# Portraying a Regime



## LvB (Nov 21, 2008)

There are many pieces which have political content of some sort, ranging from Beethoven's Napoleon-inspired third symphony through Erwin Schulhoff's setting of the _Communist Manifesto_ to John Adams's _Nixon in China_. But surely there is no composer more closely tied into the political realities surrounding him than Dmitri Shostakovich. His personal life was lived under the shadow of Soviet 'Communism' (as is well known, only Stalin's direct intervention saved him from being purged-- after Stalin's orders had led him to the brink of disaster in the first place). He appears both to have genuinely believed in the ideals of the Revolution and deeply abhorred their betrayal, a state of mind which allowed him to write profound musical commentaries on the grim reality of Sovietism alongside evidently genuine propaganda pieces, with examples of each being among the best of their kind.

My question is this-- can anyone think of any other composers who are similarly superb at encapsulating not merely a particular political figure or event but the underlying emotional reality of a particular regime or political era? This is a deliberately broad question, one open to refinements and further details later, intended to open a discussion regarding the scope and nature of 'political' music. Any thoughts?


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## Guest (Dec 31, 2008)

Not to derail the thread before it even gets going (and not that threads are like trains in any way, either!), but I would like to propose that no pieces have political content. Certainly there are pieces with words, and those words could be political, but the music itself? I think that that is highly suspect. Music has musical content.

You can illustrate this by looking at recycling. Prokofiev made a tune for Eugene Onegin to sing to words about his indifference to Tatiana, a tune that turns up later in the comic opera Betrothal in a Monastery in entirely different circumstances (and with completely different words). Where's "content" in a case like that? Berlioz made a little tune for the Gloria of his _Messe Solennelle_ to the words "Laudamus te, benedicimus te." You might be tempted to say that this music has religious content, except that it turns up again in the carnival scene of _Benvenuto Cellini._ Where has the religious content gone? Same with the Gratias, the long theme of which recurs in the _Symphonie Fantastique._

Berlioz own words about that might be illuminating here: "The composer has aimed at developing from certain scenes what they contain that is musical." That's quoted from Jacques Barzun's _Berlioz and the Romantic Century,_ Vol. 1. Barzun comments that this "is not to duplicate literature, nor to imitate real life, but to develop in sounds certain elements which life and music mysteriously hold in common." And, one might add, sounds which just as mysteriously seem perfectly capable of being used in a variety of disparate and incompatible circumstances.

We as listeners can and have assigned non-musical meanings to music, claiming that such and such a piece by Schumann depicts his love for Clara or that such and such a piece by Shostakovich depicts the invasion of Russia by the Germans. And while certainly Robert loved Clara, and the Germans did invade Russia (and Shostakovich certainly knew that!), that doesn't add up to music having specific contents, personal, political, religious, whatever, that can be expressed in words. Political content can be expressed in words. In music, though? Pretty sure not.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I'm going to have to disagree with some guy somewhat. I relate music with other art forms and I remember the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" 

There are fiercely political paintings such as "Guernica" and "The Third of May, 1808." Now I know music may not have the power to convey as specific a political message as a painting might, and paintings in turn may not be as specific as words, but both art forms are not purely abstract necessarily.

I grew up in a genration that stopped a war with music and flowers. Would it have been as successfull if the music had been polka rather than a music of rebellion? I doubt it.

Therein lies my answer to LvB. If you can move into pop music, Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" fairly sums up an entire political movement, granted mostly with words, but also by its grass roots musical milieu.

Given time I'm sure I could think of several examples of political classical music, political not because of the melody itself, but because of the context of the melody or what the comnposer does with it. None come to mind at present, but it isn't all about melody. It's the context of the piece as a whole.


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## LvB (Nov 21, 2008)

> I would like to propose that no pieces have political content. Certainly there are pieces with words, and those words could be political, but the music itself? I think that that is highly suspect. Music has musical content.


I agree. But-- and it's a major caveat-- the musical content will have different resonances in different contexts, and these resonances can, indeed almost _must_, allow for intended political responses. When Shostakovich chose to make his ninth symphony a short and sardonic piece rather than a massive celebratory counterpart to the seventh and eighth symphonies, he knew (unless he was appallingly stupid, which he was not) that this choice would have a political resonance. If I write a piece called 'A Jolly Overture' and include a raspberry in the brass at the beginning, no one will think twice about it-- but call the exact same piece 'Honors For George W. Bush' and the impact will be quite different. Call it 'Salute to Stalin' in the Soviet Union and I wouldn't live long enough to discover the muiscal impact.

