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(ART) MUSIC IN THE PUBLIC REALM
[revised 3/11/03]
Allen Gimbel

Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida 3/12/03

In the summer of 2002, I had the opportunity to discuss with FAU Artist-in-Residence Michael Singer a new course he was developing for the impending academic year, a course with the arresting title "Creative Thinking in the Public Realm." This course was to explore the ways public planning and design could be improved through the creative intervention of artists. A series of suggestive proposals, framed as questions, propelled the course description forward:

"A power plant that protects the land, celebrates natural systems and is accessible to the community? A solid waste transfer and recycling center that is beautiful, houses environmental advocacy groups, educates thousands of school children, and is the anchor for an eco-industrial park? A commercial shopping center whose landscape and architecture regenerates natural systems and adds to the environmental health of a community?"

These proposals may be considered representations of a category later defined in the course description as "public art." The arts represented here, though, seemed limited to the fields of architecture and urban design, while the presence of sculpture and the visual arts, for instance, seem fairly commonplace in the life of public environments. As a musician, I couldn't help wondering where my art might have a place in such utopian ideals. This led to my own series of questions. Music is an art form that surrounds us today at virtually every turn. What place does it have in our "public realm"? Must it remain solely decorative? Has its public place always been so? The public has seemed to accept uncritically what has become its unyielding definition of musical being. What happened to the possibility of tones fashioning a viable artistic communication? What responsibility does the artist leave to the receptor for the experience of such a communication? What sorts of physical (architectural) environments are conducive to an appropriate experience with such an artwork? The following observations are not intended to criticize or even to explore the art form's current status, but rather to suggest some avenues for exploration of these issues, and to wonder whether or not there could be, or ever has been, an art music in the public realm.

I open, appropriately, with a piece of music. John Cage wrote his 4' 33" in 1952, the score of which is displayed overhead. It consists simply of the direction "tacet", which means "rest". A proposed time frame is divided into three sections, or "movements", to be measured by the pianist and communicated to the audience by the opening and closing of the keyboard lid. In the published score, Cage reports the version created by pianist David Tudor at Woodstock, NY, 8/29/1952, which opted for the following time divisions of 4' 33": 33", 2' 40", and 1' 20". In the (pedantic) interests of historical authenticity, we will adopt Tudor's divisions. Please take out a piece of paper and a pen and write down everything you hear during the prescribed time intervals.

[Pianist enters from offstage and commences performance. My page turner will take notes.]

Thank you. There are, of course, innumerable "hearings" of this work, depending upon where you're sitting and what you choose, or are able, to focus upon. For practical purposes, we'll use [Sandra]'s version as a template for discussion.

[Produce work and analysis thereof.]

This, then, is a sample of "deep listening", in this case of the environment immediately surrounding you. Cage has "composed" the time frames; the environment has supplied content; its depth, internal structure and quality must be supplied by the auditor. Time frames infused with sound may serve as well as any definition of "music"; the content of these time frames may be as variable as the audible content of time itself. But their status as "art" is entirely dependent upon the auditor's attentiveness. Inattention to the environment as such is the stuff of daily life; attending to it in an artistic manner is an exercise, the stuff of meditation, an elevated state of awareness. The auditor must attain the state of an artist in order to structure his or her experience; when this experience is communicated (even to oneself) he or she becomes a participant; when it is judged he or she becomes a critic. When its possibilities are suggested one becomes a teacher-all artists, then, like rabbis, are teachers.

Another very useful example may be found in the work of FAU artist-in-residence Michael Singer. Let's examine a work of his from 1979, the April 79 entry in his "First Gate Ritual Series" (Guggenheim catalog 55) [overhead example 2]. Like the Cage, nature serves as background, here a bucolic wooded area in a public space, DeWeese Park in Dayton, Ohio. As we observed moments ago, the artist produces a structure from a complex environment, in this case a sculpture of bamboo and phragmites (tall, feathery grasses wrapped here by the artist with jute rope); the work is subsequently photographed within its environment. Note the interesting interaction of structural levels at play here. The right-leaning curves of the actual woods are reflected in inversion by its left-leaning reflection in the water, a complementary natural presence (inversion and complementation are venerable musical processes , not incidentally). The artist reflects on this situation and produces an interpretation (a Work). This work could then be removed from the actual environment and placed out of its original context [see, for example, 54 (overhead example 3)-is there an installation of p. 55?], as an installation in a museum, for example. Further variations might even be executed, as in a drawing or painting [overhead example 4, perhaps 47].

