and Green candidates, never Republican as far as I know, and opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, when many more conventionally liberal people supported it).



NishmatHaChalil said:


> > Or maybe I can be more precise than that. The 5 1/2 centuries between the end of the Roman republic and the establishment of the Codex Justinianus saw the patriarchal family structure of the Roman elite collapse into the nuclear family - a collective relaxing of discipline and thus somewhat similar to the political revolutions of the last two centuries. So maybe the common thread is a cultural elite that feels society is getting out of control and withdraws into itself.
> 
> 
> Interesting! I had never taken into account the influence of the shift in the social structure of the Roman family over the quality of later Roman literature. I think it was quite possibly an important factor, and I like your analogy to our era.


Thank you!

I think I want to revise what I said there. I was too eager for an excuse to blame the elite for elitism. I now think I should have stuck closer to Paglia: Freedom quickly becomes unbearable, and so the artist is more or less forced to invent new, even more rigorous restrictions.

So now I would say: the self-imposed restrictions of Debussy and Stravinsky produced a lesser art than Wagner's: but by the 1890s, there was no longer any question of the world producing more Wagners. Rather, the question was whether it would ever produce anything other than late Romantics such as César Franck and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (no disparagement intended of either composer, but I think most people will agree that Debussy and Stravinsky somewhat surpassed them).



NishmatHaChalil said:


> Perhaps the pace of our revolutions may also explain in part why our "Silver Age", if we can call it that, was that short. Though, of course, talking about Golden and Silver Ages regarding Modern Europe is problematic, considering its tradition actually started to peak in the Renaissance, while different nations had different peaks and different revivals. England, for instance, starting with Chaucer, had at least one literary revival per century until at least Byron. That model applies well to the US, to Russia, to Germany, perhaps to France and, interestingly, even to Brazil. England, however, is entirely different, just like Spain, Portugal and Italy.


I wonder, though: Chaucer is a great poet, but would his own greatness have been enough to make us care about him today? Or has the advent of Shakespeare made earlier English-language literature look more important than it otherwise would?

Conversely, I also wonder if we're still too close to, for example, Victor Hugo and Matisse to have the courage to say that the French art of the 19th century _surpassed_ the art of the Grand Siècle.



NishmatHaChalil said:


> I wonder, however, if the breach between the cultural elite and the suppressive revolutionary classes may not also have influenced art's demoralization. We have discussed before how the failure of The Spring of the Peoples may have led to the apolitical aestheticism of Gautier and the decadents, and I believe the social changes in the USSR, in Fascist Europe and McCarthyist US during the 20th century may also have played a role in motivating Postmodernism to assume an even more cynical stance than Modernism and Decadence. The 20th century was a good age for purging artists, and, I think, this must probably have taken its toll in the history of our art. If I'm right, it would be a similar development to the governmental persecution of artists in the Roman Empire that contributed to the inhibition of the Silver Age and its eventual demise. Regarding feelings of social impotence in art, even now, after the US finally became hegemonic and persecution of most artists diminished in Western countries, the victory of neoliberalism also tends to enforce an image of status quo. I would be curious to know your views on it!


Communism and fascism were extreme enough that I think they could indeed explain a decline in the arts where they were in power, but I can't see McCarthyism as any MORE extreme than, for example, the repression of Catholics in England or the expulsion of Protestants from France, which don't seem to have much weakened the artistic cultures of those countries in the centuries that followed. And let's face it, it's not like American high art was all that great immediately BEFORE McCarthyism either. We had Wallace Stevens, granted, but then, artists as politically conservative as he was would have been untouched by McCarthyism in any case.

Leaving aside the question of quality, what you call the cynicism of Postmodernism - I would maybe say, instead, the resignation - seems to me, at least in the United States and western Europe, often involve a _reaction_ by the artists against their own countries' _left_: against the "passionate intensity" of the New Left radicals (to use a phrase coined by a centrist of an earlier generation), and against the failure of the social democratic regimes to continue to provide an increase in prosperity at the same rate as previously (neoliberalism of course "solved" the last problem by providing a great increase in prosperity for a relatively few people, at the expense of everybody else).



NishmatHaChalil said:


> As a writer, I'm also interested in finding interesting ways of bringing us from postmodernism into something new. I actually like a lot of postmodern art, but I believe the movement is already too old, and I'm frustrated by the fact we can't get past it, not because we don't want to, but rather, like you wrote in a recent post here, because we are not able to. I'm also interested in how one could do that in music, the visual arts and film, but I'm much less likely to contribute to any of them directly. Sometimes thinkers and critics influence artists, though, and I believe the critical debate of art's future may eventually provide interesting ideas for creators. Goethe would probably be very different without Herder, after all, just as Whitman would be very different without Emerson. I'm not entirely sure on how we could start another era, but I have been developing some ideas during my late teens, and they are now starting to take shape. I could explain some of them, and, in the future, I could also try to translate some of the verses I have been writing in order to give an idea of what I have already been able to arrive at.


