The Misunderstandings

Music of JM Jarre was essentially the first successful modernist music. His work should have been seen as the unlikely victory of modernists.

But his innovations weren’t met with big bells among musicians. When the “weird ideas” came to life, and managed to claim wide audiences, it came out that people and musicians in general weren’t quite ready. It could be said that modern music was dreamed big, but made true on a small way.

At the time in which I experienced everything here described, still knowing nothing about where this music came from, I became shocked when I discovered that JM Jarres music is widely not regarded for experimental among musicians. It is then when I became curious to learn why this is so and, unknowingly, started writing this book.

For the beginning, Oxygene was musically commented by existing modernist circles surprisingly sparsely, mostly dealing with its commercial success and skipping the musical story. The explanation for this, if it was provided at all, was that there is nothing particularly original in Oxygene, in terms of content. What this meant, is that forms and concepts from Oxygene were already known theoretically. But making them work in practice was surprisingly not seen as a great achievement, and, in a way, the true invention of the music discussed. Even the house to which Jarre mostly belonged, GRM, comments like this:

Jean-Michel Jarre, for example, who (partly) followed the course at the GRM, and who claims to be a follower of Schaeffer, presents his world hit album "Oxygene" as being "électroacoustique" (or allows it to be presented as such). For him, and others, this word refers only to the source of the sounds and their timbre (synthesizer), rather than to aesthetics (his music is essentially tonal and traditional, basically instrumental).

Here we immediately come to the core of the thing. Aesthetics of Oxygene is presented as traditional, because it was not in accordance with stylistic clichés of what modern music is. One could then wonder how could a “traditional aesthetics” cause frantic pro-et-contra reactions and fire up the synthesizer controversy, accusing Jarre of emotional coolness and “blowing humans away”. As everyone could hear, emotional impact of Oxygene was more unusual than anything academic experimental environment produced. Especially interesting is pointing out that music is “tonal”. This illustrates how artificial the understanding of musical form, not only meaning, became. Since Oxygene didn't fit in “atonal” theoretical frame of the time, that means it is “traditional”. What didn’t cross the minds of these musicians is that the theories they put on pedestal might be wrong, or inappropriate to judge a piece they are dealing with. As Francis Bacon said in his “The Great Instauration” preface:

…because the primary notions of things which the mind readily and passively imbibes, stores up, and accumulates (and it is from them that all the rest flow) are false, confused, and overhastily abstracted from the facts; nor are the secondary and subsequent notions less arbitrary and inconstant; whence it follows that the entire fabric of human reason which we employ in the inquisition of nature is badly put together and built up, and like some magnificent structure without any foundation.

Forms of Oxygene – regardless of instruments used -- sounded unusual on an intuitive level. Jarre’s music was subjectively sounding experimental, regardless of how innovative it was when analyzed down the lines of electro-acoustic theories. These experimental pieces were going in front of theirs time and induced the need for adjusting the theories. JM Jarre’s music was inviting the listener to find out what is it that makes it interesting. It is the question if so experimental music ever existed, and it probably won’t repeat for ages. It was genial activity in most narrow sense of the word, that Kant described:

Genius is the talent which gives the rule to art.

Oxygene score was highly effective and relatively simple; so how is it possible that such obvious innovations were not noticed? It was because academicians were blinded by power of pure reason, both in the way of understanding and creating music. Experimental music was criticized and listened to down the path of those theories. How it actually sounds, didn’t seem to matter. Beauty seemed to have became alien to music writers of the period.

It is really bewildering that musical writers could calmly walk over the actual effect of music, regarding only what fits theirs current abstract theoretical frames. Academic circles were going out with the most ridiculous things to explain JM Jarre’s success. So for example, it was said that likability of JM Jarre’s music comes chiefly from his ability to take the edge out of sound. How much sense this make one could wonder immediately, and also again after JM Jarre came out with stuff as edgy and non-smooth as Zoolook from 1984.

It is also funny that the fact that Oxygene had traditional elements in it was one of the reasons for not paying to much attention to it, where exactly that should have been the reason for attention. Traditional elements were exactly the proof of the achievement and experimentality. True experimenting means evolution from what is there. New original music is always derived on some way from existing; it is always an evolution, although maybe through a sudden jump. In other words, in order to remain good, music in essence must not change. After all, any new music that we really like, however different or original it is, we feel as in a way familiar to us, as actually not being new – it’s like, it was always there, it’s just that someone finally found it. As Kant would say:

Originality for originality's sake is original nonsense.

