What’s Wrong with the World

I answered a few of these issues in an essay for American Thinker here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/why_the_artists_hate_conservat.html

It's about why artists hate conservatives and love government.

But I agree with you, Jeff, about the ease I have with the kind of people you mention.

I write literary novels (which have conservative themes but aren't tracts), but the the only people publishing and reading literary fiction are liberals.

I compose serious art music, but the only people interested in art and concert music are mostly liberals.

Everywhere I turn in the arts, I find an overwhelming number of liberals.

The New Criterion which is supposed to support artists like me won't have anything to do with me until I've succeeded in the liberal marketplace. But I can't succeed in the liberal marketplace because my work is too masculine, too Christian (not preachy but thematically), too unambiguous about its ideas, thoughts, characters, observations, and conclusions.

My poetry and music are too formal, too melodic, lyrical, clear, and fathomable.

No matter how good my fiction or music, I can't get conservatives or other Christians to read or listen to it (except occasionally with generally good reports).

For example, we often hear what a great writer Flannery O'Connor was or Walker Percy was for their Catholic fiction, but all the continual praise generally comes from liberals because conservatives and Christians don't or rarely read such fiction.

Heck, most conservatives and Christians don't even read the Bible or know it well.

Conservatives are generally happier than liberals because they don't trouble their minds with difficult issues and painful reflection.

Go to any Shakespeare festival and you'll find the audience mostly made up of retired schoolteachers who are invariably more to the liberal side.

I guarantee that if you collected a couple hundred young college Republicans and said, "Hey, As You Like it is playing at the theater, let's all go", you'd find the crowd to be pretty thin by the time you got to the box office.

Serious Art, literature, music and such require a much greater willingness to experience your feelings and examine your experience, and most conservatives and Christians associate such things with navel gazing, self-indulgence or self-pity, and are unprofitable (emotionally and financially).

All the various major foundations created by conservatives are all run by liberals from Ford to MacArthur. Annenberg Foundation spent $100mm on Bill Ayers and Obama for more useless education programs, for Pete's sake. Reagan's friend's money going to radical creeps.

In many ways, I'm a conservative and Christian in spite of what I think about most people who share my politics.

Does anybody think that Jonah Goldberg, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, or even Bill Bennett gives a damn about a new novel that might be as fine or better than the best American novels?

It wasn't conservatives who published and supported Cormac McCarthy (whatever you think of him).

Oh well.

With a daughter in the ballet, I know exactly what you're talking about. Only thing I can figure is that they can't escape - because they truly love - the beauty of these Western cultural forms, and know - without quite being willing to admit it - that they are the greatest aesthetic achievements known to mankind. They are devoted to the works born of that aesthetic, but not to the spiritual substance that gave birth to both. Contemplation of it would require dispensing with an entire world view. I have some speculations as to the cause, but no time at the moment to indulge them.

We might differ only in that I'd rather hang out with mechanics, farmers and woodworkers than with aesthetic elites.

This reminds me of something Wendell Berry wrote, to the effect that he sometimes wonders exactly what it is that "conservatives" think they're conserving. In context he was referring to the land and to rural culture/agriculture, but it seems to me that this also applies to the Western cultural tradition.

Not just classical music, but a certain kind of classical music. You would think their favorites would be Romantic sludge, but my local liberal NPR station plays gobs and gobs of Baroque music; the most tonal and orderly music of the lot. My guess is when you are committed to chaos you leave a hole that craves order, and it gets filled with Baroque (and $75,000 kitchens even though no one in the family really cooks. :))

P.S. This also fits nicely with Mencius Moldburg's theory that it isn's Liberal vs. Conservative so much as Brahmin vs. Townie.

One would be hard pressed to find a more reflexively liberal demographic than that of classical musicians.

Ahem...the analysis is a lot more complex than you have indicated and I am fairly well qualified to speak to the issue as I am a professor in the sciences, have a doctorate in music, am an expert in humor theory, and a conservative (of sorts). Musicians as a rule, per se, are not more liberal. Creative people, in general, are less contrained by prevailing laws of conduct/organization than the general population. This mindset spills over into the political arena as a gravitation towards whichever party is less contraining. Often, this is the liberal party.

Classical musicians, as a rule, are very religious, and are fairly conservative in the moral sphere; rock musicians are exactly the opposite. This is because, in part, rock music is a form of social protest, whereas classical music is a form of organization of manners. Where there is more contengency (as in musical performances), there is more faith and religious outlook.. I don't have time to explain why (I'm in class - my students are taking a quiz).

In the political sphere, classical musicians are modestly more concervative as a group, but composers (as opposed to performers) tend to be very liberal. Performance arts, as a rule, are social, but more importantly, they depend on instantaneous social raport in order to do their jobs (information about intonation, phrasing, etc., must be passed around the orchestra instantaneously). As such, they tend to foster group connectedness and liberal brotherhood, something conservative are less prone to do, being more focused on individual performance and responsibility. This tends to give musicians a more liberal-tending outlook than say, businessmen, who are also social creatures, but not in a sense where they depend on the simultaneous connection of perhaps a hundred orchestra members working cooperatively.

I know many scientists, by the way, who are flaming liberals. In any endevor where creativity and money are linked one can expect liberals to flourish. Paradoxically, as in the case of starving artists, wherever creativity and poverty are linked, one can expect the same.

Rather, it is unrestrained creativity that promotes liberalism; goal-directed creativity tends to be associated more with conservatism.

I could say a lot more, but I have to run. The central issue, however is creativity in its many shades.

The Chicken

I wonder if in the broad brush a correlation arises from the fact that high culture is an aristocratic domain, and our aristocratic elite is a liberal elite.

I think Zippy's hit the nail on the head. Isn't it related to the "why do liberals tend to have higher IQs than conservatives" phenomenon? Not for any reason particularly insulting to political conservatism nor particularly complimentary to politically liberalism, but because people with higher IQs tend to get turned over to a self-perpetuating higher educational system in which political liberalism, socially and economically, is considered _of course_ to be the only possible stance for the intelligent. And let me say, too, that this is _very self-conscious_ at the college level and is promoted by the administration. College orientation, etc., sessions are liberal political indoctrination sessions. It's not just the professoriate. Certainly, classical musicians have been through this system. I suppose an interesting demographic question would be the distribution of political affiliations among people with a bachelor's degree, MA, and PhD according to discipline--are classical musicians on average more politically liberal than other members of the American intellectual elite--say, biologists, philosophers, lawyers, etc.?

You would think their favorites would be Romantic sludge, but my local liberal NPR station plays gobs and gobs of Baroque music; the most tonal and orderly music of the lot.

Scott, good point. I have often been secretly amused at this little discrepancy in classical music: When you go to a concert, about 4 times out of 5 you get a good classical or baroque era piece first and last, sandwiching some horrendous a-tonal or modernist piece of crud that sounds like the instruments themselves are protesting their own abuse (or, if you are lucky, an impressionist piece that you can stand to listen to for 10 or 15 seconds at a time in places). You can't get the really good stuff without listening to the crud in between. You rarely, RARELY hear the modernist piece put last. Similarly, the two classical stations I have listened to play pre-modern music about 20 times as much as stuff from 1900 on, and never do they play any a-tonal pieces. And their ratio of pre-romantic to romantic-and-after music is at least 2 to 1.

My own take on this phenomenon is simple: The super-elites, the composers and symphony owners want to push modernist stuff at as AS IF they were of equal worth compared to a great Bach or Mozart piece. (Actually, the modernist musicians themselves claimed the mantle of philosophical modernism itself, and decried the very possibility of determining the worth of music by how it sounds . "The music of Wagner is better than it sounds.") But the "regular" people (semi-elites who listen to classical music) won't go there willingly. So, if you put a Fred Lerdahl piece last, everyone gets up and leaves. If you run a radio station playing modernist stuff regularly, you lose all your support because people won't tune in. The symphony organizers are well aware of the reality (that people want the old greats), they just reject that reality as saying anything important about truth and beauty.

