[ad_1]
(Wikipedia Commons)
“Why, after all, should it be ‘pro-test’ and not ‘de-test’? Protest used to mean testifying for something good over something corrupt. “
Editor’s Note: This is intended as a follow-up to the author’s May 18 play “The Two Faces of Classical Music: The Bureaucratic Tyranny of Music Schools”.
Consider this not so much as a continuation of my previous post as a coda, the kind of postscript oh and by the way it is now necessary to append to any statement that is neither orthodox nor politely uncertain. . Although it is no longer safe to say that I think you are protesting too much (because if we have learned anything in the past year, it is that there is no over-protesting. ), one could perhaps say that we suffer from an excess of explanation. A joke isn’t a joke if it needs to be explained, after all. As EB White joked, explaining a joke is a bit like dissecting a frog: you can understand it better, but you kill it in the process. Likewise, an argument is hardly an argument if the argument itself needs to be argued. (You can feel the boredom of it, I think.) Such is the boredom of our society, in which even the lines that separated satire and sincerity have dissolved, as reality becomes more and more absurd as the humor dies the death of a thousand qualifications. .
However, this social obligation to explain is not far from my main topic here. The obligation arises from a new presupposition that all are guilty until an explanation can be given, at which point the explanation becomes relentless proof of guilt. (Invariably, this will be seen as a form of bourgeois explanation.) The formula is as simple as it is impervious: we are all sick, even asymptomatic; we are all bigots even if silent philanthropists. If possible, this is where the protest is indeed too strong. (At this point, Kafka can almost be heard laughing at his typewriter.) Nonetheless, since no one can ever become not guilty or in other words, unlike Yeats, once all hatred is pushed out, the soul cannot not cover up innocence, our mumbling attempt at explanation is our only act of atonement. Like dissections, our explanations serve to expose and critique these corruptions, in ourselves and in our culture.
Good criticism, on the contrary, always arises from a place of love-love for the good, the true and the beautiful.
I have long resolved to never criticize anything for the purpose of destruction. Any fool can say something is wrong; or as my Appalachian ancestors would say, any donkey can knock over a barn. It does not take wisdom, skill, or virtue to destroy. Good criticism, on the contrary, always arises from a place of love-love for the good, the true and the beautiful. Whether such a criticism is directed against a work of art, or even an art institution, it must not intend to demolish but rather identify precisely what is worthy of love. It is only by virtue of this that the critic should expose what is, by contrast, worthy of reprimand. Any destructiveness in such a criticism is therefore only the prudent immolation of slag.
This is by no means my personal philosophy of criticism. This is what criticism has always been meant to be. If one has enough patience to consider the word, one can also realize that the protest itself once had the same meaning. Why, after all, should he be pro-test and not hated? Protest used to mean testifying for something good, against and against something corrupt. Not that we would like to remember. Our amnesia only admits the bad and the ugly. Our protests and criticism are only intended to hate and destroy.
I once read an essay in music criticism to a friend. It was a critical essay, I told him, on Schubert’s chamber works. The essay was brimming with admiration and insight, both musical and philosophical, propelled from below by a life affirming spirit. When I had finished reading and put the book aside, I looked to find my friend apparently puzzled, maybe even confused. For a moment, I assumed she didn’t agree with Schubert’s assessment, and prepared for an all out brawl to defend, if not the bespectacled Austrian, at least his C quintet. major.
She said, Well, that didn’t sound too bad.
Do you think it should have been?
Get Involved Joining us in our mission to help rebuild civic life is open to anyone who believes this is a cause worth pursuing. Learn more at Club MW.
No, I mean, to me Schubert is fantastic, she said. But you said it was a criticism.
This is criticism, I say. Criticism doesn’t necessarily mean something bad.
She didn’t seem convinced yet and picked up the flip book, while I sipped cold coffee and Beach House sounded darkly through loudspeakers somewhere in the ceiling. A moment of perfectly Schubertian irony that the man himself may have appreciated. Perhaps she couldn’t reconcile her associations of the term critical with this shameless reverence of critics. Would this be a criticism? Or perhaps, more fundamentally, she wondered what Schubert himself wondered about der leiermann: if music can offer real meaning, can that meaning be purely good? To think that criticism should be aimed at giving an affirmative answer to such a question seems almost jarring enough to be heresy.