Why Jarre succeeded is because, as Jarre himself explained, he was able to treat synthesizer as a “divinely inspired man”. Instead of following intellectualized theories, he has chosen the natural way. As summarized in great writings of Francis Bacon, “The Great Instauration” preface:

For while men are occupied in admiring and applauding the false powers of the mind, they pass by and throw away those true powers, which, if it be supplied with the proper aids and can itself be content to wait upon nature instead of vainly affecting to overrule her, are within its reach.

By relying on intuition and nature, while keeping in mind the modernist aims, Jarre made first effective versions in avant-garde idioms. He was able to forget before starting to create – to forget how he would think about music and create it without a synthesizer.

Becuse genius derives rules for art from nature originality is its primary property. Kant

Oxygene wasn't made down the theories and practices of the time, even the most avantgarde. After all the traditional practice and all modernist theories, there were no too usable theoretical nor practical guidelines; everything had to be made with no prescribed system, using all existing practice and theory as a raw resource. It is like if in the previous phase modernists destroyed all values and music, alongside devising theories that more formalized dreams than anything else, now it was the time for construction of new music from scratch. Accumulated knowledge was not enough to enable musicians to continue further.

Experimental music is a term introduced by composer John Cage in 1955. Cage defined "an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen" (Cage 1961, 39), and he was specifically interested in completed works that performed an unpredictable action (Mauceri 1997, 197) /…/ Michael Nyman (1974) uses the term "experimental" to describe the work of American composers (John Cage, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Meredith Monk, Malcolm Goldstein, Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Philip Glass, John Cale, Steve Reich, etc.) as opposed to the European avant-garde at the time (Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis). Wikipedia

This last quote focuses on gnostic vs agnostic approach. European modernists had a musical dream, formulated it in some abstract concepts, and then wanted it to be done by theoretically constructing music. Experimentality for them meant making music that follows avant-garde theories of music, that transcend or differ from traditional theoretical frames. For academical experimentators, experiment meant before all exploring music theoretically and devising theories of music more advanced than existing, afterwards applied on making music.

While modernist academic experimentators tried to create new music starting from theories, others were doing the opposite - the do-it-your self composing. Where with academic modernists it was like theoretical science, JM Jarre and his kin were like scientists-experimentators. They took for theirs starting point the effect, agnostically searching for the ways to excite listeners, incorporating everything around them they would find interesting. In this immediate, practical experiment, common-sense experimenting, they were like musical alchemist, and theirs musical studios were like alchemical laboratories. After all, experiment is associated with practice rather than theory.

If silence of modernist circles when JM Jarre stepped on the scene was a surprise, one would expect better reactions of traditional classical and pop circles, since his electronic music seemingly bridged the gap between the two. What however ensued, is that it was refused by both. There was a taboo around this scene. Neither the criteria of fashions and statistical popularity on which pop scene was formed, nor the abstract criterias on which academic scene was formed could reflect the actual popularity and worth of this music. Pop circles not only didn’t accept it, but were against it. Oldfield said in one interview that he is certain he could get physically attacked by many rockers because, in his opinion, he was “not a part of a gang” and was being “too smart”.

Even the most progressive part of the pop scene, the most free-minded and sophisticated rockers felt repulsed. ”Opaque melodies that would bug most of the people”, was Frank Zappa's comment on Oxygene, who regardless of truthfulness of his comment didn’t bother to mention what was good about it. The following Rolling Stones magazine comment on one of JM Jarre’s records, “Magnetic Fields”, is an essential attitude of the whole pop scene towards this music:

Unfortunately, Magnetic Fields were not strong enough to destroy the record.

There was a lot of confusion and a comic quailty to how Jarre's work will soon be percieved in pop circles. Pop journalists will soon start regarding Jarre's music as some sort of “main-stream” electronica, as opposed to experimental electronica. The reason for this, as funny as it sounds, is since all the noisy and unsuccessful experiments were pursued for decades, people from broad circles were used to equate experiment with unsuccessful experiment. Experiment was expected to sound murky, half-structured, raw, noisy, arbitrary. Reason enough to be called not experimental, was to succeed in experiment; reason enough not to be called innovative was to sound like music at all.

Anyway this music couldn’t have been viewed and accepted as another addition to pop market. There was a deep difference between it and what pop culture was about. And what about traditional classical circles? These forms looked weird and alien to most classical lovers. In this period the resistance towards electronics was at its peek. It was considered a purely deviant form. Traditional circles were mostly choosing not to speak about electronic music. Although academics usually looked at it as a part of pop culture – since everything that isn’t classical was called pop – any real pop musician was discussed more relaxedly among official musical elite than these musicians, for whom one would expect to be much closer and more interesting to them.

