BOOKS: Classical voices
Who Needs Classical Music? by Julian Johnson
BOOK: Julian Johnson, Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value [OUP, pp. 150, £18.99]
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CD: John Hawkins, Voices from the Sea and other pieces [Meridian, CDE 84496, £11.75]
Theory
Somewhere in his correspondence, Felix Mendelssohn notes that music certainly has meaning; however, were that meaning capable of being put into words, it would be better to create a piece of prose or poetry.
This comment is not merely a piece of Romantic smart-assery. Mendelssohn and those in his circle, whether or not they were professional musicians, were raised within a culture in which understanding of the discourse and rhetoric of music was a normal social accomplishment, as indeed was a comprehension of the elements of pictorial art and poetry. Music ‘spoke’ — not merely privately to each hearer, but conveying similar, if verbally indefinable, emotion and intelligence to all. Beethoven passed on to this generation a set of values and passions through his music at least as eloquently as Goethe did through verbal language. Such an acceptance of ‘the language of music’ — or at least a version of it — spread out through bourgeois society at least throughout the nineteenth century, where every home had a piano and at least one pianist. It is not coincidental that this generation, and Mendelssohn himself foremost within it, created the canon of ‘classical music’ which has remained a major feature of the concepts of the Western cultural tradition ever since (and with remarkable little alteration).
But inevitably as this tradition diffused, it became debased — for to maintain its original principles necessitates some effort of intellect and application, and man is weak. Music has perhaps suffered more than the other arts, for ‘classical music’ (straightforwardly defined by Johnson for his purposes as ‘music that functions as art’) requires not only some comprehension, active or passive, of its rhetoric, but it is highly demanding of that precious commodity, time. Art music unfolds though time and cannot be properly apprehended unless the auditor pays attention through its period. We can at least pretend to admire pictorial art strolling through a gallery and giving each canvas no more attention than a postcard. There is no parallel facility for speed-ingesting music.
‘Classical music’ as a leisure activity has, therefore, as with the other arts, been gradually supplanted by less demanding alternatives. An increasingly pressurised and materialist world has preferred to exalt the body rather than the intellect and the arts have become dumbed-down as a set of commodities in a competitive leisure economy — not only by commercial pressures but indeed with the connivance of the state (the very title of the ‘Department of Culture, Media and Sport’ says it all). Commercial music — whether hip-hop or Classical FM — gives us unprovocative snippets whose packaging predisposes our responses without our having to think about them. Elements of art music can indeed be reified to suit these packages — a slow movement here (‘smooth classics’) or a tootly baroque concerto there. Initiatives to attract audiences, in an era where no one would dare extol any virtue in the work of dead white males, operate on the basis of debasing the repertoire. Today an acceptance of art music in its own terms, as Mendelssohn took for granted, is an option available only to the few who have had the advantage through their schools or families of an induction to almost extinct cultural values — and that in itself threatens disaster, for in today’s ignorant, mean and envious world, every intellectual minority is of course by definition ‘elitist’, part of those forces of conservatism that are to be sought out and destroyed.
The desolate remains of the once mighty domain of art music are surveyed by Julian Johnson in Who Needs Classical Music? His analysis is thorough, and depressing even to one who has been a Conservative party member over recent years. Having made his case for art music he is almost exasperatingly relentless in his elaboration of why this case is difficult, if not hopeless, to plead. He has however made things as difficult as he can for himself by the density of the principal arguments he chooses to deliver for the defence. These are, in essence, an unusual blend of classic liberal democracy and Schopenhauerian metaphysics. The rhetoric underlying the structure and expression of classical music is seen as embodying the ideas of individuality and association which inform modern progressive social ideas; the experience of such music, both by individuals and by larger audiences, is the transmission to the mind of a ‘software’ which can both contextualise individual values, and connect to a sense of transcendent values beyond everyday experience. Classical music is good for you, that is, not because of extraneous arguments about Culture or a Great Tradition, but because it is in its very essence an embodiment of Good, an intellectual paraphrase of an ideal relation between the individual and Society.
As it happens I have a certain intuitive sympathy for such ideas, but I would not hold out much hope for them being taken on board by anyone with any influence in arts policy or musical education. If Johnson wants to change public thinking on such issues, his own analysis will tell him that philosophical elucubration is not the way to do it. The sense of despair that is attached to his book must partly result from the way in which, in modern Britain, it is difficult even to discern where even to insert a lever that can have a chance of affecting public opinion on issues like these. It may be of course that this book has some purpose in giving comfort to others who feel like Johnson, by letting them know that they are not alone. We can all whinge together, knowing at least that we are tending the sacred flame, and giving it some chance of surviving this Dark Age.
Praxis
There are those however, fortunately, who are willing to brave the storm by flaunting their values by relentlessly performing, or even creating, art music. The latter especially strikes me as an extremely lonely route. The chances of obtaining a public hearing, unless one is prepared to write the sort of feng shuei tat that is sometimes offered on Classic FM, or is one of the few favoured at Radio 3, are remote indeed. But the recent very engaging recording of works by the composer John Hawkins shows that the tradition shamelessly lives on.
Hawkins is a student of Elizabeth Lutyens and writes in the English lyrical tradition. The principal work on this disc, his cantata for tenor and string orchestra ‘Voices From the Sea’, (a recording made at its premiere in 1985) immediately displays the composer’s heritage, but also a fine sense of structure and a mind and ear both confident and sensitive. ‘Voices’ is the second part of a trilogy, the first of which was a Sea Symphony commissioned by the Marine Society, who sent the composer for a month on a container ship to Australia for background — a heavy price perhaps to pay for art, but the convincing rendition in ‘Voices’ by the orchestra of every variety of light at sea proves that is was one well worth paying. The composer has been hampered by the clunkiness of the words in some of the six poems he has set — (they were amongst the winners in a poetry competition) — it is noticeable, and understandable, that it is the most ‘poetic’ texts which have enabled the most expressive vocal line; but they are all perfectly sung by Martyn Hill.
The other pieces on the disc, a broad selection of more recent chamber music, are no less attractive. I was particularly drawn to what is superficially the most abstract, a set of eight variations on a theme for piano, whose intelligence, humour and variety made me want to have a go at playing it — surely the ultimate test for contemporary art music. Quirkiness is also evident in an extended Tango for viola and double bass and a progressively anguished sequence of lullabies ‘Disturbed Nights’, for solo oboe. But Hawkins’s rhapsodic side is well displayed in the extended ‘Worlds Apart’ for double bass and piano and in the ‘Quietus’ for string trio written in memory of a friend.
That ‘Voices’ has waited eighteen years for a published recording shows that the composer’s first requirement today must be patience; that it, and the other pieces, have been published at all is in itself remarkable. This music will never conquer large, let alone mass, audiences. It is what it is — the essence of ‘classical music’ in Johnson’s concept — intelligent, heartfelt, often beautiful communication. It may not, as such, be ‘needed’ by anybody — but a society in which no-one bothered to make such statements would not be worth living in. We can agree with Johnson, then, that society itself needs classical music; and Hawkins, like other creative artists, reminds those of us who believe that cultural standards are important for society that all is not yet lost.
Allen Buchler is ERO’s music correspondent, and evidently woke up on the gratifyingly reactionary side of the bed this morning.
Allen Buchler, August 27, 2003 01:46 PM