XX Century Musical Decadence

While XX century brought an increase in material luxury, it also proved that art is not its outcome – since the cult of arts, and musical beauty in particular, declined. “People don't like Scriabin, because they don't like melody anymore”, mourned one of Scriabin's admirers. Actually Scriabin's music offered more then catchy tunes; more precisely, people stopped caring for any kind of art whatsoever. Even the appearance of revolutionary electronic musical technology did not give birth to beautiful music of new technological age. Rather, there was a demise of beauty, to a degree that many never use this word anymore.

What was then the musical life of XX century about? In academical environment, it was mostly about respect among musical professionals. Popularity – not only in the sense of widest appeal, but any degree of popularity, even enthusiasm of the most patient musical lovers – mattered little. What’s more, it was sometimes viewed as something bad per se. This policy was probably most noticeably “pioneered” by Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer from the first half of XX century (also the pioneer of dodecaphonic music, or “atonal” music) as can be seen from the words with which he commented one Puccini work:

There are higher and lower means, artistic and inartistic… Realistic, violent incidents – as for example the torture scene in Tosca – which are unfailingly effective should not be used by an artist, because they are too cheap, too accessible to everybody.

If there is an aesthetic shortcoming in this piece, it could be commented on another way; but Schoenberg scorns “unfailing effectiveness” as cheap from the reason of being “accessible to everybody”. Wide popularity was a fault in itself. Vastly popular piece is not worthy art -- at least not because of those features that make it popular.

Certainly, contemporary classical music, or art music, while claiming to be at least as, if not more artistic then music of XIX century, had to explaing its lack in popularity. This was being tried by pointing to the fact that audiences are, naturally, divided between masses that don’t understand artistic music, and musical elite, consisting of musicians, critics and devoted listeners, who did. All music that would achieve popularity was dubbed “easy listening”.

Actually modern classical circles assumed that even many musical lovers were afraid of contemporary academic music, since it was too complex for them to grasp. With Schoenberg, by “managing to like” a piece of art music, one proves belonging to a minority that understands art music. These attitudes spawned people who are content to listen to music in order to challenge themselves and prove some of theirs abilities through success in “understanding” and “liking” these turgid pieces.

Truth to be told, easy listening view is somewhat grounded in the fact that understanding and appreciation of art is greater within “enlightened minority”. Yet the problem arouses, when one wonders that many highly acclaimed works of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart are still vastly popular, inside that same “masses” who do not understand higher art. In the time of these composers, classical music could talk to anyone with musical sensitivity. Then, a musician could be both popular and serious, both entertaining and having lasting value; both an entertainer and an artist acknowledged from musical professionals.

This was still so by the beginning of XX century. Tchaikovsky was a “pop star” of his time, as Mozart, Beethoven or Liszt were before him. But fashions of XX century popular music helped to make the word “popularity” acquire a meaning of something lower and even obscene. The picture of popularity and accessibility also meaning vulgarity, shallowness and simplistic music, while depth, intellectualism and complexity meaning secludedness from wider audience, was a very well established image from the middle of XX century onwards.

And so during XX century the concept of masses from one side that consume pop music, and professional musical circles from the other side that are into art music was formed. This functioned well from outside, but it dwarfed academic musician in power-possessing sense; professional musician wrote music only for the narrow participating audience and thus only playing a role of an artist in a social sense, but not of an artist on a natural, universal way of Beethoven. Composers closed themselves inside the world of theirs own, writing music for each other and small circle of highly educated performers and critics. How this influenced thinking of even most passionate music lovers, tells a subtle example from the book “Lives Of Great Composers” (by the way a great book, written by a passionate and knowledgeable lover of music):

Nothing dates as fast as pure sensationalism, and the tragedy of Strauss is the tragedy of a superior musical mind flawed by the desire to put effect over substance.

This is a recapitulation of the work of Richard Strauss, a composer who created the overture to “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” -- that is in subconsciousness of humanity, that inspired Bartók to start composing, and that famously contributed to one of the biggest XX century movie spectacles, "2001: Odyssey in Space". The writer speaks of “dating”, “pure sensationalism”, and “the tragedy”. Of course if there is truth to these words writer would be expected to state it somewhere; but the emphasis shows how little respect there was for composer’s actual achievement from the point of view of widest audience. Creating melodies that impress an ordinary listener was taken as something not worthy of respect. Creating pieces that are engaging, even on what is considered the profound way, was not considered important. All that mattered became a hierarchy within professional circles: there was even a number of unofficial ranks, like in an army: a hack composer, a minor master, a master, an immortal etc. Even the composers themselves started thinking down these lines. A telling example is that of Ravel, who knew to speak of himself as a “failed composer”: “I have failed in my life. I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work – the best and worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively very little… and at that, I did it with a great deal of difficulty”, he wrote in a letter to Claude Delvincourt, in the moment of creative exhaustion. So Ravel’s criteria of being a great composer was not based on what he meant to audiences, but on his “rank” within secluded musical state -- something very artificial. Ravel saw himself in an army with other composers, and he wasn’t one of the generals. It didn't cross his mind that every artist is already a general by being an artist; art is not natural occurring phenomenon and can not be regarded on this way. Not a single good tune is a given and easy to write, and is precious.

