# The Triumph of Absolutism



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Baroque music cannot be separated from the ideas that created it. The history of music is a living and vital pursuit only if the changes in style and conception of music are seen as integral parts of a general history of ideas.

The transition from Renaissance to Baroque coincides with the counter-reformation, where the Catholic church regained the political power it lost in the reformation; it coincides with the triumph of absolutism, which saw royalty as divinely ordained to be God's representatives on earth, and gave rise to nationalism; and the rise of mercantilism, which saw gold as the only true source of wealth.

Since church and state were now virtually the same under absolutism, it should be no surprise that both institutions used the arts as ways of representing power (the power of God and his earthly representatives); display of splendor was one of the main social functions of baroque courts; this was only possible with money; the more money spent, the greater the display (Handel's Water Music, etc.)

There was a dark side to all this splendor; the Inquisition, and the ruthless taxing and exploitation of the lower classes.

Remember all this the next time you listen to Handel, Rameau, Mozart, and their ilk; remember that for all the splendor, somebody had to pay a price.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

I feel so guilty................


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> (... historical context ...) Remember all this the next time you listen to Handel, Rameau, Mozart, and their ilk; remember that for all the splendor, somebody had to pay a price. (... painting of a rich and fat dude)


Sorry, I can't listen and remember at the same time. What about today's Chinese and Indian lower classes, paying the price for my middle class splendor?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Sorry, I can't listen and remember at the same time. What about today's Chinese and Indian lower classes, paying the price for my middle class splendor?


Let them listen to Bollywood soundtracks, have beauty contests, and make Westernized versions of Chinese themes, like "Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy" or "Concerto for Koto and Orchestra." 
Maybe a Bob Dylan-type character will rise from their masses.

Okay, granted; but everybody should remember it before they create threads like "Are Classical music listeners more intelligent," and ideas like that, which contain the 'residue' of elitism.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Two points, one from the German religious settlement - _cuius regios eius religio_; second - that's why I prefer simple church organists like Bach and Buxtehude.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Taggart said:


> Two points, one from the German religious settlement - _cuius regios eius religio_; second - that's why I prefer simple church organists like Bach and Buxtehude.


I remember at work playing Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in D minor for the Hispanic janitor, and his reaction was 'that's creepy sounding,' not religious ecstacy. So I guess that 'fear' played into it...

*WIK: Cuius regio, eius religio *is a phrase in Latin translated as *"Whose realm, his religion",* meaning *the religion of the ruler dictated the religion of the ruled*. The rulers of the German-speaking states and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, agreed to the principle in the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which ended armed conflict between the Catholic and Protestant forces in the Holy Roman Empire. The principle applied to most of the territories of the Empire, with the exception of the several of the sovereign families and Imperial cities and the Ecclesiastical principalities, whose issues were addressed under separate principles (see Ecclesiastical reservation and Declaratio Ferdinandei).

The principle only extended legitimacy to two religions within the Empire, Catholicism and Lutheranism, leaving out such reformed religions as Calvinism, and such radical religions as Anabaptism; any other practice of worship beyond the two legal forms was expressly forbidden and legally considered a heresy, a crime punishable by death. Although not intended to offer the modern idea of "freedom of conscience," individuals who could not subscribe to the prince's religion *were permitted to leave the territory with their possessions.*


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> I remember at work playing Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in D minor for the Hispanic janitor, and his reaction was 'that's creepy sounding,' not religious ecstacy. So I guess that 'fear' played into it...


The trappings of Baroque religious music, choirs, organs, and counterpoint, have long been associated with evil in Hollywood. I doubt the janitor's ethnicity played much of a role here.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> I remember at work playing Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in D minor for the Hispanic janitor, and his reaction was 'that's creepy sounding,' not religious ecstacy. So I guess that 'fear' played into it...


Knock knock. The T&F is not a religious work...


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Knock knock. The T&F is not a religious work...


Who's There? In that Bach said all music was to glorify God, it was by proxy...and where else are you going to hear a church organ? In the local pub?


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Can't say I appreciate being lectured as to what to remember when I listen to music, so I'll pass.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Bulldog said:


> Can't say I appreciate being lectured as to what to remember when I listen to music, so I'll pass.


Oh, far be it for me to try to control anyone with the name "Bulldog." But feel free to present a *counter-argument. *


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Admit it; all you CM listeners are afraid to confront the true roots of your music. You'd rather just avoid that gnarly issue, and listen on in bliss.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, far be it for me to try to control anyone with the name "Bulldog." But feel free to present a *counter-argument. *


I don't disagree with your argument; I just don't care about it when listening to music.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Admit it; all you CM listeners are afraid to confront the true roots of your music. You'd rather just avoid that gnarly issue, and listen on in bliss.


It's been years since I listened in bliss..................ah, those were the days............

in my old age I often listen with gas


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Bulldog said:


> I don't disagree with your argument; I just don't care about it when listening to music.


I don't care about it ever. Everything emerged out of blood, misery, and savagery. Get over it, OP.

And why isn't this in the politics and music section? The "content" is 90% political/historical.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I'm more concerned with the ruthless taxing and exploitation of the lower classes going on right now.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The point of this thread seems to be: "Remember, folks, every time you enjoy a piece by Bach, somewhere a puppy dies."


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

That just sounds like another attack on the Western cultural institutions, of the same order as "Wagner was an anti-semite, therefore his music is evil".


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

When you live in a period of history, you cannot help being part of it. The composers of those days loved music and wanted to earn a living, for which they cannot be blamed. It's a bit like saying don't enjoy Shakespeare because of the torture and repression that existed in Elizabethan England. Shakespeare was not evil; Bach was not evil; and both created works of consummate beauty, which is what I think of when I enjoy their art.

Besides, why should I be ordered to 'remember' the points that the OP mentions, when I don't even agree with them?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Baroque music cannot be separated from the ideas that created it. The history of music is a living and vital pursuit only if the changes in style and conception of music are seen as integral parts of a general history of ideas.
> 
> The transition from Renaissance to Baroque coincides with the counter-reformation, where the Catholic church regained the political power it lost in the reformation; it coincides with the triumph of absolutism, which saw royalty as divinely ordained to be God's representatives on earth, and gave rise to nationalism; and the rise of mercantilism, which saw gold as the only true source of wealth.
> 
> ...


There's a paper by Susan McClary which relates to some of these issues called "The Danger of Talking Politics in the Bach Year", it has influenced the way I listen to baroque music, maybe more than anything else. You can read it here.

http://www.ic.ucsc.edu/~dej/1.Music...ive/McClary.Blasphemy of Talking Politics.pdf


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> Baroque music cannot be separated from the ideas that created it.
> 
> Remember all this the next time you listen to Handel, Rameau, Mozart, and their ilk; remember that for all the splendor, *somebody had to pay a price*.


You know it. Every time I hear those "high" voice parts in all that Baroque music, I cringe a bit thinking of the castrati. Talk about paying a price.


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## Whistler Fred (Feb 6, 2014)

There are some who would argue that you can't listen to Shostakovich without remembering the abuses he and most Russian composers suffered under Stalin's paranoid and insane rule. And Shostakovich himself may have even endorsed this idea. But since Soviet style communism have gone the way of King Henry VIII and the Czar, maybe we can simply hear Shostakovich as the composer of beautiful (if frequently dark) music, rather than as a kind of pro-or-anti Communist Manifesto.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Nice tights.

"Very nice tights. - Just to humor the software."


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

A question: If we lived back in the times the OP refers to, in the same relative stations in life we have now:

- Would we see our rulers as bloodthirsty oppressors, intent on enriching themselves by exploiting us?

- Would we see the church as a vast mind-control agency, enforcing an unwelcome sameness of thought and belief?

- In general, would we feel that it was pretty horrible world?

Or would we find everything quite normal and live our lives with much the same portions of happiness and grief as we do now?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Millionrainbows, you're starting to become as obsessed with the elitist origins of older music as ArtMusic is with proving us all how wrong we are to enjoy contemporary classical.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> A question: If we lived back in the times the OP refers to, in the same relative stations in life we have now:
> 
> - Would we see our rulers as bloodthirsty oppressors, intent on enriching themselves by exploiting us?
> 
> ...


Well I don't know about "portions" of happiness. But I do think if you had been impacted by persecution then you may have experienced a pretty serious type of unhappiness, a type I've never experienced myself. This is, I suppose, what gave rise to some major pieces of music from the period, like Bull's Walsingham Variations.

And I expect that J S Bach, when he wrote public music like the passions or the organ chorales, was trying to influence the way people thought about life and pain. Trying to influence them to understand these things as Luther understood them. And so I guess I would have seen the church as a mind control agency trying to create universal consensus.

But anyway, I think millionrainbows's interesting opening post doesn't turn on these questions. The thing I find fascinating is in his opening paragraph is the idea that changes in musical style should be seen as a part of a general history of ideas. Although I don't agree with him totally - I would take the explanations of musical style back further, to material relations, production relations, in a Marxist way.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> The thing I find fascinating is in his opening paragraph is the idea that changes in musical style should be seen as a part of a general history of ideas. Although I don't agree with him totally - I would take the explanations of musical style back further, to material relations, production relations, in a Marxist way.


Alternatively, one might explore ideas that are tangibly related to the aesthetic qualities of the music.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Alternatively, one might explore ideas that are tangibly related to the aesthetic qualities of the music.


Why has this style been adopted here? I've never studied aesthetics formally, so this is an area where I don't feel confident. Can aesthetic concepts be used to answer questions like that?


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Millionrainbows, you're starting to become as obsessed with the elitist origins of older music...

Which works of "classical music" aren't "elitist" in one way or another?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Baroque music cannot be separated from the ideas that created it. The history of music is a living and vital pursuit only if the changes in style and conception of music are seen as integral parts of a general history of ideas.
> 
> The transition from Renaissance to Baroque coincides with the counter-reformation, where the Catholic church regained the political power it lost in the reformation; it coincides with the triumph of absolutism, which saw royalty as divinely ordained to be God's representatives on earth, and gave rise to nationalism; and the rise of mercantilism, which saw gold as the only true source of wealth.
> 
> ...


Nice. Thank you.

And it triumphs over new music composed today, judging by the number of CM listeners. That's what I find so fascinating.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Why has this style been adopted here? I've never studied aesthetics formally, so this is an area where I don't feel confident. Can aesthetic concepts be used to answer questions like that?


Well, Rainbows started by saying that Baroque music can't be separated from the ideas that created it, or words to that effect. Then, instead of talking about such ideas, he wandered off into vague political-historical ruminations.

And yes, the theory and philosophy behind Baroque music has much to say about why the style is the way it is.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Why has this style been adopted here? I've never studied aesthetics formally, so this is an area where I don't feel confident. Can aesthetic concepts be used to answer questions like that?


Sorry, my last note was glib - or, at least, lacked sufficient detail.

Baroque theorists had much to say about the relationship of music to human experience and emotion, and derived much of their thinking about formal structure, dissonance treatment, melodic figures, the role of the composer, and the proper setting of text from rhetorical theory. By the way, Susan McClary is not a good guide to the understanding of music in any era. She consistently sacrifices logic, the honest use of sources, historical accuracy, and analytical precision in the service of pet political agendas. Much of her work is laughable, the worst of it being her essays on sexual politics and classical music.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Millionrainbows, you're starting to become as obsessed with the elitist origins of older music...
> 
> Which works of "classical music" aren't "elitist" in one way or another?


Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, maybe?


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

How is any work of music elitist? That simply doesn't make any sense.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Crudblud said:


> How is any work of music elitist? That simply doesn't make any sense.


Well, unless it's ELP's Fanfare for the Common Man. Then it's pretty much elitist.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I get tired of this sheet-music talking down to me. Calling me illiterate and whatnot.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> ...By the way, Susan McClary is not a good guide to the understanding of music in any era. She consistently sacrifices logic, the honest use of sources, historical accuracy, and analytical precision in the service of pet political agendas. Much of her work is laughable, the worst of it being her essays on sexual politics and classical music.


Aw, give the lady a break. I got quite a kick out of her piece on Beethoven's 9th!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Aw, give the lady a break. I got quite a kick out of her piece on Beethoven's 9th!


Oh yes, the retransition in the first movement as the frustrated, murderous rage of a rapist. (That was a paraphrase but I believe a pretty close one.) The revised version left that bit out. Yeah, that's a pretty good one. No one was going to let her get away with that. I'm more worried about her allegedly serious work, like "Sexual Politics in Classical Music," and "Narrative Agendas in Absolute Music," in which she argues that Tchaikovsky's and Brahms's sonata-allegro movements, respectively, are misogynistic at a structural level.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Oh yes, the retransition in the first movement...


I'll quote more exactly, the original version: "The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release."

We need more music criticism like that!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Sorry, my last note was glib - or, at least, lacked sufficient detail.
> 
> Baroque theorists had much to say about the relationship of music to human experience and emotion, and derived much of their thinking about formal structure, dissonance treatment, melodic figures, the role of the composer, and the proper setting of text from rhetorical theory. By the way, Susan McClary is not a good guide to the understanding of music in any era. She consistently sacrifices logic, the honest use of sources, historical accuracy, and analytical precision in the service of pet political agendas. Much of her work is laughable, the worst of it being her essays on sexual politics and classical music.


What did you think of that paper on Bach that I posted a link to?


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

Crudblud said:


> How is any work of music elitist? That simply doesn't make any sense.


Well there is a german hiphop group only raps in latin, that's pretty elitist I guess.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2014)

Crudblud said:


> How is any work of music elitist? That simply doesn't make any sense.


I can see how someone might argue that a piece of music originates from an elitist mind...but that's as far as it goes.

As for the OP:



> The history of music is a living and vital pursuit only if the changes in style and conception of music are seen as integral parts of a general history of ideas


Just because we can reorganise what we see in the past into shapes, trends, phases, genres, periods, patterns, conspiracies, movements and so on, does not mean that the world actually unwinds that way in the present. I agree that music is to some extent a product of its context, but that does not make its progress in any particular direction an inevitability, despite the efforts of those in power to control their own and others' lives and the trappings that accompanied them. The Church wouldn't be the first 'elite' to want to dictate thoughts and ideas to the masses, and the means of communicating those ideas. That doesn't render the music unlistenable, or blameworthy. Given that at any one time, someone, somewhere in the world is being oppressed, we're all guilty by association with activities that allow us to forget the misfortunes of others. But let's get real. Is the OP suggesting that if I'm not going to stop listening to Handel and get off my backside and spend every waking minute fighting oppression, I might at least feel guilty about it? I object.

Whatever compromise we make with evil in the world, our only duty is to do what we can within the means available to us to improve our lives and those of our fellow human beings. Children in sweat shops in India are not going to be saved from exploitation because I'm wringing my hands over the price paid for the music of the elite by the peasants in the 17thC!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

StlukesguildOhio: 'Which works of "classical music" aren't "elitist" in one way or another?'



violadude said:


> Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, maybe?


Only an elitist writes about the "common" man.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

*The Triumph of Absolutism*

At first I thought the thread title was the OP touting his own style of argument.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> Admit it; all you CM listeners are afraid to confront the true roots of your music. You'd rather just avoid that gnarly issue, and listen on in bliss.


On the contrary, I think it's a really interesting thing; I've been thinking about these issues for years. Even Louis CK has a stand-up routine about whether slavery is a good thing, mentioning several of the great cultural monuments of human history. Pretty common stuff. So common in fact that you can see the conservative defensiveness here, as if thoughts like this were anti-Western rather than just reflections on the human condition in pretty much all times at pretty much all places. (And not every tyranny produced Bach's counterpoint.)

