The Problem...

The idea of classical music as the unquestioned benchmark of musical taste and authority has changed. Where once it was considered a crucial part of a healthy society, it has now grown isolated from mainstream culture and has been relegated to the periphery of modern cultural life. The current model for performing classical music – the location, rituals and formalities associated with attending a classical music concert – are now considered out dated and out of touch with contemporary culture.

This chapter will explore the historical and philosophical foundations that have lead to this situation. It will be suggested that the concept of aesthetic autonomy has been the defining factor in the reception and performance of classical music. It will also be suggested that, within the foundations of aesthetic autonomy, lies a hypothetical ‘contract’ between the artist and the responder, (in the context of music, between composer and listener), and that this relationship reveals a further dimension to the understanding of how classical music is currently valued and performed.

Aesthetic autonomy has its foundations in Enlightenment thinking. During this period, philosophers were reconsidering and redefining existing attitudes to knowledge, truth and universal values. Notable amongst these was Immanuel Kant and it is from his examination of the concepts of beauty and fine art that appears in his Critique of Judgement (1790), that a clear image of aesthetic autonomy and the hypothetical contract can be gained.

For Kant, objects of beauty are those that can be deemed beautiful without recourse to rational thoughts or concepts and appear to have been constructed yet do not display a discernible purpose. As Taruskin summarises, “[Objects of beauty] must be disinterested both in their motivation and their mode of contemplation, they must have the appearance of purposiveness, without having an actual purpose or socially sanctioned function”[1]. These objects trigger a critical dialogue in which the beauty of the object is defended as if it were an innate property of the object. While Kant intended these categories for judgements of beauty in nature, when this conception of beauty is seen in the context of his discussion of fine art, a clear understanding of aesthetic autonomy can be made.

Kant’s conception of fine art was informed by a clear distinction between judgements of art and taste. Judgements of an object’s artistic merit were directed towards the construction or form whereas judgements of taste referred to the beauty of an object. A work of fine art, according to Kant’s system, would be one in which art and taste merge; the work would be so well constructed that the viewer would no longer be aware that they were observing an artistic construction but would instead observe the object as naturally beautiful. Thus, Kant’s conception of a work of fine art is one whose form and construction is expertly hidden and is judged beautiful (that is, it is deemed beautiful on sensory experience alone and has no obvious utility). Here lies the basis for an autonomous art: it is isolated from social concerns, is expertly constructed so as to appear natural and without apparent function or purpose.

For instrumental music of the late eighteenth century, the ramifications of valuing fine art in this way were hugely significant. Where previously instrumental music was valued only in its mimetic capacity (its ability to emulate scenes in nature, the human voice or as equivalent to rhetorical oratory), it now took on a new authority within this radically new schema. If fine art was to be that which was abstracted from social concerns and clearly constructed without displaying an explicit purpose or message, then the newly emancipated instrumental music, whose expressive vocabulary consisted of abstract representations of pitches in time, took prime position within the fine arts.

The new authority granted to music, also cemented the relationship between the composer and the listener. The symphony became “some thing with the potential to endure, a textlike object”[2] while the audience evolved into a respectful, attentive, and informed spectator. The composer would produce works that would transport the listener from the everyday in exchange for their attention, criticism, and adoration suggesting “a contract between composer and listener – and their mutual empowerment”[3].

This ‘contract’ had an immense effect on the performance and reception of classical music and it is from these origins that the existing model for performing classical music evolved. Music, and those who composed and performed it, were to be respected and granted a degree of attention and focus. As Samson suggests, “it was the nineteenth century that fostered and nurtured that fetishism of greatness – of the great artist, the great work – so familiar to us today”[4]

With the autonomy principle firmly in place, and the contract between composer and listener clearly established, instrumental music was ready to lead “the nineteenth century, the “music century,” when music came into its own as a fine art”[5].

No longer confined by an inability to represent and depict reality, and supported by the theories of early German romantics who valued ambiguity, subjectivity, and the supernatural, instrumental music became seen as a porthole through which listeners might catch a glimpse of a transcendental realm. The purpose of music would no longer be defined by rationalist aesthetics of imitation and empiricism but would instead aim to express the sublime and the unattainable[6].

Continuing the principles of disinterestedness and ‘purposiveness without purpose’, the notion of autonomous music was further clarified with the emergence of composers who, no longer reliant on the patronage system, were free, and encouraged, to explore their own creative urges. Beethoven, whose fierce temper, erratic mood swings and physical deafness set him apart from everyday society, came to represent the archetypal musical artist[7].

As the nineteenth century wore on, ensuing composers, charged with the task of delivering profound transcendental experiences through the medium of their own creative genius, could no longer be considered on an equal footing with the common man. Isolated from, and indeed uninterested in, trivial matters of the everyday, these composers came to embody the autonomy principle and, in the process, shifted the balance of power between composer and listener in their favour. Supported by the influential theories of Schopenhauer, who saw music as the purest way of experiencing – free from the essential features of the phenomenal world[8], music was now thought of as the supreme means through which attentive audiences might experience the pure essence of existence[9].

