Ordering life experience

 

Music – art music - is stylized psychology, in the sense of offering an experience in sound of life experience, in terms of metaphor. It is not about the ‘what’, but about the ‘how’, and not merely as a reflection of experience, but organised, structured according to organising laws which are absent in the pure processing of direct emotional stimuli. This is the reason why music, written long ago, is still accessible to contemporary listeners, from different times and different places and cultures. Music addresses a perceptive framework deeply embedded in the human psyche, on a level where emotional stimuli are ordered and thus given meaning, even if this meaning is impossible to pin down.

But how does this work in practice? Let us take an example, and why not a very popular and great work: the Second Piano Concerto of Brahms – and have a look to the impressive first movement.

The material consists of two different types: the first one in major, announced by the horn theme with which the piece begins, with the character of a positive, welcoming question, vaguely invoking ‘nature’, as a tender voice from afar beckoning the listener into its sphere. The theme is worked-out in a way which suggests some trouble to come, like a positive, optimistic mood sometimes being undermined by something like premonition. The second type, following the first, is different: an intense, stormy group of themes and motives depicting conflict and downright despair in its wandering harmonies and insistent phrasing - darkness has descended. What follows, is an extensive ‘discourse’ of conflict and worry, and when the tumult dies down in a cloud of shimmering vagueness, the horn theme from the beginning rises above the mist, as a sun after a bad night. The return of the first material after the turmoil solves the conflicts and shows the overcoming of despair. But after that, the second material returns as well, as if the music wants to make sure it is not forgotten. But now, this material appears in the context of solution, which gives it a different meaning: yes, the darkness is still there, but it has been integrated within a context of meaning and overcoming. Again, the music dissolves in a desintegrating cloud and the first theme rises again, as a reassurance. And the rest is an insistent confirmation of the overcoming of darkness and despair, concluding in the major.

It is in this way that music orders emotional experience, without suppressing negative emotions, but overcoming their destructive effects and giving them a meaningful place in the context of the whole. It is a psychological process of integration. This reflects a development of inner growth, a way of coping with negativity, without denying its impacts, but offering a way of dealing with them in a constructive way.

This is a quite Jungian way of looking at classical music, but has the composer meant it as such? After all, the return of the second material is also simply a requirement of classical form: first, an exposition with two contrasting material types, followed by a develoment section, followed by a recapitulation with again the two types of material. So, the ‘overcoming’ is also determined by an aesthetic formula. But the original classical structure of this form (the ‘sonata allegro’) is defined by the relationships of keys: in the exposition two different keys are established, and after the development section, both material types of the exposition return, but now all in the original key of the beginning. So, this ‘overcoming’, this symbolic synthesis, is already embedded in the key structure of the original aesthetic idea. This way of exploring difference and, at the end, harmonizing the differences, is a deeply psychological feature, stemming from the idea that in life experience and human development, harmony and balance should be the goal. Hence the term ‘classicism’, with deep cultural roots in the culture of the ancient Greeks.

Of course there are many different ways to achieve such harmony in form and meaning, but the idea of an ordering balance of forces and expressions remains an inexhaustable source of inspiration and psychological meaning. Brahms, who had a profound relationship with classicism – taking as his examples the icons of classical music: Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, plus more contemporary sources like Schumann and Chopin – struggled to get different life experiences synthesized in his music, and the rightfully famous Second Piano Concerto is one of the greatest testimonies of his power to achieve such synthesis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qgzQBr6uC4

The Great Awokening

'Woke': American slang for being aware of social injustice, a perfectly legitimate need, always present in any society. But where morally-driven action flips into the clinical insane, it turns into the opposite of its original intentions. 

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Over the last years the musical world has been confronted by pressures from society to be involved in its reforms, instead of ‘keeping windows and doors shut to the reality outside’. These pressures are mainly directed towards the symphony orchestras, because of their prominent visibility and expensive upkeep, and their seeming role of being a ‘cultural identity tool’ of the well-to-do bourgeoisie, the social class which is supposed to happily escape the setbacks that groups lower on the economic ladder have to suffer. Somehow this is seen as ‘unfair’ and ‘elitist’, and the orchestra is suspected of having to thank its ‘privilege’ over the backs of the downtrodden, and offering nothing more than decadent chique entertainment for the powers that rule. In short: a useless luxury which is immoral in difficult times while so many people have so many serious problems to worry about. This is the fallacy of zero-sum thinking, ‘your happiness has only been possible because of my misery’.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking

The tendency of many orchestras in the Western world to try to make themselves ‘useful’ to society, by way of atonement, to become instruments of social change, is one of the results from the decreasing status of classical music as a whole, and especially of the expensive medium that the symphony orchestra is. Justification of the costs has now to be found in some form of utility that lies outside music because music as such becomes ‘much too difficult’ to see as something socially relevant. In a time when the notion of culture, and of psychological and spiritual themes, is eroding, only the material and the financial aspects of life appear to be visible, and especially social injustices because they are understandable by most people on the most basic level.

