I have in the past discussed something I called "new" musicology exemplified by the feminist musicology of Susan McClary. Now we have a new phase that we might call "woke" musicology exemplified by Philip Ewell. I think it is important, if you disagree with this methodology, to not simply dismiss it out of hand as some have done, but to take it seriously enough to examine the problems. Here is a positive statement of Ewell's position: Philip Ewell: Erasing colorasure in American music theory, and confronting demons from our past.
In the history of American music theory, and American classical music, Whiteness has consistently erased nonWhiteness from existence as unimportant in a process I call colorasure, which I based on Kate Manne’s useful concept of herasure when the same happens with women.1 In order to shine a light on notable colorased Black musicians, every February morning I sent out a tweet of a Black African musical figure, usually American, who has been colorased by American music theory—this list of 28 figures appears at the end of this post.
Anyone familiar with Thomas Sowell's book A Conflict of Visions will immediately recognize the nature of this tactic as stemming from the unconstrained vision of society. I recommend examining his book for a full presentation of the two basic visions of society and culture.
But as regards classical music we have a very direct way of countering these kinds of claims: they are always non-specific, that is to say collective and generalized. Ewell is claiming that black composers and theorists have been erased in favor of white ones and then provides a long list of examples. This sort of argument from the statistics of oppression is hard to answer on the face of it. But it contains a deep flaw: it avoids specifics. Instead of claiming, for example, that Zenobia Powell Perry (1908–2004) is as significant or more significant than a white composer such as Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975), the blanket claim is made that "Whiteness has consistently erased nonWhiteness from existence." The strained jargon is a typical giveaway. There is an agency problem, of course--"Whiteness" doesn't do anything, it is a mere abstraction. There is also a causality problem: what does it mean to "erase nonWhiteness from existence"? Something that obviously did not happen as Prof. Ewell was easily able to produce the names and biographies of twenty-eight black composers and theorists whose erasure was obviously unsuccessful.
But the basic issue is even more fundamental: significant music is produced by highly atypical individuals, not by generic possessors of this or that skin color. As soon as we ask whom do you advocate as a composer on the level of Mozart, Bach or Beethoven, the argument collapses into absurdity. If you have someone of that stature, simply name them. Ah, but then we come up with some figures like Scott Joplin or Miles Davis who are fine musicians, each in their area. But of a different significance than Bach or Mozart. So this really isn't a new argument after all. Just a new tactic to win illegitimate tactical points. And, not incidentally, as a nice hook to hang a career on.
The claim used to be made that only if the music of such and such a composer were more "available" then they would finally be appreciated as they deserved. But now everything is available on YouTube. This is Homage for piano by Zenobia Powell Perry, a pleasant enough piece, but...
16 comments:
The phrase "a white composer like Dmitry Shostakovich" rubs me the wrong way, because Russia has never had a racial classification system like the countries of the Americas have. I very much doubt that Shostakovich ever thought of himself as "white."
Ewell is just projecting his parochial American obsessions onto the rest of the world.
- Concerned Listener
Well yes, I believe Prof. Ewell is projecting his obsessions, but it was I who called Shostakovich "white" based solely on the belief that he isn't black?
Russia definitely has racial classification, even if it isn't quite comparable to the USA's system due to the role race played there in chattel slavery. The slur that Russians use for the peoples of the Caucasus is chernozhopy 'black asses', and the indigenous peoples of Russia's East are frequently the object of slanty-eye jokes etc.
I'm a bit of a fan of George Walker's piano sonatas and I find it a little tough to believe he was colorased in the sense that 1) he won the Pulitzer Prize and 2) Washington Post had a 2015 feature on him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2015/08/20/d6e9e6c2-3beb-11e5-9c2d-ed991d848c48_story.html
Now a lot of the other composers I had not heard of before in that big list, to be fair, but I do think George Walker was better-known than Ewell seems to believe he was. It's thanks to Ethan Iverson blogging about Walker and interviewing him I heard of Walker's work.
There are some other composers who aren't necessarilY BIPOC who have been erased in some ways, a la Arthur Farwell and the Indianist composers of the late 19th and early 20th century. They've run afoul of contemporary politics but Joseph Horowitz has tried advocating for more hearings for Farwell's music.