Now you may object that these examples involve words as well as music. Fair enough-- but composers, especially Romantics and afterwards, often choose titles as an integral part of their work, as a way of directing the listener's thoughts along a certain path. This is at least an attempt to shape the work's context, and, I would argue, a political act (in the Aristotelian sense rather than the narrow partisan subset thereof). In a society in which every act is constantly being scrutinized for its political content the choice of one title over another, one sound over another, one harmony over another, is indeed political. If we understand the context we can at least make a reasonable guess as regards the political content. It is not that the work is _solely_ political. but that it is, in addition to its musical character, _also_ political.


> We as listeners can and have assigned non-musical meanings to music, claiming that [....] such and such a piece by Shostakovich depicts the invasion of Russia by the Germans.


Actually, it was Shostakovich who assigned this meaning to the repeated motif in the first movement of the seventh symphony. Most Western critics dismissed it as a crude effect-- but in so doing they accepted its 'extramusical' purpose. I am not saying that all music with titles is political, of course (except in the very broad sense noted above), but I am claiming that Shostakovich could not have attached the same story and title to, say, his _Festive Overture_-- and that he knew this and acted upon that sort of similar knowledge among his contemporary audiences.


> And while certainly [....] the Germans did invade Russia (and Shostakovich certainly knew that!), that doesn't add up to music having specific contents, personal, political, religious, whatever, that can be expressed in words. Political content can be expressed in words. In music, though? Pretty sure not.


Even on these terms, political content requires a shared context to have any meaning. This may seem a banal point, but note that it applies across the board, not merely to words. If I ask you whether you preferred McCain or Obama, you probably could answer the question. If I ask you whether you preferred Clay or Crawford you might be unable to answer. And so on. Now transfer this to music. If, in today's United States, I compose a piece entitled 'Abstract Overture' which contains a clear, conventionally harmonized, extensive quotation of 'America the Beautiful' it will inevitably have a different political impact than a similarly titled piece which has a similar quotation of 'La Marseillaise' (think of that scene in _Casablanca_ where the latter drowns out 'Die Wacht Am Rhein').

When Shostakovich's fifth symphony was premiered, the Russian audinec was ecstatic, and many contemporary reports indicate that people were slapping others on the back and asserting that Shostakovich had really 'got it'. Is there some innate quality which makes this statement true? Like you, I highly doubt it. Yet at the same time, there was a quality of sound within the particular context of the work's premiere which undercut its official title ("a Soviet Artist's reply to just criticism") and allowed the reaction to occur (there was not, and at that time could not possibly have been, a widely shared subversive program, or Shostakovich wouldn't have been alive to write the later symphonies). That combination of context, music, and reception is what makes Shostakovich so powerfully political, and it is a combination I don't see in any other composer-- which is where the thread began....


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

Good, someone who doesn't just believe Testimony.



> but I would like to propose that no pieces have political content.


You can never not be political, being apolitical is a political stance.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

some guy said:


> Certainly there are pieces with words, and those words could be political, but the music itself? I think that that is highly suspect. Music has musical content.


I feel uneasy about this, though it takes us back to the old irresolvable 'absolute music' debate, and of course there's no hope of agreement between the 'pro' and 'con' supporters on that issue. I wanted to refer to a particular Vaughan Williams quote about a soldier and a bugle that I never seem to be able to find, but instead I rediscovered another one, which is interesting in a different, but related, way. He's talking about a folk tune, which is one of _'those great tunes, which like our language, our customs, our laws are the groundwork upon which everything must stand'_. That seems to imply some element of meaning and significance beyond the merely musical. I'm not sure whether that counts as a 'political' meaning, exactly (one might point to some of Elgar's more Imperialistic music for more obviously political intention), but anyone who loves RVW's music knows what he means, I think.



Yagan Kiely said:


> You can never not be political, being apolitical is a political stance.


I know this kind of statement always sounds conclusive when people make it, but actually it uses a trick of language that renders the word 'political' meaningless in its context. So the statement seems unanswerable, but only because it undermines its own meaning. It hasn't expressed an insight; it's misused an otherwise useful word. It's like saying 'You can never be amoral; being amoral is a moral stance'.