God bless the Met, but may He smite Peter Gelb. If he goes on massacring productions and staging modern garbage like John Adams there won't be a Met worth blessing for much longer. I've never had the terrible-music-at-a-concert experience, but then again, I wouldn't go to one with such tripe listed on the program.

The wider conservatives-and-culture problem is a complex one. I think it has something to do with feminism: large elements of modern social liberalism have been engaged in the emasculation of society. A lot of popular conservatism is a visceral reaction to these forces (in favor of guns, hard work, self-reliance, beer and hamburgers, etc.---masculine things feminist liberalism hates) The more fundamental cultural factors such as art, music, and the like aren't really on the same sort of radar. Besides, traditional value in these things have been under attack for a lot longer. You see it on Mad Men even---even before the dam breaks on the wider social collapse, art and music had already been in the dumps for several decades. People can't really be expected to associate classical art and music with the good old days when they weren't a key part of the referenced good old days.

"they seem to be the only people interested in preserving the treasures of western civilization, apart from a few cranky Catholics and other traditionalist malcontents of negligible influence."
- I think you honestly need to get out more.

There are many of us dirty, unworthy, middle class proles who are actually VERY interested in preserving these things. The main problem is that some of us, like myself, work for a living, have a family, and also try to run a home business to boot. We don't have a lot of time to devote to this cause. I get to spend a few hours engaging in good books or music, but the opportunity doesn't present itself often.

One thing I note often about the high society liberal types is how they differ from people like me in their idea of preserving civilization. They seem to be only concerned in preserving whatever happens to be fashionable for the moment, whatever flatters them at the time.

(Actually, the modernist musicians themselves claimed the mantle of philosophical modernism itself, and decried the very possibility of determining the worth of music by how it sounds . "The music of Wagner is better than it sounds.")

The above comment reminded me of the essay by Theodore Dalrymple on Le Corbusier, "The Architect as Totalitarian":

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_otbie-le-corbusier.html

From the essay:
"At the exhibition, I fell to talking with two elegantly coiffed ladies of the kind who spend their afternoons in exhibitions. 'Marvelous, don’t you think?' one said to me, to which I replied: 'Monstrous.' Both opened their eyes wide, as if I had denied Allah’s existence in Mecca. If most architects revered Le Corbusier, who were we laymen, the mere human backdrop to his buildings, who know nothing of the problems of building construction, to criticize him?"

It's a great read. And to Zippy's/Lydia's point: One gets one's BA/MBA/Yuppie Union Card and of course one is to be politically liberal and of course one is to attend arts events. What percentage of them have any sort of critical or reflective thought about the artwork, I don't know.

A thought: Maybe this "preservation effect" applies only to music? Do liberal tastes in other arts (drama, literature, architecture) tend toward the modern/postmodern?

I used to share the feeling that I preferred the company of these educated liberals to the less-sophisticated middle. I'm not so sure anymore. When my wife worked for an opera company, I enjoyed the conversations about the performances. I enjoyed working with people who'd read the same books in college. But I'm not so sure anymore. I get uncomfortable if the conversation turns to gay marriage or stem cell research or some other topic on which I don't have the "right" opinions. I don't like the awkwardness that comes with the fact that I still haven't gone green and use paper towels at home. On top of this, I now work with people who are generally not in the same elite circle, and I've been pleasantly surprised by many things. Just yesterday we had an office potluck, and we actually prayed before the meal! Never would've happened in a billion years at my old workplace...

Their brand of liberalism, though fairly radical, is genteel and seldom confrontational.

That's what's so unnerving about it: That veneer of gentility that belies the truth. They're smiling and chatting with you at a kids' birthday party, while their kid is running around with an "No Hate - Equality in Marriage" sticker on his shirt. It gives me the willies, like I'm talking with aliens.

The main problem is that some of us, like myself, work for a living, have a family, and also try to run a home business to boot.

Good point Mike. Taste in classical music requires free time and tutelage by an expert if one is ever going to get beyond owning a CD of Beethoven's 5th and 9th and Stravinsky's Fir Firebird.

Tony:

You can't get the really good stuff without listening to the crud in between.

Indeed. I believe this was exactly Henry Pleasant's point in The Agony of Modern Music (a must read in my estimation even if you don't end up agreeing with it). Modern a-tonal stuff is forced on audience in much the same way multiculturalism is forced on schools--in a tired, "kids eat your vegetables" manner (with the difference being that vegetables are actually good for you).

On the Zippy/Lydia point--it's not just the brute fact of institutional indoctrination. Intellectual people need to know that their views tie into a system of explanations that's going to stand up. Academia and the prestige media articulate the system of explanations that supports liberal society--that's why they're there. So that's what's most obviously on offer and that's what the average intelligent and educated but basically nonpolitical musician is going to tie into. Unless of course he happens to be a cranky trad Catholic or whatnot who's got some other system to appeal to.

"Modern a-tonal stuff is forced on audience in much the same way multiculturalism is forced on schools--in a tired, "kids eat your vegetables" manner"

- THIS THIS THIS THIS!!

You can tell with this type of thing is being played at our local symphony: the place is only about 1/2 full.

However, when the Academy of Ancient Music here in town sponsored a performance of the Brandenburg Concertos on period instruments, the place was packed to overflowing!

As an aside, I would actually blame the Liberals for why the middle/lower class doesn't engage in classics. As another poster noted, you have to be educated in them. I was fortunate to be home schooled by my mother who realized their value. How many of our public, even private school teachers, pretty much all of whom are liberals, actually try to instruct their students in the same way? Few to zero. Who pushes the coarse music we see in popular culture, MTV, etc, from grindcore and emo to the jungle thump of rap? I would say the majority would be again, liberals.

If most of the middle and lower class have no appreciation of the higher things, the Liberals have themselves to thank for that.

If you play the violin you're a liberal, if you play the drums or electric guitar you're a conservative. I think I get the idea.

But if this is true now, for how long has it been true? Over the years what happened to those who didn't fit the mold described here but yet had more conservative inclinations?
They did exist, and given what is occurring now you may yet see more of them.

We have had a long period of fusion between culture and politics. Intelligent people were expected to recognize the need and urgency of government measures, the virtues of tolerance towards reformers loosely defined, the hallowed "open mind" which always settled on the one way street of political liberalism. An ethos slowly changed, a new pride was born, yea we were blessed with progressivism, and who among the enlightened would dare hesitate.

Guardians of tradition? Tradition covers much ground, I wonder if the guardians still read Russell Kirk? I doubt it, they're too busy reading the Times.

I'm a classical musician and yes,I'm a liberal.
But conservatives unfortunately tend to mistake being liberal for being libertine, which is certinly not the case with me.
I'm pro-choice,pro homosexual rights, pro separation of church and state,against the death penalty, for REASONABLE gun control but not opposed to gun ownership per se, am for more government support of the arts,
etc, but I do not hate Catholics or Catholicism or Christians and Christianity, don't approve of sexual promiscuity, want to prevent as many unwanted pregnancies as possible to lower the abortion rate, have never believed in Marxism or communism, have never had the slightest admiration for tyrants such as Hugo Chavez,Castro, Pol Pot, Mai Zedong or Stalin etc.
I'm not one of those doctrinaire left-wing,politically correct and multicultural leftists.
But I'm appalled by the narrow-mindedness,intolerance, and self-righteousness of many religious conservatives,
and am utterly opposed to their theocratic agenda, which of implemented would be little better than communist dictatorships. I'm just as opposed to tyranny of the right-wing kind as left-wing tyranny.

You do realize don't that if it wasn't for those hordes buying the Victorian homes in the cities they would not exist. The rest of us would happily put in a parking lot.

Classical music has always been a class thing; the aristocracy mentioned above being the main patrons. In the days before recorded music, you had to get an orchestra together to play a symphony, so most people never heard them. It worked out, because most people are naturally more interested in regional folk songs than more cosmopolitan classical fare. If our idea of traditionalist revival involves everyone liking the same high-culture music, or the same high-culture anything, then we're going to be disappointed.