Actually ... the Zenobia Powell Perry piece has some moments that remind me of Arthur Farwell's Polytonal Studies here and there.
I think that the subtext underlying Ewell's project is that there is not nearly enough racial erasure to suit the needs of the progressive academic market!
I found a couple of PhD and master's dissertations on Walker's work I linked to at my blog when he passed. At least in Walker's case I just can't believe Walker was as erased as Ewell seems to think he was.
No, of course not. But in order to fit into the Narrative, he had to have been erased, so therefore, he was.
By your own logic, it would seem that the standards of "significance" that elevate e.g. Mozart over e.g. Miles Davis are fairly arbitrary, which is precisely Ewell's argument. Educational institutions have elevated Mozart's version of musical creativity over Miles Davis' for arbitrary reasons that have resulted in massive racial bias. It is a worthwhile endeavor to use a different arbitrary set of evaluation criteria to remove the systemic blinders that currently impoverish the field.
My argument was fairly clear, I thought. And Wenatchee contributed some good points. The Narrative doctrine is that composers like George Walker were "erased", but in reality, that simply didn't happen. The "system" awarded him a Pulitzer prize and I presume that scholars like Ewell and yourself will be presenting his music to your students.
Isn't Miles Davis vs Mozart a bit of an apples to oranges comparison? I don't see a problem with people or schools preferring one over the other depending on their tastes.
I couldn't agree more, which is why this whole narrative based on skin color is so irrelevant.
Most of the composers Ewell mentioned really are people I haven't heard of before.
My questioning how erased/forgotten George Walker is was about that specific composer. :)
As I've never really been much of a Mozart fan there is another angle that can be considered, which is that the composers who were sacralized in the long 19th century weren't necessarily always the ones who were most or best esteemed in their own eras. Take Hummel being more popular than Beethoven, for instance, for a while. Hummel's not at all bad. I've enjoyed his piano sonatas Kozeluch was popular in his day and a student of Mozart, if memory serves.
As I'm going through some books by Mark Evan Bonds I suggest that some of what's going on with objections to composers elevated during the 1780s through about 1910 is that shifting aesthetic and social priorities have meant that the symphony is no longer viewed as a synecdoche for society as a whole the way it was in 19th century European music criticism. I don't see that as a bad thing. If anything I'd say Angelo Gilardino rightly said we guitarists BENEFIT from that tectonic shift in prestige credited to musical genres. During the 19h century the guitar was viewed as a bit of a pathetic miserable never-started or also-ran. The demise of the Matthew Arnold style
art-religion will probably help us guitarists rather than hurt us. :D
Which is why, though I might disagree with some things Ewell says and the way he says them, I don't really care that much that he looks to be attacking the prestige of symphonic composers heralded in the Romantic era. I'm still going to like Haydn more than Beethoven while recognizing that part of Ewell's polemic can highlight that there's a history to how 19th century critics and scholars began to regard Haydn as second-tier compared to B and M.
Some good points, Wenatchee. I don't think the idea of re-evaluating composers and bringing forth neglected composers is anything that one would want to object to. But I do find the totalizing aspect of Ewell's claims to be problematic.
Unbelievable... History should be formed through the prism of race, but that of truth. It is true that the composers that shaped western music in the last 1000 years have been white. We should not wonder if this statement is racist, but wheather is it true.
Besides, we don't learn about many composers in general. We compact the knowledge to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Debussy, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. They all had an important role and were (inarguably) geniuses. What would the point be in replacing one of those names?
-Stanley, WKMT
I'm not sure anyone is advocating replacing any particular white composers with black composers, but I could have missed it! I just don't think skin color is a relevant criteria to apply.
"The composers that shaped western music in the last 1000 years have been white" - this statement is only true for certain types of "western music." If you're talking about the last hundred years in the United States and Western Europe, the main musical forces have been blues, jazz, R&B, rock, disco, electronic dance music and hip-hop, all of which are heavily dominated by Black artists. If you only care about the music of Western Europe, then yes, it makes sense to only study composers from Western Europe, literally or in terms of influence. However, if you take "the west" to include Western Europe's colonies, including the US, that is a strangely narrow view of music to take.
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