Tuesday, March 3, 2020

The Decline of Aesthetics

Older folks get a reputation for being cranky and disagreeable. I think this is because when you have several decades of experiences to ponder, you notice changes and trends that a younger person is unlikely to. As an example, I notice that the pursuit of goals related to aesthetics is in severe decline. I wish I had statistics to cite, even though we know how deceptive they can be, but I don't. I just have an impression that very few young people are attracted by careers that involve aesthetics.

Let me define aesthetics, first of all. I think that the standard definition of aesthetics as found in Wikipedia for example is rather outdated:
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that branched from aesthetics). It examines subjective and sensori-emotional values, or sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.
As far as music goes, both beauty and taste are no longer central to the idea of aesthetics. For one thing, they are hard to define and composers and performers do not primarily aim for the creation of beauty according to the taste of the listener. Challenge me if you like on this, that would be a productive discussion. But I know in my own experience that while I am certainly seeking the realization or expression of something in a composition, I would not describe it as "beauty." I am looking for something dynamic, expressive, compelling, captivating and so on. A passage that is perhaps "beautiful" is merely one sort of strategy. A passage that is "ugly" might be equally useful. So that is my testimony. I suspect other composers might agree.

Now, regarding the decline of aesthetics, my thoughts on this were sparked by a couple of recent conversations. I ran into a young person who is studying at one of the universities I used to teach at. In answer to the question what was she studying, the answer was "computer engineering." Just one data point, of course, but it makes me recall that this or a similar answer was what I have heard for years and years now. People are studying international business, criminology, economics, business administration, psychology and various areas in science and technology. I suspect that people that would have been attracted to something related to aesthetics in the past are now in the "studies" areas: women's studies, gender studies or others relating to colonialism and identity. In other words, people used to write poetry, now they are social justice warriors--or studying something job or occupation related.

Well, ok, that's just the changing world. The other conversation related to my song cycle that a friend has just been listening to. The song cycle, which I wrote about a decade ago, is titled Songs from the Poets because it consists of twelve songs using poems that I particularly like. When we were talking about the songs I realized that he was not relating to the poetry very much. This is partly a language issue: his second language is English and nearly all the songs are in English. But more significant is that he is young, just twenty years old and it seems that people of that age no longer read (or write) poetry. That made me realize that poetry (aside from lyrics to songs and hip-hop) is pretty much a dead medium. When I was a young person, many of my friends wrote poetry and most of them were familiar to some extent with poets like T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. Now I doubt if most young people could even name a poet. I would be hard-pressed to name a living poet! There are almost no places where contemporary poetry is published these days. Recall that the two most prominent prizes in literature recently were given to a rap artist and Bob Dylan.

The other problem for my friend is that it is hard to hear the poetry clearly in the recording. Perhaps some of this is my fault as the composer, though I am not sure how. But part of it is the singer. We talked a lot about making the words as clear as possible with some success. But with female voices it always seems harder to hear the words--perhaps this relates to the higher pitch of the female voice. One thing I do know is that there are only two singers that I can think of that really make the words clear: one of them is retired and the other is dead! Thomas Quasthoff recently retired and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died in 2012. With the latter in particular, you can hear not only every word clearly, but every syllable--no, every letter!

The looming question is, why the loss of interest in aesthetic pursuits? Somehow they have become less meaningful to young people. Is this a consequence of the idea that all aesthetic judgements are relative? If it is in principle impossible to achieve anything of objective value, then why bother? Perhaps you should spend your time fighting climate change instead. Is this what is going on?

Over to you commentators.

Here are a couple of songs to listen to while you ponder. The first is "Listening to a monk from Shu" from my song cycle setting a poem by Li Po:


The second is "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai" from Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.


10 comments:

  1. Re your convo about your song cycle

    I forget where I made the observation here that music had lost its confidence. This is an observation just so you know that has been met by puzzlement when I have discussed it with other music buffs in the past so the fault is mine. When you set poems that you love to music you will always be disappointed that they don't speak as beautiful poetry anymore. But the progression since Monteverdi,and really it started earlier in the madrigalists, is to make music serve the words. But true poetic expression is not isomorphic with musical movement so the better the music the more ruptured the poetry. The only alternative is Sprechstimme.