It takes all kinds to make up a public. Political categories become fuzzier, the closer in on actual people you zoom. It's always something of a shock, to encounter people who are intelligent, informed, honest--and yet still of differing worldviews.

As for classical music, thanks to records, cds, and now the internet, it is more available to the masses than ever. In just a few clicks, I can listen to the Brandenburg Concertos, performed more brilliantly than they were for the Elector of Brandenburg himself. But lovers of classical music will always be in the minority, no matter their political leanings.

High art is swamped by vulgar, transient popular culture? It's always been that way. Reach back into the Renaissance and pluck an Italian at random, and you would be highly unlikely to fish out a Leonardo or Donatello or Michelangelo. You'd most likely just come up with an average person of the times.

I do not believe that vulgar pop culture is some sort of liberal plot to corrupt our youth. It's just out there, probing for openings, like the stream of ants that keep getting into my cupboard. Aided by the megaphone that is modern mass communications. And it's not all wrong, people need plain old mindless fun once in a while. You just don't want to overdo it, like junk food.

and am utterly opposed to their theocratic agenda,

Hehe. That's kind of a howler among some of us here.

But conservatives unfortunately tend to mistake being liberal for being libertine, which is certinly not the case with me.

But I'm appalled by the narrow-mindedness,intolerance, and self-righteousness of many religious conservatives, and am utterly opposed to their theocratic agenda, which of implemented would be little better than communist dictatorships.

So you critise conservatives for having a stereotyped view of liberals, and then you repeat a completely stereotypical view of conservatives.

want to prevent as many unwanted pregnancies as possible to lower the abortion rate,

How? Expansion of welfare and government, probably.

don't approve of sexual promiscuity

Yeah, but your unwilling to criticise it (because that would be intolerant) so your indifference is a form of approval, and with your increase of government welfare (to prevent unwanted pregnancies) you end up supporting plans that encourage the poor to engage in sexually promiscuous behaviour and to live off the state, also through depriving the poor of the responsibility of there actions (through big governmnet protections and government programs to provide them with everything they need) you incourage them to act in a irresponsibile manner, which would include sexual promiscuity.

Robert B, you missed the boat, the theocratic threat passed on January 20th. 2009, and a close call it was. The High Priest of theocracy, the rampaging G W Bush has been confined to quarters in Texas without a peep from the depths of his religious bigotry.
Relax and get a good nights sleep, the theocracy hasn't hit us in 235 years and if it does I doubt, despite your excited comparisons, it will match those communist states you mention. You know, Gulags, show trials, planned mass starvation, all the things that didn't bother liberals not so many years ago.

Though we may have to tolerate the horrors of the dreaded "moments of silence" in classrooms should the zealous take control. Let us both keep our fingers crossed.

Gentlemen, while I appreciate the ironies inherent in Robert B's almost charmingly naive genteel liberalism (e.g., he's _against_ tyrannical liberalism but _for_ homosexual "rights"), I do think this is taking us O.T. a bit. What one might say is that Robert B. is probably a good example of the kind of person that both Jeff, in the main post, and j. christian, in his above comment about the kid at the party, had in mind--basically nice people, people you can talk to and enjoy hanging out with, who _think_ they believe in liberty and "everyone's just getting along," meanwhile enabling the development of an ever-more-tyrannical leftist ideology.

I'm still not sure that such people dominate classical music any more than they dominate other fields that occupy a similar elite niche-type in the U.S.--e.g., law.

I do wonder why (though I'm grateful to hear that) the liberals in the music area seem to preserve and love truly great music more than the liberals in the visual arts seem to preserve and love great visual art (!).

Robert Berger, you wrote:

I'm pro-choice, pro homosexual rights, pro separation of church and state ...

If you are "pro-choice", you support the legalized killing of unborn children and are, by definition, pro-tyranny.

If you are "pro homosexual rights", you support government policies which favor, accommodate and incentivize sexual promiscuity.

If you are "pro separation of church and state", as most people on the left understand this, you support a regime of official hostility towards Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, intolerance of its public expression, and suppression of its political and social influence - hardly attitudes of benevolent open-mindedness.

On the latter point, do you not find it ironic that the greatest composers and artists all flourished under regimes you would consider "theocratic" and "tyrannical"? In the Baroque period, the entire population of Europe was fewer than 15 million souls, and yet this benighted, priest-ridden, superstitious and theocratic civilization produced works of artistic genius, in quality and quantity, on a scale that our modern secular democracies, with their hundreds of millions of people and unsurpassed wealth, cannot possibly hope to achieve.

... want to prevent as many unwanted pregnancies as possible to lower the abortion rate ...

Just curious, Robert: Why on earth do you want to lower the abortion rate? What's wrong with abortion in your opinion? If you believed that unborn babies were human beings, presumably you would want them legally protected as such, just like everyone else. If you don't believe they are human beings, then what's the big deal? Abortion seems like a perfectly logical solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancies, it probably reduces crime and welfare expenditures, and best of all, it's a most effective means of controlling population growth. I don't understand why someone who describes himself as "pro-choice" would be concerned in the least about reducing abortions.

Being pro-choice doesn't mean that you LIKE abortion and that you Want them to happen. It just means that you are realistic enough to know that abortion can never be stopped by being made illegal. No country has ever been able to do this or ever will.
There is simply no way to enforce laws against it.
Women will seek and obtain abortions whether they are legal or not.In fact, every time the government of a nation has made it illegal again, the abortion rate has skyrocketed, and more and more women have died from botched illegal ones.
This will inevitably happen if our government bans it again. Abortion is an extremely unpleasant experience and a terrible tragedy. But if women lose the right to choose again in America, the result will be catastrophic for America. Of this you can be sure.
Are you aware that in Brazil, where abortion is illegal and which is the world's largest Catholic nation, far more abortions happen each year than in the uS? The Brazilian government doesn't even pretend to enforce the law, because it can't !
And if our government bans abortion again, women who can afford it will have no difficulty flying off to Europe or elsewhere for safe,legal ones, while poor women will die trying to abort themselves. Is this fair?
If our government provided more help for poor pregnant women,married or single, so that they could provide decent food,shelter,education and medical care for their children,born or unborn, there would be far fewer abortions in America.
But noooo-conservatives don't want that because it would be "socialism", and we don't want that here ,do we? Yet they consistently support and vote for politicians and Presidents who vote to gut or eliminate
help for the poor, which only INCREASES the number of abortions.
Conservatives love to condemn and rail at the supposedly Godless, wicked and hedonistic prosperous nations of Europe, yet here you find the world's LOWEST abortion rates.

Yeah, the term, "One would be hard pressed to find a more reflexively liberal demographic than that of classical musicians" seems to me to be unrealistic. I find that classical musicians tend to be apolitical on the whole, they seem to just adopt the politics and beliefs of there friends, without much analysis of the topics themselves. Because of the general sway of our culture, and the many unquestionable beliefs that have been embedded in it through liberalism (views on justice, tolerance and discrimination) they seem to just follow these ideas, without wondering why they are (as most people today do).

A point that has been made before, with artists in general, is that the reason they are anti-conservative is because they see conservatism as repressive of creativity, with its moral standards and absolutes. Artists in the past, seen themselves as fighting against the establishment, but I don't think this is true anymore. If anything liberals artists themselves are the new conservatives, because they are trying to hold up and preserve what they believe to be the ultimate moral truth, liberalism, they don't fight against it, they conform to it and congratulate themselves for being intelligent enough to see its supremacy over everything else, while at the same time attacking the unenlightened conservatives for not sharing this belief.

