"Maximum Clarity" and Other Writings on Music

Art and Survival

art and survival 1971 The aims of avant-garde art show themselves in large part destructive: happily so, to be sure, but quite ruthlessly so. It is important that destruction not proceed indiscriminately, as well. Most musical concerts are, without any need to parody them, a form of anti-art. Nevertheless, if concerts are to be destroyed, what then will be the occasions when we listen to music? On records and tapes only? In concerts which have become theater occasions? Solely in historical museums? Some music is enhanced by the impersonal formality of conventional concerts, but much of it is stultified by this environment. Always to have such concert customs creates a stifling atmosphere which audiences may accept but which frequently bores them. Harry Partch’s “corporealism” is a protest against the dehumanizing abstraction of the concert occasion. So, in its own time, was Franz Liszt’s virtuosity ; and so also, in a much different social context, is Nam June Paik’s reassertion of sex in concert music. Formality is not the only trap into which concert giving can fall, however. The utter informality of certain avant-garde concerts, with people constantly entering and exiting, talking out loud, eating food, and rattling paper, can destroy utterly everyone’s ability to attend to any music which takes close and active listening. Obviously this custom, too, as an a priori condition for concerts, is severely limiting. The tyranny of the traditional concert could only too easily give way to a new tyranny of opposite aesthetic persuasion. Revolutions are well known to be followed frequently by dictatorships, no matter what the contradiction of explicit revolutionary ideals. For better or worse,we are in the midst of profound changes in our musical customs. One of the principal causes is technology, which is altering music from the ground up. There is far more electronic music today than any other kind if you include in the term phonograph and tape reproductions.This state of affairs has an adverse effect upon established customs of concertgoing. In addition, through mass media, the arts now reach millions of people, in sharp contrast to the aristocratic status quo of earlier times. This changes utterly the nature, the aims, the techniques of the arts. In most record companies the pop,rock,and other mass-consumed music support the “serious” music as a kind of prestige item. This has long been the case with music publishers. ASCAP and BMI have to operate on this basis. The tradition of American public school music education up to now divides itself between a parade- and football-oriented band program and sundry adapted varieties of traditional concert music. Faced with the increasing self-assertion of youth and with the spectacular commercial success of youth music, which far outdoes any of the concert or educational varieties in popularity, some educators are playing with the idea that such music might make a superior basis for public school music programs. Since the performance training provided in public school music programs is a large part of the foundation of almost all advanced musical study in the United States, such a policy would precipitate a major shift in our artistic life. When you consider also the economic straits in which nearly all United States symphony orchestras and opera companies find themselves today,it is evident that we are approaching a crisis in the musical life of our country. We are rapidly approaching a time when those who value the artistic traditions of the past must search for a mutation of these which can survive in the changed conditions of contemporary life. Technology is trying to enable us to survive, if possible even to thrive in the face of overpopulation and its attendant mass culture. If the arts are to help us to maintain sensitivity and alertness of perception in these circumstances, they will need a great deal of help from all who understand what art is. It has been pointed out by many philosophers that the arts are potent means for emotional education. No kind of education is more widely or more disastrously neglected today. Meaninglessness, lack of beauty, aimlessness ,and boredom are as great causes of suffering as are hunger,disease,and exposure. The role of these and similar emotional factors in causing delinquency and mental illness is basic. The poor have no monopoly upon these ills. It is well known that the incidence of delinquency and mental illness in affluent segments of society is very high. Much of the...