You mean involving multiple nested poplets, perhaps?

No, why not let's leave this whole thing alone where it belongs? In so saying, I intend absolutely no unwarranted disrespect toward Mr Downie, but this kind of thing is really going to get most of us of whatever political persuasion or none nowhere fast (or, worse still, not so fast), I fear.

This statement (and any other that I may make on this subject) has no conceivable connection with any particular political persuasion on my part or on anyone else's; I simply state, as a composer, that I cannot reconcile anything that I do or try to do with this kind of heavily generated (sorry!) political posturing, for I do not seek - nor could I even imagine myself wanting to try - to press anything that I do into some - any - kind of "political" service (still less servitude), to (as Bernard van Dieren once said in a somewhat different context) "hang there like a soldier's body on the barbed wire".

Best,

Alistair

Sorry - I should have added (as I think I did elsewhere in what I wrote) "in my opinion" (for that is what I meant, because, rightly or wrongly, it comes across to me in this way).

Sorry again here, Ian, but in the different sense that he does rather make them sound as though they are, in the context of the entire article.

I don't know.

But what about his airings to the audience of like-minded political types? Isn't that potentially as suspect as baying to what you call the "middle-class liberal (or frequently to the right of that) classical music goers"? And he really lays himself on the line when citing certain Grawemeyer award winners as being exclusively of centre-right or right oriented political leaning, as though (whether he is right or wrong about that in any of the cases he cites) it really matters in purely compositional terms?

Who cares? I don't (at least not when writing or tring to conceive something). I am not at all undermining the rôle or importance of politics - I simply state that, for me, at least - this kind of posturing seems to tell us nothing about how composers for the most part function. I do not dismiss everything that he writes - very far from it - but I simply cannot get my head - still less my heart - around what strikes me as his fundamentalist communist restrictive proscriptive attitudinisings, any more than I could if he just happened to come at the same subject matter from a "right-wing" or "centre-right" perspective...

Best,

Alistair

The article (assuming you mean the most recent one) is specifically about art and commodification - I challenge anyone to offer an opinion on that issue which is not 'political'. But certain ideologies are so often tacitly accepted or assumed as to become 'naturalised', and so don't seem obviously 'political'. That's what I meant by the above.

Well, if you look at the ongoing exchanges in the pages of that paper, I doubt you or anyone could really say that the protagonists are 'like-minded' at least on that issue. Though they all share certain fundamental Marxist principles, as do I. It's on that basis that I generally take their views more seriously than those of what I see as a more reactionary political persuasion.

No, why should it be? A belief in solidarity and refraining from sectarian attacks on fellow comrades should be fundamental to any progressive socialist (alas this isn't always the case in practice, by any means - sectarianism remains rife ). Whereas there's no intrinsic reason, as I see it, to grant any particular a priori importance to the views of someone who is a liberal, a classical music goer, or middle class. Which is not to say that their views are necessarily bad either (except perhaps in the case of the liberals ), just that there's no reason to assume they come at things from a progressive viewpoint.

I think that is a relevant question - the extent to which this may or may not be reflected in their work is of course quite complex. Schoenberg, at least in his later years, wrote music that was to my mind more socially progressive than his right-wing political views, whereas in some ways I'd suggest the opposite of the later Henze.

You must care a bit as you often attack those who bring particular forms of politics into aesthetic discussions. Otherwise, why bother?

Composers function in many ways, but that is not all that is important about music. Not least when (as in the case of the discussion at hand) we are also looking at a music (free improvisation) where the 'composer' does not exist in the same manner.

Well, I don't think he is advocating censorship of other forms of music or anything like that. The position is a not uncommon one emerging from an aesthetics of high abstraction and autonomy. in some ways an extension of the purest forms of modernism, as found in architecture of the Modern Movement, to music. In some ways there are plenty of links with the position of Boulez in the 1950s. Personally, whilst I see why Boulez arrived at the conclusions he did then, and I see why Gordon does at his now, I don't share them all, being more sceptical about the possibilities inherent in high rationalisation. Essentially I still believe (fundamentally and passionately) in the value, indeed the vitality, of individuated subjectivity in artistic creation (and do conceive GD's work in that manner to an extent, even though that's not how he himself sees it necessarily), whereas Gordon would, I think, argue that individual subjectivity is too thoroughly dominated in an era of late capitalism to be of any use. To some extent the latter is true, but I don't see the process as being as total as he does - if it were, I doubt that anyone would be anything other than a mere pawn. I think he would argue that that is the case, but that capitalism contains its own inherent contradictions - by following what is immanent in culture through to its logical conclusions, one has the only possible chance of negating that situation. My position is more optimistic on one hand - believing that there remain traces of a non-colonised subjectivity - and more pessimistic on the other - believing that late capitalism has, at least for the foreseeable future, ways of papering over its own internal contradictions, in a manner that art will not negate, so as to ensure its continuation. Don't know if all of that makes sense.

