(Those who are receiving this article by email or viewing it on Substack: please note that the voiceover includes all the musical excerpts, cut to the right length [and believe me, that’s particularly important for THIS composer], and so will doubtless prove a more enjoyable way of engaging with this content!
Not sure I can "like" this, nor can I listen to the music in case it gives me nightmares! I had to endure studying it many years ago and this, along with Shenkerian analysis, are the stuff of sleepless nights. But you make some good points here. For me, the atonal stuff of the 20th century embodies the spiritual desert of the modern world. Give me Gregorian chant any day.
I couldn't agree more. As a young composition student I never could quite understand what people saw in atonal (especially dodecaphonic) music. On the other hand, I have long wondered about the appeal of non-harmonic sounds, such as the overtones of bells, and especially the exquisite music of the Javanese gamelan, which I spent some years studying. Non only do most of the instruments, consisting of bronze gongs and slabs, produce non-harmonic overtones, each set of instruments (that is, each gamelan) has its own unique tuning. Tuning is an aesthetic variable. So here is a refined and sophisticated system of music in which you will rarely hear what we in the West call "consonance" and yet it is thoroughly human, full of soul, and, in my experience, is capable of providing access to something approximating the divine. I once had a recording playing when a roommate, a horn player, who had never heard Javanese music before, came in. His response: "It sounds like I've died and gone to heaven."
Yes, I quite agree - the non-Western musics are obviously very different but they breathe the same humanity, naturalness, and richness that we in the West have obtained from our instruments and voices. When I first got into classical music I enjoyed listening to the now-forgotten Canadian composer Colin McPhee, whose "Tabuh Tabuhan" was written after 4 years in Bali. (Performance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lJlK27oOak)
I've also enjoyed some of John Cage's more serious works. I actually love modern composers if they are not simply assaulting my ears with noise or ugliness.
Thank you for this excellent piece. I studied violin performance at conservatory, and one primary motive for doing graduate work in Historical Performance Practice (baroque violin) was that I'd never again have to play twelve tone "music"!
Reminds me of something I wrote once about decimals having no soul; spawned by the dropping of fractional prices on the NYSE in favor of decimals, as experienced by the son of a man whose main tools were a tape measure and a hammer.
I gave it the hour to listen, despite my hesitations, and I believe anyone who takes in the music along with the fascinating analysis will be richly rewarded.
In the golden calf selection I indeed heard the brutality, yes, the consequence of our seeking anything other than a God-ordered liberty. There was maybe also a hint in the frayed tonality, of the instruments yielding animalistic sounds. And perhaps shrill mockery.
Your words trace, very accessibly, with respect to music and culture, how the utter abandonment of final and formal causality has led to all manner of extremes in anthropology. Isn’t that at the root of today’s moral and cultural crises? So now I’m wondering if you’ve made anywhere, or would consider making, a more sustained apologia for moderate realism, and a Thomistic anthropology…with reference to human pursuits—including music. You know, in order to more fully complement your extensive works on the Mass.
It is true, we need the Mass first and foremost. But I think we’ve sadly already lost the culture on anthropology. That is unfolding in some very dark ways now in Europe, and the US isn’t far behind. You are helping readers not to lose our minds as well, in posts like this one at Tradition and Sanity. Just wondering, love the piece, looking forward to more.
Tremendous analysis, as usual! With clarity of hindsight it's so obvious how these developments were simply the implementation in the musical art of "the Revolution" that had been spreading for a few centuries through society -- the willful attempt to separate man's earthly existence from his origin from and dependence upon God (if that were possible). Of course, that's probably why such explosions of error last for only those 70 years you describe - for the generation in which it originates, the next generation that was raised in it and tried to "better" it, but then in the third generation the "forces of nature" begin to restore order as the "novelty" of the error wanes.
And the "nightmare world" comparison, along with the toddler's mix of *all* colors, is exquisitely on point. Whenever I listen to this music, it has always <provokes> an immediate sense of confusion and anxiety; there is absolutely nothing in it of the "beauty" its advocates gush about, just as with the emperor's new "clothes". It never <evokes> the "peace" that Furtwangler describes.
