A partial response to Ian Pace’s ‘How the Culture Wars are Killing Classical Music’
Ian Pace’s article is the latest in a new genre decrying the state of higher education apropos of a threat from insidious ideological meddling. On this occasion, the focus of the fear-machine’s ire is the field of music, and particularly the apparent side-lining and condemnation of the Western classical tradition in history and analysis. Pace seems to inhabit a pedagogical and research world that I simply do not recognize. By means of some small illustration, I can point to the day I read his article and drafted this response as entirely routine in my life as a fairly unremarkable music PhD student. I spent most of the morning re-reading and marking up a paper on Beethoven, Czerny and Liszt that I think I might want to refine and submit to a musicological journal. Later, I silently attended an undergraduate survey of Western classical music, with a view to observing the way such a vast expanse of history might be taught.
I only dedicate these hours of each already hectic week to such an enterprise since, supposing I get a job in the field at all, I anticipate being asked to teach such a thing myself sooner or later with near-certainty. Pace will be surprised to learn, then, that we went the entire class without indicting anybody for ‘ideological crimes.’ Perhaps those who have read Pace’s article will be inclined to assume I attend the last great bastion of tradition, nestled away fighting the ‘good fight,’ and fortified against an unrelenting barrage of condemnations from the wider academic community. The truth is that this is simply the bread and butter of what so many of us continue to do, perhaps alongside other things, day in day out, more or less everywhere. The other truth is that it’s no bad thing to decide not to continue to do it.
‘In the UK, it seems these history courses are at least offered if not required at most institutions.’
In the UK, it seems these history courses are at least offered if not required at most institutions, and often from multiple angles with different degrees of depth and breadth. The history of Western classical music is baked into most of the offerings at the Royal Holloway, from whence another ‘dissenter’ recently resigned. Pace’s own institution, City University, offers no less than four courses relating to Western art music in the first year alone. Incidentally, the University of Oxford has seven required modules in relation to Western classical music, while Cambridge offers nine. Given their frequency, I find it rather implausible that all these courses are available as a sort of clandestine guilty treat for scholars carrying out otherwise maligned research, but this is exactly what it seems Pace would have us all believe. The picture in the US is fairly similar, and any brief glance at the faculty pages of most institutions will tell you the study of Western classical music is very much alive here.
When it is not being sidelined, Pace argues, there is too much context at the expense of analysis and listening. To get to the meat of it, l want to start by turning first to an aspect of his overview of how we got into this apparently interminable position. Pace singles out developments in ethnomusicology as one of three sources. He tell us that they are ‘hostile to aesthetic value judgments, recoiling from the hierarchical nature of this, despite evidence of musical hierarchies and value judgments existing in most societies and cultures.’ Ethnomusicology is the study of musical cultures other than our own. When we enter into a space the rules of which we do not grasp and could only hope to learn superficially in short order, it is in my view absolutely reasonable to suspend our judgement. Their reticence to judge is also in a context Pace does not really remark upon: the aristocratic explorers of yesteryear, swanning off to judge the cultural activities of others, contributed significantly to the ideological underpinnings and justifications for all manner of horrific colonial enterprises, the after-affects of which permeate Western society and the racial hierarchies it perpetuates. In the United States, the historical-political conditions for which Pace simply does not account, this is all the more accentuated because the consequences of ongoing and historical racism are so very visible and impossible to deny. Modern ethnomusicologists, while many fall short, are right to be as mindful of this legacy as they can. If they are serious and ethical, they are reporting and reflecting on what is taking place before them, not on the degree to which the music being produced conforms to their own tastes or the priorities of the cultural landscapes they bring with them.
‘When we enter into a space the rules of which we do not grasp… it is in my view absolutely reasonable to suspend our judgement.’