But precisely this kind of criticism had long been the intimate affair of academic scholarship, when universities were portals to the good and the beautiful and all the rest worthy of being loved. Had, that is, until the 20th century, separated truth from meaning and meaning from words, and criticism became synonymous with deconstruction. Now, we assassinate to dissect, and dissect not to understand but to expose the gutted rot which we then non-ironically claim would have been fatal. Language, now, is just a facade hiding power structures, and what use are structures outside of demolition? Whether it is the language of words or the language of music, grammar and syntax are only constructions intended to serve as instruments for the exercise of power. As such, they have no meaning in themselves beyond their correlation with this power, whether it is the power to oppress or the power to liberate.
Nothing, in other words, can be considered for itself, but only for its contribution to the revolution against power. Schubert’s study, like the study of anything, is only useful to the extent that it advances the great project of liberation. (Schubert’s liberation, of course.) We must all become revolutionaries, if we are not to be seen as class enemies. If you don’t do that if you don’t submit every piece of art, statement and sigh to the project, like frogs in dissection, that’s not part of the solution but rather part of the problem. All our priorities must be ordered in this way, a bit like Molotov valued the irresistible virtues of his wife: intelligent, beautiful and above all a great Bolshevik.
It is this totalitarian impulse that demands that everyone participate in the great program of progress, towards some imagined utopia that is hidden just beyond the horizon of the future. Nothing in our culture escapes this power equation. A former professor of music history of mine put it very succinctly during a conference on Berlioz: Art is only the expression of money and power. It is what it is, she said. Considering this, it is no wonder that my friend was stunned to discover what is called the criticism which, far from doing the work of destruction, ultimately had something commendable to say. This kind of criticism, which seeks the good and the beautiful, is not only old-fashioned and irrelevant; it is condemned as an obstacle to progress.
In writing my review of the Cleveland Institute of Music, I did not violate my resolve to never criticize for the purpose of destruction at all. It goes without saying that my six years there were among the richest of my life, and I am very grateful to them. But it must be said that this wealth was, almost entirely, thanks to a few rare professors who corresponded to this model of archaic and irrelevant criticism. They taught purely out of love for their subjects, and their unequivocal brilliance was always tempered by humility. (One of them would often say: My job doesn’t matter. It’s not like I’m doing heart surgery or saving lives. It’s one of their rare statements. which I would eagerly refute.) They have opened up worlds of truth and beauty for me and their other students that we would never have had access to otherwise.
But if they are obstacles to progress, while they preserve the real good and beautiful, then thank God for it.
They are not revolutionaries. They do not wish to see old relics dissected and great monuments overturned. They do not provide the interminable explanations and the thousand qualifications necessary to justify their work on the revolutionary project. Most of the time, they want to take care of their own business. For this reason, I cannot credit their names here (and they would not) as a thank you for the invaluable gift they have given me and countless others. If this were the case, they would be considered enemies of progress, not because they have an unsavory political allegiance, but because they have none. But if they are obstacles to progress, while they preserve the real good and beautiful, then thank God for it. In truth, it means that they are obstacles to destruction.
Here are the two faces of classical music. One is a public face, chin out, proudly walking towards an imaginary future, leaving behind the smoldering remains of all its destroyed obstacles. (It’s the face often seen on posters, with determined eyebrows and bright smiles and a bold red font.) The other face is the one you don’t see. This goes unnoticed because, like the farmers of L’Angélus, he is cast in the shade of the sun, bent in grateful prayer for all that has been given, or otherwise bent in the work. There is no glamor or glory in it, no sign of virtue and no revolutionary thrill. It is the face (history will remember) that will be the soonest despised, the soonest driven into the mud by boots on this great march forward towards progress.
I am begged by the former to join in this march into the future, and to leave the others behind. The second taught me to cherish what has been transmitted and to be grateful. If indeed I have to choose one for my own mask, which one should I wear ?.
Justin Hall is a writer, cellist and host of The Notion Club Podcast. He studied musical performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and his current work explores questions of musicology and philosophy, with a commitment to identifying and celebrating the true, the good and the beautiful.
[ad_2]
picture credit