Who listens to classical music?

A new 'classical music' radio station, Scala Radio, is being launched in the UK, and it is being much publicised in the press. This is because the media absolutely love anything that is apologetic about our past and our culture. They love a story about 'shaking up' and 'reinventing' a fusty old thing like classical music.

And this is exactly what Scala Radio claims to be doing. From the Guardian article about the station:

Jack Pepper, Britain’s youngest commissioned composer, will also be joining Scala. The 19-year-old said: “Classical music is surrounded by the misconception that it’s irrelevant, sterile and inaccessible. What many people don’t realise is there is an authentic modern-day narrative to accompany classical music which is really connecting with people.”

Try as I might, I cannot fathom what he means by that last sentence. What would be an inauthentic modern-day narrative? In what way is classical music 'accompanied' by a 'narrative'?

By way of distinguishing itself from its competitors, Simon Mayo, one of its presenters, said:

We're different because we're going all out to entertain, laugh with the listeners, and have a good time. Some of it will be familiar, some new and exciting but all timeless, beautiful and all absolutely relevant to today.

Ah, I'm noticing a theme; you may have too. Both quotations use that shallow buzzword, relevance.  You will find it, or at least the sentiment behind it, whenever some silly, hip person comes along claiming to know how to make classical music 'accessible' (ah, there's another one).

In the Guardian article, Scala Radio say they will do this in various ways, inspired by dreary opinion polls and supposed trends. Apparently 'almost half (45%) of young people ... see classical music as an escape from the noise of modern life.' Who actually believes these statistics? Most young people seem to be listening to the most noisy forms of rap and electronic music. Very, very few are listening to Palestrina. And besides, I rather like a lot of noisy classical music -- in fact most classical music is to some extent 'noisy'. This is a variation on the 'classical music for studying' or 'classical music for relaxing' themes. A pox on the next person who says classical music is relaxing! Even Arvo Part's music (and he has written some quite lively work too) is far too moving and far too involving to ever be called 'relaxing'. In fact, it is pop music that leaves me either bored and unaffected or repulsed; my favourite classical music makes me ecstatic.

The other example brought up (as it always is) to show classical music's ... relevance ...  is the popularity of film and video game music. There is something in this. Film composers often have classical training. Historically, there have been some good, even great, composers worked in film (Erich Korngold of course comes to mind -- listen to both his symphony and violin concerto!). And I more than appreciate people enjoying film music. I understand the pull of music as a way to instantly evoke something beloved. But it does not make for good concert music. It is quite different to the way one listens to classical music. You couldn't possibly simply sit and listen to it for an hour: in terms of interesting musical content it is rather lacking. And so I find it hard to believe that masses of young people, listening to semi- or pseudo-classical soundtracks, are somehow turned onto Haydn or Monteverdi.

We are also told that

a new generation of listeners was switching on to classical music through different sources, with 48% of under-35s exposed to it through classical versions of popular songs, such as the Brooklyn Duo version of Taylor Swift’s Blank.'

Here is the version they are referring to:

What boring, insipid music! Just because a popular song is played on a cello does not make it 'classical music'.

The term 'classical music' may be the cause of this confusion. As is always pointed out, 'Classical' refers to an era between about 1770-1820. (Opinions differ regarding the dates, and some of us even question whether we should divide musical history into Renaissance, Baroque, Classical etc.) Many people therefore do not identify 'classical music' by its belonging to a distinct musical tradition, but rather to a particular time and to particular fashions of the time. And so if it played by an orchestra, it is thought to be classical music. If someone plays Lady Gaga on a harpsichord, somehow people think it has been made 'classical'. But what makes Bach or Scarlatti, say, part of the great tradition of Western music is their musical features -- features which come from a distinct musical discipline, and which remain classical whether they are played on a harpsichord or a synthesiser. It is this discipline, this tradition, which most popular music is either ignorant of or has rejected.

