Music and Moral Agency

Richard Strauss

Arnold Schoenberg

When I was reviewing the Salzburg festival programs this week to pick out concerts I particularly wanted to attend I noticed a reluctance to attend certain kinds of programs. Now this is not necessarily an entirely new trend as I do have long-standing preferences. But I try to always be aware of my aesthetic decision process to see if it is trying to tell me something. There is quite a lot of Richard Strauss in the orchestra concerts this year, plus a couple of Mahler symphonies and some Brahms and Wagner. I tend these days to want to avoid all these composers. I want to see if I can explain why and also ask some questions about music and moral agency.

I think it is undeniable that there was a fundamental shift in the aesthetic and moral foundations of German music between, say, 1700 and 1900. This whole period we term the "common practice" era as if it were all of a piece, somehow. But that is not true, even in purely theoretical terms.

Let me try and head off some criticism in advance: I am not particularly interested in the biographies of any of these composers, whether they were anti-semites or critics of anti-semitism, for example. Whether they were morally fine people in their private lives or not. The only thing that I am going to look at--and that is going to be very brief given the limits of a blog post--is the moral content of the music, if we can even figure out what that might be!

The undeniable fact is that the history of Germany in the 20th century is stained by two horrific acts: first, the destruction of the First World War insofar as the cause of that conflict was at least partly the responsibility of Germany (its political leadership, at least) and the second, the Holocaust, where millions upon millions of Jews and other "undesirable" persons were simply murdered, en masse.

In the past I have presented arguments for the aesthetic autonomy of music and I still believe these have validity. But it is also a fact that music is just one thread in a socio-cultural context and one that is not entirely separable from the rest.

Where I think it is crude and simplistic to make claims about how Wagner led to Nazism or how the fact that such and such a conductor was popular in Nazi Germany is a moral stain, it is also crude and simplistic, as Richard Taruskin has pointed out on a number of occasions, to claim that the love and appreciation of classical music somehow gives one a special moral luster. Nope, none of that is true.

So what is true? Well, it's subtle, I think.

If we look at the music of, for example, J. S. Bach, we find music of sublime moral strength, I think. This shows itself in multiple ways: it is music devoted to the worship of God which, while there may be a lot of historical and moral complexity to that, especially given all the religious wars Europe suffered, I think there is little if anything morally blameworthy in the music of Bach. It elevates and educates the listener. Bach was no religious zealot in the sense of being fanatical about only one mode of worship. Recall that he wrote an enormous amount of secular music as well as a Catholic Mass, something rather unusual for a Lutheran composer!

Bach's music is impressive, not only for its aesthetic power, but also for its fundamental humility. It does not seek to elevate the individual, nor the German race, over any other.*

Over time, though, I think we see a shift, incrementally, from Bach's aesthetic stance, which was largely followed by composers like Joseph Haydn who, while still writing music to worship the divine, also did a little gilding of the aristocratic lily. Mozart continued this process with music that was humble and reverent, but also could be cynical and playful.

Recognize that I am leaping around in music history here simply because a full argument would run to tens of thousands of words and take me a great deal of time! With Beethoven we reach a kind of crux: his music is morally and aesthetically powerful (just look at the late A minor quartet for an example of genuine moral gratitude) while also extending, just a bit, into political territory. We need not take Beethoven's political ideals and opinions too seriously, but he certainly had them. With Schubert we take a great stride into the psychology of the individual and hence into the Romantic stance and attitudes. This establishes a trend toward greatly heightened intensity of musical expression at the service of a greatly heightened individuality that later shaded into a heightened collective identity.

And so we end up with the music of Brahms, who tried to re-establish the fundamental values of German music and that of Richard Strauss (the glorification of the individual in pieces like Ein Heldenleben), Richard Wagner (the supreme expression of individual passion and racial collectivity), and Gustav Mahler who was the culmination of these trends.

What does all this have to do with the fatal sickening of German culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Nothing? Something? Well, not nothing, certainly. I don't see how you can listen to the progression of late 19th century German music and not hear the arrogance, the complacency, not to mention the distant sound of artillery and perhaps, just a hint of the smoke from the chimneys of Auschwitz.

Is this unfair? Is it entirely unfair? Well, maybe, because looked at from one angle, these composers were just writing music. But there is little real humility in the music and there is certainly a cultural arrogance that is hard to deny.

Music itself has no moral agency, or not much direct moral agency. You might argue that La Marseillaise led to soldiers marching into battle with renewed energy, but I doubt you can argue that Tristan led to the death camps. So if the music itself has no real moral agency, does the composer? Well that is the question. Unfortunately, it lead us into the knotty issues of intentionality, which are very hard to sort out.

Perhaps it is not a bad idea to fall back on the notion of art as being a mirror of its society. If that is the case, then the mirror held up to German society in late 19th century music is certainly one of hubris and arrogance. What is interesting is that this mirror quickly turned into a darker reflection with pieces by people like Arnold Schoenberg. If you listen to Pierrot Lunaire, premiered in 1912, you can certainly see that the culture is going in a fearful direction indeed. But hardly anyone was listening...

Artists perform a valuable function in society, but only if they are working freely, not in the service of some popular ideology. Mind you, if you know how to read the signs, that in itself is an indicator.

I will be hoping to attend a performance of Pierrot Lunaire this coming summer, but I likely will not attend the performance of Ein Heldenleben.

So, readers, did I make some valid points, or am I completely off-base?

UPDATE: Regarding Bach, there are passages, especially in the St. John Passion, that are undeniably anti-semitic, blaming the Jews for killing Jesus. While reprehensible, I think that this is a general moral failing of the Christianity of the time, not of Bach in particular. Still...