Also on the point, that it is liberals not conservatives preserving great art, I think there is a lot of truth in this. But at the same time, there has also been a lot of liberals who have tyred to destroy great art, or reinterpret it, so as to make it conform to the liberal agenda. How many liberals have attacked authors and artists for not having politically correct beliefs, or tyred to get rid of the Canon of Great Books because it is to Euro-centric, distorted stories and books with Feminist interpretations, or Queer theory, or Racial theory's to get them to conform to liberalism or to use them to attack conservative beliefs, have glamorised bad art deliberately just because it tells them things they like to hear. Roger Kimball and the New Criterion's aim was to preserve art, from the onslaught of the liberal agenda (Harold Bloom, no conservative himself, also fights against these things). I think much of the rejection of the Arts, by conservatives can be traced back to these elements, the idea that the Arts are a no go area, because it hasn't always been like this, liberals throughout the 20th century dominated the Arts, but there was still some conservatives fighting back. But it doesn't seem to be that way anymore.

Some people are mistaking the rich, liberal, elite in big cities who support the "arts" (mostly pretentious nonsense) as the folks Jeff was talking about.

But as I said about Shakespeare audiences or the people who recently attended a Bach festival in Sacto, these are the hoi polloi of liberal America. School teachers, music teachers, English teachers, students of the arts, musicians and so on.

Not too many from the black tie, local millionaire, fund raiser, house party, gala event.

And I agree with the fellow who mentioned the wariness a conservative maintains when talking to such folks who will simply assume you agree with their politics should an issue arise like those awful people who voted for Prop. 8 in Cal.

I also believe that a conservative Christian lover of art takes more out of the experience of art religious or secular. The liberal's experience concludes in ambiguity (life is a mixed blessing, who knows what it all means), melancholy (nothing good lasts, happiness is fleeting, we're just leaves in the wind, no one is satisfied for long, disappointment and failure are more prominent that pleasure and triumph), and sardonic, gallows humor (what did you expect?, it's all a cosmic joke anyway, when does an ant think it has value; pffft - then you're dead, ha ha ha).

The liberal wants to believe in the triumph of the human spirit, hurray for the little man who soars! But Icarus always crashes. The Sistine Chapel is beautiful, a testament to one man's spirit and vision to a foolish, fairy tale and extended metaphor about human life that passes away, a bright flame snuffed out trying to buck itself up in the period between the two voids and darknesses. "Full fathom five, thy father lies. . . "

The liberal may believe in the perfectibility of Man, but he knows he won't live to see that happy day when the State dries every tear.

The astute, conservative Christian recognizes this Vale of Tears as a proving ground for his soul, an assayer's fire, and knows (has hope) that the excellence he strives for doesn't end but finds reward, is redeemed and vindicated in the life to come. Because his redeemer liveth.

That's why a great Christian artist's work always is surpassing. It means more and contains more truth.

I think we should not be too quick to adopt our personal experiences as statistically valid generalizations; and, I think we can't ignore how factions within a community self-select for conformity, forcing the non-conformers to withdraw to other lands, there to form their own self-selecting factions.

In my own limited experience a sense of genteel and urbane appreciation for higher achievement in the musical arts goes hand-in-hand with more right-leaning politics. But that is because I have little contact with the classical music community, and instead must gauge "higher" and "lower" in a relative sense, by discerning differences amongst a crowd of rock and pop and hip-hop musicians.

Within that community, the type of musician who plays and writes and orchestrates with greater sophistication and artistry is more likely than the norm to be a Christian, to be a serious reader, to "talk like a tenured professor." Show me a "prog" rock musician whose songs are twenty minutes long with multiple movements, precisely written parts, moving across several keys and time-signatures, and tied together by recurring themes and a programmatic text, and I'll show you someone who can quote Edmund Burke and who checks "The Corner" daily. Contrariwise, show me a musician who plays whatever three-minute formulaic stuff is currently called "cutting edge," and I'll show you someone whose impressions (one can't call them "thoughts") about the political scene range from a childish glorification of libertinism to a Gaiaist or druidical environmental totalitarianism, where 60's red-diaper tropes like calling policemen "fascist pigs" and not trusting "anyone over thirty" are oddly preserved in cargo-cult fashion.

But as I said, we shouldn't trust our personal encounters to be statistically valid. The above describes my area "to a T," but I wouldn't count on it being universal.

And we shouldn't rule out the self-selection and ostracization process for producing factions within the larger community. In the Vietnam era, conservative and traditional youth went to war and died or had their academic lives sidetracked for several years; those that returned found that the war protestors had already occupied the academy having dodged the war in various ways. Since then the left-leaning academy has increasingly selected like-minded peers for tenure: It is one of the remaining nature preserves where the otherwise extinct true Marxist may be found. But the music programs at universities produce the classical musicians, and the J-schools produce the journalists, and the astrophysics professors and bioscience professors mould the next generation of scientists. Christian students who fail to fit into such communities have a marginally greater incentive to opt for other majors...when the professors themselves don't ride them out of their major on a rail.

The recursive nature of all this ideological inbreeding is easy to see...but don't forget that the excluded folk aren't going to vanish entirely. They'll go elsewhere, but they may preserve some of their original inclinations. The traditionalist music students who don't enter the classical world may become movie-scorers or jingle-writers (or prog-rockers, like those I described before), living out their dedication to music outside the exalted company of orchestral types from which they are socially excluded. The traditionalist j-schoolers will not find posts at the Washington Post. But their journalist inclinations may experience a galvanic reawakening through the Catholic blogosphere. Everywhere that an ideological norm conquers the high ground of a field, the dissenters will form a community set apart from it, "in exile" so to speak.

So much for observation of the process by which the left and right consign themselves to their respective ghettos.

Two questions, I think, remain:

(1.) Which parts of this ghettoization represent real problems for the Christians and others who aren't liberal nihilists? For of course if leftists tend to predominate among those who play parcheesi and conservatives respond by abandoning the parcheesi world and dominating backgammon, that's an interesting example of the self-selection and faction-building process, but I don't suppose it matters overmuch.

(2.) Can anything be done to reconquer these areas that represent actual problems?

In reply to Question 1, I think everyone agrees that entertainment media, mainstream news organs, and university-level education are areas of cultural "high ground" dominated by the left. This dominance is far more harmful than if the left dominated only the parcheesi community. It is a real problem.

In reply to Question 2, I can only offer the very beginnings of an answer, which is: Greater excellence and achievement in early education, in combination with a powerful historical, religious, philosophical and moral training sufficient to immunize youth against university-level corruption. That is, I would see every tenth-grader be a prodigy at Calculus, Cello, and Christian Apologetics.

Well, that's too specific. (Sorry. My Baptist homiletic background forbade me to pass up three items which all began with "C.") What I mean is that Christians increasingly turn to homeschooling, private schooling, parish schooling, and these are often not only separate from public school, but superior to it.

Good! Let us take that opportunity to press the students for a high level of excellence (in artistic fields, academic fields, and religious education) which their government-schooled peers cannot match. Let all the best new talent of each generation be, to the horror of their university professors, committed orthodox Christians who, far from being convinced by campus left-wing propaganda, can refute it with a laugh and still move on to dominate their field of study.

I know, I know: It sounds like a pipe-dream. (And I admit I am painting the picture in exaggerated colors.) But I find it hard to believe that the cultural high-ground will be reconquered in any other way.

And perhaps it simply won't ever be reconquered. But while we are fighting that fight, what better way than to give our kids the best possible educations, and the best possible catechizing?

I couldn't disagree more about John Adams.He's one of the most important and widely performed contemporary composers,and the recent Met premiere of his opera Doctor Atomic was a triumph,and I'm looking forward to
the Met's production of his first opera Nixon in China next season.
The current Met season,soon to close, has featured some truly interesting off-beat operatic repertoire,such as the outrageous "The Nose" by Shostakovich, Rossini's "Armida", "Hamlet" by Ambroise Thomas,and Janacek's powerful "From the House of the Dead", as well as Verdi's "Attila".
Liberals have no monopoly on love of classical music; the late William F. Buckley was a great lover of it, and Jay Nordlinger of the National Review is a fine classical music critic, for example, who writes on it for the conservative website armavirumque.org.
I recommend his criticism for any one who loves classical music,liberal or conservative.
My classical music blog "The Horn"(an instrument I used to play professionally) is on the website blogiversity.org , which has blogs and forums on a wide variety of topics. I cover all aspects of classical music,orchestral music,opera, chamber and choral music,
music history,information for classical newbies, current events in the field etc.
You may find it interesting, and I've received some gratifyingly positive feedback on it.
You can easily access my blog from the blogiversity home page.

