An die Musik

Even Classical Music isn't safe from the 'culture wars'

Dr Finscher with friends, circa 2010, photo by Monika Ullmann

Like many writers, I have been following the so called ‘culture wars’ for years. Reading Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds was helpful, following Quillette magazine and the Spectator London is instructive, but alas, the crisis just keeps escalating and gaining ground.

For example, during the last two years, tearing down statues of historical figures and defacing them with paint has become commonplace, even here in staid old Victoria where the police do nothing to stop this kind of vandalism. Extreme activists are allowed to deface our history because, according to them, we are all guilty of ‘white privilege’, racism, colonialism, and stealing the land we live on from the indigenous population. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t actually there, since it happened two hundred years ago; it’s enough that you are white. White equals guilt, especially if you’re male. White and male, oh boy, you’re in deep trouble. Call it a new, much improved kind of racism.

And you must atone for your sins by endless apologies and then, endless reparation payments. If you have a problem with that narrative, it only proves how wrong you are. Arguing with the proponents of this woke religion is useless; it is a matter of faith. You either believe or you don’t, and if you don’t, you will feel the wrath of cancel culture. It has proven especially crazy in the so-called field of gender studies, where calling a woman a woman is now impossible and downright dangerous. If you have the nerve to speak up and protest in the name of reason, you run the risk of losing your job as well as your self respect. You will be hounded, vilified, and made to eat humble pie.

The latest round in the destruction is taking place in the somewhat obscure academic discipline of musicology. It was an article by Ian Pace in the Spectator London that tipped me off to what at first glance seems like a tempest in an academic, if musical, teapot.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-the-culture-wars-are-killing-western-classical-music

You see, according to the quite minor musicologist Philip Ewell, classical western music is not Politically Correct enough and Beethoven himself is nothing more than a ‘composer of above average talent’. This is followed by a nasty assault on the very existence of musicology itself as well as the entire concept of western culture. As the unculture warriors have it, it’s all terrible: racist, patriarchal, and not to be tolerated.

Basically, we should not be allowed to listen to classical music without feeling deeply ashamed. Oh really!

For me, attacking and politicising western classical music happens to be highly personal because one the most honoured musicologists of the 20th century, Dr Dr Ludwid Finscher, was my uncle. Winner of the Balzan prize and recipient of the exclusive Pour le Merite distinction as well as all state honours you can get in Germany, his influence on our cultural legacy went beyond music or musicology. He considered music history part of the greater cultural, social, and historical milieu. He endowed facts with meaning by tracing their spiritual origin to the philosophical developments of European thought. His approach was interdisciplinary, so his understanding of music history was broader than that of past musicologists.

His article on the concept of the “classical” in music Zum Begriff der Klassik in der Musik, is the most significant contribution to this theme ever written. He was, in so many ways, an inspirational figure, one of the last of the great humanists that our universities no longer produce. I was so very fortunate that we grew up together under my grandmother’s roof, and that he became first, an older brother, and then the father figure I needed.

During one of my annual visits to his villa in Wolfenbuettel, Germany, where he lived with his wife Renate and a succession of ueberintelligent white King poodles, he took me into his roomy attic, housing one of the most comprehensive music libraries in the world. He sat me down, pulled out a selection of CDs, and taught me how to really listen. One of the composers we were listening to, the Hungarian György Ligeti, was someone whose Violin Concerto I had several days earlier suffered through with the Berliner Philharmoniker in Berlin. I made a few scathing comments re this concerto and modern classical music in general. Let me show you what he used to compose, before this concerto, he said, smiling mischievously. For the next hour, I was mesmerized by the gorgeous melodies, the harmonic progressions, the truly beautiful compositions Ligeti had once written. And then, we listened to his modern compositions and my uncle explained what they were about, why they mattered, and how to listen to them. Lutz (his family nickname) didn’t only know the music, he also happened to be Ligeti’s personal friend. Instead of getting angry with my obvious lack of knowledge, he simply showed me another facet of the man and his music. It was a private, unforgettable lesson in music appreciation by one of the greatest musical minds of the twentieth century---and someone who was never offended, unlike the unculture warriors who simply revel in being insulted.

Dr. Finscher in his music attic, circa 2010

The irony as far as the accusation of elitism goes is that he was the man who took the entire discipline outside of the strict confines of German classical music. He is credited with enlarging and widening the scope of what is studied, how it is studied and delving deeply into what it means on the broader European landscape. And in spite of all the spiteful attacks on his discipline, he was no elitist. In fact, he was well known for using clear language accessible to anyone and never allowing his personal preferences to dominate. In his acceptance speech to the Balzan Foundation, he said:

I have always tried to understand not only the most sublime works but also the endeavours of the lesser luminaries – seeing the history of musical composition as a never-ending discourse between all kinds of composers, music history as the history of all aspects of musical culture in society, and music historiography as the reconstruction and narrative construction of a virtually all-encompassing structure from which the great works of art shine on.

This is all by way of demonstrating: Culture isn’t just something we do for fun when the serious business of business, technology and pandemics is done. It is the very touchstone of our life: from it we derive all our values and everything we stand for, everything that has meaning and lasting value. When it is being attacked, as it is now, the entire edifice that we largely take for granted, starts to crumble. This isn’t a war on culture, it is worse than that. It is a war on your own, personal way of life, and what you live by, nothing less.

The big questions as to why we are doing this, who is to blame and whether this an internal neurosis or an externally created threat I can’t answer here. These are not trivial issues, requiring a leap into the political and social aspects of the unculture wars. I will attempt to unpack them in future posts.

For now, I simply wish to remind my readers that to attack music is to attack what is sacred in our cultural tradition. I use that word on purpose: nothing else, no other art, has the power to move us, to remind us that we are part of something greater we cannot grasp intellectually, something that is visceral. Only music can bring us closer to it, and in this time of extreme chaos, it is one of the few anchors we have left. Let’s defend it, because in doing so, we are standing on the side of the angels.