David Matthews SYMPHONY NO. 8 First Performance 17/04/15

[Richard Barrett]

the implied alternative "socialist realism"

That wasn't the "implied alternative" in the least, but, as I assumed people would be aware, the name usually given to the conservative styles of music and other arts demanded by the cultural authorities of the USSR - not something to be emulated in other words! My use of "capitalist realism", a term brought to my notice here by Serial_Apologist, is intended to draw attention to the way in which the structure of Western society these days ends up having comparable effects to the Soviet one in terms of extolling "traditional" musical virtues, not by coercion and threats as in the USSR but by the indifference and marginalisation produced by the marketisation of culture along with everything else. This applies to more popular music forms as well - I notice that your examples of "good songs being written again" are all half a century old, more or less, and I don't think you would make anything like the same case for contemporary popular music, assuming you follow it at all.

[Richard Barrett]

It seems to me to play in a game that has very few if any rules is a heck of a lot easier

What gives you that impression? Do you think it's possible to listen to music and perceive how "easy" it was to create? How do "easy" and "difficult" music sound and why would the latter be more valuable?

[ahinton]

That wasn't the "implied alternative" in the least, but, as I assumed people would be aware, the name usually given to the conservative styles of music and other arts demanded by the cultural authorities of the USSR - not something to be emulated in other words! My use of "capitalist realism", a term brought to my notice here by Serial_Apologist, is intended to draw attention to the way in which the structure of Western society these days ends up having comparable effects to the Soviet one in terms of extolling "traditional" musical virtues, not by coercion and threats as in the USSR but by the indifference and marginalisation produced by the marketisation of culture along with everything else. This applies to more popular music forms as well - I notice that your examples of "good songs being written again" are all half a century old, more or less, and I don't think you would make anything like the same case for contemporary popular music, assuming you follow it at all.

OK, but where does DM8 fit into the scheme of things here? Do you believe that, in writing that work, the composer consciously and indeed wilfully sought to prioritise the notion of "extolling 'traditional' musical virtues" over the creation of a fine new symphony?

[kea]

Good question, kea... as you imply, people compose music for all kinds of different reasons. All I'm saying is that making compositional decisions on the basis of trying not to do something is probably not a particularly creative way to think. It seems to me that the way basic compositional skills are taught often gives rise to thinking in terms of strategies of avoidance (avoiding parallel fifths in traditional counterpoint, avoiding tonal formations in serial composition, and so on) rather than in terms of what one is actually trying to focus on (in these examples, a certain sense of harmonic and textural consistency). I think that focusing on one's own vision as clearly and precisely as possible, rather than worrying about other people's visions, other people's idea of beauty, and so on, the "sense of identity" I mentioned earlier doesn't suppress or hide the influences but puts them in context and perspective, if that makes sense.

Yes I see what you mean. There does tend to be a lot of focus in compositional training on this kind of "avoidance" which I think sometimes can necessitate an amount of deprogramming—eg "why do I feel I can't write this, is it because I genuinely don't want to or do I have to get past some aspect of training e.g. wrong style, in 'bad taste', not 'original' enough, too impractical/weird, etc."—or alternately one can just run with the programming and fit one's personal tastes to what's "acceptable" but that seems a bit less interesting to me >.>; I mean I have no problem with a contemporary composer writing music as a creative response to some other composer but I think the issue is more when your own "personal" voice gets so tied up with (a) other people's music and (b) conventions of what's acceptable or expected that you'll sometimes come up with "original" ideas that other people have already done without your knowledge. (This is a thing that has happened to me before)

[Richard Barrett]

the issue is more when your own "personal" voice gets so tied up with (a) other people's music and (b) conventions of what's acceptable or expected that you'll sometimes come up with "original" ideas that other people have already done without your knowledge. (This is a thing that has happened to me before)

Yes, that's a common issue to be sure. Especially if the "originality" was the aspect of principal interest. Xenakis used often to say that he always tried to start "from nothing"... while the many self-quotations in his music would tend to call this idea into question, it's certainly true that he put an enormous amount of time and work into trying to reconceive music from first principles, without recourse to received ideas of what was "good practice", and, while his music is of course not without audible influences, this clarity, integrity and precision of thought is almost always at the centre. These are the sorts of things I find most admirable in a creative musician. Although in themselves they aren't of course a guarantee that the resulting work is going to be inspired or inspiring.