As an aspiring historian, I'm keenly interested in ideas on this subject, maybe more than in anything else. I want to know where we're going next!!! (On the other hand, I'm also somewhat afraid of finding out, because if we DO find our way out of Postmodernism, then it will be time to start speculating about what will eventually replace US.)



NishmatHaChalil said:


> I'm probably going to try to manage my stress, identify its underlying causes in my style of organization and start optimizing my routine next semester.


If you succeed, you'll be 10 years ahead of me. Good luck!


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## NishmatHaChalil (Apr 17, 2017)

Thank you for the response! I found some time to write in greater detail today, as I'm reviewing easier subjects right now. I will post some of the passages I mentioned below later today, and I intend to participate here throughout the week, but probably with shorter posts.



Magnum Miserium said:


> I had no idea! I'm embarrassed to say that while I know who Leopardi is, I'm not sure I've ever read a single line of his. Well I suppose I'll remedy that starting with "La ginestra."


I don't think you should be embarrassed! Today, he's little read outside of Italy. I can't say I have ever found a translation of his works here in Brazil. It should not be that difficult, so I might write one someday, if someone else does not get the initiative. I already translated some of his shorter idylls for friends during high school, and his lyrical production is rather short, so it should be practicable. Even so, he's certainly worth reading, and, unlike Foscolo, beyond his early pieces, lamenting Italy's decline and helplessness against deterioration, lack of resources and foreign powers, he cannot be easily summarized as a typical nationalist poet from Byron's generation. Even the national analogies I previously mentioned are probably more the critics' than his. He probably just used Italy as a close and vivid example for his peers, but his works were intended to be read in a more universal tone, even though, like a true master, he's able to sound characteristically Italian in doing so, and not in a way previously explored by his predecessors. In the context of European Romanticism, I think he can be accurately read as the poet of atheistic nihilism, of materialistic reaction against religious optimism and of pessimist resignation towards the harshness of life. I will select some of his key poems for you today, and I may comment on him in greater detail later as well. I will also look for good translations, but I actually translated some verses literally when I was organizing my notes. I will probably send them to you later too.



> I am absolutely interested! And as I may or may not have said before, I am on the one hand extremely grateful for such translations as you are inclined to provide, I would on the other hand also be interested in trying to get whatever I can out of the text in the original language.


Thank you! At least once I'm freer, I will share some pieces with you. I even thought of translating them into French, since grammar, morphology and metrics are in closer correspondence between the two languages, but I'm not so sure if I have enough active practice in order to do so. Even so, from your knowledge of French morphology, you may still get part of the original. Phonologically, though, Portuguese is closer to Spanish and Italian. French is actually the odd one out, but Google Translate and Forvo can help getting you an idea of the sounds. Before that, I may comment too on the current scenario of Portuguese language poetry, as well as on its history and my main predecessors. I will probably write you a longer post later explaining Pessoa's background =] Eventually I will do the same for Camoens as well, and also for a few others. I actually started doing it now, but I noticed it would get too long, so I'm saving it for later.



> It may indeed come down to that after all. This would leave the question of what artists are supposed to do AFTER their class has risen. (Find a new rising class to attach themselves to, I suppose.)


I think this is one thing that might happen. Martial, for instance, defended the rights of slaves and plebeians in his writings, which is one of the things, besides the fact that he was formally original and fundamental to the consolidation of the epigram as a genre, that really attracted me to him when I started studying Latin. Hugo Shelley, Byron and Tolstoy are probably closer and more representative examples to us. Hugo came from a military family, while all the others came from the nobility, but they all defended the rights of the people from a point on. There may be other possibilities as well, however. Even if we lived in a communist utopia, as long as there were problems for human society, there probably would be new motivations for thought and art. Even if there were no significant problems, which is unlikely, maybe even then there could be something for artists to feel motivated about and renew their style (perhaps changes in society and technology, for instance). For that, however, someone would have to care about art and prioritize it. As long as there are enough people willing to invest a significant part of their lives towards improving their art, I tend to believe there may always be new ground for innovation.



> Your assessment agrees with my own, though on the subject of politics I should say, in her defense, that she's not as perhaps not _as_ conservative as she sometimes gives the impression of being (she's announced the intention of voting for Democratic and Green candidates, never Republican as far as I know, and opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, when many more conventionally liberal people supported it).


I did not know that about her. Thank you! In this case, her social reputation may be a more extreme example of Bloom's. He sometimes expresses conservative views, but, if I remember correctly, he opposed Bush and the Iraq war as well. He also opposes more traditionalist views quite frequently.



