# The shifting sands of ideology in music...



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Looking at the history of music, there are obviously these broad shifts. I'm especially talking of more extreme shifts. Often they occur as a result of things going on outside the music world - eg. politics, economics, other areas of the arts & also developments in areas like philosophy or science, etc.

I thought I'd do a thread talking about some of these shifts. Recently I came across a manifesto in 20th century music that I had not known about before. It was published in Italy in 1932 and called the _Italian Manifesto against Cerebral Music_. This was a decidedly anti-Modernist ideology, and it was signed by Respighi as well as Pizzetti, Zandonai and Pick-Mangiagalli (the last three unknown to me). More info on that at this source at googlebooks.

This contrasts strongly with an earlier and famous Italian manifesto, that of the Futurist movement which included visual artists, poets and musicians. It was written in 1909 and it was in support of a radically Modernist ideology. Composers who where part of this movement included Russolo, who pioneered a precursor to the _Noise music_ genre of today. Here is the manifesto in English translation and here is some info on it at wikipedia.

Why I put these as examples to open this discussion of contrasting ideologies is that both these 'movements' where embraced by the Italian Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini who came to power after World War I. Initially he supported a kind of Modernist ideology of 'progress' in the arts, but as his reign went on he became more conservative. So at first he supported the Futurist group, and later he supported the 'anti-Cerebral' group. Its also pertinent to add that WWI was a big blow to Futurism, in terms of it bringing home the dark side of technological progress (eg. mechanisation of war with previously unheard of death toll) and one of the leading lights of the movement died on the battlefield (the painter Umberto Boccioni).

So what I'm saying is that this is indicative of these kind of ideologies, particularly those putting various composers or artists under one banner. As the saying goes, a week is a long time in politics. As times change, so too do the fortunes of various ideologies. Here one minute, gone the next.

*So I'm asking for a discussion of these types of changes in ideology across the history of music. *Especially in relation to politics and histories of their time, how they where seen then and how they are seen now. One potentially controversial opinion I draw from this is that all ideologies seem to have a use-by date. & all have aspects that are useful in the long run, and other aspects that do not make sense when divorced from the era which they came from. They're stuck in a timewarp, reading them is like digging up a time capsule from some other period.


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## Ondine (Aug 24, 2012)

It is curious that the emergence of the trend of splitting the notes in atonal, microtonal, serial, minimal and other similar 'isms' coincided with the dawn of Physics splitting the atom.


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## Guest (Dec 3, 2012)

Here are some other curious things:

1) The use of the word "splitting," as if that were enough to demonstrate a conclusion.

2) The complete indifference to history. "Atom splitting" dates from 1938. Atonality (what Schoenberg called pantonality) dates from 1908. Microtonality dates from ancient Greece. (In western "classical" music from 1558. Halévy's _Prométhée enchaîné_ is from 1849.) Serialism dates from the 1920s. The term "minimalism" was first applied to music in 1970, retrofitted to the so-called downtown school of New York of the 60s.

3) And even if any of the various things in Ondine's list had actually coincided in time, there would still be some work to do to demonstrate any coinciding in philosophy or ideology.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Ideologies are just ideas, and aren't going to permanently affect music, because _ideologies are not essential or inherent qualities of music,_ and don't deal substantively with _musical ideas._ So I reject the "_idea_ of modernism" as espoused by the Futurists, who had a naive faith in technology for its own sake.

The _real_ change in music, and the move into modernism, came when composers began the gradual discarding of traditional key-based tonality, and began using the _chromatic scale_ as the basis for ideas.

As far as the analogy with physics, yes, I see how with modernism a new "relativity" began to emerge in music, in which the tonal "king root" lost power, and a new "chromatic democracy" began. (See my blog _Tonality and Serial Thought: Two Different Universes_)


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## Ondine (Aug 24, 2012)

some guy said:


> 3) And even if any of the various things in Ondine's list had actually coincided in time, there would still be some work to do to demonstrate any coinciding in philosophy or ideology.


Yes, that is why I am curious about the coincidence. The _zeitgeist_ started with Plank at the end of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th when Schoenberg started with his a-tonal crusade.

Coincidence? I don't know.


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## Ondine (Aug 24, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> Ideologies are just ideas, and aren't going to permanently affect music, because _ideologies are not essential or inherent qualities of music,_ and don't deal substantively with _musical ideas._ So I reject the "_idea_ of modernism" as espoused by the Futurists, who had a naive faith in technology for its own sake.
> 
> The _real_ change in music, and the move into modernism, came when composers began the gradual discarding of traditional key-based tonality, and began using the _chromatic scale_ as the basis for ideas.
> 
> As far as the analogy with physics, yes, I see how with modernism a new "relativity" began to emerge in music, in which the tonal "king root" lost power, and a new "chromatic democracy" began. (See my blog _Tonality and Serial Thought: Two Different Universes_)


Yes.