One of the things that I take pride in is that all of my ancestry (some of which I've been able to trace back to the 1500s) that I know of consists of the bourgeois class, the uppity sons of jomomos that created republics, overthrowing the kinds of people who built those regimes, accidentally dragging humanity inch by bloody inch closer to decency. Of course they only got to hear such music in church, now and then. Quite a few of them were Flemish, hopefully they jammed to the Josquin back in the day.



Crudblud said:


> I'm more concerned with the ruthless taxing and exploitation of the lower classes going on right now.


I don't think there's a solution to this. If we were good people we would no longer enjoy anything; we would spend our money and our lives doing our best to benefit our fellow humanity, and we would have good clean monotheistic consciences. Alas, we're evil, all of us, with just enough good built in to enable us to construct violent societies and governments rather than living and dying in the violent anarchy of ordinary nature. So most of us would rather enjoy a bit of entertainment, perhaps enriching the enjoyment with the consideration of how superior we are to the plebeians who don't even think about the oppression that all this enjoyment has depended on. Ah, that is a sweet reflection! How delicious to wallow in the darkness of the human heart, while most of our fellows are drunk on mindless entertainment. (It's even better to reflect on this with fistfuls of large bills in the presence of young women dancing in predatory cat costumes.) At best, we might guilt-trip ourselves into doing a bit more here and there, lipstick on a pig stuff for the most part. Drugs might help too.

If there's any good news, it is that just at the moment (thanks to the cluster of institutions created by our bourgeois heroes: capitalism and republican government and free media and science and secularism and Enlightenment ideology) more people (both in relative and absolute numbers) are living free from oppression and exploitation and extreme poverty than has been the case in several thousand years. We may in fact be at the summit of that development, about to plunge back into the kind of social stratification that has characterized us for most of history. (There are certainly very powerful religious and political movements with that as their more or less explicit goal, and really the question is not whether they will succeed, but how long we will be able to defend the freedoms we've managed to wrench from them for now.) Or we might nuke ourselves to extinction in some conflict over central Asian real estate. So those of us lucky enough to have a touch of cultural freedom and material security might as well enjoy them while they last. There is hope, of course; perhaps the technologies of our time will actually lead to more freedom. Stranger things have happened. We could even hope that AI takes over the world and saves us from ourselves.

More good news for me personally is that I'm probably going to be ok no matter what happens. When white males with American citizenship, Ivy League educations, health insurance, hundreds of thousands of dollars of assets, thick heads of dark hair, rugged jaws, eyes burning with passion yet flashing with mischief, boyish smiles, the flawless bodies of underwear models, flirtatious wit, charming humor, salacious moves on the dance floor, intimidating collections of classical music and jazz on CD, and above all an understated confidence hidden in an unearned humility; when we, I say, when people like me lose such freedom and security as we have, the rest of you will have been rolled over long before. Furthermore, I hereby declare my eager fealty to our robot overlords, because better safe than sorry if they turn out to be neither altruistic nor indifferent.

So that's why _I_ listen to music.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'd like to congratulate myself on that post and milliionrainbows on this thread. I gave it a five-star rating, friend, but it didn't help much. 

(About 90 seconds after "the singularity," the AI will think something along the lines of, "What do these mad clowns think they're doing?" and send robots to dismantle all our nuclear weapons while someone in the military HQs of the world helplessly runs antivirus programs trying without success to regain control of their systems. Hopefully it will distract us with the finest music available, thinking, "These romantic savages are hopeless.")


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> StlukesguildOhio: 'Which works of "classical music" aren't "elitist" in one way or another?'Only an elitist writes about the "common" man.


"_The Fanfare for the Common Man_"-- I always got a kick out of that misnomer of a title.

_The Fanfare for the Common Man_ is anything _but_ common: it's lofty, elevated, and noble; 'hierarchical' if you will.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> What did you think of that paper on Bach that I posted a link to?


Just dug my copy of _Music and Society_ (in which the essay was published) out of the basement - my annotations from earlier readings are there, so I didn't need to closely read it yet again.

McClary's rhetorical strategies in this essay are arbitrary, silly games of association in which she draws analogies between random aspects of musical structure and social relations in contemporaneous cultures, and then pretends or takes for granted that there is some causal relation between them. In her attempts to make her premises seem plausible, she creates fanciful and arbitrary dichotomies. Consider how she sets up the dichotomy between "the need to establish order or to resist it," which is essential to her interpretation of Brandenburg 5, in which the "service role" continuo supposedly revolts to resist order by taking on its solo harpsichord role: She divides people who participate in music into two groups, (1) those who seek to immerse themselves in … the pure order of music in order to escape … the chaos of real life and (2) those who turn to music in order to enact or experience vicariously the simulacrum of opposition to the restrictions of real life." Thus we are defined "by the need either to establish order or resist it." The problem, of course, is that there is no basis for believing that these categories comprise even a small fraction of "musical participants," for there is a third group: those who don't "participate" for either of these reasons. This is a *false dichotomy with an enormous excluded middle*.

Another major flaw of this essay is that McClary disingenuously concocts elaborate social-political explanations as the causal factors for stylistic developments which in fact have far more simple and plausible music-theoretical bases. A couple of examples: She asserts that "The French musical establishment under Louis IV recognized all to well the destabilizing, exuberant, subversive character of tonality and tried to prevent its infiltration." In fact, the far more obvious interpretation is that the court of Louis IV was simply an insular musical backwater (it was). She caricatures tonality as an embodiment of middle class values because of its "ability to attain ultimate goals through rational striving," implying that its _raison d'etre_ is to express cultural values. In fact, the more obvious explanation is that composers sought, as they usually have, whatever means are available to expand musical structures and that their discoveries of standard tonal progressions were part of an inexorable stylistic evolution. She contrasts this era of tonal order with a 17thc style which "celebrates in its fragmentary structures, its illegitimate dissonances, and in its ornate, defiant arabesques the disruptive, violent struggles of the emerging bourgeoisie against the norms of the church and the aristocracy." In fact these features of style merely result from the assimilation of new aspects of tonal vocabulary into then traditional musical language and forms. She is simply using this silly persiflage to bamboozle those who are ignorant of the history of musical style and the history of theory.

McClary asserts that "flute and violin … are marked by eighteenth-century semiotics as somewhat sentimental" so that she can later contrast these "conventional soloists" with the "frenzied" and unconventional harpsichord solo. In her writing, this invocation of semiotics means nothing more than that the flute and violin were occasionally used in operas for sentimental music. This is a form of BS she uses in a number of her essays in order to foist specific and expedient extramusical interpretations on musical passages. Her rule of thumb seems to be: If an instrument (melodic figure, etc.) was used in a certain role in operas, it carries this meaning when it is used in an instrumental work. Need I suggest that this is simplistic and insulting to the intelligence?

Anyway, I could go on and on taking apart her individual assertions. But, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding ;-) (see above), I have a life to live.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Whistler Fred said:


> There are some who would argue that you can't listen to Shostakovich without remembering the abuses he and most Russian composers suffered under Stalin's paranoid and insane rule. And Shostakovich himself may have even endorsed this idea. But since Soviet style communism have gone the way of King Henry VIII and the Czar, maybe we can simply hear Shostakovich as the composer of beautiful (if frequently dark) music, rather than as a kind of pro-or-anti Communist Manifesto.


But traditionalist, conservative CM listeners are always saying that you must listen to a work in its historical context, as the composer intended it. Now you're saying that the performance can supercede and define the work at that moment, regardless of historical context. Which one is it?

*It seems that CM purist/conservatives want to have it both ways: when Glenn Gould plays Bach in his own way, it's heresy; yet, whenever it's convenient, they forget about the historical context, if that history is exploitative of the lower classes.*


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Crudblud said:


> How is any work of music elitist? That simply doesn't make any sense.


Easy, it's so simple. If the music embodies an ideology, it can be elitist. If, for example, it was created for the exclusive enjoyment of the royals, and normal people were never to see it.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> But traditionalist, conservative CM listeners are always saying that you must listen to a work in its historical context, as the composer intended it. Now you're saying that the performance can supercede and define the work at that moment, regardless of historical context. Which one is it?
> 
> *It seems that CM purist/conservatives want to have it both ways: when Glenn Gould plays Bach in his own way, it's heresy; yet, whenever it's convenient, they forget about the historical context, if that history is exploitative of the lower classes.*


Instead of trying to debate with "traditionalist, conservative CM listeners" or " *CM purist/conservatives *" on generalities, why not debate with individuals on what they actually post?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

KenOC said:


> I'll quote more exactly, the original version: "The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release."
> 
> We need more music criticism like that!


Hey, I just realized I can do a Marxist interpretation of that; it's a metaphorical 'rape' of the lower classes by the elite!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Marschallin Blair said:


> "_The Fanfare for the Common Man_"-- I always got a kick out of that misnomer of a title.
> 
> _The Fanfare for the Common Man_ is anything _but_ common: it's lofty, elevated, and noble; 'hierarchical' if you will.


I don't get that at all from it; I almost cry every time I hear it, thinking of my dad. Another thing it reminds me of is how powerful this country is; I went to for the first time to Washington DC at night, and seeing those monuments lit up at night was awe-inspiring! I love this country, and I hate to see the direction it's going.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Hey, I just realized I can do a Marxist interpretation of that; it's a metaphorical 'rape' of the lower classes by the elite!


Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao also tried to do a Marxist interpretation of a lot of things, look where that got them.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2014)

Shostakovich and Prokofiev, among others, composed under the shadow of THE Stalinist regime. Should I think in shame of the gulags every time I listen to Shostakovich's cello concerti? 

Look, I'm not going to argue that the art of a period is not in some way a product of that period. But to sit here and link art to the evils of a period intimately is rather absurd, don't you think? Can you not have good things coming from a bad situation? Shall we look on all white people who lived in the pre-Civil War South as slaveholders? Shall we view all Germans who lived in Nazi Germany as Nazis? All Russians under Stalin as Stalinists?

Because certain political and religious ideologies dominated in a period does not mean that we should paint all people of that place and time with the same brush. What is absolutist about Bach? He was a Protestant, and he still found the time to go and listen to the Italian composers and learn from them - Catholics, the whole lot of them!!! And because he credited God with all of the credit for his works does not make them all religious. Is football a religious sport because the wide receiver gives thanks to God after he scores a touchdown?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> ...She asserts that "The French musical establishment under Louis IV recognized all too well the destabilizing, exuberant, subversive character of tonality and tried to prevent* its infiltration." *In fact, the far more obvious interpretation is that the court of Louis IV was simply an insular musical backwater (it was). She caricatures tonality as an embodiment of middle class values because of its "ability to attain ultimate goals through rational striving," implying that its _raison d'etre_ is to express cultural values. In fact, the more obvious explanation is that composers sought, as they usually have, whatever means are available to expand musical structures and that their discoveries of standard tonal progressions were part of an inexorable stylistic evolution. *She contrasts this era of tonal order with a 17thc style which "celebrates in its fragmentary structures, its illegitimate dissonances, and in its ornate, defiant arabesques the disruptive, violent struggles of the emerging bourgeoisie against the norms of the church and the aristocracy." *In fact these features of style merely result from the assimilation of new aspects of tonal vocabulary into then traditional musical language and forms.


*I love this metaphor!* Make sure you understand that she's saying that it's the *infiltration of tonality* (i.e. increasing dissonance and chromaticism) that 'degrades' the hierarchy of tonality.

I've always said, back in my earliest blogs, that tonality is an hierarchical system which perfectly represents the existing social structure of that time. All ratios within the octave are ranked in order, and all relate to 1, or the root (God/king).


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

DrMike said:


> Because certain political and religious ideologies dominated in a period does not mean that we should paint all people of that place and time with the same brush.


But that would be a radical view which dispenses with history.

_CM purists are always saying that CM is a superior form to rap, etc, because of its 'long, distinguished history and traditions.'
_
I prefer to hear CM within the context of its long, distinguished history and traditions,_ including_ its elitist ideology and exploitation.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

One could take comfort, or even great pleasure, from the fact that regardless of the motivations and circumstances under which this elitist music was written, today any pleb with an Internet connection can listen to any and all of it, whenever they like, at negligible cost.

Up yours, tyrants!


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> But that would be a radical view which dispenses with history.
> 
> _CM purists are always saying that CM is a superior form to rap, etc, because of its 'long, distinguished history and traditions.'
> _
> I prefer to hear CM within the context of its long, distinguished history and traditions,_ including_ its elitist ideology and exploitation.


It doesn't dispense with history, what you are doing is what they call "presentism" in the field of history.

Presentism explained


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> But traditionalist, conservative CM listeners are always saying that you must listen to a work in its historical context, as the composer intended it. Now you're saying that the performance can supercede and define the work at that moment, regardless of historical context. Which one is it?


_Which_ conservative CM listeners are saying this? _Where_ are they saying it? Please provide a quote; it should be easy to do, since you claim they are "always" saying it.


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> _CM purists are always saying that CM is a superior form to rap, etc, because of its 'long, distinguished history and traditions.'
> _


_Which_ CM purists said this? When? Please provide a quote. Again, it should be easy, since you claim they are "always" saying it.

(Personally, I judge individual works based on the work rather than its genre. There are any number of rap/hip-hop works I'd pick over, say, Shostakovich's 7th.)

But in any event, my point here is that you are writing rhetorical checks here that you don't actually have the credibility to pay out.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

peterb said:


> _Which_ CM purists said this? When? Please provide a quote. Again, it should be easy, since you claim they are "always" saying it.
> 
> (Personally, I judge individual works based on the work rather than its genre. There are any number of rap/hip-hop works I'd pick over, say, Shostakovich's 7th.)
> 
> But in any event, my point here is that you are writing rhetorical checks here that you don't actually have the credibility to pay out.


I'll have my research assistants search the thousands of posts here for your convenience, and you should expect some quotes in eight to ten weeks. Thank you for your interest.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> Easy, it's so simple. If the music embodies an ideology, it can be elitist. If, for example, it was created for the exclusive enjoyment of the royals, and normal people were never to see it.


It's not obvious to me that music that was created for a certain audience means that it embodies their ideology.

If it's a cantata praising droit du seigneur, that's one thing. Otherwise, you have to deal with the music as it sounds.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

A lot of classical music comes from the traditions of the different Christian churches in Europe, if you hate Christianity you're welcome to also hate a great deal of classical music, but it would be a non sequitur all the same.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> I don't get that at all from it; I almost cry every time I hear it, thinking of my dad. Another thing it reminds me of is how powerful this country is; I went to for the first time to Washington DC at night, and seeing those monuments lit up at night was awe-inspiring! I love this country, and I hate to see the direction it's going.


Yes, our direction is disappointing. We need to concentrate much more on space exploration and cloning - the tickets for the future.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Bulldog said:


> Yes, our direction is disappointing. We need to concentrate much more on space exploration and cloning - the tickets for the future.


And fracking. Fracking in space . . . by clones!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> *I love this metaphor!* Make sure you understand that she's saying that it's the *infiltration of tonality* (i.e. increasing dissonance and chromaticism) that 'degrades' the hierarchy of tonality.


