In this piece I shall address Theodor Adorno’s essay on ‘Gestures’. In this essay, Adorno wears more of a musician’s hat than his many other hats, like say, the Freudian psychoanalysis hat; the sociologist hat; or the philosophers’ hat.

Give them what they want – The Allegory of the Running Man 

Perhaps the most informal way of trying to understand this essay, and that is by no means to say that I do in fact understand it; is to try and make a couple of cultural touchstones. There’s an expression among my friends which comes from the film ‘The Running Man’, which is about a totalitarian imagined future (from a 1980s perspective) where in order to ignore the reality of martial law, entertainment is used to pacify the audience, to use crass consumerism and aspiration as a ploy to accept the dominion of the status quo. One of the tools to do so is by the entertainment show ‘The Running Man’, where convicted persons go on a sadistic game show to fight for their lives. The character Killian says at the start of the show: ‘We give ’em what they want’. What an interesting parable to allude to when discussing a Marxian theorist of culture. The film itself is almost like some Frankfurt School parable. Later on in the film, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character makes a step towards overturning  the false class consciousness of the audience and then before he kills Killian, Arnold’s character (Ben Richards) recapitulates the phrase but giving it a new context: ‘and right now, I’m going to give the audience what I think they want’.

While I could say more about how this film is a parable for the Culture Industry thesis of Adorno, I might instead talk about Adorno’s damning essay on ‘Gesture’ that accuses Wagner not merely of bad character as he did in the essay ‘Social Character’, but of poor composing ability. I think the most salient and boiled down version of what Adorno says of Wagner in this essay is that the Saxony composer wrote unstylistically, and perhaps even unmusically. Wagner is putatively understood for being the composer of long phrases and lucious chromatics, building tensions and creating erotically charged dissonances, but to Adorno, there is compositional merit to this, and the reputation he has built on his composing is effectively a shallow populism: it is akin to Killian’s ‘give them what they want’. 

The Wagnerian Gesture 

One of the things I hate about academic writing is when a term is used, and can even be an everyday term, but it is not defined. I’m probably guilty of this myself on occaision. As this essay concerns the gesture. We might ask what is a gesture. Instead of giving a definition as such, Adorno points towards how Wagner’s work is gesture-like. Perhaps that is the closest we can get to for understanding a gesture.

One point Adorno makes is that as a person, Wagner’s traits show in his music, and both in terms of his music, and personality; Meister Wilhelm is a dilettante. Perhaps another crude way of putting this is to say that Wagner is a Jack of All Trades, and master of none. Wagner in his later operas put much effort into elements outside of the music itself: the libretti, mythology of the texts. It is even said that Wagner put much effort into the costumes and even the physical considerations of a concert venue in his Bayreuth opera house. Wagner was an ambitious person, and his music met such ambitions. However, to be dilettante is to be amateur. Adorno’s acusation is something as follows: Wagner’s ambitions were shallow, and this is reflected in the lack of depth in his music. This is what seems to me the meaning of a gesture.

Wagner as a bad composer 

Adorno does not say this without reasons. There are specific things that, within the musical work of Wagner’s work (in contrast to say the mythology of the libretti). Adorno has very specific things to say to accus Wagner of being a bad composer. They are the following:

Wagner emphasises the role of the conductor as a ‘master’ of the music. In historical context one may accept this and see this as leading to a future where conductors are on a level of musical artists as say, the composer. A generation after Wagner, notable composers had reputations as conductors, in particular Mahler must be mentioned. Mahler was almost as much a superstar conductor of his day as he was a notable composer!

Adorno also makes the point that the music Wagner makes is compatible with or conducive with the emphasised nature and centrality of the conductor with specific respect to tempo. Wagner also makes a claim that I’m still trying to work out in my own head, that there is a distinct atemporality to his music. I may take this to mean the way that the harmonies and textures of the compositions are atemporal both in terms of being otherworldly and not obviously alluding to the work of past composers. Compare this to say Brahms, where in much of his work the Beethovenian and Baroque elements are quite evident (and much pleasantly so). Not being an expert on Wagner, I will take this on face value about atemporality.

The other point about atemporality may be construed in terms of being immaterial to the historical based conditions of the music and the settings of the grand stories of Wagner’s operas. Atemporality also refers to the respect that the melodies don’t go anywhere interesting. Instead they simply and frustratingly stay in the same places without a good amount of development. Atemporality is something Adorno is using in a variety of senses, some ideological, some psychoanalytic, but all musically justifiable. To provide and example of the atemporality as a lack of melodic development, Adorno appeals to the infamousTristan concert prelude.

Wagnerian gestures try to speak of a grand view through big instrumental sounds of the symphony orchestra, but they are gestures because of the poor score-writing. Adorno specifically refers to poor modulations and disapproves of the secondary modulations present in much of Wagner’s score-writing to be sloppy.

Adorno references another Wagner commentator, Alfred Lorenz. Lorenz put forward a notable study of Wagner’s work and points out specifically the use of ‘bar form’ in Wagner’s work. Adorno picks up on this as a lack of form, and this is a big part of what Adorno seems to find disapproving in Wagner. I think something that wikipedia noted to me is that Lorenz is considered as a discredited authority on Wagner, due to the former’s associations with Nazi ideology. Adorno in the purposes of this essay, however, takes the bar form (AAB melodic phrasing) as horribly generic and unstylistic.

If I were to pretend to be Zizek and be facetious, I might give a crass analogy. Adorno here is employing something of an Oedipal fascination and protection of his mother against what he percieves as a threat to his mother, the father. In this crass parody of a Freudian analogy (which I urge you not to take seriously), the unwelcome father is Wagner who is courting the mother’s affections.

So who is the mother? In this essay I might take it to mean the ideals of Viennese Classicism. But to me this is not a good enough answer. If Adorno valorises the greatness of Mozart and Beethoven, I contend it is only mediated through the other masters of Viennese form: Adorno’s own divinities: Schoenberg and Webern. But let’s take a step back and talk about Viennese Classicism.

