In this sense, music as a mode of thought is able to combine the features of both mathematics and rhetoric in a single form that can be pleasing to the soul. The inability to recognize this leads some to think of music as a type of irrational emotionalism or erotic passion rather than as a disciplined, intellectual, and beautiful mode of thought. This portrayal of music as passionate and irrational comes not only from the political and cultural Left but also from the Right. But this conception of music is nothing more than a form of sentimentalism that romanticizes a non-existence past.
For example, in The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom described students addicted to rock music because of its barbaric appeals to sexual eros. According to Bloom, the deleterious effect of rock music is the destruction of a student’s proper passion, a genuine eros, for anything, much less for the art and substance of liberal education. The sexual frenzy of rock music is part of a broader cultural phenomenon which has witnessed the abolition of sexual mores and norms, with consequences spilling over into the family life and the cultivation of children. Our present age, characterized by therapeutic pop psychology and an ethic of self-indulgence, creates children who are self-centered with “flat-souls,” interested more in their careers and their own enjoyment than citizenship and liberal education. Music is too often the manifestation and making of this “flat soul” where concern of anything else besides oneself is absent.
Being part of that generation which Bloom described, I will grant there is much to his analysis that rings true. I will concede that rock music (and hip-hop) generally is revolting in its artificiality of emotions and appeals to sexuality, as it was in earlier generations, whether in medieval drinking songs as later composed by Carl Orff or compositions by Rousseau. However, there are also aspects of popular music that are celebratory. Some songs provide a social critique, which can lead to more thoughtful inquiry; others express the sheer exuberance of living and are just fun, capturing something of the beautiful.
Instead of classifying all popular music as corrupting, we should distinguish those aspects that are soul-flattening from those that are not. To make these evaluations, we not only need to look at the content of the song but also its technical aspects of rhythm, melody, and harmony. Not only do I think such an approach would be a more accurate and effective way to reach and to understand our students, but it has the added benefit of avoiding self-righteousness, such as Tipper Gore or grumpy grandparents.
With respect to music, my sense is that Bloom, and others like him, want to romanticize a past that never existed and then use it to bemoan and bewail about the travesties of today. Even in classical music we see this. The latest manifestation of this tendency can be seen in the recent controversy over the YouTube Orchestra, whose members auditioned on the web and later played at Carnegie Hall after two days of rehearsal. Also, there is rising concern about the increasing incorporation into classical music of popular music’s marketing techniques, like talent contests and cross-overs. According to these critics, classical music has become a follower and victim of fashion in order to make itself heard in contemporary culture. Instead of praising these efforts, they condemn them as trying to take the “classical” out of classical music.
But I would remind those who are opposed to making classical music relevant to the Internet generation that there is no such thing as a fixed repertoire. True, classical music is not subject to the whims of the weekly pop chart: its hits are decade-long but they are just as susceptible to shifts in culture and society; its practices and norms developed over centuries, but they are as subject to change like anything else. The notion of the conductor directly addressing the audience before a concert or to be seated for no more than two hours would have shocked people a century ago. To conceive of a certain type of music as fixed and everything thereafter as being corrosive and corrupt is not to engage in scrutiny but a type of sentimentality about the past and a contrived tradition. There never was Arcadia.
All music evolves from what audiences preferred listening to, conductors and performers enjoyed playing, composers wanted to write and their sponsors wished to support, and what technology happened to be available at that time. For example, until recently, most classical music was listened to live. A tradition developed that was subject to credentials and change and that comes to us today. When compared to classical music, popular music is an infant still finding its way. We should give popular music time to develop before we reject it outright. To do otherwise is to misunderstand how all music, whether classical, popular, or other, develops and sustains itself over time and how it effects, both positively and negatively, children.
Some on the Left wants to embrace popular music entirely and disregard classical music as a form of structured oppression. This view is also in error: taste in classical music is highly complex that involves audiences and players, composers and conductors, sponsors and the technical availability in a tradition that spans centuries. Just because something is more difficult to grasp does not necessarily make it oppressive: it just makes it more difficult, as doing calculus or reading Shakespeare is more difficult than doing algebra or reading Danielle Steele. These things may be used in an oppressive manner, as Hitler did with Wagner’s music, but it does not make the thing itself inherently oppressive.
From both of these perspectives of the Left and the Right, we see a conception of music as primarily irrational or emotional and, therefore, as having negative consequences for citizenship: conservatives want to claim popular music makes us selfish while liberals argue that classical music is a form of white man brainwashing. But both of these vantage points are wrong because their assumptions are incorrect. As I have pointed out earlier, music is primarily a rational and intellectual discipline, more akin to mathematics and science than to art and literature. Once we see music in this light, we will be able to determine rationally instead of romantically whether these claims about the effects of self-centeredness and victimhood are correct.
The emotional potency of music makes it unique because it bridges both the intellect and the sentiment in a synthesized moment. Music can be both rational and beautiful simultaneously – something which few other fields of study can claim. By appealing to both their reason and emotion at the same time, music has the ability to unite people as part of the whole, like when a national anthem is played, at a religious service, or even at a rock concert.7 It this power that music possesses – the rational and emotional expressed at once – that makes it crucial in the cultivation of children into good people and citizens. Children’s first intellectual encounter with the world is usually through music, for they can listen to music before they can read, write, or count. It is critical that we make sure that such an initial encounter is correct for the education and citizenship of the child.
Now what is such a correct encounter, what type of music should children first come into contact, will depend upon a number of considerations: from the child itself to the type of regime, from the state of the culture to the musical knowledge that teachers themselves possess. The point I wish to underscore is that we need to reconceptualize music, no longer viewing it as secondary to the education of our children because its content is emotional or irrational. In fact, it is the opposite: music should be the center of both our children’s education and the education of our citizens. Once we realize that music is more than the food of love, we will see that its nourishment lasts as long as our minds and as large as our hearts can accept it.
Notes
7. The power of music to create community by appealing to both a person’s intellect and emotions is one of the reasons why totalitarian states have adopted music for their political ends. This does not mean that music is inherently totalitarian or even advocates a support of the state; but, it does suggest that the social potency of music is its ability to create a community, political or otherwise.
"The social potency of music" ... "flat souls" !!! You sure are talking about the world I live in. Many thanks Lee.