Tuesday, December 15, 2020

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...



19 comments:

  1. Sometimes it feels as though the Holocaust and a watered-down caricature of World War 2 are sort of a founding myth of modern society. Our creation story, the foundation on which all is built, is not birth, but death.
    As for arrogance in music, frankly, there is far more arrogance in the life and music of a Boulez, a Wuorinen, or any of their countless imitators than you'll find in a common practice German composer. What are we to make of this? Are we building up to something worse than the Germans were? Could our fixation with avoiding one evil allow another to creep in and take root?

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  2. No lengthy comment on your post, which merits reflection, but surely artists perform a useful function whether they are servants of 'a popular ideology' or not; I suppose it depends on how one defines 'freely'. And who gets to define what a 'popular ideology' is? The notion that one might programmatically avoid Strauss, Brahms, and Mahler because of whatever is quite frankly something simply not to be entertained (although in the context of ticket-buying, well, do as one likes, I reckon). I'll re-read the post later on.

    I'm listening to the Hofoper, Staatsoper's streaming of their delightful Die Zauberflöte (they are closed, as you know, until Epiphany because the plague so we get a daily opera gratis). No one has told the Austrians that blackface (Monostatos, of course) is deeply offensive to someone or other. I tried watching Romeo Castellucci's woke production-- no blackface but I don't recall anything else about that Monostatos-- of 2018-2019 at La Monnaie some months ago and had no desire to make it to the end of Act I.

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  3. Bach, Haydn and Mozart were free of ideology because the music they were composing was serving a social function. They were primarily employees of the church and of the nobility, so ideology simply didn't enter into the bargain for them. The Congress of Vienna (post-Napoleonic Wars) led to relative peace throughout the entire 19th century, but it ironically led to nationalistic tendencies and, eventually, revolutionary movements that swept through Europe. At the same time, as you say Bryan, the cult of the artist (the expression of individuality) was unleashed. But the question of morality in music? Does any music have any moral content? I have never really thought of music as being moral or immoral. I guess the question only arises when it is thought of as being harmful in some way. P.S. I am actually slightly surprised that Strauss and Wagner are still being performed in the concert hall, considering the hypocritical and hyper-sensitive times we live in!

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  4. Thanks for the comments which, as always, help me hone my thoughts. Nothing mythical about the World Wars and the holocaust, Aaron! But you are very right about the arrogance of the high modernists.

    Yes, Bach, Haydn and Mozart wrote music with a social function. Their religious music had a double purpose: both to worship God and to ennoble the aristocracy.

    My reluctance to attend concerts of music by Brahms, Richard Strauss, Wagner (who is not performed in Israel, as a rule) and Mahler ultimately is one of taste. I make no claim that they are morally blameworthy. But what gives me a deep unease is that their music of soaring nobility, individual passion and collective idealism was such a poor harbinger of what was so soon to come: decades of horror and death. Aesthetically, that is a very bad and deceptive mirror. Can aesthetics lie? Well, yes.

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  5. I was glad to see your comment, Marc, when I opened up the email account just now but I will admit to a brief moment of panic as I wondered if I had been at the computer in my sleep. I will be happy to change my screen name here to 'Marc in Eugene' (which ought to be fairly simple, even for me) as you continue to comment!

    Surely the 'cult of the artist as individual contra mundum'... oh, I have to re-read the post, and it's too early to be commenting here.

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  6. Thanks for the clarification Marc in Eugene. A while ago we had three different Anonymouses commenting on the same post and that was quite confusing.

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  7. "Frankly, there is far more arrogance in the life and music of a Boulez, a Wuorinen, or any of their countless imitators than you'll find in a common practice German composer. What are we to make of this? Are we building up to something worse than the Germans were?"

    This sounds troubling, honestly. Shades of late Weimar/early Third Reich where newfangled music (of whatever stripe: atonality, raucous jazz from the USA, etc.) that had arisen was seen as a sign of moral degeneracy, and the people ought to have stuck with traditional German music. Since Boulez, Wuorinen, and their "countless imitators" all have at least some small-but-passionate audience out there (easy enough to verify for yourself), then the world is a better place if we have both them and all those canonical common-practice German composers.

    I would say that in terms of everyone being able to find music out there that appeals to them, we have "build up" to something good indeed.

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  8. Anonymous, I find myself largely in agreement with your comment. I always find arrogance a bit off-putting and Boulez had his fair share.

    I think what makes me uneasy about the late 19th German music is the contrast between it and subsequent events. Not to imply any causality, of course, but perhaps the very complacency of late 19th century Europe might have been a sign of some sort.

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  9. If there is no causality, it seems to me that you are concerned about 'arrogance' and 'complacency', which I don't really understand, to tell you the truth. N. in 1870 Dresden was supposed to suddenly begin composing like A. from 1980 Paris? and issuing the appropriately worded manifesto? And of course if he had done so, every other composer ought to have done, too, lest they be accused of unwoke complacency. I begin to be afraid that this is all simply post hoc propter hoc. But since I still haven't re-read the original post, where perhaps you explain how this is not so, I'll stop there before putting my foot too far down my throat.

