Is Tchaikovsky an 18th Century Composer?
From tchaikovsky-research.orgSome comments concerning my rereading of Richard Taruskin’s chapter “Tchaikovsky and the Human” from his book Defining Russia Musically. Taruskin’s contention is that Tchaikovsky’s explicit advocacy of autocratic rule and its social structure, coupled with his determination to provide musical entertainment rather than dragoon a listener into the creator’s private egotistical orbit makes Tchaikovsky’s agenda an 18th century one.
Taruskin’s claim that Tchaikovsky is essentially an 18th century composer needs to be taken seriously; not because of his (neoclassic) pastisches, not because of his adoration of Mozart, and certainly not because of some similarity of technical means or stylistic profile — but because Tchaikovsky’s explicit aims and vision of the prupose of art is so consonent with Mozart and his colleagues’ musical aims. But what a composer wants to accomplish isn’t necessarily what he does accomplish.
From tchaikovsky-research.orgSome comments concerning my rereading of Richard Taruskin’s chapter “Tchaikovsky and the Human” from his book Defining Russia Musically. Taruskin’s contention is that Tchaikovsky’s explicit advocacy of autocratic rule and its social structure, coupled with his determination to provide musical entertainment rather than dragoon a listener into the creator’s private egotistical orbit makes Tchaikovsky’s agenda an 18th century one.
Taruskin’s claim that Tchaikovsky is essentially an 18th century composer needs to be taken seriously; not because of his (neoclassic) pastisches, not because of his adoration of Mozart, and certainly not because of some similarity of technical means or stylistic profile — but because Tchaikovsky’s explicit aims and vision of the prupose of art is so consonent with Mozart and his colleagues’ musical aims.
But what a composer wants to accomplish isn’t necessarily what he does accomplish. Mozart and Tchaikovsky wrote music that pleased contemporary audiences, for sure. But so did Brahms and especially Wagner (which Taruskin explicitly places outside the orbit of the popular or consumer-oriented music). My experience as a classical music teacher for the last 20 years leads me to suspect that among a construable general classical music public Tchaikovsky and Brahms are roughly equivalent in appeal and Wagner ultimately dwarfs them. How many complete DVDs of the Ring are available? How many CDs? I can’t walk across the street without arguing the merits of various Wagner conductors. And I think Taruskin want’s to lay at the doorstep of Brahms, Wagner and their modern heirs a kind of blame for what he perceives to be a disastrous course of 20th century music en generale.
Another thing that bothers me about Taruskin generally is his inability to take seriously the aesthetics of passionate and sincere minority viewpoints. I promise you, as much as I love Tchaikovsky, I love Schoenberg more (and, in fact, for similar reasons). I respond to the feverish hysteria, the fecund melodiousness, the kaleidescopic colors, and even the hysteria which is occasionally present in both composers. Taruskin makes what I think is a crucial and correct point that Tchaikovsky anticipates and probably influences Mahler. If Tchaikovsky anticipates and influences Mahler, he necessarily anticipates and influences composers in Mahler’s wake who exemplify the diastrous 20th century musically.
Also, Taruskin’s fixation with the musicological Teutonic hegemony appears to me to be professionally inspired and I can only sympathize wholeheartedly for the company he keeps in this regard. Right he is about the condescension and annoyingly jingoistic blather that has afflicted musicological discourse. Right he is, too, that the ghettoization of composers outside the Germanic mainstream has been pervasive and most likely carries racist and bullying overtones. Right he is that the so-called universal is a Teutonocentric fantasy.
Absolutely salutory are Taruskin’s perceptive comments on Tchaikovsky’s astounding technical prowess. Nobody needs to appreciate Tchaikovsky: but to deride his superlative competence in almost every meaningful area of musical technique is to reveal oneself as either bigoted or ignorant. And, in fact, the bigoted are nearly always ignorant though I don’t necessarily contentthat the ignorant are always bigoted.