Viennese Clasccisism

What Adorno refers to as Viennese classicism refers to a golden age around the middle of the 18th Century (ah, the 18th century, my favourite time in philosophy), where the greats such as Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn developed stylistic innovations which emphasised a particular brand of balance, and form over feeling. I am led to feel that this historical ideal of the 18th Century is clouded by Adorno through the Schoenberg perspective. Late Beethoven cannot be said to exhibit balance in its emotional temperament. Perhaps Adorno’s understanding is anachronstic. It is often said that talk of a ‘First and Second Reich’ only came about when the Third Reich was conceptualised as a notion. Likewise, there seems to be no Viennese Classicism in Adorno without what had come to be known as the Second Viennese school. There are reasons to support this interpretation in other essays where Adorno compares and contrasts Wagner’s composing and scoring to Schoenberg. The essay ‘Colour’ comes to mind when thinking of Adorno comparing to another ‘Viennese great’, which I shall write about hopefully soon enough.

Why is Viennese Classicism so important? This to me is the real issue of this essay. If Wagner is a composer of gestural motions, it is because he does not pay attention to the innovative aspects of his forebears such as Beethoven. Beethoven and Mozart were masters of form when it came to composition, they were masters of developing melodic lines and harmonies and of transitioning keys. I take this to be more than a musical opinion but a strong personal conviction. However I am sceptical of Adorno’s disapproval. I understand the ideological and cultural grounds for saying that Wagner fails as a composer compared to Beethoven. Then again, almost every other composer fails to compare to Beethoven, and those that dare to surpass him number on a four-fingered hand. Of course Adorno would think Schoenberg numbers among that four (as do I!).

The Tristan passage which Adorno is highly distainful of, I find hard to be convinced that this is terrible part writing. Adorno talks more about the Tristan passage in his essay ‘Motiv’. Which particularly goes into what I consider as a very contraversial view about Leitmotif. If Wagner was a composer of gestures, then he has fooled even me that his harmonies are luxurious. Indeed Meister Wilhelm even convinced Nietzsche for a time. Adorno stated in his own musicological way of the shallowness of Wagner’s writing which has a simultaneous appeal to it, because it is gestural. Adorno says this where Nietzsche says in much pithier words: Only sick music makes money today.

Some conclusions

Part of me wonders as I read this book, and as we had also written an essay on Glenn Gould on this blog some weeks ago: what would have Gould thought of Adorno? Adorno very much resembles one of the personalities that Gould adopted in his broadcasting work, of the avant-garde radical composer. Both are fans of Schoenberg, I keep emphasising this because there are very few of us in the world, living and dead! However, for very similar reasons, Gould enjoys Bach where Adorno valorises the Vienna 18th Century. Gould however, was no big fan of Beethoven or Mozart (Gould once made the infamous comment that ‘Mozart died too late’). Part of me wonders whether Adorno’s vision of music prefigured a character like Glenn Gould, or whether Gould’s later piano career could be seen as reflecting some of the musical ideology that could be said to be ‘Adornian’. This is a thought that I will try to develop more hopefully as I am going further along in assessing these essays.

A serious point is to be made here. I could take Adorno’s views here seriously, and I would respond to say I am not convinced that a lack of form is such a bad thing in something like the Tristan concert prelude. However, I find Adorno’s reasons very apt, if they were applied to other music. Something that I have also been suspecting about Adorno is finding textual evidence. Namely, that Adorno could have been a formalist aesthetically speaking. Formalism is the view that what makes something beautiful is the form of it, and the underlying rules and principles that govern that art form. Those are the things that made Beethoven great, those are also the things that made Schoenberg a great composer too. But if Wagner were a great composer, it would only be for him as a dilettante. But that said, that to me is not necessarily a bad thing. This is an essay where Adorno is uncharitable, but his points force me to take them seriously because of the strength of the psychoanalytic association between Wagner’s character and the shallowness of his writing. Perhaps if we are to take formalism seriously as an aesthetic view, we may draw from an essay like this to evaluate its merits, by looking at the demerits of its alternative.

Michael

I’ve found many of the apps to be really helpful in everyday life. Using Google Maps to find locations; using Evernote for basically everything; Foursquare to find potential places to go and keep little logs of my travels. I think however the most interesting app has been WhatsApp. What has life been like without it! I keep about a half dozen casual conversations, most of them non-serious.

When I was informed by the service that I had to subscribe to the service, I was kind of aware this point in time would happen, but then I found out the price of the subscription was ridiculously cheap. These days everything is overpriced and it is such a delight to find an app that I use a great deal which by no means breaks the bank! Thinking about how much I’m saving from the alternative of texting and picture messaging makes WhatsApp a really cool appliance. I had to admire the business model of it as well. Get one hooked and then put a minimal price. I also expect that many other users will subscribe, and that will be a very neat profit. I am pleasantly surprised and impressed at this neat little strategy for an app!

This is admittedly quite a frivolous post. I like Whatsapp for being frivolous. I keep a group chat with my friends from badminton, and then I also like to snap pictures of things I think are amusing like newspaper headlines or other such items to share with friends for a quick laugh. I am generally apprehensive about apps because sometimes they can be a convenience at a cost of being some form of inconvenience (for example: smartphones have a short battery life at the cost of being really useful).

Clever move, Whatsapp. Clever move.

Michael

A summary of this essay would be that Adorno tries to psychologise Wagner. In doing so, Adorno gives us a reason to consider the composer as a self-aggrandising egotist who relies on the middle-upper classes to fund his composing while at the same time critiquing the order of the status quo. Wagner also portrays his ideological vision of the world using the Jews, or rather, a stereotyped characterisation that his audience would recognise as a Jewish sentiment, as problematic to society. Adorno points out how there is an internal inconsistency, or conflict in the ways that Wagner both relies on the bourgeoisie patronage, as well as the status quo of a culture which celebrates opera; against Wagner’s supposedly revolutionary sentiment. The other ‘conflict’ relates what is casually referred to as Wagner’s secret. Namely, the accusation (which is not explicitly stated in Adorno but only alluded to), that Nietzsche knew ‘the truth’ of Wagner’s parentage, that in spite of all of Wagner’s anti-semitism, he himself may have had a Jewish heritage. So that’s a summary of the essay. I could just end my blog post here! But of course, I never do end at the beginning.