Being pro-choice doesn't mean that you LIKE abortion and that you Want them to happen.

Being "personally opposed" to abortion is no more meaningful than being personally opposed to ketchup on a hot dog.

But as I said about Shakespeare audiences or the people who recently attended a Bach festival in Sacto, these are the hoi polloi of liberal America. School teachers, music teachers, English teachers, students of the arts, musicians and so on.

Arrgh. I guess my experiences are radically different but probably statistically significant, as I know (literally) about a thousand professional musicians, including classical, jazz, and (not as many) rock musicians in both small ensembles and major symphony orchestras. There is also a great different depending on what side of the stage one is on.

Let's look at the Bach festival. The crowd can be very coarsely divided into those who really understand the music and those who simply like to listen to the soothing sounds. Among those who know what a ripieno is in a concerto grosso, I have observed a fairly conservative trend. For the record, most of my professors in music graduate school were conservative - it is only recently, with the trend towards ethnomusicology, that I have seen liberalism begin to rear its ugly head. Classical music historians, in my experience, are fairly conservative - music theorists, not so much and performance professors closer to conservative than liberal. Again, it seems to be creativity, where it exists, driving the liberalism in music, not the class of musician. J. Christian, in his 10:14 am post, above, is close to the mark.

Among those who were there only to listen to music that sounded interesting or good, who really had no more understanding of it than chant music, I would say that the trend is vastly more towards the liberal side because they are, by nature experientialists: people who put themselves out to experience the new, the unfamiliar.

I maintain that this seeking of newness, whether it be in experience or in creativity is what marks a particular musician or music-lover as likely to be liberal, not the type of music they play. So, I must comment that the thesis of this post is not being specific enough. Classical music lovers (who understand the genre) and performers are not likelier to be liberals than conservatives, in my experience (both can be found). In fact, they are as likely as the next man to hate the twentieth-century caterwauling that passes for modern music even as they have to play it. I know. I have premiered many works by modern composers.

Tony, above mentioned the phenomenon of putting (hiding?) twentieth-century music in the middle of a concert. The reasons for this are somewhat sociologically driven. Modern music has abandoned the safe tonal theoretical basis of Rameau and each modern piece's theory must be understood before it can be listened to, properly. Most audiences do have time to study the theory, so the music sounds foreign and unsafe. Most people have heard a lullaby and how different is the tonal theory of a lullaby to a Mozart Symphony? It is safe, easy to digest music. This accounts, in large part why no one shows up at these sorts of concerts -not that the music is bad. It is incomprehensible. There are also some theories of musical processing in the brain that argue that this sort of music really is foreign to the brain, but that's a topic for another time.

Mat Weber wrote:

Classical music has always been a class thing; the aristocracy mentioned above being the main patrons. In the days before recorded music, you had to get an orchestra together to play a symphony, so most people never heard them. It worked out, because most people are naturally more interested in regional folk songs than more cosmopolitan classical fare.

This is partially true, in the sense that prior to the rise of the aristocracy, most composers were court composers, but notice, that this also applies to Gregorian Chant, which was the domain of monasteries. Most people only heard the chant of the Mass and then only once a week if they were lucky. No one has ever said that Benedictine monks in the 12th century were liberals.

As for getting an orchestra together, the rise of the piano in the 1700's allowed for a much wider audience to hear symphonic music in the form of piano reductions (these were popular in the nineteenth-century). There were few orchestras during Mozart's time and most were in the big cities.

As for folk music - there has been a rise and fall of folk music throughout music history. Usually, it is the development of new musical instruments which spurs this (ah, the electric guitar...). This happened in the Medieval and the Renaissance eras. Folk vocal music, then as now, was generally associated with either the mundane or the fanciful.

Now, what I would like to see a discussion about is how the schism between liberal and conservative church musicians came about. That would be interesting.

The Chicken

What a comely young lady in your accompanying photo, JC...

Too bad nobody involved in the shoot knew beans about the proper angle between bow & string.

;^)

Most audiences do have time to study the theory, so the music sounds foreign and unsafe

should read:

Most audiences do nothave time to study the theory, so the music sounds foreign and unsafe.

The Chicken

What a comely young lady in your accompanying photo, JC...

Too bad nobody involved in the shoot knew beans about the proper angle between bow & string.

Or how to sit in a chair, properly??

The Chicken

They don’t mind putting on a coat and tie, or a long skirt.

Would to it that the lovely young lady in the picture would wear a long skirt. I would never be able to conduct a symphony with someone dressed like that sitting in the front row (I blush...).

She is wearing an appropriate dress for a cello player, however, except for the low bodice (is that what women call it - I am a clod where it comes to fashion). Adrian Monk once captured a murderer because she claimed to be practicing the cello while wearing a long skirt.

As for the finger position on the bow - as Steve pointed out - totally wrong, unless she were playing a transitional violin of the 1650's (this finger position was, if I recall, used by a very small minority during that time, just before violins became larger - the common fingering was underhand at the time).

The again, I suspect she would be run out of town for wearing that outfit in 1650.

The Chicken

With four violinists in my household, I am of course aware of the incorrect bow and finger positions in the photo, as well as the incorrect most everything else in the photo. Perhaps a poor choice, I was trying to capture the liberal hijacking of classical music with the image.

Perhaps a poor choice, I was trying to capture the liberal hijacking of classical music with the image.

As a metaphor of everything that is wrong with the liberal musician, it is lovely.

The Chicken

P. S. Jeff, could, you, perhaps, have the makings of a string quartet in your family? The Culbreath Quartet has a nice ring to it.

Mike in KC, you wrote:

There are many of us dirty, unworthy, middle class proles who are actually VERY interested in preserving these things. The main problem is that some of us, like myself, work for a living, have a family, and also try to run a home business to boot. We don't have a lot of time to devote to this cause. I get to spend a few hours engaging in good books or music, but the opportunity doesn't present itself often.

With all due respect: baloney. The liberals I am talking about also work for their livings, raise children, and have home businesses and hobbies just like you. These are not, by and large, spoiled "trust fund" brats with too much time on their hands. If you have a family, you can raise your children to love, learn, and appreciate classical music. If you have any leisure time at all, you can get involved with and support the arts.

Lots of conservatives are "interested" in preserving classical music, I suppose, but very few care enough to do anything about it. And it isn't because they don't have the time or the means.

One thing I note often about the high society liberal types is how they differ from people like me in their idea of preserving civilization. They seem to be only concerned in preserving whatever happens to be fashionable for the moment, whatever flatters them at the time.

Like you would know.

The Culbreath Quartet has a nice ring to it.

Thanks, Chicken. I'll think it over. :-)

We're not quite at the string quartet stage - our youngest violinist just turned seven - but we call ourselves "Prairie Strings" when performing together. Mostly bluegrass and old-time stuff lately, it seems.

"Romantic sludge?"

Good grief, Scott W. & Tony: what on earth are you talking about?

Beethoven/Schubert/Berlioz/Mendelssohn/Schumann/Chopin/Wagner/Verdi/Brahms/Tchaikovsky/Dvorak formed the core of the concert repertoire in 1890, and and they still form it now.

Jeff, if you play bluegrass, have you heard of the one-time-only recording of a group called, Strength In Numbers? Technically, Newgrass, it has some of the loveliest fiddle playing I have ever heard. Sam Bush (fiddle/mandolin), Jerry Douglas (dobro), Béla Fleck (guitar/banjo), Mark O'Connor (fiddle/guitar/mandolin), and Edgar Meyer (bass) - can't beat that. They split up into pairs and each pair composed a song for the album ranging from bluegrass to a Scottish Reggae (believe it or not). Edgar Meyer's song, One Winter's Night is haunting. Their live performance on Austin City Limits in the 1990's was even better than the recording.