By far, the most powerful and persuasive part of Taruskin’s essay is his brilliant examination of the sociological totems represented by Tchaikovsky’s use of the waltz and polonaise. I’m also quite persuaded by his analogy between Tchaikovsky’s and Mozart’s use of contradanse. Also, I find it totally refreshing that the homosexual element in Tchaikovsky is relegated to the personal sphere and not seen as some overpowering conditioning element of the music itself.
(I’ve never heard a gay note in my life, although, come to think of it, g-sharps are iffy. And Francophilia doesn’t imply a gay agenda. Goodness, it’s iconic that the French are the ménage à trois people!
Taruskin discusses an apparently dismal conference on Tchaikovsky in which the idea of “exemplary 19th century composer” is said to exist. Lemme tell ya about exemplary composers: Grieg is the exemplary composer of the snowflake-motifed, sweater-wearing, cosy domestic amateur tradition in Bergen, Norway. Wagner is the exemplary composer for the lengthy opera on mythological themes. Percy Grainger is the exemplary composer for the “my composer must be a curly-headed Scandinaviophile” audience. There is no such thing as an exemplary composer and it’s embarassing to try to find one.
As an aside I’ve found Tarusking comment that in Fidelio Beethoven had discovered a limitation in himself (i.e. that he was not an opera composer). I agree. But the irony is that Fidelio is a great as any Mozart opera and Mozart’s operas are every bit as great as they are made out to be. But that’s Fidelio. Underailed by a clumsy theatrical modus operandi, Fidelio shows a dimension beyond the merely practical. As all great music does. Here I find a strain in Taruskin’s writings to be problematical: the exaltation of general (and thereby inevitably visceral) popular appeal as an endorsement of the art in question.
To make an irony I’d like to suggest that Tchaikovsky was no more an 18th century than a 19th century composer. His suites, ballets, and serenades, etc. are hardly negligible in his output in quantity or quality. And his yoking of the Mozartian with the Gothic in The Queen of Spades is a pinnacle of the operatic repertoire. But here, naturally, I’m being impartial. The fact that The Queen of Spades is my favorite Russian opera altogether has no role in my completely objective evaluation.
As for the 19th century, you can hardly discount the influence of Berlioz and Liszt in works such as Francesca da rimini and the Manfred symphony. For that matter, you can find a Mendelssohnian strain in Tchaikovsky — look at the Scherzo of the 1st Symphony. You can find Chopin and Schumann as wall (and not just because they’re specifically invoked) in his Op. 72 piano works. In fact, the spirit of Schumann seems to hover over Tchaikovsky frequently.
Like all truly great artists, Tchaikovsky is ultimately irreducible. Taruskin provides a welcome corrective but he also notices, for instance, an “underrated skill at grotesquerie” in Tchaikovsky (hardly a Mozartian trait) and he is perfectly willing to invoke patent Russianism is the music when it suits his purpose to refute the likes of Cesar Cui and patent Germanisms (i.e. the beginning of the Finale of the 2nd Symphony) to refute the ghettoizing judgments of David Brown, etc.
By the way, David Brown’s Tchaikovsky article in the New Grove may not be a disgrace, but it’ll do till the disgrace gets here. Poznansky’s book Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man is reasonable, meticulous, sober and exceptionally well documented. But I couldn’t possibly justify it as the text for my class because it wholly excludes musical analysis and concentrates for 600 pages on issues related to Tchaikovsky’s sexuality. This is too much. The impression from Poznansky is problematical although perfectly fair. This book is perhaps a necessary refutation of previous biographies of Tchaikovsky but frankly, the overall assessment of Tchaikovsky’s character could be suitably condensed into a much smaller span. An unexpurgated collection of Tchaikovsky’s letters (which I understand Poznansky has been working to achieve) could conceivably replace his biography.
Periodically in my reading of the Poznansky I found it necessary to set the book aside and listen to the waltz from the Serenade for Strings, the final scene of Mazeppa, or Sleeping Beauty to remind me of why I was reading the book in the first place.
Defining Russia Musically by Richard Taruskin
Some Clarifications and Amplifications: Barber, Taruskin, and Snobbery
[Barber’s Violin Concerto attempts, and magnificently succeeds in, creating obviously beautiful and appealing melodies. Make no mistake, Violin Concerto though it may be called, the first two movements are luscious songs.]