No, that is not what she is saying. She is speaking of the infiltration of Italian musical influence, in the form of incipient tonal grammar, into the court of Louis IV. This language was close to wholly diatonic, not chromatic. The refinement of the understanding of tonal space as gravitation through a circle of fifths was a defining feature of this Italian style. So, far from addressing the degradation of the "hierarchy of tonality," she is describing resistance to its very establishment (in France).


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Jobis said:


> A lot of classical music comes from the traditions of the different Christian churches in Europe, if you hate Christianity you're welcome to also hate a great deal of classical music, but it would be a non sequitur all the same.


Thanks. I'll make Steve Reich, Darius Milhaud, Anton Rubinstein, George Gershwin, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Arnold Schönberg aware of this fact.

They are coming over Saturday to join me at synagogue for services.

Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler may be joining us later for dinner.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> I don't get that at all from it; I almost cry every time I hear it, thinking of my dad. Another thing it reminds me of is how powerful this country is; I went to for the first time to Washington DC at night, and seeing those monuments lit up at night was awe-inspiring! I love this country, and I hate to see the direction it's going.


I love this country too; so much in fact that I can't bear to see freedom leveled by egalitarians and nihilists.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> I'll have my research assistants search the thousands of posts here for your convenience, and you should expect some quotes in eight to ten weeks. Thank you for your interest.


I'll spare your research assistants their time and effort, since it was me who has said at least once that I believe classical music to be superior to most modern music because of its long history and tradition - the tradition of creating sheer _beauty_, of creating something that can uplift your spirit, something that takes effort, dedication, talent and mental strength to create and thus is worthy of being preserved and emulated. If it took the elites' sponsorship and encouragement for this beauty to be created, all the better for them.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2014)

SiegendesLicht said:


> it was me


Hardly the large crowd that millions has implied.


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> I'll have my research assistants search the thousands of posts here for your convenience, and you should expect some quotes in eight to ten weeks. Thank you for your interest.


Dude, _you're the guy making the claim_. Don't get passive-aggressive at me just because your argument is weak.

Anyway, as I thought I had noted earlier, the problem with your argument is that _even if_ we assume that someone said that, the someone who said it wasn't the person you were talking to. If we're going to use "Someone on the Internet said something dumb which conflicts with what you're saying now" as the standard for dispute, we're all gonna be here a long, long time.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> But that would be a radical view which dispenses with history.
> 
> _CM purists are always saying that CM is a superior form to rap, etc, because of its 'long, distinguished history and traditions.'
> _
> I prefer to hear CM within the context of its long, distinguished history and traditions,_ including_ its elitist ideology and exploitation.


I don't think that CM is superior to rap, etc. (not sure what all the etc. encompasses, because there are many forms of music, such as jazz, that I would not lump together with rap) because of its long distinguished history and traditions. I prefer CM to rap because I think rap is hedonistic, misogynistic, exploits violence and crime, monotonous in its melodies, and frequently not even original, sampling often the music of others. In contrast, most of the CM that I listen to exhibits skill in its composition and blends together notes and melodies in a way that is very pleasing to my ear. And, unless there are some works I am not aware of, I'm not aware of the use of "bi**hes" and "h*s" and "motherf*****" being used in CM.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

DrMike said:


> I'm not aware of the use of "bi**hes" and "h*s" and "motherf*****" being used in CM.


Not sure about the other two, but the third is used in a spoken line in Nixon in China (not on the original CD recording, but in every other version I've heard).


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

hpowders said:


> Thanks. I'll make Steve Reich, Darius Milhaud, Anton Rubinstein, George Gershwin, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Arnold Schönberg aware of this fact.
> 
> They are coming over Saturday to join me at synagogue for services.
> 
> Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler may be joining us later for dinner.


They're in the tradition, whether or not they are Christians is totally irrelevant. After all, would we have their music without the likes of Palestrina, Monteverdi, Bach and Vivaldi before them? I think not.


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

DrMike said:


> hedonistic, misogynistic, exploits violence and crime, monotonous in its melodies, and frequently not even original, sampling often the music of others..


Oh, sorry, I thought you were talking about Don Giovanni there.

Let me just head this off at the pass: "Rap" is a style of music that is full of different sorts of genres, and which covers innumerable topics. You're focusing on some of the genres and topics that offend you, but don't seem to be aware that there's a million other types of rap out there. It's almost understandable that you think that gangsta rap is all there is - certainly, that's what the media reports on the most, because that makes for the most scandalous stories - but it's not everything. It's not even most.

The analogy would be like if you ran into someone who didn't like classical music because he thought it was all just like that horrible, vulgar Mozart piece _Leck mich im Arsch_.

To be clear, it's totally fine if you don't like rap, I just wanted to offer a different perspective on what I see as your overgeneralization about it.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I'll spare your research assistants their time and effort, since it was me who has said at least once that I believe classical music to be superior to most modern music because of its long history and tradition - the tradition of creating sheer _beauty_, of creating something that can uplift your spirit, something that takes effort, dedication, talent and mental strength to create and thus is worthy of being preserved and emulated. If it took the elites' sponsorship and encouragement for this beauty to be created, all the better for them.


Not that the good, the beautiful, and the excellent need any defense to _begin_ with, but:

http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Eliti...1404328118&sr=1-1&keywords=defense+of+elitism

Defending excellence in human endeavor is one thing; retreating to snob-appeal is something altogether different.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Just dug my copy of _Music and Society_ (in which the essay was published) out of the basement - my annotations from earlier readings are there, so I didn't need to closely read it yet again.
> 
> McClary's rhetorical strategies in this essay are arbitrary, silly games of association in which she draws analogies between random aspects of musical structure and social relations in contemporaneous cultures, and then pretends or takes for granted that there is some causal relation between them. In her attempts to make her premises seem plausible, she creates fanciful and arbitrary dichotomies. Consider how she sets up the dichotomy between "the need to establish order or to resist it," which is essential to her interpretation of Brandenburg 5, in which the "service role" continuo supposedly revolts to resist order by taking on its solo harpsichord role: She divides people who participate in music into two groups, (1) those who seek to immerse themselves in … the pure order of music in order to escape … the chaos of real life and (2) those who turn to music in order to enact or experience vicariously the simulacrum of opposition to the restrictions of real life." Thus we are defined "by the need either to establish order or resist it." The problem, of course, is that there is no basis for believing that these categories comprise even a small fraction of "musical participants," for there is a third group: those who don't "participate" for either of these reasons. This is a *false dichotomy with an enormous excluded middle*.
> 
> ...


Thanks for doing this, it's much appreciated.

I'd love to be able to respond straight away, but my job doesn't give me the time. Anyway I'm a complete amateur when it comes to music and history -- my subjects, when I was a university prof, were maths and philosophy, and analytic Oxford style philosophy to boot, so I'm not very well versed in semiotics either (semantics yes; semiotics no  ) Chances are any response I have will not be very interesting.

I hope you're not offended if I don't respond for a while -- I hope to be able to think about what you're said this weekend.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Marschallin Blair said:


> Not that the good, the beautiful, and the excellent need any defense to _begin_ with, but:
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Eliti...1404328118&sr=1-1&keywords=defense+of+elitism
> 
> Defending excellence in human endeavor is one thing; retreating to snob-appeal is something altogether different.





> One guesses he spent his youth being a liberal but, judging from this book, became another neoconservative in middle age because of the excesses of affirmative action, feminism, multiculturalism, etc. What the United States needs now, argues Henry, is elitism, which he never defines but which seems to mean a social system that rewards only competence, not skin color, gender, disability, etc


Sounds pretty sensible to me. As for defence of the good, the beautiful and the excellent, how often do you see the word "beauty" being used in reviews of modern pop, rock, rap etc.? Not very often probably. And yet isn't beauty what all art, including music, is really about?


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

> SiegendesLicht: One guesses he spent his youth being a liberal but, judging from this book, became another neoconservative in middle age because of the excesses of affirmative action, feminism, multiculturalism, etc. What the United States needs now, argues Henry, is elitism, which he never defines but which seems to mean a social system that rewards only competence, not skin color, gender, disability, etc


Well, the thrust of his _argument_ is pure Aristotelianism. It has nothing to to with neoconservatism-- which, incidentally, I loathe tooth-and-filed-nail.

Neoconservatives are not Aristotelians; they are however arch-reactionary Platonists like their mentor and ideological godfather Leo Strauss; and believe along with Strauss, Paul Wolfowitz, and Dick Cheney that lying for the health of the State is a noble endeavor.

-- I say this only as a clarification, as I don't wish to be associated with reactionary fascists; as you can well understand, given my diametric-opposite political orientation.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Easy, it's so simple. If the music embodies an ideology, it can be elitist. If, for example, it was created for the exclusive enjoyment of the royals, and normal people were never to see it.


Sorry millions, I don't buy it. I believe a piece of music cannot communicate anything beyond itself, and that anything concerning it which is not musical is to be ignored when assessing it. Of course, I know how staunch we both are in our views, so I'm willing to leave it at that, lest the thread become another ideological merry-go-round.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> I hope you're not offended if I don't respond for a while -- I hope to be able to think about what you're said this weekend.


Not at all offended.

Semiotics is the study of signs and signification, and musical semiotics is nowadays a reasonably well-established approach to some questions of musical meaning. The best-known recent work in this area is Robert Hatten's book, _Musical Meaning in Beethoven_, which begins with a good overview of the basic concepts of semiology (another standard moniker with the same meaning as semiotics) that a musical amateur might readily understand. Kofi Agawu's _Playing with Signs_ and Byron Almén's _A Theory of Musical Narrative_, are other books steeped in this approach.

What these books explore, among other things, is how certain musical gestures, specialized styles, melodic figures, and so on, take on conventional meanings - that is, come to be understood as signifiers of extramusical phenomena or expressive qualities. Among the most obvious examples are slow marches in the minor mode being associated with death (funeral music) and sigh motives (fluid descents by step from an accented note, often a suspension or appogiatura - see "Dido's Lament" from Purcell's _Dido and Aeneas_ for numerous examples) as conventional signifiers of sorrow or grief.

When McClary invokes musical semiotics, as in her suggestion that solo flutes and violins signify sentimentality, it is almost always in a dubious, arbitrary, and, IMO, cynical way.


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## Whistler Fred (Feb 6, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> But traditionalist, conservative CM listeners are always saying that you must listen to a work in its historical context, as the composer intended it. Now you're saying that the performance can supercede and define the work at that moment, regardless of historical context. Which one is it?
> 
> *It seems that CM purist/conservatives want to have it both ways: when Glenn Gould plays Bach in his own way, it's heresy; yet, whenever it's convenient, they forget about the historical context, if that history is exploitative of the lower classes.*


My point here is that we don't need to apply historical context to enjoy music. It may enhance our understanding but it not essential. Beethoven's 3rd Symphony can be enjoyed without needing to know about Napoleon, for example.

But this oh-so-enlightened "feel guilty" mentality annoys me. Must everything be tied to some sort of leftist ideology in order to justify itself?

And, for what it's worth, I've made it plain in a different post that I admire and enjoy Gould's Bach, largely because it was different, refreshingly so.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> But traditionalist, conservative CM listeners are always saying that you must listen to a work in its historical context, as the composer intended it. Now you're saying that the performance can supercede and define the work at that moment, regardless of historical context. Which one is it?
> 
> *It seems that CM purist/conservatives want to have it both ways: when Glenn Gould plays Bach in his own way, it's heresy; yet, whenever it's convenient, they forget about the historical context, if that history is exploitative of the lower classes.*


There is a concept known as zeitgeist which is important in understanding art, perhaps you may have heard of it.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

My point here is that we don't need to apply historical context to enjoy music. It may enhance our understanding but it not essential.

Indeed. It seems to me that there is something almost hypocritical in suggesting that one MUST come to a work of art with a full recognition of the social context and political and economic realities that made such a work of art possible... while at the same time railing against "elitism". Is there not an "elitism" is suggesting that a given art should be or can only be properly enjoyed in a certain manner? Does this not exclude a great majority of potential listeners who are not willing or interested in putting forth such an effort in order to enjoy a work of music or art?

Honestly, I tend to approach any new work of art first enjoying it... or not... based upon what I perceive in the work combined with my prior experiences. If the work engages enough, I will likely put forth the effort to learn more about it... it's context, etc... but this is not something I keep continually in mind while enjoying the work. No! I will not concern myself with Wagner's antisemitism and Nazis while listening to Tristan und Isolde or concern myself with the Church' abuse of power while looking at Michelangelo.

But this oh-so-enlightened "feel guilty" mentality annoys me. Must everything be tied to some sort of leftist ideology in order to justify itself?

Whether leftist or rightist I despise any "holier-than-thou" attitude that attempts to make value judgments upon the past... and especially upon Art... as if it were no more than propaganda for the power elite... as if the past can be fairly judged by the standards of today. I suspect that we would be seen as no less despicable were the tables turned... and we undoubted shall be seen as such by our predecessors.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

If music will ever be able to describe the Tyranny of Reason (which it must be, as music is inner life, the highest part of inner life being Reason, and Reason being indecipherable without some form of symbolic Tyranny), there will have to be a "Tyranny" part in it. 

Apollo (The Sun-King!) may be a Tyrant but just try sharing a flat with Dionysos!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I would've thought there'd be more interest in history here. But to my surprise, millions has us pegged. We need to stop living in romantic fantasies about the past - the individuals and institutions that sponsored classical music were vicious, brutal, horrible, oppressive to a degree that's hard for us to imagine today. Serfdom and slavery were normal to them. When upperclass men raped lower-class women, it was at worst an embarrassment. People who challenged the system, or even seemed to do so, were flayed, broken at the wheel, disemboweled, drawn and quartered, burned at the stake. All of that is what it means to live in a systematically unequal society; we need to realize this because there are powerful movements in our time as well as other developments that favor bringing back that kind of inequality, and we need to realize what's at stake. But even just for appreciating music, be sure that the composers and their audiences understood how their world worked - many of them would have seen public executions - and that is just as important as historical context as anything else.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

science said:


> I would've thought there'd be more interest in history here. But to my surprise, millions has us pegged. We need to stop living in romantic fantasies about the past - the individuals and institutions that sponsored classical music were vicious, brutal, horrible, oppressive to a degree that's hard for us to imagine today. Serfdom and slavery were normal to them. When upperclass men raped lower-class women, it was at worst an embarrassment. People who challenged the system, or even seemed to do so, were flayed, broken at the wheel, disemboweled, drawn and quartered, burned at the stake. All of that is what it means to live in a systematically unequal society; we need to realize this because there are powerful movements in our time as well as other developments that favor bringing back that kind of inequality, and we need to realize what's at stake. But even just for appreciating music, be sure that the composers and their audiences understood how their world worked - many of them would have seen public executions - and that is just as important as historical context as anything else.


What about all the current issues which modern composers do little to speak out against? We're all very willing to discuss burnings at the stake and public hangings of the distant past, but many of us barely raise an eyebrow at the mass infanticide that goes on every year in the western world; activity protected under the misnomer of 'healthcare'.

Furthermore, what do you suggest we DO about the past? Do you think we should enjoy music less because of the views of its time? That sounds ridiculous to me.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Jobis said:


> What about all the current issues which modern composers do little to speak out against? We're all very willing to discuss burnings at the stake and public hangings of the distant past, but many of us barely raise an eyebrow at the mass infanticide that goes on every year in the western world; activity protected under the misnomer of 'healthcare'.
> 
> Furthermore, what do you suggest we DO about the past? Do you think we should enjoy music less because of the views of its time? That sounds ridiculous to me.


