One of the greatest ballets ever composed, Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev:
One wonders why Russia is so very good at music (three of the greatest composers of the 20th century, and many of the greatest pianists, not to mention a few violinists and cellists), dance, chess, mathematics and literature and so very, very bad at government.
14 comments:
Maybe 'bad' or illiberal government correlates with better music? Since the more moderate and stable post-1688 constitution, which produced centuries of effective government (whether or not one agreed with the values), English music has really suffered. And actually, the semi-Renaissance of British music from the latter part of the 19th century onwards may be related to the reinventing of a kind of pre-1688 culture -- neo-medievalism, Oxford Movement, Romantic anti-industrialism. The music of the Second Elizabethan Age, as well, was notable for its rediscovery of the First Elizabethan Age.
Reflecting, it occurs to me that music and danger work together effectively. Music and war are a very effective combination. So is music, drugs and sex. It's why Plato had his suspicions about music; it's why the major Abrahamic faiths traditionally are suspicious of music.
In what does bad or illiberal government consist? Lack of democracy? Autocracy? That might well lead to better music as the implication is that there is an aristocracy who typically have more developed tastes and who are often patrons of the arts. Yes, the pattern of better government and more mediocre music certainly seems borne out by English history.
What do you mean by music and danger work together effectively? (I'm reminded that the Spartan hoplite armies during the Peloponnesian War marched into battle led by long-haired musicians playing the Aulos or double-flute.)
I'd be very, very cautious about these kinds of ideas. I am reminded of how among music historians and among theologians and church historians there's been this surmise that Calvinists are anti-music and skeptical of music. Percy Scholes wrote an entire book (a big one at that) correcting the claim that the Puritans in New England and the American colonies disliked music, showing that the claim was functionally anti-Puritan libel. Both Scholes and the American church historian Jaroslav Pelikan pointed out that "if" the canard that Calvinists don't like music held true why was one of Johann Sebastian Bach's happiest and most productive periods of his life working for a Calvinist prince?
It may be that autocratic patronage yielded music a lot of us enjoy more but I think the Christian anarchist writer Jacques Ellul nailed the point well when he wrote in The Empire of Non-Sense that critics did not exist back prior to the eighteenth century but that something else did, a much closer working relationship between artists and musicians and the royal patrons who funded them, patrons who were themselves often dedicated and gifted amateurs. Haydn's baryton trios may not get even half the play-time as the string quartets and piano sonatas or symphonies but his patron played baryton.
I'm not contesting Steven's correlation, by the way, English music took a spectacular nosedive within a generation or two of the death of Henry Purcell. :) I just have some doubts, which I trust by now are obvious, about the correlation/causation chain. :)
Very good points, Wenatchee. I think it is safe to say that most religions have found music to be very useful. Of course there are other possible explanations for the history of music in England. Between 1688 and the late 19th century the English were very, very busy building a world empire, much like the Romans before them. Both peoples likely had little leisure time to pursue the fine arts.
yes, I think the empire-building tended to distract from music-making. Given the tumultuous transition from England being a Catholic monarchy to a Protestant monarchy there were mountains of changes in liturgical rites and translations of texts and so on. The late Roger Scruton referred to what he called the English "loyal indifference" of the Anglican church and there may be something to that, too. I am actually in Anglican/Presbyterian circles and my hunch is that Anglicans (Episcopalians, too, in the US) do have a social club element but not necessarily the world over.
The Lutherans, famously, opted to keep whatever they regarded as not heretical in musical culture. So the Mass was retained and mensural polyphony was preserved. Bog Wegman went so far as to say that given a century of intra-Catholic conflict about the value of mensural polyphony the Lutheran revolt did more to save Catholic high liturgical mensural polyphony because Luther was a Josquin fan than anyone inside the Catholic church from Trent onward. There were crucial points of convergence and preservation of centuries of musical disciplines in England and Germany during the shift from Catholic to Protestant cultural norms. By contrast, the Swiss rejection of all those elements happened via Zwingli and Bullinger and, well, come to think of it, how much music by Swiss composers did we hear about in music education courses?
Anglicans definitely have a social club culture. (I say as someone also in Anglican circles here.) I think it affects the Anglican musical culture.
I was looking recently at some German 16th century printed books of Josquin masses, which contemporary Lutherans were presumably using (they wrote alternative text above references to Mary). In England we have a certain view of the Reformation and cultural loss which we mistakenly impose on other countries.
So yes I share some of your doubts -- I make the argument hesitantly! I have also been surprised, for example, by how much good music there actually was during the Interregnum. I don't think religious change was important in affecting the quality of music, nor do I have the view that the more Protestant a culture the more anti-music it is -- which is obviously not true. If I have a bias, it is that I think monarchs help create a more interesting high musical culture. Continues to this day with King Charles compared with Parliament and public arts bodies.
On music and danger. Music is surely effective at encouraging us towards danger -- e.g. violence or drugs. A mob is doubly energised when they have a song to sing; a nightclub would not be nearly as effective without music. If this is all true, then I was wondering if it's also true to say that more dangerous conditions are fertile ground for music.