I would like to concentrate on one of the many aspects one could take off on from these situations. Cage, commenting on the recognition of one's sonic environment as potential material for music, writes:

"Hearing sounds which are just sounds immediately sets the theorizing mind to theorizing [a negative thing for Cage, but a crucial thing for artistic response, I believe], and the emotions of human beings are continually aroused by encounters with nature [also negative for Cage, but see further]. Does not a mountain unintentionally evoke in us a sense of wonder?… night in the woods a sense of fear? Do not rain falling and mists rising up suggest the love binding heaven and earth?… What is more angry than the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder?… Emotion takes place in the person who has it. And sounds, when allowed to be themselves, do not require that those who hear them do so unfeelingly. The opposite is what is meant by response ability" [note the delightful word play at work here]. [Experimental Music: in Silence, 10].

Cage is making us aware that music exists in the public realm if only we would have the capacity ("response ability") to recognize it-for what could be more public than mountains, woods, rain, mists, lightning and thunder? And note the spiritual subtexts suggested by Cage's descriptors: wonder, fear, love (that binding heaven and earth), lightning and thunder. And it is surely no coincidence that Michael Singer titles his work as a series of rituals [Guggenheim catalog, 23].

What sort of place may assist in the development of "response ability"? Do our contemporary environments for the consumption of art assist or detract in such development? Does such an activity (the development of "response ability") exist in popular culture? What happens when it doesn't?

Music as an art form is in many ways more problematic than any other art form in these respects. It is often said to be "abstract", "non-representative", filled with content but merely its own sonorous content, not attributable to anything outside itself. Although this theoretical stance is certainly debatable (the late 19th century German critic Eduard Hanslick is a seminal representative of this notion [On the Beautiful in Music, citation]), I'd like to embrace it for the purpose of this talk, if only to underscore the art forms' demand for an attentive listening subject, certainly before sophisticated interpretations of it might take place.

What is "attentive listening", and how might present environments serve to discourage it? The need for an attentive listening subject seems first to have been elucidated in 1749 by the important German critic and theorist Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg. In his periodical Der critische Musicus an der Spree (The Critical Musician on the River Spree), Marpurg writes:

"Attentiveness on the part of listeners is unquestionably one of the best means of stimulating the lofty ambition of skilled virtuosos, or of other well-bred persons devoted to music, and thereby of raising the level of good taste." (In other words, if performers-or other well-bred persons like composers-- feel the indifference of their audience, their work will suffer accordingly.) "But attentiveness is not simply a matter of keeping quiet during a concert, of not playing cards and appearing to listen without distraction." (no gin rummy during a performance at the very least.) "Nor is it enough to refrain from disrupting the Muses' agreeable strains with trampling feet or disorderly chatter." (In other words:Sit down and shut up!) "We owe the performer's skill a clearer sign of our approval. The enticing tones with which he delights us deserve the honor of a compliment. To prick the concert artist's zeal and encourage music lovers in this way does not yet seem to be altogether fashionable. Here and there people are still accustomed to listening to everything with frigid and phlegmatic indifference." [In The Attentive Listener, ed. Harry Haskell, p. 16.]

An environment for music (or any sort of activity that requires attentiveness) that permits trampling feet, disorderly chatter and card playing is obviously not the place for (art) music in a public realm. This sort of behavior is, however, virtually ubiquitous during musical events in the popular culture. Maybe secular environments are not the places to look for attentive listening.