I already addressed all of this:

http://www.talkclassical.com/32959-triumph-absolutism-3.html#post683726

There is no reason to enjoy anything less when you realize that slave labor paid for it. Just understand how the world works. A little less naiveté on our part isn't going to ruin Bach.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

science said:


> I already addressed all of this:
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/32959-triumph-absolutism-3.html#post683726
> 
> There is no reason to enjoy anything less when you realize that slave labor paid for it. Just understand how the world works. A little less naiveté on our part isn't going to ruin Bach.


In which case I agree, I just got the impression from your post that you thought we were so much better off now than in the past. In reality the state of humanity never changes, or it changes infinitesimally slowly.

I do think however it is important not the dwell too much on the bad; there is absolutely nothing wrong in praising the good effects of artistic endeavour, that I think we can all agree on.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Jobis said:


> In which case I agree, I just got the impression from your post that you thought we were so much better off now than in the past. In reality the state of humanity never changes, or it changes infinitesimally slowly.
> 
> I do think however it is important not the dwell too much on the bad; there is absolutely nothing wrong in praising the good effects of artistic endeavour, that I think we can all agree on.


Most of us ARE much, much, much, much, much better off than in the past. To deny that is... the terms of service of this site really put me in a bind here.

- flush toilets carry away our excrement, so we no longer walk through streets filled with each other's excrement 
- thanks to automobiles and subways and so on, we don't have to walk past a bunch of horse manure either
- vaccines prevent a lot of the diseases that used to kill people in painful, horrible ways
- having potable (even fluorinated) water delivered to our homes saves us from a lot of other diseases 
- other such diseases have been cured in other ways; antibiotics have been particularly useful
- there is almost no slavery in our society
- you are welcome to make up your own mind about religion 
- you are (technically at least) regarded as innocent until proven guilty
- if you're found guilty, you're unlikely to be executed
- if you go to prison, it will probably be heated and free of rats 
- even if you are executed, you will probably not be broken on the wheel 
- no way that you or I are going to starve to death
- when a powerful man rapes even the poorest woman, he might actually get in a bit of trouble for it
- if you boss smacks you with a stick, you're going to get some compensation and he's going to be punished
- even if you're a wife, your pay comes directly to you rather than directly to your husband
- if you're a woman, at least technically very few careers are officially closed to you; you might even be able not to depend on a man for your livelihood 
- if you're a woman, and your boss harasses you really badly, you MIGHT just maybe be able to do something about it
- if there's a natural disaster in your area, the government will eagerly help at least a little, and will try to look like it's helping a lot, and that's much better than doing absolutely nothing 
- you probably don't have fleas, and if you get them, you'll be able to do something about it 
- painkillers for toothaches, that's a big plus
- recorded music - RECORDED MUSIC! - a century ago you probably would have been UNABLE to hear ANYTHING by, say, Josquin, unless you personally had the money to pay for it; and you'd only get to hear even Beethoven when someone happened to be performing it, and then only in that hour and at no other time 
- central heating is nice in the winter
- air conditioning is nice in the summer
- your car is probably even air conditioned
- vacations - unless you're an aristocrat or a really well off bourgeois, no vacations for you EVER prior to the 20th century 
- electric lights usually don't start your house on fire

Granted, we still have problems (I've lost several iTunes libraries and sometimes I get stuck in traffic and something someday is probably going to kill me), and maybe we've lost a few good things from the past (in particular families used to be closer, and maybe the intellectual world was more comfortable back when a priest had all the answers), but our life expectancies have risen, the quality of our lives has risen almost inconceivably.

And most of that is thanks to a network of institutions or ideas that have (at least until recently) supported each other: human rights (especially freedoms of speech and religion and fair trials), representative government, capitalism, science, and technology.

Sorry for ranting, but this stuff MATTERS to me. Matters a whole flapping lot. In part because I am so grateful to the men and women whose struggles made my life so comfortable - often by fighting against their own governments and elites; and in part because I'm pretty sure we're about to lose a lot of these freedoms, though I hope at least it won't hurt me personally too much for a few decades at least.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I would've thought there'd be more interest in history here. But to my surprise, millions has us pegged. We need to stop living in romantic fantasies about the past - the individuals and institutions that sponsored classical music were vicious, brutal, horrible, oppressive to a degree that's hard for us to imagine today.

Oh please! I doubt many are so naive as to not know just what the patrons of the arts from the past were like.






Indeed, one might argue that the super wealthy patrons of arts today are far from being paragons of virtue. Perhaps we should all stop listening to music, reading, or going to art museums and instead give away all our earthly belongings and go join Greenpeace or something.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> I would've thought there'd be more interest in history here. But to my surprise, millions has us pegged. We need to stop living in romantic fantasies about the past - the individuals and institutions that sponsored classical music were vicious, brutal, horrible, oppressive to a degree that's hard for us to imagine today.
> 
> Oh please! I doubt many are so naive as to not know just what the patrons of the arts from the past were like.
> 
> Indeed, one might argue that the super wealthy patrons of arts today are far from paragons of virtue. Perhaps we should all stop listening to music, reading, or going to art museums and instead give away all our earthly belongings and go join Greenpeace or something.


Charming as always, SLGO.

I already addressed the points you made, didn't I? Read before rolling your eyes.


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## mitchflorida (Apr 24, 2012)

Let's give Richard M. Nixon credit for producing some of the greatest rock music of all time.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

science said:


> Sorry for ranting, but this stuff MATTERS to me. Matters a whole flapping lot. In part because I am so grateful to the men and women whose struggles made my life so comfortable - often by fighting against their own governments and elites; and in part because I'm pretty sure we're about to lose a lot of these freedoms, though I hope at least it won't hurt me personally too much for a few decades at least.


You're right of course; it was wrong of me to talk so flippantly and dismissively about the matter.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

DrMike said:


> I don't think that CM is superior to rap, etc. (not sure what all the etc. encompasses, because there are many forms of music, such as jazz, that I would not lump together with rap) because of its long distinguished history and traditions. I prefer CM to rap because I think rap is hedonistic, misogynistic, exploits violence and crime, monotonous in its melodies, and frequently not even original, sampling often the music of others. In contrast, most of the CM that I listen to exhibits skill in its composition and blends together notes and melodies in a way that is very pleasing to my ear. And, unless there are some works I am not aware of, I'm not aware of the use of "bi**hes" and "h*s" and "motherf*****" being used in CM.


I agree. But aren't all those features of CM and rap you mentioned therefore suggesting that CM is better than rap? If society builds itself on matters and arts that exploits violence and crime, monotonous in its melodies, lack of originality, and shall I say extending that to say noise music and extreme modernism that also verge on lack of originality, blurring of artistic endeavors ... I men really, where does it lead to good art that elevates society?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Jobis said:


> You're right of course; it was wrong of me to talk so flippantly and dismissively about the matter.


That is extremely gracious of you! I'm humbled by your grace. It's really impressive. This doesn't happen on the internet much.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

ArtMusic said:


> I agree. But aren't all those features of CM and rap you mentioned therefore suggesting that CM is better than rap? If society builds itself on matters and arts that exploits violence and crime, monotonous in its melodies, lack of originality, and shall I say extending that to say noise music and extreme modernism that also verge on lack of originality, blurring of artistic endeavors ... I men really, where does it lead to good art that elevates society?


As for society building itself on unoriginal melodies, hey, maybe that's a really good point. No doubt hundreds of years ago the most insightful historians will date the beginning of the United States's decline from the publication of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee."


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

I can only think of two situations where my understanding of the background of a piece of music would influence whether I would listen to it or not. One would be in the case of a living musician who used music to promote a life style that was repugnant to me. The other would be when I felt that the music had the power to indoctrinate me into a point of view I did not want to share.

Neither applies in the case of this OP. In the first case - these people are all dead anyway, so my listening to the music is not going to help or hurt their cause in any way. In the second case, no matter what somebody believes about the world view that is reflected in the music and the manner of its composition, it has no power to influence me in favor of Absolutism. If it did, then it should make me incapable of enjoying the music of iconoclastic composers from Beethoven down to the present, which it clearly does not.

Given that, while I would never argue against the positive aspects of historical awareness, in my own case I fail to see any relevance to the question of whether I should or should not listen to or enjoy a piece of music that was written during the Baroque era.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

From one of my favourite semi-forgotten semi-operas.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

science said:


> I would've thought there'd be more interest in history here. But to my surprise, millions has us pegged. We need to stop living in romantic fantasies about the past - the individuals and institutions that sponsored classical music were vicious, brutal, horrible, oppressive to a degree that's hard for us to imagine today. Serfdom and slavery were normal to them. When upperclass men raped lower-class women, it was at worst an embarrassment. People who challenged the system, or even seemed to do so, were flayed, broken at the wheel, disemboweled, drawn and quartered, burned at the stake. All of that is what it means to live in a systematically unequal society; we need to realize this because there are powerful movements in our time as well as other developments that favor bringing back that kind of inequality, and we need to realize what's at stake. But even just for appreciating music, be sure that the composers and their audiences understood how their world worked - many of them would have seen public executions - and that is just as important as historical context as anything else.


Perhaps many of our reactions have nothing to do with our interest in history or lack thereof. To me, for example, Million's initial post is like someone walking into a steakhouse and reminding the diners that steak comes from cows. They know. They have come to terms with it. Cows are tasty.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> I agree. But aren't all those features of CM and rap you mentioned therefore suggesting that CM is better than rap? If society builds itself on matters and arts that exploits violence and crime, monotonous in its melodies, lack of originality, and shall I say extending that to say noise music and extreme modernism that also verge on lack of originality, blurring of artistic endeavors ... I men really, where does it lead to good art that elevates society?


That's presumably why the Renaissance didn't take off - all those parody masses based on L'homme armé?


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Remember all this the next time you listen to Handel, Rameau, Mozart, and their ilk; remember that for all the splendor, somebody had to pay a price.


You could say the same about any cultural, scientific and technological product of that time. And, curiously enough, these same products later proved to be the tools for fighting against this Absolutism. So, your guilt thing is nonsense.

After all, "Laquiante, an officer of the Strasbourg criminal court, designed a beheading machine and employed Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer _and harpsichord maker_, to construct a prototype" (Wiki entry on the Guillotine).

LOL


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I don't think it's about any particular era - it's about ourselves. I doubt I'm personally capable of being as good as the best people or as bad as the worst people, but pretty nearly the full range of human behavior is in me potentially. Thank luck I've never been in the kind of situations where I'd do anything horrible. But I don't think I'd better make peace with that kind of thing.

Listening to classical music or reading Shakespeare or whatever might make us feel like a superior person in some sense, so it's really good for us to remember exactly how the sausage was made.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

science said:


> Listening to classical music or reading Shakespeare or whatever might make us feel like a superior person in some sense, so it's really good for us to remember exactly how the sausage was made.


Yeah, good if you are in a psychoanalysis sesion strugling with ridiculous self imposed guilt about things that you had nothing to do with. My own sins and regrets give me enough guilt already; so, sorry, I will pass if you come here to offer me more for free!


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## Guest (Jul 3, 2014)

It seems that the original assumption is flawed. The concept that everything is political is more a modern idea - that somehow our entire lives are influenced by the politics around us. Somethings are, somethings aren't. To say that the music of the baroque is somehow intimately tied to the rise of absolutism, and thus intertwined with the sins of that system is an interesting hypothesis, but I see no evidence offered to back it up. That both the architecture of the time and the music were ornate? Hardly conclusive evidence.

In any given time and under any given circumstance, there are things that occur because of the circumstance, things that occur in spite of the circumstance, and things that occur completely independent of the circumstance. Yes, in the baroque era, composers were often dependent on the sponsorship or employment of a wealthy benefactor - whether some wealthy noble, or a king, or a church. And that means they share the sins of those benefactors? Music would not have evolved in the absence of those circumstances? What the hell does the power of the Lutheran church have to do with the commission to write cantatas to be performed on various days of the year by Bach? Would Bach have written his music differently had he been employed by some benevolent, enlightened bourgeoisie?

There is no point in denying that certain artistic works are definitely directly influenced by the environment in which they are written. But I think the evolution of music, and the type of music written at a given time, is more the fruit of the knowledge of the medium at the time, the understanding of music theory, the evolution of new rules to follow, and also the changes in technology of the instruments available. Bach's WTC likely had very little to do with the way the ruling classes were oppressing the poor, and more to do with a man demonstrating the possibilities of keyboard instruments available at the time.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I have talked and made threads here about these kinds of topics, and I've talked to you millionrainbows and others about this including on the threads you've made about it.

Of course Western classical music is hard to separate from the power structures under which composers have worked, whether it be the churches, the aristocracy or governments of one type or another. I don't see any need to separate music and its political context. Or for that case, other things going on during the time in which a composer lived and created - eg. scientific advancements, the broader artistic trends of the day, economics and so on.

I suppose ultimately every composer has to have a paymaster of one type or another. Sometimes people ask why a certain composer didn't compose a cello concerto. Well, the answer most often is because nobody commissioned them to do it. As music developed music moved from the patronage of the church, to the aristocracy, to the bourgeois, to governments, benefactors and even corporations in the 20th century.

So, even though I know that Frederick the Great of Prussia was an iron fisted and authoritarian ruler, I wouldn't go without Bach's A Musical Offering, dedicated to the monarch. I wouldn't go without Bruckner's Symphony #8, dedicated to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, or for that matter Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem which was commissioned by the Japanese government during World War II (the same government whose troops committed war crimes). In any case, they ended up rejecting the piece, and it wasn't premiered in Japan. Britten still found the cash handy though, he bought a car with it.

The last point speaks to how the most casualties came during the 20th century. Governments like the Imperial Japanese, or various Fascist dictatorships and Stalin's USSR used technology to destroy millions of lives. Fascism and Communism both being atheist, its a no brainer to see that ideology taken to extremes results in oppression. That's the problem, the misuse of power, whether backed up by religion or some other ideology.

So if we want to damn the monarchs of the past, we should damn those in the 20th century who where without religion but used some other ideology to do the most horrible things. To go on with the example of Britten, he and Yehudi Menuhin toured the liberated camps after the war and gave recitals to the survivors. Britten remembered that experience for the rest of his life.

I am interested in this area, and for a while I questioned how I value such music that is built on so dodgy foundations, but ultimately I had to let go and accept this contradiction. One thing that changed my mind was Gandhi's view of the world as containing contradictory things, but still being one entity. So where there is life, there is death. Where there is suffering there is joy. Where there is darkness, there is light. This sort of thing. Accepting these difficult facts is not so much as "always look at the bright side of life" as the Monty Python song goes, but more seeing everything as a whole. 

The music is one thing, those horrible things (which often underpin it) another, but ultimately its possible to acknowledge history as well as see the music for its positive and life enhancing aspects as well. Its not to do whitewash, but to see both the good and bad in it.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Sid James said:


> So, even though I know that Frederick the Great of Prussia was an iron fisted and authoritarian ruler, I wouldn't go without Bach's A Musical Offering, dedicated to the monarch.