I tend to agree. Royal or church patronage could encourage more compelling works in the arts because the patron/artist relationship was closer, more dynamic, and active. Kyle Gann has blogged in the past about how in an era of foundation funded orchestral works and conservatory-built kleinmeisters there are composers whose works reflect their ability to jump through the hoops of bureaucratic/social vetting to get their works performed and the works themselves are, eh, often not very memorable. I'm not going to necessarily become an avid microtonalist but I have very much appreciated Gann's writing over the last fifteen years.
For dangerous conditions ... I'm reminded of Matanya Ophee pointing out that the most established guitarist composers in Spain and France tended to have military day jobs. Not all of them were actual soldiers on the frontlines but it was an interesting point Ophee made that for guitarists who are historians of the repertoire we can't ignore how much the guitar's canon depended on the sinecures within military organizations guitarists so often replied upon to have the spare time to compose their works.
Artistic freedom for guitarists, in those settings, came because they were functionally hobbyist guitarist composers who had military day jobs.
There is a scientific/logical term - overdetermined. Colloquially that means there is more than one way to skin a cat. Why do people blink their eyes? Not for one reason only.
So if there are multiple ways to produce the same result looking at all the different ways that result can happen is too confusing. You need to understand the process better.
Let's take sports. The US is very good at professional sports. Is that because of democratic instincts that promote sports? Well the Soviet Union was very good at producing Olympic athletes as was East Germany. Now East and West Germany united is more mediocre at sports.
Ok so let's think of why an army is stronger than a mob of equal size or a laser more powerful than a lightbulb. When a society organizes* itself to produce a certain result and has sufficient resources to accomplish the various process requirements they are often successful. Societies that do things haphazardly are not likely to produce superior results. But flukes can happen too; they just are not sustained.
Conversely when society blocks a given result sometimes people with sufficient motivation can develop workarounds. Even in the US quite a few good musicians join the military to play in service bands with steady pay and reasonably high standards as opposed to gigging.
*And there are different ways to get organized.
Plus there's the teaching route. THe insult that those who can't teach may have emerged among musicians.
But we might have been sold a bill of good about how many composers and musicians actually made their livings as such. Didn't Robbins Landon mention that Haydn's contract with the Esterhazy court was functionally a military service/servant type contract? His day job included more responsibilities than just cranking out music. As haydn himself put it, not being drawn into the outside world was part of what forced him to become original.
I have often felt over the years that the ruts I hear in pop and classical seem to have come about among the musicians who are making a living at it because of a kind of over-justification effect. They HAVE to make their livings as musicians and so they go with what they know they can sell. The Emerson string quartet once answered on their fan page they could not record Paul Hindemith at all because the label said they couldn't possibly move enough units to justify the project. For the swan song CD what did Emerson record? Some Hindemith. I.e. when everyone knew the quartet was calling it quits there was a rational for finally recording a composer the quartet had thought of getting to but couldn't justify within the larger run of their professional trajectory.
To discuss specifically the thread comment about Russia / Soviet Union music in the 20th C is a very interesting subject worthy of a book and one could usefully widen it to the arts in general. The basic fact is that in music the Communists took over the Czarist music system pretty much intact as later did the new Russian state under Yeltsin and Putin.
I suspect that the circumstances prior to the Revolution with Rimsky Korsakov and then Glazunov greatly influenced the takeover. As is well known Rimsky wrote his last opera Le Coq D'Or as an oblique slam at the Czarist government. It was believed to be so by the Czarists themselves who discharged Rimsky from his Directorship of the St Petersburg Conservatory. They tapped Glazunov to replace Rimsky but Glazunov refused and said he wanted Rimsky reinstated which eventually happened. When Rimsky died Glazunov took over running the Conservatory though WW1 and then the Revolution probably because the Communists viewed him and the Conservatory as anti Czarist. Also Glazunov's music was if anything more conservative than Rimsky's. Glazunov eventually left in the mid 1920s and emigrated to France so he soured on the Soviet oversight at some point. This is just speculation without access to Soviet documents but at least it is consistent with the basic facts. BTW the situation with the visual arts played out much differently during this period.
There's at least one such book that Taruskin reviewed, Pauline Fairclough's Classics for the Masses.
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300217193/classics-for-the-masses/
It's a surprisingly brisk and easy read considering the sheer complexity of the topic.
Given the rich depth of the comments I am very glad indeed I made that remark about Russia. Just a couple of minor points: a lot of the discussion has revolved around the social context and that is certainly important. For example, from my own experience the social context in Canada is relatively unfavorable for composers and for certain kinds of musicians. But this does not mean that some gifted individuals might not break through from time to time. Also, in music I think that there is a kind of musico-social milieu that is very important. Good musicians, creative musicians, tend to clump together with other creative musicians so there can be schools of activity or at least brief flurries--the New York composer scene in the 60s and 70s, for example, or the school of guitar playing that came about because of Andres Segovia. A positive social context can amplify these, but it really has to start with some creative individuals.
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