Both Cage and Michael Singer suggest spiritual subtexts for entrance into their artistic worlds (Cage's association with Zen Buddhism is well-known; recall Michael Singer's use of the term "Rituals" as his title for his aforementioned series of works.) What sort of environment encourages appropriate listening in this context? Or, put more concretely (no pun intended), what is good architecture for the public consumption of what are essentially private artistic (musical) communications?

This question led me to thoughts of Venice, where the impressive edifice known as St. Mark's cathedral functioned as a location for so much impressive music in the 17th and 18th centuries. What sort of environment might have influenced the creation of the sensuous music of the Gabrielis, for example, a music designed to envelop the listener with meaningful sonority with its multiple choirs and colorful timbres? John Ruskin (in "The Stones of Venice"-1853) describes the atmosphere of St. Mark's as an ideal place for concentration and contemplation of mystery: [photo overhead, if available]

"Let us enter the church. It is lost in still deeper twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us a vast cave, hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the dome of its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far-away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colors along the floor. What else there is of light is from torches, or silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels… and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream [nota bene]..." (150)

Earlier, in his discussion of "The Virtues of Architecture", Ruskin insists that a building must "act well, and do the things that it was intended to do in the best way" (29). It seems reasonable, then, that a place for sonic adventures must somehow promote attentive contemplation of an ineffable object (music), and St.Mark's seemed to be a successful candidate for fitting that bill. If a building is visually distracting, and Ruskin's characterization suggests that St. Mark's is not, it is unlikely to produce a sufficient aura of meditation for musical purposes. Should places for the appropriate contemplation of music, then, be constructed as if they were churches? (Is this why churches often make such good sonic environments?) Most contemporary public concert halls are constructed as if they were theaters rather than churches (and many actually are theaters, particularly when the music being presented belongs to the popular realm). Is this why audiences for art music often behave like Marpurg complains they do? How do places of worship promote contemplation (musical and otherwise, perhaps). What kinds do (or don't)?

I would like to turn to the phenomenon of the Baroque cantata for some suggestive paths through this argument. These complex works were to be given in church, where I presume trampling feet, disorderly chatter and card playing were strongly discouraged. What sort of environment was an 18th century German Lutheran church, where these works were conceived? [overhead photo from Wolff] These churches are obviously more modest than the mysterious open space of St. Mark's; they in many ways resemble basic church design pretty much anywhere: not overwhelmingly large, congregation facing the pulpit (that is, the performance space), the "audience" for all intents and purposes "captive". Canadian pianist Mayron Tsong described to me the ambience of St. Thomas's Church in Leipzig, where J. S. Bach wrote most of his cantatas:

"even though the church is still impressive (certainly, by North American standards), I was quite taken at how relatively simple the interior was. I remember the roof especially, since it was monochromatic-only beige, with the exception of the dark brown wooden beams. No distracting gold, myriads, or scenes of oppression."

This unassuming environment served as an ideal space for musical expression of daunting intensity. Rather than simply feeding his audience familiar tunes, J.S. Bach provided profoundly elevated transformations of homely vernacular material (Lutheran chorales, for example). It was assumed that these audiences (that is, congregations) knew these chorales and their associated texts. Since the tunes and their texts were assumed to be general knowledge, the composer was left free to exercise his artistic fancy and create a work of High Art accessible to the Public. Furthermore, this High Art was intended to be exegetical in purpose, that is, it was not merely intended to be (hopefully) "understood" but to be "learned from". How different is this from the examples from John Cage and Michael Singer raised earlier? In the public realm, music may be frankly didactic ("art" music) or, in polar contrast, designed for entertainment. This dichotomy was pointed out by Luther himself when discussing what type of music belonged to the former category: "pieces that have an appropriate dignity and are not made for dancing but rather for a religious service should be used as church music" (55).