Thus the value of musical invention was degraded, and originality and achieved beauty of produced music was more and more not appreciated by institutions. Academic musicians became more important than music. Despite its unpopularity, modern academic music was protected by systematized professional appraisal; academic music of XX century was maybe the most caressed and on pure principle respected musical culture ever. But, no one outside of circles of musicians who deal with it seemed to need it and take genuine interest in it.

Last generation of composers who were both popular and respected was the generation of Igor Stravinsky, who are widely seen as the last true classical composers. After them comes barbaric jazz and pop music.

From one other dancing whole by which I was passing by, hot and rough wave of intense jazz music came over me, like smokes of raw flash. I stood up for a moment; always this sort of music, although I loathed it, had a secret charm for me. Jazz was disgusting to me, but I loved it ten times more than todays academic music: jazz, with it's joyful, raw savagery, brimming with naive, chaste sensuality, touched me also in the world of my drives. I stood for a moment sniffing, I was inhaling the bloody and jarring music, I sniffed maliciously and lustfully the atmosphere of these halls. One half of that music, the lyric one, was trite, too sweet and full of sentimentality, and the other half was savage, moody, strong, and still both these halves naively and harmoniously went together, flowing into one.

Herman Hesse, The Stephen Wolf

Hesse here precisely described the sensibility of the whole pop music of XX century, the sensibility of the street – the mixture of pathos and vulgarity. From name “pop music”, one should work out that this was the best loved music of the time. But it is hypocritical equating purely musical popularity of classical or movie music with popularity of pop music, which owned much to extra-musical things. Pop music was never strictly music – it was always putting heavy accent on lyrics and image of the performer, as well as music’s role in social sense. “Youngsters don't like music, but partying”, says one DJ.

Not only this, but XX century pop music was equally not esentialy that entertaining and popular neither. Fashions of pop music were seemingly serving orgiastic purposes, but only seemingly so. Pop music was always heavily compromised with amortization purposes -- political, racial, generational, social and others. Pop music was often not there to enjoy, but to be endured. That there was of course pop music that was indeed loved was despite it was pop. What's more, neither was pop music music of majority. It was rather music of minorities imposed upon majority. If music should be music of true majority of modern societies, it would be music of sub-urban areas, equivalent of Steven Spielberg movies. Finally, pop music was more imposed through fashions than left to the true tastes of audience. People were more getting used to it then getting to like it. In previous ages, such pressures did not exist. One was allowed to like whatever one pleases. But in XX century, “masses” were made to listen certain kind of music. It’s obviously hypocritical to say that vast audiences can’t understand higher art, when that same masses are not allowed to decide what they really like in the first place.

So there was the outset of elite, highly intellectual but turgid music from one, and popular (or “accessible”) but vulgar music from the other side. This in unprecedented measure sharp division on elite and popular culture was much discussed.

Maybe the novelty brought by our times on the aesthetic level is... on one side more and more exclusive art of elite and on the other side – unrestricted production of kitsch. Ludwig Giesz, phenomenology of Kitsch

The apparent “ugliness” of modern art music, its reclusion from beauty itself, was thus seen as protection from pop music deformation, a try to protect cultural circles from contamination by surrounding kitsch. There came a generation of composers and elite listeners who would found really liking a piece, even on the most profound way, vulgar.

…art … by a conscious anti-kitsch affect renunciates beauty whose fragility is scaring it. This renunciation looks daring, but is actually only polemical behavior which is ultimately there to protect from kitsch. Ludwig Giesz, phenomenology of Kitsch

What this means is that if beauty can not be produced, musicians will at least not even try, so that they don’t help producing kitsch. They will only caress and develop skills that will one day be used again for producing beauty. That will be theirs way of contributing to the world of musical art.

So academic circles were seen as fiercely anti-populist. However, it is enough to drop a casual look on XX century academic trends to doubt in this picture. Two key trends of XX century academic music dominate: first is the emancipation of rhythm, brought by Stravinsky. Obsession with rhythm soon got hold over almost all modern composers: Orff regarded rhythm as “perfect mediator between instincts and intellect”; French composer Messiaen will talk about himself as “a rhythmicien”; leading American composer Aaron Copland will start off with rhythm-driven music, and so on. With these rhythmic obsessions came certain barbaric spirit. XIX to XX century French composer Claude Debussy had these impressions on Stravinsky, who he admired on the whole and on whose work he had some influence:

He is also a young barbarian who wears flashy ties and treads on women's toes as he kisses their hands. From “The Lives of Great Composers” by Harold C. Schoenberg

The second trend of XX century academic music was emancipation of dissonance, brought by Schoenberg. This trend was seemingly unrelated with rhythmic one, bringing glorifying of rational and abstraction. But in the way it sounded, Schoenberg's chromatic expressionism was very rhythm-driven; temperamental, rhythmical outbursts of sound.