Didn’t I just say that in my last post?
Am I permitted to say that my comment on listeners “being free to luxuriate in the beautiful melodies” of the Barber concerto is an observation, not a condemnation? At least I didn’t consciously try to put down Barber’s audience; and if I put down Barber’s audience subconsciously, it is probably due to my own insecurities, and not to a rational evaluation of the nature of his audience. Snobs are insecure people, let’s face it. For convenience, and because I’m heartily sick of semi-colons and other connective gammatical devices, I’ve arranged these in the form of a list:
1. The Barber Violin Concerto is a great work. I know that. And ironically, from my point of view, it would continue to be a great work even if only the size of Webern’s public liked it. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. And you know, I’m not persuaded that it is always out of bounds to criticize public taste. Standards of discrimination has its value…I would hate to have classical music concerts become pops concerts. My problem is that I’m frustrated that what I value isn’t valued more generally, which I guess is a kind of immaturity. Don’t I get credit for defending the popular rep in my student days, at least? And I’m not always a snob. Didn’t I just run a class on Sibelius, for instance? And haven’t I praised Leonard Bernstein’s music at every opportunity?
2. Taruskin is a great writer and thinker. I know that. And ironically, he would still be a great writer even if he preferred Webern to Barber and if only a public the size of Webern’s liked his work.
3. I imagine it was some jackanapes and not The Great Man who claims I’m a snob who needs to be rebuked. But let me respond, as to being a snob: It’s a fair cop, Guv’nor, you got me bang to rights. As for a rebuke? Well, I deserve all sorts of rebukes for all sorts of transgressions. …ah, if you only knew!
4. For better or worse, a blog is the sort of forum where in order to generate interest, it appears that controversial or provocative claims get more readership and generate more interest than careful, sober posts. And I try to do my posts with humor, which is some defense. That’s why posts on Taruskin and even one on Alex Ross’s fine new book took issue with some of their views. The “off the cuff” nature of a blog reveals things about the writer that he would not perhaps want to reveal intentionally. Regular contributors to the comments, such as Ry and David, who happen to be friends of mine, are most often moved to comment when they disagree with something. I imagine it is easier to take shots from the sidelines than to create an interesting post a priori, which is fair, but I ask for some indulgence. I like to stir things up, it’s in my nature.
I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf. Who needs a snob? Here’s a new list of points that will indicate my new, reformed direction.
1. Aren’t puppies cute? I saw one crawl in a sock drawer once, just a-snoozin’ away! And kittens are cute, as well.
2. And so are composers. Especially ones who write nice music. Only meanies think that it’s appropriate to criticize each other’s taste. And I think you’re cute, too. Can’t we all get along?
3. Boy, those concert grand pianos sure are big!
4. Goshers, isn’t it amazing how the Chicago Symphony got through the whole 80 minutes of Mahler 6 without stopping or breaking down even once. They’re like super-men!
Oh no! I’m doing it again! These “reformed” comments smack of sarcasm! Oh, well, a chameleon may change his colors, but never his nature.
Postscript to "If You Can't Beat 'em, Should You Join 'em?"
It occurs to me that in my defense of intractability, etc. I have made myself vulnerable to Richard Taruskin’s charge of irrelevantly clinging to the dying idealogy of German romanticism. And my case wouldn’t be appreciably helped if I substituted intractable works by say, Gesualdo or Scriabin for the works I did invoke by Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Berg. Oh, well, let it stand. When somebody believes in something, it is only too easy to find reasoning that seemingly makes one’s own point of view appear to be the best point of view. To borrow a rhetorical tool from Nietzsche, here are some “maxims and arrows” related to the subject at hand:
- A composer creates his own audience.
- Yes, he creates it, and then like as not abandons it.
- What is the difference between some run-of-the-mill divertimento in D Major by a Classical composer, and some piece for three amplified percussionists, called “Resonances” by a Darmstadter?
- In every way, John Cage is more old-fashioned than Rachmaninov.
- Yes, and Philip Glass is more old-fashioned than Puccini. Compare “Satyagraha” and “Boheme”.