The Chicken

Jeff Culbreath: I am simply astonished by the gratuitous hostility of your response to Mike in KC MO.

Steve, Scott and I seem to have a slightly different notion of where to draw a line: my examples of execrable music were the a-tonal, modern, and from 1900 on.

I know music teachers who think that the romantic development was a watershed event in music, as a fundamentally deforming conception and practice of music. These are people who both know tons more about music than I, and who are really, really solid about the beauties and perfections of music pre-romantic. I, on the other hand, don't understand their argument, and I know just enough to be confident that when I denigrate modern music I am not out on a limb. While I enjoy a certain amount of romantic stuff, I am open to the theoretical possibility that it is sludge and that my tastes are not as sound as they might be. (I have even listened to Inagodadavita all the way through!)

John Adams [is] one of the most important and widely performed contemporary composers

This is undeniably true. My point wasn't that Adams and other modernists are unknown---although compared to the great classical composers they actually are---it was that their music is ugly. (Coincidentally, I rather liked Attila, as well as Lyric's Ernani, which I was able to see live; I was able to listen to the Janacek or Shostakovitch broadcasts: while a bit off the beaten path I have quite enjoyed some of the symphonic work of theirs. My complaint is not with obscure works per se.) Part of the affliction of modern art is that it has come unhinged from any objective standard of accomplishment (apart, perhaps, from dollar signs). Adams's work may be innovative; it may contribute to our understanding of music theory; it may be (although it isn't) massively popular. But above all of these, it is certainly not beautiful. It is, almost in its essence, chaos and barbarity turned into an art form. The message that atonalism sends about what we ought to appreciate in life is quite terrifying. I can take the vigor and conflict of romanticism, but modernist music is simply ugly.

I would very much like it if opera, or "classical" music generally, were a viable art form. But the truth of the matter is that it isn't and it really can't be. Artistic theory has consumed itself---not as in concentrated on, but as in an Ouroboros---with mindless concepts of being "new," "expressive," "edgy," and "reflecting the unique perspectives of non-metropol peoples." The art world simply isn't capable of producing beautiful works on anything like a systematic basis anymore.

While I enjoy a certain amount of romantic stuff, I am open to the theoretical possibility that it is sludge and that my tastes are not as sound as they might be.

Tony: You're both right. Most true romantic music is not anything like sludge: it's beautiful. But romanticism was a transformative event in music that led, more or less directly, to the Full Blown Sludge of modern music. Romanticism was like early legal realism: it loosed forces that it could not control, creating a whirlwind that destroyed itself and everything else around it. A pandora's box, if you will.

There was plenty of rubbish in whatever Golden Age anyone would care to designate. It's just faded away with the passage of time, and we don't have to listen to it anymore. Time will also separate the crap from the keepers in our own day, too.

The Masked Chicken:

In looking up other commentary on the subject, I just found an article from a book review in First Things from August/September 1996 titled "Abortion, Set to Music". See:

http://tinyurl.com/y3svblw

Although I have been a FT subscriber since 1991, I recall vigorously nodding my head while reading a portion of this article reprinted in a more recent issue. Indeed, it appears that I have almost plagiarized one of the lines, which I assure you was entirely subconscious and unintended! Apologies to Terry Teachout, who first wrote:

I know of no group of people in the United States more reflexively liberal than classical musicians, and none more unanimous in the belief that abortion should remain legal and wholly unrestricted in its availability.

I won't argue with your much greater experience, but my own limited experience is wholly identical to Mr. Teachout's, with few exceptions. Maybe it's a geographical thing. Or maybe there are distinctions to be made between various categories of musicians, teachers, schools, foundations, and media. In any case, your remarks about order, creativity, religious and political leanings, etc., are exactly what one would expect to find, and I can only be relieved that you find it somewhere.

Steve, you wrote:

I am simply astonished by the gratuitous hostility of your response to Mike in KC MO.

Your astonishment doesn't surprise me, Steve.

But perhaps I do owe Mike in KC MO an apology. I took his self-identification as a "dirty, unworthy, middle class prole" to be an insincere and gratuitous swipe at elites qua elites. Though I am not a member of any elite, I have even less patience with reverse elitism than with reverse racism.

As for Mike's claim that "high society liberal types" - if he means the liberal musicians and teachers referenced throughout this discussion - are "only concerned in preserving whatever happens to be fashionable for the moment, whatever flatters them at the time", he is not only dead wrong, but unjustly so, proving either malice or ignorance. There is plenty else wrong with liberal musicians without inventing faults that don't exist. But again, perhaps he had different "high society liberal types" in mind, like maybe Paris Hilton, in which case he would have been exactly right and I should not have objected.

In both cases I could have interpreted his words more charitably, and for failing to do so I sincerely apologize.

Chicken, you wrote:

Jeff, if you play bluegrass, have you heard of the one-time-only recording of a group called, Strength In Numbers? Technically, Newgrass, it has some of the loveliest fiddle playing I have ever heard. Sam Bush (fiddle/mandolin), Jerry Douglas (dobro), Béla Fleck (guitar/banjo), Mark O'Connor (fiddle/guitar/mandolin), and Edgar Meyer (bass) - can't beat that.

Thank you for the tip! The group name sounds familiar, but much more familiar are the names of the musicians (sans the bass player). I'm not a fan of Newgrass, but with this line-up I'll definitely give it a listen.

I say "we" a lot with reference to my family's music adventures, but the sad fact is that I am a non-musical father living vicariously through his children. :-)

You have a doctorate in music? Would you mind sending me an e-mail? I'd really like to "talk" to you about some things ...

You have a doctorate in music? Would you mind sending me an e-mail? I'd really like to "talk" to you about some things ...

Sure.

Tony,

You wrote:

know music teachers who think that the romantic development was a watershed event in music, as a fundamentally deforming conception and practice of music. These are people who both know tons more about music than I, and who are really, really solid about the beauties and perfections of music pre-romantic. I, on the other hand, don't understand their argument, and I know just enough to be confident that when I denigrate modern music I am not out on a limb.

Begging your pardon, but you are.

As for you people who are deriding modern music, while I share a certain aesthetic sympathy, you really have no idea what you are talking about. For one thing, what is modern music? Which styles: the wildly mathematical Xenakis; the minimalist, Riley; the computer school; the neo-Romantics like Rochberg; the pan-tonalists like Berg; The nationalists, like Copeland, etc.

I assume you all saw 2001: a space odyssey? It combined Strauss with the modern composer, György Ligeti, whose piece, Lux Aeterna (based, by the way on mensuration canons of the later Medieval period, except using seconds instead of thirds for the harmony), forms the eerie music when the apes encounter the Monolith. What other music would be appropriate?

Modern music must be interpreted piece by piece, because each one is an experiment in theory or practice and an experience in communication. The standardization (almost - the orchestra was still in development) of Mozart's music to modern ears would have been mildly objected to at the time it was written, because theory was only becoming codified. Rameau wrote his famous treatise in the 1720's, don't forget.

It is possible that some modern music is not processed in the brain in the same way a tonal music and therefore sounds odd. There may be a reason that scales of the type seen in Western music have been created. The music processing region of the brain is right behind the language processing centers, so it is possible that tone in music is related to tone in language. This area is under active study.

While there is much modern music that I think is hookey, some of it is quite good. Has anyone ever heard Olivier Messiaen's, Quartet for the End of Time? It is to modern music what Elliot's Four Quartet's is to poetry.

Sorry. I am a poor composer, so I can't be accused of contributing to the demise of music, but I am a fair theorist and a good historian and I specialize in twentieth-century music (as well as Medieval music), so my understanding may be a bit more developed. I suggest that painting twentieth-century music with such a broad brush is unfair.