Expressionism is stark, often brutal, purposely distorted in line and texture, full of nervous tension. From “The Lives of Great Composers” by Harold C. Schoenberg

Schoenberg's followers in next generation, serialists and electro-acoustic musicians such as Stockhausen, used aggressive sounds, that are unlikely to be used from the side of harmonically-minded musician who uses more gentle sounds, that have more potential to be put in complex context. Such sounds dominate traditional classical music; but during XX century, serenity is replaced with wild outbursts of temperament. Tonalists like Stravinsky, although not writing atonal music, also used distorted harmonic elements and will have them even more in the future.

But pop culture that started with jazz in America in the period between WW I and WW II was marked with same attributes - rhythm and dissonance, created through wild, instinctive improvisations. So these two tendentions – emancipation of rhythm and dissonance – were equally the main driving forces of both popular and modern academic music. So where is then the sharp difference between “exclusive art of the elite” and “unrestricted production of kitsch”? Academic circles brought exactly the same what jazz brought - rhythm and dissonance; only wild improvisations were replaced with intellectualized composing. Both resulted in what sounds arbitrary, lacking articulation and regularity that are always there with true music. In early jazz the minimum of regularity was obtained through rhythm, its even bars following the rhythm of the human heart; in academic music, through strict rules. And that was it.

So jazz and pop, that were equated with barbarousness and degradation of music in XX century, and academic intellectualized music of the time, were a part of the same approach, that we will call “rhythm & noise”, and that will dominate the century. This concept was a degradation of musical art of which XX century academic forms and pop music were two opposing facets. Both academic and popular music lost serenity and order, replacing it with nervous impulses and arbitrariness; music was more and more used to express the negative, confused and powerless than positive and elevated.

But it was felt as an authentic expression of the times. Somewhat later almost all important musical happenings from the first half of XX century will be seen as premonitions of disasters, so ballet “Rite Of Spring” of Stravinsky will be seen as premonition of 1st world war, and jazz of 2nd. Hesse continues about jazz:

It was music of times of decadence. In Rome in the times of last emperors must have existed similar music. In comparison with true music, Bach and Mozart, those are, of course, slops – but that is how all our art, whole our mentality, all of our so called culture looks like when compared to true culture.

What all this jazz, “populism”, “elitism”, rhythm, noise and abstraction meant, was comprised by an authentic music lover from XIX century – now long ago dead - of whose reaction when he heard for the first time Luis Armstrong sing my father once told me:

When I heard that goofing, I realized: the age of music has passed.

The last classical musicians were aware of this wrongness. Schoenberg was dreaming of harmony and return to simplicity of means. Stravinsky later departured barbaric experiments and went for neo-classicism. But crisis of beauty continued throughout XX century. And there was something worse than drop down in artistic quality – beauty itself started to be viewed upon on as something undesirable. So-called modernist classical music fell in total disregard for natural flow of music. More worthy music, that stayed close to ancient stream of musical beauty, was not recognized as such. Music space turned into a big heap of rubbish and rare pieces of gold, with no one to make some order. There was not anymore any universal measure for quality or importance of anything achieved. Even highly educated musicians started loosing idea about what is good music, doubting that there is such a thing as this stream of musical beauty, and rather believed that the art of music is free to fluctuate as the spirit of time commands in all directions, as any individual finds to his temporary liking, and thus that there is no way to say if something is an embraced degeneration or a natural evolution. Cynical attitude towards beauty, loss of belief in beauty, in objectivity of beauty, took over the academic world.

On this way neither pop fashions nor academical rhetorics and respect weren't in accordance with how we truly feel things from inside and what we really think. Our honest feelings and thoughts were replaced with pop trends, cools and hypes, and from the other side academically proposed criterias – all different sorts of licenses. Both professional circles and popular market did not allow spontaneous reaction of audience, but were essentially commanding to audiences what is to be liked/appreciated, and what to be disliked/scorned, without giving the explanation. There was conformism of the street through anonymous authority, and the conformism of institutions through named state authorities, that were both set against what we really like from inside. This situation, that demotivated musicians to genuinely strive for good music, is perfectly illustrated with this paraphrase of a young (techno) musician that I recently encountered somewhere on Internet forums about music:

All music is a whore. Either you go for intellectual complexity appreciated at academies, either for dance-floor.