"Marcin Gokieli" <marcingokieli(a)go2.pl> wrote:
>This book is, along with Adorno's 'Philosophy of new music' and 'Dialectic
>of Enlightenment', my main ennemy among written things ('three tenors' are
>the target among musical objects). Parts of the critique are interesting,
>but his agressive self confidence and hate towards what he sees as popular
>culture make it a monster. Yet another opinion form mr. academic teacher on
>the eternal topic of "now wouldn't this world been much better had
>everyone ACTED JUST LIKE ME AND AMDMIRED THOSE NICE THINGS I DO, but they
>are just to silly to to that".
>As for his view of rock, he treats it as something that makes life 'a
>comercially confected masturabational fantasy' (my retranslation from polish
>edition), no mer, no less. Needless to say, there's no single musical
>argument in the chapter devoted to it, just plain 'what's that horrible
>violinless thing' atittude.
and
>The problem is, however, that he does not say anything more interesting
>about music then 'rock sucks, mozart is OK' (maybe besides his reducing
>music to a kind of educational tool, which i find deeply mistaken), and it
>makes the discussion with him pretty useless. And as a person who has spent
>much of time on listening and creating music at times close to rock, I feel
>very offended by such treatment of this kind of music.
Dismissing Bloom, & Adorno, simply because they badmouth music that
you like isn't too different from their dismissal of that music;
you're dealing with symptoms and not causes. All of us who've been on
this list for a while have seen some interesting and complex
discussions that make it clear that, though we may share a general
interest in one (very amorphous) area of music, we don't all agree on
the details of what we do & don't like. The fact that there aren't
many more such discussions is due more to restraint on the part of
various list members than it is to any actual consensus of taste.
Both Bloom and Adorno's writings about pop music are instances or
examples of a much more nuanced discussion about how culture and
history operate. In Bloom's case this is set out in earlier chapters
of his book, in the case of Adorno, it pervades a large body of work
written over many years. Trying to refute specific comments they've
made about specific music, without dealing with these larger
arguments, is pointless, no matter how frustrating you may find their
musical opinions, because you haven't dealt with their main arguments.
There is a LOT to criticize in Bloom and Adorno; I agree with very
little that I've read by Bloom and somewhat more of what I've read by
Adorno. But a critique of their work that is limited to discussing
their responses to electric guitars or pop crooners, doesn't come
close to addressing their overall approach. These details are matters
of personal taste that have little to do with the actual shape of
their arguments.
Marcin's comment about "three tenors" may make this a bit more clear.
Based on Bloom's and Adorno's writings, one can very safely say that
they would have found this kind of marketing of "classical" music to
be even more despicable than Marcin does. If you just have a
knee-jerk dismissal of Bloom based on his comments about pop music,
there's no clear understanding of why you may agree on other issues.
It's easy for me to imagine someone agreeing with Bloom's overall
argument, and differing only on details like their response to rock,
TV sitcoms, or other cultural manifestations. There are people who
make the same kind of arguments based on valuing a particular
creative period of the past but draw their aesthetic lines at
different points because of their own tastes in art. I've seen very
similar arguments from people who like jazz more than Adorno did or
who like rock more than Bloom did. The arguments are no more or less
flawed simply because I may share more musical tastes with the author.
--
Herb Levy
P O Box 9369
Fort Worth, TX 76147
herb(a)eskimo.com