None of that, of course, has anything to do with the non sequitur forming the second part of Pace’s argument: the fact that musical hierarchies and value judgements exist in many of the societies or subcultures they are researching has no bearing on their own methodology. It is true, with good reason, that approaches avoiding clear value judgements often appear in historical musicology as well. The purpose of having undergraduates study the late 12th and early 13th century organum of Notre Dame, for example, doesn’t really have anything to do with organum per se. Rather, it’s a good exercise in developing a toolkit for coming to an understanding of a music unlikely to immediately resonate. To be candid, much of it sounds faintly ridiculous to the modern Western ear, but to say as much is besides the point. What we’re interested in is how to situate it historically and to understand the material and social conditions from which it emerged, and by whom and why it was appreciated enough to have been preserved in the first place.
‘The analysis is in some cases the easy bit; the hard work is the why and the wherefore.’
This involves analyzing the music on its own terms, reference to the historical record, and an understanding of its purpose. Even coming to an appropriate method of analysis for a particular piece of music requires an understanding of the society from which it came. Context and analysis support each other, and one is very often amplified at the expense of the other because that is simply the most appropriate way to proceed relative to the subject at hand. Of course, analysis can tell us that Notre Dame Organum is based Gregorian chant. It can tell us the musical functions of all the parts and how they contribute to the texture. With enough examples, we could and should deduce all manner of musical facts about the way one note follows another. However, if we did not also know, by way of trivial example, that the music was sung as part of the rituals of the Catholic mass and so had to be a certain length and no longer, we would have difficulty coming to reasonable assumptions as to why the melismas are set so short. The analysis is in some cases the easy bit; the hard work is the why and the wherefore.
To this day, we are struggling with Philippe de Vitry’s utterly esotoric 14th century motet Cum statua / Hugo / Magister invidie. Detecting the isorhythm is basic nuts and bolts theory that then allows us to deduce the structure of the piece. The musicological questions following on from that are exactly and precisely about context. Is the very obvious tripartite form connected to the religious nature of the text? Why did he chose to borrow from such an obscure chant, and was it as obscure at the time as it is now? Who on earth is Hugo and why is de Vitry so upset with him? Who in his audience might have known enough to connect the dots? Was it important that they understood him or is it deliberately obscurantist? What can the answers tell us about the culture of written music at the turn of the ars nova? It seems to me that the questions proliferating from the analysis must inevitably be given more weight on many occasions than analysis itself, and this is all the more the case when we are humble enough to acknowledge that we often lack the tools to appropriately map the territory before us. In order to do so, we need to turn to context to begin thinking – slowly, carefully, and arduously – about how and to what ends we might develop them.
‘If musicology is not to be an exercise in simply confirming the values and priorities of dominant cultures, this seems to me worth interrogating even if we don’t necessarily go all the way with those who are doing so.’
Where ethnomusicologists, as Pace suggests, turned ‘their disciplinary approaches to practices within Western classical music itself,’ they did so largely with a view to its place in contemporary culture and not the past. This is important to note because present-day reception of the famous composers of old is not the same as it was at the time the music was written. If musicology is not to be an exercise in simply confirming the values and priorities of dominant cultures, this seems to me worth interrogating even if we don’t necessarily go all the way with those who are doing so. Pace raises Christopher Small’s notion of the symphony concert as a ritual ‘celebration of the “sacred history” of the Western middle classes,’ as if such an observation would immediately rankle us. Perhaps it would raise the ire of somebody who has never thought twice about the values such concerts propagate, but it is surely interesting and worthwhile to examine how and why the immediately recognizable norms of classical concert-going emerged.
Is it not curious how different they are from concerts of the same music in different historical periods, and indeed, how different they are from the performance practices and audience behaviours surrounding other musics in the present day? One can continue to say, if they so wish, that the music is worth celebrating in this exact way. One can do so without imagining that their reasoning is magically exempt from codes of behaviour that evidently arose with and from within western bourgeois culture. It is no secret, of course, that the audiences of classical concerts continue to be predominantly the white middle classes, and the reasons for this include not only the prohibitive costs of tickets but also a natural and understandable uncertainty as to what to do. Little wonder when, in stark contrast to most other types of performance, even the question of when to clap does not always have an immediately obvious answer to the uninitiated.
