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Why state subsidies produce boring music
------------------------------------------------------------------------------Posted: March 12, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Ellis Washington
"There are many of them [aristocracy], but only one of us!"
– Beethoven (to poet Goethe)
I recently viewed a wonderful book of the complete works of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. I was amazed at how difficult it was for van Gogh to make a living as a painter and how in his letters to his elder brother, Theo (his primary benefactor), he poured out his frustration in eloquent detail of the unbearable realities and hardships of life – frustrations that eventually drove him to despair to such an extent that he cut off his ear. He was committed to an insane asylum where he eventually committed suicide at the young age of 37. Perhaps he had to be half crazy to enter the heavenly gates of Parnassus.
This brings me to the subject of this column: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and three views on the role of government. Haydn was the career bureaucrat/wholly subsidized, Mozart the reluctant bureaucrat/partially subsidized and Beethoven the anti-bureaucrat/non-subsidized. My supposition here is that the more a composer was subsidized or attached to a monarch, aristocrat, archbishop, bureaucrat and the State, the more his music was pedantic, derivative and uninspired. The less subsidized the composer, the more exultant and creative his music became.
Using the example of van Gogh as the archetypal model artist forming his craft in the furnace of affliction, I examined Haydn's background and found some interesting things.
Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809) had a tumultuous upbringing as a choirboy and self-taught musician; he had little to be envious of in his early years (he left his very poor home at age 5 to study music and never lived with his parents again). However, through much hard work and incessant composing, he was able to land the best music job of his era – court musician at the palace of Prince Esterhazy of the Hapsburg empire in Eisenstadt. He kept this position for about 30 years until shortly before his death.
To me Haydn's music (which I have played throughout my own music career) is structurally sound, harmonious and inventive; however it frequently devolves into being pedantic, effete and light-weight. Nevertheless, his coveted position with the prince characterized him politically speaking as a career bureaucrat wholly subsidized by the State, here, the monarchy.
Haydn sadly had little occasion to be profound, because the prince and his aristocratic friends appreciated music as only entertainment – background noise for their frequent parties and social occasions. Ironically, Haydn's two finest and most exalting compositions were written after his employment with the prince, namely the oratorios "The Seasons" and "The Creation."
Next there is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91), the reluctant bureaucrat/partially subsidized composer. Unlike Haydn, Mozart was never able to make the transition from being an amusing boy genius to respected court composer of some prince or king, although he spent most of his 35 short years trying to secure that elusive patronage job. This omission in Mozart's resume I contend was really a blessing in disguise. How? Because unlike Haydn, who was virtually imprisoned at Prince Esterhazy's palace in the hinterland of Austria 11 months out of the year, Mozart had been a world traveler since his child prodigy years of the early 1760s when he visited all of the prime centers of music at that time – Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin, Mannheim, Amsterdam, Vienna, even Russia.
Although Mozart wanted the financial security of being a musical bureaucrat like his elder mentor, Haydn, he did not posses the discipline, temperament and political sophistication to achieve this. Ironically, this made Mozart's music more interesting, technically proficient, lively, bursting with lyricism, and on occasion, profound, even sublime – for example his operas "The Magic Flute" and "Don Giovanni," his last three symphonies, and his Requiem Mass and Coronation Mass. However, much of Mozart's music, like his elder mentor, Haydn, is mired in the excesses of the Age of Enlightenment of which he was one of its late children – gallant style, technically brilliant, structurally sound, but provincial, effete, frivolous and insubstantial.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), the anti-bureaucrat/non-subsidized composer is by far the most interesting of the three masters both on a psychological and a musical level. When you listen to his music (especially the middle-late periods) you can hardly believe that Beethoven worked during the times of Haydn and Mozart, for his music is that revelatory and triumphant.
Beethoven, unlike his predecessors, had nothing but utter contempt of the monarchy and the hoards of ambitious, treacherous petit bureaucrats that groveled at their feet seeking political patronage and promotion. To Beethoven, a child of the Enlightenment and a man who personified revolution, all monarchs, aristocrats and bureaucrats were mediocrities.