> This is an interesting idea: as if, somehow or other, a situation arose in the 20th century where only highly authoritarian societies were capable of creating a really strong demand for high art, but by their nature, those authoritarian societies practiced a degree of censorship that was, more or less, just as much an impediment to creativity as the scramble for sponsorship in the liberal capitalist world.
> 
> Communism and fascism were extreme enough that I think they could indeed explain a decline in the arts where they were in power, but I can't see McCarthyism as any MORE extreme than, for example, the repression of Catholics in England or the expulsion of Protestants from France, which don't seem to have much weakened the artistic cultures of those countries in the centuries that followed. And let's face it, it's not like American high art was all that great immediately BEFORE McCarthyism either. We had Wallace Stevens, granted, but then, artists as politically conservative as he was would have been untouched by McCarthyism in any case.


Thank you! I think that's a good point, and now I tend to agree with you. American literature was already in decline by that time, so McCarthyism could not explain it, and it was not probably all that bad when compared to other periods of European history. It was probably more damaging in regions like Latin America, where the US decided to adopt military intervention and/or to support right-wing dictatorships aligned with their block. Even so, our dictatorships from the period did not stop the Boom, although they probably took their toll. Brazilian literature by that time was already entering in decline as well, however. Our last writers I would consider calling great reached their peak during the 40's or 50's. I believe some were demoralized by the events from the Cold War, but most were already past their peak, old or about to die. Most of the authors actually persecuted by the regime I actually disliked (though, of course, I would not want them to be persecuted anyway).

Regarding the US, I think the first great period of intellectual movement with expression in literature was around the time of independence, having being consolidated in the first half of the 19th century. Ben Franklin's literary writings are not all that original when compared to, say, Twain, but I think his efforts in assimilating and adapting philosophy and satirical style of the Enlightenment were probably important first steps.



> Thank you!
> 
> I think I want to revise what I said there. I was too eager for an excuse to blame the elite for elitism. I now think I should have stuck closer to Paglia: Freedom quickly becomes unbearable, and so the artist is more or less forced to invent new, even more rigorous restrictions.
> 
> So now I would say: the self-imposed restrictions of Debussy and Stravinsky produced a lesser art than Wagner's: but by the 1890s, there was no longer any question of the world producing more Wagners. Rather, the question was whether it would ever produce anything other than late Romantics such as César Franck and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (no disparagement intended of either composer, but I think most people will agree that Debussy and Stravinsky somewhat surpassed them).


This interpretation really sticks with me! I especially like how you stated it in the colored passage. There may be other causes as well, but I think this may be a major variable. I'm not that knowledgeable about the topic, but from my limited experience, I also have the impression that most neo-romantic composers, both today and in the past century, tend to sound like the composers from that age as well. If that's right, perhaps it's so partially because we do not know yet know how to effectively renew pre-modern ideas in a way that sounds original, and then we eventually tend to be derivative of the last romantic period that preceded modernism. Perhaps Stravinsky is an exception, and, indeed, his Neoclassical period, while trying to mimic earlier music, was also preoccupied in actively responding to Late Romanticism as well. Even so, it was probably less successful than his modernist works, and probably (I think) less representative of later music than Schönberg and, later, Stockhausen and La Monte Young. I do see elements of it in Riley, however, and your recent post in the ideas&discoveries thread suggests Reich may have been directly influenced by it as well.


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## NishmatHaChalil (Apr 17, 2017)

> I wonder, though: Chaucer is a great poet, but would his own greatness have been enough to make us care about him today? Or has the advent of Shakespeare made earlier English-language literature look more important than it otherwise would?
> 
> Conversely, I also wonder if we're still too close to, for example, Victor Hugo and Matisse to have the courage to say that the French art of the 19th century _surpassed_ the art of the Grand Siècle.


Regarding Chaucer, that's a difficult question! I guess my answer would depend on many variables. Without Shakespeare, I'm not all that sure about how later literature would look like. For the sake of perspective, then, I will start by imagining that English literature did not exist at all. If English literature did not exist and Chaucer were an Italian poet, would I still hold him in the same esteem? If so, I do think so, at least to some extent. His short poems are mostly poetic adaptations of medieval and early Renaissance pieces, and it would not be a surprise if they looked somewhat derivative when removed from their original context in the birth of English literature. But then, the same might be true of early Pushkin. Goethe is another matter, I think, but he was at the very center of early Romanticism, much of which he either invented himself or first expressed in literary form, while Chaucer, like Pushkin, was working on the margins of the cultural world of his time. In political terms, England and Russia were very important and powerful margins, but the center of Romanticism and the Renaissance were still far away. Even so, I think he sometimes hits at something special in them. His rough and popular humor was not all that common in the Trecento, and his characterization of Pandarus in T&C, for instance, is both funny and of great dramatic interest. Without Shakespeare, however, who explored this interest as much as he could, I'm not sure if such subtle triumphs in otherwise derivative works would look all that interesting. Spenser, Marlowe and Johnson were also Chaucer's heirs, though, so perhaps they would to some extent. Even so, the lyric works of Petrarch and Dante were more obvious in their originality.