Crucial in the propagation of such attitudes was a new bourgeoisie for whom ‘serious’ music became a sign of cultural status. Music and its dissemination became a highly profitable industry leading, in the second half of the nineteenth century, to an influx of purpose built concert halls and the first subscription-only concerts. With this came the steady canonisation of the repertory, a gradual cementing of the music profession and the establishing of now-familiar rituals associated with concert attendance. As Ellis states, “the act of concert-going itself increased in aesthetic seriousness, its dedicated spaces, many of which had facades reminiscent of ancient Classical temples, becoming shrines for the silent appreciation of acknowledged masterpieces”[10]

By the close of the nineteenth century, autonomous music came to represent a retreat from a rapidly modernising world. As Clarke suggests, “in a modernizing society characterised by increasing scientific rationalisation, growing industrialisation, and an associated market economy, autonomous art offered a world of imaginative experience that was Other to the means-end orientation and commodity production of the empirical social world”[11]. Western classical music now came to embody a kind of utopian alternative to an increasingly mechanised and dehumanised world. The composer/listener contract remained intact however new class divisions meant that the enjoyment of classical music was increasingly restricted to an elite upper class audience.

The radical events of the first half of the twentieth century were the catalyst for a radical shift in the approach to, and reception of autonomous art. The horrors of two world wars, combined with ever-increasing mechanisation and industrialisation, the rise of fascist ideologies, and the seemingly unstoppable forces of capitalism, had called in to question the authority of the enlightenment project. Teleological metanarratives were to be treated with suspicion. A radical revaluation of modernity and the autonomous art principle was imminent.

The writings of Theodore Adorno clearly exemplify the changing attitude to music and the autonomous art concept from this time. For Adorno, working with Max Horkheimer, culture formed an inextricable part of society: the musical and artistic spheres were as much responsible for the stability of society as were the legal, political, and financial sectors. Drawing on Kant’s formulation of fine art, Adorno saw the autonomy of art, specifically the element of purposelessness, as crucial[12]. For Adorno, it was autonomous art’s disregard for social function that was the critical element that would allow it to offer resistance to the forces of capitalism. The more abstract a work of art, the more isolated from the influences of popular culture and the ‘culture industry’, the more social function it would have. As Adorno suggests, “insofar as a social function can be predicated for artworks, it is their functionlessness”[13].

This attitude, shared by composers of the time, resulted in radically new approaches to composition and to the relationship between composer and listener. Objective systems of composition were favoured in which “total structural integrity [was] achieved at the price of maximum indifference to sensuous appearance and subjective enjoyment”[14]. Autonomous music would no longer offer its bourgeois listeners solace from the horrors of reality. Indeed the will of the masses was now seen as irrelevant while the ‘popular’ was seen as the antithesis to the intellectual pursuit of high art. In the now infamous words of Arnold Schoenberg, “no musician whose thinking occurs at the highest sphere would degenerate into vulgarity in order to comply with a slogan such as “Art for All”. Because if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art”[15].

As a consequence of such high modernist ideals, the composer and listener now parted ways. The modern composer became fixated with resisting the forces of an ever growing popular culture industry and with reconsidering the very concept of music itself, while the listener, lured by the instant gratification of the easily understandable and unable to make sense of the radically new aesthetic, lost interest. The contract was broken.

In the ensuing decades, and in the wake of this division, the culture industry took hold. Postmodernism, with its so-called “incredulity towards metanarratives”[16], declared an end to single, authoritative systems of truth instead championing a plurality of interpretations. Truth was subjective and previous divisions between high and low art no longer existed. Accordingly, popular culture and one’s enjoyment of it was no longer seen as taboo. The previous model of the composer/listener contract was now replaced by a new contract between producer and listener. Equipped with financial buying power, the listener could exchange their hard earned money for music that appealed to their subjective enjoyment while contemporary composers were forced further into the periphery of contemporary culture.

Here lies the current state of the contemporary classical music landscape. The classical music establishment has become caught between resisting the forces of the market system, in keeping with its foundations as an autonomous art form, and attempting to appeal to, and maintain audiences. The traditional canon remains in place with modern and contemporary works usually kept to a minimum. Symphony orchestras are placed alongside rock and pop artists in an attempt to gain exposure to new audiences but it appears to be having little effect. Concert halls have become seen as museums while antiquated formal concert rituals continue to perpetuate sentiments of elitism and exclusivity in contrast to the immediate and inclusive nature of the popular music industry. As Clarke suggests, “On the one hand, then, there is a high-modernist practice that retains its purity as an autonomous art by moving to an aesthetic vanishing point where only a minority care to venture; on the other hand, there is a mass cultural practice assimilated to its role as part of a market economy and embracing its mundaneness, its worldliness”[17].

While contemporary composers have continued to practice their craft in the wilderness of the contemporary cultural landscape, the vast majority of Western classical music performance institutions have seen a dramatic decrease in audience numbers in recent decades. The contemporary listener, now re-empowered through financial means, has made their absence felt. It has become apparent that, if Western classical music is to continue in a world dominated by the popular culture industry, a new approach to the performance and presentation of works from both the traditional and contemporary classical music canon is necessary.