There is something very interesting about the consequences of having _freed_ music from the tonal constraints. And I am not bringing here things about 'good' v.s 'bad'. Just a genuine interest aside from preferences.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

There are people who love this sort of stuff. Most musicians have no truck with it. To be as simplistic as my tiny intellectual capacity sees it, words about music and music itself are two entirely different things. All the talk about an ideology of music is nearly impossible to make manifest in an actual bunch of notes, unless those notes accompany a text.

I can imagine a non musician with an interest in politics and history might actually think that what is written about those very temporary political manifestos (manifesti?) has a real relationship to music. But the result of or after these little political-ideological hiccups? Zip-nada.

The only 'outside force' I can think of which clearly shifted a perspective on a particular aesthetic of music was the European vogue for classicism, which rapidly swept through all of Europe and Scandinavia and as readily took hold: it was a direct reaction after the news spread about the unearthing of Pompeii: then in arts, letters, home decor and fashion, 'classicism' became all the rage.

There have been many 'doctrines,' those aesthetic and coming from the intellectual and art community, not the political-ideology quarters, the baroque era "Doctrine of the affections (or 'effects') being just one of them in the course of music history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_the_affections

But hanging politics on a bunch of notes -- about as indirect, and 'unpinnable' as it gets. And I'm certain there are oceans written about it, almost none of it by actual musicians or composers, would be my guess 

I suppose what I more than want to hint at is the subject has little, if nearly nothing, to actually do with music: in the upper level schools where people are majoring in music, nothing like is ever mentioned or covered in either the general required music history or other music classes. If there had been a scintilla of an effect upon music of any importance, you can bet the topic would have been included.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> Ideologies are just ideas, and aren't going to permanently affect music, because _ideologies are not essential or inherent qualities of music,_ and don't deal substantively with _musical ideas._ So I reject the "_idea_ of modernism" as espoused by the Futurists, who had a naive faith in technology for its own sake.
> 
> The _real_ change in music, and the move into modernism, came when composers began the gradual discarding of traditional key-based tonality, and began using the _chromatic scale_ as the basis for ideas.
> 
> As far as the analogy with physics, yes, I see how with modernism a new "relativity" began to emerge in music, in which the tonal "king root" lost power, and a new "chromatic democracy" began. (See my blog _Tonality and Serial Thought: Two Different Universes_)


In that vein, the ideologies that were associated with a given movement in art become decreasingly relevant as time passes. Putting aside the use of Wagner's music for German nationalism, the great divide between the "Neudeutsch" school and the Brahms/Hanslick faction has disappeared nearly entirely in the modern consciousness. The rift between the supporters of Ravel and those of Debussy barely registers. The modern classical music listener doesn't feel the need to choose between the high Baroque of JS Bach or the Galant style taken up by his progeny, he/she can enjoy both.

Likewise, the gap between supporters of Neoclassical music and early 20th century Romanticism is far smaller than it was back in the 1950s, when Henry Pleasants published _The Agony of Modern Music_, and the gap between Neoclassicism and the 12-tone works of the 2nd Viennese School is looked back upon by many as not as wide as it had been perceived at the time. None of the ideologies and factionalism that grew up around these composers and their works have survived, but the music has.


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

PetrB said:


> I can imagine a non musician with an interest in politics and history might actually think that what is written about those very temporary political manifestos (manifesti?) has a real relationship to music. *But the result of or after these little political-ideological hiccups? Zip-nada. *


Your essential point, I agree with. Music - great music - that stands through the times can be appreciated on its own quality, whatever the perceived ideology, real or not, has zip relationship to the music in the long run. Who really cares, as far as the music is concerned. People /policiticans/whatever might use the music for their iedology but in the long run, it has nothing to do with the music.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> In that vein, the ideologies that were associated with a given movement in art become decreasingly relevant as time passes. Putting aside the use of Wagner's music for German nationalism, the great divide between the "Neudeutsch" school and the Brahms/Hanslick faction has disappeared nearly entirely in the modern consciousness. The rift between the supporters of Ravel and those of Debussy barely registers. The modern classical music listener doesn't feel the need to choose between the high Baroque of JS Bach or the Galant style taken up by his progeny, he/she can enjoy both.
> 
> Likewise, the gap between supporters of Neoclassical music and early 20th century Romanticism is far smaller than it was back in the 1950s, when Henry Pleasants published _The Agony of Modern Music_, and the gap between Neoclassicism and the 12-tone works of the 2nd Viennese School is looked back upon by many as not as wide as it had been perceived at the time. None of the ideologies and factionalism that grew up around these composers and their works have survived, but the music has.


I agree to an extent, and this frees us up to see these "ideologies" for what they are. As Sid James pointed out in his opening,



Sid James said:


> ...As times change, so too do the fortunes of various ideologies. Here one minute, gone the next.... all ideologies seem to have a use-by date. & all have aspects that are useful in the long run, and other aspects that do not make sense when divorced from the era which they came from. They're stuck in a timewarp, reading them is like digging up a time capsule from some other period.