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

> 'You can never be amoral; being amoral is a moral stance'.


Amorality is the belief that moral right and wrong do not exist, or are meaningless.
The state or quality of being apolitical can be the apathy and/or the antipathy towards all political affiliations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apolitical#cite_note-0Being apolitical can also refer to situations in which people take an unbiased position in regard to political matters.

These to can not be compared the way you tried. Neither can immorality.



> but actually it uses a trick of language that renders the word 'political' meaningless in its context.


It uses semantics, but semantics are the ultimate meaning of the words, and unless you wish to make up your own meanings, semantics is still a valid argument.

Also, taking an apolitical stance has consequences that are political in nature. So regardless of what you want to call it and try to have for yourself, your actions end up being political.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

Let's not hijack this thread by taking more words to say the same things all over again (or the same non-things, according to one's point of view).

Back to the politics of music.....


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

....

If you don't understand, it's not my fault. I said things differently. I said that to an individual, yes it me be apolitical, but the effect isn't.

Also, your comparison to amoral isn't valid... yet you ignored that. Congratulations on sidestepping the issue.

Hijack? I'm talking about politics in music..... in a thread about politics in music... please stop trying crap like that just because you can't think of a way to counter anything...


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2009)

Yagan, your comment about apoliticality was about people, though. I agree that people are political, even that being apolitical is itself a political decision. But I was talking about music, not people. Music has no political content. It has musical content. One of the curious things about music, however, is that it can acquire extra-musical meanings and in that acquisition can seem to any listener who knows the extra-musical meanings it's acquired to have those meanings as part and parcel of its inherent meaning.

One can check this simply by playing some "political" music to someone who is not familiar with its political content. How accurately will anyone be able to identify its supposed political content? Not very, I think. This is a corollary to my original point about recycling, those instances--and they are legion--where composers take music which has acquired (or been given) connotations of one sort or another and use those same notes, rhythms, harmonies in an entirely different context.

That that is possible is key to this discussion, is it not? It might be said that music, unlike language (or something like representational painting), is all connotation, and if that is so, it should surprise no one that something without denotation should be so mercurial when it comes to meaning. If it were not so, none of those 16th and 17th century drinking songs would have ever turned up in hymn books accompanying religious words.

(Elgarian, somewhere in the preceding is a way out of the "absolute music" debate, don't you think? That is, music is absolutely itself, but that self has no denotation, so "meaning," by which we usually mean (!) a combination of denotation and connotation doesn't seem to operate with music like it does with other things. So no question of "mere-ness." Maybe music is like non-representational art. People can recognize (and some insist on recognizing) all sorts of familiar objects in paintings that are entirely composed of glops of paint, just as they can see faces in the moon, or ships and wild horses in cloud formations. What we have, in short is meaning as a result of a relationship. It's not the music that has the political content; it's the relationship between a listener with certain expectations and the inherently innocent notes themselves.)


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## LvB (Nov 21, 2008)

some guy said:


> Music has no political content. It has musical content. One of the curious things about music, however, is that it can acquire extra-musical meanings and in that acquisition can seem to any listener who knows the extra-musical meanings it's acquired to have those meanings as part and parcel of its inherent meaning.
> 
> One can check this simply by playing some "political" music to someone who is not familiar with its political content. How accurately will anyone be able to identify its supposed political content? Not very, I think.


I won't restate all the points I made above which you elected not to address, but merely suggest that your statement can be very slightly changed to arrive at a vastly different conclusion: 'One can check this simply by playing some music to someone who is not familiar with its musical content. How accurately will anyone be able to identify its supposed musical content? Not very, I think.' Many are the stories about westerners who failed to recognize non-western sounds as music at all. In fact, I suspect, though of course I cannot possibly prove, that Bach might not recognize, say, many of Ligeti's works as music. Certainly many critics over the years have rejected claims on behalf of --fill-in-the-blank-- as music (as late as 1881 one London critic wondered, apropos the London premiere of the _Symphonie Fantastique_, whether its last two movements could be considered to qualify as music). Context is very important, and therefore whatever goes into that context is relevant.