And while this is all very easy for me to say from my wheeled office chair, yet it seems inescapable to deduce that, besides the general "revolutionary" loss and repudiation of God in the musical art at the time, there was also an increasing (for long time, for sure) loss of <purpose> for composers. Obviously if one can write a beautiful opera or symphony for the concert hall, bravo; but at Schoenberg's time things had come to such a pass as far as "art for art's sake", that he was finding himself "justified" dreaming up such nightmares "out of the blue", as it were, and to what end?? To write music for the Mass, to fulfill the needs of the household of one's patron, to provide music for the dance or the drama -- these are <purposes>; what Schoenberg and company did was little more than the artistic ravings of a very <enabled> and unbalanced mind, as you say.
Thank you, Tom, for these wonderful reflections. I am very convinced, with Thomas Storck, that "art for art's sake" is a highly pernicious error. All the greatest accomplishments of fine art (taking this as broadly as possible: music, dance, poetry, drama, sculpture, painting, architecture) over the millennia were produced for something outside of themselves: for the city, the temple, the aristocrat, the village festival. Always they are in service of a greater vision of God, the cosmos, human happiness. Once they become a solitary "genius's" effusions, made into the void for whatever other lonely beings might care, there is a divorce between artistry and society, between creativity and civilization, that can have only disastrous consequences as time goes on.
<< I was impressed by what you said about Schoenberg blaming the expressive inadequacy of atonality on tonality itself. It rather reminded me of how the bien-pensants blame the patriarchy for sexual violence, when it's actually the evisceration of patriarchy that begets deviance. If men are not leaders and women are not mothers, then women will be whores and men whoremongers. It’s as simple as that. The parallel with the musical avant-garde is interesting: liberate music from the natural authority of tonality, and you’re left with ugliness and despair. >>
There was a flashed notice that said unable to load audio file on my iPad. Only wanted to mention this in case I’m not the only one. Great topic. I loathe dissonant compositions usually and it really piqued my interest. Ty!
Not sure I can "like" this, nor can I listen to the music in case it gives me nightmares! I had to endure studying it many years ago and this, along with Shenkerian analysis, are the stuff of sleepless nights. But you make some good points here. For me, the atonal stuff of the 20th century embodies the spiritual desert of the modern world. Give me Gregorian chant any day.
I couldn't agree more. As a young composition student I never could quite understand what people saw in atonal (especially dodecaphonic) music. On the other hand, I have long wondered about the appeal of non-harmonic sounds, such as the overtones of bells, and especially the exquisite music of the Javanese gamelan, which I spent some years studying. Non only do most of the instruments, consisting of bronze gongs and slabs, produce non-harmonic overtones, each set of instruments (that is, each gamelan) has its own unique tuning. Tuning is an aesthetic variable. So here is a refined and sophisticated system of music in which you will rarely hear what we in the West call "consonance" and yet it is thoroughly human, full of soul, and, in my experience, is capable of providing access to something approximating the divine. I once had a recording playing when a roommate, a horn player, who had never heard Javanese music before, came in. His response: "It sounds like I've died and gone to heaven."
Yes, I quite agree - the non-Western musics are obviously very different but they breathe the same humanity, naturalness, and richness that we in the West have obtained from our instruments and voices. When I first got into classical music I enjoyed listening to the now-forgotten Canadian composer Colin McPhee, whose "Tabuh Tabuhan" was written after 4 years in Bali. (Performance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lJlK27oOak)
I've also enjoyed some of John Cage's more serious works. I actually love modern composers if they are not simply assaulting my ears with noise or ugliness.
Thank you for this excellent piece. I studied violin performance at conservatory, and one primary motive for doing graduate work in Historical Performance Practice (baroque violin) was that I'd never again have to play twelve tone "music"!
Well. That was perfectly penitential for an Ember Friday. Thank you!
Ha! Yes!
Reminds me of something I wrote once about decimals having no soul; spawned by the dropping of fractional prices on the NYSE in favor of decimals, as experienced by the son of a man whose main tools were a tape measure and a hammer.
I gave it the hour to listen, despite my hesitations, and I believe anyone who takes in the music along with the fascinating analysis will be richly rewarded.
In the golden calf selection I indeed heard the brutality, yes, the consequence of our seeking anything other than a God-ordered liberty. There was maybe also a hint in the frayed tonality, of the instruments yielding animalistic sounds. And perhaps shrill mockery.
