tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6993045826856544697.post7870240282775259299..comments2023-12-19T09:49:33.560+00:00Comments on streams of expression: Stockhausen - GESANGE DER JUNLINGE / WELT-PARLAMENT (from MITTWOCH AUS LICHT) – BBC PROMS, Royal Albert Hall, 19.07.2013david_grundyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09822972751622883772noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6993045826856544697.post-9684534878696914842013-07-20T17:50:40.856+01:002013-07-20T17:50:40.856+01:00Just a few additional comments:
1) He was one of ...Just a few additional comments:<br /><br />1) He was one of the first signatories of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Parliamentary_Assembly Hence on the one hand an attempt to make the UN more democratic, on the other hand obviously within the framework of Western liberal democracies. Although given that his mother was killed by the Nazis because of her depression and that his father died in WW2, there might be in his work something lots of West Germans feel (or have been indoctrinated by): a real & genuine (if perhaps misguided from a socialist perspective) belief in the post-war constitution, the so-called German Grundgesetz, as the first body of law that supposedly actually safeguards peace, equality and human rights. You are still taught this belief at school, a real sense of pride in these values: liberal democracy not merely as the least worst compromise, but as a real political position people would fight for. Sort of along the line of Popper's critique of Plato and Marx, or any kind of totalitarianism, all equated with one another, and along with a real belief in the individual as a critical & emancipated political entity.<br /><br />2) Similarly, I think it'd be interesting to consider his mythical-mystical tendencies in the framework of other megalomaniac-mythical German post-war art: esp Joseph Beuys, but also Anselm Kiefer; Werner Herzog. Kind of strange these figures would gain such fame, even though they all seem to work off of what could at least be called semi-fascist tendencies in terms of their beliefs in myths, irrationality, the great individual. And kind of strange this should happen, of all places, on post-Holocaust Germany.<br /><br />3) Also obv the history of total art from Richard Wagner onwards, i.e. the megalomania which seems slightly inherent to classical music at least from the 19th century onwards. I think to some extent I always feel uncomfortable with ALL (German) orchestral music, just in the way its performances link so tightly to the subaltern mindset of the bourgeoisie (discipline, efficiency, rigour, hierarchy, CULTURE): and in fact I felt slightly that Licht possibly opened up the rigidity of these structures in a satirical way. Plus, the Gesang der Juenglinge felt especially haunting having been written in the 1950s, just after the Holocaust: and the kind of distortion of these choric voices, as if something like a choir or a nice singing-voice could not be maintained, felt like a logical and critical conclusion in response to the Holocaust. The disgusting ways in which Germans have always held up their high culture (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, etc.) and lied through attaching metaphysical notions (humanity! elevation!) and then wondered how "in spite of" this the Holocaust could happen, just makes an unchanged practice of orchestral and choric work impossible, or at least its still common practice in a non-distorted, uncritical way: hence channelling those kind of voices through a machine, where no dutiful German chorister can gain five stripes or medals or prizes feels like a radical response to history: which is why I found that piece moving, or almost sickening. It’s like the piece inhabited a kind of brutality which is in fact a tenderness, and an understanding of a particular historical condition in terms of cultural practice.<br /><br />4) Do you really think Plato is a good/interesting model? Always seems like teacherly & condescending fake-dialogue to me!<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com