[clive heath]

Richard
I accept that I was ignorant of the phrase "socialist realism" and how it described limitations on Shostakovich's publications, however the suppression of individuality was the intent of the Stalinist controls whereas the comparable limitations as you see them of the "capitalistic" structure of today's society does not intend this outcome and I doubt there is hard evidence that it seeks to, as you acknowledge. In fact through the lottery and arts council you could argue the opposite tho' not very loudly. I'm assuming the big name sponsors of concerts and blockbuster art shows obtain a tax benefit. I would not want to confuse the public's naff tastes with insidious government control. The marketization of culture you refer to is not necessarily a bad thing, surely neutral. Would you rather there was no marketing at all? No Paloma Faith on last year's Prom brochure?

On the 50 year old point which also happens to be, as I said earlier, my first exposure to avant-garde music, I explained that a feeling that good songs were no longer written was wonderfully disproved. So I'm not quite sure what my "case" is. Would I be bemoaning the paucity of good songs nowadays or celebrating the recent flurry? Does the occasional visit to the "Bedford Arms" Brixton or the "Half Moon" Putney qualify me as taking an interest?

https://soundcloud.com/jemcooke

Jem is my neice

ahinton, my compositions are few and far between and I am wrong to minimize the effort that goes into any composition especially as it's taken me over 10 years to complete a satisfactory middle-8 to a 32 bar piece written to accompany Keats "Ode to Autumn" nevertheless if I were to choose between writing something that had little relation to and reverence for the music I love compared to one that I wanted to feel was in a long yes, conservative, tradition, I, me would find the latter far harder. No doubt my mistake.

[ahinton]

I accept that I was ignorant of the phrase "socialist realism" and how it described limitations on Shostakovich's publications, however the suppression of individuality was the intent of the Stalinist controls whereas the comparable limitations as you see them of the "capitalistic" structure of today's society does not intend this outcome and I doubt there is hard evidence that it seeks to, as you acknowledge.

Even if today's "capitalist realism" might not set out deliberately to "intend" an outcome broadly similar to that to which you refer in respect of the suppression of individuality that you describe as the intent of Stalinist controls in mid-century Soviet Russia, that doesn't necessarily mean that responses to it and its ultimate outcomes might not have some similarities; where I part company with the use of these terms is in the music itself when it's clear that Shostakovich still managed to put across a powerful message both within his own country and outside it in spite of what you write of as the "limitations on (his) publications"; this is in no sense meant to undermine the gravity of what Shostakovich and others went through - merelyl to point out his ability to rise above it. Now, clearly, no such authoritarian limitations, strictures and the like are imposed from on high upon composers such as David Matthews, so one could argue that something different is at work here, even if thar something is merely that Matthews can write just as he wants without obvious fear of the risk of censure.

In fact through the lottery and arts council you could argue the opposite tho' not very loudly. I'm assuming the big name sponsors of concerts and blockbuster art shows obtain a tax benefit. I would not want to confuse the public's naff tastes with insidious government control. The marketization of culture you refer to is not necessarily a bad thing, surely neutral. Would you rather there was no marketing at all?

Marketing of some kind there has to be otherwise the likelihood that any composer's work is ever going to get itself before the public will be slim indeed; it's where the marketing seeks to assume an importance over and above what's being marketed that the danger becomes all too apparent and that kind of thing is undoubtedly a profoundly regrettable and unwelcome symptom of present-day British society (as well as elsewhere).

[Serial_Apologist]

Richard
I accept that I was ignorant of the phrase "socialist realism" and how it described limitations on Shostakovich's publications, however the suppression of individuality was the intent of the Stalinist controls whereas the comparable limitations as you see them of the "capitalistic" structure of today's society does not intend this outcome and I doubt there is hard evidence that it seeks to, as you acknowledge.

I would have thought there to be an analogy between superficiality of idiom and of general understanding of society, and what keeps it going in the way that it is, that ties the old strictures on "formalism", the euphemism for modernism promulgated under Stalin and the various Stalinist-type regimes that flowed from it, on the one hand, and today's capitalist realism - one that reads in both directions across all the boundaries between all formal and informal disciplines supportive of the status quo and antagonistic to challenges to it. Repressive regimes have recognised and used this worldwide to stop people questioning why, for instance, both music and politics respectively may be stylistically stuck in past eras, unamenable to straightforward intelligeability.