But I suspect I merely restate myself, so I'll stop here and let the argument continue on its own.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2009)

We're none of us obliged to respond to any points, L, so you're bringing up my "electing" not to address some of yours seems to me suspect. Is the validity of my remarks gauged by whether I address all of your points or not?

In any event, neither you nor anyone else has yet elected to consider my point about recycling, either, (which I consider my most telling point), but so what? We're none of us obliged to respond to any points.

I agree with you, by the way, that context is important, but I also observe that contexts can change while the actual sounds stay the same. That phenomenon is surely germane to this discussion. n'est pas?

(You don't mind if I call you surely, do you?)


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

> Yagan, your comment about apoliticality was about people, though. I agree that people are political, even that being apolitical is itself a political decision.


Then it also has no musical content. What I was saying was about people, and how no matter what the effect of what they do is political. This is where music comes into it. Bartok's collection of his nation's folk songs is a form of politics without it being outwardly political. Nationalism as roles politics, and vice versa. The political climate surrounding all of us influences us in one way or another and it will inevitably influence our musical desisions (when composing), evan if it is minor.



> But I was talking about music, not people. Music has no political content. It has musical content.


So it is only mathematics and physics and psycology. It has not emotive content. Vivaldi's Seasons (and every other programatic work) must therefor have a missleading title. What of Messien's Bird imitations?



> How accurately will anyone be able to identify its supposed political content?


Yes, but can you pick up the emotive quality's in (traditional) indian or arabic music? I know I can't, all sounds the same. All musc requires some leval of education before it can be understood - musically or emotively. If you play the begining of the 2nd scherzo in Mahler's 10th, will most people be able to identify the chord quality? (It's a FMaj with a Maj 7th I believe).

Let us take a more modern idiom, electronic/tape music that includes recordings of... (let's make it obvious for simplicity) Hitler comanding is armies. Is that political? A non-native speaker would likely not recognise it as Hitler, let alone it's political roots. What of a rhythm that take the rhythm of hitler's speech? What of cannons in pieces? Are they not indicitive of war, a political arm? What of marching rhythms? What of war drums?


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

some guy said:


> Elgarian, somewhere in the preceding is a way out of the "absolute music" debate, don't you think? That is, music is absolutely itself, but that self has no denotation, so "meaning," by which we usually mean (!) a combination of denotation and connotation doesn't seem to operate with music like it does with other things. So no question of "mere-ness." Maybe music is like non-representational art. People can recognize (and some insist on recognizing) all sorts of familiar objects in paintings that are entirely composed of glops of paint, just as they can see faces in the moon, or ships and wild horses in cloud formations. What we have, in short is meaning as a result of a relationship. It's not the music that has the political content; it's the relationship between a listener with certain expectations and the inherently innocent notes themselves.


This is well said, though my feeling of unease remains, so maybe I can explore that a bit? (Not because I have answers I think are right, but because I have questions I'm trying to answer.)

I'm thinking first about this passage of yours: 


> One can check this simply by playing some "political" music to someone who is not familiar with its political content. How accurately will anyone be able to identify its supposed political content? Not very, I think.


That's well said again, but I'm not sure it solves the problem. Suppose I take a sentence that's loaded with complex meaning in English, like 'Energy is Eternal Delight', and say it first to someone who doesn't speak English, and second, to someone who does, but who knows nothing of William Blake. For the first listener, without an understanding of the linguistic context, my sentence would seem like 'mere' abstract sound; for the second listener, without a knowledge of the cultural context, all the intensely rich Blakean associations would be missed. Isn't that a reasonable parallel to your 'political music' example? Wouldn't we be wrong to conclude, from the listener's lack of appreciation of its meaning, that the meaning wasn't inherent in the words? The words are not 'innocent' (excellent choice of word, by the way) even though they may seem so to one (or both) of our hypothetical listeners.

The parallel between music and non-representational art is a tempting one to draw, I agree - but even in the latter case, many of its practioners have thought they were injecting something into their work other than merely formal relationships. Nothing could seem more 'innocent' at first sight than Malevich's _Black Square_, but it and other works were attempts to express mystical/philosophical concepts ('I felt only night within me'). There's a similar impulse behind Ben Nicholson's white reliefs.