The Wagnerian Joke 

The Wagnerian Joke reflects a certain personality trait that Adorno is trying to trace in looking at Wagner historically. Adorno draws from materials such responses to Wagner’s earlier works and his own descriptions of them, testimonies about the composer as well as other stories and relationships that are documented. Such as Wagner’s letters to the Romantic heavyweight composer, Franz Liszt; Wagner’s contact with Friedrich Nietzsche and Wagner’s contact with Nietzsche’s sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, the latter who became infamous for her antisemitism, but that’s another story.

What I would call the Wagnerian joke draws a certain unitary concept from the testimonies and characterisations that Adorno seems to string together about the way Wagner believed in his own cultic status and revolutionary character. Wagner’s sense of self-celebration is depicted also in select characters of his works.

The Wagnerian joke, as drawn from this essay can be understood in the following ways:

1. Wagner ridicules the plight of a character whose malady comes from a concrete social situation

2. By doing this Wagner creates a sense of humour while also attempting to create a form of celebration. The joke, and response of laughter serves as a rationalisation and acceptance of the plight in question. Instead of thinking critically about it, we laugh.

3. A consequence of this is that Wagner makes himself in a janused fashion both malicious behind a magnanimous and friendly face

The Wagnerian joke is deeply sinister, and it is imbued within the comedy around Mime’s character. Another example of the Wagnerian Joke is the anecdote of Hermann Levi conducting Parsifal. Levi was a Jew and one might think that this could be something to allay the concern of Wagner’s anti-semitism. Adorno refers to a story in which Wagner gives Levi a letter written anonymously to the effect of telling Levi to step down from composing Parsifal. Levi asks why Wagner gave the conductor this letter and Wagner answers in a way that appears both kind but also deeply sinister and ugly at once. Apparently after Wagner gave the letter to Levi, the latter was deathly silent at a dinner engagement to which Wagner asked Levi why he was so quiet, which was in some darkly way, a gesture of intimidation clothed behind the appearance of concern. The Wagnerian joke is something Adorno describes and I am trying to conceptualise (by calling it the Wagnerian joke), but realistically speaking, I cannot really have a grasp on it as a notion.

Perhaps the closest thing that came to mine was the comedy of Ricky Gervais. Particularly in the way that Gervais uses embarrassment and humiliation as a way of breaking a character down and revealing the facade and fakeness that was really underneath. I’ve had conversations about this kind of Gervais reactionhumour (another term I made up on an ad hoc basis) and this seems to be the basis of the dislike or like of Ricky Gervais as a comedic writer. I personally am a fan of the ugliness of the Gervais reaction as there’s something very awkward and untimely about it, television sitcoms and acting seem to have this polished nature to it and the Gervais reaction is an instance of how something in real life happens that is not comedic and not timely. Whether one finds this funny, seems to be the defining question of whether one is a fan of Gervais or not.

Wagner’s inner conflicts 

Another aspect of Wagner’s social character seems to be the internal conflicts present within his work and his character. One dimension of this is the relationship with the bourgeosisie that Wagner has. Wagner is dependent on the Bourgois classes as patronage and as a paying audience. Adorno notes how Wagner occupied a time before state provisions were introduced for artists, and also when the influence of opera was waning. As such Wagner occupied a position of a bohemian, the artisan without a patron. It is interesting sociologically speaking, to think about the ways in which artists and musicians of the various times in history may find financial support before they become properly established, if they ever become established at all. This is an issue that many people in bands or many artists face today. Have we really escaped the age of the Patron. In the UK we have things like the National Lottery and the Arts Council, who are in some ways not so much different to the House of Esterhazy or Ludwig II of Bavaria.

Wagner’s narratives reflect a feudal mentality, and one which is in some respects against the bourgeois status-quo. Adorno points out the compromise of Wagner’s integrity to take the thalers of patrons and appealing to bourgeois sensibilities, while also trying to provide a revolutionary sentiment of a different social order. How far can one be revolutionary while conforming to the modes of the status quo? In some ways this is not a unique issue. Another book I’m currently reading, by filmmaker Kevin Smith: “Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good”  speaks about the early days of Miramax and the indie films he made with them. Smith speaks about how the rise and rise of Smith’s career was due to a commitment to a specific vision of his stylised view to filmmaking. Smith later admits that the intervention of studio executives interfering with various aspects of his filmic vision led to a compromise and a loss of interest from a large part of his audience. I think the film that Smith refers to as destroying him in the book was ‘Cop out’. Back to Wagner…

This kind of compromise might look disingenuous. But I do wonder if Adorno meant it to be so. This kind of tension is based on the social conditions of creating music. If I were to create music today, I’d need access to quite a fair bit of equipment. I would need some fancy software and fancy recording equipment and it’s not too easy to get a hold of a lot of that stuff without a studio, or making one! I’m actually having this problem lately as it happens with another project. On the other hand, Wagner’s ideology that underpins his opera libretti are deeply imbued as social narratives and visions of society. One reading of this inconsistency is suggestive the necessity of a consideration of the means of production in the culture industry and thinking along that narrative, another reading reveals the strained relationship with the bourgoisie that Wagner had following a textual consideration.

The other inconsistency needs a bit of unpacking. Wagner as an anti-semite characterised these behaviours and characters that an audience of his time would associate with Jewish connotations and the negative stereotypes of their day, as well as reflecting cultural worries. Wagner’s vitriol was a point of contention when it came to his friendship with Nietzsche. Adorno points out how Niezsche alluded to ‘Wagner’s secret’ or the inconsistency of knowing the truth about Wagner in the light of these antisemitic characterisations and attitudes in the latter’s work. I am slightly perplexed at the way Adorno words this issue, because it seems not explicit. After some digging, I think what Adorno was alluding to in not enough words was the controversial claim that Richard Wagner’s father was not Carl Wagner, but his stepfather, Ludwig Geyer. Also by extension, the rumour that Geyer was Jewish would by this line of speculation entail that Wagner had a Jewish heritage. I think it is reasonable that this is what Adorno is alluding to with Nietzsche’s allegation, which I think comes from Nietzsche’s 1888 work Der Fall Wagner.