[clive heath]

You mean that a lot of people don't think like you and it must be someone else's deliberate ploy to make it so? What about:
the only comparisons that can be made are with past eras and 1) musically, those with wider tastes than most ( already a minority ) have been programmed to reject modernism in music rather than actually just not liking it that much. Really? As regards 2) politics, the past eras of state socialism do not appear to have commended the process to most of us although the continent appeared/s to be ready to swallow it whole. ( tot-ups in French Francs as well as Euros on bills indicated some reluctance.)
What I can't get my head around is why it is thought that there actually is a conspiracy of power-crazed capitalists, actual people, who are deliberately keeping us plebs in subservience to an anti-progressive ( I would say "hegemony" if I knew what it meant!) mind-set. How do we get any information at all? The BBC, right-wing capitalist freedom fighters? surely not. We don't have SKY. The newspapers, quite a range of opinions there. Chats at the pub, hardly, closing all over the place, partly drink-driving laws, partly laziness, I guess. Which leaves family and friends, the prime target for repressive regimes all over and including cults. Spy on your parents, your neighbours etc. etc. Is that systematically in place here?
Why were the British people not told in this last election that they are being manipulated in this way by any of the progressive parties and encouraged to throw off their blindfolds and become free? Some previously Labour supporters so mistook "the way forward" ( copyright someone or other) that they ended up casting a vote for...another party and turned themselves from salt of the earth to racists in a flash.

[Serial_Apologist]

Clive, you do yourself a disservice by misrepresenting those you disagree with by exaggeration.

You mean that a lot of people don't think like you and it must be someone else's deliberate ploy to make it so? What about:
the only comparisons that can be made are with past eras and 1) musically, those with wider tastes than most ( already a minority ) have been programmed to reject modernism in music rather than actually just not liking it that much. Really?

Well - modernism would need to be a pretty narrow concept for one to be able to reject it in its entirety

As regards 2) politics, the past eras of state socialism do not appear to have commended the process to most of us although the continent appeared/s to be ready to swallow it whole. ( tot-ups in French Francs as well as Euros on bills indicated some reluctance.)
What I can't get my head around is why it is thought that there actually is a conspiracy of power-crazed capitalists, actual people, who are deliberately keeping us plebs in subservience to an anti-progressive ( I would say "hegemony" if I knew what it meant!) mind-set. How do we get any information at all? The BBC, right-wing capitalist freedom fighters? surely not. We don't have SKY. The newspapers, quite a range of opinions there. Chats at the pub, hardly, closing all over the place, partly drink-driving laws, partly laziness, I guess. Which leaves family and friends, the prime target for repressive regimes all over and including cults. Spy on your parents, your neighbours etc. etc. Is that systematically in place here?

I've always liked Marcuse's term "repressive tolerance", the conformity-inducing policeman in the head, as an explanation of how people maintain and perpetuate the given status quo to the point where they get extremely irate to the point of incoherency when anyone raises questions in their mind. How does one get any information at all, you ask - and I take it you refer to media-filtered information? The best way is unfortunately to be around when there are still enough traditions of thinking and clear enough articulators thereof to learn different principles from - and these can be principles offering visions of different ways of going about living and their associated cultural referents, or religious/spiritual guidance, if one feels one needs it.

Why were the British people not told in this last election that they are being manipulated in this way by any of the progressive parties and encouraged to throw off their blindfolds and become free? Some previously Labour supporters so mistook "the way forward" ( copyright someone or other) that they ended up casting a vote for...another party and turned themselves from salt of the earth to racists in a flash.

How people come to their own understandings in all different areas of life is very much conditioned by the times they are raised in. Many of us so-called baby boomers were strongly assured that war would be a thing of the past and our parents would see us thrive in ways they had never been in positions to enjoy. That was all part of a modernist vision including sustainable career chances and health care that some of us learned was predicated on what previous generations had fought tooth and nail to secure, and it was only later, when commercial desiderata began dictating mass consumer psychology as a substitute for communitarian values that had encouraged a sense of belonging coupled with an awareness of power structures, how they originated, were maintained and might one day be replaced, that one started looking in out-of-the-way places and eventually finding the deeper structures expressing resistance and change in marginalised music, among other manifestations.

For me, should you still be reading this, this came about initially through having I suppose a modicum of innate inner musicality, part-inherited from my mum, a fine pianist and interpreter of Chopin, and my father's interest in what was for him "modern music", e.g. "The Rite of Spring". Exposure to this from a comparatively early age inevitably made most of the pop music of the early 1960s seem pretty limited in harmonic scope and unsatisfying; but to elaborate on the era factor I mentioned earlier there was jazz around, and one could if lucky find oneself tracing one's evolving path from Trad via Bebop and Cool to modal and even free jazz, finding out the motivators behind the changes that were so daring and exciting to be not so different in kind, because they were expressive of expanded consciousnesses, and hence, being contemporaneous with where we were, capable of appreciation on so many more levels than the musics and arts of the past. once one gets to grips with a good part of it, any idea of going back to earlier stages of the eviolutionary process, other than to attempt to see them in the ways they were perceived as new in their age, seem rather fruitless.

That pretty much sums it up for me.