I believe Canterbury Tales would be taken differently, though. Its derivative traits would look more obvious to Boccaccio's native readers, but no one in Italy was able to express in poetry with the same degree of success that kind of materialistic, colorful characterization of early urban life that was so innovative in Boccaccio's stories, not even Boccaccio himself in his narrative poems. Even in comparison to him, I think Chaucer would probably look rough and bawdy, perhaps more characteristic of the Middle Ages, and richer in popular undertones. However, he went much further in his ambitions than any Christian poet from the Middle Ages. Since Dante, and at least until Ariosto, I'm not sure if there was a more ambitious poetic program in all of European literature. His greatest contributions were probably his humble and benign poetic persona, his sweet, colorful depiction of community life in the Late Middle Ages and his exploration of the dramatic potential of stories told in narrative poetry by the characters themselves. At the time, the one to better exemplify this last trait was Dante, but Chaucer's work, in comparison, was much closer to Boccaccio's, and his formalization of it in poetic language was extremely eloquent, successfully marrying his Catholic sensibility with the mundane universe of the poem. Dante was better, in my opinion, in his treatment of himself, Beatrice and Virgil, but Chaucer's characters are so different that I don't even think it matters. His originality and ambitious scope would probably be apparent, despite similarities to Boccaccio, and he would probably be considered as his major successor, and probably the chief poetic precursor of Pulci, Poliziano and, later, Ariosto and Ruzzante. They were all influenced by Boccaccio rather than Chaucer, but then, had Chaucer been born in Italy, perhaps they would be somewhat different as well.

Regarding 19th century France, I think you may be right! I mean, it's obvious how the early US, for instance, was indebted to the Grand siècle, but Whitman, for instance, was virtually Hugo's disciple in English language poetry, while Moby Dick was also indebted to his style and Henry James, unsurprisingly, to French realism. I'm not entirely sure if Baudelaire is better than Racine or Molière, although perhaps he is, but I would be entirely happy in ranking Hugo higher than both. I also think that it was in the 19th century that France, unambiguously became the center of European literature, displacing England's previous position. After Byron, most of the most influential romantic writers, including the decadents, were French. Browning, for instance, was certainly relevant, just like Tennyson, but I don't think they come even close to Baudelaire, Rimbaud or Mallarmé. England was still strong in the novel tradition at the time, but, Dickens notwithstanding, I think France was even more so. Early modernism was basically French as well, even if Joyce may have become the major writer of the movement.



> Leaving aside the question of quality, what you call the cynicism of Postmodernism - I would maybe say, instead, the resignation - seems to me, at least in the United States and western Europe, often involve a _reaction_ by the artists against their own countries' _left_: against the "passionate intensity" of the New Left radicals (to use a phrase coined by a centrist of an earlier generation), and against the failure of the social democratic regimes to continue to provide an increase in prosperity at the same rate as previously (neoliberalism of course "solved" the last problem by providing a great increase in prosperity for a relatively few people, at the expense of everybody else).


That's an interesting interpretation, and I believe there is a lot of truth to it. Are you referring to Yeats? I like to compare his apocalyptical pessimism in The Second Coming with Pessoa's messianic call for the readers' participation in the Message. Pessoa was already the best decadent poet in the Portuguese language, but it was in his attempt to start a new Portuguese Renaissance after rejecting Decadence that I think he reached his most sublime efforts. He may have failed in changing society through poetry, but anyone would probably have failed in his place, and the greatest works he has left are probably among the very best in the language, sometimes even surpassing Camoens himself. When so much of modernism sounds like the end of the world, even if sometimes eloquently, at the end of his life Pessoa sounded like something else entirely, closer to Hugo and Blake than to Baudelaire or Mallarmé, and that's in part why he is my favorite modernist author. And, ok, his successors were not a new Renaissance, but they may have been better than Portuguese romanticism. There's probably a reason why Portugal sees Sophia Andresen like Bloom sees Shelley, or why Saramago and Helder in old age, until their very deaths now in the 2010's, still seemed to hold some belief in the unfaltering power of literature, and I cannot help but imagine that Pessoa may have been a fundamental part of it.

If Latin American postmodern literature was also so good, I think it may have been in part thanks to Neruda's legacy, he himself a heir of the Condorists, the Latin American Romantic poets who made Hugo their main model. I mean, he's probably less of a great poet than Pessoa, but he's also representative of a kind of poetry based on a sense of action and inspiration. Unlike Pessoa, he was also officially affiliated with the left. Brazilian modernism was also in general closer to the left, which may explain why Hugo's memory is so strong in our poetry. Although he was not from the left himself, Carpeaux said some interesting things about the influence of Hugo in Latin America. I will look for the relevant passage later and translate it for you!



> As an aspiring historian, I'm keenly interested in ideas on this subject, maybe more than in anything else. I want to know where we're going next!!! (On the other hand, I'm also somewhat afraid of finding out, because if we DO find our way out of Postmodernism, then it will be time to start speculating about what will eventually replace US.)