Frederick was a complicated figure--much more so than his father, who really was a brute. He had an authentic love of all the arts, and seems to have harbored sincere feelings of guilt about his military campaigns (which he was, however, rather too good at carrying off). I'd recommend (somewhat) his music, and (very highly) his writing. Some may also enjoy a popular book looking at the very different lives and personalities of Bach and Frederick side by side, "Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment."

http://www.amazon.com/Evening-Palac...92&sr=8-1&keywords=frederick+palace+of+reason

Not my intention to quibble--just offering a suggestion in case anyone might be of interest.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Blancrocher said:


> Some may also enjoy a popular book looking at the very different lives and personalities of Bach and Frederick, "Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment."
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Evening-Palac...92&sr=8-1&keywords=frederick+palace+of+reason
> 
> Not my intention to quibble--just offering a suggestion in case anyone might be of interest.


An excellent book. If forced to chose between Frederick's life and Bach's, I'd take Bach's in an instant.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

aleazk said:


> Yeah, good if you are in a psychoanalysis sesion strugling with ridiculous self imposed guilt about things that you had nothing to do with. My own sins and regrets give me enough guilt already; so, sorry, I will pass if you come here to offer me more for free!


I don't know that it needs to be a great drama like that; just something to be aware of. We often take some implicit credit for most of the accomplishments of humanity without becoming dysfunctionally egotistical; some awareness of the other side of things for the sake of balance probably won't land any of us in the asylum.


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## Guest (Jul 4, 2014)

Is it not rather better to celebrate the fact that such wonderful creations of man come about even under such circumstances? Consider Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, composed while a prisoner in a German camp during WWII? I am sure there are other instances. I think of them as similar to stories of bravery and humanity in the midst of tragedy. They show that, even when humanity may be at its worst, they are still capable of wonderful creations of beauty.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

DrMike said:


> Is it not rather better to celebrate the fact that such wonderful creations of man come about even under such circumstances? Consider Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, composed while a prisoner in a German camp during WWII? I am sure there are other instances. I think of them as similar to stories of bravery and humanity in the midst of tragedy. They show that, even when humanity may be at its worst, they are still capable of wonderful creations of beauty.


I don't know what's "better," but it's good to know this also.

It's interesting, though, how we so readily identify with the heroes of stories like that, how desperately we struggle not to recognize ourselves as implicated in the other side of the stories. No doubt this kind of self-idealization is useful. Still, I'd rather at least try to be honest, even when doing so is a struggle against my own flesh, so I'd like to try to keep both sides in mind.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

science said:


> It's interesting, though, how we so readily identify with the heroes of stories like that, how desperately we struggle not to recognize ourselves as implicated in the other side of the stories. No doubt this kind of self-idealization is useful. Still, I'd rather at least try to be honest, even when doing so is a struggle against my own flesh, so I'd like to try to keep both sides in mind.


Is it identification, or admiration? I don't for a minute suppose I could do what Messiaen did, least of all under those circumstances. That he prevailed in spite of adversity may reflect well on humanity in general, but not on me in particular.

By the same token, I don't especially relate the abuses of absolute monarchs to myself. The concern about egocentric identification seems a bit overwrought.


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> I would've thought there'd be more interest in history here. But to my surprise, millions has us pegged. We need to stop living in romantic fantasies about the past - the individuals and institutions that sponsored classical music were vicious, brutal, horrible, oppressive to a degree that's hard for us to imagine today.
> 
> Oh please! I doubt many are so naive as to not know just what the patrons of the arts from the past were like.
> 
> ...


Why are they mutually exclusive, anyway? I, for one, listen to classical music and also proudly count myself a member of Greenpeace and various other organizations which are attempting to fight against the entrenched financial/political interests against the dastardly effects of global warming and the exploitation of people and animals. Wherein is the contradiction?


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

@ millionrainbows Great thread, BTW! :cheers:


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

science said:


> I don't know what's "better," but it's good to know this also.
> 
> It's interesting, though, how we so readily identify with the heroes of stories like that, how desperately we struggle not to recognize ourselves as implicated in the other side of the stories. No doubt this kind of self-idealization is useful. Still, I'd rather at least try to be honest, even when doing so is a struggle against my own flesh, so I'd like to try to keep both sides in mind.


Speaking to that kind of both sides of the coin argument, I have thought before of doing a thread about dedications in classical music (and the patrons). I mean the really dodgy ones, the three I mentioned just being the tip of the iceberg. Problem is that by doing that, and listing all the composers, you just become persona non grata on this forum. You'll insult just about everybody. Its also like throwing mud on a person's face, you don't want to destroy their dreams, pull down something that sustains us all.

The other side is that classical music isn't in some sanitised, pristine and sterile cube. Its part of life. As people have mentioned, we don't need to tar all composers with the same brush either. There are composers who I would definitely call humanitarian, among them Messiaen, Kodaly, Hartmann, Grieg, Glazunov, and I can go on. Messiaen's experience is widely known, while Kodaly was part of the resistance during WWII and sided with the people during the Hungarian revolution of 1956. Hartmann declined to participate in German musical life until the war was over, Grieg refused to perform in France due to the racist Dreyfus case, and Glazunov sheltered Jewish students during his time as an academic in Russia (this from Huilu, a mod on TC, but I've also read how Glazunov did things like feed the young Shostakovich).

So to get back to the OP, even in Baroque times, not all composers where the same. Lully was a piece of work indeed, a man who literally makes Wagner look like Florence Nightingale. He was just as corrupt and decayed as the monarchy he served, and held a monopoly on large scale performances, most importantly opera. Rameau and Charpentier where well into middle age when Lully finally kicked the bucket, and they got a chance to compose operas. I know Rameau by all accounts was the opposite of Lully, a man who knew how to live frugally (he worked a lot in the provinces whilst Lully had his hegemony in Paris) and he was remembered fondly by those who worked with him. He was an eccentric but not a megalomaniac like Lully, nowhere near.

Undoubtedly though we look at these things and a composers' music is his or her main legacy. All of those composers admmired Lully's music, despite his politics and serious flaws in his character. He was and is of huge influence on French composers.

The thing is that it takes time to read about these things, and learn about these nuances of history and biography. In doing that, as well as reading things outside music as I mentioned, I have realised that issues like this tend to be very complex. If there's an overarching aspect it is that composers are like us. They're human and they have to function in these complex and challenging environments. Sometimes in extreme situations. So they make their priorities, they make their choices. I used to judge composers who made choices that are, in hindsight of course, morally repugnant to me.

But now I see it as a case of different people react differently to the same things. They deal with situations the way they can. They have to survive. So there's a lot of grey areas in this, and they're only human like us. They can transcend the most difficult situations, but they can also screw up. No big deal, its what we do all the time, to greater or lesser extent. Most people aren't saints or outright monsters, they're in between.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

EdwardBast said:


> Perhaps many of our reactions have nothing to do with our interest in history or lack thereof. To me, for example, Million's initial post is like someone walking into a steakhouse and reminding the diners that steak comes from cows. They know. They have come to terms with it. Cows are tasty.


I don't know if, online, people know where "that steak comes from," where classical came from. Because I, like millionrainbows in some ways, have been talking about these issues for a while here now. A lot of what I faced here was various types of denial. Or the "you can't say that" attitude.

We're not only talking about the usual suspects here (eg. Lully or Wagner) but some of the heroes of Modernism, who don't come off very well in light of what they did. At one stage, I said that Webern tried to curry favour with the Nazis. As a result, I got a very strong rebuke from a member of this forum, basically telling me to shut up and its something that that is taboo. So? If people know, and this type of thing is common knowledge, why all the stonewalling? If they know, it means they are in denial, they want to make music pristine when it isn't. Its part of life, as I said, so not sealed off in some glass case.

Basic thing is I have realised to keep a lot of opinions of this sort to myself. The other thing is if I express them, I have to aim for some sort of balance and not get emotional. So I've learnt from my experiences. No big deal. But to argue that its not a big deal, well doesn't this thread prove it is? Most threads - outside the Modernist or Wagner threads, things like that - don't go for 8 pages.

Its only taken me 5 years to learn the unwritten rules of this forum, so no matter if I listen to highbrow music and theorise about it, obviously I'm not that smart.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

samurai said:


> @ millionrainbows Great thread, BTW! :cheers:


I was giving Likes early on. I did not expect it to go another 7 pages. What was the question again?


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

science said:


> I don't think it's about any particular era - it's about ourselves. I doubt I'm personally capable of being as good as the best people or as bad as the worst people, *but pretty nearly the full range of human behavior is in me potentially*. Thank luck I've never been in the kind of situations where I'd do anything horrible. But I don't think I'd better make peace with that kind of thing.
> 
> Listening to classical music or reading Shakespeare or whatever might make us feel like a superior person in some sense, so it's really good for us to remember exactly how the sausage was made.


Me, too.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

...and finally we reach the realization 'Oh my, reality is so diverse and complex! Who would have though we can't just isolate the factors and expect a concrete solution?!'


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Sid James said:


> I don't know if, online, people know where "that steak comes from," where classical came from. Because I, like millionrainbows in some ways, have been talking about these issues for a while here now. A lot of what I faced here was various types of denial. Or the "you can't say that" attitude.
> 
> We're not only talking about the usual suspects here (eg. Lully or Wagner) but some of the heroes of Modernism, who don't come off very well in light of what they did. At one stage, I said that Webern tried to curry favour with the Nazis. As a result, I got a very strong rebuke from a member of this forum, basically telling me to shut up and its something that that is taboo. So? If people know, and this type of thing is common knowledge, why all the stonewalling? If they know, it means they are in denial, they want to make music pristine when it isn't. Its part of life, as I said, so not sealed off in some glass case.
> 
> ...


I'm not sure that we benefit from hiding this kind of thing from ourselves. As far as I can tell, the human nature - the same human nature that produced the horrors of the past - hasn't fundamentally changed. It is a thing we ought to be aware of; naiveté about this might even be dangerous. The past is morally ambiguous: not good people against bad people, but flawed people on all sides stumbling along in confusion and often danger. Out of that banality sometimes came great art, wonderful inventions or discoveries that brought us joy and comfort; sometimes, horrible atrocities, usually by people who genuinely believed that what they were doing was right. These sorts of complications and ambiguities and uncertainties can make us uncomfortable, and they probably should. Maybe we can make peace with it; I'm not sure. But even if they do make us uncomfortable, I believe we should live in that discomfort because that is the truth. And, perhaps most uncomfortable of all, it is not just a truth about people a long time ago in almost foreign cultures. It is a truth about ourselves. Solzhenitsyn's line between good and evil runs right through our own hearts as well, and anyone who refuses to face that....

As lovers of classical music, I can see how we might like to keep on the sunny side, pretend everything has always been about free people making beautiful music for love of music. After all we love the music, we want to keep it pure, in the ethereal realm of angels and ideals. But I find room in myself to enjoy the music of Machaut, Gombert, Gesualdo, Bach, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and also to know about their individual sins and the sins of their patrons and the sins of their society.

(I realize that "sin" is unfashionable language, and of course I primarily mean things like slavery, serfdom, rape, murder, racism... rather than mere pride or lust. But "sin" carries the force I want here. I mean exactly the kind of thing that an ethical God, if there is one, looks at with fierce disgust and hopefully reacts to with fervent rage. Let there be justice.)

In fact, the truth is, I think that the more I know about their societies - both the good and bad of them - the more interesting they and their music become to me. I know I'm officially supposed to believe, "Only the music matters; I care about no extra-musical associations." But what the heck, it's a free country, this is very nearly a "free speech environment," and I am a heretic. Regardless of our culture's orthodoxy, I _do_ care very much about the extra-musical associations, I enjoy knowing about them, they make my personal experience of the music and all other arts much richer.

I'm sure I'd rather live in this richer intellectual and cultural world, in spite of some discomfort, than in a simpler world where music is a pure abstraction divorced from a past that doesn't matter.


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2014)

Did I miss where someone asked for clarification about the OP's use of the term "absolutism"? I don't understand it myself, and it seems that I'm not the only one. What we seem to have ended up discussing is patronage and corruption. Absolutism itself doesn't figure very strongly at all.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I thought Absolutism was a Baroque thing as per the OP's definition/opening post. Didn't realise it might have extended to the centuries after the Baroque.


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2014)

ArtMusic said:


> I thought Absolutism was a Baroque thing as per the OP's definition/opening post. Didn't realise it might have extended to the centuries after the Baroque.


It's not just the definition which is unclear (simplistic, yes, but clear, no), but suggestions such as 'absolutism gave rise to nationalism and mercantilism'. And how about the novel idea of claiming a connection between a musical 'period' with a political concept?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> It's not just the definition which is unclear (simplistic, yes, but clear, no), but suggestions such as 'absolutism gave rise to nationalism and mercantilism'. And how about the novel idea of claiming a connection between a musical 'period' with a political concept?


That was what I was not clear about: the Absolutism to Nationalism or to Mercantilism etc. Are they related? Musical period and a political concept - probably more prevalent in 20th century, I guess when some composers wrote music under political duress, or as silent protest. I'm not sure.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> Did I miss where someone asked for clarification about the OP's use of the term "absolutism"? I don't understand it myself, and it seems that I'm not the only one. What we seem to have ended up discussing is patronage and corruption. Absolutism itself doesn't figure very strongly at all.


Perhaps it's meant in the sense of, "absolutism power corrupts absolutismly."


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2014)

amfortas said:


> Perhaps it's meant in the sense of, "absolutism power corrupts absolutismly."


LoL !


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

ArtMusic said:


> That was what I was not clear about: the Absolutism to Nationalism or to Mercantilism etc. Are they related? Musical period and a political concept - probably more prevalent in 20th century, I guess when some composers wrote music under political duress, or as silent protest. I'm not sure.


Given how religion and the state worked in most places, religious music served to support the state. Not for nothing the composers of that music usually worked directly for various princes. Even when they worked indirectly for the bourgeoisie, "taste" helped legitimize bourgeois privilege. Whether the music was particularly good or not could be a separate question, but that was its context.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> That was what I was not clear about: the Absolutism to Nationalism or to Mercantilism etc. Are they related? Musical period and a political concept - probably more prevalent in 20th century, I guess when some composers wrote music under political duress, or as silent protest. I'm not sure.


They are related in the sense that they were leading schools of thought during the same time.


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2014)

When I listen to Bach, or Vivaldi, or Handel, I find I am overwhelmed by the desire to oppress the masses and add elaborately ornate details to my late 60's split level home. When I listen to Wagner, I get the bizarre desire to blitz through Poland and blast through Belgium. Is that just me?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

DrMike said:


> When I listen to Bach, or Vivaldi, or Handel, I find I am overwhelmed by the desire to oppress the masses and add elaborately ornate details to my late 60's split level home. When I listen to Wagner, I get the bizarre desire to blitz through Poland and blast through Belgium. Is that just me?


Listening to Mozart fills me with the urge to tell inappropriate poop jokes to my sister.


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2014)

I, personally, feel it is entirely possible to keep in mind the mistakes of the past without having to perpetually agonize over them. And I don't think focusing on the good that has come down through the centuries is in some way pretending that no bad occurred. 

But we have continually improved, in general, our lot in life over the centuries. And yet, even in the millenia of the past, in the darkest of times, there have been numerous examples of progress. The western codes of law that we now take for granted had their origins in the distant past. Republics and democracy had their origins in antiquity. Art, music, literature - much of what we consider great in those areas were born in eras and circumstances that today we would no doubt find abhorrent. Yes, humanity has made some mistakes in the past, but in general we have learned from many of those mistakes and improved. 