- But Schoenberg, despite vociferous hype to the contrary, is not old-fashioned. You can’t be old-fashioned before you’ve been digested (and being an icon for a generation of university composers is not digestion).
- Mozart wrote approximately three times as much music as Beethoven. They have roughly the same number of masterpieces. Does this make Beethoven better?
- No. He just has a better batting average.
- Taruskin’s words, “accommodation” and “German romanticism” are new words for that old stand-by of Schiller’s, the “Naive and the Sentimental”.
- Re Taruskin: Beethoven is sentimental in this dichotomy, agreed, but is Shostakovich “naive”?
- Polemics are like junk food; they taste great at first, but anything more than a few bites leaves you feeling a little nauseous; one wants fresh air.
- Popular and “high brow” music aren’t the same subject and shouldn’t be compared; they serve different functions; but sometimes they overlap.
- The composer is closer to the poet, never the scientist. Beauty can’t be “proved”.
In “A Shostakovich Casebook”, Taruskin wrote movingly of an experience he had listening to a Shostakovich symphony with sophisticated musicians, in the Soviet Union. He relates that he looked around to see if there were expressions of condescension on the part of his Soviet colleagues, and was taken aback to see how deeply involved with and moved by the music they were, and it appears he had a sort of epiphany, or awakening, which led him to question the biases in our higher musical education system. Could this be the beginning of the train of thinking that led to his article, “The Musical Mystique”?
Review of Taruskin's Article, Pt. 2: If You Can't Beat 'em, Should You Join 'em?
reviews:
Who Needs
Classical Music?
Julian Johnson
Classical Music,
Why Bother?
Joshua Fineberg
Why Classical Music
Still Matters
Lawrence Kramer
I just spent the morning listening intently to Paul Hindemith’s 1938 operatic masterpiece, Mathis der Maler. This work is ultimately an apologia for the so-called, “ivory tower”. It’s also an apologia for Hindemith’s personal artistic and political credos, formed in the crucible of Nazi Germany, but that’s another story. In short, the artist determines that art is, if not above, at least not predicated or necessarily determined by politics, and the artist has a free hand to determine his own relationship to society, and is not to be bullied either by the tyrant or the (probably justified) revolutionary. The work is a blockbuster, a profound work of (it sadly seems) eternal relevence. Why this magnificent work is not a staple of the repertory, I cannot say…actually, I can, but the explanation depresses me.
Which of course, brings us to Taruskin’s exasperating article. Taruskin claims: “There are two ways of dealing with the new pressure that classical music go out and earn its living. One is accommodation, which can entail painful losses and suffer from its own excesses …Composers have accommodated by adopting more “accessible” styles. Love it or hate it, such accommodation is a normal part of the evolutionary history of any art.” I don’t know where to begin with this seeming advocacy of cowardice and cynicism. The fact that we have the St. Matthew Passion, the Grosse Fuge, Winterreise, and Wozzeck, among other works, already constitutes a persuasive rationale for the “unreasonableness”, the “intractability”, the “lack of accommodation” of the artist. Accommodation is a prescription for pap. And, by the way, I think that the works listed above have “earned their living”. You could say, they’ve “made their living”; blunt as this sounds, they have forced their way into the consciousness of true music lovers, and the desires of casual music-lovers, to whom Taruskin appears to cater, is something else, something to which Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and Berg, at their generally acknowledged, “best”, appear not to particularly care about…rest assured, lesser figures will care about this public, and the most fortunate of them will get rich doing it.
There are indeed, especially in academia, where so-called “artists” are protected from the judgement of the marketplace, composers who appear to produce sterile works for the approbation of their similiarly inclined colleagues rather than for the living consumption of real music lovers. This is a pathology, but this pathology obtains even more in popular genres, where imitation and formulae for commercial puposes rival the ubiquitous imitation and formulae extant in the Ivory Tower.