So these ideologies are reactions to change, an attempt to codify experience. They are attempts to create correspondences in art with technological and social change.

...But there may be another strategy at play here: instead of "fleeting ideologies," *these movements might be attempts to codify history itself.* For example, what about those ideologies which seem to have "survived,"or at least whose art got "preserved" and were not forgotten, and the art under those ideological umbrellas which are still appreciated for their inherent qualities...such as *"Impressionism"* or *"Abstract Expressionism"* or *"Pop Art"* or *"Minimalism?"* Won't these "surviving" ideologies and the art associated with them now be seen as "historical movements," having passed the test of time? Have they transcended mere "ideology" and now become "historical movements?"

When Mahlerian said that _"...the gap between Neoclassicism and the 12-tone works of the 2nd Viennese School is looked back upon by many as not as wide as it had been perceived at the time. None of the ideologies and factionalism that grew up around these composers and their works have survived, but the music has...", _

...then why should the _music_ survive, and the ideology perish? We can either see this as a testament to _"great enduring art"_ or as_ a hesitancy to acknowledge certain music and art as having "historical significance" as a "historical movement."_

Won't the effect of Henry Pleasants, in his attempt to "erase all ideological identifiers" serve to simply smooth over the real differences in music in order to *sweep serialism (as a historically significant movement) under the carpet?*


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> ...But there may be another strategy at play here: instead of "fleeting ideologies," *these movements might be attempts to codify history itself.* For example, what about those ideologies which seem to have "survived,"or at least whose art got "preserved" and were not forgotten, and the art under those ideological umbrellas which are still appreciated for their inherent qualities...such as *"Impressionism"* or *"Abstract Expressionism"* or *"Pop Art"* or *"Minimalism?"* Won't these "surviving" ideologies and the art associated with them now be seen as "historical movements," having passed the test of time? Have they transcended mere "ideology" and now become "historical movements?"
> 
> ...then* why should the music survive, and the ideology perish?* We can either see this as a testament to _"great enduring art"_ or as_ a hesitancy to acknowledge certain music and art as having "historical significance" as a "historical movement."_


I think you have hit the nail on the head with, *"these movements might be attempts to codify history itself."* For each of the 'ideologies' you listed (impressionism; abstract expressionism, pop art, minimalism) the 'events' came about first via one or several inventive artists -- and after the fact and often 'long enough' -- the new style then got assigned its label - by a writer, critic, or such.

Terry Riley, John Adams and Philip Glass, o.a. would have been as surprised as anyone to learn they were 'Minimalists,' writing well before the fact of musicologist Michael Nyman using the term in 1970 (!). [Just as Mozart and Beethoven would have been surprised to learn they were 'classical' composers] Likewise for those other tags you listed. The name, and formal ideology, seem to come well after the event, due to someone noticing something new in the air. It is an attempt to recognize that something new and of interest is afoot, a sea change, shift in thought, aesthetic, approach.

But that is the historian's bailiwick, not the artist's who made the stuff the historian writes about. I can think of but a few 'artists movement,' ideologies which were nearly born with a manifesto in their mouths; Dadaism, Futurism come to mind. There too, the newer approach was already extant, not an abstract 'to be sought and found.' Dadaism and Futurism were more singular in being a reaction catalyzed by a (artist perceived) particularly stale or stagnant creative climate.

I don't even know if I would go so far as to say the naming of the ideologies had any intent to strengthen or preserve same ideology, nor was it to 'name them for history: a more common and basic impulse is motivated by a compelling need to recognize something new when it has become a real presence, to identify it and give it a name. This atavistic urge of our brain to identify and label comes from a need to survive and be aware of all in our environment - it is for 'safety's sake.' When that same impulse turns to labeling artists movements, etc. It is far from necessary 

Codifying is to the purpose of understanding, and to clarify 'what it is.' But.. do not ignore that other very much lesser impulse when faced with something new and puzzling - naming it to cut it down to size, simplify it to a degree which allows for a reduction of its power, or to readily dismiss it.

Perhaps that last is how ideology is so often (and most often) misused, ending up a lazy thinker's way of lumping together Riley, Adams, Glass, or to reduce having to think about the extreme differences between Manet and Monet.

It is the 'after the fact of the main event' of the birth of most of the ideologies which bothers me most: it is like a 'clean up the understanding' sweeping crew who come in after the originators are gone, or have gone that much further along their way. In that, I find the ideology 'irrelevant' to the work which caused someone to name that ideology. Between the work and the ideology codified after the fact, the work will always contain 'more,' and be far more interesting.