To give you an idea of Beethoven's anti-bureaucracy/non-subsidy approach to music, consider the day Beethoven and Goethe (the greatest poet and literary figure of his day) were going for a walk in Teplitz, Czechoslovakia, in July 1812:
As Beethoven and Goethe walked, some of the nobility passed with their entourage. Goethe politely stepped aside and bowed deferentially to the nobles – while Beethoven, in a gesture entirely typical of him, strode almost defiantly right through their midst, with his hands behind his back and without acknowledging the presence of the nobles, who had no alternative but to give him clear passage. When Goethe asked Beethoven how he could so disrespectfully treat these nobles, the composer replied, again quite characteristically, "There are many of them ['nobles'], but only one of us!"
So Beethoven and Goethe, by the magnificent works they produced, ascended the steps of Parnassus, while this puffed up diminutive prince and the privileged class he represented have descended into the abyss of obscurity and oblivion where they belong, having done nothing for God or humanity but sat on a throne, looked important and squandered the people's confiscated tax money on excess, irrelevance and vanity.
During the FDR administration (1933-45), America was in a critical economic depression. To generate revenue Roosevelt greatly expanded the federal government, including a department of the arts under the Works Progress Administration. However, FDR's artistic largess and legacy was artificial. Zero percent of these so-called "commissioned" works amounted to anything of lasting value, and few of them stand today or are even remembered. What does this say? When government, the State, monarchs or kings get into "supporting the arts," you usually get derivative or perverse art, miserable music, unremarkable sculpture, ugly architecture, uninspired poetry. This is why there have been no Michelangelos since Michelangelo, no J.S. Bachs or Handels since Bach and Handel, No Rembrandts, van Goghs or Wagners since Rembrandt, van Gogh and Wagner, and lamentably no Beethovens since that magnificent master put down his quill for the last time on his unfinished manuscript, the 10th Symphony, on a cold, stormy, rainy night on March 26, 1827.
Why state subsidies produce boring music
------------------------------------------------------------------------------Posted: March 12, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Ellis Washington
"There are many of them [aristocracy], but only one of us!"
– Beethoven (to poet Goethe)
I recently viewed a wonderful book of the complete works of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. I was amazed at how difficult it was for van Gogh to make a living as a painter and how in his letters to his elder brother, Theo (his primary benefactor), he poured out his frustration in eloquent detail of the unbearable realities and hardships of life – frustrations that eventually drove him to despair to such an extent that he cut off his ear. He was committed to an insane asylum where he eventually committed suicide at the young age of 37. Perhaps he had to be half crazy to enter the heavenly gates of Parnassus.
This brings me to the subject of this column: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and three views on the role of government. Haydn was the career bureaucrat/wholly subsidized, Mozart the reluctant bureaucrat/partially subsidized and Beethoven the anti-bureaucrat/non-subsidized. My supposition here is that the more a composer was subsidized or attached to a monarch, aristocrat, archbishop, bureaucrat and the State, the more his music was pedantic, derivative and uninspired. The less subsidized the composer, the more exultant and creative his music became.
Using the example of van Gogh as the archetypal model artist forming his craft in the furnace of affliction, I examined Haydn's background and found some interesting things.
Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809) had a tumultuous upbringing as a choirboy and self-taught musician; he had little to be envious of in his early years (he left his very poor home at age 5 to study music and never lived with his parents again). However, through much hard work and incessant composing, he was able to land the best music job of his era – court musician at the palace of Prince Esterhazy of the Hapsburg empire in Eisenstadt. He kept this position for about 30 years until shortly before his death.
To me Haydn's music (which I have played throughout my own music career) is structurally sound, harmonious and inventive; however it frequently devolves into being pedantic, effete and light-weight. Nevertheless, his coveted position with the prince characterized him politically speaking as a career bureaucrat wholly subsidized by the State, here, the monarchy.
