“There are times when I incline to judge all historians by their opinion of Winston Churchill: whether they can see that, no matter how much better the details, often damaging, of man and career become known, he still remains, quite simply, a great man.”I think we could have something similar in music that we could call "The Bach Test." You can tell quite a lot about music scholars by their attitude towards Bach. In his case, of course, there are no unpleasant details to reveal as he conducted no mass-bombing campaigns, though he did recruit his children as copyists. Even according to the New York Times, Bach stands at the head of the Western Classical Music Tradition, so how musicologists regard him might reveal something. As a proxy for surveying them directly, let's have a look at the postings over at Musicology Now for an indicator. There should be a caveat, though, as these posts are quite different from articles published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society. Here is a link to the contents of the current issue. Nothing on Bach, but serious articles on several subjects nonetheless. What do we find over at Musicology Now? Here is a list of the subjects of the most recent posts in reverse chronological order:
- urban busking
- Estonian composer Helena Tulve
- student gun protests (voice and silence)
- Cui Jian and Chinese rock music
- Japanese composer Akemi Naito
- Philippine vaudeville and "oriental syncopation"
- recording industry 1905 - 1926
- interpretive labor in experimental music
- mechanical instruments
- musical labor
- Parisian music journalism
- Justin Timberlake at the Superbowl
- music in Star Wars
And, believe it or not, this is a considerable improvement as for a long time it seemed that all they could find to write about was movie and videogame soundtracks. What we have lately is a couple of articles on composers from eastern Europe and Japan, both women, by the way. Then we have a number of posts that I would term sociological on things like busking, protests, musical labor and the recording industry. That leaves a couple of posts on pop music both current and historical. Not a horrible mix, but one wonders if the bias against white male composers will continue indefinitely. No, nothing on Bach.
So, despite the fact that Bach is possibly the greatest composer in the Western European tradition, he is resolutely ignored by current musicology. Mind you, if they could find some dirt on him, that would lead to a spate of articles on that. There is one legitimate reason to ignore Bach and people like him and one illegitimate reason. The legitimate one is that it is thought that everything worth saying about Bach has been said. Well, perhaps. I can certainly see a graduate student having a very difficult time pitching a thesis on Bach to his advisor! But two recent biographies on Bach, one by John Eliot Gardiner and the other by Christoff Wolff, both show that there is more to be said even about Bach. Taruskin's discussion of his music in the Oxford History also had quite a bit to chew on.
The illegitimate reason to ignore Bach is that he simply contradicts your narrative that there are no "great men" in history or in music and that behind the public image of every great man lies a sordid tale of oppression and murder. That's a pretty hard sell with Bach, but the strategy has proved fruitful with a long list of historical figures including, yes, Winston Churchill. At the end of the day, though, it is rooted in nothing more than nihilism and resentment.
Let's listen to some Bach. This is the Art of Fugue in two performances. The first by Grigory Sokolov in Leningrad in the late 70s early 80s:
The other is by the Emerson String Quartet:
Honestly, did you have something better to do this morning?
"how musicologists regard him might reveal something. As a proxy for surveying them directly, let's have a look at the postings over at Musicology Now for an indicator."
ReplyDeleteReally, they are different from lots of journals. This isn’t the first time you have pointed to Musicology Now as representative of the field in general, but this is very distorting and I suspect you don’t have access to a decent music library. I happen to be sitting in the periodicals room of the Sibelius Academy at the moment, where the latest issue of each new journal is hung on the wall so that its cover is clearly visible, and I count 17 general-interest journals that contain at least one article on a dead white male (not necessarily Bach, but Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, etc.) I’m sure that more journals, whose tables of contents aren’t shown on the cover, have similar scholarship.
We are really pretty much of the same opinion, Christopher. For in the very next sentence of my post, I make exactly the point you are making: "There should be a caveat, though, as these posts are quite different from articles published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society. Here is a link to the contents of the current issue. Nothing on Bach, but serious articles on several subjects nonetheless." I think that Musicology Now is a indicator of what the younger and less-established members of the musicology community are concerned with, so it is interesting to look at from that point of view.
ReplyDeleteYour suspicion of my music library access is mere calumny, but I do envy your current location. There is a great deal of very solid musicology being done that needs a bit more celebration here. Why don't you send a comment outlining some praiseworthy examples? Thanks in advance!
Thank you for this blog post. I have only recently discovered you and you have restored my faith that some sanity exists, somewhere.
ReplyDeleteThanks, of course. But I am curious: what about my blog restores your faith?
ReplyDeleteWe live in a society where political correctness renders us nearly incapable of seriousness of purpose. This is particularly acute in the arts and the academie. As such, we risk losing touch with what (and whom) has made our civilization great. Not only do we take little pride in it, so many are seemingly embarrassed by it. How long can we fail to teach and celebrate our history before those important bonds to the past are broken? Therefore, this post is refereshing. Mahler may have said it best: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anonymous, for expressing it so clearly.
ReplyDeleteI despise "Musicology Now" because they despise me and my civilization. I can only hope those kids eventually grow up in perspective, since academic ideology and terminology are often mistaken for sophistication and depth whereas genuine historical perspective is much harder to achieve and yet fundamental to constructive purpose.
ReplyDelete