The Chicken

MC: it is precisely this sort of condescending promotion, by self-styled experts, of pretentious dreck like Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" (to say nothing of even worse crap by the likes of Ligeti & Xenakis!) that has destroyed the popular audience for serious music, today.

Shame on you.

Chicken, you wrote:

As for you people who are deriding modern music, while I share a certain aesthetic sympathy, you really have no idea what you are talking about. For one thing, what is modern music? Which styles: the wildly mathematical Xenakis; the minimalist, Riley; the computer school; the neo-Romantics like Rochberg; the pan-tonalists like Berg; The nationalists, like Copeland, etc.

One of our resident philosophers must tell me the name of this logical fallacy: because a thing is difficult to define, therefore it doesn't exist. It's a widely-used conversation-stopper. I can't define pornography with any precision, nor can I tell you precisely where art ends and porn begins. It would be easy to confuse me in the border-regions, and getting bogged down there, I might lose the argument. Yet there is such a thing as pornography, and most men know it when they see it. There is such a thing as "modern music", and most experienced listeners know it when they hear it. It's true that distinctions should be made between styles of music composed in the modern era, but that doesn't mean that certain nuanced judgments cannot be made about the modern genre.

I enjoy some modern-era compositions - "Lux Aeterna" is beautiful, as are many of the works of Tavener, Gorecki and Part. A-tonality does not offend in certain contexts, but it seems calculated to offend in others. "Quartet for the End of Time", to which I am now listening for the first time, might well be Exhibit A among those modern works calculated to offend. I think what the cultivated western mind objects to is the tendency to disorder: even if some pleasure might be derived from listening to it, it isn't something you want to get used to.

There has been great music in every era as well as dull, formulaic hackwork .
If you consider the 20th century as a whole, much truly great music has been written by composers of highly divergent styles: Stravinsky,Bartok,Prokofiev,Schoenberg, Berg,Webern, Copland,Britten,Shostakovich,Barber,Sibelius,Nielsen,
Tippett,Debussy,Ravel,Roussel,Boulez,Carter, Henze,Messiaen,
Richard Strauss,Janacek,Szymanowski,Lutoslawski,Martinu,
Walton,and others.
The 18th century produced such great composers as Bach,Handel,Rameau,Gluck,Mozart and Haydn, but their lesser contemporaries wrote an enormous amount of formulaic hackwork.
Adams music is not "ugly" at all; in fact it is much more immediately appealing than the works of much more difficult contempory composers such as Elliott Carter,Pierre Boulez, or Milton Babbitt, which is not "ugly", but so complex and lacking in conventional melody as to be extremely difficult to grasp.
But if you take the time and effort to give their music repeated hearings on recordings,it can come to make much more sense to you.
And when Beethoven's music was new,in the early 19th century,many found it as baffling and unappealing as
many find the contemporary music of the present.
Only time will tell how posterity reacts the the music of our time.

I didn't read the entire thread so forgive me if I'm inadvertently repeating what others have said, but it seems to me that it's a certain type of liberal who supports culture in this sense -- the so-called "limousine liberal." A few years back, as a member of a jazz combo, I played at a fundraiser for AIDS research. This was quite an exclusive do and tickets were not cheap--the food and drink was top-shelf, etc.

Given the nature of the event and the prominence of homosexuals among the attendees, one assumes (correctly) a quite liberal crowd. Yet the parking lot was full of BMW's, Mercedes and other high-end cars and SUV's. It's safe to say, then, that these were affluent liberals, and I'd argue that it's this sort of liberal, the NPR/wine-and-brie crowd that largely supports classical music and other forms of cultural tradition.

On the other hand, in my experience in the folk music scene, and to a lesser extent the jazz and blues scenes, the type of liberal who follows and supports those cultural forms tends to be more of the middle-class quasi- or wannabe-bohemian type.

On the subject of music, I'd have to ask the experts in musicology here if there are any traditional, organic musics from around the world that are atonal? I know there are many that are differently-tonal than Western music, but I don't know of any that are atonal. Tone, like symmetry, seems to occur naturally. Hence atonal music, like asymmetrical architecture, is in a very real sense unnatural. Which is probably why the vast majority of people don't like it.

I like a fair amount of contemporary classical music and don't at all mind an occasional bit of dissonance and aleatory (one of my favorite living composers is Peteris Vasks). But I draw the line at works that are entirely dissonant and/or aleatory. Who wants to listen to an entire CD of "music" that sounds like the orchestra tuning up, no matter what the underlying "structure" is, or if, in fact, you can even pick it out? Wouldn't you feel cheated if you spent 30 or 40 bucks to go to the symphony, and the first violin stood, got everyone to tune up, then proceeded to do that for the next 90 minutes?

