I have had a dream.
Nothing so elevated as Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s, nor prompted by some
vision of a distant nirvana; merely brought on by watching BBC World News too
late into the night. In my dream I am lecturing
to a class of students (I recognise it as being Middlesex University for the
students there are an argumentative bunch) and, for some inexplicable reason, I
pick on one of them and ask him if he knows the name of the American
President. He tells me he does not and I
am astonished. I press him, believing
that it is impossible not to know his name, and even go so far as to give broad
hints. Yet still the student professes
ignorance. In desperation I say, “but
you MUST know who the President of the United States is!”, to which he replies “Why?”. And I wake up.
Unambiguously political works – The Death of Klinghoffer and Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima – have found a firm place in the repertoire, while even American politics, at home and abroad, have been celebrated. What is Porgy and Bess if not a statement against racism, and Nixon in China makes no bones about celebrating the activities of an American president.
There is no obligation for musicians to know the name of the American President (unless, that is, they are saxophonists living during the Bill Clinton era) but not to know it today would imply that one has ignored the saturation news coverage of contemporary events. If you can turn on TV, the radio, open a newspaper and check latest news stories online (for goodness’ sake, Windows 8 even puts the headlines up on that ghastly opening screen) and not know who the US president is, you have to be inhabiting the world of dreams.
How I wish I had dreamt on just another few seconds, for I’d
love to know what my answer was. In the
cold light of day, I am not sure that I can answer his question. Is it important that music students, perhaps
more than those in other disciplines, know the name of major world figures? On the surface of it, it certainly does not
seem a really vital piece of information for musicians to possess.
However, music – like all the arts – is intended to be
consumed by society. If society is your
market place, then it is pretty obvious that you need to know about society,
and one of the important things to do, if you are keeping in tune with society,
is to follow closely its trends and developments, and to keep in touch with its
thinking. Companies who have attempted
to do business in China without first understanding the Chinese psyche,
business ethic and language, invariably get their fingers burnt. (I knew of one which sailed in expecting the
English model of business to be accepted and did not so much get its fingers
burnt as have them all chopped up and served on a bed of rice with Soy Sauce – “Wah!
Taste like Chicken!”) So how can a
composer, a performer or even a critic address a market of which they have no understanding
of their recent trends?
We tend to be blinded by the elevated position in which we
place the composers of the Classical Era; we even redefine the whole genre as “Classical”,
a sure sign of the disproportionate stature we give this short period of
musical history. Regarding Haydn and
Mozart to be non-political animals – little more than humble servants in
courtly houses – we tend to open our mouths in awe at Beethoven who appeared to
have some political thoughts of his own.
“Beethoven believed in Democracy” is a hackneyed phrase used to explain
why he changed the course of musical history; but in truth all self-respecting
musicians should hold strong political views.
How else can they communicate with and reflect on the society from which
they are drawn.
Notwithstanding the musicians who worked for the church –
and, frankly, has there ever been a more blatantly political organisation than
the church? – most of those who worked during the Renaissance period were
heavily involved in politics. They
combined their composing and performing with working as government agents,
spies, ambassadors and emissaries. Even
in the Baroque era musicians had political lives. Bach and Telemann, for example, sat on town
councils, I read a compelling hypothesis about how Handel, far from absconding
from the court in Hanover, had actually been secretly sent to London by the
Elector of Hanover’s chamberlain to report back on the likely English reaction
to the Elector’s claim on the British throne, and I find it incredible to think
that Domenico Scarlatti’s only involvement in the court of King Philip of Spain
was as the Queen’s keyboard instructor.
The popular view is that musicians of the Romantic era had
their heads so far up in the clouds that normal, daily things like politics did
not concern them. But look at the political
posturings of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin and, of course, Wagner (whose
political outlook has been so distorted by politically-coloured historians that
it is quite common to find students writing that he “was a member of the Nazi Party”
and “admired Adolf Hitler” – forget the six years which elapsed between the
death of Wagner and the birth of Hitler).
The 19th century was awash with political activity, and few musicians
seemed to ignore it.
In more recent times there have been politician musicians. Paderewski was a famous pianist and Prime Minister
of Poland, while the British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, largely abandoned a promising
career in music to take up politics. In
our own time many musicians have espoused political campaigns, not always with
total success – Michael Berkeley’s anti-nuclear cantata or shall we die?... has mercifully sunk into oblivion, while
Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony is
often the butt of musical jokes – but sometimes so glitteringly successful that
we almost forget their political overtones – audiences need reminding of the political
message behind Britten’s War Requiem while
the adoration heaped on Górecki’s Symphony
of Sorrowful Songs these days conveniently forgets the political issues
which were at the heart of the work when it was written back in 1976. Unambiguously political works – The Death of Klinghoffer and Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima – have found a firm place in the repertoire, while even American politics, at home and abroad, have been celebrated. What is Porgy and Bess if not a statement against racism, and Nixon in China makes no bones about celebrating the activities of an American president.
There is no obligation for musicians to know the name of the American President (unless, that is, they are saxophonists living during the Bill Clinton era) but not to know it today would imply that one has ignored the saturation news coverage of contemporary events. If you can turn on TV, the radio, open a newspaper and check latest news stories online (for goodness’ sake, Windows 8 even puts the headlines up on that ghastly opening screen) and not know who the US president is, you have to be inhabiting the world of dreams.
I suspect that no music student at Middlesex, or anywhere
else, is ignorant of such key facts about the political issues affecting society,
but just to be on the safe side, my students are warned; I have not yet worked
out how it will fit into any of the syllabuses I teach, but a few weeks into
the next semester, and you can be sure that there is going to be an essay on
Music and Politics.
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