Music has nothing to do with politics (again) ?

[Serial_Apologist]

Perhaps our understanding of what the word 'inherent' means differs when applied to music.

People will say that music can't be 'inherently' tragic, 'inherently' beautiful, for example: the way people experience it is personal to them; and what one person finds melancholy another finds peaceful, what one finds tuneless another finds melodic.

What do you mean when you say of music that 'its expression is social'? Maybe you take 'political' in a different sense? Everything is connected to everything? I don't find your use of these words have any meaning for me.

I am probably way out of my depths, but here fwiw is my theory.

Everything is connected to everything before words enter any picture. In terms of how, we are of course limited to words; which is where music is elusive, unless it is actually set to words. We have to go back a long way to discover music before the invention of words and concepts - and there we can agree (or not) with Wagner (in his magnum Oper und Drama) where he posited a period antecedent to the development of language when human utterance had not yet separated out into music on the one hand, and language on the other.

Musical communication could be thought of as analogous to "body language", except for the way in which the development of musical instrument technology - which cannot be separated from productive advances in general and their interconnections with political developments, see what I mean? - acquired an autonomous dynamic of its own in terms of the character of the melodic line. Note the difference between the broad-leaping melodic contour of melodies from the time of JS Bach and compare them with the smoother, vocally-shaped character of melodic contours in say Palestrina, 170 years earlier. The bigger intervallic leaps have come about through the greater ability of instruments than voices to "jump".

The background to all this, especially from Shakespeare's time onwards, has been how human means of seeking guidance for future conduct in history (in whatever sphere, e.g. warfare, religion, etiquette, writing and performing music) has inferred analogical associations back into reading concept-derived meanings (are there any other sort?) into music: meanings which, though capable of communicating basic feelings between maker and recipient which are probably deducible in terms of acoustic properties and their effects on bodies and brains, are nevertheless intelligeable in musical-symbolical terms explicable to the degree that encoded correspondences can be perceived within music linking it to spoken and written means of communication.

[Serial_Apologist]

Some might say that Jazz is inherently political.

OG

Just because jazz is conventionally easily amenable to political analogisation doesn't mean that other music forms aren't. The politics is more subtly disguised. I would argue that elucidating the political in music is itself an important tool of personal and collective political empowerment.

[Serial_Apologist]

Would " political" not imply a relationship with, rather than engagement with?

Most people would describe Crass as " political", but I would imagine their relationship would be one of complete disengagement from the mainstream political?

Disengagement implies engagement by others - maybe the impossibilty of doing anything about it, hence the disengagement.

[Serial_Apologist]

I suspected the answer would be something like that - S_A may have additional thoughts, but this is a very attenuated interpretation of 'political'. The political aspect becomes insignificant once everything can be included in the definition. I don't really feel there is a necessary connection between the social, cultural and the political.

Political implies some sort of engagement with social organisation/government/authority, and the extent of the political depends on the nature and extent of the engagement. Surely?

Disengagement is a political parti pris: it is letting other people get away with it, (regardless of whether they still will if one engages oneself).

[french frank]

Would " political" not imply a relationship with, rather than engagement with?

I subsequently wondered whether my involvement with Sartre was influencing my terminology (engagement, la littérature engagée).

Trying another tack: what about the political intention of the composer? Including the strength of that intention? Is it a definition of all 'art' that it is political? And if it isn't political, it isn't 'art'? Once we enter the realms of the theoretical, we're just making unsupported assertions.

To me, to say that a musical work is 'political', there needs to be either a demonstrable intention on the part of the composer; or its justified reception as a political work, reasonably argued. It is possible, I presume, for someone to be unwittingly 'political' through naivety or ignorance. But I can't (as yet!) accept that music by definition is 'to do with politics' in a sense that has much meaning.

[Serial_Apologist]

The sounds in a piece of Music aren't "inherently" meaning-specific, but the choice(s) that Musicians make of which Musical sounds they are going to make is a matter of cultural preference - and as such, inherently "political"; not in the sense of supporting any particular political party line, but in the sense of expressing to others what values and conventions are important to the Musicians making those choices.