No, I'd have to say that like so much of modern culture, most atonal music has the scent of the pit about it.

~~~the works of much more difficult contempory composers such as Elliott Carter,Pierre Boulez, or Milton Babbitt, which is not "ugly", but so complex and lacking in conventional melody as to be extremely difficult to grasp.~~~

If these musics do not qualify as ugly, do you admit the existence of any contemporary classical music that is ugly? In your scheme of things, is "ugly" music even possible?

There are many of us dirty, unworthy, middle class proles who are actually VERY interested in preserving these things. The main problem is that some of us, like myself, work for a living, have a family, and also try to run a home business to boot. We don't have a lot of time to devote to this cause. I get to spend a few hours engaging in good books or music, but the opportunity doesn't present itself often.

One thing I note often about the high society liberal types is how they differ from people like me in their idea of preserving civilization. They seem to be only concerned in preserving whatever happens to be fashionable for the moment, whatever flatters them at the time.

Yep. Basically,the entire civilization is falling apart. Why? Because liberal cultural elites (and conservative elites as well) are not having children nor protecting the family for the future. They are individuals in a sea of individuals.

Like Mike above, we simply don't have time for culture - that will be for future generations. How many elites, con or lib, have seven kids? How many are really building local culture? I don't see them.

In a sense, the unwashed masses will always build the future, while the elite will fade. It's the English and Irish story, retold a million times. In fact, European literature and culture probably will vanish soon enough merely from demographics. White people were 25% of world population in 1900 or so. They are now in single digits and fading fast. So I think there are bigger problems than some loss of elite culture.

Like Mike above, we simply don't have time for culture - that will be for future generations.

I couldn't disagree more. If you are that impoverished, fine, but America's middle class, by and large, has plenty of time and money for culture. 27%-30% of American adults hold bachelor's degrees and most of these are middle class people. However, at my local state university you can get a degree in "Music Industry Technology" and "Recording Arts", but the strings and organ programs are discontinued. Americans spend $14 billion every year on pornography, but less than $10 billion on performing arts - not an "apples to apples" comparison, granted, but revealing in terms of America's cultural priorities. Sales of classical music recordings were at a pathetic 3.3% of all recordings in 1998, while rock music accounted for 25.7% and country music 14%. Etc.

The middle class, if it had the interest and desire, could save the culture. Were a sizable minority of the middle class to consciously pick up the cultural baton, transforming America's homes and schools and workplaces, great things could happen. I acknowledge the possibility and try not to lose hope.

But I'm not holding my breath. Cultural leadership belongs to the elites (and by now I hope W4 readers know that I do not define class purely in economic terms.). Where the elites lead, the other classes invariably follow. America's culture is a sewer because America's elites embrace, fund, and promulgate sewage. The easiest way to reform any culture is to convert the elites. Thus it has always been and thus it ever shall be.

Steve,

We do not disagree as much as you might think. We used to discuss in graduate school how some modern music could be anything but silly. That said, I was reacting to the blanket dismissal of all modern music by some earlier commentors. I, personally, would never introduce a young person to music with Stockhausen, but I might with a Stravinski opera like, Petruska.

Has music reached its state of perfection with Classical/Romantic music? Is there nowhere else to go?

The Chicken

Jeff,

"I took his self-identification as a 'dirty, unworthy, middle class prole' to be an insincere and gratuitous swipe at elites qua elites. Though I am not a member of any elite, I have even less patience with reverse elitism than with reverse racism."

Well, that is an easy mistake to make, especially because I really didn't provide a good explanation. I used the term because while I was college, I ran into people who had the opinion that if you didn't go to the symphony or opera a lot then you must really be some kind of lower class, quasi civilized barbarian. (although they made the case in a more round about way.) So I used the phrase in more of a tongue in cheek manner. It was not a case of me screeching "you ain't no more gooder than me!"

"There is plenty else wrong with liberal musicians without inventing faults that don't exist."
- I actually wasn't talking about the artists and musicians themselves, and you are correct I should have been more clear (I should not try to comment on blogs while at work.) I was talking more about the types like I tend to run in to: who confuse shock value with beauty (the pieces of rusted garbage the company I work for buys and dumps on the building lawn would qualify as 'litter' in my local neighborhood.)

One of our resident philosophers must tell me the name of this logical fallacy: because a thing is difficult to define, therefore it doesn't exist. It's a widely-used conversation-stopper

Indeed. If it doesn't have a name, it should have one. Earlier CMR linked an article by someone calling for a revolution of the Liberation Theology kind in the Church, naming its well-known proponents like Gustavo Gutierrez, Jon Sobrino, and Leonardo Boff; and heaven help us someone came on and said Liberation Theology was too diverse a term to be useful. The only reason my jaw wasn't on the floor from the denseness was because I was busy laughing.

"Ugly" is in the ear of the listener. Different listeners will react differently to the same piece.
Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" is filled with grinding dissonances, but it's a viscerally exciting work.
Early reactions to it(it was premiered in 1913) were often of horror and shock, but now it's a staple of the orchestral repertoire.
"Elektra", the grim and harrowing opera by Richard Strauss based on Sophocles,contains passages of hair-raising dissonance, but also ones of radiant lyricism.
So does the bone-chilling Prokofiev opera "The Fiery Angel", a weird and sinister story of sorcery and demonic possession in 16th century Germany.
Dissonance in music is not necessarily ugly. It's rather like spice in food. Without it,music as well as food can be bland.

I have no problem with dissonance as spice. It's when it is served up as the main course that I leave the table.

I would like to offer a theory that may help to explain the seemingly paradoxical fact that classical musicians, the so-called preservers of Western culture, tend to align themselves with the liberal ideology which is destroying Western culture. The theory states, basically, that musicians qua musicians never really constituted the culture in the first place, and that the task of conserving it is something they simply cannot fathom, let alone achieve; but allow me to spell this out in greater detail so that it makes a little more sense.

There are two great realities in human life: the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Caesar. I am not setting these two against each other, as indeed they should not be; I am simply naming them and declaring them to be, for lack of a better term, non-overlapping magisteria. The material problems faced by human beings require material solutions in the form of sustainance, protection, and law. Hierarchy being the organizational principle of the universe, these solutions are arranged hierarchically, culminating in the person of the prince or monarch. Similarly, the spiritual problems faced by human beings require spiritual solutions in the form of sacrament, liturgy, and catechesis; and these, too, are arranged hierarchically, culminating in the person of the priest. Thus the primary estates, the estates that truly constitute the essence of a culture, are the first and second estates, the gentry and the priesthood.

But these are also the conservative estates. Their traditions have been formed and hardened by long experience in the world. They are themselves human life existing at the highest terminus of possibility, the doyens of society, with nowhere higher to go save God and His heavenly court. If anyone is going to conserve society, it must be them.

On the other hand, artists as such belong to no estate. They are society's ornaments, the fine instruments through which it articulates its deepest heart-needs. Modulo the broad scope of culture, the artist is basically a synecdoche; he is just a part of the technical ensemble through which "art" is produced. Dimly conscious of this ironic component in his constitution, it pertains to the character of an artist to instinctively seek the patronage and protection of the two primary estates. The artist never developes the organ for true political or spiritual mastery and hence he is incapable of "conserving" the culture in the sense in which that term is important for our present discussion. Only the ruler's will can do that.

If our culture is not being preserved, the artist can do nothing to fix that. Nor is the culture being ruined by the active subversion of the artist. The culture stands or falls only with the clergy and the gentry, the Holy Priesthood and the Holy Knighthood. When the primary estates are corrupted by liberalism, the artist, who by virtue of being an artist already has a Weberian elective affinity for servility and sentimental gestures, can hardly help becoming a liberal as well. Our society's estates have gone liberal, so our artists continue to serve society while mirroring its general decline, QED.

You'll notice that this analysis, if true, makes sushi out of the oft-repeated claim that a fine arts education potentiates children for higher overall achievement. In fact that claim is a romantic, nay, an occultist sentiment which the sooner forgotten the better. The highest achievement is to be found in the fields of liturgical worship and statesmanship. Counterintuitively, it is only when we devote greater attention to these things than to the arts, that we create a society wherein the arts can actually flourish as they were meant.

Ok, way off topic: I spent my childhood being told my "IQ" was quite special. And I'm glad they told me since all I ever saw was how foolish I was, and how much less socially and physically awkward other kids were, not to mention that they generally had better judgment, or "common sense" if you prefer.
Let me put it this way: My IQ was so high that it was clear to me the IQ wasn't all that much in life, or in success-- and certainly not in the arts that I love so much, but have no great talent for. I'm not saying that what IQ testing measures lacks worth-- quite the contrary-- I'm just saying its only a part of life (and only a part of the life of the mind!) and it's not often the best part either. Of course there is always a correlation between various types of success. Leonard DaVinci, etc.... But as in all things, getting the lines of causation correct actually matters quite a lot. If we are to measure the worth of conservatives, liberals or anyone else, that is to say that if we need to resort to just one single criteria to start ranking folks, then I say lets use devotion ("True Love" sounds too...you know...). No, seriously. Think about it: Devotion to one's field, one's mind, to logic, to music, to friends, family, humanity-- its this that all the other "goods" spin out of. Show me a devoted group of individuals and I promise you they are consistently rising in "IQ". The reverse is not the case. That's causation.

Loved the article, especially the part about the Sodomite hordes who desecrate old Victorian houses by rehabbing them. Have you ever considered becoming a comedy writer?!

This is what we mean when we say that conservatism's power comes from lies about history. The reason that conservatives don't uphold the classical European cultural traditions is because their beliefs are a radical antihistorical departure from them. They don't know that because they have been a steady diet of lies about history, which enables them to see themselves as upholders of a cartoonish never-was "tradition" instead of the nihilistic revolutionaries against that tradition they really are. For example, they believe the US is a "Christian nation" despite the fact Christian historian Sidney Ahlstrom estimated that in 1776 80% of families belonged to no church. Indeed, it was more than 150 years after English settlement before the colonies even had an Anglican bishop and that was the official state church. Similarly conservatives believe the US has always been economically Darwinist when in truth prices and wages were often set by government in colonial days, and every government of that day recognized a duty to alleviate poverty. James Madison even came out for greater taxation of the rich and support of the poor in a piece he wrote for the National Gazette in 1792. He thought it was the only way to control the evils of party and factionalism, since those with excessive rewards from public policy would invent bogus issues to whip up popular hatreds. He was right, as we have clearly seen since 1980, as CEO's and banks have looted the economy while making the brainless public vote against abortion and gays, something government has no power to stop, instead of voting to fix the economy by making it more fair.

As a professional musician I am offended by many of the generalizations about all those involved in the arts. I do not feel that I fit into many of the generalizations that I have read here. I see a true ignorance for the understanding of why artists do what they do. Anyway the real reason I landed here is the photo that goes with this article is absolutely beautiful. To the photographer, you rock! I'll try to read everything here, get pissed off about it, try to formulate an intelligent comment all after I eat. Or maybe just forget it all and go listen to some devil music and drink some beer!

An ancient musician informed me, that there were some famous lutes that attained not their full seasoning and best resonance till they were about fourscore years old. - Robert Boyle quotes