    But with respect to the 20 something yes poetry means something more like a clever song lyric. You won't get reactions based on poetry qua poetry anymore. This may be another aspect of the distaste for overt professionalism I noted in the young regarding singers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmm, interesting observations! I think there is real truth in the idea that music has lost its confidence. In all the arts, it seems we are searching, doubtfully, for something obscure to us. In past times, music could be exultant, ecstatic--that hardly seems possible now. Re my songs, perhaps I am out of step, but I feel that the poems I chose have been enlivened in some way by the musical settings. I intentionally chose poetry that seemed to cry out for a musical setting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't doubt that your music added enjoyment. Perhaps it was too good as music. I was addressing your perception that something had been lost in the poetry as poetry. You felt the singer was not interpreting well enough too. Yes singers never interpret words very well except for DFD and his voice wasn't the best after he turned 40. Generally I find the few singers who are very good at interpretation are less good at pure singing. Andrea Ramm was the perfect example but there are others like Fassbaender. So I was just commenting that you are likely to be disappointed by the singers if you are focused on the poetry.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Excellent article Bryan! You set up an inquiry that could easily grow into a book yet is here already essentially formulated enough that we can all ponder it as our own experience would take it.

    One thinker who grappled with this already in the 19th century was William Morris, who saw industrialization as eclipsing the craftsmanship of artisanal production, promoting alienation by taking the creativity out of work. As a writer and artist he hearkened back to earlier forms, whether in medieval-set novels or intricate textile patterns. I see the information technology and continued technological transformation generally as continuing the trend already identified by Morris, which I think you are also describing. After all, it is not only "useless" fine art where aesthetics apply, but also in the more mundane world of product design or even ordinary speech if leavened with wit or humor.

    Technology and the increasing scale of human civilization press new challenges upon us, including the example you mentioned and to which I have devoted myself professionally: mitigating climate change. But devoting one's entire life to solving problems leaves me feeling a little bleak and unsatisfied, so I have simultaneously devoted my amateur life to the aesthetic satisfactions of learning to play musical instruments and singing. All of which shows me that aesthetic pursuits can be a fundamental element of human happiness and fulfillment, something that the other animals don't seem to need. In this I recall a hilarious Christian Science Monitor illustrated article that I hung on my wall in the late 1990s: a gallery of birdhouse miniature paintings that were actually installed inside birdhouses that were then put outside and inhabited by birds.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks, Will, we have been missing your sage comments.

    I haven't thought about William Morris in ages, but that is a very good comparison. There is a lot of talk about creativity, but it seems to have been squeezed out of just about every human occupation.

    I think that some of the aesthetic impulse has been channeled into different areas: gourmet cooking and eating, interior decor, fashion, and, god help us, tattoos and body art.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Bryan,
    I am so glad that you are experiencing a renaissance of interior decor and gourmet cooking and fashion in Mexico. My experience direct and indirect for the US and Europe is sadly at variance. In terms of decor I thought the 80s and early 90s were fairly good, but it declined precipitously in the last 25 years. Take a look at those years in say Architectural Digest. In redecorating my place a decade ago, I was forced either to get things from overseas generally the Mideast and Asia or have them custom made. Of course all those poor furniture makers in the ME now have been blasted by war

    Gourmet cooking is more or less the province of the aged. Most Millennials abhor cooking in my experience. Fashion is pretty much extinct in my experience as well. Looking at the arts events as an indicator is deceptive. When I was working in an large office environment 15 years ago I was considered GQ merely because I wore color coordinated sports jackets, slacks and ties. Of course woke culture is the sworn enemy of all three.
    Anyway enjoy your paradise and don't venture out.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I admit that where I live is a bit of a special case with an affluent expat community devoting time and resources to the art of living. But my observations about the redirecting of the aesthetic impulse from art, music and literature to things like food, decor and fashion is not based on my community alone, but from reading the mainstream media. Someone like Anthony Bourdain, a world-famous celebrity chef and gourmet, had a level of fame and recognition much greater than any contemporary composer, or even famous performers like Yuja Wang. I think that this is an index to the relative positions in the culture of the pursuit of food and the pursuit of music.

    I think the fine arts have been devalued and the lesser arts have been raised up. What I wonder is if part of the reason for this is that the fine arts demand a high level of knowledge and discipline while devotion to the arts of living (food, decor, fashion) is more a case of purchasing items to your taste which appeals to the narcissistic aspect of our culture.

    ReplyDelete
  8. My comment was more jocular than clear. I agree that there is increasing emphasis on the so-called decorative and domestic arts, almost certainly for the reason stated in your last sentence. What I was referring to 25 years ago was the first stirrings of external justification for cuisine, decor, fashion. First it was because of the natural, then the renewable, then the health, then more and more ideologies of different kinds before the current wokeness. The 20th C had similar strong movements in the decorative arts with Art Nouveau, Deco and even abstraction but those were artistically generated movements even though Deco had a certain bias toward streamlining.

    ReplyDelete
  9. So hard to convey the jocular mood!

    I wonder if we have wandered into the decorative and fashionable because of a loss of faith in the aesthetics of the Fine Arts?

    ReplyDelete