Re: ...*then why should the music survive, and the ideology perish?* We can either see this as a testament to _"great enduring art"_ or as_ a hesitancy to acknowledge certain music and art as having "historical significance" as a "historical movement."
Since the art itself is the better and more replete embodiment of the ideology - the ideology being always that much less because it is broad and not specific to one piece, I don't think there is any later 'hesitancy' to acknowledge any art as having historic significance, but a very real willingness to dump what is often a rather hyped up lot of verbiage around and about but not on or really attached to the art. Most ideologies are 'tacked on,' and have a shelf life of a current events article in a paper. The works which remain with later generations clearly speak without further explanation, and the generation to whom those works were puzzling, who needed the ideology to get a handle on it, are as long gone as the artists who made the works which were new at the time. That is why so many ideologies of the arts are either in the trash bin, or mere footnotes in history. The works are clearly more durable than the ideologies _


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## Guest (Dec 4, 2012)

PetrB said:


> a lazy thinker's way of lumping together Riley, Adams, Glass


Which used to be Riley, Reich, Glass, about whom somebody (either Ludger Bruemmer or Barry Truax) said to me "I can't imagine any three composers more different from each other."

Any label carries with it the danger of becoming substitute for reality. Think of any group. Practically all of them (of the ones that have been applied externally) consist of individuals radically different from each other. Blacks, gays, women, liberals, conservatives, serialists, minimalists, whatever.*

And how many people self-identify as minimalists? Tom Johnson does. One of the few. And he's even more different from the usual list of "minimalists" (Part, Glass, Tavener, Riley, Adams, Reich) than any of them are from each other.

And how often are Radigue or Sachiko M or Behrens or Oliveros even part of the discussion. And their work is more echtly minimal than any of the Downtown School folks are.

Even La Monte Young hardly ever gets a look in.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Thanks for all your posts. This went in a different direction than I thought it would, which is good.

What I'd add re the atom - well, the atom bomb - when scientists in America where working on developing it (the Manhattan Project), they had Edgard Varese's _Ionisation_ going continuously on a tape loop. Apparently for some type of 'inspiration.' Varese did have an interest in science, but since he wrote that work over a decade before, he would not have had the atom bomb on his mind. However, some writers have interpreted it to be a sonic depiction of New York city, which was Varese's adopted home.

Re the posts about what I said in my OP, the 'use by' date of ideologies, I'd also add that the same type of art or music aesthetic can be adopted or coopted by wildly different political agendas. The Mussolini example I talked to is a good illustration of that. So too what PetrB mentioned, Classicism in art through the ages, you had rulers from Napoleon to various totalitarian regimes of the 20th century adopting a style drawn from that, esp. in architecture and visual art. Interesting how that in the time when Napoleon was seen as a liberator, the style was seen as a departure from the decadence of its precursor (eg. the highly ornate and near-kitschy Rococo period in architecture), but by the time the likes of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin started building monuments that where derived from the 'Classical' aesthetic, it became a symbol of dictatorship.

After that, you had a turning away from that, but with post-Modernism (in architecture) you get columns appearing again, and even domes. There are even examples of this in recent architecture in Australia.

But getting back to music, another contrast is Lenin's toleration at least for a kind of Modernist or progressive ideology, just after the Bolsheviks took power in the coup of 1917. But once Stalin came to power in the 1920's and '30's, like Mussolini he turned the clock back to an anti-Modernist ideology. We all know the Zhdanov decree of 1948, condemning not only more 'Modernistic' composers like Shostakovich and Prokofiev, but also comparatively 'conservative' ones like Myaskovsky and Khatchaturian. Roslavets was by then written out of history, after the Lenin period he became persona non grata. This shift corresponded with a move away from Lenin's and Trotsky's ideology of pushing a type of global Communism to Stalin's ideology of Communism in the USSR only. So he was more insular and less international.

So what this demonstrates is that dictatorships can adopt Modernist ideologies, they need not necessarily be conservative or retrograde. So ideology can be used by political chameleons who change their colours and allegiances as it suits them!?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sid James said:


> ...when scientists in America where working on developing it (the Manhattan Project), they had Edgard Varese's _Ionisation_ going continuously on a tape loop. Apparently for some type of 'inspiration.'


No offense, but I'd sure like to see a reference for that one...


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Let something good and right come about, in action, poetry, or music. Immediately the person emptied out by his education looks out over the work and asks about the history of the author. If this author has already created a number of things, immediately the person must allow himself to point out the earlier and the presumed future progress of the author's development; right away he will bring in others for comparative purposes, he will dissect and rip apart the choice of the author's material and his treatment, and will, in his wisdom, fit the work together again anew, in general giving him advice and setting him right about everything. Let the most astonishing thing occur; the crowd of historical neutrals is always in place ready to assess the author even from a great distance. Momentarily the echo resounds, but always as "Criticism." A short time before, however, the critic did not permit himself to dream that such an event was possible. The work never achieves an effect, but only more "Criticism," and the criticism itself, in its turn, has no effect, but leads only to further criticism. In this business people have agreed to consider a lot of criticism as an effect and a little criticism or none as a failure. Basically, however, everything remains as in the past, even with this "effect." True, people chat for a while about something new, and then about something else new, and in between do what they always have done. The historical education of our critics no longer permits an effect on our real understanding, namely, something that produces an effect on life and action. On the blackest writing they impress immediately their blotting paper, to the most delightful drawing they apply their thick brush strokes, which are to be considered corrections. And then everything is over once again. However, their critical pens never cease flying, for they have lost power over them and are led on by them rather than leading them. It is precisely in this excess of their critical ejaculations, in the lack of control over themselves, in what the Romans call impotentia [impotence], that the weakness of the modern personality reveals itself.