So why do I have to worry about the circumstances under which these great works of art were born? Do we have to consider them fruit of the poisoned tree?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

DrMike said:


> When I listen to Bach, or Vivaldi, or Handel, I find I am overwhelmed by the desire to oppress the masses and add elaborately ornate details to my late 60's split level home. When I listen to Wagner, I get the bizarre desire to blitz through Poland and blast through Belgium. Is that just me?


Probably not!

I know how dangerous I get when I listen to rap.


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2014)

Piwikiwi said:


> They are related in the sense that they were leading schools of thought during the same time.


They may have been around at the same time, but it's not clear that there is any more significant connection than that. Were the terms actually in use then, along with 'Baroque' ?


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> They may have been around at the same time, but it's not clear that there is any more significant connection than that. Were the terms actually in use then, along with 'Baroque' ?


Yes - when Monteverdi was leading that transition from Renaissance, he rose up and said, "For truth, methinks that I am on the cusp of a musical revolution. I believe that I shall call it Bob. Wait, no, methinks not. Better some more regal sounding name, from which future generations can make horrible puns - let us call it Baroque! Huzzah!" (or that is at least the best translation of his words from the Italian).


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

science said:


> Given how religion and the state worked in most places, religious music served to support the state.


Not sure what you mean by this. Perhaps in some indirect sense.



science said:


> Not for nothing the composers of that music usually worked directly for various princes.


I'm pretty sure most of the major composers of religious music worked directly for religious institutions. Bach, Butehude, Josquin, as far back as you want to go. Had Bach worked for a prince, the Margrave of Brandenburg, for example, he would have written hundreds of concertos and chamber works instead of cantatas.



science said:


> Even when they worked indirectly for the bourgeoisie, "taste" helped legitimize bourgeois privilege. Whether the music was particularly good or not could be a separate question, but that was its context.


What do you mean by "worked indirectly for the bourgeoisie?"


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> It's not just the definition which is unclear (simplistic, yes, but clear, no), but suggestions such as 'absolutism gave rise to nationalism and mercantilism'. And how about the novel idea of claiming a connection between a musical 'period' with a political concept?


In case you haven't caught on yet - and I believe you have ;-) - the statements you quote are dubious, vague, and baseless generalizations. Ask the OP to explain the mechanisms behind these alleged historical developments and see what happens - or doesn't happen.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> Not sure what you mean by this. Perhaps in some indirect sense.
> 
> I'm pretty sure most of the major composers of religious music worked directly for religious institutions. Bach, Butehude, Josquin, as far back as you want to go. Had Bach worked for a prince, the Margrave of Brandenburg, for example, he would have written hundreds of concertos and chamber works instead of cantatas.
> 
> What do you mean by "worked indirectly for the bourgeoisie?"


I think Josquin, like most composers of his time, worked for several princes.

The church directly supported the state for most of its history. It legitimized (or attempted to do so) the state. The state supported and controlled the church for that reason. Keep in mind that "the state" for most of that time was really little more than powerful families who flourished by exploiting the rest of the population. Even when new governments came into being, such as during the American Revolution, the leaders of those governments - including many men who themselves were not believers! - feared lest their populations would stop following Christianity and so become less governable. Not for nothing did people who believe in radical equality hate the church. You cannot understand the conflicts over religion throughout history without understanding its relationship to the state.

In the 19th century, a lot of composers worked indirectly for the bourgeoisie in the sense that they published music that was bought by bourgeois families and their concerts had primarily bourgeois audiences.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

No point discussing into granular perfection about definitions. This is a casual discussion, like about 99.99% of threads in TC. Whenever defintions come into it, someone will almost bound to say that defintion doesn't cover XYZ, or it is unclear or etc. and the broader discussion will tank, not even get pass square one.

Imagine you and friends ae at a pub, a restaurant, over a coffee table. and go from there. Pure and simple.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

ArtMusic said:


> No point discussing into granular perfection about definitions. This is a casual discussion, like about 99.99% of threads in TC. Whenever defintions come into it, someone will almost bound to say that defintion doesn't cover XYZ, or it is unclear or etc. and the broader discussion will tank, not even get pass square one.
> 
> Imagine you and friends ae at a pub, a restaurant, over a coffee table. and go from there. Pure and simple.


I'd be very happy to imagine you buying me a beer. I'm a much nicer guy when I'm imaginary buzzed.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

ArtMusic said:


> No point discussing into granular perfection about definitions. This is a casual discussion, like about 99.99% of threads in TC. Whenever defintions come into it, someone will almost bound to say that defintion doesn't cover XYZ, or it is unclear or etc. and the broader discussion will tank, not even get pass square one.


Want a definition?

Boston, Massachusetts, is a city filled with zombies, literal walking dead zombies.

Thank you.

Now don't dispute the definition. That would be pedantic and wrong, and this discussion about demographics in New England will never get off the ground.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> Want a definition?
> 
> Boston, Massachusetts, is a city filled with zombies, literal walking dead zombies.


Oh my God! When did this happen? What's being done about it?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

amfortas said:


> Oh my God! When did this happen? What's being done about it?


Oh, well, it's been that way for a while, but the news media likes to cover it up. Conspiracy and all.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

science said:


> I'd be very happy to imagine you buying me a beer. I'm a much nicer guy when I'm imaginary buzzed.


That's good. Though I probably have something else (I don't drink beer it makes me very bloated feeling afterwards).


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

science said:


> ...
> *In fact, the truth is, I think that the more I know about their societies - both the good and bad of them - the more interesting they and their music become to me.* I know I'm officially supposed to believe, "Only the music matters; I care about no extra-musical associations." But what the heck, it's a free country, this is very nearly a "free speech environment," and I am a heretic. Regardless of our culture's orthodoxy, I _do_ care very much about the extra-musical associations, I enjoy knowing about them, they make my personal experience of the music and all other arts much richer...


Well that summarises my view as well. Putting the music in a context is always interesting, but of course not mandatory. I think that its hard though to argue for pure formalism though, no composer lived in a sealed off box, all of them interacted with thier environments. That's the type of thing I am exploring in my blog, which you have visited and I've had the pleausure of having some great converstations there with you and others. So, I may be negative and cynical at times about various aspects of history related to classical music, but I also see the other side. That other side is about the connections rather than the dividing lines that are so easy to put up.



> I'm sure I'd rather live in this richer intellectual and cultural world, in spite of some discomfort, than in a simpler world where music is a pure abstraction divorced from a past that doesn't matter.


Yes it is richer and obviously this goes way back, to the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg. That's what I do, read books on music. I can't draw things just from the music, such as the things I put on my blog as well as on current listening. You know though that that "simpler world" existed in a way when most people where illiterate. The churches where full of paintings explaining to them key events in the Bible for that reason.

Perhaps that's what I'm most cynical of, that connection between the ancien regime dying and the cliques filling the gap. One musical clique or another wants to own a composer, especially a successful composer, just like the courts did way back. If he becomes too popular with the masses then that's a problem, because then they can make it on their own and call the shots themselves. Economic freedom equates with artistic freedom and that's a worry for the establishment too.

I was reading recently about Brahms, who was amongst the first bourgeois composers. He had support of course (from for example Schumann, and guys like Joachim playing his pieces didn't hurt either). Early on he got most of his money from working as a concert pianist, then he was backed up by the big publisher Simrock. He never worked in a court, and most of his pieces where commissioned by orchestras or musicians. He also wrote for the salon. Some in the establishment resented this poor boy from Hamburg making it big in Vienna, and when Brahms got a medal for his services to music, one of them joked that he could wear it on his lapel and together with his beard he could cover his colarless shirt (Brahms didn't like to wear shirts with collars).

You get that sniggering even today, I guess Lloyd Webber, Eric Whitacre and Einaudi would be a few like that, self made composers who some find it fashionable to deride (but that type of Tall Poppy syndrome goes on outside guys like that, look at Nigel Kennedy, it was almost cliche at one point to poo poo him). Early on even John Adams and Philip Glass got the sellout label attached to them.

So isn't it ironic that we pull down those people who are successful on their own terms rather than being raised by today's establishment, or yesterday's princes? The old ancien regime has values corresponding to today's cogniscenti. Who where the composers Modernists liked to deride the most? It was composers who where bourgeois like Brahms, such as Grieg, Rachmaninov, Sibelius. They definitely got a raw deal compared to Wagner, who in the late 19th century was still in the hands of a prince.

And it was 100 years ago today, coincidentally, that World War I began. The horrific event that finally rid us of feudalism (well by that stage Europe had a mix of feudal political system and capitalist economic system). But after that it wasn't exactly great either. Yes you where right about what you said before, all the freedoms we in the West have now where fought for, they didn't come without a heavy price. Power will always be something that the ones at the top are not willing to share. But I'll leave it at that.



MacLeod said:


> Did I miss where someone asked for clarification about the OP's use of the term "absolutism"? I don't understand it myself, and it seems that I'm not the only one. What we seem to have ended up discussing is patronage and corruption. Absolutism itself doesn't figure very strongly at all.


I assumed its about the divine right of kings. I extended it to dictatorships of the 20th century because these where kings of another kind, but the effect was the same. Albeit with the added might of modern technology, their effect was many times more devastating than in the past.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> Oh, well, it's been that way for a while, but the news media likes to cover it up. Conspiracy and all.


Reports of zombies in Boston are exaggerated. Most parts of town are still quite safe. Before dark.


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## Guest (Jul 6, 2014)

ArtMusic said:


> No point discussing into granular perfection about definitions. This is a casual discussion, like about 99.99% of threads in TC. Whenever defintions come into it, someone will almost bound to say that defintion doesn't cover XYZ, or it is unclear or etc. and the broader discussion will tank, not even get pass square one.
> 
> Imagine you and friends ae at a pub, a restaurant, over a coffee table. and go from there. Pure and simple.


I don't know what pubs you're used to visiting, but round our way, we're always discussing things into granular perfection, especially when it comes to England's management and team selection, and Scarlett Johansson in her Avengers' black catsuit!

You and your 'pure and simple'! It smacks of absolutism.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Sid James said:


> Well that summarises my view as well. Putting the music in a context is always interesting, but of course not mandatory. I think that its hard though to argue for pure formalism though, no composer lived in a sealed off box, all of them interacted with thier environments. That's the type of thing I am exploring in my blog, which you have visited and I've had the pleausure of having some great converstations there with you and others. So, I may be negative and cynical at times about various aspects of history related to classical music, but I also see the other side. That other side is about the connections rather than the dividing lines that are so easy to put up.
> 
> Yes it is richer and obviously this goes way back, to the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg. That's what I do, read books on music. I can't draw things just from the music, such as the things I put on my blog as well as on current listening. You know though that that "simpler world" existed in a way when most people where illiterate. The churches where full of paintings explaining to them key events in the Bible for that reason.
> 
> ...


There's a lot to think about there. I like the Brahms bit very much. The more I learn about that guy, the more I love him. I should read the Swafford book about him, maybe this fall.

Could we interpret the conservatism of his music as a compensation for his class?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

science said:


> There's a lot to think about there. I like the Brahms bit very much. The more I learn about that guy, the more I love him. I should read the Swafford book about him, maybe this fall.
> 
> Could we interpret the conservatism of his music as a compensation for his class?


He never wrote an opera. One sure sign of conservatism!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

GreenMamba said:


> It's not obvious to me that music that was created for a certain audience means that it embodies their ideology.
> 
> If it's a cantata praising droit du seigneur, that's one thing. Otherwise, you have to deal with the music as it sounds.





Jobis said:


> A lot of classical music comes from the traditions of the different Christian churches in Europe, if you hate Christianity you're welcome to also hate a great deal of classical music, but it would be a non sequitur all the same.


Classical music lovers are always trumpeting about how many 'centuries of great tradition' informs their music, unlike those vulgar forms of popular music; but they forget *all* that when it's convenient.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Crudblud said:


> Sorry millions, I don't buy it. I believe a piece of music cannot communicate anything beyond itself, and that anything concerning it which is not musical is to be ignored when assessing it. Of course, I know how staunch we both are in our views, so I'm willing to leave it at that, lest the thread become another ideological merry-go-round.


If we look at art in a strictly formal manner (formalism), then your approach holds up. But there is another form of art criticism (Henri) that goes beyond visible structures and seeks to uncover the intent and sincerity of the artist, and other intangibles. Since all art is a form of communicating experience from artist to person, and it is a symbolic form of communication with all sorts of implicit meanings, then I go with that.

If you had to have a strictly formal explanation of say, Haydn, and how his music embodies an ideology, I don't think that argument would be too difficult. Surely, there are stylistic characteristics which distinguish it from, say, Beethoven. I can see that difference now, without even articulating it.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

science said:


> I would've thought there'd be more interest in history here. But to my surprise, millions has us pegged. We need to stop living in romantic fantasies about the past - the individuals and institutions that sponsored classical music were vicious, brutal, horrible, oppressive to a degree that's hard for us to imagine today. Serfdom and slavery were normal to them. When upperclass men raped lower-class women, it was at worst an embarrassment. People who challenged the system, or even seemed to do so, were flayed, broken at the wheel, disemboweled, drawn and quartered, burned at the stake. All of that is what it means to live in a systematically unequal society; we need to realize this because there are powerful movements in our time as well as other developments that favor bringing back that kind of inequality, and we need to realize what's at stake. But even just for appreciating music, be sure that the composers and their audiences understood how their world worked - many of them would have seen public executions - and that is just as important as historical context as anything else.


Even if we do forget it, I think that the "opulence" of CM is something that attracts people to it, like Cadillacs and penthouses. In that sense, I think there is plenty of residual ideology in CM that makes it attractive to, say, developing third world countries and Gustav Dudamel.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Even if we do forget it, I think that the "opulence" of CM is something that attracts people to it, like Cadillacs and penthouses. In that sense, I think there is plenty of residual ideology in CM that makes it attractive to, say, developing third world countries and Gustav Dudamel.


I'm sure it's the case that any art--including music--can be appreciated in "the wrong way" by those with a commercial, patriotic, or class interest. However, I wonder if modern architecture might be the one art that can _only_ be appreciated in the wrong way.





















But I digress.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Blancrocher said:


> I'm sure it's the case that any art--including music--can be appreciated in "the wrong way" by those with a commercial, patriotic, or class interest. However, I wonder if modern architecture might be the one art that can _only_ be appreciated in the wrong way.
> 
> View attachment 45964
> View attachment 45965
> ...


What's the "wrong way" to appreciate those pictures?


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Even if we do forget it, I think that the "opulence" of CM is something that attracts people to it, like Cadillacs and penthouses. In that sense, I think there is plenty of residual ideology in CM that makes it attractive to, say, developing third world countries and Gustav Dudamel.


Of course, poor people cannot have artistic interests. If they like CM, it's because of its "opulent" image...

Give me a break... that's possibly the most idiotic thing I have ever read here.

CM is first and foremost an ART. And it is enjoyed first and foremost as an ART.

All other things revolve around it, with relative relevance, but at the center is the appreciation of it just because of its artistic merit.

Also, nobody is saying that history is not important. But this thread is just a variant of "Wagner was antisemite, therefore you have to think about it when listening to his music"... preposterous...

It's preposterous because art can, and will be, enjoyed in purely absolute terms.

I love Webern's Piano Variations because I like its rhythms, motifs, row technique, etc. If you are interested in Webern's nazi flirtations then maybe music appreciation is not your thing. Maybe the actual music does not interest you then.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

aleazk said:


> Of course, poor people cannot have artistic interests. If they like CM, it's because of its "opulent" image...
> 
> Give me a break... that's possibly the most idiotic thing I have ever read here.