It's also important to consider how emotional expression eventually became associated, if not explicitly linked, with extramusical didacticism: that is, when did the music itself take on a life of its own and become understandable and feel-able as an abstract entity in itself that brought one closer to God, assuming that the listener was properly attuned to this entity's codes? At the beginning of the 18th century, one Pastor Christian Gerber is quoted as saying that in "a wonderful musical oration… (God's) people on earth… can be reminded even better of the divine being, which is impossible during a mere oration that consists only of the melodious sound of rhetoric." (195) "Consequently", scholar Ulrich Leisinger writes, "church music [in our discussion thus far, "art music"] possesses the same merits as a sermon; a competent composer is the equal of a good preacher. What mattered was the transmission of a certain meaning to the audience." (195) This through a kind of musical "rhetoric": "The composer… had to familiarize himself with the principles of public speaking [nota bene] and apply them in a suitable way to music." In the public realm, "music was intended, first, to praise the Creator and, second, to teach and [NB] move the listeners." (196)

When did such practices become hermetic, rather than "public"? I'd like to turn now to the early 19th century (specifically, about 50 years later) and consider the phenomenon of the Schubertiad, where the public realm became by invitation only; audiences became smaller as expressive content became more overwhelmingly intimate in its psychological acuity. Here "architecture" is a room in a private home; its "realm" is explicitly private, not public [overhead:von Schwind drawing]. Overhead is the famous sepia drawing by Moritz von Schwind depicting a Schubert-Abend (Schubert evening) at the home of his friend Joseph von Spaun. Do not confuse this with an aristocratic gathering among royalty. Franz Schubert, now venerated as a "great composer", is seated at the keyboard. He is a poverty-stricken visionary with syphilis. To his right is Johann Michael Vogl, a singer who premiered many Schubert songs at such gatherings; to his left is Josef von Spaun, the primary resident of this home. The men appear transported; the ladies are in ecstasy. This appears to be a visual document of "attentive listening". Here's a description of one of these gatherings from one of the participants:

"Schubert sang and played many of his songs. After that, punch was drunk, offered by one of the party, and as it was very good and plentiful the party, in a happy mood anyway, became merrier, so [that] it was 3 o'clock [I'm assuming a.m.] before we parted."

Participants included Schubert's seminary friends, painters, poets, later his doctors, hangers on, and so forth. They met wherever they could: poor houses, rich people's houses, Wasserburger's café "where", according to Schubert scholar Elizabeth Norman McKay, " they reserved a small, cozy, private room for themselves alone.It is possible, even likely, that here [Schubert's friend Franz Schober] encouraged the smoking of opium." Getting stoned and listening to music-what could be more American? (or French, if you're Berlioz, or Russian, if you're Scriabin?)

How many guests were typical? A "grand Schubertiad" held in 1826 had "some 40 guests." Some Schubertiads ended with gymnastics (no comment). What might these guests have been hearing in Schubert's meticulous, adventuresome music? The well-known pianist-and composer-Ferdinand Hiller provided one answer: "you did not notice the piano playing nor the singing, it was as though the music needed no material sound, as though the melodies, like visions, revealed themselves to spiritualized ears." (NB). Remember that this is a composer and pianist talking. Attentive musical listening is assumed for all interested (invited) listeners, and these assumed capacities are subsequently transcended into a "spiritualized" realm, that is, a hyper-internalized realm explicitly antithetical to banal public considerations. In other words, art music exists here exclusively in a private realm.

To this point we have been considering only music involving relatively small forces: chamber music, really intended to be presented in, well, chambers. How does the idea of a deeply personalized art music requiring attentive listening translate into larger public spaces? Richard Wagner was supremely aware of this issue, so much so that he proceeded to build his own theater for presentation of his exemplary visions. The foundation stone for Bayreuth was laid in 1872. In his address to its patrons, Wagner made a point of stressing the simplicity of its architectural design:

