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perfect wagnerite
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« on: 19:13:55, 11-04-2007 » |
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There has been some press coverage of Peter Maxwell Davies' keynote address to the Incorporated Society of Musicians - a coruscating attack on the dumbing-down of music education, among other things. The full text is at: http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/comment/story/0,,2053775,00.htmlThe comments about musical education seem to me to be particularly pertinent - it seems a tragedy that schoolchildren are being denied a potentially life-changing experience because of a wrong-headed perception of elitism |
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« Last Edit: 19:22:18, 11-04-2007 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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roslynmuse
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« Reply #1 on: 22:41:25, 11-04-2007 » |
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An article whose basic premise I can't imagine finding much criticism here.
Did anyone see the C4 news report last night about instrumental, particularly violin and piano, teaching in China? The thrust of the report was, that as interest in "classical" music in the West is (quote) waning, it may be in the Far East, and particularly China, where it finds its new home over the coming decades. That almost seems plausible to me, since serious music is SO foreign - and worse, irrelevant - to the majority of people born after, say, 1970 in the UK. We are perilously close, as PMD says, of losing a whole cultural heritage, and the notion of the Asians "rescuing" it from obscurity is perhaps no stranger than the adoption of an interpretation of the world of the Ancient Greeks at the time of the Renaissance. The fact (and it IS a fact - I know several musicians who have come from this background) that the Chinese, in particular, are happy to invest so much time in educating their child with fearsome dedication, in a way that we Westerners would now consider child abuse, a breach of human rights, demonstrates how far our culture is removed from the pursuit of excellence - from a fear, I would suggest, of excelling.
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FisherMartinJ
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« Reply #2 on: 23:55:09, 11-04-2007 » |
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Excellence is of course discriminatory...  |
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'the poem made of rhubarb in the middle and the surround of bubonic marzipan'
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roslynmuse
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« Reply #3 on: 00:05:52, 12-04-2007 » |
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Excellence is of course discriminatory... Indeed! Poor old Salieri! That Mozart chap should have had his hands tied early on - it's just not on, letting someone get that good. Of course, he was lucky - his dad helped him - always the way, isn't it. Parents shouldn't be allowed to help their kids - gives them an unfair advantage... 
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Stevo
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« Reply #4 on: 14:31:48, 12-04-2007 » |
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Max can do no wrong in my view.
His view of our vapid musical culture as being more insidiuous in effect than anything Stalin implemented or Orwell imagined is particularly chilling.
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #5 on: 00:59:46, 16-04-2007 » |
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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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roslynmuse
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« Reply #6 on: 01:13:19, 16-04-2007 » |
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Pardon my ignorance - who is Sean O'Hagan? (I can see what he is...) Sadly, I think Max left himself wide open to an attack like that; I also suspect that amongst the population as a whole it is Mr O'H's view that would be the majority one - evidence that the thought police are succeeding, perhaps?
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #7 on: 01:14:40, 16-04-2007 » |
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Pardon my ignorance - who is Sean O'Hagan? (I can see what he is...) Sadly, I think Max left himself wide open to an attack like that; I also suspect that amongst the population as a whole it is Mr O'H's view that would be the majority one - evidence that the thought police are succeeding, perhaps?
Just a rock journalist for the Guardian and Observer. Max does make some interesting points, but there is so much hyperbole. Whilst the link is not unmeaningful, to claim the effects of loud repetitive music to be even more insidious than the propaganda of Goebbels and Lenin is quite offensive, actually. Like many artists, Max assumes that what others do with their leisure time must be a template for their whole being; he doesn't seem to appreciate the possibility that people go to clubs to switch off, lose themselves, simply because in the rest of their lives they do have so much responsibility, stress, etc. It in no sense implies that in their non-clubbing hours they act in the same way. |
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« Last Edit: 01:20:11, 16-04-2007 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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Bryn
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« Reply #8 on: 05:06:43, 16-04-2007 » |
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IgnorantRockFan
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« Reply #9 on: 10:45:42, 16-04-2007 » |
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As someone who straddles "both sides of the fence" I did agree with the thrust of PMD's argument but, like O'Hagen, found his rhetoric astonishing. O'Hagen comes across as much more level headed and open minded. Classical music nevertheless remains an extraordinarily protected, and revered, part of our musical culture, but one whose often infinitely rewarding secrets will remain off-limits to the majority if the likes of Maxwell Davies choose to combat the so-called philistinism they see everywhere with patronisation and their own refined brand of elitism and ignorance. Quite. |
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Allegro, ma non tanto
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TimR-J
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« Reply #10 on: 10:52:06, 16-04-2007 » |
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I agree that PMD rather shot himself in the foot with his remarks on pop music, but it's still daft reading people foaming at the mouth about ivory-towered composers with respect to PMD, of all people.