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  10. Well, yes, please re-read the original post. I take your concerns seriously, of course. Here is the problem, stated in a different way. I look to art of all kinds for some kind of, and here the right word choice is difficult--maybe "authenticity," aesthetic truthfulness?, if a mirror to society or something, then a useful mirror, not one that contradicts the reality. Now maybe this is not a legitimate expectation, but I find the relationship between music and society, what each can reveal about the other, to be endlessly interesting. Look at how the music of the French Baroque reflects the flavor of the ancien regime.

    But then I listen to the enormous pretentious portentousness of a Mahler symphony and I think to myself, Gustav, old friend, whatever you are doing here is wildly far from the truth of things.

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  11. Well, well, I'll re-read the original post this afternoon. However, I cannot, as the expression goes, get my head around how you are prepared to jettison Mahler's symphonies because they are 'enormously pretentiously far from the truth of things'.

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  12. Are we not understanding one another, or do you just disagree?

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  13. Per J.S. Bach and his Passions and anti-semitism, Taruskin tackled that in Cursed Questions in a way I thought, as a Christian, was a nuanced and thoughtful way. Bach's Passions were not written as concert music but as church music and so our assessment of that music now that it has become more frequently heard as concert music than liturgical music is part of our approval or disapproval of things in the works. There have since been, post-Holocaust, Christian reflections on the things justified by way of sacred texts, and I have some appreciation for those debates being necessary and ongoing because of my Native American (and Calvinist!) dad and my white mom. There were plenty of Christians who used Christian rationales in the U.S. to screw over a whole lot of Native Americans.

    There is a sense in which the problem of Bach's anti-semitic sentiments are with us BECAUSE we have collectively transformed them from being liturgical music to concert music and now have to account for what the audience and composer might not have been thinking about themselves.

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  14. I can respect Mahler but I don't tend to enjoy Mahler. Too late Romantic and long-winded for my taste.

    While music itself may not have moral agency what the absolute music position tends to always fail to do is deal with the reality that flesh and blood people always have non-musical and extra-musical associations with music.

    An irony that has been noted already is that many progressives and social justice warriors (used in the pejorative sense to describe progressives in many contexts) want a correspondence between ideals stood for and persons standing for them. I've seen some people describe this as a neo-Puritan stance and the irony, of course, is that many of these progressives (if they're in the New England area) would never want to be associated with the Puritan impulse despite the fact that they probably demonstrate that reformist purgative ethos and praxis better than any ostensibly "conservative" group these days in the arts, who are more likely to defend canonized composers, artists and writers even if they were known cads and monsters.

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  15. Thanks, Wenatchee, for some incisive thoughts.

    I can respect Mahler, Brahms, Wagner and Richard Strauss, but I just find what came immediately after in European history to be incongruous with the prevailing mood of their music.

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  16. Just have to come to Mahler's rescue here. I get that Mahler may deserve a sharp elbow here and there for his...grandiosity. But I wonder if the detractors here have ever had the pleasure of playing a Mahler symphony? I have played the 2nd, and it was a sublime and transporting musical experience that I will never forget. The audience too, were completely floored. I wonder if participation holds a key to greater appreciation of his (and perhaps others') gargantuan works.

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  17. Jives, I think you have added just the perspective we were missing.

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  18. (I can't persuade the Marc in Eugene business to work this time, eh.)

    I just disagree with much of what you wrote in the original post.

    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.

    Am far from possessing the detailed knowledge of the composers and their works that you have but from my point of view you have decided that 'not nothing' is the way forward and so it must be. I've never heard any artillery or smelled any smoke or experienced any arrogance when listening to Ein Heldenleben.

    My position is that composers are moral actors, not their creative works. Beethoven's Missa Solemnis itself is no more a moral actor than is my left foot. If one wants to criticize e.g. Richard Wagner's anti-Jewish nonsense then one has to do that via the words and actions he expressed himself in in real life, not find some sort of phantasms of it in the operas. If you want to criticize Hans Pfitzner for his adherence or partial adherence or whatever it was to the Nazi ideology, fine! (and doing so would be a moral act based on a legitimate moral judgment); Palestrina, however, isn't Pfitzner, and if you try to read his beliefs and madness and idiosyncrasies from it, you're going to end up twisting yourself into rhetorical circles of diminishing diameters. This, while limiting the arena in which critics can hypothesize and theorize and perhaps indulge their own creative imaginations, has none the less the merit of being true, so far as I can see.

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  19. Thanks, Marc, for giving us a clear statement of your position. And your position is actually my default position regarding these sorts of questions. The music itself does not have moral agency, only people do. And just because a person wrote a certain piece of music likely has little in the way of moral import one way or the other. As I say, that is my basic position as well.

    So I guess this is just a matter of taste. While I feel a sort of aesthetic dissonance or incongruity, apparently others do not!

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