Music and Its Social Meanings

August 1985 Vol. 46 No. 3
Music and its Social Meanings ("Musicology Series", Vol. 2). By Christopher Ballantine. Pp. xix +202. (Gordon & Breach.) 1984. $29.75.

Recently we had occasion to review a book claiming that the social order is decisively influenced by and depends upon music; now we have the opposite and are told that the latter is a product of the former, and that Beethoven has to be understood in terms of Marxism. Bach is "static", wholly because of feudalism, and Beethoven, no longer "the Voice of God" (Mellers), represents "the bourgeois democratic order" and also, to a certain extent, the Voice of Stalin. Yet Dr. Mellers lends support by writing a laudatory introduction, showing again a characteristic lack of discrimination and of a critical faculty.

It is true, of course, that art comes into being in the context of society, and one must consider both in the context of the spiritual development of man over—in our case—the whole Christian era. But to this development each domain has an entirely different relationship, just as Blake represents something different and opposite to, say, Locke or Adam Smith. On the other hand, capitalism and Darwinism are phenomena of the same order and way of thinking and one can add Marxism for good measure; but Chopin, though contemporary, certainly does not belong to this trend. Romanticism is related to individualism; schizophrenia and much modern art to the social alienation of the individual; "socialist realism" to his extermination by force. The relationship of art to the culture and society as a whole and its life-cycle was expounded on the right (non-Aristotelian) lines by Spengler as part of his aesthetics of history. One can also observe the great cycles of the outer planets and relate all social phenomena to these, in terms of a higher level of understanding of cosmic relationships.

In the book under review we are presented with the lowest possible level of understanding, or non-understanding—that of dialectical materialism and—what is worse—with its characteristic methods of reasoning. These start out from a valid critique of the status quo and thus generate a sympathetic energy in the reader or listener, which is then surreptitiously channeled into the most perverse directions, contradicting the very critique from which we have set out. This confuses the innocent—witness Dr. Mellers. All the right words are used for the wrong purposes. Thus, reference is made to the "ossified mentality" of musicology, to the absence of ideas of value and meaning in musicology, the need to consider everything in relation to the "whole". All very applaudable. Consciousness-Raising or Redemptive Criticism by Jurgen Habermas is cited; but Marxism is anything but consciousness-raising. The author writes of "deceits and rationalizations" used in the service of ideologies—a category that exactly describes his own technique and is a typical piece of "doublethink". "The picture is bleak", he says, and dialectical materialism is even bleaker. . False prophets are worse than entrenched ignorance.

The starting-point of this method is Hegel. The Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz describes in The Captive Mind Hegelianism in practice in enslaved Poland, from thorough first-hand experience as opposed to the arm-chair Marxism of Western bourgeois idealists. Referring to dialectical materialism Russian-style and the influence of Hegelian philosophy, he writes:
Precisely because such an analysis of history comes closer to the truth, it is more dangerous. It gives the illusion of full knowledge; it supplies answers to all questions, answers which merely run around in a circle repeating a few formulas.
Jung had written almost the same thing, describing this method as all the more dangerous as Hegel was a psychologist in disguise who projected great truths out of the subjective sphere into a cosmos he himself had created.

In Jung's view the peculiar high-flown language Hegel uses . . . is reminiscent of the megalomaniac language of schizophrenics, who use terrific spellbinding words to reduce the transcendent to subjective form, to give banalities the charm of novelty, or pass off commonplaces as searching wisdom. This so-called dialectic proceeds by the principle of subtle false analogies, and for that reason it is slippery, devious and difficult to come to grips with. One can use convincing-looking arguments to arrive at pure nihilism.