With this line of thought I am unsure of how seriously to take this. Adorno goes into detail of how the characters Alberich and Mime reflect Wagnerian ideosyncracies which rely on cultural prejudices and the “Race theory [which] assumes its rightful place in the no man’s land between idiosyncracy and paranoia” (Adorno 2009: 15). Adorno thinks that the racialised characterisation and the ‘ideosyncracies’ as he calls it, reflect and betray the deeply anti-semitic character of Wagner’s work.

Concluding thoughts 

Adorno reads into the ugliness of Wagner’s character in this essay. The beautiful music and lyricism of works such as Der Meistersingers von Nürnberg are met by the inexorable ugliness of the character of Wagner. Reading this book we are led to ask that open question: how do we square this circle of a great composer who is, according to Adorno, ugly to the core. Perhaps this is an ongoing question we should have when reading this book.

Another thing I might worry about when reading Adorno is that there seems to be an internal logic to reading this book. If one is reading ‘In Search of Adorno’ as a way to interpreting Wagner, we would be dealing with the simplistic reading of ‘is this how to interpret Wagner?’, and the answer to that is probably better answered by reading some more specialised Wagner literature. There does seem however, to be another alternate route to reading this text, and that is by a principle of charity, taking serious the internal logic and argumentation of where Adorno is going with his line of thought. This involves a suspension of judgment more akin to when I’m reading say Descartes or Kant. An example of this would be: when reading Descartes on the soul or on God, or Kant on his metaphysics, one simply has to assume we can validly talk about the soul, or God before engaging critically with their thoughts, failing to do so is failing to be an exegete. That said, I do wonder how far Adorno’s internal logic is seperatable from reading the text without having such a charitable hermeneutical perspective.

Michael

I’m going to start on a book that was unknown and new to me. I did not truly realise the breadth of Theodor Adorno’s writing on music beyond individual essay vignettes. The book I wish to review in serial format is Theodor Adorno’s ‘In Search of Wagner’. In this piece I shall have some reflections propaedeutic. This piece primarily reflects on the introduction note written by Adorno and the Verso publication introduction which was written by Slavoj Žižek, which is notably interesting in its own right.

Why should we be interested in Wagner? 

Let’s start with the question: why should we be interested in this book? I’m no expert in Wagner studies or 19th Century musical history. Žižek’s introduction, and Adorno’s own introduction preface seem a little bit disingenuous to me. Both of them effectively acknowledge that the main subject of this book: the ideological baggage of composer Richard Wagner’s work in a way that prefigures the later cultural tropes and notions of the later 20th Century, particularly when located within the context of class. Adorno acknowledges in the preface how surviving copies of the original work were limited as a consequence of the Second World War, and so a few additional essays were added and some edits made. Adorno also acknowledges that his views had moved on slightly since the original time of writing, and so this book is in a strange way already outdated.

Why should we be interested in Wagner? Perhaps Žižek answers this in the most interesting way:

In 1995, at a conference on Wagner at Columbia University in New York, after the majority of participants had exceeded each other in the art of unmasking the anti-Semitic and proto-Fascist dimension of Wagner’s art, a member of the public asked a wonderful naive question: ‘So if you all are saying is true, if anti-Semitism is not just Wagner’s private idiosyncracy, but something which concerns the very core of his art, why, then, should we still listen to Wagner today, after the experience of the Holocaust? When we enjoy Wagner’s music, does this stigmatize us with complicity or acquiescence, at least, in the Holocaust? The embarrassed participants – with the honourable exception of one honest fanatical anti-Wagnerite who really meant it, proposing that we stop performing Wagner – replied with confused versions of ‘No, of course we did not mean that, Wagner wrote wonderful music…’ – a totally unconvincing compromise, even worse than the standard aestheticist answer: ‘Wagner as a private person had his defects, but he wrote music of incomparable beauty, and in his art, there is no trace of anti-semitism…’ [...] The battle for Wagner is not over: today, after the exhaustion of the critical-historicist and aestheticist paradigms, it is entering its decisive phase.

This thought reflects the uncomfortable tension. To acknowledge a composer whose sign of influence is significant even by those who would oppose him; a composer whose rich chromaticism has taken us musically into directions that we cannot turn back from; whether we like it or not, in terms of harmony; and a composer it seems, who has a deeply troubling set of ideas underlying his work. In Žižek’s essay, the Lacanian goes into detail of how characters such as Mime, or the cultural text of the Ring Cycle alludes to the 19th Century context of a discussion of what at the time had been described as ‘The Jewish Question’. The issue of Wagner’s anti-semitism is a very deep one. Considering that the oft-attributed quote of Adorno that ‘After the Holocaust, poetry is barbaric’, for me the Wagnarian themes of folk-culture revival, mysticism, sentimentality, the place of the bourgeoisie, and big narratives of ‘love’ and ‘death’ are not harmless and isolated cultural phenomena, they are ideological, and subjects for ethical and critical analysis.

If there is such a thing as being an Adornian, I would like to think that it is someone who takes a critical view at our mass culture, and sees the ideology that underpins it. Whether that is the misogynist and anti-authority narratives of NWA’s ‘A Bitch iz a Bitch’ or ‘Fuck tha police’, and not seeing these cultural items as anodyne. Culture reflects our sentiments and the better we can be aware of it, the more we can realise that the ways in which culture affects us when we are in our downtime forms of an influential force that affects our decisions which in turn affects consumption, environmental and social behaviours and perhaps even things as high up as ideology. We cannot take the ideologies underlying cultural texts sitting down, we must take it as seriously as say, a speech from a politician or a newspaper headline, as politically and ideologically significant.

Who should read this? 