So in one clear and very important sense you're right when you say that everything lies in the relationships (involving the artist, the art, and the receiver); but I don't think I agree that the art itself is 'innocent', because it can't be separated from the other two components of the triumvirate _and remain art._ If you strip away the cultural assumptions of the artist, and the cultural expectations of the receiver, then I think that what remains isn't 'art' any more. It's just sounds (if we're talking about music), or paint on a board (if we're talking about abstract painting).

Would we agree that the _Pomp & Circumstance_ marches were politically motivated? If so, then Elgar wrote the music with a set of cultural assumptions of his own, with certain cultural expectations about his audience. If you take away all those cultural accoutrements, and play _Pomp & Circumstance_ to a Martian, then it's true that the notes are now 'innocent'; but I don't think the process that's happening is _musical_ in any recognisable sense.

This is tough stuff. I just set off down the road and this is where I arrived. Tell me if I'm wrong.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

Yagan Kiely said:


> ....
> 
> If you don't understand, it's not my fault. I said things differently. I said that to an individual, yes it me be apolitical, but the effect isn't.
> 
> ...


I wasn't going to respond to this, but I think that perhaps I will.

The simple fact is that, as I suggested in my previous post, I've said all I have to say on that particular matter back there at #6. I've nothing more to offer, and don't want to sidetrack this interesting thread any further by merely repeating the same argument. You are of course free to conclude that I'm 'sidestepping the issue' or (as you eloquently put it) 'trying crap like that', but please be aware that those are not the _only_ possible reasons why someone might choose not to continue such a discussion with you.


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

> I've said all I have to say on that particular matter back there at #6. I


Your comparison to amoral was incorrect, and the other argument was that it was 'word trickery'. That isn't an argument, and I am interested in how you think it is word trickery. I went into more detail about what I meant, (and even admitted that being apolitical is possibly apolitical to the individual concerned as it is too far removed from the political issue), you, however, never went into any detail only accusing it of trickery.



> I've nothing more to offer, and don't want to sidetrack this interesting thread any further by merely repeating the same argument.


You can't side track a topic with the exact same topic. This thread is about politics in music after all, and that is what I am talking about.


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2009)

Elgarian, no I don't think that you're wrong. I just think that music is the type of thing (perhaps the only thing?) that can mean different and incompatible things. Or perhaps not incompatible, on a deep level.

Musical lines that go (generally) up, that crescendo only on the ascending parts of the line, could acquire any extra-musical meanings compatible with those patterns, burgeoning romance, exploding volcano, the expression of long-suppressed emotion, tidal waves, the eternal spirit of rebellion in an oppressed people. You see? It's not that the notes themselves, or the patterns they're arranged in, that _mean_ any of those things, but any of those things (and more) can be associated with that musical pattern.

A regular succession of pesante thumps can easily be wedded to an image of soldiers marching, right? (Hence Shostakovich assigning the "Germans invading Russia" meaning to the repeated motif in the first movement of the seventh symphony.) But not all regular successions of pesante thumps (and I'm thinking specifically now of that bit in Rite of Spring, about seven minutes in to the second part--Glorification of the Chosen Victim?) mean "soldiers marching" or even "fascism" or "the (symbolically) hobnailed boots of the oppressors." Could easily be a composer's idea of how to allude, musically, to the activities of a blacksmith, say, or a carpenter. Could be nothing visual at all. Could be simply the energy that comes from any regular, emphasized beats. The musical energy.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

some guy said:


> I just think that music is the type of thing (perhaps the only thing?) that can mean different and incompatible things. Or perhaps not incompatible, on a deep level.
> 
> Musical lines that go (generally) up, that crescendo only on the ascending parts of the line, could acquire any extra-musical meanings compatible with those patterns, burgeoning romance, exploding volcano, the expression of long-suppressed emotion, tidal waves, the eternal spirit of rebellion in an oppressed people. You see? It's not that the notes themselves, or the patterns they're arranged in, that mean any of those things, but any of those things (and more) can be associated with that musical pattern.


I think what I'm not convinced about is that music is a special case in this respect. I suspect that _all art_ - once you strip away the cultural context of its construction, and the cultural expectations of the receiver - falls into the same category. We've mentioned abstract painting already as one such. Malevich's _Black Square_ can mean 'the night within me', a representation of a black cat in a coal cellar, or just an invitation to contemplate the formal qualities of a painted black square. It bears the same kind of relation with the perceived meaning as do the musical examples you give.

