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Bryn
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« Reply #15 on: 22:36:36, 26-08-2008 » |
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As to Takahashi, I don't think he is averse to quoting Mao's poetry in support of his work, though those of his works from the period in question that I am most familiar with are based on Vietnamese and Korean political experience, rather than that of China.
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« Last Edit: 22:39:08, 26-08-2008 by Bryn »
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #16 on: 22:43:19, 26-08-2008 » |
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I'm not sure mention of Beethoven is helpful - we can mention Bizet, Massenet or Verdi too, but they weren't active in England... the topic under discussion  Well, Bizet spoke contemptuously of how he would give his audiences trash, as that was what they seemed to want, when writing the Toreador aria in Carmen. And I can't accept Verdi as an unabashed populist, at least not after the galley years. Massenet may be a different matter, of course. |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #17 on: 22:45:45, 26-08-2008 » |
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Cardew would have been pretty much aware of both western and Chinese reporting of events leading up to, and around 1975. Though it was around that time that he and his political allies started to question what was going on in the Chinese Communist Party, particularly with regard to the rehabilitation of Deng. Shortly thereafter he moved his support from China towards Albania. Indeed, in "There is only one truth", he specifically denounces Maoism. Mind you, Cardew probably also took the historical and immediate economic and political isolation of China by the West and the Soviet Union into account when trying to come to terms with the large scale deaths from famine in China during the period in question. If it's mass murderers you are looking for in connection with those famines, you might consider widening your horizons to include those in the USA, UK, Soviet Union, etc, who did their utmost to undermine China's economic development.
This is really the ultimate in Mao apologetics. One might as well blame the death of around 3 million Soviet POWs captured by the Germans in the winter of 1941-42 on the economic and political isolation of Nazi Germany and its occupied territories. And shifting allegiance to Hoxha's Albania hardly seems much of an improvement. |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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time_is_now
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« Reply #18 on: 22:56:55, 26-08-2008 » |
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I can see where you were coming from with your first post, Ian, but surely this: Indeed so, Ron. It's sad that newspapers commission people with little or no knowledge of music - and on the basis of this piece Pollard clearly falls into that category - to write this sort of polemic. Would it happen with football?
Well, when 'people with little or no knowledge of music' are still expected to subsidise it through their taxes, aren't they allowed to have their say as well? weakens rather than strengthens your argument. I can't see the advantage in confusing the right to have a say with the right to remain stubbornly uninformed while talking as if one were an expert. Pollard's piece is a succession of sweeping unsupported generalisations, for example:
"Their dominance of the subsidy racket meant that not only were composers freed from any obligation to secure an audience for their music, but they were pilloried and starved of funds also if they did attempt to do that."
"Vaughan Williams was the last composer to speak directly to a wide audience, with music that could be appreciated by listeners who did not have degrees in musical theory."
Where's the evidence? It's just incredibly sloppy, and in one respect represents a peculiarly English type of dilettantism; the belief that culture is not to be taken seriously. Quite. His characterisation of James MacMillan - 'as intellectually rigorous as any of his predecessors but has the priceless gift of connecting with audiences' - is absurd (and why does he feel the need to mention this 'intellectual rigour' if he thinks it's so irrelevant?). And as for his wider argument, he fails to take into account all sorts of other social and economic factors (not least the fact that it's no longer considered acceptable for public subsidy of the arts to focus primarily on institutionalised classical concerts) that could explain why no classical composer working today has the prestige Vaughan Williams held in his time. For example: Vaughan Williams was the last composer to speak directly to a wide audience, with music that could be appreciated by listeners who did not have degrees in musical theory. One reason was basic: he wrote tonal music. But another was that there was something very English in his music. If they were the only reasons, then I don't see what would be stopping Howard Skempton, or Jonathan Lloyd, or David Matthews, from being celebrated by the same sort of 'wide audience' Pollard keeps claiming existed to follow RVW's career closely in the first half of the twentieth century. |
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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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IgnorantRockFan
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« Reply #19 on: 23:03:55, 26-08-2008 » |
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Vaughan Williams was the last composer to speak directly to a wide audience, with music that could be appreciated by listeners who did not have degrees in musical theory." *cough* Malcolm Arnold  |
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Allegro, ma non tanto
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richard barrett
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« Reply #20 on: 23:16:45, 26-08-2008 » |
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Returning to the question of RVW versus "subsidy", it's perhaps relevant to mention that Vaughan Williams himself had a private income, as to varying degrees did many of his English contemporaries and antecedents, Elgar (though his wife did have one) and Holst being exceptional in lacking this advantage. I presume Mr Pollard is of the opinion that this is a more equitable way of funding musical activity than these awful "subsidies".