I should say that the more I give Adorno a bit of charity and favour, the more I should be aware of the ways reading Adorno may be problematic. A side question to this is: how should we read ‘In Search of Wagner?’ This is a book of interest to critical theorists (which I’m not); maybe sociologists; and more likely Wagner scholars. Adorno writes in a way that is so expansive that one does need to have a good amount of familiarity with a variety of subjects before really engaging with him. It so happens that many of the subjects Adorno appeals to (such as early social theory, German Philosophy and the European tradition of classical music) are not unfamiliar staples to me. Reading Žižek’s introduction makes me understand slightly more the anecdotal ways in which he appeals to cultural references to explain something philosophical. Just as an interesting aside, I am completely astounded at the description of an Eastern European marriage custom to reflect the sexually confused nature of Wagner’s Siegfried character. I’m always amused by Žižek’s anecdotes even if one should be wary of how he uses them (we’ve discussed the topic of Žižek‘paraphrasing in a previous post).

In search of Wagner 

Žižek points out how long after the publication of these essays in ‘In Search of Wagner’, Adorno’s views slightly softened and he came to appreciate Wagner more. Perhaps there is a general philosophical question here which has come from times ancient: how can we be drawn to something that gives us such an adverse reaction? Back to the likes of Aristotle, Plato and Hume we go to the topic of how it is that we are drawn to tragedy and sad emotions in theatre. Or perhaps to reframe the question in less general terms: can we consider something like Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will to be a great work, knowing how it is an obvious propaganda tool for the Nationalist Socialists of the time.

Digging into the cultural dimensions of Wagner is fruitful enough. I must admit I didn’t really understand what Žižek was trying to say about Wagner’s sexually repressive attitudes as it bordered on psychoanalysis and perhaps a perspective too eccentric for me to understand.  When I read this book, I am in search of a view of musical history. I’ve spoken about my performing aspects of being a musician in the past, but in my practicing and performing, and more recent engagements, there is something of a connection between my musical mind and my cultural thoughts. Or I should say the former informs the latter in some ways.

Coda: Why read Adorno?

I am convinced of the genius of Theodor Adorno’s work. I hold that Adorno’s breadth of work and topics are so wide they cannot be constrained in the ways that they have been, by introductions to critical theory overviews that don’t go into depth, or speaking of the genius in the same breath of his inferior peers like Benjamin or Mercuse; without in some way undermining what is deep and unique about this thinker. I am curious about the internal contradiction I have: of this period of history I have followed an interest in movement of philosophy from Vienna completely different to the Frankfurters. I am also interested in the magician-like way in which Adorno escapes a definition: is Adorno a Marxist? Is Adorno a philosopher? Is Adorno a musicologist? Is Adorno a Sociologist? Is Adorno part of the Frankfurt School? I am interested in the fact that many people call Adorno elitist but also in the same breath admit they cannot understand many of the notions he appeals to. I am attracted to the fact that like Kant, Adorno was not exactly an easy writer to read. Questions like these are in the back of my mind in this exploration. I am in search of a method of doing philosophy. I thinking about what it could mean to be a musical philosopher. I am thinking about how being theoretically minded about culture may be of contemporary relevance. I am in search of Adorno.

Michael

Some people have spoken of the non-Star Wars games that Lucasarts was well known for, particularly the way that games such as Secret of Monkey Island or Sam and Max challenged our assumptions about games. I thought I’d give an highlight of the things I really loved about LucasArts that were definitive to my growing up. If LucasArts will no longer continue I will be sympathetic to the fact that some of the later games were sub-par, but I will miss what LucasArts meant for me during my formative years. I thought I’d talk about some of my highlights.

Dark Forces/Jedi Knight/the Kyle Katarn games 

Whenever one is having a night in with my crew, one of the staples alongside blues-based jamming, ordering unhealthy takeaway and watching bad action movies is to play a first person shooter. One of the cliches I say at this point is ‘guys I should let you know I have motion sickness, but I’m happy to watch you play’. This is the legacy of me playing Dark Forces!

Dark Forces was a shooter in a Star Wars setting, addressing stories that were sideways to the main films. I especially liked the original story, and how it created a new situation within a universe that I already knew and loved. Then came Jedi Knight (the Sequel) and this was one of the defining games of my early teens! I absolutely loved the multiplayer and it indulged my fantasy of having lightsaber battles in the most interesting of settings, over walkways with a massive pit underneath. I also was introduced to modding through Jedi Knight. Modding was one of the most awesome things about gaming in the late 90s in my view, plus I learned a few skills from the community. One of my first email addresses was from a server that hosted Jedi Knigth Mods (Massassitemple.net).

Then came the sequels to Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast and and Jedi Academy, which are games which had a big impact on my late teens. I absolutely loved the way that those games engaged my imagination, and gave me the satisfying indulgence of being part of a science fiction world. Although in that world most people were trying to kill my almost all of the time. That’s probably not a good life lesson.

Rebel Assault and Rebel Assault II 

Another couple of games I loved from LucasArts are by objective standards, pretty bad games. Rebel Assault and Rebel Assualt II were my first introductions to PC gaming. Most of my experience had been from console games. What marked the games as significant to me was the ways in which different modes of gaming were within the same game – from flying to first person shooting to differing arcade modes.

I loved the way I engaged with the game, and introducing family friends to the game. I would play Rebel Assault II repeatedly, even though I knew how this game on rails would turn out, there was the illusion of real agency in this game that had replayability. Also the 90s were a pretty dull time compared to today, so replaying games was something that was probably a bit more common.

X-Wing, Tie Fighter, X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, X-Wing Alliance 

One of my family friends had a demo on a floppy disk of Tie Fighter. We played it endlessly for the longest time. I was introduced to the X-wing series of games through the later game: X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter. I loved the fact that Tie fighter and XvT was that you could play as the bad guys. I also liked the narratives present in X-Wing and Tie Fighter, and the ‘awards’ system and presence of secondary objectives. I loved learning about flying the spacecraft, where later on in XvT, and X-Wing Alliance, involved an extremely complicated system, like adjusting shields, laser power, targeting system and mapping.

The Star Wars flight simulators were a big part of my growing up. They were so monumental to me as say, my musical interests. They introduced a more abstract way of perceiving the world, thinking about memorising keyboard combinations and even the clunky 1990s joystick was a lot of fun. Back in the day, joysticks had this really awkward input plug that my modern laptop would have no hope of using. Ah, the days before USB!