It is only natural, then, that classical music has begun to form an identity in reaction to the rise popular music. Some have tried to instead call it 'serious music', but that doesn't work; so much of classical music is jovial and witty. I used the term 'Western music' earlier, but I dont' much like that either: it is simultaneously too broad and too narrow. I would prefer to simply call it 'music', and to distinguish rock, pop etc. by referring to them as 'popular music', as I believe used to be the case. But we live in an inverted world in which popular music is the more regarded, the style for which politicians are keen to demonstrate an appreciation, the style that we choose to flaunt and import abroad, the style that is played at national events (even, or perhaps especially, at Conservative Party conferences).

Not that anyone should object to the existence of a popular music. It is a good and necessary part of communal and national life. But the invention of a global, vulgar, homogenised pop music, rather than a humble, local music, is a disaster for society. It is one of the obvious signs of civilisation decline.

Of course, classical music has been popular in the past. Some classical music still exists in the popular culture, but most of it is old. Some of its modern-day failure is admittedly its own fault. It needs to get over its modern pathology of desiring to always be 'challenging'. There is a socially revolutionary impulse in modern pop, and a musically revolutionary impulse in much modern classical music. Both have cause much damage (though the former more so). But the fundamental reason is a broad cultural shift following the Second World War; the rubble and debris were not merely material. Civilisation has not recovered, and once again music began to cater to what (to borrow from Allan Bloom's brilliant book The Closing of the American Mind) Plato would have considered the barbarous expression of the soul.

Is there any hope? As I have more than implied, I think classical music's future may be inextricably linked to a larger, civilisational, and possibly terminal decline. I don't think it will ever disappear, but its role in society and culture will be greatly diminished. Still, there are some things that might help. For one thing, it would certainly help to better educate the young; classical music is best appreciated by the musically literate, but even mere familiarity with the music can help cultivate an appreciation. We also need a society that expects all serious people to be well acquainted with classical music, just as they would be with great literary works, and that recognises classical music as the culmination of centuries of musical greatness. These sorts of things might help extend to the life of classical music. But what certainly won't help are PR stunts by people in skinny jeans and tattoos championing insipid crossover music.

Let us end with a truly wonderful aria, 'Lasciate Averno' from Luigi Rossi's opera Orfeo:

Nation and Culture

One can judge a nation by its art or lack thereof. One of the most striking aspects of North Korean culture is that it has absolutely no high art. Perhaps their most famous cultural export is the Moranbong Band, a group who make even the most vapid europop seem sophisticated. Here is their piece, Tansume, celebrating a successful missile launch. It is one of the most depressing of music performances I have ever seen.

North Korean culture is an sort of Disney-land traditionalism. Its leaders make great efforts to invent an idealised past, in order to support a distinct Korean cultural and racial identity, but they do so in very modern ways as they have no real understanding or love of history. Films, pop music, mass stadium festivals, ugly behemoth Soviet architecture are what define North Korea.

In that respect, we are rather like the North Koreans. We seek to portray an increasingly idealised version of ourselves that accords with a contrived set of modern values, and which is propagated mainly in low culture. Most of our cultural output is not much better than the Moranbong Band, and in some respects it is worse -- at least the Moranbong Band don't descend to the kind of vulgarity prevalent in our popular music. Great Western art still has a foothold in our culture, but one cannot be optimistic about its future.

Can, then, the inability to establish a genuine national culture hinder the development of a high culture? One problem with America is that it has always lacked an obvious high culture. It has not quite achieved the same literary, artistic and musical heights of European nations. When one thinks of Germany one thinks of Goethe and Bach, but with America one tends to think of an altogether lower culture. America never was a nation in the normal sense -- a home for a tribe of people -- but rather a nation defined almost entirely by its method of government. Anyone really can become an American, and so it is very hard to figure out what exactly America is. I am inclined to think this explains why their artistic culture is not as rich as the European nations'.

