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Milly Jones
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« Reply #45 on: 20:07:30, 24-09-2008 » |
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Unfortunately what a lot of people don't realise is that it is possibly only by sheer accident of birth that we hold the opinions and views that we do.
I do take your point, Milly. But this last sentence I think goes too far. It is not just by sheer accident that we have a moral compass such as we do. I can accept circumstantial hardships as mitigating or at least complicating circumstances without becoming a moral relativist. It's not as glib as it sounds Turfan I'm afraid. You take impressionable young people of any race - and remember that not everyone is very intelligent or able to empathise - indoctrinate them to any political stance and see what happens. Obviously there are going to be many people who will baulk at committing some acts, even if it does result in their own deaths. Unfortunately there are also many who will go along with it. Not every German was a Nazi of course, but so many young German boys were pulled in at a very impressionable age and it was done with force. I try not to judge people too harshly these days. As I've got older I've realised that there is always a reason for anyone's actions. Not an excuse, you understand, but a reason. You don't have to agree with that reason or be a moral relativist, but understanding is crucial. Nobody is perfect. Not one composer who ever lived was a perfect person. Some were very much worse than others but when you look back at history and see how much mankind seems to have learned from it, it's a sobering exercise. Should we only listen to Ben Britten and Michael Tippett because they were conscientious objectors? |
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« Reply #46 on: 21:50:33, 24-09-2008 » |
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Not an excuse, you understand, but a reason. You don't have to agree with that reason or be a moral relativist, but understanding is crucial.
OK. You and I agree completely, I think. But it is only in the objective qualities that music can really be adjudged subjectively. You seem to be denying - even though you have confessed total ignorance of it - that any objective quality that may exist in the music is of any use.
You think music can be heard without regard for extra-musical meaning. I think it cannot, or rather, I cannot hear it that way. That is where we are at odds with one another; certainly not wrt to our ability to be responsible academics. -- that little jibe did not go unnoticed. |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #47 on: 22:58:07, 24-09-2008 » |
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My aunt married a German prisoner of war who was captured by the Americans. He'd been shot in the head by them and the bullet remained in his brain for the rest of his life, as it would have been too dangerous to remove. He was very very young when the war started. He had been forced to join the Hitler Youth at 15 and had consequently been indoctrinated. They didn't actually have a choice you know.
A nicer man you could never meet. They married and he stayed over here until he died some 10 years ago. As soon as he was able to reflect, he denounced war altogether - in any form. The consequences of doing that in his own country would have been fatal.
He was not a composer, but if he had been, I'd have listened with pleasure to his music I'm sure.
You seem to be assuming, though, that his music would have been some sort of sweet and pleasant instrumental music. I'd be quite happy to hear some of the early symphonic poems Mr Grew mentioned at the start of the thread, but I don't think being reminded that 'Nobody is perfect' makes much difference to whether most people would want to hear Trunk's Feier der neuen Front, composed in 1932 (a year before the Nazis even came to power) and dedicated to Adolf Hitler, which is a setting of a text by a man who became head of the Hitler Youth in 1933 and was later a section leader in the SA. Trunk also wrote songs called 'O Land', 'Horst Wessel' and 'You, my Germany!' (that one as early as 1933!), and even one simply called 'Hitler', of which the opening words are: And you are I, and I am you.
I have experienced no thought
Which did not tremble in your heart.It might also be worth remembering that Trunk was born in 1879, so he was in his fifties when all this was going on. It seems a bit irrelevant to compare it to the experience of teenagers who had no choice but to join the Hitler Youth. |
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« Last Edit: 22:59:47, 24-09-2008 by time_is_now »
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Andy D
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« Reply #48 on: 22:59:37, 24-09-2008 » |
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Although SG is acting, as he frequently does, as an agent provocateur, his thread does raise a serious point. Webern is a much more obvious example than R Trunk. Music is, after all, just a collection of notes and other instructions. So we listen to an anonymous piece and find it quite acceptable (to say the least), only to discover that the composer has totally unacceptable political views or the performer has recently been banned from r3ok - what to do now? Were we mistaken in our liking of the piece? Oh, such problems!
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time_is_now
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« Reply #49 on: 23:02:49, 24-09-2008 » |
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Although SG is acting, as he frequently does, as an agent provocateur, his thread does raise a serious point. Webern is a much more obvious example than R Trunk. Music is, after all, just a collection of notes and other instructions. So we listen to an anonymous piece and find it quite acceptable (to say the least), only to discover that the composer has totally unacceptable political views or the performer has recently been banned from r3ok - what to do now? Were we mistaken in our liking of the piece? Oh, such problems!
I do agree with this, incidentally, and I think the issue would be much less clear-cut if we were talking about abstract or instrumental music. Webern wasn't attracted by Nazi ideas until much later than Trunk, but based on his comments above I don't really understand why TF is made less nauseous by the obsession with perfection and the natural order in Webern's works of the 1930s and early 1940s than he is by the prospect of listening to Trunk. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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« Reply #50 on: 23:22:44, 24-09-2008 » |
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I think you do understand why it's less nauseating. It's not as nauseating.
The naiveté which allowed Webern to believe that his 'order' was Order is the naiveté which allowed him to passively accept the political developments that surrounded him.
I cannot produce such a (debatable) analogy in the case of Trunk because I don't know his music. And even if I did, I am not guaranteeing that such an analogy can be made. I do guarantee my nausea, though, as I cannot separate the man's ideology from his music. One of my little foibles.