Your words trace, very accessibly, with respect to music and culture, how the utter abandonment of final and formal causality has led to all manner of extremes in anthropology. Isn’t that at the root of today’s moral and cultural crises? So now I’m wondering if you’ve made anywhere, or would consider making, a more sustained apologia for moderate realism, and a Thomistic anthropology…with reference to human pursuits—including music. You know, in order to more fully complement your extensive works on the Mass.
It is true, we need the Mass first and foremost. But I think we’ve sadly already lost the culture on anthropology. That is unfolding in some very dark ways now in Europe, and the US isn’t far behind. You are helping readers not to lose our minds as well, in posts like this one at Tradition and Sanity. Just wondering, love the piece, looking forward to more.
Where there’s tonality, there’s hope!
Others have done the defense of Thomistic anthropology and moderate realism better than I could: Garrigou-Lagrange, Wilhelmsen, Pieper...
However, you might enjoy my book on St Thomas's doctrine of love, which happens to be on sale at Amazon at the moment:
https://www.amazon.com/Ecstasy-Love-Thought-Thomas-Aquinas/dp/1645851044
Tremendous analysis, as usual! With clarity of hindsight it's so obvious how these developments were simply the implementation in the musical art of "the Revolution" that had been spreading for a few centuries through society -- the willful attempt to separate man's earthly existence from his origin from and dependence upon God (if that were possible). Of course, that's probably why such explosions of error last for only those 70 years you describe - for the generation in which it originates, the next generation that was raised in it and tried to "better" it, but then in the third generation the "forces of nature" begin to restore order as the "novelty" of the error wanes.
And the "nightmare world" comparison, along with the toddler's mix of *all* colors, is exquisitely on point. Whenever I listen to this music, it has always <provokes> an immediate sense of confusion and anxiety; there is absolutely nothing in it of the "beauty" its advocates gush about, just as with the emperor's new "clothes". It never <evokes> the "peace" that Furtwangler describes.
And while this is all very easy for me to say from my wheeled office chair, yet it seems inescapable to deduce that, besides the general "revolutionary" loss and repudiation of God in the musical art at the time, there was also an increasing (for long time, for sure) loss of <purpose> for composers. Obviously if one can write a beautiful opera or symphony for the concert hall, bravo; but at Schoenberg's time things had come to such a pass as far as "art for art's sake", that he was finding himself "justified" dreaming up such nightmares "out of the blue", as it were, and to what end?? To write music for the Mass, to fulfill the needs of the household of one's patron, to provide music for the dance or the drama -- these are <purposes>; what Schoenberg and company did was little more than the artistic ravings of a very <enabled> and unbalanced mind, as you say.
Thank you, Tom, for these wonderful reflections. I am very convinced, with Thomas Storck, that "art for art's sake" is a highly pernicious error. All the greatest accomplishments of fine art (taking this as broadly as possible: music, dance, poetry, drama, sculpture, painting, architecture) over the millennia were produced for something outside of themselves: for the city, the temple, the aristocrat, the village festival. Always they are in service of a greater vision of God, the cosmos, human happiness. Once they become a solitary "genius's" effusions, made into the void for whatever other lonely beings might care, there is a divorce between artistry and society, between creativity and civilization, that can have only disastrous consequences as time goes on.
A friend wrote to me:
<< I was impressed by what you said about Schoenberg blaming the expressive inadequacy of atonality on tonality itself. It rather reminded me of how the bien-pensants blame the patriarchy for sexual violence, when it's actually the evisceration of patriarchy that begets deviance. If men are not leaders and women are not mothers, then women will be whores and men whoremongers. It’s as simple as that. The parallel with the musical avant-garde is interesting: liberate music from the natural authority of tonality, and you’re left with ugliness and despair. >>
I am unable to load the audio file. I have tried a few things to retrieve it, but no success.
I'm sorry to hear this! I just went to the article and press "play," and heard the sound.
I would restart or refresh and try again.
There was a flashed notice that said unable to load audio file on my iPad. Only wanted to mention this in case I’m not the only one. Great topic. I loathe dissonant compositions usually and it really piqued my interest. Ty!