We are seeing the same problem now in Britain. Britishness is becoming something entirely abstract to which anyone can subscribe. And as we become like America, will we find it hard to have a flourishing artistic culture? I think it is already clear that we are struggling. For we are losing the most essential of things: a real, deep, common national culture.

Too Much Democracy

Is there anything more irritating than the unctuous politician who claims with mock piety that he wants to put 'power in the hands of the people'? He only says this because he thinks his side will get a majority of the votes; I can think of no one who has advocated for a general election or referendum in which he suspects he will lose. Isn't it odd how democratic principles seemingly disappear when there is little or nothing to gain?

I am, of course, chiefly referring to the campaign for a 'People's Vote'. But the above equally applies to the 2016 referendum. That too was called in the name of 'giving people a say', but everyone knew it was intended as a way to strengthen the Conservative Party under Cameron and the modernisers. 

Herein lies one of the great dangers of this fake democracy-worship: in an otherwise free society, with a secret ballot, it can backfire horribly. Those who were readying themselves for more power, and for implementing a decision they thought inevitable, are in the course of one night defeated and dethroned, and soon they and their side suffer an onset of confusion, fear and even a touch of madness.

There is nothing to stop this happening again. This is why the 'People's Vote' campaign are playing a very dangerous game indeed: they are betting the nation's future on the hope that the people will vote for their side. I'm not sure they will. And if Leave again win, all that will have been achieved would be an entrenchment of our current crisis. Remainers will have spent a good year (perhaps longer? I long ago lost track of it all) pursuing a solution that turned out to worsen the problem.

It's a stupid gamble. Even if they win, they will have doubled the constitutional crisis by having two conflicting democratic mandates separated by only three years, and they will have doubled the resentments and fears and sentiments of those who voted to leave. 

I can very well see a Trump-like figure emerging in Britain. We may have proven resistant to such populism in the past but we are by no means immune. After all, we are an entirely different nation now. We view our prime ministers like presidents and our royal family like celebrities. We are no longer so appalled by vulgarity, nor do we take such pride in dignity. There is no modern equivalent of gentlemen and gentlewomen; the idea of being 'genteel' has become a source of ridicule. Modesty, prudence, temperance -- these are hardly fashionable qualities. Our culture is increasingly coarse, and so our politics will follow.

Democracy is never as attractive as it is imagined to be. If you make it the central feature of your country it will ruin it. The greatest features of the English system are, or at least were, the monarchy, its liberties (which were not acquired democratically; nothing is more wrong than the idea that democracy begets freedom), its parliament (which was not, in better days, that democratic, and to some extent still isn't), and its religion. All come with caveats; every system is bad in many ways and they will always be so. 

But democracy has only recently become a core feature of the British system. And universal suffrage is a very modern experiment, one I'm not sure has worked out too well. I cannot understand why the left aren't now understanding this too. Right-wing populists are thriving in modern democracies, as they have since -- and yes, it was inevitable that I would mention it -- National Socialism in Weimar Germany. (Not that Fidesz or PiS are much like the National Socialists, of course.) And referenda, let us remember, were a vital way in which both National Socialists and Fascists consolidated their power. Both were modern movements that used modern means to gain absolute power.

Populism, contrary to what many say, is not a threat to democracy -- it is democracy.

So let's stop looking to democracy to solve every problem. I wish MPs would just act on the nation's behalf using the insight and education and experience they are supposed to have. At any rate, a sorry lot though they are, they are easily more competent than the general public in matters of governance. And even if they weren't, I would rather be governed by 650 fools than 46 million. It is healthy for a country to seek to contain the political process.

