The Art-Music, Literature and Linguistics Forum

As things have been a bit quiet save for the downloading thread, I'd like to know what anyone on here thinks about a few questions that have been occupying me today:

1. Is it meaningful to talk about such a thing as 'political music', separate from some other types?
2. If so, what would be the defining attributes of such a music?
3. Can the politics of certain music, or indeed any art, be gauged primarily in terms of the intentions, or even indeed other activities, of those who produce it (this can refer to composers, performers, free improvisers, or whoever), or is its reception the best measure of such a thing (or a mixture of both, or neither)?
4. What is achieved through the production of music or art that makes explicit a certain political agenda, other than in terms of a certain self-fashioning - is it any different to simply wearing a badge?
5. Might (as Adorno suggested) the very fact of turning explicit politics into art serve to diffuse that politics by rendering it aesthetic?

All views, from whatever perspective, are welcomed.

My goodness; very interesting. 
Off the top of my head,

Yes, insofar as:
- The composer/songwriter holds a political orientation and,
- - purports to express it in their work or,
- - it is to be considered from a biographical point of view.
- A piece, tune or song not necessarily political in content or intent has been adopted as a political anthem. 

It's also valid, therefore, to talk about the political in music.   

That the composer says it is. 
That it has explicit political content--what would that be?
That it is made use of in a political context.   

I guess I responded to this in #s 1 & 2, so, any or all of the above 

Both instumental music and song can only tell and suggest; achievements are the product of people acting in light or in spite of the content of the music or song. 

Only for those who, even despite the vehemence of their political views, prefer experiencing the aesthetic to participating in the political.  This is a matter of character and temperament, not art or politics, although it can affect art and politics--usually badly? 

So, I wonder how these composers would fit in with those definitions: Beethoven (Fidelio and the Ninth Symphony), Britten (his operas), Xenakis, Yun, and Brahms (Academic Festival Overture)?

There are several issues which arise from this...

• Several of the works you've mentioned are textual, and could be said to derive their "political" nature from the text onto which they have been fused...  after all, the text pre-existed the music.  Would that same music without that text, or with a different text, still remain "political"?
• Are works "political" only when they purport to challenge or overthrow the existing status quo?  For example consider Cimarosa's comic opera IL MATRIMONIO SEGRETO, roughly contemporaneous with Mozart's allegedly "political" opera about a wedding, LE NOZZE DI FIGARO.   Cimarosa's opera winks indulgently at the "right" of aristocrats to subvent the law, and to behave in social unacceptable or repellent ways (the appalling "tests" to which "Count Robinson" subjects his potential bride and her family)?  It could equally be argued that this trifling social comedy is a deeply political work that seeks to garner support for the continued rule of the moneyed classes over their social and financial inferiors?  Equally you could argue that FIDELIO isn't political - it merely asks that existing laws be upheld.

No, absolutely not only then; it's as conservative a position as one can get to define only those views that differ from their own as 'political'.

The same question has been posted by IanP on the M&S board - with a couple of interesting replies.

http://mas.nfshost.com/index.php/topic,166.msg3245.html#msg3245

Elsewhere on M&S, the following exchange recently appeared.



The Maoist line quoted above was associated, in England at least, with Cornelius Cardew from c.1971/2 up to (but not after) 1977.

I'm assuming that IanP's hit-list of works involve
1 - Penderecki's Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima
2 - Cardew's Vietnam Sonata
3 - Penderecki's Dies Irae (or Auschwitz Oratorio)
4 - Christian Wolff's Accompaniments

if my assumptions are correct, I'm surprised certainly at the inclusion of 1), originally entitled 8'43" and apparently opportunistically retitled after the composer heard the work. I've never really thought of that work as "political" any more than others of an In memoriam nature, but no doubt my view of what constitutes "political" in the context of composed music is considerably narrower than that of others. At worst, I suppose, such a work could viewed as "ambulance-chasing"? (to use a memorable phrase from IanP which appeared on an earlier board).

. Good point, Reiner. And how then do those works become "anything more than propaganda"?
[To declare a self-interest, I've composed works which could be said to contain a social/political dimension - indeed IanP has performed a couple of them (for which I'm eternally grateful) although I suspect he would regard one as "propaganda" (rightfully) and be dismissive of the musical approach adopted in both. But this is by the bye]
More relevantly, how do others today view works by an earlier generation of avowedly "political" composers such as as Eisler and Bush as well as less well-known contributions from the likes of Blitzstein and Schulhoff?

For the No. 3 you mention, I was actually thinking of Nono's Ricorda cosa ti hanno fatto ad Auschwitz, but the Penderecki work equally fits the category.