But let us leave this weakness. Let us rather turn to a much-praised strength of the modern person, with the truly awkward question whether, on account of his well-known historical "Objectivity," he has a right to call himself strong, that is, just, and just to a higher degree than the people of other times. Is it true that this objectivity originates from a heightened need and demand for justice? Or does it, as an effect with quite different causes, merely create the appearance that justice might be its real cause? Does this objectivity perhaps tempt one to a bias concerning the virtues of modern man, a bias which is detrimental because it is far too flattering? Socrates considered it an illness close to insanity to imagine oneself in possession of a virtue and not to possess it. Certainly such conceit is more dangerous than the opposite delusion, suffering from a mistake or vice. For through the latter delusion it is perhaps still possible to become better. The former conceit, however, makes a person or a time daily worse, and thus, in this case, less just.

It is true that no one has a higher claim on our veneration than the man who possesses the drive and the power for justice. For in justice are united and hidden the highest and rarest virtues, as in a bottomless sea that receives streams from all sides and absorbs them into itself. The hand of the just man authorized to sit in judgment no longer trembles when it holds the scales. Unsparingly he puts on weight after weight even against himself. His eye does not become dim when the scale pans rise and fall, and his voice rings out neither hard nor broken when he delivers the verdict. If he were a cold daemon of knowledge, then he would spread out around him the ice-cold atmosphere of a terrifying superhuman majesty, which we would have to be afraid of and not revere. But since he is a human being and yet is trying to rise above venial doubt to a strong certainty, above a patient leniency to an imperative "You must," above the rare virtue of magnanimity to the rarest virtue of all, justice, since he now is like this daemon, but from the very beginning without being anything other than a poor human being, and above all, since in each moment he has to atone for his humanity and be tragically consumed by an impossible virtue, all this places him on a lonely height, as the example of the human race most worthy of reverence. For he wants truth, not merely as cold knowledge without consequences, but as the ordering and punishing judge, truth not as a selfish possession of the individual but as the sacred entitlement to shift all the boundary stones of egotistical possessions, in a word, truth as the Last Judgment and not at all as something like the captured trophy desired by the individual hunter. Only insofar as the truthful man has the unconditional will to be just is the striving after truth, which is so thoughtlessly glorified everywhere, something great. By contrast, in the case of duller eyes, a large number of very different sorts of drives (like curiosity, the flight from boredom, resentment, vanity, playfulness), which have nothing at all to do with the truth, blend in with that striving for truth, which has its roots in justice. So the world does indeed seem to be full of such people who "serve the truth," and yet the virtue of justice is very seldom present, even more rarely recognized, and almost always hated to the death; whereas, the crowd of the apparently virtuous in every age marches around with honour and a great public display. In truth, few people serve truthfulness, because only a few have the purity of will to be just, and even among these, the fewest have the strength to be capable of being just. It is certainly not enough to have only the will for justice. And the most horrible sufferings among human beings have come directly from the drive for justice without the power of judgment. For this reason the general welfare would require nothing more than to scatter the seeds of the power of judgment as widely as possible, so that the fanatic remained distinguishable from the judge and blind desire to be a judge distinguishable from the conscious power to be able to judge. But where would one find a means of cultivating the power of judgment! Thus, when there is talk of truth and justice, people will remain in an eternal wavering hesitation whether a fanatic or a judge is talking to them. Hence, we should forgive those who have welcomed with special kindness these "servers of the truth" who possess neither the will nor the power to judge and who set themselves the task of searching for knowledge which is "pure and without consequences" or, more clearly, of searching for the truth from which nothing emerges. There are a great many trivial truths; there are problems that never require effort, let alone any self-sacrifice, in order for one to judge them correctly. In this realm of the trivial and the safe, a person indeed succeeds in becoming a cold daemon of knowledge. And yet! When, in especially favourable times, whole cohorts of learned people and researchers are turned into such daemons, it always remains unfortunately possible that the time in question suffers from a lack of strict and great justice, in short, of the noblest kernel of the so-called drive to the truth.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

KenOC said:


> No offense, but I'd sure like to see a reference for that one...


It was mentioned in the article put in the opening post of this thread (if my memory serves me right!):
http://www.talkclassical.com/8722-article-times-about-varese.html

...which has now been archived, but I might try to dig it up by other means (I think I printed it out, and I might still have it in 'hard copy'). If I do, I will let you know.