In Praise of Theresa May

Political disagreements aside (and there are many), I quite admire Theresa May. There is a something stoical in the way she conducts politics, adapting herself resolutely to whatever fate throws at her.  I think beneath that rather awkward exterior lies the soul of a conservative, a woman whose strong sense of duty guides her, even when most MPs and perhaps most of the public are strongly opposed to her. I have to admire anyone that believes in sticking to something in spite of the pressures of mass rallies and opinion polls (two wretched features of modern politics). If only she could put this this remarkable ability to ignore the opinions of parliamentarians, pollsters and activists to better use!

Brexit: The Uncivil War

It is only fitting that in discussing a TV film that is essentially a biographical drama about Dominic Cummings, I should emulate the man in his penchant for entertainingly interminable blog posts. So before discussing the film, I will make a long disclaimer as to my views regarding Brexit, then wend my way slowly towards the topic of the film, only to digress on to another topic entirely.

Firstly, though I do not necessarily regret us leaving the EU, I do regret the referendum itself. Like many others who found the opportunity to 'make a point' irresistible, I voted to leave. With hindsight, I should have abstained. The referendum was, as all referenda are, a dangerous, cynical move done not in the interests of the country, nor of 'democracy', that valueless term used to justify everything in modern politics, but rather done solely in the interests of the Conservative Party.

When I watch and read those who most vocally support Leave, I am struck by how much I dislike them. They are either rabid liberals, dreaming of some free market utopia where Britain beats out all the international competition, or vulgar populists (who are nevertheless doing the work of the rabid liberals). This is of course a generality and there are indeed many I like, but the Fields and Scrutons and Frasers of this world are unfortunately rare.

The pro-EU side (to be distinguished from Remain more broadly, just as Leave is not synonymous with being anti-EU) is no better. Such disdain they have for the natural healthy sentiments of nation, home, tradition. And I find their insistence on a second referendum to be one of the most astonishingly unaware and reckless campaigns in British history. Anyone who recognises the injury the first referendum caused cannot honestly, unless afflicted by a most remarkable stupidity, argue for another one.

Unfortunately, there appears to be no decent way out of this situation. Referenda do not have constitutional legitimacy, but the government and opposition party having promised to carry out the result, be it leave or remain, gave the referendum complete legitimacy. To seek to reverse it by any means would deepen the constitutional crisis; yet to carry it out without a deal, which seems to be the direction we are heading in, would likely mean an intolerable economic burden in the short term. Sadly, I think 'project fear' may be right, and Britain's shallow economy probably cannot weather what would be in store for us.

The best solution I know of is that we should stay in the single market, but not the customs union (why did the government rule this out?). And we would do well to extract ourselves from the political institutions and from the ECJ and ECHR (yes, I know the latter is separate from the EU, but in the minds of many voters it is rightly associated with the broader European project). Add to that the European Arrest Warrant and I would be jubilant. This is basically the Booker-Hitchens option. It would reduce the power the EU had over us considerably, lessen the amount of money we would have to pay them, and keep us insulated from the shock of a 'no deal' Brexit while giving enough to satisfy those like myself who wish to leave the EU.

But even if all this isn't achievable, I think many Leave voters would be content to stay in the EU if something was done to significantly limit immigration and to protect UK jobs, reinvigorate increasingly dilapidated local communities and local economics (which does not mean ugly high density housing and more warehouses and chain shops), and thus give up on this sham low-wage economy we are building. We can do all these as a member of the EU, and I think they are the main reasons why people voted to leave.

And yes, we can reduce immigration drastically while remaining a member of the EU. People indeed object to EU immigration, but concerns are possibly more directed towards immigration from outside the EU -- that's 326,000 per year (or 248,000 net) which we could reduce -- considerably higher than EU immigration to Britain. And besides, I suspect we could reduce EU immigration even from within the EU. Other countries seem to have managed it.

Of course, this sort of compromise will never happen as the Remain side is so immoderately pro-EU and anti-conservative. And so we are doomed to endless battles, as this is a political war in which no side is willing to yield.

But technically Leave has already won, and so any concessions made should be firstly made in their favour.