This leads me to a further point. Pragmatics aside (employment, getting into graduate school, and so on), there is no serious philosophical reason beyond personal interest why the subject matter ought to be one thing and not another. Pace suggests that a deep analysis of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven can help us understand why they stand out among so many other forgotten composers within the tradition. He suggests that it ‘can be immensely enriching for the ears and the mind, sharpening one’s focus and perception.’ While Pace’s concerns about the sidelining of this music are for the most part a figment of his imagination, what would be the problem with giving students options? Can we not just as well enrich minds and sharpen perception by explaining why the music of Miles Davis stands out among many fans of Jazz? Or what makes a good rapper apropos of what the audiences of rap music value? Or why we ought necessarily to build historical narratives pivoting around ‘great men,’ at all rather than teach in such a way that acknowledges the more-or-less silent incremental contributions of people whose names we will never know? There are all manner of other things that might interest music students that we can offer to teach instead or in addition without really losing anything except what many of the gatekeepers demand we all know. Towards the end of his article, Pace protests that ’there is no need to assert any superiority of a Western classical tradition,’ as though he hasn’t spent the entire article heavily implying just such an assertion, but if he does not feel a need, why then is it so necessary to feel slighted by such suggestions?
All of this to say that ultimately, when we are teaching the history of western classical music, it’s best if the point is more the how than the what. Having a student gain the ability to identify the very clear differences and similarities between Czerny and Liszt through listening and score study is a happy side effect of a wider purpose: helping them to figure out how they might go about any analysis in a way that is sensitive to the music in question and its cultural context no matter what it is. It’s the transferable thinking skills, and not the specifics, that are the most important to imbue. I don’t see the purpose of encouraging students to simply identify those arbitrary aspects of a given piece of music that we have decreed are evidence of its objective value. Is it not better to say that these are some of the things that the audiences of this music value, and this is how you can hear and discuss them, and here is a way we might consider the social structures that gave rise to them? At worst, we risk perpetuating wrong-headed views of other musics, alienating students whose passion for music originates from elsewhere, and perpetuating the structural inequalities of the academy. At best, we risk churning out very knowledgeable idiots. That is, intelligent people who are nonetheless incapable of the kind of self-reflection that recent events in the musicological world have shown we are in desperate need of.
‘Jackson’s ‘cancellation’ suddenly starts to look much more like the predictable and correct professional consequences of saying racist things.’
I’m thinking here particularly of the response to Professor Philip Ewell’s critique of the theories of Heinrich Schenker, which are still held in high esteem particularly in the United States. Pace seems in my most generous interpretation to have misunderstood the whole sorry saga from start to finish. He introduces his readers to Ewell’s work with a contextless quote, ’Beethoven was little more than an ‘above average composer,’’ but does nothing to explain how Ewell arrived at this position or why. Unfortunately, I cannot think of a reason for its inclusion in the article in this way except to drive his audience to indignant pearl clutching. There is no characterization of Ewell’s work here to contest, because there is no characterization of it at all. A scholar suggests in the course of his research that Beethoven wasn’t to his way of thinking particularly special – who cares? In fact, good. Musicology is a collective intellectual endeavour in which disputes and fierce disagreements are to be had collegiality and in the spirit of the pursuit of knowledge. It is not seminary for the Church of Beethoven. If Pace is seriously concerned about the exorcism of value judgements from musicology and theory, hadn’t he ought to welcome the provocation in any case? The correct and proper mechanisms to provide a counter-argument to Ewell are well understood by all. Why provoke outrage through reductio ad absurdum in national newspapers rather than engage his arguments in the appropriate academic way through the channels that we have available for this precise purpose?