All of this was soon leading towards these musicians remaining even more isolated than when they began. This music is therefore to remain the most obscured widely known music of XX century; quite popular yet rejected from pop world, and quite beautiful and serious yet rejected from academic musical world. It was the music and scene the least talked about that was doing the most important and inventive musical activity of the time. There was never a group of composers so universally listened and commercially successful, and exerting influence on other musicians, and yet remaining so little acknowledged by musical circles. It was an extraordinary, unprecedented happening. Composer could have been misunderstood or under-rated, but not on this way of a true taboo. While JM Jarre was creating personal success, sold millions of instrumental records, being voted personality of the year 1976 by the readers of American 'People' magazine, and soon started organizing huge outdoor concerts, he was out of talk and media exposure. It was all starting to look like yet another affirmation of the old thought of XIX century maverick German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer:

What is valuable, world does not value; what the world values, has no value whatsoever.

On those rare occasions when trying to explain such ignoration, musical writers would come out with controversial arguments. JM Jarre was accused for being sugary, and in the same time for being cold; because of being weird and in the same time because of being 'mainstream'; because of pretentiousness and in the same time because of simplicity; etc. It looked unreal reading how people from punk suddenly mind 'unsophisticated' character of JM Jarre or Oldfield, classical musicians mind 'pretentiousness', and modernist ones 'lack of emotions and belittlement of man'. On one strange way, from different reasons, all different parts of musical state were together against this kind of music. They would all suddenly start sounding rather similar when speaking about electronic music. Situation diverged from the established picture in which rural majority is alienated from art, while enlightened minority, speaking through musical institutions, is embracing it.

Could it really be the case that people were simply buying bad music? But this music also had overwhelming influence on both popular and academic music that was and will be produced. From Moroder’s “I Feel Love” pioneering of electro-dance culture, which was varied from JM Jarre’s Oxygene 5, over such pop hits as “Sweet Dreams” of EU Rhythmics or Pink Floyd “Another Brick In The Wall” that were inspired with Equinoxe 4, to Philip Glass, movie composers and others, musical impact of these records was obvious. Why then this taboo and ignoration by all levels of musical establishment? The reason must have been as Shakespeare would say it: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”.

And what exactly was rotten was not difficult to say: beauty became alien to XX century musical state. Musical beauty is not easily formally described, but certainly it is from the other side of sentimentality and anger of pop music. Beautiful music stirs the soul, enchants the senses, fires up imagination, impresses the reason, making us to feel that there is some order in what overcomes us, that something is right with the world. If music is sour and leaves feelings of discomfort on the bottom, one needs no other proof that it doesn’t come from the summit of art. And modernist academic pieces were always standing for doubt, discomfort, and often used for these purposes in movies. At best, they sounded like distorted, more loosely organized romanticism such as that of Alban Berg or film composer Newman.

And so during XX century musical conservatories turned from a house of musical truth, science and beauty, into worshipers of turgid and under-achieved; of false “masterpieces”, considered to be of high quality despite theirs failure to connect with any audience whatsoever. Academic modernist pieces, that were supposed to be unpopular because of complexity and inaccessibility, where in truth simply not impressive, but just being promoted into that status by dishonest musicians and music writers. Interests of musical art and musical state diverged; musical institutions themselves were becoming the main enemies of music. Musicians were admiring each other, while more and more ignoring the product, the actual musical importance of what is heard.

But behind this silence there was a lot of disturbance, confusion and fear. No doubt, few people from institutions, if anyone, were able to truly comprehend what was happening. There was suddenly much fear from synthesizers, even in circles that commended or tolerated modernist experiments while they were strictly academic. While Stockhausen and other academic electronic experimentators were having business with detractors and enemies only within closed circles of musicians, these first popularizators of electronic music came face to face with people and society. It was, understandably, a much more grave and on moments disturbing battle. Scornful phrases like “a contradiction in itself” or violent phrases like “an excuse for existence of people lacking brain and heart” were used from the side of enemies of electronic music, showing clearly all the depth of animosity and fear it aroused.

Accepting this music essentially meant musicians acknowledging what has been done and trying to do more along those lines; but it didn’t happen. Everything that happened, was that this music was left to be broad-casted and simply be popular.