I’ll miss the decline of LucasArts, not for what it is now, but for what it was. That’s how I’ll remember LucasArts.

Michael

Critics are great. We sometimes love them, sometimes we hate their judgments. It’s a bit lazy to say as many people do, that Critics are ‘those that can’t do, so criticise’. There’s an interview in the late 80s with Dave Mustaine from Megadeth panning the critics of his time, saying how they must feel very small to judge music that they are unable to perform. Often I can understand this audacity. I am sympathetic to the audacity of criticising people’s work in a way that takes such little effort when the work we critique involved so much.

Critics have an important role. When they are wrong, they can be really wrong, and their judgments are immortalised in print. But then again, they can also be the basis of informed dispute. An example of a controversial critical appraisal in music is the infamous description of Rachmaninov in an earlier description of the Grove’s musical dictionary that the Russian composer’s work is monotonous and that the success he has enjoyed is unlikely to last. When I first heard about this anecdote, I laughed and thought this kind of criticism is the most unfair thing I’ve ever heard (at the time I was a massive Rachmaninov fan). In my later maturity my interest in Rachmaninov has simmered, just this week I was listening to a recording of the Second Piano concerto (performed by Helene Grimaud) and I thought to myself: I feel sick of this overly emotional tripe!

There is a time for Rachmaninov’s luxurious Chromaticism and the slow waking hours of the day are not it. I was also convinced that Rachmaninov’s Romantic leanings well into the 20thC are actually quite conservative, musically speaking. At a time when there were bold composers like Berg and Stravinski’s Rite of Spring, many of Rachmaninov’s works seem like an echo of a stylistic and historic yesteryear that is no longer relevant.

Sometimes critics do a very important thing and take a step back. In the medium of film, there are many aspects of the physical watching of film that make it fully immersive: in the cinema it is dark and everyone sits on church like pews, their booklets replaced by popcorn and overpriced soft drinks. The screen is the centre of attention and there is something deeply submissive and obedient about staring at a darkened screen and given a world that you are forced to accept, with characters in an ontology and a tacit acceptance of the moral order that it depicts. Films can give us our values, sometimes in ways we would not realise they do. Critics take a step back and call out if these values are unconvincing or if they are things we should reject. On the other hand, the ability to delve into morally and ontologically different worlds is something that is a dimension of making a film engaging, by enacting the faculty of imagination. Again, this is an object of criticism.

One thing that I found interesting is how some commentators have pointed out the gender dimensions within Ebert’s film reviews. Whether we like a film or not can be immaterial to the critical distance in which we engage with the material. I often quite like film reviewers. Currently I follow a lot of Mark Kermode and Richard Roeper’s reviews. One thing that Kermode does is address bigger cultural and industry themes to express his cynicism about films. Film critics often have a rationale for their judgment of a film, and it is this which is sometimes more interesting than the film itself to me. Sometimes it is a rationale that is informed and insightful, and even if I disagree with the conclusion, it is something that I feel rationally obliged to take seriously. I think this is the case for anyone who I might find prima facie disagreeable but may be otherwise insightful.

Perhaps it is disagreement that I find the most interesting thing about a critic. When Siskel and Ebert looked at films, they were quite open about the points of disagreement they had between each other. They may have overall agreement about each other’s conclusions about whether a film was good or bad, enjoyable or dull; but the way in which they reasoned about it, highlighting different aspects of the film, is interesting.

To close, I thought we’d go through some of the reviews of films we love on Noumenal Realm, and see how Ebert considered them.

• Terminator 2 

• Demolition Man (interestingly, a film they liked that most people panned)

• Rocky IV (Roeper’s disagreement with Siskel is notable)

• Talking about Star Wars fims

• Discussing ‘the Tarrantino generation’ (second part here)

Sinistre

This technical/instrumental ideal is unfortunate. I did come across others who were interested in the pure value of learning while at university. I used to hear stories of a certain lecturer in the philosophy of physics sitting in on courses in Number Theory and Axiomatic Set Theory, studiously taking notes and not taking attention to himself, except for maybe the fact that he was the most popular professors in another department and was visibly known as such. I sometimes wonder if Immanuel Kant, during his Privatdozent days or when he became tenured, would be seen as that eccentric older man sitting in on lectures in natural philosophy, Law, Theology or even Medicine. The appeal of learning should be of an intrinsic value. Ideal learning is the kind that sticks.

Its with this mindset that I’ve discovered what is called the Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC. I have mostly been using Coursera to undertake courses. I have been involved in differing degrees with the courses. Some I had lost interest pretty quickly after it was going a bit too slow and spuriously (for instance, the songwriting course), others I follow on a more casual basis such as Music Production. I intend to follow the courses on logic (Intro logic, introduction to mathematical philosophy, introduction to mathematical thinking) with a little bit more atention.

What appeals to me about MOOCs? At the moment I’m not too fussed about credit or accreditation, although if there came a coding course or something on SPSS I might be interested in getting a proper accreditation or recognised acknowledgment that I’ve learned it properly (for CV boosting purposes). The MOOC appeals to me in a way that says you shouldn’t be limited in your curiosity. As long as you are willing to put in the time and the effort, which I must admit isn’t something everyone wants to do or can do, or something many realise requires an effort or sacrifice; curiosity should have no barrier.

I am interested in music production because I was trained in acoustic instruments, and where dynamics and timbre were affected by physical conditions. Pure curiosity should be encouraged, it is a dimension of what makes human creativity special. There’s an openness to the MOOC, that location, background or other accessibility concerns do not hinder one’s ability to learn. I’d be very interested to see what the future of the MOOC holds, not least because of the learning potential of open access learning materials. I wonder also what a generation of people who have learned from MOOCs to accelerate their own learning might look like. Time will tell

Michael

As many of you can tell, I’ve been blogging a lot about music lately. I have always had thoughts and Ideas about music and I always considered that eventually I would come to speak my views or embed them in unsystematic places through other discussions, such as my commentary blog pieces on Adorno.