"You will find an outer shell constructed of the very simplest material [NB], which at best will remind you of those wooden structures which are knocked together in German towns for gatherings of singers and the like [immortalized in Die Meistersinger], and pulled down again as soon as the festival is over… when you step inside… you will find the very humblest material, a total absence of embellishment [NB]: perchance you will be surprised to miss even the cheap adornments with which those wonted festal halls were made attractive to the eye." [Does this not sound like my correspondent's description of St. Thomas's?]. Let's go on. "The need I felt first [was] that of rendering invisible the mechanical source of [the] music, to wit the orchestra; for this one requirement led step by step to a total transformation of the auditorium of our [new] European theater… The orchestra was therefore to be sunk so deep that the spectator would look right over it, immediately upon the stage… The mysterious [NB] entry of the music [because of the hidden orchestra] will next prepare you for the unveiling and distinct portrayal of scenic pictures that seem to rise out of an ideal world of dreams [NB]". He then describes the effect as "the utmost possible achievement of a sublime illusion." This illusion is extended by the construction of multiple proscenia that results in the creation of what Wagner calls a "mystic gulf"; "the architectural adjustment of the two proscenia [results in] the unapproachable world of dreams, while spectral music sounding from the "mystic gulf", like vapors rising from the holy [NB] womb of Gaia beneath the Pythia's tripod, inspires him with that clairvoyance in which the scenic picture melts into the truest effigy of life itself." It must be noted here that when Bayreuth finally opened it was the profoundly spiritual Good Friday opera, Parsifal, that took the stage. To this day, applause is forbidden at Bayreuth after a performance of this work (this tradition continues even in New York when Parsifal is given at the Metropolitan Opera). Parenthetically, one does not "visit" Bayreuth. One makes a Bayreuth "pilgrimage". Who constitutes such an audience? These works are intended (in Wagner's words) for "art-lovers near and far": not a random "public realm" in any "democratic "sense. Audience members are referred to as "guests". Wagnerism is more often than not described as a "cult", and one in which attentive listening is assumed. Marpurg would certainly approve.

Mention must be made of Wagner's music itself in this context. The Wagnerian system of leit motives ("leading motives") is designed to play a crucial role in drawing the listener into the dramatic musical argument. In its creation of recognizable correlations between musical gestures and specific objects, places, characters, and feelings, Wagner invites his listeners to become "necessary sharers in the creation of his artwork". This system presupposes the existence of (and desire for) attentive listening, with an audience primed for such an experience through sufficient preparation, openness, and, to recall Cage, "response ability". Wagner's model society was ancient Greece, where these qualities appeared to be assured among the general population. Whether or not these assumptions are provable, they do point to the sort of enlightened ideal toward which these artworks were directed, and the same may be said for all the artistic situations alluded to thus far.

It goes without saying that few composers had the opportunity to design and build their own opera houses, and as the economy worsened progressive-minded creators of music found themselves reviving the idea of the Schubertiad in order to assure a committed and attentive audience. In a brochure written by Arnold Schoenberg in 1904, he wrote that "only if there is an inner relationship between the work and its listener, can music make an impression… The listener's qualities are likewise of decisive importance in achieving this result. His intelligence and emotions must rise to meet the demands made by the work." And the listener's receptiveness "is a matter of both ability and good will."

In 1918, Schoenberg advertised rehearsals for his First Chamber Symphony, attendance at these rehearsals offered by subscription. Audience members could purchase the score at half price (musical literacy was obviously assumed). There were to be ten rehearsals (!). The composer was to conduct and always be around. "No critics!" And no "non-members" of this intentionally closed circle. The great architect Adolf Loos, in the preface to his symposium "Guidelines for a Ministry of the Arts", warned that same year that "the masses [i.e. the public realm] lack proper judgment; bad, middle class taste stifles the impulse of the truly original artist." So Schoenberg had no choice but to form his own Schubertiad: the Society for Private Musical Performances, "to give artists and friends of art [like Wagner's Bayreuth patrons] a real and precise knowledge [NB] of modern music." Works were to be carefully studied, by performers and audience alike. Pieces were to be performed more than once; introductory discussions were to be provided. "The performances are not public in every respect… Reviews of the performances in newspapers as all publicity of the works or artists is inadmissible", as Schoenberg wrote in his prospectus. Members are "accepted" and are "committed" to attendance. Again, the notion of an "art music" presupposes a pedagogical component. A public expecting only "entertainment" would obviously be out of place in such environments, as it would be in any of the demanding artistic environments described thus far.