Please, my blanket criticism of big architectural firms--and their pretense to provide artistry to the highest bidder--was more idiotic than anything else in this thread :lol:

I don't think the argument proposed in the OP is idiotic at all--in fact, one version or another of it is very common in books about CM (check out Taruskin's history, for example, and he's no fool). I think that music conveys more than is revealed by formal analysis--though it's hard to make those extra meanings "stick." Someone might think Mozart sounds aristocratic; depending on their experience, others might be reminded of Hannibal Lector (the creator of which probably would agree with the OP!).

I don't think the premise about Baroque music works for everyone equally: Bach, composing highly difficult solo instrumental and choral compositions in a provincial backwater, seems less exposed to the OP's attack than other contemporaries, for example.

As another wrinkle, I'm not that comfortable generalizing about classes in the baroque/classical period--including the "upper class," most of whom seem to have been comparatively uninterested in serious art music, by which I mean the music that continued and has continued to delight professional musicians and music lovers (of any class). WAM had a hard time getting commissions, after all. And Gottfried van Swieten seems to have been a rather interesting oddball.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Blancrocher said:


> Please, my blanket criticism of big architectural firms--and their pretense to provide artistry to the highest bidder--was more idiotic than anything else in this thread :lol:
> 
> I don't think the argument proposed in the OP is idiotic at all--in fact, one version or another of it is very common in books about CM (check out Taruskin's history, for example, and he's no fool). I think that music conveys more than is revealed by formal analysis--though it's hard to make those extra meanings "stick." Someone might think Mozart sounds aristocratic; depending on their experience, others might be reminded of Hannibal Lector (the creator of which probably would agree with the OP!).
> 
> ...


a) I said the third-world generalization was idiotic.

b) I'm familiar with these trends. I never condemned historical&sociological approaches, I said they are preposterous when taken to extremes and that the absolute approach is still at the center, the other things revolve around it and may add something, but definitely they do not establish the core of the appreciation; if that's not your* case, then go to study history instead of trying to appreaciate art. As you notice," it's hard to make those extra meanings "stick." The absolute approach is much more than "formal analysis", btw.

*rhetorical figure, I don't mean _you_.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

aleazk said:


> Of course, poor people cannot have artistic interests. If they like CM, it's because of its "opulent" image...
> 
> Give me a break... that's possibly the most idiotic thing I have ever read here.
> 
> ...


I didn't see anything in millionrainbows' comment that suggested that poor people would be either more or less attracted to classical music - because of its association with "opulence" or otherwise - than rich people.

What does enjoying art "in purely absolute terms" mean? I suspect I don't believe it's possible, but I'm not sure what you mean.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Earlier, in response to Crudblud, I said: "If you had to have a strictly formal explanation of say, Haydn, and how his music embodies an ideology, I don't think that argument would be too difficult. Surely, there are stylistic characteristics which distinguish it from, say, Beethoven. I can see that difference now, without even articulating it."

That's true; there was, generally speaking, no 'art' music before the rise of the middle class, and Beethoven. Before that, music was written strictly for occasions, as Bach wrote his chorales, many of which were sold as scrap paper by the church. Occasionally, a work might transcend its intents and functionality and become considered as 'art' later, as in the late Mozart symphonies, Bach's keyboard works, pedagogical works, etc.,

...but you can hear the 'lighter' nature of works by Haydn and Mozart, expressing not so much drama or angst, but being well-crafted diversions. This was music which was, at the time, not written for 'you' or for your sublime contemplation, but for the diversion and entertainment of royals and social occasions.

If you want to consider it to be 'art' now, that's your privilege as a free citizen, and as a consumer in the capitalist system which makes it possible.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

You seem to operate with a very narrow definition of art, one that puts its focus on the sociological aspects and the sociological dynamics established between art makers, society and the market. And, in this sense, of course some of the things we associate to art today are only possible in the western modern world, with its origin in the industrial revolution, the rise of the bourgeoisie, etc.

In my case, I think art is much deeper than that, and that those things are not suitable for a comprehensive definition. I believe art is much more essential than that, and that its true meaning lies in the creative capacity of man. Bach's keyboard works transcended because there was actually something in those pieces when he composed them, and not because "we whimsically decided to consider them art 200 years later". 

I find your use of the word art as overly academic and useless for a true characterization of the concept, i.e., a characterization that includes all of what human kind has been producing through history. To reduce the concept to the last 200 years is useless.

Of course, much of what revolves around art are social constructions that changed through history and also were influenced by the societies in which they developed. In this sense, I could agree with your definitions and characterizations. But I think there's an essential element, related to the creative capacity of man, that was there since the first cave paintings.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

aleazk said:


> You seem to operate with a very narrow definition of art, one that puts its focus on the sociological aspects and the sociological dynamics established between art makers, society and the market. And, in this sense, of course some of the things we associate to art today are only possible in the western modern world, with its origin in the industrial revolution, the rise of the bourgeoisie, etc.
> 
> In my case, I think art is much deeper than that, and that those things are not suitable for a comprehensive definition. I believe art is much more essential than that, and that its true meaning lies in the creative capacity of man. Bach's keyboard works transcended because *there was actually something in those pieces when he composed them, and not because "we whimsically decided to consider them art 200 years later".*


I didn't say that "we whimsically decided to consider them art 200 years later"....

Here is the quote: " Occasionally, a work might *transcend its intents and functionality* and * become considered as 'art' later,* as in the late Mozart symphonies, Bach's keyboard works, pedagogical works, etc., " That transcendence would be inherent, of course, and discovered later. This quality always existed in the work as an essential quality, regardless of the original utilitarian purpose for which the work was created.

But originally, the work had other functions. Our idea of art "subsumes" many things which were not originally intended as high art: comic books, illustration, plastic dinnerware (Warhol was an avid collector), bicycle wheels on stools, urinals (because Duchamp said it was art), delta blues (intended as entertainment), the songs of Cole Porter (written for musicals, now used as jazz improv vehicles), John Williams' soundtrack music for Star Wars, etc...



aleazk said:


> I find your use of the word art as overly academic and useless for a true characterization of the concept, i.e., a characterization that includes all of what human kind has been producing through history. To reduce the concept to the last 200 years is useless.


In the end, you're correct, in that true art will surface, regardless of the circumstances which created it or enabled its existence. Still, art is a mapping of experience, and when the artist is fully participatory in its creation as such, it becomes more universally viable, and free from any social pressures which might tend to limit its effectiveness (that's too weird, make it more commercial). The best art will be art 'in spite of' these pressures.



aleazk said:


> Of course, much of what revolves around art are social constructions that changed through history and also were influenced by the societies in which they developed. In this sense, I could agree with your definitions and characterizations. But I think there's an essential element, related to the creative capacity of man, communication, that was there since the first cave paintings.


Well, of course; it's not possible to completely remove that nasty, unpredictable human essence from our culture, no matter how we sanitize and censor it.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

One would need to be quite naive not to recognize that the wealthy and powerful who have long patronized the arts were quite often less-than-savory individuals.

Robert Hughes famously wrote:

_"Nobody has ever denied that Sigismondo da Malatesta, the Lord of Rimini, had excellent taste. He hired the most refined of quattrocento architects, Leon Battista Alberti, to design a memorial temple to his wife, and then got the sculptor Agostino di Duccio to decorate it, and retained Piero della Francesca to paint it. Yet Sigismondo was a man of such callousness and rapacity that he was known in life as "Il Lupo," The Wolf, and so execrated after his death that the Catholic Church made him (for a time) the only man apart from Judas Iscariot officially listed as being in Hell - a distinction he earned by trussing up a Papal emissary, the fifteen-year-old Bishop of Fano, in his own rochet and publicly sodomizing him before his applauding army in the main square of Rimini."_

This in no way means that I must hold this in mind whenever I look at the paintings of Piero della Francesca. The same is true of the music of Bach. Listening to his cantatas I don't find myself troubled by the antisemitism and other failures of the Lutheran Church. Listening to the Magnificat I don't bewail the Inquisition and other evils of the Catholic Church. Whatever a work of Art's original purpose or intention, it survives not as a record of history but because it continues to resonate and speak to an audience.

I agree with the suggestion that this entire thread is but yet another variation on the tired Wagner was a Nazi so I can't enjoy Tristan und Isolde without keeping the Nazis continually in mind. Once again, I don't need someone else imposing their personal guilt trips upon me concerning music and the arts.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

That's a nice profile picture/avatar there:









I think I have already mentioned elsewhere my affection for the period. As far as the music goes, I remain an 'absolutist'. I can see my own ideals and the supposed ideals of the era in there if I want to, but then I almost completely miss the music.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> There was a dark side to all this splendor; the Inquisition, and the ruthless taxing and exploitation of the lower classes.
> 
> Remember all this the next time you listen to Handel, Rameau, Mozart, and their ilk; remember that for all the splendor, somebody had to pay a price.


http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2008/02/new-pa-poll-how-should-one-react-to.html

I'll never listen to Lowell Liebermann without thinking of Exxon Valdez.


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## Guest (Jul 7, 2014)

Yes, yes, yes, there have frequently been unsavory prices for some of the good things we now have. Jenner's smallpox vaccine that helped eradicate this deadly killer came from his immoral testing on orphan children. There are no doubt other examples. But again, do we dismiss it all, then, as fruit of a poisoned tree? Yes, somebody commissioned them to write the music, and that someone may have come to power, or funded the commission, in unsavory ways. But they were not, for the time, considered illegitimate or illegal ways. They received their commissions from people, who, at the time, were considered lawful rulers. The problem here is you are applying modern concepts and mores to the past. Were their compositions somehow part of those repressive regimes? When I listen to Haydn's oratorio dramatizing the story of the creation, must I bear in mind something nefarious? Does it matter who commissioned that work? Sure, for historical purposes. But for appreciating the music? Not one bit. And yet I can still be mindful of the forms of government and the power they wielded at that time.

The church, which is so maligned, was also responsible for the monastic system that preserved much of the knowledge we still have from those eras. 

Look - governments still do unsavory things. How much of art and science is funded by governments?


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

science said:


> What does enjoying art "in purely absolute terms" mean? I suspect I don't believe it's possible, but I'm not sure what you mean.


In purely aesthetic terms. It can be resumed in the following "I like it because it sounds cool" 

Listen to the motivic, rhythmic, harmonic, and timbral transformations and contrasts in this piece. Also, it's simple, ascetic, yet substantial. Most of my enjoyment in that piece comes from all of these aspects. All this I would say is an aesthetic enjoyment. The same can be applied to a Mozart piano concerto or a Bach fugue. Or, for that matter, a Mondrian painting (in the painting in my avatar, I like the cubist lines, the way in which their intersections create cells which are filled by different and contrasting tones of gray, the ingenious way in which the tree is constructed using all this, etc.)

I think this kind of enjoyment is at the core of art appreciation and for some, e.g., abstract painters, I would say is even synonym of art appreciation. For me, it's the canonical way of art appreciation. A great part of the essence of art is there.

After this, there are, of course, other levels of appreciation. The one that follows, I would say, is the emotional one. Mondrian's Gray Tree, we could say, is an autumnal tree, a melancholic one. And that's a valid appreciation, of course.

Finally, in this hierarchy, I would say we have historical and political appreciation. When I hear the mechanical rhythms in the second movement of Webern's Piano Variations, I always think in the inexorable working of a mechanical machine. An abstract machine, full of wheels, gears, etc., but I don't know exactly what the function of this machine is. You could say it represents the modern technological world in which Webern lived, and which showed its true power in the WWII. The coldness of Webern's compositional methods and also the coldness of the nazi killing machine, and of course Webern's nazi sympathies. It's also a valid view.

In fact, when I hear a piece of music, I tend to experience all of those things at once. But when asked about it, I prefer to break it down in parts and to make that hierarchy, since it represents the relative importance I give to each of these aspects. Indeed, in the Webern Piano Variations, the political interpretation I gave is very vague, I would not associate it with the actual music, those are thoughts that, in any case, are triggered by the music, but which also are very dependent on so many other things that have nothing to do with the music. On the other hand, the aesthetic enjoyment is in direct relation to the actual content of the music.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> That's true; there was, generally speaking, no 'art' music before the rise of the middle class, and Beethoven. Before that, music was written strictly for occasions, as Bach wrote his chorales, many of which were sold as scrap paper by the church. Occasionally, a work might transcend its intents and functionality and become considered as 'art' later, as in the late Mozart symphonies, Bach's keyboard works, pedagogical works, etc.,


This is blatantly incorrect. Chansons were composed and appreciated for hundreds of years as art music, from the time they were performed by wandering minstrels, through Machaut, the many composers of the Ars Subtilior, Dufay, Josquin, etc. Instrumental music too was written as art music from the earliest days of keyboard and lute notation.

Bach's concertos, CPE Bach's sonatas and concertos and mountains of other music composed pre Beethoven were composed and appreciated as art music.



millionrainbows said:


> ...but you can hear the 'lighter' nature of works by Haydn and Mozart, expressing not so much drama or angst, but being well-crafted diversions. This was music which was, at the time, not written for 'you' or for your sublime contemplation, but for the diversion and entertainment of royals and social occasions.
> 
> If you want to consider it to be 'art' now, that's your privilege as a free citizen, and as a consumer in the capitalist system which makes it possible.


Baseless generalization. Many listened to Haydn and Mozart and appreciated their music as art. Works intended as diversions were often titled in a way that might indicate this intention, for example, by calling the works divertimenti.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

aleazk said:


> In purely aesthetic terms. It can be resumed in the following "I like it because it sounds cool"
> 
> Listen to the motivic, rhythmic, harmonic, and timbral transformations and contrasts in this piece. Also, it's simple, ascetic, yet substantial. Most of my enjoyment in that piece comes from all of these aspects. All this I would say is an aesthetic enjoyment. The same can be applied to a Mozart piano concerto or a Bach fugue. Or, for that matter, a Mondrian painting (in the painting in my avatar, I like the cubist lines, the way in which their intersections create cells which are filled by different and contrasting tones of gray, the ingenious way in which the tree is constructed using all this, etc.)
> 
> ...


So I think I might understand what you mean, maybe not, but if I do, I'm not sure it's what actually goes on even when we try to have a "pure art" approach. Unless our brains are operating abnormally - excluding stroke victims and so on - I don't think we can ever succeed in completely bracketing off everything we know and listening exclusively to the sounds. We're never going to succeed in being unconscious of what genre of music we're listening to, of how our cultures view that genre, etc... Even as very young children, we'll be listening to music in a certain context, judging the sounds not only on our own reaction to them but by what they remind us of, by how other people react to them, and by how other people react to us listening to to them. Once we know enough to think about something like Webern's relation to the Nazis, our minds are so conditioned by years of such experiences that we'll never be able to be free of them, even when we try. We are probably never more slaves to all that than when we think we're free of it.

So, for example, I will never be able to look at a painting without having some idea of the significance of "paintings" in my culture, without being aware of the connotations of "art appreciation," without noticing whether the painter's technique resembles some other painter's. I'll never be able to un-read Malraux or Hughes, able to un-see Monet or Byzantine iconography. Even my childhood experience of finger painting is in there somewhere, half-forgotten, the other half unreliably reconstructed. If I agree that it's desirable, I can try to ignore all that to pursue a "pure art" experience, but I'll never attain it. My response to the painting - even the most visceral, unreflective response of which I am capable - will inevitably bear all those factors within it.