More thoughts on autoharp's interesting post to follow, but a few other things that occurred to me:

In terms of a piece being 'political' which doesn't attempt to challenge or overthrow the status quo, the most obvious category for that would be numerous works celebrating those in power, either directly or indirectly: Beethoven's Wellingtons Sieg or Der glorreiche Augenblick, Berlioz's Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia, Brahms's Triumphlied or Prokofiev's Hail to Stalin.

I take your point although I'm unsure about a couple of your examples. My understanding is that the Berlioz is an In memoriam work and the inclusion of the Borodin seems tantamount to suggesting that those works composed for Brenda's coronation are political! But then my use of the word "political" is probably far too exclusive. I suppose it might be useful to delineate the boundaries, if indeed that is possible.

The Berlioz was written to celebrate 10 years since the July Revolution of 1830, and the Borodin to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the coronation of Alexander II. I would consider works written for any coronation as political, just as I would those to celebrate Lenin's coming to power, or Mao's.

I suppose it depends what "category" means in this context.

But why should music be exempt from political viability, any more than any other art form?

As Adorno would certainly have insisted. And did :). Often. And with great eloquence.

"Might (as Adorno suggested) the very fact of turning explicit politics into art serve to diffuse that politics by rendering it aesthetic?"

Where does Adorno "suggest" that? Or at least insist upon the 'explicity'?

Do you mean Adorno on Brecht?

I certainly don't think so, but acknowledge that others disagree. But having a particular category of 'political music' (or 'political art') implies that there is other music/art which is somehow not politcal.

Yes, I'm thinking of his comments on Brecht and Sartre (and Picasso, and Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw) in 'Committment'. And that's at the heart of my problem with the Nono work - it purports to be some sort of musical representation of the worst horror known to man (or its victims), but succeeds in creating something abstractly beautiful. I appreciate that this may be a means of attempting to recapture the victims' humanity, but think it a very dubious aesthetic strategy at best.

and almost everything by every court composer there ever was!?

Pretty much so, yes, at least those pieces written for a particular function.

I would go further and include all works written for patrons holding positions of inherited or elected power. After all, the principle reason for maintaining musicians at Court (or at noble households etc) was not (usually) for the pleasure their compositions or performances gave, but as a manifestation of the power, wealth, and alleged artistic discrimination of the patron in question... a "publicly acceptable" proof of political power.  Visitors, for example, to Esterhazy would come away with a greatly enhanced opinion of His Excellency having seen and heard music-making that excelled that of many of the Crowned Heads of Europe.  One could possibly make a case for excluding music commissioned by connoisseur-patrons (such as the flute-playing Frederick II) but even then perhaps his performances could be classed as merely the fullest realisation of the "gloved fist"... the omnipotent ruler who also - did y'know? - also played the flute. 

"Soft power" it's called these days. Rather like Condoleeza Rice giving Brahms recitals  >:(

If music composed to express opposition to a particular political viewpoint is "political", then it's an obvious extrapolation that music that endorsed that same political viewpoint also has a political content to it, albeit an apparently "latent" one.   An easy "test-case" for this line of logic would be the composers who found it "convenient" to support the Third Reich, or at least to cooperate with the Reich for the sake of an easy life and professional advancement.   Clearly it wouldn't be true to say that it was only the Reich's opponents (Hindemith, Weill, Ullmann, Eisler etc) who wrote politicised music - the Reich's allies (R Strauss, Orff etc) were just as politicised.  And before anyone thrusts my geographic location up my nose  ;)  clearly the same would apply both to composers who clashed with the USSR authorities and those who reached accommodations with them..  both are politicised to an equal extent - it's unavoidable.

I am still interested to explore how abstract textless music can express "political" ideas, however? Other than by the extraordinarily heavy-handed means of quoting pre-existing music that has an established political leaning?  For example Puccini is sometimes accused of anti-Americanism in MADAM BUTTERFLY (viz the introduction to Pinkerton's Act I aria that quotes the American National Anthem)...  but how many people notice the Japanese National Anthem (of the time - Japan has a new one these days) quoted during the tea-ceremony showdown with Sharpless, when Cio-Cio-San rubbishes her own country's marriage laws?  Surely such clumsy requoting can't be the only way of expressing a political idea without text?  Can it?

For once, I think Reiner and I are in complete agreement (except perhaps on abstract instrumental music - more on that another time). What I really take exception is those who can accept that under fascism or communism music-making is 'politicised', but can't accept that this could at least be equally true of music created in feudal or capitalist societies.

Certainly, I'd agree with most of that. The only problem is how to create anything that isn't a part of the system.

The alternative, I suppose, is silence. The danger, of course, is ideological rectitude that becomes self-serving. A refusal to participate. Or worse: in that the silence serves the powers that be in presenting zero opposition/argument/dissent. Indeed, no aesthetic alternative to their world.