James Macmillan? Intellectually rigorous? Some mistake surely.
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Bryn
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« Reply #21 on: 23:20:57, 26-08-2008 » |
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And shifting allegiance to Hoxha's Albania hardly seems much of an improvement.
On that much we can agree. Still, at least he did not descend into Trotskyism. How was it LuXun put it in his Reply to a Letter from the Trotskyites? Ah yes: "Your "theory" is certainly much loftier than that of Mao Zedong; yours is high in the sky, while his is down-to-earth. But admirable as is such loftiness, it will unfortunately be just the thing welcomed by the Japanese aggressors. Hence I fear that it will drop down from the sky, and when it does it may land on the filthiest place on earth." Of course, Bronstein never got to wield the power he so craved, once the civil war was done with. I fear things would have be even worse than they were under Dzhugashvili had he done so. |
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #22 on: 23:23:29, 26-08-2008 » |
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Returning to the question of RVW versus "subsidy", it's perhaps relevant to mention that Vaughan Williams himself had a private income, as to varying degrees did many of his English contemporaries and antecedents, Elgar (though his wife did have one) and Holst being exceptional in lacking this advantage. I presume Mr Pollard is of the opinion that this is a more equitable way of funding musical activity than these awful "subsidies".
According to Wiki, Mr Pollard runs a Brussels-based Free Market think-tank and writes regularly for the Daily Mail and the Times. So he probably is of exactly that opinion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Pollard(He also appears to be an alumnus of the same Norf Lunnon centre of secondary education as the present writer, which might explain where he learned some of his musical prejudices) |
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« Last Edit: 23:32:15, 26-08-2008 by perfect wagnerite »
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #23 on: 23:28:22, 26-08-2008 » |
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You won't find me carrying any card for any ideology named after an individual, Bryn (which includes Marxism, though I would speak up for a certain tradition of theory and practice that relates, not slavishly, to aspects of Marx's thought), including Trotskyism. Kronstadt is an event that cannot be ignored.
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #24 on: 23:31:33, 26-08-2008 » |
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I can see where you were coming from with your first post, Ian, but surely this: Indeed so, Ron. It's sad that newspapers commission people with little or no knowledge of music - and on the basis of this piece Pollard clearly falls into that category - to write this sort of polemic. Would it happen with football?
Well, when 'people with little or no knowledge of music' are still expected to subsidise it through their taxes, aren't they allowed to have their say as well? weakens rather than strengthens your argument. I can't see the advantage in confusing the right to have a say with the right to remain stubbornly uninformed while talking as if one were an expert. Well, I'm not particularly convinced that many of the utterances from the 'opposite side', especially when it come to the complex issue of subsidy, are necessarily any more informed. But one does not have to be informed about music to question why one's taxes are being spent on it. The argument used to try and poo-poo the views on these matters of non-specialists are much the same as those that Chomsky identifies from 'professionals' at the heart of government (politicians and civil servants) to try and damp down dissent - the arguments of the 'commissars'. There is no-one involved in the musical world whose view on the music that's produced is any more valid or worthy of consideration than that of any other person from outside it. But many of those either involved with it or choosing to demonstrate their 'appreciation' have a vested interest in perpetuating the idea that they have some sort of superior discernment - it's rot. I tend to respect more nowadays the views of those who simply dismiss new music that they've heard, because they think it does nothing, than those who mystify it in pretentious jargon (i.e. most of those who write about it in English). Same applies for older music. To Ron's point: do you think a criticism of spending on sport, or on defence, by one who does not have detailed knowledge of the intricate workings of either industry (and how many people can really claim that with respect to defence) would be given as short shrift as with respect to music? I've seen countless highly generalised criticisms of defence spending, sometimes from the same types of people who become so defensive when spending on contemporary music is called into question. |
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« Last Edit: 23:41:21, 26-08-2008 by Ian Pace »
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #25 on: 23:42:24, 26-08-2008 » |
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If they were the only reasons, then I don't see what would be stopping Howard Skempton, or Jonathan Lloyd, or David Matthews, from being celebrated by the same sort of 'wide audience' Pollard keeps claiming existed to follow RVW's career closely in the first half of the twentieth century.
