Wagner's music

alec ramsdell a_ramsdell at hotmail.com
Sun Dec 13 21:01:23 PST 1998


Daniel wrote:


>Alec, you asked: "But by your criteria, why isn't John Adams' music
fascist,
>because it's
>not loud enough? What about serialism: couldn't one argue it's a
structural
>"iron boot"?"
>
>I don't know enough of Adams' music. Do you think it is fascist?

No, but then I've never heard fascist music.


>As for your question on serial music, Alec, I'm not sure if you are
implying
>your own answer.

No, just a question, embedded in an ideology (hey, I could't help it!).

For my part, the answer is an emphatic negative. No, serial
>music (12-tone music) is not in any way an expression of the fascist
craving
>for "order" - especially, arbitrarily imposed order as the product of
the
>individual will and its need to dominate. There is nothing in the least
bit
>arbitrary about serial music.

Schoenberg has been crucial for me, as has Cage. Schoenberg's _Theory of Harmony_ and _Style and Idea_ are invaluable. In many ways Schoenberg is the heir of Bach and Mozart, and brings a tradition to a close (though of course opening the way for serial music). I've worked on the Opus 33a, one of the "mature" 12-tone pieces, for quite some time, and it's very compelling. But it seems that none of the piano's I ever play is ever in tune, and you know 12-tone music demands precise tuning. In _Style and Idea_ Shoenberg discusses how the materiality of sound conflicts with the 12-tone system. Eventually for him music, at it's best, was something that one read on manuscrpit paper in silence (this is also in _Style and Idea_). Is this not so?

Thankfully there's always Ives. And Satie: do you know about his "Velvet Gentleman" phase? 7 velvet suits, 7 days a week, for 7 years. Stravinsky praised him, considering him the "oddest" man he'd ever met.

-Alec

"Without the loudspeaker we would never have conquered Germany."

-- Hitler (quoted in Jacques Attali's _Noise: the Political

Economy of Music)

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