So, in an attempt to survive in an environment that seems to increasingly become hostile, where classical music is seen by large groups as 'white suprematist', 'elitist', 'inaccessible', 'outdated', 'irrelevant to the modern world', a number of people at symphony orchestras think it necessary to turn away from the idea that classical music is something worthwhile in itself and accessible to anyone. Unfortunately, subjecting the art form to strategies that look like social engineering, fails to produce the wished results and merely adds to the feeling that this medium is hopelessly disconnected from the world ‘as it really is’. Why is the orchestra so powerless to effectively intervene in society’s ills? Because the symphony orchestra simply is not the right instrument to produce social change in a direct way.

The discussion in the USA about racism has spoiled into the world of classical music as well, with accusations of racism being deeply embedded in its repertoire and in its academic surrounding structures, where a ‘canon’ of superiority is upheld, excluding works by non-white composers. In short: classical music is a symbol of ‘white suprematism’.

It goes without saying that it is a good idea to look for underestimated or ignored music – underestimated or ignored unfairly for whatever reasons - to bring variety and novelty to programming. But the reason that there is no single non-white pre-20C composer of the level of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler etc. is not because non-white composers were suppressed, or were ‘genetically’ less gifted, but because the mentioned composers who hold a central place in the repertoire were one-off geniusses in a period and area where white people were in an overwhelming majority. Statistically it is for that reason entirely natural that these composers were white, and this aspect has nothing to do with racism.

If there has been a non-white composer of genius level whose works have been suppressed, it is the task of musicology to do historical research, but the chances that such a composer will be found are minimal, because non-white composers were in an absolute minority – and probably for unfair reasons. This does not mean that the handful of composing geniusses whose works survived the times, were the product of racist privilege - their ‘whiteness’ simply represented social conditions which were not of their making.

More serious, because of being even more nonsensical, is the tendency to ‘decolonize classical music’, i.e. to look at the repertoire, its concert practice, and its educational structures in academia as representing the art form as a product of a colonizing society and therefore tinted by association, and its status as a whole being based upon grave injustice elsewhere – the fallacy of zero-sum thinking again. The ‘argument’ mostly goes as follows: ‘19^th-century musical works are the products of an imperial, colonizing society; therefore, the existing repertoire with its canon has to be decolonized’. With ‘decolonizing’ is meant: replace existing repertoire by music by unfairly suppressed composers belonging to an ethnic minority or who were women, and making sure that orchestras, opera houses, and any musical institution including conservatories and music faculties at universities contain a quotum of ‘minority people’, preferably of black ethnicity. It goes without saying that discrimination of any kind is something to be fought against in the whole of society, but that has nothing to do with classical music as such, so the idea that classical music is representing an immoral view of society is insane. And as for the repertoire: that the composers of the existing repertoire had not the slightest responsibility for the society they were born into, or for its national policies, is a simple fact that is happily overlooked. And the only composer who had strong political views: Richard Wagner, saw his political ideas entirely ignored by his patron King Ludwig and by Chanceler Bismarck, both of whom he tried in vain to interest in his ideas on nationhood and the ‘danger of Jewry’.

It is regrettable, to put it politely, that the focus of social resentment and revenge is so often directed towards the medium which is seen as representing classical music as a symbol of society: the symphony orchestra. The idea that an orchestra is not, or less, relevant to society if it is not directly connected to the needs of social change, is entirely wrong. Classical music is not an utility instrument, it is an art form which has no other ‘use‘ than being itself, and as such it is very usefull and effective to enhance the listeners‘ inner life. In a world where so much is measured for its utility, it is the arts who offer an island where the value of a psychological and spiritual experience can be found in itself, as itself, and not in relation to some ulterior motive.

However, the influence of classical music on the development of the inner life does have effects ‘in real life’ but indirectly, because of contributing to people’s development as a personality. When there is more awareness of what happens in the interior realm, people may come to think differently, to evaluate differently, to act differently, and to react differently to stimuli coming from the outside world; the influence of classical music is psychological and will only have an effect on the interior life over a certain stretch of time, through regular exposure and accumulating experience. This means that symphony orchestras should simply stop engaging in social justice community projects which aim at fighting social ills, and replace them by educational projects about classical music itself, if possible in the context of local education on every level, accompanied with information and explications which point towards the nature of interiority of the music and the nature of the human psyche which needs this cultivation of interior experience.

(From: 'Saving the Muse; regaining the relevance of classical music in a troubled world' - JB); to be published later in the year or in 2023)