As Guy Debord pointed out :).

If you can believe in the possibility of 'relative autonomy', utopic dreams (a possibility, by no means a given), then things may not be wholly bleak. No music is wholly autonomous of its social context and function, but that doesn't mean it has to passively accept that role and not attempt to look 'beyond'.

As Adorno pointed out :)

On the other hand, what you say might mean that one should put musical artistic questions to one side, and work for revolution...

Ian

I've heard worse suggestions :). 'Relative' autonomy is just that ... relative.

It's a form of resistance, perhaps?. Of saying no to the system.

Burning banks, trashing city institutions is another form of resistance. But it isn't unrisky. Or, indeed, universally popular on the so-called left.

But I take the point about art as a non-way out of the horror. I just wonder ("apart from burning banks, trashing city institutions") what else is to be done?

Look at the anti-Iraq 'democratisation' demos. And the G20. The powers that be didn't take much interest, did they? Apart from asserting the right to demonstrate (and be kettled, beaten senseless by the police. In the interests of public order).

I lived in Brixton at the time of the riots, and it got so close to an invasion of Parliament. But, instead, people started looting (frrom other poor people) and that's how it culminated and is (mostly) remembered.

One day, perhaps. One day.

Whilst art is certainly not going to bring about major social change, it's worth preserving something in life that isn't wholly subservient to all the other de-humanising, commercialised aspects of late capitalist culture. A world without some culture that does more than simply mirror the other structures of society would be poorer than a world with such a thing. Same goes for intellectual life, or indeed for human relations.

(if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be involved with such things)

I don't think we should be "disappointed" that Art fails to do this, because it hasn't (historically) been the purpose of Art to effect social or political change.  That would be a misunderstanding of its role.  Its function, if any, is as a catalyst, rather than an actual agent of change.

However, there have been one or two instances worth remembering.  The one I have in mind most clearly is the "Singing Revolution" in Estonia, where the choir at the Song Festival* opening ceremony secretly agreed to break into "Estonia, beloved country" instead of the Soviet Anthem as the opening number.  On live tv, with the Party bosses right on view, it was a devastating PR blow...  with the cameras on him, the local Party Boss spluttered for the first verse, but realised he'd been utterly outmanouevred and had the sense to join in for Verse 2.  Within just a few days Estonia had left the Soviet Union.

* the annual Song Festival is an event of huge significance, probably the biggest civic event in the country, taking place in an enormous outdoor stadium.

In case any one misses it, I have posted some information about Konrad Boehmer on the "Broadcast Rarities" thread. He says that his music "reflects my Marxist political agenda," but I would like to know more about how exactly it does that. In the Grove Dictionary it is stated that "in that Boehmer's activities as a composer are inseparable from his work as an activist and theorist, he is an heir to the traditions of the Enlightenment and the avant-garde." Again, is any one in a position to explain the precise mechanism of that?

How about the points 1.a-b and 2.a-b, at least, quoted and indexed here, as a basic framework,

What could be more neutral than first exploring whether and how any music, that with words and that without, can be intended and/or regarded as political?

Along 'the avenue of "political music that challenges the status quo" ', presumably one finds more examples, similar in intent, context and construction, to this? After we will have gone along that avenue for a bit, what would turn its features from a mere catalogue to an assessment? Wouldn't we otherwise get bogged down in cataloguing?

New York Times: "The Sour Notes of Iran’s Art Diplomacy"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/arts/music/04abroad.html?pagewanted=1&ref=middleeast

an apposite excerpt:

"The difference now isn’t just that the Tehran orchestra playing a pathetic Peace and Friendship Symphony is such a far cry from Emil Gilels playing Beethoven’s Emperor concerto. More fundamentally, it’s that a tour by an anointed symphony orchestra from the other side barely registers in the Western political consciousness. In an Internet age when everyone’s supposedly savvy to crude propaganda, the presumption seems to be that the Iranian tour doesn’t even rise to the threshold of newsworthiness.

"But this presumption is a result of what the American musicologist Richard Taruskin calls a common fallacy. The fallacy, he has written, consists in turning “a blind eye on the morally or politically dubious aspects of serious music,” as if “the only legitimate object of praise or censure in art” is whether it’s good or not."

A contribution:
http://www.ensemble21.com/cardew_stockhausen.pdf

IMHO it isn't OT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_in_music

obviously  columnist's opinions do not necessarily coincide with my personal ones.IMHO too broad topics are taken into consideration and treated briefly there is no careful research on profoundly different historical periods and phenomena
https://theamericanscholar.org/the-disappearing-modernists/