Skempton came at least close to that with Lento. [The next time I read or hear someone talking about 'connecting with audiences', or any similar bit of para-Hollywood schmalz, I will not be responsible for my actions. At the very least they will be forced to ingest my vomit.] |
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« Last Edit: 23:45:10, 26-08-2008 by Ian Pace »
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #26 on: 23:47:33, 26-08-2008 » |
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Pollard doesn't seem to have made any mention of the R-, N- or J-words.
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time_is_now
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« Reply #27 on: 23:50:32, 26-08-2008 » |
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I'm not particularly convinced that many of the utterances from the 'opposite side', especially when it come to the complex issue of subsidy, are necessarily any more informed. Neither am I. But two wrongs don't make a right. one does not have to be informed about music to question why one's taxes are being spent on it. The argument used to try and poo-poo the views on these matters of non-specialists are much the same as those that Chomsky identifies from 'professionals' at the heart of government (politicians and civil servants) to try and damp down dissent - the arguments of the 'commissars'. There is no-one involved in the musical world whose view on the music that's produced is any more valid or worthy of consideration than that of any other person from outside it. Again, as I said: I could see this was where you were coming from, and I agree about vested interests and all that (although I do believe people who are professionally involved do sometimes try to see things from a more 'objective' angle, and I don't think you should so easily discount this possibility). But that's not what PW or anyone else was saying in this thread: as I understood it, PW was saying it's a pity that someone not professionally involved in the musical world should have been paid by a newspaper to comment on it in a way that made his lack of knowledge so manifest. The desirable alternative is not that comment should be left exclusively to those with vested interests, but that someone like Stephen Pollard should have been able to write that article without making patently untrue statements and glaring omissions (such as the failure even to mention Tippett or Walton or indeed, as IRF says, Malcolm Arnold). |
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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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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #28 on: 23:52:38, 26-08-2008 » |
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I can see where you were coming from with your first post, Ian, but surely this: The argument used to try and poo-poo the views on these matters of non-specialists are much the same as those that Chomsky identifies from 'professionals' at the heart of government (politicians and civil servants) to try and damp down dissent - the arguments of the 'commissars'. There is no-one involved in the musical world whose view on the music that's produced is any more valid or worthy of consideration than that of any other person from outside it.
I agree, but the point here is that Pollard is behaving in a Commissar fashion by failing to support what he writes with any sort of evidence - it's just a succession of assertions being presented as indisputable fact. Insider or not, Pollard simply fails to justify what he writes. |
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« Last Edit: 00:00:03, 27-08-2008 by perfect wagnerite »
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #29 on: 23:58:47, 26-08-2008 » |
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although I do believe people who are professionally involved do sometimes try to see things from a more 'objective' angle, and I don't think you should so easily discount this possibility I do discount the idea that they are necessarily any more likely to do so than anyone else - actually, in my experience, I would say the opposite is true. It's extremely rare to encounter any musicians who consider the world they inhabit from a genuinely wider perspective, much though some of them pretend to (usually in a self-serving manner). |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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