Thank you for your interest! I will share many of my ideas on future directions in art with you later =] To be fair, I'm not sure I know where we are going either. I probably have a clearer idea of where I want to go, though even that I'm still figuring out. If I'm successful, I may become influential, but I doubt my success would be enough to create a new great age in Portuguese letters, or even art in general in the Lusophone world, but I may be wrong. Either way, I don't think we will be replacing the US, even in the best case scenario. Latin America kind of did become the most influential scene in late 20th century literature, but even so, that's probably because we had a delayed development rather than because we are growing to become World powers, which I don't think we are. In translation and criticism, the US is still at the top, and it also seems to me to be at the top of both popular and classical music in terms of original production. China and India have the numbers to surpass the US in all areas in the future, but then, they are not nation peoples, but rather empires comprehending many different peoples allied under one government. I think it's going to take some time, though, and the West is not necessarily going to fall because of that, but we are probably going to change. But, to be fair, they have changed because of the West as well. In any case, as a Western social democrat born in the age of globalization, I'm more a child of the US than I am of any other World power. Taking all current states into account, I think Sweden tends to be the most representative of my views and positions, though probably not of my art.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Wow, nice start- this has the potential to be the most long winded thread of all time..........


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## NishmatHaChalil (Apr 17, 2017)

So, here are Leopardi's poems in the original, followed by a site with their translations:
http://www.leopardi.it/canti.php
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Italian/Leopardi.htm

I also wrote for you a poetic translation of "A se stesso" earlier today, one of his most famous short poems:

To Himself

From now you'll rest forever,
My weary heart. For dead is that last error,
Which I had thought eternal. Dead. Well grasp
That for our dear illusions,
No, not our hope; our very will is past.
Lay down forever. Far
Enough you have throbbed. There is nothing worth
Your throbs, nor of our sighs the Earth is worthy.
All bitterness and tedium
Is life, and nothing else; all mud the world.
Calm down from now. Despair
But one last time. Our race from Fate was granted
Death, and death only. You as well, scorn now
Nature, that brutal power
Which, secretly, rules to our common harm,
And the old, boundless vanity of all.

In general, Italian Romanticism tends towards pessimism, elegy and decadence. There are some exceptions, but probably none so great as Hugo. Perhaps that's because Italy had the earliest cultural peak in Europe, and literature started to decline after the Cinquecento.


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## NishmatHaChalil (Apr 17, 2017)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Wow, nice start- this has the potential to be the most long winded thread of all time..........


Perhaps! And the fault is with me. Look on the bright side, though. This conversation is moved by interest, not the bitterness prevailing in so many other threads.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Wow, nice start- this has the potential to be the most long winded thread of all time..........


Nice of you to see what is actually taking place on the main forums after being cooped up in the STI for so long.

Kind of makes your head explode?

You should have started off with something a bit less taxing like "Wagner and Hitler" or "What is Atonalism?"...to get your feet wet first.

Glad you came out of that particular STI closet.

A whole new world awaits!!!!!


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

NishmatHaChalil said:


> Perhaps! And the fault is with me. Look on the bright side, though. This conversation is moved by interest, not the bitterness prevailing in so many other threads.


That's a good point about the collegial spirit of this thread, and I am all in favor of intellectually stimulating threads with detailed posts. I must confess, however, that I'm a bit confused about the topic of this thread...is it really about classical music being doomed? It seems to be moving in a different direction which involves poetry and literature. If you're interested in including more participants, it might be helpful if you could post a brief description of the aims and scope of this spin-off thread.


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## NishmatHaChalil (Apr 17, 2017)

Bettina said:


> That's a good point about the collegial spirit of this thread, and I am all in favor of intellectually stimulating threads with detailed posts. I must confess, however, that I'm a bit confused about the topic of this thread...is it really about classical music being doomed? It seems to be moving in a different direction which involves poetry and literature. If you're interested in including more participants, it might be helpful if you could post a brief description of the aims and scope of this spin-off thread.


Thank you for the feedback! Oh, yes, it's certainly not about classical music been doomed. That was the other thread, which was not started by either of us, and its thesis did not actually reflect accurately neither of our views. MM likes current music, but he believes that, in the long term, it _may_ be doomed, in the sense that innovation may stop happening. I like it as well, and I think that's a possibility, but I prefer to bet on new ideas emerging in the future. Neither of us is sympathetic to the thesis that only past music is good, although I at least am not that bothered by the fact that there are many that feel that way. That's my parents' view, so I have to live with it, and at least I have enough friends that appreciate new music to chat with.

This thread specifically is about art history and literature. I was intending to open a new thread about the topic, but MM created this one first in order to give his response to my posts. I'm probably going to open the other one now and move the discussion there, so as to avoid misunderstandings. If anyone else would be interested in participating, feel free to jump in! My posts this week may have been scary, but I'm working to abridge them. Also, they only were this long to begin with because I had many things to say before joining talkclassical, considering my previous conversations with MM were cut off after the end of IMDB.