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #11 on: 11:24:47, 16-04-2007 » |
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Pardon my ignorance - who is Sean O'Hagan? (I can see what he is...) Sadly, I think Max left himself wide open to an attack like that; I also suspect that amongst the population as a whole it is Mr O'H's view that would be the majority one - evidence that the thought police are succeeding, perhaps?
Just a rock journalist for the Guardian and Observer. Max does make some interesting points, but there is so much hyperbole. Whilst the link is not unmeaningful, to claim the effects of loud repetitive music to be even more insidious than the propaganda of Goebbels and Lenin is quite offensive, actually. Like many artists, Max assumes that what others do with their leisure time must be a template for their whole being; he doesn't seem to appreciate the possibility that people go to clubs to switch off, lose themselves, simply because in the rest of their lives they do have so much responsibility, stress, etc. It in no sense implies that in their non-clubbing hours they act in the same way. I think this partly depends on how one reads Max's text (assuming that the words were carefully chosen and not just hyperbole). He writes that the effects of rock and pop are "more subtle and penetrating than" the efforts of Stalin and Goebbels (rather than more insidious per se), and I think there is a potentially respectable argument to be made here, about people being seduced into a sort of oppression by consent - more Huxley, perhaps, than Orwell. I take your point about clubbing and enjoyment of rock music being a switch-off activity in the face of stressful lives, but I still find something rather sinister about a large group of people moving in unison to a very loud beat, leaving their individuality outside. The switching-off entailed in that activity begins to look very much like the allure of fascism and the denial of responsibility that is implicit in that particular ideology. In any event, the headline of O'Hagan's piece sits uneasily at the top of an article alleging hyperbole .... |
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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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roslynmuse
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« Reply #12 on: 11:35:26, 16-04-2007 » |
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...but I still find something rather sinister about a large group of people moving in unison to a very loud beat, leaving their individuality outside.
Even more sinister is the fact that these same people feel they are asserting their individuality by so behaving... Subtle indeed.
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time_is_now
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« Reply #13 on: 11:57:51, 16-04-2007 » |
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... but I still find something rather sinister about a large group of people moving in unison to a very loud beat, leaving their individuality outside Even more sinister is the fact that these same people feel they are asserting their individuality by so behaving ... Subtle indeed. I've got a certain amount of time for that kind of analysis, but as someone who quite often goes clubbing to places with large groups of people, drugs and loud music, and yet also spends most of the rest of my life listening to and writing about contemporary classical music (including PMD's own!), I must say that the sort of descriptions being bandied about of house music and clubbing don't really fit my experience. Now, it's quite possible I'm somewhat exceptional in the way my life centres around these two rather different types of experience. But I think the possibility Ian's raised - that very many clubbers may in all sorts of different ways be 'exceptions' to the easy stereotype, and that the clubbing experience isn't a template or paradigm for their whole lives - is an important possibility. |
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« Last Edit: 12:09:38, 16-04-2007 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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Ian Pace
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« Reply #14 on: 14:02:25, 16-04-2007 » |
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I think this partly depends on how one reads Max's text (assuming that the words were carefully chosen and not just hyperbole). He writes that the effects of rock and pop are "more subtle and penetrating than" the efforts of Stalin and Goebbels (rather than more insidious per se), and I think there is a potentially respectable argument to be made here, about people being seduced into a sort of oppression by consent - more Huxley, perhaps, than Orwell. Fair enough, but Max does go on to say ''this music reflects something every bit as disturbing in our collective psyche as communism or fascism at their genocidal worst'. As you know, I do draw some links between culture and fascism, but this amazes me. The worst things that music can do can never be said to match industrially-organised genocide, or Stalinist/Maoist mass murder in the millions, in terms of how disturbing the phenomenon is - to assert otherwise, as Max does, is what I do find offensive. What I think is needed is some sort of evidence, if such a thing could be found, that those who do enjoy clubbing really do lose their individuality in the process, in the sense that it affects the rest of their lives. If I am allowed to draw on other types of experiences, I do know a large number of sexually submissively-oriented women within a certain 'scene'. A great many of them are otherwise extremely independent, responsible, confident individuals, often in high-powered jobs. Sometimes they want a break from that responsibility, in a sexualised or other arena. Many assume that they must be doormats in most of their life - frequently the reverse is the case. And I know some of the most profound anti-fascists who get a sexual kick out of role-playing scenarios of that type - ethics and desire by no means necessarily work in harmony with one another (actually I think it is dangerous to confuse the two, but that's another issue). The urge to go clubbing, and all the subsumation of individuality it entails, surely belongs to the realms of desire. To do so (as to choose to submit in other areas) itself entails an individual choice. Obviously coercion would change this, and in the case of either activity there may be peer pressure involved; but I would be surprised if there are many fields of human life where at least a degree of the latter does not apply. |
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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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