However I thought I might just try and address some of the thoughts and issues directly. With that in mind I thought I would write about my favourite Musician: Glenn Gould, and try to articulate some of the things I find interesting about the pianist-broadcaster. Part of the reason I felt it important to talk about Glenn Gould is because part of his insight will, I suspect continually be referred to if I continue to write on issues musical. Gould is as a pianist, as influential to me as say Kant is as a philosopher.

Why I like Glenn Gould 

Glenn Gould is one of my all time favourite musicians. I say musician and not concert pianist. Gould composed works in his own time which have been of little recognition, Gould also had very deep thoughts on music history. Glenn Gould worked with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in producing programming that engaged with the public about music, in the way that the likes of Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins did for science, or Marcus deSautoy for Mathematics today. I consider Gould not just as a performer, but someone who was a performer with a composer’s mentality, someone with ideological views on music, its direction and its history. Gould was someone who lived in the age that transitioned the end of classical music as we know it and saw the emergence of popular music styles which took the place of the big composers.

Gould is a divisive figure, many have a dislike for him for giving the impression that’s okay to play the piano with poor pedagogy, or while humming, using an inappropriately low chair. On the other hand, it is the eccentricity of the man that I love. It is the out of this world nature of his personality, that also reflects the other-worldiness of the composers that he favoured: Bach and Schoenberg. I will consider the many different dimensions of Glenn Gould and have some closing reflections on the ‘cult’ of Glenn Gould.

Who is Glenn Gould? 

Gould the performer 

One of the things I am attracted to about Glenn Gould are his performances. The way that Gould makes 18th Century J.S. Bach come alive in a way that gives it a distinct freshness. Gould’s interpretation of the Brandenburg Concerto is considered a benchmark, and Gould’s career can be book-ended by his early recording and his late recording of the very same piece

One thing I find particularly interesting about Gould is the choice he made for his recordings. Gould avoided Romanticism a great deal, and expressed a certain Baroque-ness in all of the pieces he recorded. Gould’s choices in music reflects a lineage, from Bach to Schoenberg, from Rhineland old to Rhineland recent. There are however some choice exceptions to Gould’s work: his interpretation of Mozart leaves much to be desired, and the choice of recording Scriabin leaves me unsure of what to think. I am particularly surprised at some of the Richard Strauss lieder recorded by Gould.

Gould the ideologue 

Gould nailed his colours to the mast about many issues. Perhaps bold enough to say that Mozart ‘died too late’ as a form of disapproval of the latter’s later work. Gould was a pianist who was known more for their voice than his hands. Gould was very vocal on his feelings for Bach and Schoenberg and many of the ideological baggage that he carried has chimed a lot with my own musical upbringing and influences. In a way Gould is a natural extension of my musical worldview. I particularly like the way that Gould conflates or expands (depending on how you see it) the role and position of what a concert pianist should be. Should a pianist play, or contribute to a conversation about music and what music means?

Gould the Studio Musician/perfectionist 

Glenn Gould famously refused to be part of the concert scene and chose not to engage in live performing. Gould had distinct reservations about the way in which music is performed to an audience, and the way that the distinction was made between performer and audience. Gould was then led to taking a more studio oriented approach to performing and propagating his music. There are amazing videos out on youtube showing the ways in which Gould had been involved in the studio process of making music, not just in terms of playing the piano, but in the post-production stages of mixing audio and cutting tape. I’ve lately been working in some home studios with very fancy software like Digital Audio Workstations, but I am astonished at an age where cutting up a recording and splicing with other takes literally involved cutting tape! Gould was a perfectionist of the classical music variety, in an age where the studio was emerging. Gould made himself a recording artist from a performer, and this is something very telling about the status of musicianship today and the scope of what musicianship involves.

Gould the firebrand/anti-conservative 

Gould is a figure who is inherently disagreeable to some, or may I even say many. This is a fundamental aspect of what makes anyone a firebrand. There is a story of Glenn Gould meeting another notable musician (and musical intellectual) who found Gould’s interpretation disagreeable, but noteworthy enough to deserve engagement. That musician was Leonard Bernstein, someone who I also have great admiration for as a musician and a composer (and no I’m not so big a fan of West Side Story).

Gould held strong opinions, from Romanticism to Modernism; Bach to recording methods. Gould remained a distinct face and one who ruffled feathers by his distinctness and presentation. Glenn Gould was not just an eccentric and a passionate person of the world of classsical music, but was distinclty a person of 20th century sensibilities as well, doing things that other classical performers would not do. Like this!

Gould the broadcaster 

Glenn Gould’s greatest legacy may very well be not in his playing, but the efforts he made to educate the public in music and culture. Very similar to Leonard Bernstein, Gould made entertaining material from discussing the history of music, discussing style and reaching audiences through CBC broadcasts in an accessible fashion. We speak of the public intellectual like a rare breed of broadcaster these days. We also normally think of such intellectuals for science, mathematics or even history and philosophy –  but …whither music? The Unanswered Question.

I particularly enjoyed the ways in which Gould would parody the pretentiousness of the world of classical music by the various fake characters that he would perform, and at the same time embody in all seriousness the very kind of persons that he would lampoon. Such a strange and contradictory state of affairs it is to be Glenn Gould. It is with greatness that one can both parody experimental composers and music critics, and both be an advocate of Serialism in all seriousness as well as having very strong views on issues musical. This contrast between the serious and playful/funny Gould is something that any public intellectual can learn from. Gould contains great comedy as well as seriousness. As evidenced from things such as his ‘so you want to write a fugue’. A fugue about writing a fugue. Talk about parody as a form of art.

Gould the ‘bad example’

Gould is, lets face it, a bad example to emulate as a pianist. Gould does a lot of things ‘badly’, pedagogically speaking. The chair he sits on is too low, Gould strikes with an overhand that is too dominant; humming is not desirable plus the movements are far too eccentric. Of course when it comes to virtuosi they are a law unto themselves. Like performers like Louis Armstrong, their eccentricities are evident of their skill, but not things for mortals to emulate.