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## NishmatHaChalil (Apr 17, 2017)

I just submitted it. Once it's approved by the moderation, I will link it here.



NishmatHaChalil said:


> In general, Italian Romanticism tends towards pessimism, elegy and decadence. There are some exceptions, but probably none so great as Hugo. Perhaps that's because Italy had the earliest cultural peak in Europe, and literature started to decline after the Cinquecento.


That's probably true as far as poetry goes, but, in retrospect, Italian Romantic Opera *is* a great exception! It can be sad and tragic, but it is also quite often popular, funny and sweet. Besides, it's one of the precursors of modern popular music.


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## NishmatHaChalil (Apr 17, 2017)

Here it is: http://www.talkclassical.com/49018-literature-art-history-corner.html#post1236907


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

NishmatHaChalil said:


> Here it is: http://www.talkclassical.com/49018-literature-art-history-corner.html#post1236907


Awwwah, I was hoping for Atonal Hip Hop or something


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Awwwah, I was hoping for Atonal Hip Hop or something


Start one of your own, after the moving thing of course.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Pugg said:


> Start one of your own, after the moving thing of course.


Don't temp me I have people to do that with on a music collaboration site...................


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

NishmatHaChalil said:


> Thank you for the feedback! Oh, yes, it's certainly not about classical music been doomed. That was the other thread, which was not started by either of us, and its thesis did not actually reflect accurately neither of our views. MM likes current music, but he believes that, in the long term, it _may_ be doomed, in the sense that *innovation may stop happening*. I like it as well, and I think that's a possibility, but I prefer to bet on new ideas emerging in the future. Neither of us is sympathetic to the thesis that only past music is good, although I at least am not that bothered by the fact that there are many that feel that way.


I'll reply to your replies to me in the new thread (soon!), but for now a quick note on this note: I entirely agree with all this, except maybe the part I've bold faced, depending on how literally it's meant, since I don't think innovation ever _entirely_ stops happening. That would itself be a kind of _achievement_, to outright _stop_ human creativity. Rather, when I say "doomed," I'm talking about creativity declining to a level where our products may even seem quite impressive to us in the short term, but history won't find any reason to pay much attention to us in the long term.

And yes, I'm not saying we ARE doomed, I just want people to admit the possibility. Basically I find complacency almost physically intolerable, whether optimistic - "everything's as good as ever and always will be" - or pessimistic - "there is no creativity in our brave new world and that's okay."


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## NishmatHaChalil (Apr 17, 2017)

Magnum Miserium said:


> I'll reply to your replies to me in the new thread (soon!), but for now a quick note on this note: I entirely agree with all this, except maybe the part I've bold faced, depending on how literally it's meant, since I don't think innovation ever _entirely_ stops happening. That would itself be a kind of _achievement_, to outright _stop_ human creativity. Rather, when I say "doomed," I'm talking about creativity declining to a level where our products may even seem quite impressive to us in the short term, but history won't find any reason to pay much attention to us in the long term.
> 
> And yes, I'm not saying we ARE doomed, I just want people to admit the possibility. Basically I find complacency almost physically intolerable, whether optimistic - "everything's as good as ever and always will be" - or pessimistic - "there is no creativity in our brave new world and that's okay."


I look forward to your response, and I'm sorry for the length of my previous posts. They could have been far more summarized, especially my comments on Chaucer, but my views were not clear enough then for me to present them more concisely. Thank you too for clarifying your views! And sorry, I did not mean to really speak for you, and I apologize for misrepresenting your thoughts. I should have made explicit that that was only my impression at that moment, but I was sleepy when I wrote that, so it unfortunately did not come to me at the time. My main objective with that post was only combating the misunderstanding that this thread's goal was merely spreading controversy for its own sake.

Regarding the views and attitudes you describe, I think I actually agree with everything! I believe we should admit that possibility too, and, just like you, I hold that view because I think neglecting that may lead us to complacency, which, in my eyes, is actually the attitude that makes that outcome the most likely. In art, I think many of my main ideas are generally related to fighting complacency and finding new ways of showing another perspective. I'm not sure there are any differences in our views, but if there are, I think they might be related to my particular context as a writer and as a person from a marginal civilization.


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## NishmatHaChalil (Apr 17, 2017)

Magnum Miserium said:


> I entirely agree with all this, except maybe the part I've bold faced, depending on how literally it's meant, since I don't think innovation ever _entirely_ stops happening.





NishmatHaChalil said:


> I look forward to your response, and I'm sorry for the length of my previous posts. They could have been far more summarized, especially my comments on Chaucer, but my views were not clear enough then for me to present them more concisely. Thank you too for clarifying your views! And sorry, I did not mean to really speak for you, and I apologize for misrepresenting your thoughts. I should have made explicit that that was only my impression at that moment, but I was sleepy when I wrote that, so it unfortunately did not come to me at the time. My main objective with that post was only combating the misunderstanding that this thread's goal was merely spreading controversy for its own sake.


