Generally, yes - but right wing libertarianism is itself a position riven with internal contradictions (as are most right wing ideologies).

As are [all] ideologies? I can't bring one to mind that isn't. My favoured one certainly is .  You can still hold consistently to one over time though (which is what I took Bryn to mean about Zappa).

I think we shall have to agree to differ on that point!

Fine, if one's not interested in his various subjects, one's not likely to be drawn to his work. His stuff on Finnissy's This Church was particularly interesting, though.


No, it's not about intent at all, it's about using some of Adorno's strategies (and those of others) as techniques for examining Zappa's work and what it entails. 'Negative dialectics' is not at all about what you are describing - rather about identifying pronounced antimonies in phenomena without at all attempting to resolve them.


That's a thoroughly different thing to ideology critique, which is about uncovering the hidden ideologies within various things. And a deeply important exercise, I believe, of which we see far too little in the narrower forms of writing about music.

By the way, George's comment about all ideologies being riven with contradictions is probably true, but some more so than others. Ideologies of the free market, for example, come very unstuck by virtue of the fact that military force needs to be exercised on a global scale in order to keep such a supposedly 'free' system in place.

I know that I really ought to keep out of this (and I'm sure that Ian in particular knows even better that I ought to keep out of it!), but I couldn't resist making a brief rejoinder to these particular remarks. To my (compared to some other people's) not-very-politically-oriented mind, it would be valuable - perhaps vital - first to determine whether and to what extent Richard Strauss's music (or, for the sake of the present argument, only those of his works that appeal to Richard non Strauss here) can be written about or responded to intelligently and informatively in specific relation to any kind of socialist or other political standpoint; in other words, how politically motivated should we regard Strauss the composer? I'm fairly certain that I couldn't begin to answer that one in a way that would cut much ice with most participants in this discussion, but if I were to try to approach the question, I suppose I'd have to start by examining works such as the late Metamorphosen, the much earlier symphonic poems and the stage works for clues in the chosen subject matter (though quite where that would get me is anyone's guess; after all, how would one explain Sorabji's fulsome admiration for Alan Bush's final opera Joe Hill: The Man who Never Died).

We are all aware, of course, the (now largely discredited) slurs on Strauss's alleged capitulation with the régime in his country in the 1930s and 1940s yet, many years ago, Humphrey Searle told me that he met Strauss (just the once, I believe) shortly before WWII and that one distinct impression of the then 74-year-old composer with which he was left was that he simply wanted to be left alone to get on with his work without the kinds of political pressure to which many of his contemporaries were and had been subjected.

The wider question of the "social relevance" of Strauss's music is, I find both impossible and indeed unnecessary to try to answer, for if it had such a relevance to certain kinds of German in its own day, the likelihood is that it would be pretty much useless to most people (even in Germany) today other than as interesting museum-piece material, unless its true value far exceeded anything that suggestions of "social relevance" are likely to imply.

OK, so that's my two cents' worth; now, while I shut up, you can all take turns in tearing it up word by word and then continue the discussion as before(!)...

Best,

Alistair

Haven't seen that, would be very interested.

I didn't for a minute imagine negative dialectics was about what I was describing. When I said 'something of Adorno and something not of Adorno' I was referring to the juxtaposition of the phrase 'negative dialectics' with the phrase 'poodle play'. Bryn, thanks for the explanation (just seen it as I was about to send this post). That's exactly what I was referring to - I understand both elements of the title (the 'Adorno' bit and the 'Zappa' bit) but I find their juxtaposition doesn't yield anything very persuasive about Watson's own approach.

Where did intent come into it? I certainly never said anything was about intent.

This is only really a cheap rhetorical point but I'll make it before anyone else jumps in there: it's probably not a good idea to use the phrase 'some more so than others' in such arguments. Echoes of Orwell and all that - tends to undermine your argument rather than help it!

I don't really agree with you, anyway. Yes, from your perspective what you say about the free market may be self-evident. I'm not about to disagree with you either, although I might profess agnosticism re some of your political convictions. However, I think it's a little disingenuous (and potentially dangerous) not to take into account how 'natural' (i.e. not riven with contradictions) quite opposite political convictions to your own might look to the people holding them.

And yet, sadly, he will probably be remembered in future as the man after whom the TV 'remote' is popularly named.

(I'll get me poodle)

Which is in fact the problem, because this is as clear a political agenda as any other: ignoring the world around you doesn't make if go away. But anyway, the point I was trying to make was that attempting what Ian calls an "ideology analysis" and/or "extrapolation" on Strauss in a similar way to that with Ben Watson takes with Frank Zappa is more clearly a waste of time (though both are wastes of time): one should rather have the courage to admit that one is actually talking constantly about oneself, rather than pretending to be talking about something else.

Nor am I trying to say that everything Ben Watson writes is rubbish. I find his review of Georgina Born's book Rationalising Culture and his comments on Ferneyhough and Bernstein's misappropriation of Walter Benjamin both quite valuable. On the other hand, anyone who knows his journalism at all well (he and I both used to write for The Wire (does it still have a "the"? I lose track)) will have seen that whatever he's reviewing or otherwise seeming to write about, the name Frank Zappa has to occur in the article somewhere, preferably in the first couple of sentences. This has the hallmarks of blind obsession, and the book struck me as the same thing writ very large.