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #51 on: 23:42:21, 24-09-2008 » |
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You seem to be assuming, though, that his music would have been some sort of sweet and pleasant instrumental music. No not at all. It could have been any sort of music. After reading the rest of your post, am I to assume that you wouldn't listen to Gesualdo? 'he were a right rum 'un 'n all!  { lovely music though. ) |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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time_is_now
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« Reply #52 on: 23:45:43, 24-09-2008 » |
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You seem to be assuming, though, that his music would have been some sort of sweet and pleasant instrumental music. No not at all. It could have been any sort of music. After reading the rest of your post, am I to assume that you wouldn't listen to Gesualdo? Sorry, you've lost me! I don't understand what this has to do with Gesualdo. I wasn't passing comment on Trunk's reasons for behaving as he did, just suggesting that not many people would find aesthetic value in listening to partsongs in praise of the Führer and that your comment about 'listening with pleasure' seemed particularly irrelevant to the kind of music that's actually in question here. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #53 on: 23:52:14, 24-09-2008 » |
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You seem to be assuming, though, that his music would have been some sort of sweet and pleasant instrumental music. No not at all. It could have been any sort of music. After reading the rest of your post, am I to assume that you wouldn't listen to Gesualdo? Sorry, you've lost me! I don't understand what this has to do with Gesualdo. I wasn't passing comment on Trunk's reasons for behaving as he did, just suggesting that not many people would find aesthetic value in listening to partsongs in praise of the Führer and that your comment about 'listening with pleasure' seemed particularly irrelevant to the kind of music that's actually in question here. Ah well you see, I've broadened the discussion to include other very unsavoury personages whose music happens to be beautiful - as to whether it should influence our opinions generally. I wasn't talking about praise to the Führer, or indeed anyone else's music in praise of dictators. However, that aside, they wrote other music as well usually. Beethoven dedicated one of his pieces to Napoleon and thought better of it I believe. But you are right, I had meandered off-topic and it was irrelevant to the sort of music you are discussing. |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #54 on: 01:02:45, 25-09-2008 » |
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I think that the Gesualdo issue is also far too easy to bring up, when we don't actually know an awful lot about what actually happened. IIRC most of what we have comes from gossip, rumour and propaganda (and PR). With Trunk, we have clearly documented facts (but not motivations...) and we can tell quite closely what actually happened, even if the 'why' is left to speculation. [off topic: I've always found the 'fact' that is inevitably wheeled out about Gesualdo ('he wrote these gritty dissonances because he felt so sorry about what he did') to be so glib and meaningless as to be quite insulting. I'm glad I've got that off my chest.] Webern is a much more obvious example than R Trunk.
Can someone say more about Webern's involvement with Nazi ideals? Or at least point me in the right direction to read more on the subject? I've always thought that Webern's interest in 'order' grows almost directly out of Enlightenment ideals and hadn't connected it to his political views (which I would have thought were too mystical and Christian to be in line with central Nazi ideology). Music is, after all, just a collection of notes and other instructions.
Um. No. That's a really rather silly simplification. Western music is often just the realisation of a collection of notes and other instructions. But that collection of notes and other instructions is often the expression of an awful lot and it can result in a hell of a lot more. And this is all without even going into wider definitions of music. Other than these thoughts I can only refer readers to my previous post. |
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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Andy D
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« Reply #55 on: 01:31:21, 25-09-2008 » |
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Music is, after all, just a collection of notes and other instructions.
Um. No. That's a really rather silly simplification. Western music is often just the realisation of a collection of notes and other instructions. But that collection of notes and other instructions is often the expression of an awful lot and it can result in a hell of a lot more. And this is all without even going into wider definitions of music. Other than these thoughts I can only refer readers to my previous post. I wasn't being silly hh and I've got to disagree with you. In the same way, a novel is no more than the words printed on the page. OK you personally can build a massive amount on what you're given, as you say, and it might very well have been the intention of the author to "express an awful lot" - but that's not what you're given. Marks on paper (traditionally speaking) is all you've got. Make of them what you will - that's where the performance aspect comes into music, whereas it doesn't (usually) into literature. |
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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #56 on: 02:33:08, 25-09-2008 » |
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If Members are still searching for the key to Trunk we venture to suggest that it might be the sound of massed men's voices. It must have been the love thereof that filled his heart and directed his endeavour from youth under Joseph Rheinberger - even before he sailed off for New York - right through to those long golden days of retirement along the banks of the sparkling (if sometimes icy) Ammersee.
And we are certain here too that "A nicer man you could never meet." As we have stated three times already in this thread his principal fault seems to have been that he was so obliging. He was ready to write music for any one who asked for it. No one with a love of music so great as to lead them to spend a lifetime writing more of it could possibly be "bad" could he? One of his last works is the "Musical Picture-book for Children" opus 91, written for piano-forte.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #57 on: 04:55:56, 25-09-2008 » |
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If Members are still searching for the key to Trunk we venture to suggest that it might be the sound of massed men's voices.
I bet he really got off on this one. http://www.worldmilitaria.com/newsite/Media/HorstWesselLied.mp3 |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #58 on: 10:34:56, 25-09-2008 » |
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Those with access to Naxos online can listen to one song by Trunk here (clicking on the right link - I find it interesting that Naxos fails to provide a biography). This is one of his op. 4 songs, so comes from earlier in his career. |
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #59 on: 11:54:03, 25-09-2008 » |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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