All of those and many more, such as in particular the idea that musical creation is entirely unrelated to the identity of its creator (in terms of their class, their gender, etc.), that music evokes wondrous, sensuous other worlds, or that music should to try to 'connect with audiences'.

(Can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but you might be interested in the article by Philip V. Bohlman - 'Musicology as a Political Act', in the Journal of Musicology, Vol. 11 No. 4 (1993), pp. 411-436. in particular the section called 'The Political Act of Depoliticizing Music'. It can be found on Jstor. Certainly not an article that I agree with in all respects, but very relevant to the topics under discussion.)

I think a lot of the cogitation about Music and Politics doesn't revolve around composers consciously using their music to political ends, but rather having their music appropriated for political ends, or interpreted as political messages, or interpreted as tacit approvals of political messages, or or or... A composer would have to be willing to live with this kind of appropriation or take measures to make it impossible, or at least resist it.

That is also a response to the Dixie Chicks angle, Colin; if you take away the lyrics, the music can be appropriated for the opposite ends that the Chicks intended -- precisely because the music merely recycles tropes of persuasiveness that don't actually carry with them the content they try to persuade you about -- the music lacks specificity. Besides, their political statement was made verbally through a Newsworthy Microphone(TM) to cheering crowds, without any music at all. Without that, pardon me, political posturing (see above), their names would be as obscure as any other decent country-Western outfit. I do embrace their message about Dubya, but it's a different topic than the commodification of music.

No, indeed you hadn't.    Insofar as the article gave many examples of abuses of western musicology and examples of things that aren't really "music", but can be analysed using traditional musicological tools, it was fascinating (I will probably try to track down the stuff on WW2 German musicology, Qur'an chanting, and various other things in time), though there were a few points that really got under my skin. 

I don't think that anyone would argue against the usefulness (arguably the need) of interpreting directly political music in political terms but this, it seems to be, is of course necessarily interdisciplinary.  And, of course, the imposing of a strict academic style on an oral tradition (as done for a time in Iran), might well be folly in a lot of situations; this seems like common sense to me, though.  Even classical musicology, surely, could make that judgement in retrospect.  I mean, if someone has an evidence-based thesis, whatever be the topic, I will respect it,

I don't know if I fully appreciate what's so bad about essentialism from a scholarly/historical point of view (any more than history as a general pursuit is folly), and don't see what's to replace it.  In a lot of places in it, I experienced a sort of knee-jerk reaction to various statements that seem to be antagonistic towards classical musicology rather than supporting and extending it; I guess I'm going to have to just shrug such things off and take them as rhetorical gestures not intended for me exactly.

Hmm...here's a section that didn't fully seem reasonable to me


I would say that, frustrating as it can be, such reductionist musical aesthetics still seem to act as a foundation of many more elaborate interpretations of much ("absolute") western art music (At least what tiny amount I've read by McClary does), and it doesn't seem to be reasonably possible to retrofit classical works with explicit real-world interpretations and have them able to stand by themselves (not that it's impossible; certainly not with programme/vocal music, but say if we went back to Mozart or Beethoven sonatas then there have been no successful interpretations).  I'm not saying I don't think it possible, but it seems reasonable to me that such theses should be based around historical evidence in order to count as being scholarly and not independent creative works in and of themselves.

Also in a footnote, when writing on others' writings on McClary, he says


That statement seems needlessly provocative to me, and I Just Don't Get It, really.

I think a lot of my negative-reactions are just an internal aversion to the "political", and the general register of the article; had it instead been written more praising the new areas of musicological research opening up rather than decrying the old I think I might have been rather more entertained by it.

It's the "pat yerself on the back" phenomenon. The listener considers herself 'progressive' because she exposes herself to progressive messages. But I'd consider that a caveat rather than a reason to disregard such political efforts.

I can't go along with that. The "beautiful" passages in the Nono works are the most affecting parts: they don't say "everything's gonna be all right" but rather "this is how I or the protagonists of my piece would like things to have been" -- they suggest the utopian vision beyond what political reality has given. That's especially true, for me, with La floresta e joven and Il Canto Sospeso, but really, I can't think of a piece where the beauty takes away from the overall effect. To each his own, though. In any case, I would suggest that the critique you cite is much much too simple, and I doubt you'd endorse it upon re-reading it. (Due respect)