EDIT - its mentioned at the start of this source (and Alex Ross mentions it in The Rest is Noise too).

http://www.overgrownpath.com/2008/09/lise-meitner-forgotten-lady-atomic.html

& I think brainwalker has quoted some writer verbatim, wholus bolus, I did a basic search on google and it appears to be Nietzsche. Whatever but it would be good to get people's opinions or just their views of others opinions rather than quotes of other people's opinions.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

PetrB said:


> ...The name, and formal ideology, seem to come well after the event, due to someone noticing something new in the air. It is an attempt to recognize that something new and of interest is afoot, a sea change, shift in thought, aesthetic, approach.....But that is the historian's bailiwick, not the artist's who made the stuff the historian writes about....I find the ideology 'irrelevant' to the work which caused someone to name that ideology. Between the work and the ideology codified after the fact, the work will always contain 'more,' and be far more interesting.


That's a tidy discarding of ideology, which turns history into a convenience, overlooking the precious, narcissistic worship of the individual, replacing him with "movements" and "isms,"...History, that's the problem, isn't it?

What happens when musical thought becomes so associated with "ideology" that it becomes almost indistinguishable from the art itself? Thus the troublesome terms _"serial thought"_ and _"set theory"_ arise; are they ideology or technique?

What about the ideas of _"symmetry"_ and _"equal division of the octave"?_ These are all connected to the general notion of "serial thought" in music.

So for me, "Serialism" is more than mere ideology; it is a new way of musical thinking, which transcends any ideological straight-jacket.

*For me, to dismiss "Serialism" as an ideology is to come perilously close to discarding the ideas inherent in serial thinking, and, indeed, in all modern musical thought, including those artists who were not "Serialists" per se: Bartók, Stravinsky, Debussy, Ives, and all advanced tonal, as well as atonal, musical thinkers.*

Let us make a clear distinction between "serial thought" and ideology, or it looks to me like we will once again "throw out the baby with the bathwater."


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

PetrB said:


> Codifying is to the purpose of understanding, and to clarify 'what it is.' But.. do not ignore that other very much lesser impulse when faced with something new and puzzling - naming it *to cut it down to size, simplify it to a degree which allows for a reduction of its power, or to readily dismiss it....Perhaps that last is how ideology is so often (and most often) misused*, ending up a lazy thinker's way of lumping together Riley, Adams, Glass, or to reduce having to think about the extreme differences between Manet and Monet....*I don't think there is any later 'hesitancy' to acknowledge any art as having historic significance...*


But didn't you say that the "ideological labelling" of certain related kinds of music was the way critics _dismiss_ it? Yet you say _"I don't think there is any later 'hesitancy' to acknowledge any art as having historic significance..."_

I think the contradiction lies in the motives which are ascribed to terms such as "Impressionism." A "lumping together" of characteristics can either be used as a celebration and validation of those characteristics, or as an easy stereotyping and dismissal.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sid James said:


> EDIT - its mentioned at the start of this source (and Alex Ross mentions it in The Rest is Noise too).
> 
> http://www.overgrownpath.com/2008/09/lise-meitner-forgotten-lady-atomic.html


Thanks Sid. "Legend has it Manhattan Project scientists working on the atomic bomb at the uranium-enrichment plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee listened repeatedly to Nicolas Slonimsky's recording of Edgard Varèse's Ionisation." Legend is what I suspect it is. The scientists at Los Alamos, at least, had much more traditional tastes! I've never seen this mentioned in any of my readings on the Manhattan Project.

BTW magnetic tape recorders were not readily available in the US until the late 40s, so a "tape loop" for entertainment in the pre-1945 workplace would have been more than passing unlikely.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

KenOC said:


> Thanks Sid. "Legend has it Manhattan Project scientists working on the atomic bomb at the uranium-enrichment plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee listened repeatedly to Nicolas Slonimsky's recording of Edgard Varèse's Ionisation." Legend is what I suspect it is. The scientists at Los Alamos, at least, had much more traditional tastes! I've never seen this mentioned in any of my readings on the Manhattan Project.


Yes, its just an anecdote, but as that article talks to as well, Varese had a strong interest in science. Hence the title of that piece. However, as I said, the music itself is open to many different interpretations (by listeners, that is).

As a general comment on the discussion about art and science, there are connections for sure there. & of course with politics, philosophy and other things. It is a tenet of a very objective type of Modernism that art is just art and that's it. Hence Stravinsky's famous quote to the effect that music is about nothing but itself. Well that's just one view, one ideology of many connected to Modernism. So its this pluralism of ideologies I'm interested in - its uses and abuses over the decades and centuries - rather than just reducing things to one quote or one ideology. Or one long quote by some composer or philosopher etc.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Sid James said:


> & I think brainwalker has quoted some writer verbatim, wholus bolus, I did a basic search on google and it appears to be Nietzsche. Whatever but it would be good to get people's opinions or just their views of others opinions rather than quotes of other people's opinions.