All cultural choices are political in this wider sense - wearing a wedding ring is a choice to let others see that the ring-wearer has accepted, approves of, and values the social conditions that "Marriage" entails.

Yes, one has to be careful to avoid political reductionism of the kind that simplified what one means by "the political" to simple issues of resource allocation and distribution. Questions about artistic relevancy that were a, b and c among political circles following the Bolshevik revolution unfortunately assumed the vulgar Marxist patina that led in conjunction with civil war and its practical desiderata to Stalinism, and this was, I think, as much a reflection of the far less sophisticated definition of politics than we have at our disposal now, one which excluded the psychological or dissed it as "bourgeois individualism" or some such, that was prevalent at the time.

[teamsaint]

I subsequently wondered whether my involvement with Sartre was influencing my terminology (engagement, la littérature engagée).

Trying another tack: what about the political intention of the composer? Including the strength of that intention? Is it a definition of all 'art' that it is political? And if it isn't political, it isn't 'art'? Once we enter the realms of the theoretical, we're just making unsupported assertions.

To me, to say that a musical work is 'political', there needs to be either a demonstrable intention on the part of the composer; or its justified reception as a political work, reasonably argued. It is possible, I presume, for someone to be unwittingly 'political' through naivety or ignorance. But I can't (as yet!) accept that music by definition is 'to do with politics' in a sense that has much meaning.

It isn't a very big step, in fact its quite an easy step, between the theoretical / " unsupported assertions" ( I' m not quite sure why you use unsupported), and " justified reception as a political work".

"The Death of the author" sorted this out, didn't it?
( i really wish S-A hadn't mentioned how deep the water is....... Think i will stay in the shallow end !!)

[Serial_Apologist]

It isn't a very big step, in fact its quite an easy step, between the theoretical / " unsupported assertions" ( I' m not quite sure why you use unsupported), and " justified reception as a political work".

"The Death of the author" sorted this out, didn't it?
( i really wish S-A hadn't mentioned how deep the water is....... Think i will stay in the shallow end !!)

It's OK to start with a theory; then you have to try and support it, not the other way around!

[Beef Oven!]

It's OK to start with a theory; then you have to try and support it, not the other way around!

I think, therefore I am.

[teamsaint]

It's OK to start with a theory; then you have to try and support it, not the other way around!

I think that was what I was saying, EG that Barthes' theory is supported by the reality of the readers /listeners perception of a text (or music) as political, whatever its originators intention.

" Drive" by The Cars, for example.

[french frank]

It's OK to start with a theory; then you have to try and support it, not the other way around!

Yes, I only meant you start off with your proposition but you have to test it against the evidence. If there is any ...

I would see 'politics' as a deliberate form of 'human action' (including deliberate inaction) and therefore music could not, in itself, be 'political' if there was neither intention on the part of the creator nor good reason for it to be received as if there had been such an intention. The only interesting political significance would be what political point was being made or understood. And how it was achieved (but that would be artistic, not political).

[doversoul1]

I am inclined to agree with ff that politics are actions but music is abstract. Music can be manipulated or used for political purposes but I can’t see how it can be a form of action in itself. Janacek wrote his piano sonata in protest (at least in response) to the death of a youth during a political event, which can be considered a political action, but without knowing the background, there is nothing to link the music to any deliberate action.

May be S-A could explain with an example or two of actual works, say a Fauré Piano Quintet or a Hayden symphony? In what way are these works political?

[Serial_Apologist]

I am inclined to agree with ff that politics are actions but music is abstract. Music can be manipulated or used for political purposes but I can’t see how it can be a form of action in itself. Janacek wrote his piano sonata in protest (at least in response) to the death of a youth during a political event, which can be considered a political action, but without knowing the background, there is nothing to link the music to any deliberate action.

May be S-A could explain with an example or two of actual works, say a Fauré Piano Quintet or a Hayden symphony? In what way are these works political?