As it happens, the ideal just outlined is not at all well represented in the events following Ewell’s conference talk on Schenker’s racism and its implications for music theory. The Journal of Schenkerian Studies, which Pace paints as somehow having been the victim of this scandal and not the perpetrator, released responses to Ewell in a way that frankly fell well short of the professional and ethical standards expected of a reputable academic journal. To take probably the most egregious example, Prof. Timothy Jackson suggested in his response that Ewell’s critique was motivated by antisemitism, remarking that it should be contextualized “in the much larger context of Black-on-Jew attacks in the U.S.” He went on to suggest in possibly the most racist line I’ve read in a contemporary academic journal that Ewell “is uninterested in bringing Blacks up to ‘standard’ so they can compete.” On the face of it, it is almost a relief to learn that the issue had not been subject to peer review. It is absolutely true, as Pace suggests, that these responses led to denunciations. He does not, however, tell us why, preferring instead to simply summarize the content of the issue as ‘very critical of Ewell’s arguments.’ Once you know what was actually said, however, Jackson’s ‘cancellation’ suddenly starts to look much more like the predictable and correct professional consequences of saying racist things. It is also true that there were lawsuits, but Pace’s framing implies that the lawsuits were against those connected to the journal, and not against some of those who dared criticize it as was actually the case.
In many senses, the reaction to Ewell’s paper, and indeed Pace’s misunderstanding of it, constitutes a very good example of an idea he’d doubtless be quick to brush aside. This is white fragility in action: Ewell, a black man, suggested that a means of analysis that a group of white men hold very dear is racist, and without a moment’s self-reflection, they run to barricades to express their outrage, announce their indignation and secure their victimhood. This also speaks to the wider ‘culture war’ debate such as it is. It’s not that this particular tradition is being ‘cancelled’, it is simply having to make some space for other things. The ‘culture war’ right again and again blow every little thing out of all proportion, summoning all kinds of imaginary slights with which to rail against with the indigence of a toddler faced with the prospect of sharing.
‘The Spectator… is a bastion of the intellectual wing of the British hard right.’
The Spectator has been one of many fronts from which such indignation has been repeatedly expressed. It is a bastion of the intellectual wing of the British hard right. As if to preempt me, Pace suggests the issue is wider than ‘simple disputes between ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives,’’ but I think we’ve done this rodeo enough times by now to know that this ‘war’ is only really being fought by one side. The ‘invent a cultural problem and become enraged by it’ trope has been a fixture of right-wing propaganda since the War on Christmas if not before. This is the paper that was happy to publish Lionel Shriver’s article propagating the white supremacist ‘great replacement theory,’ and is of course the home of Rod Liddle, a font of fractal bigotry who once deigned to give us all “a quick update on what the Muslim savages are up to.”
The Spectator’s readership will find catharsis in Pace’s latest contribution, however little they might care for music education more generally. Being neither in the field nor particularly inclined to fact-check anything that raises their blood pressure, they will very likely believe him, too, and this has consequences for the already-embattled endeavor to teach the humanities to anyone outside of a small and incredibly wealthy elite. For the last decade, the very same biting austerity cuts that destroyed music in state pre-tertiary education have been championed by this very paper as part of a wider attack on ‘soft subjects’ in the ‘culture war.’ Gone, too, are many of the local libraries Pace tells us was his starting point in coming to enjoy classical music in the first place. He is correct to decry these devastating cuts in public spending, but his doing so does not change the fact that he is playing to a gallery largely of their most ardent supporters.
‘Why would it be so bad to acknowledge the presence of historical and continuing structural prejudice in our field?’
This response has not addressed nearly all of the points Pace presents. As is often the case, it can take far longer to pull apart an argument than to make it in the first place. However, I hope my small contribution goes some way in correcting at least certain parts of the record and serves as one among many helpful responses from diverse and contrasting perspectives that I expect will be forthcoming and look forward to reading. I will end with some questions for Ian Pace that I suppose I have been, in my own way, asking throughout. If Western classical music is both truly in need of defending, and truly worth defending, why do we need to be so precious about it? Why must we so sensitively leap to dismiss even the most cautious of criticisms? Why would it be so bad to acknowledge the presence of historical and continuing structural prejudice in our field? Nobody is cancelling Beethoven by considering the potential ways his music could be sexist, or racist, or classist, or used to any of those ends. Why would it be so bad to let dissenting voices give us pause and consider how we might do things differently? Why, if we truly do disagree, can we not do so collegiately, in good faith, with rigour and in the spirit of our shared passion and joy for music? Why do we have to do it like this?