But that would mean that we would have to turn this shouting match into a discussion!


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

I don't think it is quite so easy to dismiss ideology. First of all, even a position essentially anti-ideology, is an ideology in itself. In the context of music, it could imply a number of things. Perhaps that the artistic merit of music is more powerful, more enduring, than the passing ideas about life and the real world.

From the OP:



Sid James said:


> I thought I'd do a thread talking about some of these shifts. Recently I came across a manifesto in 20th century music that I had not known about before. It was published in Italy in 1932 and called the _Italian Manifesto against Cerebral Music_. This was a decidedly anti-Modernist ideology, and it was signed by Respighi as well as Pizzetti, Zandonai and Pick-Mangiagalli (the last three unknown to me).
> 
> This contrasts strongly with an earlier and famous Italian manifesto, that of the Futurist movement which included visual artists, poets and musicians. It was written in 1909 and it was in support of a radically Modernist ideology. Composers who where part of this movement included Russolo, who pioneered a precursor to the _Noise music_ genre of today.


These manifestos have indeed passed their use-by-date, however the fundamental ideas underneath them have not. The argument is not really very different, as I see it, to the famous Brahms (conservative) vs Wagner and Liszt etc. (music of the future) groups in nineteenth century Germany. The forms these ideas took has changed, but the underlying motives are the same. In a sense the forms these ideas took had to change, because the forms of music that they were about changed. In the early twentieth century, music in a Wagnerian style would have been (and was) considered conservative, if written at that time.

So I am arguing that these various manifestos are mere applications of more enduring ideologies, and change and pass over time _like the changing and passing musical styles of the time_. The ideas live on no less than the music.

PetrB mentions aesthetic 'doctrines'.



PetrB said:


> There have been many 'doctrines,' those aesthetic and coming from the intellectual and art community, not the political-ideology quarters, the baroque era "Doctrine of the affections (or 'effects') being just one of them in the course of music history.


These ideas undoubtably influence music a great deal. How much have they got to do with politics? A limited amount - but some are incompatible. One of the most obvious being that modernism in the twentieth was unacceptable to the socialist-realist aesthetic of the Soviets. Modernism was too esoteric for them.

But are these doctrines all just historical? I don't think so. Romanticism is very much alive today, whether it is adhered to by conservatives or modernists. We have members here to prove it. It takes a different form, perhaps, but according of primacy to the natural expression of the emotions (or _affections_ as it was termed in a previous age) or to intellectual integrity and beauty or to whatever else is still done in the minds and hearts of composers or listeners. The forms of these ideas may have changed, but the underlying motives have not. There is no such thing as a person with no ideology, and there is no such thing as music without an aesthetic. It is no wonder that, from an individual level to political policy, music has been used and abused (the one does not necessarily imply the other) by the various forms enduring ideologies have taken throughout history.

The music of past eras lives on for us to listen to, while the manifestos are just historical artifacts. But the ideologies and motivations that produced those manifestos live on to this present day and continue to influence not only composers and listeners but critics, musicologists, philosophers and politicians.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

A massive movement began around the beginning of 20th century that was both psychological and artistic, to oppose 18th and 19th centuries Art styles and philosophy schools. No coincidence here ...


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Ramako said:


> I don't think it is quite so easy to dismiss ideology...So I am arguing that these various manifestos are mere applications of more enduring ideologies, and change and pass over time _like the changing and passing musical styles of the time_. The ideas live on no less than the music...PetrB mentions aesthetic 'doctrines':
> "...modernism in the twentieth was unacceptable to the socialist-realist aesthetic of the Soviets. Modernism was too esoteric for them."...But are these doctrines all just historical? I don't think so...The forms of these ideas may have changed, but the underlying motives have not. There is no such thing as a person with no ideology, and there is no such thing as music without an aesthetic...The music of past eras lives on for us to listen to...But the ideologies and motivations that produced those manifestos live on to this present day and continue to influence not only composers and listeners but critics, musicologists, philosophers and politicians.


I agree with this, and offer a simplistic example that anyone can agree is obvious: _"Copland, with the Piano Quartet of 1950, was now using twelve-tone methods." _How are we to react to this? Twelve-tone technique is as much, if not more, a _method_ as it is an _"ideology."_ Yet, critics are all-too-ready to spin the negative, and label twelve-tone works as representing "ideologies," to be dismissed. Ideological labels can be used negatively, even though the objective fact is that it is _simply music composed in a certain way._ This does not warrant the discarding of all ideological labels. After all, the ideological label "Impressionism" is not "negatively charged," although at the time of its inception it was a perjorative term. In order to "save Serialism" from dismissal, these labels should not be questioned simply because a minority uses them perjoratively.