And large, overbearing locales would also be inappropriate for such events, in that it would disturb concentration. The Society's concerts took place, citing Judith Karen Meibach's University of Pittsburgh dissertation on the subject, in "different localities, ranging from a private school for girls to Vienna's best available, smaller (NB) professional concert halls." One of these, the Schwarzwald School's assembly hall, designed by Adolf Loos, "shunned unnecessary ornamentation". Again, art music's realm seems to reside in private spaces-Schoenberg's Society "keeps as much distance from the public musical life as is possible," and gives its members every opportunity to savor the work at the closest possible distance [ recall Wagner's architectural design at Bayreuth].

It seems crucial here to bring up the work of Schoenberg's neighbor on the Ringstrasse, the great Viennese music theorist Heinrich Schenker, whose approach to classical music brings the experience of the work inside the auditor to an unparalleled degree : the realm to which this experience belongs requires serious consideration in this context. In brief, music for Schenker was an expression of great spiritual and natural truths. "Great" ("art") music constituted an Ideal expression of these truths. Becoming conversant with these truths meant no less than getting inside the work by literally rewriting it in slow motion to reveal its inner life. Such an activity must by definition be closed to any "public realm". Its pursuit is a private enterprise-sort of a combination of research and prayer. The technique of its pursuit may be taught (again, the role of education becomes manifest). But its realization can only be successful through hard work and intense personal dedication (and talent plays a role as well, to be sure).

What was Schenker seeking? "… the very secret and source of [the great composer's] being: the concept of organic coherence". Organic coherence seems like a scientific principle . But "All that is organic, every relatedness belongs to God and remains His gift, even when man creates the work and perceives that it is organic.… The whole of foreground [that is, all that is put before us and left unstructured by our understanding], which men call chaos, God derives from his cosmos, the background [that is, the deeper structures that lie below the musical surface, and are left for us to negotiate. Think back now of the Cage and Michael Singer works confronted earlier, and how artistic structures may be created out of "wild" natural structures.]. The eternal harmony of His eternal Being is grounded in this relationship. [That is, the relationship between foreground and background]…The astronomer knows that every system is part of a higher system; the highest system of all is God himself, God the creator." How does one reach the point of being able to begin to comprehend such mysteries? "Only by the patient development of a truly perceptive ear [NB: "response ability"] can one grow to understand the meaning of what the [great composers] learned and experienced."

Can the man in the street ever hope to casually approach such mysteries? "This much is clear", Schenker writes in his profoundly important counterpoint treatise; "the average person is afraid of any effort, in life as well as in art. Provided in all respects with spiritual and material gifts by his superiors [that is. Great artists, thinkers, etc.], he spends his miserable life with a few trifles of religious, moral, and artistic principles. All the more ungrateful and conceited, he bustles about on earth, thinking himself nothing less than the final purpose of all creations of God and his geniuses among men. The average man goes about his business exactly this way also in art, and he wants to have it the same there too. Taking-taking without effort(;)… that the [artistic] dilettante cynically transforms his innate fear of exertion into a demand on art-that is the most revolting and disgusting aspect of his character."

The notion of an art music, then, cannot by definition be open to casual public consumption, and still retain its integrity. As American popular culture and commerce became increasingly dominant in the 20th century, the notion of an art music steeped in spiritual and pedagogical issues became less and less likely- instead,it became a cult located in the academy and in private realms.

It goes without saying that the notion of an elitist Art Religion could not be much of a hit with anyone left out of it. In the interests of equal time, let's take a moment to acknowledge a famous composer's opposing view. In the 1939-40 academic year, Igor Stravinsky delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard-these were later published as the "Poetics of Music". In the third lecture ("The Composition of Music") Stravinsky opens fire on the "murky inanities" of the Art Religion idea:

"The application of [Wagner's] theories has inflicted a terrible blow upon music itself", Stravinsky roars. "In every period of spiritual anarchy wherein man, having lost his feeling and taste for ontology, takes fright at himself and at his destiny, there always appears one of these gnosticisms which serve as a religion for those who no longer have a religion, just as in periods of international crises an army of soothsayers, fakirs, and clairvoyants monopolize journalistic publicity" (59). In other words, using music as an instrument for spiritual and philosophical development is contrary to its fundamental purpose, namely the expression of elegance and décor-spirituality and philosophy belong in the church and the classroom, respectively, not in the concert hall, theater or opera house.