[clive heath]

Yes, S-A, the first para was a bit of an exaggeration, no worse than plenty I've read in this thread and to pick on the word modernism is not to answer the substantial query.... but let us agree you deny it. There is no actual conspiracy of power crazed capitalists. What there is a left-wing philosopher's theory: " "repressive tolerance", the conformity-inducing policeman in the head, as an explanation of how people maintain and perpetuate the given status quo... " Why this should only apply to people that left-wingers disagree with is not obvious. To many people just any one else's way of thinking varies from odd to delusional even their best friends. In the rest of that para the word "different" appears twice and appears to indicate "better" without any justification. Does the Marcusian phrase not act like a veil between you and others preventing you seeing them clearly? You imply that the "mass" whose psychology was dictated by ad-men were a lumpen-proletariat incapable of independent thought. Maybe the psychology was always there and the ad-men just tapped in.

..still reading and appreciating your back story. As I mentioned in "...Last Concert # 1099" I played what was then modern/mainstream jazz including some free jazz myself.

[Richard Barrett]

There is no actual conspiracy of power crazed capitalists.

No of course there isn't. Nobody is claiming that. What's being claimed is merely what the logic of capitalism leads to, the fact that most cultural media (an increasing proportion in fact) exist primarily to make money. The same logic also leads to such media encouraging a passive and uncritical consumption of culture (since this way it can be made more cheaply - see Big Brother for example, whose creator is currently the chair of Arts Council England) which of course involves a marginalisation of anything that doesn't fit in with those objectives, therefore anything which lies outside the easily consumable, which proposes that the future can be different from the past and present.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, S-A, the first para was a bit of an exaggeration, no worse than plenty I've read in this thread and to pick on the word modernism is not to answer the substantial query.... but let us agree you deny it. There is no actual conspiracy of power crazed capitalists. What there is a left-wing philosopher's theory: " "repressive tolerance", the conformity-inducing policeman in the head, as an explanation of how people maintain and perpetuate the given status quo... " Why this should only apply to people that left-wingers disagree with is not obvious.

Well one starts off asking questions and ends up finding a plausible theory or at any rate plausible explanations which may well place received wisdoms in question.

To many people just any one else's way of thinking varies from odd to delusional even their best friends.

Which doesn't get any of us very far.

In the rest of that para the word "different" appears twice and appears to indicate "better" without any justification. Does the Marcusian phrase not act like a veil between you and others preventing you seeing them clearly?

Wasn't it Sartre who said truth lies in disclosure, while other's thoughts remain locked away? - a useful lesson for psephologists!

You imply that the "mass" whose psychology was dictated by ad-men were a lumpen-proletariat incapable of independent thought. Maybe the psychology was always there and the ad-men just tapped in.

The proletariat as a class was never targetted as consumers until the ruling class saw one way of trapping it in permanent insecurity, once it had bought its way into the consumer paradise, was inveiglement - the blatantest example being the selling off of discounted council housing. This wasn't and isn't as much a question of independent thought - thought arises in any case clothed in socially shared assumptions about meaning, being part of, etc. - as one of options.

[clive heath]

..which would lead to you proposing an automatically improved life for everybody following the logic of socialism? All "the logic of capitalism" signifies is something you disapprove of but which I dare say involve yourself in as much as most in terms of range of products, travel, entertainment ( maybe not "Big Brother" ), and vastly improved medical facilities thanks to the Big Pharma. This word "marginalisation" again. Because your pet sounds are not as out there as you would wish, it is " the system"'s fault. Why so? In any case vanity publishing and net launches are allowing all manner of presentation and some (admittedly make-up hints or somesuch) have gained millions of likes ( whatever they are). The net is a direct result of the logic of capitalism. My daughter has been to any number of marginal pop/folk groups as yet untaken up by a major label even to Matlock Bath! However I couldn't vouch for the product not being easily consumable although her tastes are a tad eclectic including a recording of her intoning e.e.cummings against a synthesised drum and bass. For "dry" I prefer Ivor Cutler. Back on topic! I was just wondering when it was ever not so, that making money was a major force behind putting on music apart from religious and civil/military ceremony. Further: that the wider the range of musical individuality the more chance of some areas falling outside an effective range of commercial acceptability. But not a deliberate negation of any particular form of creativity. If you write music that has limited appeal what is the problem if it has limited appeal?

p.s. S-A's riposte to my last was posted it the interim and I thank him for pointing out that other French left-wing philosphers have their bon-mots. Are we being given a lesson in Marxist thinking here? I just get a sense of every layer of explanation getting further from reality.

[ahinton]

p.s. S-A's riposte to my last was posted it the interim and I thank him for pointing out that other French left-wing philosphers have their bon-mots. Are we being given a lesson in Marxist thinking here? I just get a sense of every layer of explanation getting further from reality.

Be that as it may or may not, it's certainly getting ever farther from David Matthews' Eighth Symphony!