As I said earlier in the thread "Opression in Music" _(which tries to posit traditional tonal students as "victims" of serial opression...ha ha!):_

*"Ideology, if it defines an approach to art and music, is not bad in itself; but if ideology is used to promote a politico/cultural agenda, or within art, to "squelch" forms of music like serialism, it is dangerous."*

Sometimes I wonder whose side Sid James is on when he presents ideas like this, which can easily be used either positively or negatively, but seem to appeal to the "immediate stereotype" which will ensnare people into thinking that *"Ideological music is bad."* _Hmm, what could he be referring to?...as if traditional tonality were not a "fossilized ideology" which is so ubiquitous that it is an invisible "given assumption" for its adherents._


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Sid James said:


> What I'd add re the atom - well, the atom bomb - when scientists in America where working on developing it (the Manhattan Project), they had Edgard Varese's _Ionisation_ going continuously on a tape loop. Apparently for some type of 'inspiration.' Varese did have an interest in science, but since he wrote that work over a decade before, he would not have had the atom bomb on his mind. However, some writers have interpreted it to be a sonic depiction of New York city, which was Varese's adopted home.


"A depiction of New York City"? I thought you said it was "...apparently for some type of 'inspiration' (in constructing an atomic bomb)."

By your logic, this is presumably why the Nazis listened to Beethoven, Wagner, and Strauss: for inspiration. This is such inspiring music, no doubt.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> Sometimes I wonder whose side Sid James is on when he presents ideas like this, which can easily be used either positively or negatively, but seem to appeal to the "immediate stereotype" which will ensnare people into thinking that *"Ideological music is bad."* _Hmm, what could he be referring to?...as if traditional tonality were not a "fossilized ideology" which is so ubiquitous that it is an invisible "given assumption" for its adherents._


Sid James is definitely on Sid James' side, no doubt about who's side he's on I would have thought.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Sid James said:


> & I think brainwalker has quoted some writer verbatim, wholus bolus, I did a basic search on google and it appears to be Nietzsche. Whatever but it would be good to get people's opinions or just their views of others opinions rather than quotes of other people's opinions.


But people aren't giving their opinions. They're hiding them behind historical analysis.

Millionrainbows can sum up his genuine motivation for promoting serialism in one stroke, yet he won't.

The Nietzsche excerpt articulates what I think is wrong with this entire "discussion".


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I think it is high time for any and all to stop giving much, if any, credence to bureaucrats endorsing or condemning any kind of art. They're bureaucrats, for the sake of Apollo.


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## Renaissance (Jul 10, 2012)

What is ideological in music that even a simple peasant can enjoy ?  I thought ideological is only music which needs philosophies in order to be considered as such. I can't even think of how useless these discussions are...


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Thanks for all your posts. This went in a different direction than I thought it would, which is good.
> 
> What I'd add re the atom - well, the atom bomb - when scientists in America where working on developing it (the Manhattan Project), they had Edgard Varese's _Ionisation_ going continuously on a tape loop. Apparently for some type of 'inspiration.' Varese did have an interest in science, but since he wrote that work over a decade before, he would not have had the atom bomb on his mind. However, some writers have interpreted it to be a sonic depiction of New York city, which was Varese's adopted home.
> 
> ...


_Re; politicians and their connection to ideology in the arts, see #28 in this thread._

Varese's "Ameriques" IS a sound-portrait reaction of the immigrant-composer's perception of his (new) environment which was Manhattan


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Renaissance said:


> What is ideological in music that even a simple peasant can enjoy ?  I thought ideological is only music which needs philosophies in order to be considered as such. I can't even think of how useless these discussions are...


...so I'm gonna take my ideology and find a new sandbox.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

millionrainbows said:


> ...
> Sometimes I wonder whose side Sid James is on when he presents ideas like this...


With my opening post I tried to not take sides, just give an example of how ideologies can be used as a back up for various political agendas, and how they kind of decay over time. Its hard for me to generalise about my own ideology. I have different opinions, many contradictory. Eg. I enjoy many kinds of post war and new/newer music, incl. outside classical, yet my opinions of things like conceptual art in the visual arts, or modernist architecture are not very positive. However, I am only a consumer of music, or the other things. I am not a creator of it. I understand that creators of art - eg. composers - may find it necessary to summarise their thoughts about what they are doing, their aesthetic, etc. I also think that the issue that arose on this thread re 'labels' of stylistic trends and movements in the arts is also interesting, in terms of historians today looking back on trends that happened in the past, and are now in 'museum piece' territory. I think this thread has merited me making it (but that's probably a biased opinion!).



brianwalker said:


> But people aren't giving their opinions. They're hiding them behind historical analysis.
> 
> Millionrainbows can sum up his genuine motivation for promoting serialism in one stroke, yet he won't.
> 
> The Nietzsche excerpt articulates what I think is wrong with this entire "discussion".


Well my aim is to allow whatever people want to say here. There is no need to hide. People can say as little or as much they want. I just think I'd be more interested in your own take on this rather than that of someone who was writing 100+ years ago.


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