Haydn sadly had little occasion to be profound, because the prince and his aristocratic friends appreciated music as only entertainment – background noise for their frequent parties and social occasions. Ironically, Haydn's two finest and most exalting compositions were written after his employment with the prince, namely the oratorios "The Seasons" and "The Creation."
Next there is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91), the reluctant bureaucrat/partially subsidized composer. Unlike Haydn, Mozart was never able to make the transition from being an amusing boy genius to respected court composer of some prince or king, although he spent most of his 35 short years trying to secure that elusive patronage job. This omission in Mozart's resume I contend was really a blessing in disguise. How? Because unlike Haydn, who was virtually imprisoned at Prince Esterhazy's palace in the hinterland of Austria 11 months out of the year, Mozart had been a world traveler since his child prodigy years of the early 1760s when he visited all of the prime centers of music at that time – Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin, Mannheim, Amsterdam, Vienna, even Russia.
Although Mozart wanted the financial security of being a musical bureaucrat like his elder mentor, Haydn, he did not posses the discipline, temperament and political sophistication to achieve this. Ironically, this made Mozart's music more interesting, technically proficient, lively, bursting with lyricism, and on occasion, profound, even sublime – for example his operas "The Magic Flute" and "Don Giovanni," his last three symphonies, and his Requiem Mass and Coronation Mass. However, much of Mozart's music, like his elder mentor, Haydn, is mired in the excesses of the Age of Enlightenment of which he was one of its late children – gallant style, technically brilliant, structurally sound, but provincial, effete, frivolous and insubstantial.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), the anti-bureaucrat/non-subsidized composer is by far the most interesting of the three masters both on a psychological and a musical level. When you listen to his music (especially the middle-late periods) you can hardly believe that Beethoven worked during the times of Haydn and Mozart, for his music is that revelatory and triumphant.
Beethoven, unlike his predecessors, had nothing but utter contempt of the monarchy and the hoards of ambitious, treacherous petit bureaucrats that groveled at their feet seeking political patronage and promotion. To Beethoven, a child of the Enlightenment and a man who personified revolution, all monarchs, aristocrats and bureaucrats were mediocrities.
To give you an idea of Beethoven's anti-bureaucracy/non-subsidy approach to music, consider the day Beethoven and Goethe (the greatest poet and literary figure of his day) were going for a walk in Teplitz, Czechoslovakia, in July 1812:
As Beethoven and Goethe walked, some of the nobility passed with their entourage. Goethe politely stepped aside and bowed deferentially to the nobles – while Beethoven, in a gesture entirely typical of him, strode almost defiantly right through their midst, with his hands behind his back and without acknowledging the presence of the nobles, who had no alternative but to give him clear passage. When Goethe asked Beethoven how he could so disrespectfully treat these nobles, the composer replied, again quite characteristically, "There are many of them ['nobles'], but only one of us!"
So Beethoven and Goethe, by the magnificent works they produced, ascended the steps of Parnassus, while this puffed up diminutive prince and the privileged class he represented have descended into the abyss of obscurity and oblivion where they belong, having done nothing for God or humanity but sat on a throne, looked important and squandered the people's confiscated tax money on excess, irrelevance and vanity.
During the FDR administration (1933-45), America was in a critical economic depression. To generate revenue Roosevelt greatly expanded the federal government, including a department of the arts under the Works Progress Administration. However, FDR's artistic largess and legacy was artificial. Zero percent of these so-called "commissioned" works amounted to anything of lasting value, and few of them stand today or are even remembered. What does this say? When government, the State, monarchs or kings get into "supporting the arts," you usually get derivative or perverse art, miserable music, unremarkable sculpture, ugly architecture, uninspired poetry. This is why there have been no Michelangelos since Michelangelo, no J.S. Bachs or Handels since Bach and Handel, No Rembrandts, van Goghs or Wagners since Rembrandt, van Gogh and Wagner, and lamentably no Beethovens since that magnificent master put down his quill for the last time on his unfinished manuscript, the 10th Symphony, on a cold, stormy, rainy night on March 26, 1827.
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