Does music shape not only our souls but the laws of a nation? Roger Scruton believes so:
We know of music that is good-humoured, lascivious, gentle, bold, chaste, self-indulgent, sentimental, reserved, and generous: and all those words describe moral virtues and vices, which we are as little surprised to find in music as in human beings. Our ways of describing music give incontrovertible proof that we find moral significance in music—and it would be surprising if this were so and we did not also believe that people should be encouraged to listen to some things and discouraged from listening to others. For our characters are shaped by the company we keep, and those who rejoice in the company of crooks and creeps are likely to become crooks or creeps themselves. It is difficult, therefore, to disagree with Plato’s view that music has a central role in education, and that musical education can go badly wrong in ways that impact on the moral development and social responses of young people.
And even if we don’t forbid musical idioms by law, we should remember that people with musical tastes make our laws; and Plato may be right, even in relation to a modern democracy, that changes in musical culture go hand in hand with changes in the laws, since changes in the laws so often reflect pressures from culture. There is no doubt that popular music today enjoys a status higher than any other cultural product. Pop stars are first among celebrities, idolised by the young, taken as role models, courted by politicians, and in general endowed with a magic aura that gives them power over crowds. It is surely likely, therefore, that something of their message will rub off on the laws passed by the politicians who admire them. If the message is sensual, self-centered, and materialistic, then we should not expect to find that our laws address us from any higher realm than that implies.
March 26th, 2010 | 3:12 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by PurpleChrome, Shannon Wake, Tom Bartke, Marcel Duda, Audio Matt and others. Audio Matt said: The Moral Character of Music » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog: We know of music that is good-humoured, lasci… http://bit.ly/a3k3Bz [...]
April 4th, 2010 | 12:57 am
I’ve complained enough about the “moral significance of music” on the pages of First Things, and other places, that I guess it’s become a bit of a cottage industry. Jody and company don’t necessarily agree with what I say but they’ve been generous with giving me a spot to gripe so I’ll impose on their hospitality again take another swing at this business. Roger Scruton’s essay is problematic from top to bottom but my main complaint is with that old business of the “moral character” of music and how it can influence the individual and society. OK, one more time.
Let’s think about it this way: if there were a moral significance in music wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect that folks who liked the most “morally significant music” (whatever that is) to exhibit high morality in their lives, or at least a recognizably higher morality, if just by a bit? Wouldn’t all those moral notes rub off on them? And wouldn’t societies that cultivated “morally significant music” be similarly “moral”? Doesn’t that sound reasonable? Seems so to me.
Ok, how about this list: Versailles under Louis XIV (great music with Lully but let’s revoke the Edict of Nantes, pillage Flanders and the Palatinate and let a couple of thousand labors die digging our garden fountains), Germany under Bismarck (good for Brahms, but not so good for the king of Bavaria—he was probably murdered—and gin up a war to destroy the French and deny Catholics their basic religious rights), and don’t forget the Nazi’s with all of their magnificent musicians and orchestras (sometimes even the Jews in the camps got to play Mozart for the edification of their Aryan masters).
One more: Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during World War II (was it all the wonderful string quartets being played in the village that convinced those Huguenots to save the lives of as many as five thousand Jews?).
And in our own lives, are the finest people we know, the most generous, humble, meek, the greatest lovers of peace—are they united by their enthusiasm for “morally significant music?” And are our villains characterized by their aesthetic stupidity? How about this list? Mother Theresa, great taste in music? Did she prefer the late Beethoven quartets to Mozart’s juvenile symphonies? How was she with the text settings of Marenzio? Did she like Schubert’s or Loewe’s setting of “Erlkoenig” better? Did she find herself edified by the compositional purity of Webern’s Opus 23 Variations for Piano or did she prefer a bit of Mantovani? Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, how many Bach cantatas did he know and did he have the good taste to find the cello suites aesthetically superior? And did all the enthusiasm William F. Buckley Jr. had for Bach keep him from being a complete cad in regards to his grandson Jonathan, who Buckley mentioned in his will as “who for all purposes . . . shall be deemed to have predeceased me”? (Nope.)
It’s all absurd. Great lives, miserable lives, just ordinary lives, civilizations that bring blessings and civilizations that are unending curses, there is no clear link between all of that and music—the business of tuning systems, forms, instruments, and loud or soft notes. Great music doesn’t necessarily to lead to great lives and lousy music doesn’t necessarily produce lives of self-consumed misery. It just isn’t true.
Let me be bluntly personal. I can write music that, if you’re already in the right frame of mind and understand the language of Western Classical music and are of a particular taste, can excite you a bit, or titillate you, make you a bit melancholy, or bring a tear to your eye as you think about your deepest religious convictions (at least if those convictions are Christian), but–by itself–the music can not make you a better person, the notes cannot improve you character.
Why do I keep hammering this? One reason of course is because I think the notion is absurd. But another reason is this: If music can do what Plato and all his train claim it can do—and it’s stuff that only music can do, not poetry, architecture, painting, furniture making, potting, or even essays by philosophers–then it’s my responsibility, and the responsibility of all composers, to write music that saves the world. But I can’t do that. I can’t write music that makes me a better person, that saves me. And if I can’t do that for myself, how can I do it for you? Or Pakistan?
Right. It sounds like a Monty Python skit: composer brings peace to the Middle East through four measures of flute music in D Major. And we’re back to absurd.
But there was one composer who saw himself to be up to Plato’s challenge, who really believed that both individual and societal transformation could be accomplished through performances of music. Stockhausen believed that he was transported to earth from a planet orbiting the star Sirius for the purpose of giving voice to a cosmic music that once completely adopted by all the earth beings would transform the planet and usher in an age of peace across the universe as earthlings were finally able to communicate as star children with their loving Siriusian creators. Not any music would accomplish this task, only Stockhausen’s, which made for a great pitch to foundations and European arts agencies: cosmic peace through music (such as a double quartet for strings and four helicopters).
Yep, it’s absurd.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact