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Competing 19th century aesthetics and their relationship to modern developments

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Author Topic: Competing 19th century aesthetics and their relationship to modern developments  (Read 404 times)
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IanP
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« on: August 03, 2009, 09:05:43 pm »

This is something I posted on Music and Society about which I would be equally interested in the thoughts of any posters here.


A question I'm pondering at the moment has to do with comparing some opposed nineteenth-century aesthetics and considering their relationship to later developments. Specifically I'm looking at the difference between the North German aesthetics of Mendelssohn, Schumann and later Brahms on one hand, and those associated with Paris, Weimar and later St Petersburg and Moscow on the other, through the work of Liszt, Wagner, Mussorgsky, Chaikovsky and others (just so as not to over-complicate the argument, I will leave out Schubert, Chopin, Berlioz and many Italian operatic composers), in terms of their attitudes and approaches towards dialectical oppositions in music. Both schools take many cues from Beethoven (who cast such a huge shadow over the whole century), but where the former group extended upon Beethoven's powers of construction, development, sublation and also fragmentation (especially in the case of Schumann), the latter were more drawn towards the Beethovenian sublime, his portrayal of extreme emotional states, untethered nature, and so on.

In a good deal of Liszt's music (and many accounts of his playing) one finds certain recurrent dualistic tropes: between the demonic and the celestial, the bravura and the lyrical, and so on, sometimes with both elements within the dualism co-existing simultaneously. Yet what is rare is the sense of Liszt having somehow sublated these oppositions; he is content to portray nature (and atavistic forces within nature) rather than try to go beyond it. In this sense his work could be read as constituting the quintessence of the romantic primitivist sublime. There are exceptions, for sure, including major works such as the Sonata in B minor and Faust Symphony, but in this sense I do find them quite unrepresentative of his wider body of work. The austere late works, for all the strangeness of their harmonies and lack of full tonal resolution, again seem concerned with the portrayal of an essentially static entity (there is little if any serious development; usually he simply repeats material in a different key with hardly any changes). All of this relates various to Wagner's non-developmental use of leitmotifs, Chaikovsky's eschewal of sustained development in his symphonies (linked, I would say, to a sense of certain phenomena being timeless and innate, a fatalistic attitude), or the mimetic and programmatic works of Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin and others, all heavily influenced by Liszt's symphonic poems; these in particular employ a type of semiotic musical language for the purposes of an imaginary musical verisimilitude with respect to the phenomena being portrayed.

The work of the North Germans is very different; put crudely, one might say that the point is not to emulate nature or anything else pre-existing, but to add something palpably new to the sum total of empirically obtained experience. Thus one gets a concentration upon immanent and more abstracted musical processes, sometimes to the extent of constituting some sort of violation of nature (I would say one can hear this as early as in Schumann's Carnaval, for example, but equally in the highly complex thematic and tonal processes, forever confounding expectations, to be found in Brahms's First String Quartet).

This is a simplistic opposition, to be sure - aspects of each of the elements I describe can be found within some work of the opposing camp - but as a generalisation it is meaningful, I believe. What I'm interested in is where these can be seen to lead, historically: provisionally, I can read the Lisztian school as connecting with the refusal of immanent development in the work of Debussy, Scriabin, Stravinsky, Varese, and later Messiaen, Scelsi, and others, whereas the North Germans bequeath not only the Second Viennese School, but also the work of Fauré, Ravel and Bartók, and later much of the work of Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono and others. But there is another element to consider which might change much of this: how much was Liszt a type of 'naive romantic', how much an ironist (was he closer to Goethe or Heine)? At times I do suspect the latter, on the basis of, for example, his ultra-hyperbolic transcriptions from Italian opera in the 1830s and 1840s, whilst at the same time he (publicly) decried the shallowness of much of the work upon which he was drawing (and its reception) - might his transcriptions have been cynically parodistic (at least to an extent) rather than reverential and warm. Similarly with his massively over-the-top employment of stock musical devices such as the diminished seventh - might, say, the Fantasy and Fugue on BACH be quite tongue-in-cheek, almost an anticipation of the work of Kagel? In terms of the model outlined above, I might see Liszt and all he bequeathed as constituting a conservative romantic tendency ('Romanticism against the Spirit of Modernity', to use the title of a rather interesting book by Michael Löwy exploring this subject (including romanticist tendencies within Marxism)), but if his music is more of the work of an ironist than often imagined (and, certainly, than exhibited in the majority of later performing traditions), then I'm not so sure. What the implications of the latter might be I have still to think through.