Everything is political insofar as language binds collective memory and enables the past to be understood through developments that subsequently issue from it. Thus music might most securely be said to have arisen as a form of intercommunication which as society got organised eventually assumed a role within it, drawing the community into collective performance and through it acknowledgement of its providing a sense of belonging, gratitude towards and propitiation of the gods for successful harvests.

Later these functions separated out into religious observance with appropriate music, kinship ritual and, later, with further sub-orders of popular song and court music, into music as an aesthetic activity for the more leisured upper classes - each stage marking changes in the political order until we reach the point at which a mercantile caste emerges, later to become the bourgeoisie, which sees itself as master of its own fate and that of the rest of nature, rather than at the latter's divine mercy, and wants new musical forms that champion this self-feting image, replacing static with dynamic narrative-based forms such as the secular opera. A Haydn symphony expresses the orderly image that the class that sponsored composers of the time needed to perpetuate to justify their elevated position in the social order, with its harmonic and tonal scheme satisfactorily resolving in the final bars, not without a good deal of struggle to show the effort in the interim, in the same way that neo-classical architecture and formal landscaped gardens signified symmetry, orderliness and "natural" hierarchy.

Later musical developments, notably Romanticism, arose in part in protest against this neat set-up, along with complacency in the face of the Industrial Revolution's impact on cultures now felt to have been organised in accordance with Natural Law, now under threat. Romanticism mythologised the past and bade full recognition to the Cosmic (if you will) and the detailed, so that under its aesthetic principles it was equally permissible to celebrate the Wonders of Nature in the large (which had tended to frighten the Classicists) as embrace human love, and to draw from and appeal to emotions and encompass conflictual complexities in heightened harmonic tension more demanding of justification in the resolution, even when these facets of the enhanced subjectivity involved manifested in more sublimated form in the songs and chamber musics of composers such as Faure or Brahms. Written composition had already been reflecting new property laws that replaced property in common (or the church) with copyright across the process of origination, tranforming artistic output into autobiography consciously, for the first time - none of which would have been possible without the changed relations of production brought about by industrialism and the political order that maintained the dominance of those at the top.

From all this we can more easily see the inseparability of music and all the arts and crafts from the social and political context of their times, and how, especially as history "speeded up" from the Renaissance onwards, each age has imprinted its character on the continuity of musical development. And we haven't even started considering the role of nationalism in shaping musical identities in 19th century Europe and, later, beyond!

[french frank]

Everything is political insofar as language binds collective memory and enables the past to be understood through developments that subsequently issue from it. [ … ] From all this we can more easily see the inseparability of music and all the arts and crafts from the social and political context of their times …

But I don't think that's what 'people' mean when/if they say (see thread title): "Music has nothing to do with politics."

Your definition ties in with, for example, Marxist critiques of history and literature - but it is A way that some people choose to interpret/understand these subjects (which can result in very interesting insights), usually because it connects with their general political ideology. It doesn't by any means exhaust the subject - but it's the aspect that interests them.

[doversoul1]

S-A
Many, many thanks for answering my question in such details. I find it very interesting in that you have very clearly explained what I understand to be the point of ff’s argument; that music is not inherently political.

What has been composed throughout the history (and may be today of which I have little knowledge, so I’ll leave it out) was the result of political, cultural and social changes and not the cause of the changes. You could still say that something that is a result of a certain political movement or ideology is political. Yes, music can certainly be linked to any particular political idea but if music were inherently political, it would have died away with the original political idea or movement in which it was composed, or would have become a matter of historical interest. More to the point, if music were inherently political, it would mean nothing to the people outside that particular political environment, or in your words, ‘collective memory’. But I think we all know that music ‘speaks’ to people well beyond any particular boundary of a collective memory, which to me is a proof that music is not inherently political.

As for the work in the OP, the composer obviously used the theme, combined with the title to communicate a particular idea / thought, and got a response albeit not what he had hoped, precisely because he used music within one particular set of collective memory. I expect it would have been appreciated simply as music if the work had been premiered, say, in Japan where the theme in question is virtually unknown.

So my point is, music is not inherently political. It needs external elements to become political.

Aren’t we really saying much the same thing?