It is common nowadays to find Beethoven, of all people, associated with Hegel, and it seems fashionable to relate the sonata to Hegelian dialectic. The sonata represents dramatic conflict, yes; dialectic, we are told, is a forward movement through conflict. But the outcome of conflict is not necessarily forward, and if it is we may ask "Where to?". Ballantine would reply: "to the synthesis of opposites". But the mere change of contrasting material (second subject) into the tonic key does not constitute a synthesis, and musical form is not in the first place a matter of key. Even were we to concede a correspondence between Hegelian dialectic and the sonata principle it does not bring us anywhere. Dualism is characteristic of the epoch, and of conflict. Beethoven is a prophet of change. He uses the means at his disposal and stylistically belongs to his epoch; but this is the most superficial aspect only and does not address the inner message or meaning of the music. By slight deflections of facts into the channel of his dogma Ballantine uses sleight of hand; he cites "thematic transformation rather than variation" in his support. But thematic transformation derives from fugue and, except for Beethoven, is most atypical of the sonata period and a denial of sonata duality. Fugue, Ballantine admits, is integration rather than contradiction, and Beethoven himself contradicts Ballantine's line of argument by developing these forms of integration to an ever greater extent and by moving away from sonata duality, which is a stage towards dissociation. "Beethoven's fugues differ from Bach's in that they are dialectical syntheses... This makes it clear that Beethoven's aspirations echo those of Hegel and Marx" (p. 47). Everything is clear to a one-track mind, stuck in the nineteenth century, with not the slightest suspicion of the real revolution now approaching, a revolution in thinking.

The word "classical" is used without any regard to its meaning; conflict is not classical, but stability and integration are. The sixteenth century is the "classical" period of Western culture; the baroque, though influenced by the "Renaissance", retains the same spirit and equilibrium and may be included as "classical". Interpreting the sonata as the reconciliation of opposites is specious; and, in any case, what has, say, the fifth Symphony, or the ninth, or the Razwnovsky Quartets, or almost anything, got to do with such pedantry? In the ninth Symphony's finale "the baritone summons forth a new order": good. But this is in a cosmic context and not a political one. Schiller's ode heralds a new age, the Aquarian, one, it is to be hoped, of universal brotherhood but not of Marxism and dialectical materialism. The sonata period coincides with an increase of rationalism and a loss of spirituality, and sonata form as such corresponds to this trend. Beethoven, however, is the Voice of God and, like Blake, represents the opposite. Ballantine uses the word "spiritual" often, without seeming to know what it means.

We have a particular discussion of the fifth Symphony, from its "doom-laden" first movement to its "triumphant" finale ("triumphant" is one of the favourite clichés of meaningless musicology). But we learn nothing of the reasons for being either "doom-laden" or "triumphant", and it has taken us not an inch further.

Not content with making Beethoven a Marxist, Ballantine drags us through all this again in the essay on Sibelius, who now becomes the target of the same tired, preconceived formulae. In the second Symphony we have a conflict of contradictions, obviously, but we do not need Hegel to perceive them; but contradictions of what if we are not advanced by a centimetre in understanding its meaning. We can see, however, some further contradictions in the author himself, who defines everything in terms of abstractions while praising Marx for making Hegel concrete. His comments on the climax of the second Symphony are very revealing: "the over-long 2nd subject, with its folk-like individuality and Tchaikowsky-like pathos"; "its repetitions gratuitous; its peroration bombastic"; "written to formula"—these betray a total inability to comprehend the point and meaning of the work. To suit the author's dogma, immanent unity, the outstanding characteristic of Sibelian formal and melodic development, is termed "immanent contradiction". The second movement of the third Symphony, one of Sibelius's most powerfully symbolic slow movements, is "one of his slightest movements".

In discussing the fourth Symphony we seem to forget about Hegel and Marx and have "human morality" (Sibelius) confronted with chaos. The analysis here is straightforward as far as it goes and contains little or nothing with which to disagree. But in the fifth Symphony we are back to "dialectic", and after the first movement "the inadequacy of the rest of the work" means, presumably, that the latter is not dialectic enough and, hence, incomprehensible to Marxists (even more than the first movement). Far from comprehending the thematic transformations on which the first movement is built, "the 2nd subject is the 1st subject in the process of contradicting itself. If this is not sophistry then nothing is, and it is a good example of the self-deluding and sterile mentality behind the whole of this book, which belongs on the other side of the iron curtain.

M.McM.