I already apologized in the post above, but, just for clarification, when I wrote that, I did not intend it to be taken literally. What I had in mind was your classification from last year, according to which minor innovation, or innovation expressed in inadequate fashion, could more aptly be described as distortion. Since that was a personal definition, though, by phrasing it that way, I realize I was opening my post to misreading. Like a mentioned, I was sleepy and did not give think it through, so please overlook it. Now, what counts as minor or major is a subjective line in itself, but, for me, at the very least, all late twentieth century American literature would probably count as minor. I like Anne Carson and McCarthy, but they are also included, just as all 21th century American authors I have read. So, at least in this strict sense, they would count as distortion, or as innovation that may not be seen as important by later generations.

Under this light, when I said at first that I'm betting on new ideas appearing in the future, what I meant to say was that I bet on revival, on new authors being able to equal and surpass those their civilizations consider the most important. That's related in part to what I said here:



NishmatHaChalil said:


> I'm not sure there are any differences in our views, but if there are, I think they might be related to my particular context as a writer and as a person from a marginal civilization.


What I meant in the quote was that, although we both accept the possibility of decline and oppose complacency, as a writer, my ultimate success depends on my ability of creating a moment of revival, at least in my own work. In this sense, optimism (here meaning "I can revive our tradition and I intend to") is an urgent personal necessity, rather than a historical perspective. Under that context, my bet is more a bet in myself and, less conclusively, in my successors, than a real prediction about the future. I did not really mean to paint your views as fatalistic and mine as more accepting, but I realize it's probably how it sounded, and I apologize. I do have the impression that you slightly tend towards pessimism (meaning revival is unlikely or very distant), in part thanks to the realization that Western hegemony may be coming to an end, and, in general, I actually tend to agree with your view. Brazil's best periods in literature were not actually our periods of greatest power, but, even here, we were deeply affected by Romanticism and modern nationalism, both movements led by industrialization and bourgeois revolutions. Art generally thrives with power and prosperity, or, at least, with great ideas that are able to move a cultural elite, and these may be less likely to emerge in coming centuries. Likewise, we might suffer a stronger influence from Indian and Chinese powers in the future.

I think, in this sense, our main preoccupations may be the same: what is coming next, and how it's going to impact the culture, life, prosperity and, perhaps, the very survival of our peoples. Since you are a citizen of the US, though, the current greatest power in the world, I believe Western decline for you may also symbolize the decline of American global influence, and that may represent in part a decline of your own national people, in part a transition towards a weaker state under the influence of stronger powers. In comparison, as a Brazilian, my preoccupation is more in the guess that a non-Western world empire may be even less cooperative with and more imperialist over our society, and that we may be used in far more harmful ways in the future. Unlike Portugal, we were never a world power, we are probably not going to be, and our history has always orbited around the negotiation with foreign masters. Regarding risks of invasion, in terms of power, the US has a greater ability to defend itself, though there are more factions actually willing to attack it. Brazil, meanwhile, is weak, which is usually not a good thing, but, diplomatically, it tends towards neutrality. Of course, we have natural resources, especially water, but we are not the most attractive reserve of fossil fuels out there, even with our recent discoveries on that area. Personally, I find the possibility of linguistic and cultural extinction, for both our peoples, unlikely, but American decline in power is very likely and invasion and settlement are possibilities, though I believe there are many reasons for we to believe that resettlement is less probable now than it ever was before for other peoples. Due to these differences, there may exist some subtle differences between our views.

In the end, however, if there is any significant difference, and I'm not sure there is, it may be in the fact that, as a writer, I'm not very positive about my international prospects. Even Goethe and Hugo are not all that read by people who don't know their languages, and I'm not sure I can ever be as great as Dante, Shakespeare or Cervantes. Well, I'm probably going to give it my best shot, but I'm completely aware that my chances are slim. I have been studying these authors and reflecting on what tends to lead to foreign success, and these ideas are probably going to impact my future works, provided I I'm able to remain alive and literarily active for long enough. Since Brazil is also already marginal, perhaps I'm slightly less pessimistic in the sense that there is less for us to lose. Thanks to this discussion, I have also been thinking on how the West may respond to a possible decline against Asian powers. Perhaps different states are going to get more linked under confederations and blocks in order to defend their common interests, like present EU Europe. In terms of possible ideas that may lead towards moments of revival, I can think of new reforms or revolutions aimed at fighting inequality. Social inequality is a problem in most rich nations, including especially the US, Mexico, Brazil, and China and India even more so. In terms of development, the US and other Western nations with earlier industrializations have a more propitious infrastructure for successfully implementing reforms of this kind, so that's a great possibility for Western powers to achieve new intellectual revivals and ideological influence in future gobal history. As a social democrat, rather than betting on it, I'm wishing it's going to happen in major Western nations sometime. I'm going to fight for it, but, thanks to the recent historical developments in which you specialize, a part of me is pessimistic about the Left's prospects of victory in most nations in the future. The disappointment you mentioned, expressed by the upper classes regarding a reduction of their own prosperity at the expense of lower social strata seems to be becoming a dominant trend in current Latin America as well. In Brazil, public opinion has been dominated by a few powerful high bourgeois families, but both the middle classes and the small bourgeoisie, from which I come from, have also to gain from a compromise with the center or the neoliberal right. The fact that both factions are now allying with the religious far-right is far from reassuring. Meanwhile, it's the lower classes and the social minorities who are going to be crushed. I shudder at the thought of our current system of social inclusion in public education, already failed in itself, being impacted by more reactionary measures in the coming era. While that's either a risk or a reality, I think it's the time for assuming, like Hugo in the aftermath of the Spring of Nations' failure, an oppositional stance. Beyond that long poem, which I'm still going to rework extensively in the near future, I have also written several more solid shorter pieces in response to recent years. I'm going to select some of them and share them with you during next semester.

