Back in Bach's day there was not only a difference between sacred and
secular music - but a distinction between concert music and music for use.
The distinctions were not a hard wall - and indeed many concert genres were
versions of overtures, arias and dances - or included them.
In the 19th century the code words were "serious" and "light" music. And
composers such as Offenbach, Sullivan and Strauss were intensely aware of
which side of the divide their music fell on.
- - -
What is important to realise is that the term "classical music" took
on importance only when its opposite number "folk music" had changed
to "popular music". This change is vital. Before the advent of travel
and recording, the only way music which was not written down could be
transmitted was direct presence. The "folk process" is the process of
handing down material and traditions that interlock with a particular
social or cultural mileu. All music that was transmitted had to pass
through the hands of someone trained in the folk discipline
Hence the distinction between "folk music" and cultured music proper was
the same distinction as between literature and oral poetry. It was not
doubted that oral poetry was poetry, or that folk tales were prose, but
the distance between the two was so large as to require no sharp linguistic
distinction, nor rigorous explanation. Either it was bassed in disciplines
that were symbolic - or it wasn't. Improvisation was prized, but precisely
because it played against the conventions of written down structures.
It was with the advent of mass dissemination that this began to change.
No longer did fairy tales have to be transmuted by the middle class and
collected by Grimm or rewritten by Anderson. No longer did "folk" tunes
have to be "set" by poet or composer. No longer did improvisation pass
out of existance with the last dying reverberation.
In short the folk process was replaced by the iconographic process. This
transformation is not unusual in history. Let me take two examples.
In the west one can demarcate history by an event, the fall of the Western
Roman empire. This begins a period we refer to as the "medieval" and
specifically the "dark ages". Literacy plummeted, population dropped by
50% and as much as 90% in urban areas. The roman empire - based on a
literate elite - was replaced by arrangements of personal loyalty that
would become "feudalism". The only institution to preserve any real
semblence of learning and authority were the various branches of the
Christian church.
This church had the task of converting individual tribes, in order to
maintain peace and extend their influence. The process used was to turn
older mythologies into christianised versions. Since reading and writing
were regarded as functions of magic (cf "rune" from runa - secret), the
means to conversion was to create iconography. Feudal arrangements were
later codified by banners and heraldry by a similar process. Because
writing could not be disseminated quickly, and because the stability to
disseminate it slowly was in short supply - the iconographic was the only
means to control groups of individuals and produce conformance.
This elevation of the iconographic produced medieval civilisation in Europe
- and the word was held subordinate to it for many centuries. The entire
process of plainsong in music is the process of making words into icons -
the sound is as overwhelmingly important as anything else.
- - -
Contrast this with the Islamic world not far away. It was a symbolically
based culture, with the political and economic unity and stablity to
disseminate the written word slowly. It also had structured the entire
society around the necessities of pre-printing press dissemination. Images
were barred from religion, a single text was made paramount, and a single
language made standardised around it, symbolic thinking was hammered home
by almost every means possible - in design, decoration, and in social
standing.
Iconographic thinking is, in fact, quite common as the means of moving
masses of people. In the european 19th century it was realised that to
move people without mass dissemination of icons, that icons had to be made
out of symbolic substance. The reason the art of the 19th century is still
regarded as so powerful is that it is concerned with the creation of, and
enhancement of, powerful images or evocations that are backed by an
underlying symbolic "language" and "syntax".
Which was also its undoing, by inventing the technology of iconographic
dissemination, it fell prey to the very power of its accomplishments.
Icons which were just powerful enough without dissemination became
overwhelming with it. It was the insight of the Nazi state that mass
dissemination could take icons and impress them on individuals with a
force that overwhelmed all defenses that the society had to offer.
Previously the difficulties of dissemination alone were enough.
- - -
This tension - where a society becomes used to inherent difficulties as
protection - is not unique to the 19th century. The 20th century relied
on the expense and difficulty of mass dissemination as its protection.
Digital copying makes hash out of this - it is now worlds easier to move
the results of an expensive iconographic process than it was even a decade
ago. The current fights over napster, mp3.com, copyrighting algorythms
all fall out of this basic change. We are no longer protected by the
difficulty of lugging protons and neutrons around, we can do the same
work merely pushing electrons in waves.
- - -
The first extensive use of the term "classical" to the music came precisely
as the new century came to the realisation that it wished to return to the
logical simplicity and directness of a previous age, as a reaction against
the proliferating organicism of the late 19th century. It began to term
all of the 19th century "romantic" and divided the world into "classical"
and "romantic" world views.
The use of the term "classical" then is a matter of consciousness, and
no one was conscious of the need to have an elite music, until such time
as the popular music could become a powerful force on its own terms. This
was not just from recording - but *travel* first. It was possible for
individual folk styles to disseminate over a much larger range. Railroads
and mass migration - conscription in particular, not phonographs, were the
first mechanism of creating a "popular" culture from a folk culture.
The technology of reproduction and broadcast made it possible to completely
liberate the icons of the popular from symbolic process, and by this
liberation created a new form of high art.