I'm just interested to know any thoughts of whatever description that anyone here might have on these subjects.
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guest2
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« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2009, 02:31:40 pm »

I have already responded with a few ideas on the other forum (because this one has been inaccessible for some unknown reason); here then in the hope that one or two of them might be relevant is a copy:

1) Although he lived eighty years before Beethoven, I would put Bach in your first group - the "north German aesthetics who concentrated upon immanent and more abstracted musical processes, sometimes to the extent of constituting some sort of violation of nature (. . . as in Schumann's Carnaval, for example, but equally in the highly complex thematic and tonal processes, forever confounding expectations, to be found in Brahms's First String Quartet)." Because that is what makes Bach's style so recognisable is it not - progressions both simple and complex which forever confound expectations. (Nevertheless he has his "sublime" moments too especially in the masses and passions.) I suppose Vivaldi and Haendel might go into the other group, but do they even attempt the sublime?

2) I have never been able to understand how the word "romantic" can have an application to the activities of composers. Somewhere indeed I read an account of a conversation between Beethoven and Goethe, where Beethoven says that "romanticism has already had its day" or something like that - but I have not been able to find the passage again. But in the modern era the musical meaning of the word "romantic" seems to be "music that progresses via an alternation (on the small scale) between moments of higher tension and moments of lower tension or resolution." In literature there is a similar word: "Victorian". Both "romantic" and "Victorian" seem to contain an element of mild disparagement, as though they relate to an activity somehow unworthy of us subtler and more fortunate individuals of later times.

3) It is worrying the number of "symphonic poems" and "chamber symphonic poems" being written at present - i.e. works bearing exotic and evocative titles in the exact Lisztian manner - a sort of "mood music" really. This can be opposed to the concept of "absolute music" of which in my view far too little is being written nowadays - music that is self-contained in its art and complete, without reference to anything whatever beyond itself.

4) As for "over the top" employment of standard musical devices - try the end of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony - or even of his Fifth! Really after those no more works should ever have been written that end with a tonic chord! That they nevertheless were was probably because their composers had not properly comprehended Beethoven's full meaning and intention - which one could indeed call "ironic exaggeration" I suppose.
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IanP
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« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2009, 11:54:46 am »

Some further thoughts:

1) Although he lived eighty years before Beethoven, I would put Bach in your first group - the "north German aesthetics who concentrated upon immanent and more abstracted musical processes, sometimes to the extent of constituting some sort of violation of nature (. . . as in Schumann's Carnaval, for example, but equally in the highly complex thematic and tonal processes, forever confounding expectations, to be found in Brahms's First String Quartet)."
Absolutely, yes, and it is no coincidence that the primary composers in this first group (Mendelssohn, Schumann, later Brahms) were all quite obsessed with Bach - still a relatively esoteric interest in the early 19th century and whose work was not that well-known even in Brahms's time (though the publication of a collected editions from 1851-1900 by the Bach-Gesellschaft was an important factor in changing this situation)

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Because that is what makes Bach's style so recognisable is it not - simple progressions  which forever confound expectations.
Certainly. Where, perhaps, a quite traditionalist school of musicology and music criticism has taken a one-sided view in this respect is through their almost exclusive concentration on melody, harmony, rhythm rather than so much timbre, register, orchestration, instrumental/vocal interplay and other factors which were all very important to the second group, and can equally confound expectations, albeit in a somewhat different manner.