Yet therein lies another enormous problem: the people who fought the war (i.e. Leave voters) do not believe the same things as those who won it. And so they face rampant economic liberalism, including continued mass immigration, and absolutely no concession to either the social conservatism or economic leftism that influenced the vote.

This all brings us to Brexit: The Uncivil War, Channel 4's drama reenacting the whole horrible affair. Except it's not really about Brexit, but rather one man, Dominic Cummings, who is portrayed as the mastermind of the Leave vote. His character is rather like Sherlock Holmes in fact (though I never watched the TV shows in which Cummings starred), or perhaps that other Holmes-inspired television creation, Gregory House. Outrageous, self-absorbed, detached, unloved yet admired, ingenious, miserable. I don't have much of an opinion about the real Cummings -- he seems to be the sort of progressive modern conservative I don't much agree with, though what I've read of his I found thoughtful -- but I did not like his character in the film. And I have no kind feelings for any man who is eager to manipulate this wretched world of virtual politics -- social media campaigning and the like.

I do not think Cummings was the reason, or even a main reason, why Leave won the vote, as the film seemed to imply. Looking back on historic events, people always think they were all but inevitable, and so we go searching for the causes and triggers. But the reality was that it was extremely close, and that it could have easily gone the other way. Leave seemed to win in spite of the campaign, as far as I'm concerned. I do not remember the campaign going well for Leave -- or Remain for that matter: on one side, think Obama's 'back of the queue' comment and Bob Geldof on the Thames; and on the other side recall that stupid bus (Cummings' ingenious idea), and then most saddening of all, the murder of Jo Cox (which was days before the vote). I think most people ignored it all and went with a gut feeling, a prejudice even (in the good Burkean sense of 'pre-judgement'). The film is nearly all about high politics, as if these unattractive and silly politicians were what convinced the country to vote to leave the EU. But the hostility to the EU had been there for a long time and was deeply embedded. It really was a democratic event; and like nearly all truly democratic events, it was unwieldy, uncontrolled, and almost destined to fail.

The film also has a bias, I'm afraid, though it's much fainter than I expected. The remain side is depicted as somehow more noble and kind. This viewpoint baffles me. The problem with pro-EU Remainers (not merely in the campaign but for decades before) is that they have a lack of observable empathy with those who voted Leave and little attachment to those noble things like nation, history, tradition, place. To be fair, though, the film covers some of this.

The film also really went after various politicians, nearly always Tories (or UKIP), depicting in them in the worst possible lights. Actually, I didn't mind this at all. Arron Banks is a boor. Daniel Hannan is pomposity incarnate. Many of those Eurosceptic Tories really are insufferable. Though the same could be said for an equal number in the rest of the Conservative Party, and indeed on the other side of the aisle, but I doubt Channel 4 are about to create a drama depicting the shady, slimy, unlikeable characters in the Labour Party.

There is a great emphasis in the film on the slogan 'Take Back Control'. And perhaps rightly so, as it is the slogan everyone remembers. But the slogan, now that I reflect upon it, rather depresses me. The most frightening thing about Brexit is that, if we do 'get our country back', there might not be much we can reclaim. We are a small, relatively unimportant nation. All we have is our history. Our constitution has been eroded, immigration is transforming us, we have lost a sense of continuity with our past, often outright rejecting it. All those things I love, which make me glad I belong to this tribe, to this island -- its literature, its music, its traditions, its institutions, its liberties, its ethics, its way of life, its personality, its Christianity -- all these things are fading, to be replaced with the happy ignorance of literature, a country where the most vulgar pop music reigns supreme, and which we all are expected to condescend to, where traditions are viewed as irrelevant or even pernicious anachronisms, where institutions must be rebuilt and 'updated for our times', where we must all subscribe to an ethic devoid of meaning and purpose, kept alive by rampant consumerism, while we endure the loss of patriotism, a way of life that is no longer recognisably English.