I know my posts may have been too long, but please don't feel the need to respond to this one as well. I just thought I should clarify my views, given the fact that I did not express them before in a satisfactory fashion. I'm sorry, but, since English is my second language and, at the moment, I have very little native practice, my ability to express myself through it is sometimes inadequate, but please overlook it =]. I will be looking forward to your response to my other posts in the new thread, once you have the time. Even there, however, please don't feel the need to be comprehensive. I made a lot of remarks about the Latin American context, given the fact that it's now very important for me and for my work, but I was not really expecting you to comment on all of it. I'm aware you are less knowledgeable about us than you are about the US and Europe, and that's perfectly fine. The very reason I'm writing a lot about it is the fact that it's a closer and more urgent universe for a Latin American young writer and student to approach, so I probably have more to talk about it at the moment.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

I didn't think you misrepresented me. In a better world, without end-of-history enthusiasts, the point I tried to clarify would be so obvious that clarification would be superfluous.

And please don't feel any need to apologize to ME for the length of your posts. I love reading them & you're the one who has to write them. I want to respond to much of the above, particularly with regard to how I think my particular national background influences my perspective (I grew up in America, but my mother is Austrian, I spoke German before I spoke English, and through adolescence there were times when I felt myself to be more Austrian than American, or at least I said I did; the point being, I'm in the position of viewing decline both as someone from the declining dominant power & to a lesser extent as someone from a humiliated former power - by which I mean less Austria than Europe in general). Okay, that was a long parenthetical. Alright, let's see if I can just get through everything right now. I think you're almost certainly entirely correct about all of this: _"I do have the impression that you slightly tend towards pessimism (meaning revival is unlikely or very distant), in part thanks to the realization that Western hegemony may be coming to an end... Since you are a citizen of the US, though, the current greatest power in the world, I believe Western decline for you may also symbolize the decline of American global influence, and that may represent in part a decline of your own national people, in part a transition towards a weaker state under the influence of stronger powers."_

To some extent what makes me angry isn't even the prospect of decline, per se, but (to reiterate from my last rant) what I see as the complacency of many of the people involved. But there's also an undeniable element of maudlin self-pity.

Side note: It's honestly comforting to be told that, at this point, somebody still thinks that some other empire could be worse than us. Personally I'm not sure if, for example, Chinese predominance would be worse or better for the world in general than American predominance - maybe more authoritarian, but also maybe less racist. Better than either, of course, would be a world of equal nations and/or coalitions with nobody predominant, but, well, if wishes were horses, etc.

Okay, now to what this reply was SUPPOSED to be about -

I've thought to myself before about how writers whose first language doesn't happen to be the language of a major power face an unfair (well obviously it's unfair) disadvantage - and ended up somewhat reassuring myself with the thought of Ibsen, who wrote in an extremely peripheral language with basically no international presence before him, and still managed to become the most influential dramatist since Schiller (or since Racine?) (or since Calderon?) (or since Shakespeare?). (Oh, and speaking of theater, there's a footnote to the subject of decline: even if we concede that Italian literature was at its summit in the 1300s-1500s - though I haven't read Manzoni's "The Betrothed," and if that's as good as some people say it is, then maybe the whole idea of Italian artistic decline has to be called seriously into question; I mean, I already suspect Verdi is a greater composer than Palestrina or Monteverdi; anyway, back to the point - I guess Pirandello has to be considered both the greatest Italian dramatist ever and the most influential dramatist since Chekhov - or since Ibsen?) Granted that theater isn't exactly poetry, though "Brand" and "Peer Gynt" are in verse... but while writing this, I thought of the "Kalevala," another work that came out of absolutely nowhere, linguistically speaking, and is now an international classic. Don't know if any of that is at all reassuring.


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