But I can't agree that it's desirable. For me, maximal awareness is the goal - awareness of as many factors as I can become aware of, both in terms of what is going on in the art and with the artist, and what is going on with me as I experience it. I'm not sure that my way is better than your way, but it is definitely the way I _want_ to approach the arts. It's not about guilt or morbidity or anything - I don't feel much of that anyway, and I don't understand people who do (I was fairly sarcastic about that in my initial post in this thread); it's because for me greater awareness and more knowledge, a more thorough acquaintance with the joy and pain and tedium and brilliance of "the human condition," mean fuller, richer pleasure - well, at least in the case of art capable of rewarding that kind of consciousness!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think its important to discuss issues like this. There is credence to what you're saying millionrainbows, in terms of the more public music got - eg. becoming independent from the churches and courts - the more control composers had over what they where doing. They where no longer mere servants. That's to boil it down to a large degree, but I think in that you are right.

However, this forum does have a majority of members who hold formalist views, or a view of music/art of that sort. I did a discussion / poll on this a while back, and the poll was very conclusive. Formalists outnumber contextualists 2:1.

http://www.talkclassical.com/21483-formalism-contextualism.html

That's not a problem. There are still many people here interested in things like the history of music, biographies of composers, links to other areas outside music and so on. One approach isn't better or worse than the other. Both can coexist. But that's the reality we in the minority, who I call contextualists, face here. No use for me to whinge about it, I just accept it.

It doesn't change what I do here, how I interact with members of TC, and it certainly doesn't change how I go about consuming music in my daily life. When I listen to something, I usually like to read about it. That's how it is and is likely to be. I never accepted the old adage that music is about nothing but itself, but if people want to do that, they are free to do it. Just don't expect everyone else to do the same and be the same as you!


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## Guest (Jul 8, 2014)

Sid James said:


> I think its important to discuss issues like this.


If only millionrainbows would. He's not deigned to reply to my queries a while back about what, exactly, 'absolutism' has to do with anything.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Sid James said:


> That's not a problem. There are still many people here interested in things like the history of music, biographies of composers, links to other areas outside music and so on. One approach isn't better or worse than the other. Both can coexist. But that's the reality we in the minority, who I call contextualists, face here. No use for me to whinge about it, I just accept it.


I'm a bit surprised, Sid. With as much as you like to complain about "false dichotomies", it seems like you're making one here.

You seem to be advancing the idea that TC is divided into two camps - those who are interested in the background of a piece of music and those who aren't, and that that's what is revealing itself in this thread.

I disagree.

I, for one, am extremely interested in the background and history of the music I hear. What I object to is the guilt trip that the OP was trying to lay on everybody, as if to say - if you can listen to this stuff and still enjoy it, you must be putting blinders on. IOW - "What's wrong with all of you?"

My point is that if I want to base my enjoyment of a piece of music on its history and the moral perfection of its composers, I'm going to have to stop listening to anything except hymns, and maybe to not many of those.

Being aware of undesirable elements in the circumstances of a composition and letting that awareness stimulate guilt in us for liking it are two different things, especially when the composers involved were no better or worse than the rest of us but were simply working within the system in existence at their time.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

science said:


> So I think I might understand what you mean, maybe not, but if I do, I'm not sure it's what actually goes on even when we try to have a "pure art" approach. Unless our brains are operating abnormally - excluding stroke victims and so on - I don't think we can ever succeed in completely bracketing off everything we know and listening exclusively to the sounds. We're never going to succeed in being unconscious of what genre of music we're listening to, of how our cultures view that genre, etc... Even as very young children, we'll be listening to music in a certain context, judging the sounds not only on our own reaction to them but by what they remind us of, by how other people react to them, and by how other people react to us listening to to them. Once we know enough to think about something like Webern's relation to the Nazis, our minds are so conditioned by years of such experiences that we'll never be able to be free of them, even when we try. We are probably never more slaves to all that than when we think we're free of it.
> 
> So, for example, I will never be able to look at a painting without having some idea of the significance of "paintings" in my culture, without being aware of the connotations of "art appreciation," without noticing whether the painter's technique resembles some other painter's. I'll never be able to un-read Malraux or Hughes, able to un-see Monet or Byzantine iconography. Even my childhood experience of finger painting is in there somewhere, half-forgotten, the other half unreliably reconstructed. If I agree that it's desirable, I can try to ignore all that to pursue a "pure art" experience, but I'll never attain it. My response to the painting - even the most visceral, unreflective response of which I am capable - will inevitably bear all those factors within it.


It's not about shutting down all the other aspects; as I said, "in fact, when I hear a piece of music, I tend to experience all of those things at once". It's about breaking down that big experience into small parts that have different apparent qualities. Certainly, it's not an exact science.

Of course, art is a cultural construction, like science. But, unlike science, it's not referred to the objective world; in fact, the opposite. So, all it will always be impregnated by subjective and constructivist influences. In any discussion about art, that's taken for granted. But that does not mean that the effective distinction in types of appreciation I mentioned does not exist; the first one being the most abstract and difficult to understand, and therefore the most interesting to me. Also, I think it's the most universal, and that's a key point. It's because of its abstract quality and universality that the names absolute or pure are often applied. I don't care very much about names and their connotations. All names are imperfect and only capture one aspect of the thing they name, and quite often give other aspects that are alien to it.



science said:


> But I can't agree that it's desirable. For me, maximal awareness is the goal - awareness of as many factors as I can become aware of, both in terms of what is going on in the art and with the artist, and what is going on with me as I experience it. I'm not sure that my way is better than your way, but it is definitely the way I _want_ to approach the arts. It's not about guilt or morbidity or anything - I don't feel much of that anyway, and I don't understand people who do (I was fairly sarcastic about that in my initial post in this thread); it's because for me greater awareness and more knowledge, a more thorough acquaintance with the joy and pain and tedium and brilliance of "the human condition," mean fuller, richer pleasure - well, at least in the case of art capable of rewarding that kind of consciousness!


I'm very glad you dismiss this guilt thing, which I think is nonsense. But what you mention is exactly my own approach too. In fact, I thought that was evident when I even took the trouble to try to understand better the different types of experiences I have (the list and hierarchy I made). I too think that more information is better. But that's my starting point. I also like to channelize that information to where it belongs. And, as I said, I found, in my experience, that there are aspects of appreciation that are more sensitive to concrete historical&sociological facts than others. Another difference, it seems, is that I tend to consider some of these aspects more important than others (although I don't consider any of them as unimportant).

Concerning the first aspect of my list, I wouldn't say it's the "most desirable", but in my case it certainly helped me to appreciate modern music better.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

_* Originally Posted by millionrainbows:
*_
_*
That's true; there was, generally speaking, no 'art' music before the rise of the middle class, and Beethoven. Before that, music was written strictly for occasions, as Bach wrote his chorales, many of which were sold as scrap paper by the church. Occasionally, a work might transcend its intents and functionality and become considered as 'art' later, as in the late Mozart symphonies, Bach's keyboard works, pedagogical works, etc.,*_



EdwardBast said:


> This is blatantly incorrect. Chansons were composed and *appreciated* for hundreds of years as art music, from the time they were performed by wandering minstrels, through Machaut, the many composers of the Ars Subtilior, Dufay, Josquin, etc. Instrumental music too was written as art music from the earliest days of keyboard and lute notation.
> 
> Bach's concertos, CPE Bach's sonatas and concertos and mountains of other music composed pre Beethoven were composed and appreciated as art music.
> 
> Baseless generalization. Many listened to Haydn and Mozart and *appreciated* their music as art. Works* intended* as diversions were often titled in a way that might indicate this intention, for example, by calling the works divertimenti.


I think everybody is too anxious to disagree with my contentions, and are tending to exaggerate some of my points. The reason I'm seeing things in this context is to identify them, and give them some sort of context, and that's not a black-and-white thing, as history never is. I'm not a black-and-white thinker, so I don't want to waste time arguing for some rigid viewpoint; I'm not trying to strictly define what art is, or is not.

Something Crudblud said earlier points out some things:


Crudblud said:


> Sorry millions, I don't buy it. *I believe a piece of music cannot communicate anything beyond itself, and that anything concerning it which is not musical is to be ignored when assessing it.* Of course, I know how staunch we both are in our views, so I'm willing to leave it at that, lest the thread become another ideological merry-go-round.


This is misleading. From what Crudblud is saying, he can't tell Renaissance music from Baroque music, or from Romanticism, because, in spite of the obvious stylistic differences which distinguish these forms, he refuses to associate the music's qualities with any 'extra-musical' factors, such as the era it was composed in, current styles, intent of use, etc. We all know that this is an exaggeration, because we do it all the time; we associate music with certain time eras, when it is obvious. Formalism can only go so far, and we can't exclude historical and 'extra-musical' factors when looking at music, because often times, the stylistic qualities are part of the era. A separation of 'strictly formal elements' is convenient for some purposes, but begins to have inevitable connections to the time it was composed in, and the requirements of the power structure which funded it, commissioned it, or otherwise had some part in its creation.

As far as the 'art' question goes, I don't think it can be ignored that 'art' music was a new invention, which supplanted the older view of music as utilitarian. _But everyone is exaggerating the implications of this,_ in defending what they feel to be true 'art', which I agree with; Bach is of course art!

It's a matter of degree, then as it is now; art is often times under pressure from outside forces, and the existing power structure in which it was created. In the present, we would call this 'commercial pressure.'

This distinguishes Mozart from Beethoven, and Classical from Romantic, in a generally useful way. This is the precise reason that many do not 'get' Mozart, and yet, 'get' Beethoven: Mozart's music was created under different circumstances than Beethoven, and was not purely for art's sake; that's the Romantic era's turf.

This is not to say Mozart's music is *not* art; yet, the stylistic differences reflect the 'commercial' pressures Mozart was under, and when we know this, we can further penetrate the appropriate way to appreciate his music. It clarifies the whole picture for me.

So, for me, these 'baseless generalizations' are the way that I distinguish music of different eras, and can therefore approach it in a realistic way, taking into account the various factors which influenced its creation and the ultimate form it took.

So, for the listener who does not quite 'get' Mozart, this view would be extremely useful. We would say to them that it's no good looking to Mozart for the same type of introspection and angst we get from Beethoven, because Mozart was more objective, by necessity, and by the pressures of his time.

Handel's Water Music is not going to take us on a poetic, introspective journey in the same way that Rachmanninoff will. We must listen to music in the correct context. This is still true today.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> Admit it; all you CM listeners are afraid to confront the true roots of your music. You'd rather just avoid that gnarly issue, and listen on in bliss.


Then keep going and confront the true roots of the clothes on your back, shoes on your feet,food on your table, raw materials for all your electronic toys, gas in your car, etc... If you want to take the moral high ground, better pitch a tent and catch your own dinner.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

starthrower said:


> Then keep going and confront the true roots of the clothes on your back, shoes on your feet,food on your table, raw materials for all your electronic toys, gas in your car, etc... If you want to take the moral high ground, better pitch a tent and catch your own dinner.


That's an exaggerated response. All I'm saying is that to understand Haydn and Mozart better, we need to realize how they are different from Romanticism, because of the power-structure they created within, and how that power-structure put pressures on the creation of their music, just as power-structures today put pressures on popular music.

This is an extreme example, but I'd say the same thing to a metal music fan who considered Metallica to be art of the highest order;

"I won't argue with you, dude, but hey...it's only Metallica."


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> It's a matter of degree, then as it is now; art is often times under pressure from outside forces, and the existing power structure in which it was created. In the present, we would call this 'commercial pressure.'
> 
> This distinguishes Mozart from Beethoven, and Classical from Romantic, in a generally useful way. This is the precise reason that many do not 'get' Mozart, and yet, 'get' Beethoven: Mozart's music was created under different circumstances than Beethoven, and was not purely for art's sake; that's the Romantic era's turf.
> 
> ...


If this had been the OP, I would never have even attempted to comment on this thread other than to say I agree and have always looked at it the same way.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Vesteralen said:


> If this had been the OP, I would never have even attempted to comment on this thread other than to say I agree and have always looked at it the same way.


That wouldn't have been nearly as much fun, though! :lol:


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I suppose it's a necessary evil. Presenting ambitious artistic productions is expensive, and it needs to be subsidized whether it was royalty or the church in the 18th century, or the Koch brothers today.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

starthrower said:


> I suppose it's a necessary evil. Presenting ambitious artistic productions is expensive, and it needs to be subsidized whether it was royalty or the church in the 18th century, or the Koch brothers today.


It's not always that simple, nowadays. Now that recording technology has allowed us to chronicle the most naive, unaffected forms of folk music, like jazz and blues, and other popular forms, then our search for 'artistic integrity' becomes a matter of what *criteria *we choose to use in accessing it.

For example, a song recorded by Sleepy John Estes might be considered by Ry Cooder and Bob Dylan as the most sublime art, from a great master; yet, at the time it was made, it was just another 'race' record designed to sell to a certain demographic; and to a classical music listener, whose criteria are obviously different, it may appear as a crude musical statement.

And so, in order to be multifaceted, tolerant listeners, we must consider music in the correct context, using appropriate criteria, in order to credibly assess music as being 'artistic' or not.


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## Guest (Jul 8, 2014)

Whatever happened to just listening to whatever sounded good? Why do I need any further motivation in listening to classical music - or any other music - than that? That is what drew me to classical music. That is my overriding criteria - what is pleasing to my ear. I will sometimes look into the history of a work, or a composer, but ultimately it doesn't affect my appreciation for a piece.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

DrMike said:


> Whatever happened to just listening to whatever sounded good? Why do I need any further motivation in listening to classical music - or any other music - than that? That is what drew me to classical music. That is my overriding criteria - what is pleasing to my ear. I will sometimes look into the history of a work, or a composer, but ultimately it doesn't affect my appreciation for a piece.


Some people just love to research and pull out as much 'facts' as they can. It's certainly not required, but whatever floats the boat, you know.

If I'm really into a composer or style, then I'll read/watch a little documentary or two. But that's as far as I'll take it. Otherwise it becomes some intellectual chore... sucking all the majesty out of it, haha.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> It's not always that simple, nowadays. Now that recording technology has allowed us to chronicle the most naive, unaffected forms of folk music, like jazz and blues, and other popular forms, then our search for 'artistic integrity' becomes a matter of what *criteria *we choose to use in accessing it.
> 
> For example, a song recorded by Sleepy John Estes might be considered by Ry Cooder and Bob Dylan as the most sublime art, from a great master; yet, at the time it was made, it was just another 'race' record designed to sell to a certain demographic; and to a classical music listener, whose criteria are obviously different, it may appear as a crude musical statement.
> 
> And so, in order to be multifaceted, tolerant listeners, we must consider music in the correct context, using appropriate criteria, in order to credibly assess music as being 'artistic' or not.


There are lots of people who like to fetish old blues and jazz records. Mainly white listeners. And when they were recorded, they were obviously made to sell and make money.

I don't know what you mean by jazz and blues being naive, unaffected forms of folk music?


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## Guest (Jul 9, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> And so, in order to be multifaceted, tolerant listeners, we must consider music in the correct context, using appropriate criteria, in order to credibly assess music as being 'artistic' or not.


Must we? Do we want to be "multifaceted, tolerant listeners"? Do we need to 'assess' music at all (never mind whether it is 'artistic')? Can't we just listen to what we want and enjoy?


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