This is easy to see when we compare music with non-figurative art (and might lead us to conclude that just as there's no meaning inherent in the notes, so there's no meaning inherent in the painted form). But I think if we look further, and consider figurative art, the whole idea begins to unravel. There's just as much cultural context involved in 'reading' figurative painting, as in any other art form. In order to get meaning from a Monet street scene or a Cezanne landscape we need to learn something about that context (without it, we'd see them just as blobs of paint daubed on canvas, just as, indeed, most early 19th century critics _did _see them). Without the cultural context, we're left with 'just' paint - as, in music, without the cultural context, we're left with 'just notes'.

I think that to claim that notes are devoid of meaning in themselves is almost exactly the same kind of statement as claiming that paint strokes on a canvas are devoid of meaning in themselves. If we're ignorant of the cultural context, we can indeed read _anything_ into those paint strokes, or into those notes - like seeing patterns in the tea leaves in a cup. But once we grasp the cultural context, then the meaning we extract from them changes.

So ... if there's no such thing as inherently political _music_, then there's no such thing as inherently political_ painting_ either. And now I come to think of it, when I read _Gulliver's Travels_ as a child, I read it 'innocently' - completely ignorant of the fact that it was political satire. I read it just as an entertaining fantasy. So it seems there's no inherently political _writing_, either, and indeed, no inherently political art of any kind.

Art is only art because of its cultural context, and the materials of art have no 'meaning' in themselves. They only acquire meaning through the actions of the artist and the expectations of the receiver. I think that's neither more nor less true of music than of any other art form. We can have our cake, or eat it - but we can't have both. If we persuade ourselves that there's such a thing as political art in general, then there's such a thing as political music. If on the other hand we persuade ourselves that there's no such thing as inherently political music, then there's no inherently political art of any kind, either. Whatever way I look at it, I can't see that music is a special case. It only _seems_ to be special because the cultural connections are less obvious. But notes are no more 'innocent' than strokes of paint, or arrangements of letters on a printed page.


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## Guest (Jan 5, 2009)

I'm intrigued by this comment: 


Elgarian said:


> I suspect that _all art_ - once you strip away the cultural context of its construction, and the cultural expectations of the receiver - falls into the same category.


This may indeed be true. (And even if it's not, it's still intriguing!)

I think we only differ in how far we take this business about meaning.



Elgarian said:


> there's no meaning inherent in the notes
> 
> without the cultural context, we're left with 'just notes'.
> 
> notes are devoid of meaning in themselves


I don't think I'd go _this_ far. (I certainly would never use the phrase "just notes," except of course in the way I just did! I don't believe that's there's any "just" or "mere" about it.)

But this, I'm not so sure about:



Elgarian said:


> the materials of art have no 'meaning' in themselves. They only acquire meaning through the actions of the artist and the expectations of the receiver.


I find that I'm inclined to agree with this, in the same way that I think that if a tree falls in the forest when no one's around, there's no sound. That is, it's the relationship there between ears and the waves in the air that makes what we call "sound." But I also recognize that without the tree falling and disturbing the air, there is also no sound. So the falling part is not negligible. See what I mean? That's why I'd never say "just" in front of the word notes. (And a musical piece has quite a lot more meaning already than the sound of a falling tree.*)

Perhaps the next thing to consider is the limit of interpretation. (That is, is "the night within me" a possible meaning of Malevich's Black Square? Right off the top, I'd say no. One could certainly think that while looking at the painting, but I think one would have already dissociated oneself from the painting and entered the realm of personal dream/fantasy before one could think or say those words. The painting, and musical pieces, too (or even not just "too" but "especially") can act as triggers. But what they trigger is not necessarily a part of their meaning, because triggering is not part of a relationship. It's the sundering of a relationship, I would argue.)

*Or _does_ it?


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

some guy said:


> (I certainly would never use the phrase "just notes," except of course in the way I just did! I don't believe that's there's any "just" or "mere" about it.)


I'm inclined to think that we agree about the idea, but differ in the way we'd express it. When I say 'just notes' or 'just paint strokes' in my previous post, I'm doing it for emphasis (and straining for clarity), while aware that I'm perpetrating a tautology. In other words, by 'just notes', I _think_ I mean no more nor less than 'music stripped of its cultural context'. Or 'what a Martian would perceive', if you like. I'll pick this up again below.