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2) I have never been able to understand how the word "romantic" can have an application to the activities of composers. Somewhere indeed I read an account of a conversation between Beethoven and Goethe, where Beethoven says that "romanticism has already had its day" or something like that - but I have not been able to find the passage again. But in the modern era the musical meaning of the word "romantic" seems to be "music that progresses via an alternation (on the small scale) between moments of higher tension and moments of lower tension or resolution." In literature there is a similar word: "Victorian". Both "romantic" and "Victorian" seem to contain an element of mild disparagement, as though they relate to an activity somehow unworthy of us subtler and more fortunate individuals of the present day.
The term 'romantic', to me, implies a certain idealisation of nature (or rather, of a certain idea of what nature entails), thus underprivileging the abstract, the inorganic or anything else which can be seen to constitute a transformation of that perceived as 'natural'. In the context of music, this view applies not merely to the depiction of nature, but also to the use of motivic or structural procedures themselves constructed as natural - for example, the idea of an organic development of a motif or theme, such a development viewed as a natural consequence of its immanent properties (very unlike the acts of violence which Schumann commits against his material, for example), or an interpretation equally viewed as a natural response to the properties of the musical text (as opposed to one in which the sensibilities, desires, convictions of composer and performer exist in a form of dialogue).

This romantic view is what was so strongly challenged by Baudelaire in his 'The Painter of Modern Life', not least in the section devoted to praise of the use of make-up by women (which by extension could also be applied to men) - he believed nature could be improved upon to produce something more beautiful, a position which broke with the idea of the romantic sublime. This position is equally perilous, however, if followed to an extreme, not least because of its potential for dehumanisation (as humans are part of nature).

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3) It is worrying the number of "symphonic poems" and "chamber symphonic poems" being written at present - i.e. works bearing exotic and evocative titles in the exact Lisztian manner - a sort of "mood music" really. This can be opposed to the concept of "absolute music" of which in my view far too little is being written nowadays - music that is self-contained in its art and complete, without reference to anything whatever beyond itself.
I can agree with part of this statement, but perhaps not the whole. I am not convinced there has ever been a wholly 'self-contained' music written with no reference at all to anything outside itself. As a utopian ideal, this may be a worthwhile endeavour, but would probably entail a conscious engagement with the ways in which elements of existing musical language are themselves socially, culturally, and historically constituted, so as to be able to resist the many meanings which accompany such language. To some extent dodecaphonic and serial techniques can be viewed as an attempt to pursue this type of venture; but they can equally be viewed as a means towards the re-inscription of certain pre-romantic mechanisms of order within music (a lot depends on the nature of their employment). This in itself is far from being removed from any form of external reference, as those very orders and hierarchies have clear historical connotations. Nonetheless, the prevalence of 'descriptive' music (or, as you say, 'mood music') hardly seems much of an advance over what Liszt was doing in Weimar in the 1850s, though it is possible to do more progressive work within this basic genre if the demands of musical 'realism' are not paramount.

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4) As for "over the top" employment of standard musical devices - try the end of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony - or even of his Fifth! Really after those no more works should ever have been written that end with a tonic chord! That they nevertheless were was probably because their composers had not properly comprehended Beethoven's full meaning and intention - which one could indeed call "ironic exaggeration" I suppose.
Do you believe this was Beethoven's intention (whether this matters or not is a further question)? I have tended to gain the impression that Beethoven, at least in some of his work, was wedded to certain forms of musical symmetry, proportions in terms of numbers of bars, etc., which necessitated the filling out of extended passages with endless reiterated cadences or tonic chords just to 'make up the numbers'. There is a certain dialectic thus produced between the demands of a rather inflexible approach to structure and the immanent potential of the material (something which also appertains to Mozart, I believe, though in a rather different fashion - his best music somehow evades full 'closure' for this reason) which can produce a certain parodistic (parodic?) result, whether intended or not. Might Beethoven's approach in this respect (in terms of unwillingness to modify certain supposedly innate proportions) itself constitute part of his appeal to the sublime, which could be interpreted various as progressive or regressive in comparison to Mozart's more explicitly 'cultivated' ideals (which in this respect link Mozart more closely to Baudelaire, for all the huge differences in other respects)?
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