Sure, but I would re-emphasise that the point of such a discourse is not to discuss one individual's music and working methods, but the much bigger issue of the relationship between music, art, and commodification. And whilst I don't agree with him on all points (nor with any of the other contributors to the Weekly Worker debate wholescale - and it's not my party (neither, for those who might ask, is the SWP any longer, I haven't renewed my membership for a while for reasons I'm not particularly inclined to discuss here - have some sympathies with this organisation, but am not a member)), I believe his contributions on that subject are very important indeed, and that these are pressing issues not just for those involved in artistic production, but for others as well.

This isn't too many million miles away from what my analysis teachers taught me at university - that it's not enough to just say 'this is a theme', 'this is a contrasting theme', etc. ...

I'd go with that.

Ahem. I would float in a tub of water, CD.

But then you are Schubert, aren't you tinners? 

I'm no more about to comment on the specifics of this article about the supposed bourgeois or otherwise nature of Schubert's music than I am to get into discussion of his sexual proclivities and the extent or otherwise to which they may be deemed to be reflected in that music.

What I will do instead, however, is confine myself to a brief comment upon the pejorative remark in that article about "absolute" music. Yes, I accept that this term has been subject to some variety of interpretations, on occasion perhaps to suit the agenda of the interpreter, but the way I see it is that, whilst no purely instrumental music is definably "absolute" in the sense that it has no conceivable connections with extra-musical considerations (it is, after all, a human expression), its very nature is such that, at the same time, it is not possible to codify those extra-musical connections for the simple reason that musical expressions cannot by definition be pinned down to specifics in the ways that verbal expressions can. Those who appear to persude their readers otherwise are, of course, necessarily using words with which to present their arguments - and it would be difficult in any case to imagine anyone of any persuasion making out a convincing (or even recognisable) case for or against such arguments using instrumental music instead of words as the means wherewith to do so.

That aside, is tinners is really Schubert, may I politely enquire if he is currently working on his Herbstreise and when he expects to complete it?

Best,

Alistair

The issue of Schubert's sexuality and his music is often discussed in dubious quasi-Freudian terms, to do with mapping particular constructions of desire onto the musical structure. But there is another way of looking at it which avoids such essentialism: simply to draw attention to the experience of one of same-sex preferences in certain types of society, the forms of ostracisation, self-denial that might be forced upon them by such conditions (I'm aware that this is a somewhat ambiguous matter in Schubert's Vienna in the early 1800s, when 'homosexuality' was little developed as a concept), and the result in terms of their own wider outlook and sensibility. I would have imagined it's not that controversial to suggest that the latter frequently filters through into a composer's creative work.

Well, the issue of the possibility or otherwise of Absolute Music does not need to be framed in such 'absolute' terms! Perhaps there is very little music that completely avoids connotative or mimetic elements (human expression I don't see in representational terms - music can be 'abstract', in the sense of not suggesting some form of depiction, but profoundly expressive and emotional - Bach and Chopin are obvious examples), and conversely very little music that depicts or represents in an unambiguous manner. But there are very significant differences in degree. Some listeners might not hear the clarinet near the end of the slow movement of the Pastoral Symphony as representing a cuckoo, but it's hardly an arbitrary matter that many do.

Would that also apply to those who write of Schubert evoking the joys, fears, and melancholy felt when walking in the Austrian countryside, as well?

I made the Schubert sexuality reference as nothing more than an aside, as you can see, but perhaps it was unwise of me to muddy these particular waters by introducing even passing reference to a subject that is not directly connected with the one under consideration here.

I agree with most of what you write here. The only difference I perceive is one of empahsis and it is with the specifics of the depictive issue, to the extent that the differences in listener reaction to any extra-musical entity that a composer might consciously (or perhaps even subconsciouly) have sought to depict in any given passage will invariably be far greater than those between various people whose principal language is English on reading, for example, the same Shakespeare sonnet in modern English; this, to my mind, is because of the impossibility of codifying many such depictive strains in music compared to the reaction in words that can be elicited by the reading of words. Of course I take the point about that cuckoo, as indeed I would with any other such example of depictive literalism or near-literalism (and what, for example, of that much higher pitched one in the first movement of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, also allotted to the clarinet - albeit the E flat one in this instance - of which I once suggested to someone that it might come across as "on hearing the first cuckoo in Hell"). We all also know about Richard Strauss and the question of the extent to which a composer might be thought capable of reprenting a spoon and fork in music, but this kind of conscious attempt at musical representation is not what I had in mind here.

No, of course it wouldn't do as such, any more than it would apply to anyone writing of Chopin's gorgeous Barcarolle as evoking balmy sun-drenched Mediterranean climes and the like, but the extent to which either set of resonances happen to impinge themselves upon each individual listener will inevitably vary widely, although this fact need not necessarily be to the disadvantage of some and the advantage of others in terms of what they can get out of their respective listening experiences. But let's go back to the cuckoo idea for a moment - not cuckoos themselves this time, but running water. Here is a quote that you may recognise.

"In compositions which owe the impulse which has given them birth to some natural phenomenon, like running water, wind in trees, or something of the sort, onomatopœia will play a large part, although it will be transmuted by the composer's genius into pure music. The composer's inner ear is a wonderfully delicate and subtle transmuting apparatus when he is a Delius, a Debussy, or a Ravel. The concatenation of sounds emitted by a dripping tap can arrange itself into a sequence of notes which the composer's mind will transform into a theme, or...it would perhaps be more correct to say, sets a train of musical thought going in his mind. A pattern of notes like the...woodwind figures in the exquisite "Sunrise" section of...Daphnis et Chloé does...suggest the cool purling of a stream, not because any stream on this earth ever did, or ever could, make lovely sounds like that, but because one recognises how the sound of a stream could set such a musical pattern and idea forming in the composer's mind..."

Now leaving aside anything which you might find to be somewhat fanciful here (and I assume that you may find still more so the passage that follows it which I'll not quote here and which refers to matters of telepathy and ESP), the most significant part of this seems to me to be the notion of naturally occurring phenomena that might "suggest" a certain direction of musical thought, be that conscious or subconscious. That said, however, there is a gulf of difference even between that kind of thing and what you refer to in far more generalised terms when you consider the idea of Schubert evoking [in non-vocal music] "the joys, fears, and melancholy felt when walking in the Austrian countryside", let alone (looked at from the other end of the telescope) what particular extra-musical things may have prompted the Clarinet Quintet of Brahms or what Paul le Flem was seeking to evoke in his Fourth Symphony...

Best,

Alistair