Well, it's your prerogative to think whatever you want to on these things, of course - and it's not as though you've simply decided on the spur of the moment to adopt such stances, as you've self-evidently given the matter considerable thought before arriving at them. That said, where I part company with you on all of this is in the potentail (not to say actual) dangers of the mental associations assuming a life of their won, distinct from the sounds and effects of the music in either case; in other words, a situation where the subject matter (be it Sorabji or Bach, the Spice Girls or the Andrews Sisters) becomes a kind of fodder for the political conclusions thereon.
Well, this is not 'distinct from the sounds and effects of the music'; those are fundamental. That said, the sounds cannot really be separated from the whole 'package' in the case of the Spice Girls, and in the case of Sorabji, at the very least all of the allusions given by the titles surely inform the listening experience. But conclusions on Sorabji (which I don't really want to pursue further) do come primarily from listening to the music.
I also find it difficult to understand your position on what you call the "high/low culture debate" (not that I was knowingly engaging in such a debate at the point where you responded thus); it seems to me almost as though your avowed preference is to deny that there is any such thing
Do you mean there's no such distinction between different forms of culture, or there is no such debate? I believe both exist, though in the case of high/low I would use commercial/less commercial instead (which in no sense should be taken to imply that the 'less commercial' can't generate as many problems (though distinct ones) to the commercial).
and that there is accordingly little or no difference in such terms between Sorabji and the Spice Girls, of neither of whose work you approve.
No, they are wholly different - just think both are comparably unexalted, which doesn't mean they are similar in other senses.
Again, my concerns are far more with what the music sounds like and what effects it has than I am in talking about "high" or "low" culture, although I might be curious to hear what you would have to say on this topic using examples of music from both categories of which you DO approve, rather than those of which you don't.
Well,
sometimes the very thing that makes something appear as 'art' or 'high culture' is little more than contrived aura. And contrariwise, highly commercial music ('low culture', if you like) frequently necessitates a degree of high standardisation (this is of course to configure the distinction in the industrial/post-industrial age - 'low culture' is a quite different animal before then). These are both questions of 'what the music sounds like and what effects it has'. Now in both cases the music can amount to a lot more than that; it's a question of whether the conditions under which it is produced make this more or less likely. And, all things told, I do think that is marginally more likely under the auspices of the institutions that support and maintain 'less commercial' music than with music produced entirely as a commodity. To go into specific examples would of course require a lot of space.
I didn't actually say that - but then are you suggesting that they [Sorabji & Spice Girls] exist on the same one[plane]? If so, how and why so?
See above.
Happened to be thinking of Kramer after being at a performance of Ravel's Daphnis last night, seeing the now obligatory reference to Kramer's tired old essay on the work in the programme note;
Then I'm sad for you; I'd have been thinking of Ravel.
Certainly was, but the performance was awful - it was a reading of the piece that seemed to penetrate no deeper into the music than Kramer does. All just an array of surface novelty (and even that not done with any particular refinement), little in the way of a sense of dramatic pacing, feeling for the long-range harmonic progressions, or more fundamentally how much expressive content can be conveyed just through sound. Kramer portrays
Daphnis as 'surface without depth' (typical Baudrillard stuff about the simulacra - bear in mind Baudrillard is also the person who said the Gulf War didn't happen), but there he makes the characteristic mistake of those who have grown to associate 'depth' exclusively with its Teutonic manifestations (not that there is anything wrong with that). Ravel's music certainly has emotional depth of the highest order, but he uses different means to convey it (which of course affect the nature of what can be conveyed) - timbral interplay and acutely judged orchestral balance, rhythm, fleeting melodic and harmonic inflection which nonetheless serves unique strategic purposes. The flute solo in the second suite (Fig. 176) can be absolutely breathtaking when the strings and harp play a genuine
pp and
ppp, with careful balancing of the harmonies, also given that vague edge by the muted horns, and the flute can then play with a degree of rhythmic freedom and stylisation (
expressif et souple) whilst remaining somewhat hushed. And these relationships can be continuously renavigated as the harmony progresses. When (to give a supreme example) Monteux conducts this work (anyone who doesn't know that recording should definitely hear it), there is such a wealth of unique and complex emotion contained within those pages, achieved by a variety of musical means exercised simultaneously. This is much, much more than just an exotic moment, as Kramer portrays most of the piece. In this performance the work really did seem like a tired old array of superficially exotic goods, just as he describes. If one wants the latter, and a very real example of 'surface without depth', go to Knussen or Adčs....
Oh, absolutely they [populists and old-style aristocrats] do have each other - each one exists in large measure as the negation of the other.
Does that actually constitute "having each other"?
I think so, yes.
As to Sorabji being "no more than image", I think that this would have been abit difficult for a composer whose work was hardly in the public arena at all until he was in his 80s...
Being aloof and out of the public eye itself generates an image. But I really don't want to pursue the Sorabji question any further here.
No, but the whole culture of classical music appreciation in the UK (less so in some other countries with less of a legacy of feudalism) derives from the upper classes, the public schools, etc.
So is it utterly damned forever - is it eternally irremdiable - just because of this?
The music isn't, that particular culture in the UK is heavily tainted by all of that. Which is not to damn everything about it.
In other words, must this historical background (to whatever extent or otherwise that it may be found credible) hold good indefinitely, with the effect that "classical" music can never escape, or be made to escape, from this straitjacket?
Never said that, nor would I. But I don't see that happening at present - no will (except on the part of a few radical composers) to try and move music beyond all of that baggage. On the other hand, there have been older British composers who have made some serious attempts at such a thing (Birtwistle and Ferneyhough being obvious examples).
I just don't believe that; it makes no sense. Why? Well, to start with, like many others who are involved in such music, I am not "upper class", nor did I attend a "public school" (by which you do not in any case mean a good, bad or indifferent school in terms of educational standards but a fee-paying school as distinct from one subsidised by tax on capitalist profits).
I'm talking about a musical culture in a country where class divisions still hold very powerfully, and all that entails, not simply about single individuals' particular educational background.
And more broadly, classical music per se is historically associated with the aristocracy and the churches up until the late 18th century,
We're in the 21st one now, Ian...
Yes - that was the
first part of a statement, not the complete thing!! Sheesh....
and with the new bourgeois ruling classes after then.
Whoever they may or may not be, or have been. Anyway, I'd not realised that I was a member - or even supporter - or "the new bourgeois ruling classes"; one learns something new every day (albeit not that!)...
See other threads for definitions in that respect. It shouldn't be too contentious to suggest that newly dominant classes in the 19th century were the primary patrons of classical music.
It's a matter of which redeeming factors can be salvaged from this context (and many can).
Well, that's a relief! - but in admitting that, you are surely undermining at least some of the importance of the principle on which you base the rest of this...
No, I think you're misreading what I'm attempting to say - I don't subscribe to crude base-superstructure reductionism. I'd strongly recommend reading
this and
this on that subject.
then when it comes to your trenchantly inflexible view of the indelible historical association between "classical music" and "the upper classes", etc., you seem to conclude that what held good centuries ago still applies today, so where's the difference and why?
Because the situation as regards popular culture and the marketplace has (at least arguably) constituted a much more through-going and total transformation than that which appertains to the classical sphere.