Taruskin: “The other way is to hole up in such sanctuary as still exists and hurl imprecations and exhortations. That is the path of resistance to change and defense of the status quo, and it is the path chosen by the authors of the books under review here. The status quo in question, by now a veritable mummy, is the German romanticism that still reigns in many academic precincts…” So Taruskin is overtly saying, “If you don’t like it, Lump it!” An artist can’t protest? And historians, by the way, tell us that vital aspects of Western Civilization was preserved by so-called sanctuaries (monasteries, for instance) in the Dark Ages. No, I am not suggesting that current academia serves anywhere near so vital or admirable a function; on the contrary, I tend to agree with Taruskin’s contempt for the self important navel gazing of so many of his colleagues. Quixotically, Taruskin’s suggestion appears to be similar to that of Hans Sachs’ (I’m fresh off hearing a broadcast of the notorious Katerina Wagner production of Die Meistersinger on Saturday) maxim of “let the people decide”…The people always decide, in the long run, Professor Taruskin, but they don’t need you to congratulate “them” (and I ain’t sure who “them” really is) on their immediate, unreflective judgement; especially when, as is usual, that judgment is a product of ever changeable current tastes and fads. And of course there are commercial, and even occasionally, academic, manipulation by professors and blog-writers, inter alia, who seek to influence them in their judgment.
Taruskin on the "Defense of Classical Music" Pt. 1
Who Needs
Classical Music?
Julian Johnson
Classical Music,
Why Bother?
Joshua Fineberg
Why Classical Music
Still Matters
Lawrence Kramer
Richard Taruskin begins his essay, “The Musical Mystique” by rightly deriding a pseudo-meaningful, pretentiously artsy-fartsy “experiment” perpetrated by violinist Joshua Bell at the behest of A WashingtonTimes reporter in which Bell posted himself in the most annoying and least appropriate place in the subway system and played Bach on his priceless fiddle, in order to record the supposedly a-cultural apathy of the average commuter. This sophomoric experiment hardly needed to be made. You could go into a doctor’s office where the piped in Muzak might be a movement from, let’s say, a Mozart piano concerto, and record the apathy of the patients. In fact, its arguable that authentic lovers of so-called “Classical” music are exactly the sort of persons who object to the trivialization and degradation of music represented by its infliction on a defenseless commuter or patient population that is given no chance to decide what it wants to hear, or if it wants to hear anything at all.
If I have to hear music in a dentist’s office, restaurant, or subway, I vastly prefer that it be bad music. Not only because bad music is less distracting, but because I like to hear great music as a deliberate choice, with a relatively formal listening posture. Real music lovers don’t want music all the time, and are disinclined toward the use of background music. This includes real music lovers who prefer popular genres, as well.
So far so good, Taruskin’s point is agreed. But then he comments, “In one respect, though, the caper was instructive. It offered answers to those who wonder why classical music now finds itself friendless in its moment of self perceived crisis-a long moment that has given rise in recent years to a whole literature of elegy and jeremiad.” Why are sideshows like the Bell experiment presumed to prove anything about classical music generally? Aren’t commuters, etc. smart enough to recognise that silly stunts don’t sully Bach, or prove anything at all about the viability of classical music? And is classical music friendless? Here in Chicago we recently had a magnificent performance of Mahler’s 6th symphony. I’ve been discussing it all week with my friends and students. Aren’t we friends of classical music? Or is it a numbers game? There aren’t enough friends, perhaps. But why would I care that 99 per cent of the American population at large doesn’t give a hoot about Mahler? What sort of “obligation” does anyone have to any kind of music? I think Taruskin rightly considers that no one has any sort of obligation. Again, this point is agreed. We would indeed have a problem if the Chicago Symphony orchestra went away. We would have a problem if less visible local orchestras went away, as well. But this doesn’t seem to be happening. Millions of people sort of liking something a little bit means less than hundreds of people deeply committed to something, provided the threshold of at least minimal commercial viability is passed.