This inverts almost 500 years of artistic history in the west, and
overthrows approximately 300 years of symbolic dominance over iconography.
Let me point to the change. It can be said to begin with Dante's commedia.
A work which was written before the printing press, but which gained a huge
popularity by being read allowed. This in an era where plays and poems
were seldom written down, but were improvised from stock characters or
recited. For the first time a work of public art was entirely structured
by the demands of symbolic thinking. At the same time the popularity of
the Sonnets of Petrach and the Decameron of Boccaccio can be seen as the
first examples of what would later be the norm.
Commerce cannot be underestimated in this process. Dance manuals and music
texts became common, our first knowledge of court culture comes from a time
when there were people who wanted to join it, but did not have entre into
it until they had mastered its forms. Originally it was cheaper to
translate old books than write new ones - and so the wealth of antiquity
was put before the public.
One of the ideas of antiquity is that became accepted widely was the idea
that an *art* was based in mathematics. Music's mathematics was the ratio
of harmonies. Painters then argued that *perspective* was the mathematics
of their work, and therefore they were artists, not artisans. In this we
find a clear example of a previous age having a clear distinction between
"high" and "low" art separate from religious/secular distinctions. "High"
art is based on "knowable" symbolics.
And marks a further step on the road to a symbolic high culture triumphing
over an iconographic one.
- - -
One turning point that it is useful to look at is the influence of
Michelangelo Buonarti on the glorification of Rome by Leo. The original
design for the Sistine chapel was straight iconography - the disciples and
saints. It was Michelangelo's insight to structure the ceiling according
to Genisis. Thus undergirding a powerful iconographic work with a textual
symbolic structure. Over the next century and a half, a bitter series of
wars over whether Protestantism - the religion of the word - or Catholicism
- the religion of the icon - would triumph. In the end the Catholic church
had to adopt many of the symbolic systems of Protestantism - including the
founding of the society of jesus - in order to hold power. In the end
protestantism had to align itself with the icons of the state to remain
viable.
It is with the end of the 30 years war that the first consciously
symbolic state is formed - the France of Louis XIV. We say that this
begins the "age of reason" - in truth it is the age were symbolic logic
is made primary over icons. Geometry, for ages the structural system of
natural philosophy, is replaced found to have an algebraic basis, and this
synthesis leads to analytic geometry and then the calculus. Philosophy is
founded in logic, and logic is made formal. The two hundred years of
progress in symbolic systems flowers into being the core of education -
to be educated is to be well read. An academy is formed.
- - -
In the present we must think with icons to enact ideas. One important
road to power is the creation of icons that are proof against symbolic
attack. Ideas which are really pictures of the world, that can be held to
regardless of any counter-example or logical demonstration. To manufacture
these icons is the means of controlling groups - even groups of elites.
Our classical music is as much an icon of what it means to be an
intellectual or artistic elite member, as it is the symbolic underpinnings
of the music. More people who are fans of classical music know this idea
than can read music or explain counterpoint in any terms which make sense.
We speak often of artistic necessity. It is sometimes considered a
virtue. Let us face a necessity then, if icons are a primary instrument of
power, then we must have art which allows people to create, manipulate and
incorporate icons. We must have a culture which allows the dissemination
of icons and protects them against symbolic attack. We must have an
iconographic elite, and we must have a formal discourse which priviledges
these icons against symbolic attack.
In short, we must have a fine art which arises from everything which was
previously considered "low" and it must *function* as peasant folk art
could not function - as a means of organising large stable groups.
This central fact, this central reality, drives everything that we see in
the world of media, and in the world of classical music. It is, in a deep
sense, a betrayl of the basis of classical music, which is why classical
music is a marginal art form. It was born into the age of the need for
symbolisation of icons, and lives on in an age of iconisation of symbols.
It is a very poor tool for creating mass icons, it is a terrible mechanism
for inviting general and easy participation, since the symbolic world is,
above all else, the world of discipline and barriers to participation.
- - -
What made Beethoven, Mozart and Bach was not merely the genius of
their music - but the need in the 19th century to have icons of musical
symbolism. In our age we have no such need. Even if there is music as
great as Beethoven or Bach being made - we have no need of making its
creator into an icon. The area of symbolic thinking that *is* in need
of icons is the world of computer programming - hence the near religous
attention paid to Bill Gates and now Linus Torvalds, the almost messianic
statements of the greats of computer programming place them in the same
place as Beethoven and Mozart and Bach - the very foundation of a new
symbolic world. There is only one such moment in most art-genres.
Shakespeare and Homer are as they are in their cultures, not merely for
their genius which helped create the need for a symbolic regime to maintain
their work - but because once that regime is created, it needs a god, a
wellspring, a source.
There will not be another Bach for the same reason that there is only one
city called "Ur". We should cease to look for him, as we should cease to
look for the next Wagner or Stravinski. This age in music has another
challenge - how to reassert the power of deep structure which is the
province of the symbolic, in an age whose great wave is towardst the
iconograhic. How to unify classical music with the symbolic elites
of our age, while having the iconographic power of the media.
A large challenge, which will not be met by ignoring it.
stirling s newberry
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