Stravinsky at this point in his career held up the likes of Chabrier and "the colossus Verdi" as preferable alternatives to the post-Wagnerian "art-religion", both for those composer's inherent populism and their upholding of "natural" musical values (like melodic cadence, for example, as well as their lack of a disorienting "philosophical speculation"). But this posture-and history shows that this was indeed merely a posture-was junked only 15 years later, when Stravinsky turned to that most elitist, academic, and alienating compositional method, namely, serialism. Stravinsky's own "Art Religion" could inevitably only be practiced in the same venues as Schoenberg's-namely within the walls of the Academy, which, like Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances, served as Church and "safe haven".

Artists know that once their work is completed it becomes a candidate for public consumption. The constitution of that public, though not necessarily always obvious, probably assumes some degree of attentiveness on some part of the work's audience. What institutions in our time encourage an attentive approach to the work of art? What follows are some observations intended to direct attention on these issues.

Modern technology makes it easier than ever to produce an attentive listening experience. Once the production of commercial recordings got underway in the early twentieth century, it became simply a matter of owning the appropriate equipment to start your own society for private musical performances. The ability to repeat theoretically "ideal" performances at will enables the interested auditor to participate in the musical work directly without fear of disturbance: Wagner's dream of eliminating the clunky apparatus of the orchestra is here realized ("fine performances of ideal works of music may make this evil [the sight of the orchestral source] imperceptible at last, through our eyesight being neutralized, as it were, by the rapt subversion of the whole sensorium", as he put it. This effect may be easily procured today simply by turning on the stereo and closing one's eyes). For many, the listening room or the set of headphones provide the ideal environment for attentive listening. This private realm, it should be pointed out, is no different than the reading of a book, which, once movable type was invented, effectively took the sharing of stories out of the public realm and into the private. How much personal interaction does an art music require?

The commercialization of the recording industry reduced the relevance of the production of music for an attentive listening subject. For the public, music is generally for dancing,.background, entertainment, relaxation, and general diversion, certainly not for the purposes for which Western art music was intended, as I have suggested. But those committed to music as an art form in that sense know that a shared experience in the right communal circumstances can never be replaced by an enclosed journey into one's self, however instructive and enervating that journey might be. A conglomeration of like-minded individuals bent on sharing a heady artistic journey sounds like the makings for a cult. Where do such cults reside these days?

Classrooms are one place. There works are explained, discussed, heard, and shared attentively. It also becomes a safe haven for experimentation. The Academy is not entirely a public realm, nor is it entirely a private one, but it is there that attentive listening may thrive (though experience shows that such optimal conditions are by no means guaranteed). Milton Babbitt, a MacArthur Award winning composer, writes the following in a 1983 lecture given at the University of Wisconsin/Madison entitled "The Unlikely Survival of Serious Music":

"… It is absolutely impossible to deal with [the] whole question of music and the composer [i.e. "art music"] without dealing with the university centrally. It just so happens that a university setting is where most composers find themselves… We composers are mainly university people… The universities have been obliged to become the havens for-and the patrons of-serious musical activity in all of its manifestations."

Leaving aside deeply ingrained prejudices against academia, maybe this shift can be understood partially as a search for more congenial venues; maybe architectural considerations play a role, but certainly social considerations do.

What realms might be explored outside of total internalization and disappearance into the academy? Jazz clubs seem to offer an intriguing alternative. They're small, intimate, dark, smoky, socially selective-they seem to offer all the requirements for an attentive listening experience. It might also be mentioned here that progressive jazz often has a distinctly spiritual element (I'm thinking of John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor as examples here: there are many others). The downtown New York scene does offer venues for clubs dedicated to serious musical exploration beyond jazz. Maybe this sort of solution might spread in the future. The Bang on a Can group, whose founders met at Yale, might have ideas to contribute to this area. Their uncomfortable recent appearance at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center (which I attended) served to illuminate many of these issues.