> I find that I'm inclined to agree with this, in the same way that I think that if a tree falls in the forest when no one's around, there's no sound. That is, it's the relationship there between ears and the waves in the air that makes what we call "sound." But I also recognize that without the tree falling and disturbing the air, there is also no sound. So the falling part is not negligible. See what I mean? That's why I'd never say "just" in front of the word notes. (And a musical piece has quite a lot more meaning already than the sound of a falling tree.*)


I think we may be playing fast and loose with the meaning of the word 'meaning' (!!) The musical piece has a lot more _structure_, or _organisation_ than the sound of the falling tree; but that only becomes _meaning _ in the mind of the artist who makes it, or the receiver who, er ... receives it. So let me revisit what I said before and say it differently: when we strip away the cultural context of art, the _meaning_ goes with it, and we're left with structure, or organisation. (I nearly said 'mere' structure!)



> Perhaps the next thing to consider is the limit of interpretation. (That is, is "the night within me" a possible meaning of Malevich's Black Square? Right off the top, I'd say no. One could certainly think that while looking at the painting, but I think one would have already dissociated oneself from the painting and entered the realm of personal dream/fantasy before one could think or say those words.


Meaning can be attached to the work of art at both ends - i.e. by the artist when he's making it or by the receiver when he's contemplating it. Now, in the case of the black square, we know that at least one of its meanings for Malevich was 'the night within me' - and part of his purpose was to express that. Obviously there's always the possibility that the art will fail to communicate its meaning, but I think if art is to work at all, we have to assume that it can stimulate new meaningful thoughts/associations/feelings in the receiver. I don't think the receiver has to go off into a personal fantasy in order to experience something like 'the night within'. If he has sufficient cultural reference, I don't see why he shouldn't pick up Malevich's meaning by contemplating the visual symbol he created. In fact, it happens all the time, I'd suggest. That's how art transmits major cultural perceptive shifts (like the Impressionist revolution).



> The painting, and musical pieces, too (or even not just "too" but "especially") can act as triggers. But what they trigger is not necessarily a part of their meaning, because triggering is not part of a relationship. It's the sundering of a relationship, I would argue.)


I don't follow this fully, I think because I'm not entirely happy with the idea of art as a 'trigger'. I find it more helpful to think of the art as a symbol, created by the artist, which the receiver can contemplate and, through that contemplation, in some measure communicate with the artist. Within that model, the art is part of a relationship - or at least, it plays the same sort of part in a relationship as does a letter written from one person to the other. When we listen to the 'Pomp & Circumstance' marches, what we experience (whether we love 'em or hate 'em) may not be _exactly_ what Elgar hoped to convey, but I think it's at least as good as a blurry photograph (to draw a dubious visual analogy). The music is a symbol or collection of symbols, laden with structure to convey meaning to a receiver who is culturally receptive. It's more than a trigger.

Of course the receiver _can_ 'use' art to go off in private ramblings of his own, and in that sense the art would be being used much as one might stare into the embers of a fire and see images. That's how I would think of art working as a 'trigger', but I'm not sure if I've caught your meaning correctly.

I may seem to be expressing myself with a certainty that I don't actually feel. I'm finding this conversation very enlightening.


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## Guest (Jan 5, 2009)

Elgarian said:


> I'm inclined to think that we agree about the idea, but differ in the way we'd express it.


My suspicion exactly!



Elgarian said:


> I think we may be playing fast and loose with the meaning of the word 'meaning' (!!) The musical piece has a lot more _structure_, or _organisation_ than the sound of the falling tree; but that only becomes _meaning _ in the mind of the artist who makes it, or the receiver who, er ... receives it. So let me revisit what I said before and say it differently: when we strip away the cultural context of art, the _meaning_ goes with it, and we're left with structure, or organisation. (I nearly said 'mere' structure!)


Well, I don't think the meaning of "meaning" can be played with any other way. It's that kind of word. (And I wonder, perhaps, all words are that kind of word....) In any event, I would certainly say that structure and organization are fundamental to a piece's meaning. (Whether given it by a composer, a performer, or a listener.) When we strip away the cultural context of art (and isn't that largely what's happened with any art that's not contemporary with us? We no longer share the assumptions of 18th century Germany, for instance), what we're left with is what I've been calling the musical meaning of music. The important (fundamental) meaning. The meaning that remains upon which any listener in any age can build the total meaning of the piece for him or herself. (Of course, you realize that I too am able to express myself with a certainty that I don't actually feel!)