Take back control is a meaningless statement unless you ask the necessary follow up -- take back control of what? 

Just as an addendum to this post, the music in the film was pretty good. I recall there being lots of Beethoven -- which is wonderful. I am terribly sensitive to music in television. The ubiquity of the sleek, colourless, flavourless, odourless, half-synthesised soundtracks is thoroughly disheartening. We were, however, subject to a soul-destroying synthesised version of Rule Brittania towards the end. It is a metaphor for how I feel about the referendum generally: it is the right tune, a great patriotic tune, but mangled and contorted and rendered pathetic.

Shorten Your Horizons

Humans are fantastically short sighted, yet we think we are ingenious by virtue of our capacity to reason. It has always struck me that, while the horizon appears to be in the remote distance -- many people reasonably assume that we can see for hundreds of miles -- it is in fact seldom more than a few miles away.

Most people expected the Soviet Union to have decades of life left, and then it collapsed overnight. Almost no one saw the recession coming, nor will they predict the next one. Few, in those glorious years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, foresaw the carnage of the twentieth century. Almost no one, several years ago, saw the coming rise of right-wing populism. If anything, the ascendance of the left seemed inevitable. And as everyone keeps repeating, almost no one, even on the nights of the elections, saw Brexit or Trump.

In today's Times Oliver Kamm has a column reassuring us that there is a reliability in economic forecasts. I always read Kamm as he's someone with whom I seem to disagree with on nearly every issue, but whose writing I find useful and well thought out. I won't pretend I have even the slightest comprehension of economics as a discipline, but from I understand Kamm's column seems to simply say that uncertainty forebodes economic problems. Well, yes. But the smallest and most unexpected thing can set off uncertainty. It is often irrational, entirely a result of fear, and is the furthest thing from a science. The mere publication of forecasts showing economic downturn seems to be enough to cause economic downturn (the immediate fall of the pound following the 2016 referendum being what immediately comes to mind).

I suspect that if a few hundred influential economists were to write down a set of predictions for the state of the economy in a year's time, seal it in an envelope, then open it a year later, most would be considerably mistaken.

One might have more luck simply betting against other people's predictions. Man is more often wrong than he is right. He is too optimistic a creature, too proud to admit folly, too stubborn to admit doubts, content to either wish for an ideal future or else for a dystopia which will fulfil all the prophecies he has espoused and believed up until then.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take though for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

There is only one far-reaching prediction that is true: in the end we are all dust, swept away by an unsympathetic universe. I am inclined to believe there is a God, and therefore an afterlife, so this is not too dreadful a thought for me. But even an atheist is surely comforted -- perhaps more so than the believer who faces the prospect of eternal justice -- by the certainty of eventual nothingness.

The Fake Market Society

One of the oddest things about modern capitalism is that we often do not own what we buy (and in some case what we make). Instead of buying the goods, we buy access to them, while someone else retains ownership. You cannot sell the goods, nor can you display or collect them in any meaningful sense. And so you cannot cherish the ebook or streamed music as you would a beautiful book or a favourite recording. It has no place: you cannot make it part of your home, and the discovery of it is never an event as discovering it in a glorious bookshop might have been. And worst of all, you cannot pass it down to future generations.

There is something oddly socialist about this arrangement: online property belongs to all, and therefore no-one. There is infinite supply, and so private property is a redundant concept. Instead, we have a global institution which can exercise complete control over the goods, granting and denying you access to them whenever they so wish.

It is the sacrifice of permanence on the altar of convenience. When it is complete, homes will be stripped on bookcases, pictureframes, record collections, files and cabinets, paintings... There will be screens and blank walls and noisy devices and little else. Nothing personal will remain in any tangible form. The home will become a barren place, and the world an ever more boring place as this new generation has nothing to pass onto the next. Instead, this power of inheritance will lie in the hands of companies, who will own both the goods themselves and the means of making and distributing these goods.