Classical music…its role in our culture…that’s something I’ve pondered for a long time, and talked about often here.
aMy usual answer hasn’t been very positive. If classical music is going to focus on the past — as of course it still does; such a large percentage of performances are of music from past centuries — then is it really still art?
Art is a furnace
Art, I’d think, is stronger than focusing on the past. Should tell us things about who we are now, what’s going on in the world around us. Or, to use a phrase I love from the very end of Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: “I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
Words of an artist. Swap out the now-loaded word “race,” substitute another one (culture, world, whatever) and what Joyce wrote still seems powerful.
Our deep consciousness (I like that better than conscience, though of course it has a different meaning) is forever changing, forever renewed, forever forged in new ways, both in the furnace of art and the furnace of life.
Hard to do that if you’re always returning to the past.
But now another view
And then I saw Manchester by the Sea, a masterpiece of film, nominated at the Oscars for best film, which it didn’t win, though it won for best screenplay and best actor.
In Manchester, people go through life hurt. Trying to make the best of it, falling back, picking themselves up, fighting over nothing because they can’t articulate the big things. So gripping. So real.
And in the film, classical music plays a role. We hear it on the soundtrack — meltingly beautiful old classical works — when the director, I’d guess, wants us to feel compassion for the people on the screen. When the pain is too great, when we need some consolation.
A deep calm
Classical music provides that, in the film. Goes to a depth the characters can’t reach, speaks without words of things they can’t get to.
I’m reminded of something often said by people with no deep classical music knowledge, but who like to listen to it — that they like it because it’s “calm.”
I respect that feeling, even while thinking that it leaves out so much that happens in classical pieces, and certainly takes them far from their creation. Beethoven’s music (an obvious example) didn’t seem calm at all to his contemporaries. Just the opposite, really. Often it seemed wild. Crazy. Disturbing.
And yet…
And yet I understood that more from seeing Manchester. Classical music, as its role has evolved, really does seem to speak with a voice beyond time. Contemporary life can be jangling. As it was in past centuries, by the way, but that’s another conversation.
So by losing its roots, taking on a new existence in our time, classical music separates itself from the jangle, and brings consolation.
But then…once again…can it still be art? Is it still a furnace? I’d think our consciousness is formed in large part from the jangle. How else could it be our consciousness today?
And if classical music above all means consolation, how can that sustain the enterprise? The concert halls, the orchestras, the vast expense. Is all that just so we can be consoled?
And then why should it matter whether we play Beethoven or Debussy? I guess we’ll never play Xenakis.
But I’ll stop here. You get the point.
As usual, Greg, I have to comment that your concept of art is perhaps a bit limited. Da Vinci and Rembrandt are past; does that mean that they aren’t art? I certainly agree that living art needs to be constantly progressing, and classical music is certainly doing that, even if a lot of its audience doesn’t particularly appreciate where it’s going.
And classical music as consolation? I need to go back once again to my man A. Pettersson. At first hearing, his compositions don’t sound anything like consolation. They sound like a constant scream of pain, the pain of his serious arthritis and of his political protests, but after you hear them a few times you can perceive a struggle toward acceptance, which might be considered a kind of consolation.
Let’s zoom out 2,000 years… Consolation WAS classical’s “purpose” originally! (Mr. Hodge, care to weigh in?)
Before music grew rebellious, moved out of mom and dad’s house, and learned to sow its own oats, the church was the only institution powerful enough (and spiritually motivated enough) to raise it. The church gave composers lifetime “residencies” where they learned, over many generations, to pluck the overtones from the rafters of their verb chambers. Once they learned to write these down, harmony was born. Sure, Hildegard and Gesualdo bucked church power, but there was still a CLEAR PURPOSE: music drew the masses and gave spiritual solace back when death was CONSTANT.
Now 24-hour news spotlights death worldwide… Even in quiet suburbia… And even sans religion, music still gives solace.