Gould’s in wider historical cultural context

Glenn Gould was born in an age where notable composers wrote notable works, but then composers became less notable and their works less notable still. We think of composers more now as institutionalised figures from the universities who studied composition, or jobbing composers who work in film or commissions. This kind of historical situation gives less of a scope or an opportunity in my view, for the kind of classical music we may have envisaged of earlier centuries, or perhaps the whole notion of a classical music is an anacrhonism in itself. Gould acknowledged that there was a world outside of the classical, there was music outside of the world of R. Strauss and Hindemith. In that way I see Gould as a transitional character in the grand scheme of things. One who engaged with a changing world, where things like television and radio media are innovative ways of engaging with the public, and that engaging with the public is a social good. It’s a vastly different world from the old masters. Although to a lesser extent than Bernstein, Gould did make an effort to bridge these worlds together in a way where he seemed to both belong to them and be apart from them.

Conclusion: The Cult of Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould has something of a cult of personality about him. Gould’s eccentricities and his views are a package deal. I refer to Gould’s following as a cult in that fewer people these days are familiar with his work and fewer people still remember what he represents. As I am getting more engaged with music I find some inspiration from Glenn Gould, not just as a musician and as someone with a stylistic outlook, but as someone who talked about these things rather than just doing it, and as someone who shows the potential of being a public intellectual about music. That, and few other people in the old world of music make me laugh as much as him.

Michael

There are lots of different things I could address about the most recently appointed head of the Catholic Church: the fact that he is from Latin America; the issue of liberation theology, or the other issues that many in the public and the Church congregation which to have the new Pope address, such as celebacy, scandals in the Church or the role of women. I’m going to do the side-stepping thing of not discussing them for the purposes of this post, and only talk about two issues specifically. Firstly – the question of ‘Why Francis I as a papal name?’ and secondly What significance is there to a Jesuit Pope?. It should go without saying that this is a speculative exploration in the exercise of writing this piece.

Why Francis? 

When I heard that the Pope was named Francis the First. I immediately thought of one Saint. Unlike most of the commentators around the Vatican and in Catholic media, I considered Francis to take after Saint Francis Xavier, who is the patron saint of Goa, known for introducing Catholicism to India and Japan and one of the first Jesuits. We at Noumenal Realm considered it interesting that we have a particularly different relationships to Francis Xavier. For I consider him as one of the founders of the Society of Jesus foremost, while Michael considers Xavier as the missionary who brought Catholic Christianity to parts of Asia.

Many commentators likened the name to an association with Francis of Assisi, better known for love of animals and nature. The question of what’s in a name is a significant one – as one is a missionary going to the edges of the known world spreading values, and the other has more of a conscientious connotation. Perhaps it is like me always to overplay the Jesuit connection with everything!

A Jesuit Pope 

Ah the Jesuits, they live in poverty and obedience to the Pope. The Jesuits are sometimes called ‘God’s Marines’ due to their militaristic nature. The Jesuits have placed themselves in many educational institutions and have taken a large part in mission work historically. I grew up with tales of Jesuit adventure and the very real perils that they faced in their work, including beheadings. I also have memories of the Jesuits claiming that they had their own personal views about homosexuality and women being inducted to the priesthood, but must always submit whatever personal views they had to the authority of the Pope. I always saw that as freethinking within limitations. I also respected such freethought from what appears to be a very authoritarian order.

I’ll always have a bit of a rational blind spot about the Jesuits, as they made me who I am in very large ways: inspiring my interest in Classics, Theology and Systematic thinking. The Jesuits also taught me that you should live by ideals, which included adhering to them. One of the things that has been coming out about Francis I is the way that he enacts poverty to his real life. The way that Francis I takes austerity in his own living conditions and behaviour, dress and actions is embarrassing the status quo of how things are done and have been done in the Vatican. No more custom red shoes, no more elaborate stoles and no more popemobile? This is a Christianity that I was grown up to believe in, not one of rock-star like entourages and fancy clothes, but one where a concern with the poor means identifying with the poor in how one lives, eats, dresses and travels.

Living with a minimum, without too much extravagance, and dressing for simplicity was the way that I was taught by Jesuits, and the ideal that I saw Jesuits live by. I was told about how Jesuit teachers had a ‘common pot’ where they put their wages, which were used for things like food, personal travel and clothing expenses. Even my dress sense has been influenced by the Jesuits. Smart, but universal. Simple and utilitarian. Try not to be too flashy. Try dressing to be adaptable. Wear black.

The Jesuits live with orders to have obedience to the Pope, does that make a Jesuit Pope a contradiction? How is it that an individual Jesuit can have complete obedience to himself? This reminds me of that old saying from Meister Eckhart: Can God make a stone so big that he could not carry it?

Perhaps I am being more deferential than I should. It is also the case that there are many critical avenues that people wish to address the papacy. I choose just for this post to focus on the Jesuit angle, because if he’s anything like the Jesuits who taught me, there is definitely space for reform.

I suppose all one can do is keep eyes open. It’s also amusing to see #AMDG trending on twitter!

Destre

As you might know. Google is shutting down Reader in a few months. I’m very sad. Google Reader is by no understatement, a big part of my life. I find out jobs through RSS feeds, I get podcasts, read news, philosophy blogs, find out about journal articles, watch videos and even follow comedy blogs like wtfpictureisunrelated. The centralisation of my internet browsing in a single place was a great innovation for me. I even made APIs to do things like link it to a mobile phone app, so that when I star a story it will be sent to my phone so I could read it on the train. I’m going to miss GReader and I’m not understating by saying it has been a big part of my modern life.

So now what shall I do? I have been reading a couple of ‘here are some alternatives’-type pieces. I might trial other RSS readers, I might separate my podcasts from blogs – get a podcatcher and then use another program for RSS reading. To be honest I feel kind of lost without GReader. That is the impact of a brand’s presence, and Google’s ubiquity. On the other hand I am not entitled to complain as Google Reader was basically a free service. I think the moral of GReader’s closure is that you really can have iconic brands and presence in the internet and social media age. Maybe one day people will be all hipster if they say: ‘I was around during Google Reader’ or ‘I was using it before it was cool’. One of the other things I didn’t realise is how so many other people use it in largely similar ways to me.

I just hope they don’t close down Evernote, then my life is seriously borked!