On the end, there was yet another, and maybe core thing here. One could actually doubt in readiness, even in the middle of experimental modernists, for changes. It was all right while it was only theory; Stockhausen evangelized the world, opened the doors to strive and dream about, to became aware of where to go. But veil to be actually removed, actually making the first steps, making the dreams true – that was something else. To actually mean it – that, maybe, was not a part of agreement. Vast popularity of JM Jarre’s music disturbed existing notions about musical experiment as something by nature opposed to everyone and remaining distant from majority of people.

Actually, this unpopularity was imbibed in the very core of existing academical approach. Stockhausen, Boulez and company were supported and even hyped, because theirs actual creations didn’t have the chance to make a deep cultural impact. But when contemporary music suggested that it is ready for a breakthrough, it was obscured. Musical state on the whole was seemingly not yet ready for such a change. It was like musicians were defending from too sudden achievement.

When those who walk behind us can not keep pace with us, they swear we are going in the wrong direction. Marie Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorismen

Authors themselves tried to push the things somewhat, aware of importance of theoretical break-troughs, so Jarre was giving only interviews after Oxygene.

I view what we are doing today /talking about music in an interview/ as part of my job as a composer. It's part of the music, if I may say that, because if the music is to be communicated, it's the composer who has to communicate. His or her work is not finished at the door of the recording studio. Jean Michel Jarre

While theirs interviews eventually became a material for this book, they couldn’t change much music-state wise at the time.

Convincing someone doesn't work. If the necessity for change isn't already within them, that means they don't see the world the same way you do, so they won't change. The procedure of introducing them to the world is quite different from evangelizing about it. You can't predict the results. They might come out with a system much better than yours, actually. Or quite different. Brian Eno

What was the biggest failure of traditional circles, is that they proved decidedly unwilling to identify electronic experiments as a stand-alone activity; they wanted to consider everything as either traditional classical or contemporary pop music. But the aim of JM Jarre's recordings was not popularity for its own sake, but getting electronic culture in music going. He never went too popular even in the heights; he was just enough popular to make musicians pay attention and follow. Being popular for Jarre was more a tool than an aim. His albums were an invitation to other musicians, an agitation towards the electronic future. Same as Stockhausen, Jarre was interested in making some theoretical points about music, but unlike Stockhausen, he wanted to make it popular. For Jarre, popularity was a proof of achievement, of experimental success. This can be seen from the fact that throughout his experimental carrier (mid 70s to mid 80s), Jarre musically did everything only once or twice, to demonstrate a theoretical concern, and went on to another one. It is completely uncanny that he was able to do this, and that is why he is the most important musician of his generation.

So while the tragedy of second generation was in being given a role of the ones who will not create, the tragedy of third generation, was that they did create, but were deprived of recognition for what they musically achieved. As we have seen on the beginning of this chapter, academical experimentators of XX century were whining that, for the first time, it was not theirs fault that they are not being embraced, but of the world around them. But it was theirs fault all right – theirs music was simply unlovable, lacking the universal qualities. And they were actually accepted more than they deserved as creators. They could say that the world failed to empathize with their’s dreams, but not with the actual compositions.

The composers who actually lived the story of not being recognized are the ones of JM Jarre’s generation. As they did what previous generations spoke about, they also lived through what previous spoke about. When the message Schoenberg couldn’t communicate has finally been told, and people understood, they have chosen to pretend they didn’t and for a time continued as nothing happened. Fireworks from Jarre’s concerts weren’t seen as what they essentially were: fireworks to the first, and miraculous, romantic triumph of the seemingly least romantic, most derided and unpopular music ever - XX century modernistic music. The incredibility and proportions of the achievement was minimized. It was a grotesque contrast: Jarre’s megalomaniac concerts were the most improbable musical spectacles of the century, and maybe of all times, shaded probably only by Wagner's private musical cathedral in Bayreuth from the previous century; yet inside the musical cathedral, he was ignored. It was at times almost like writing the most beautiful song, but on an island with no one to hear and admire.

How then did Jarre succeed? Of course, audience. Another incredible fact is, that while Oxygene de facto presented academical experimental dreams come true, it was in the same time the most home, domestic-sounding record, the most close to people's living space of all the music that ever became popular. So while achieving the wildest dreams of experimentators, which originated far away from common people, JM Jarre thrown those dreams not even on the street, but directly in the urban homes of the wide audiences.

While detractors did manage to slow down the growth of electronic music after breakthroughs of 1970s, they couldn’t negate its impact. This was clearly shown when Jean Michel Jarres Oxygene album from 1976 was voted peoples favorite electronic music album 25 years after it was made, in techno-orientated “Future Music” musical magazine -- that itself was never too friendly towards classic electronic music.