You must first define what you consider “classical music”. If you consider “classical music ” an art form then
you are off track in your observations ..As a creative endeavor it has no meaning, being the most abstract
of the arts – it takes on a given meaning after the fact -it is but the arrangement of sounds into patterns that please or not. .If you listen to the sounds that represent the William Tell overture you most likely have been conditioned to receive and interpret the sounds as a reflection of the story, up to that point the overture could
reflect anything that comes to mind…for some it is the Lone Ranger.
What is music to some is noise to others. What you term classical music does not focus on the past ,people
focus on the past.
Ariel, now we are getting somewhere! Love that you’ve taken the time to explain your position…
But have you been reading the same blog as the rest of us?
There are DOZENS of pages here, posted over many years, that wrestle with the VERY complicated question of defining classical music. Telling Greg that “You must first define what you consider ‘classical music'” as precursor to your critique seems to indicate that you’ve somehow missed his efforts to “crowd source” that definition from all of us.
What is YOUR definition? Sure, it is abstract… But most composers DO have a purpose in mind WHILE creating, right?
On reading observations made by Mr.Sandow I am only interested in how he comes to his
conclusions. I am not interested in” crowd sourcing” You are correct- composers DO have a
purpose in mind while creating -the purpose in mind depends on the composer in question .
Good point. Perception of art changes with time, but the art affects us still.
But this fact confirms what Greg is saying. Time has changed people’s perception of classical music, and the effect has been watered down by cultural differences between past and current generations.
If classical music is going to focus on the past — as of course it still does; such a large percentage of performances are of music from past centuries — then is it really still art?
Isn’t that a bit like asking “why study history; of what relevance is it today”? Or “why read War and Peace, since the Tsar and the Russian aristocracy as it existed in Tolstoy’s day are gone? Why read The Illiad? Compared to us, Achilles and Agamemnon were only barbarians.”
We read the classics because they still speak to us, and we might choose to reread a classic rather than a contemporary novel because we know the former will speak to us and we’re not sure about the latter. It’s to be hoped we’ll give the new work a chance sometime, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t experiencing the old as art.
The art of previous generations is still relevant today because human nature is constant throughout history. At the root of what is happening/relevant _now_ we can find all the same forces and struggles we hear reflected in Mozart and Beethoven.
And if classical music above all means consolation, how can that sustain the enterprise? The concert halls, the orchestras, the vast expense. Is all that just so we can be consoled?
Granted we need and should seek more than consolation, and classical music offers much more than consolation, and if in certain pieces a listener finds consolation he probably doesn’t understand what he’s hearing – still, isn’t consolation one of our most profound needs? Even if classical music fulfills only that need for most people (I’m not saying it does), isn’t that a noble function?
To assume that Mozart- Beethoven heard what we hear in their music as played to-day is wishful thinking at its worst.Their forces and struggles reflect a world having nothing to do with ours.,however we try make
it so .
The observation unfortunately displays a limited knowledge to the evolution of the art from 18 and 19 C to the 21C.
Ariel, lovely to see you engage in real discussion. Thanks!
Clarification (though I’m surprised this wasn’t clear at the start, to be honest).
Study the Iliad. Sure. In a healthy context. Because a literary world that reads and studies the Iliad is also reading current literature. On an equal basis with the literature of the past. So when people think of literature they’re just as likely to think of Margaret Atwood or David Mitchell as Homer and Dickens.
Classical music. Very different. When most people think of classical music they think of Mozart and Beethoven. The field has oriented itself toward the past, so new stuff is marginalized. I’m hardly saying we should ignore the past, in classical music or any other art. But in classical music we have to fix a balance that’s gotten badly off-center.
There is no balance badly off center , what you are bemoaning is the process of evolution .
T he majority of people have found out that they can get along quite well without Mozart ,Beethoven etc .
It is now a world of Pop culture with whatever happiness it brings , To believe that one can remedy
the process and bring what is termed classical music to a more popular level is to whistle while passing
the graveyard. At one time Mozart , Beethoven were the contemporary stars of the then music world, the stars
of to-day are different breed …to day we have Dylan . ……enough said .