"Modernism", "Elitism", and "The Working Classes"

[cloughie]

So am I - retired I mean - but I find myself working harder than ever, and only evaporating ever so slightly round the edges as yet.

Yes but you sometimes think that you are blessed with the choice of saying that you can say I don’t have to work if I don’t want to?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm not "proud" as such, but I am very grateful that these days I don't work for anybody else.

[french frank]

I have difficulty with all three terms: what is 'Modernisn'? What particular 'elite(s)'? - ruling/powerful, liberal, intellectual, wealthy? Many people self-identify as 'working class', though for me it is defined by lack of control over one's working life, insecurity. And with cultural and educational implications.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I have difficulty with all three terms: what is 'Modernisn'? What particular 'elite(s)'? - ruling/powerful, liberal, intellectual, wealthy? Many people self-identify as 'working class', though for me it is defined by lack of control over one's working life, insecurity. And with cultural and educational implications.

- that's why I put them in inverted commas in the Thread title. (I nearly added "Intellectualism" and "Obscurantism", too, but thought we'd have enough problems as it was.)

[ahinton]

I have difficulty with all three terms: what is 'Modernisn'? What particular 'elite(s)'? - ruling/powerful, liberal, intellectual, wealthy? Many people self-identify as 'working class', though for me it is defined by lack of control over one's working life, insecurity. And with cultural and educational implications.

Agreed on all counts; so many "isms" exist largely for the purpose of convenient creation of pigeon holes rather than enlightenment; the inverted commas are indeed necessary, methinks.

[Mal]

If the term modernism isn't useful then why is it used all the time? If Stravinsky isn't a modernist then why is he described as such all the time? First sentence in the Stravinsky article in the Rough Guide to Classical Music: "Like his friend Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky became a modernist icon...". On the other hand, although the Oxford Dictionary of Music (2ed.) calls Stravinsky avant-garde it doesn't call him a modernist, and it doesn't define modernism.

[BBMmk2]

Surely a modernist should be contemporary to his time?

[Richard Barrett]

If the term modernism isn't useful then why is it used all the time?

Laziness. At one time it meant something, and it no longer really does; that's an opinion of course, but I hardly think the Rough Guide to Classical Music is going to offer a particularly nuanced view on such a matter (the clue's in the title I think!).

[Pabmusic]

The music is often cited, quite wrongly, as the source of the riot. It was the choreography rather than the music which caused the greater part of the ruckus. When performed as a concert work in London, a fairly short while after the ballet's premiere, it was well received. I have always heard it as greatly influenced by Stravinsky's hero, Tchaikovsky.

The Rite was performed 3 (?) times at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in (?) July 1913. George Butterworth saw it and was impressed by Nijinsky's dancing. It also gave Granville Barker the idea fot his contraversial staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Savoy in 1914, with music by Cecil Sharp and gold-painted statuesque fairies. Butterworth reviewed it for the EFDS but was not impressed, rhough he praised Sharp's contribution.

[greenilex]

It is possible that voluntary work, in spite of the name, is less easy to abandon than paid work...I don’t feel a huge increase in autonomy, no.

And I do think we all work to maintain ourselves and our environment, except possibly when we are on a cruise ship

[vinteuil]

May I humbly suggest that there is only one working class, to which we belong until we stop working and evaporate into thin air.

To be proud of not working is obnoxious.

.... there are some people who get the meaning of their life thro' their work - composers, writers, priests, surgeons, academics, doubtless others.
They are perhaps to be envied.

For most people work is a necessary part of their life in order to have what they want - they don't particularly like it, but recognize the necessity.

I find it very sad that so many people have as their major self-identification "what they do for work" when it's not a vocation. "The dignity of labour" is a con.

I don't think I am "proud" of not working, so I am not sure whether that makes me obnoxious or not.
But I am delighted that I don't have to work : it's why I took Very Early Retirement twenty three years ago.

Here's a good and relevant read -

http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

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[cloughie]

If the term modernism isn't useful then why is it used all the time? If Stravinsky isn't a modernist then why is he described as such all the time? First sentence in the Stravinsky article in the Rough Guide to Classical Music: "Like his friend Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky became a modernist icon...". On the other hand, although the Oxford Dictionary of Music (2ed.) calls Stravinsky avant-garde it doesn't call him a modernist, and it doesn't define modernism.

Is the Rite still modern 105 years on?

[vinteuil]

Is the Rite still modern 105 years on?

... well, 'modernism' ain't 'modern' any more - it's really pretty ancient.

[ Altho' I find 'modernism' sometimes rebarbative and hard work, at least I can take it seriously. 'Post-modernism', now... ]


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[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Is the Rite still modern 105 years on?

I'm willing to bet a whole English pound that it will be more "modern" than any of the commissions performed at this year's Proms.

But the "-ist" suffix implies something different: a box of sugar cubes isn't "Cubist"; if I make a good impression, I'm not (necessarily) and Impressionist etc etc.

[Serial_Apologist]

May I humbly suggest that there is only one working class, to which we belong until we stop working and evaporate into thin air.

To be proud of not working is obnoxious.

Please can we have the other greenilex back?