Why all the insecurity? It couldn’t possibly matter to me what Taruskin thinks about Schoenberg; he doesn’t love it, and therefore doesn’t understand it. It means a great deal to me what Pierre Boulez thinks about Schoenberg, however. But it doesn’t matter to me what Pierre Boulez thinks about Shostakovich. He doesn’t love it, and therefore doesn’t understand it. But it matters a great deal to me what Richard Taruskin thinks about Shostakovich. I personally dislike almost all popular music with which I’m acquainted. So what. It’s not because I’m an elitist Teutonic racist, either. Ironically, Taruskin, who loves classical music and has given his life to the subject, doesn’t appear to acknowledge the perfectly possible sincerity with which one can abhor popular music and be exclusively inclined to the classical repertory, with no other guiding principle than personal taste. The 99 percent of the population that prefers various articles from popular genres neither intimidates me, nor is in a position to force their taste on me.
Taruskin takes plenty of shots at hoity-toity classical music lovers, with occasional justification. But he could as well take some shots at the sort of idiot who likes certain pop styles, who expresses ludicrous sentiments such as “Why don’t you forget about those out-dated European guys, and listen to music that normal people like.” I’ve heard plenty of nonsense like this in my time. It’s a kind of reverse snobbery. I’m tempted to respond in such situations, “If you’ll carfully listen to Die Frau Ohne Schatten, I’ll carfully listen to Doggy-bone Snoop’s latest album. Two can play at that game, mister!
Arguments are Won by the Best Arguer, not Necessarily by the Best Argument: Richard Taruskin's Polemic in The New Republic
Who Needs
Classical Music?
Julian Johnson
Classical Music,
Why Bother?
Joshua Fineberg
Why Classical Music
Still Matters
Lawrence Kramer
Arnold Bax described a genius as someone who has, among other things, superior reserves of energy. Joseph Joachim, violinist friend of Brahms, described genius as “doing with ease what mere talent cannot do at all.” We can all probably agree that genius requires exceptional intelligence yoked with creativity. For my money, idiot savants are a sentimental myth.
By these criteria, Richard Taruskin is a genius. Probably by most rational criteria. Can you say “indefatigable?” And his writing is scintillating.
But Taruskin’s awesomely scathing and intemperate assault in The New Republic on musico-sociological tomes by Julian Johnson, Joshua Fineberg, and Lawrence Kramer does him little credit. His vitriol, entertaining as it is, tells us more about Taruskin than it does about his maimed and bleeding victims. And I say this as someone who has little use for Johnson et. al, and who admires Taruskin no end. In fact, I buy and read Taruskin’s books, and it would never occur to me to buy the books he lambasts. But the viciousness and one-sidedness of his attack-piece may make me reconsider. Taruskin quotes from “The Sopranos”, but after reading his latest, I want to quote from “Mash”. There is a scene in a “Mash” episode where the fatuously moronic Frank Burns is “more sinned against than sinning”. Hawkeye defends Frank. He is asked, “Since when do you give two hoots about Frank Burns?” He replies, “Just now, and it’s only one hoot.” Well put. That’s just how I feel in this instance.
I plan on making more posts about this article, examining Taruskin’s point(s) of view in detail (he’s all over the place). The gist of the argument is that the three maligned writers are elitist, ignorant, out of touch idiots who want to preserve obsolete Teutonic-oriented prerogatives of taste-making and arrogant cultural monopolies of limited perspective, and impose these on some public; the general public? (is there such a thing?) The “musically inclined public”? They have allies in the “academic” “public”, I know… probably the widest public Taruskin can mean is the public that shops at Borders and Amazon. But even this isn’t certain. Taruskin actually questions Johnson, if not the others, in a moral sense. I also think Taruskin questions the sincerity of music lovers who admire certain styles (Arnold Schoenberg’s style, for instance). This is infuriating. I am as moved by “Moses und Aron” as he is by Musorgsky or Shostakovich, and genius though he may be, he has no right to dispute this. He can’t know.
Schoenberg once made a blistering and unfair critique of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, and ironicallyacknowledged in the very critique that his intemperance spoke against himself and in favor of the work. Taruskin doesn’t have to retract his objections to these highly questionable books, just as Schoenberg didn’t retract his criticism, but a review like this does the books a favor.
I should add that without Taruskin’s inspired, and if I can put it this way, intoxicatingly sober advocacy for Shostakovich, my understanding for that very great composer would be much the poorer. But “That was then, and this is now.”