How is music mainly experienced in contemporary public realms? Muzak, or elevator music, is a kind of "anti-attentive listening" construction. Oberlin Professor Rebecca Leydon, in her provocative recent article on "mood music" published in Perspectives of New Music, suggests that the notion of "attentive listening" advocated in this discussion is by definition a male-dominated, distinctly non-feminist compulsion in which the aggressive, masculinist "specialist" model attempts to rule over the gentler, more passive ("feminine") non-specialist auditor, in effect "[separating] the boorish masses from the golden-eared connoisseurs". These "boorish masses", who are also not critical listeners (if they were they would likely rebel), are constantly inundated by "soft-focus sound" whose very physical location is difficult to define. Leydon implies that the public's stance toward ambient sound is non-critical (actually this is also Cage's ideal-I, however, find that a critical approach to non-critical approaches may be too self-contradictory for a non-Buddhist like myself). If it is true, nevertheless, that the public does not engage in active critical perception of the artistic forces that surround them, then it is difficult to imagine an "art music" available to a public realm, for how could an art's artifice be recognized and savored without this basic critical function? This is a question endlessly evaded in the recent literature surrounding this topic.

Another interesting related exercise pertinent to this discussion: listen attentively to one hour of commercial television, concentrating on the music presented during commercial breaks. I am unfortunately unable not to do this, but recent findings are instructive. I heard, embedded within 15-30 second segments, catchy jingles, ambient background music, real classical music (Bach, albeit via the Swingle Singers, and Vivaldi), fake classical music (a beautifully scored Norman Rockwell-esque Publix commercial), classic rock (Led Zeppelin and the Beach Boys), light jazz (Tony Bennett)-in short, every musical style imaginable, given in tiny unanalyzeable, intellectually indigestible portions. The best of these ads unquestionably approach the status of high art, but on what level would an uncritical public respond, if at all? And what is the point of any artist putting his or her self out to produce a perfect entity if there is no attentive audience to respond to it?

Let's now summarize some of the ideas put forth in this necessarily brief presentation. I have tried to separate the notion of a fundamentally ambient music characteristic of the public realm from an "art" music that requires an attentive auditor. It does not appear to be historically accurate to assume the public to be either capable of or desirous of the capacity for "attentive listening": the "deep listening" exercise and the critical structuring suggested as an essential component of the esthetic process might serve to demonstrate two basic characteristics of the "art music"-defining experience. These experiences seem to also be fundamental requirements for optimal appreciations in other art forms as well. Subject matter also seems always to have been a crucial consideration in defining the presence of an "art music". Music as an instrument in the contemplation of spiritual issues stimulated the 18th century composer to attain high intellectual feats-these feats must have been hoped to be recognized (if not, why put forth the effort?) But these efforts eventually required smaller and more exclusive receptors. These groups took on the character of what we today might consider artistic "cults". As the middle class grew to be "art consumers", irreconcilable tensions grew between the cultists and the public. Serious artistic thought grew increasingly inward, and is now almost exclusively associated with the place where such thought becomes institutionalized, namely, the Academy. Art music, then, seems to have moved from a public realm centered in spirituality through a selective realm, a private realm, and, finally it seems, an academic realm. That realm seems also to be presently threatened, as studies in popular culture replace what are now considered to be "elitist" concerns. Music is unquestionably ubiquitous in the public realm; "art music" borders on extinction. But, as Frank Zappa once put it, "the present day composer refuses to die" (or was that Varese?) Whatever "cause" this may actually be, it seems fundamental to at least be clear on the content of the categories under consideration. "Art music" is not "entertainment" in the popular sense. But that by no means suggests that it is not "entertaining". Those who retain delight in challenge, elevation, abstraction and complexity in the musical realm must retain their cults and seek new members. And this group will never be a majority. But why should it be? This is a democracy, and for it to work efficiently there must always be space for alternative views. Thank you.

Copyright © Allen Gimbel,  2005-2009  All Rights Reserved


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