Elgarian said:


> Meaning can be attached to the work of art at both ends.


I do think that meaning--that is, any important, fundamental, valuable meaning--is definitely not something that can be attached. That the meanings that Malevich created by painting the black square are all more important than the trivial attachment of "the night within me." (But then, I also view with grave suspicion the word "express" in conversations of this sort! If Malevich's purpose was to express things, he could more easily done that like all the rest of us do, by yelling or cussing or crying or laughing. But that's perhaps to precariously lift the lid on a particularly gruesome can of worms.)



Elgarian said:


> I'm not entirely happy with the idea of art as a 'trigger'.


You and me both! I think that this going off "in private ramblings" (whether of the artist or the receiver) is one of the more pointless uses of art. (And you've probably already sussed how uncomfortable I am even using the word "uses"!) Perhaps I should say that it's the way of experiencing art that hardly seems to need the art at all--as practically anything can be a trigger for private ramblings. I think we both want art to be more important than that!


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

some guy said:


> In any event, I would certainly say that structure and organization are fundamental to a piece's meaning. (Whether given it by a composer, a performer, or a listener.)


Fundamental to, yes, but not the same. Structure can convey meaning, but surely for there to be meaning there needs to be a mind contemplating it (either at the creation end, the receiving end, or both)? [We have to be very careful about how we're using these words, or we'll get into a heck of a mess - some might say we're already in one.] A tree has structure and organisation, and indeed carries information within its DNA, but (unless we're followers of Natural Theology) it doesn't have 'meaning' in the same way as a poem, or a painting, or a string quartet has been imbued with meaning by its creator. I'm aware that this analogy may lead us astray, so let me clarify what I mean: regardless of where this discussion might take us, we can both conceive of art - music, painting, or poetry - as being structured to convey political meaning. We can never say that about a tree. We're never going to see a thread on this or any other forum about whether trees (of themselves) carry a politically motivated message. That's what I mean about art of any kind - not just music - requiring that essential cultural context, right down to its deepest levels (i.e. as long as it remains art at all).



> When we strip away the cultural context of art (and isn't that largely what's happened with any art that's not contemporary with us? We no longer share the assumptions of 18th century Germany, for instance), what we're left with is what I've been calling the musical meaning of music. The important (fundamental) meaning. The meaning that remains upon which any listener in any age can build the total meaning of the piece for him or herself.


Aha! Now here I think we reach the crux of the matter. Indeed, we don't share _all_ the assumptions of 18th century Germany - but we still _do_ share an enormous number of cultural assumptions, even so. What you call 'stripping away the cultural context', I see as only a partial stripping away. What you call the 'musical meaning of the music' (the 'fundamental' meaning), I regard as meaning that still carries a substantial amount of cultural baggage (and requires similar in its receiver to be understood). A Martian will not understand a string quartet because he doesn't have the necessary cultural apparatus. A Martian won't understand Cezanne, either. I think this is the core of our disagreement (if we _do_ disagree about anything other than the meaning of words, of which I'm far from certain).



> I do think that meaning--that is, any important, fundamental, valuable meaning--is definitely not something that can be attached. That the meanings that Malevich created by painting the black square are all more important than the trivial attachment of "the night within me." (But then, I also view with grave suspicion the word "express" in conversations of this sort!


Well, the idea of 'art as expression' has a long and distinguished history, so even if I thought there was more to art than that, I'd be reluctant to abandon it. Malevich would not have agreed that his attempt to express 'the night within me' was trivial - he would have said it was crucial, I think. I think I'm correct in believing that it inspired his whole concept of Suprematism. Similarly, Ben Nicholson would have been very upset by the suggestion that his abstracts were devoid of metaphysical meaning, or that that aspect of them was unimportant.



> You and me both! I think that this going off "in private ramblings" (whether of the artist or the receiver) is one of the more pointless uses of art. (And you've probably already sussed how uncomfortable I am even using the word "uses"!) Perhaps I should say that it's the way of experiencing art that hardly seems to need the art at all--as practically anything can be a trigger for private ramblings. I think we both want art to be more important than that!


Yes. Wherever else this discussion may lead us, this is solid ground we both stand on.


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