The Danger of Taruskin

The last time a new collection of Taruskin essays appeared was about three years ago and I put up a post in April 2020: All Kinds of Brows. One essay in that collection troubled me deeply as you can see if you follow the link. I was astonished, the next time I opened up The Music Salon, to discover that Dr. Taruskin had left a comment. I think of all the comments left here from well-known figures in the music world, this one I treasure the most.

I'm reading the new, and sadly, last, collection and the very first essay, "The Many Dangers of Music" has both challenged me yet again and at the same time resolved an old thorn in my side. Dr. Taruskin's point of view is that yes, music does have the power to be dangerous and this is exactly why it is important. The formalist aesthetic that placed music outside of history and society insulates it both from moral criticism and from actually being powerful. Some of those arguing for this point of view (though not one of the best-known, Stravinsky) are actually tone-deaf with no real sensitivity to the invasive powers of music.

One of the best ways of talking about the power of music is through metaphor and one very famous metaphor has troubled me for decades. It concerns a passage in the recapitulation of the first movement of the Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven, a passage that had an enormous impact on me with its grinding chromatic intensity. The great English musicologist Donald Francis Tovey referred to that passage as "the heavens on fire." The metaphor that troubled me came from feminist musicologist Susan McClary when she described it as: "one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of music" evoking "the murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release." This bothered me because the passage seemed to me to be enormously powerful aesthetically and hence "good" and, somehow missing the fact that this is a metaphor, I thought it seemed extremely unfair to Beethoven to characterize him as a rapist. "Assumes facts not in evidence" a lawyer might say. Also, the fact that this is in the recapitulation which proceeds to an harmonic resolution, it also seems unfair to say that it is "incapable of attaining release." I found the metaphor horrifying even though it is really just a testament to the power of Beethoven's music. Incidentally, there are other passages in Beethoven with similarly violent expression: the Grosse Fuge, for example.

But I went ahead and wrote a post, years ago, attacking Susan McClary for this metaphor. Now, with the aid of Dr. Taruskin, I think I understand it much better and I want to recant. I honestly welcome things that challenge my positions. The metaphor was a bit extreme as I think McClary recognized as she toned it down to "constant violent self-assertion" when the paper was reprinted. But it sure did make her famous in musicology! I don't think that it can be denied that even scholars exhibit a touch of career ambition occasionally. Incidentally, I met Prof. McClary at a conference in Rochester years and years ago and we had a nice chat about old blues guitarists.

What I really want to do here is offer heartfelt thanks to Richard Taruskin and Susan McClary and many others who work to understand the great power of music and while it may transcendentally elevate us, it does not grant us any moral superiority. And music is always in the world and having an effect on the world for which we should be grateful. Otherwise, why would we bother?

The new collection is a very fat volume, so you will see more posts inspired by it. In the meantime, let's listen to that Beethoven movement. This is Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.