“To jump ahead roughly one hundred years: Jim Morrison described his band The Doors as ‘erotic politicians’. ‘We’re interested in everything about revolt, disorder, and all activity that appears to have no meaning.’ It is difficult to imagine what Nietzsche would have thought of the music, but it is hard to imagine him withholding his …
Playing The Cult Card
One of the things that liberals did successfully for quite some time was play the race card. One of the things that conservatives (eventually) did in response was name the practice, calling it something like “playing the race card.” Little tricks of illusion and distraction in politics operate much the same way that tricks of …
Where We Got All the Uber-Goobers
“It took Nietzsche to philosophize out of Wagner’s music a program for cultural revolution that would shake the coming age to its foundation. The twentieth century was to become the proving ground for Nietzschean philosophy in its various permutations. There were the Nazis, and then there was the global cultural revolution of 1968-1969, and then …
Mark the Music
“For the next one hundred fifty years, the West would post the Liebestod question again and again in various ways, from Nazism to Woodstock, and never be able to come up with an answer. In the process, enormous amounts of cultural patrimony were thrown overboard. Classical music, freed from patriarchal melody by Wagner’s chromatic modulations, …
For Love of the Code
These continue to be tumblesome times here in Moscow, and there is both good news and bad news intermingled. The bad news is that critics continue to multiply, but the good news is that they are getting progressively squeakier. The charges are increasingly crazy-out-there and, with reference to their goals, counterproductive. For an example of …
Musical Pornography
“To modulate the notes unceasingly from one key to another, as Wagner’s chromaticism did, was tantamount to blunting the emotional focus; to lead them away never to return to the dominant note gave the feeling of tumultuous and unsatisfied passion, a passion that never got resolved. From a human perspective, there was generally only one …
The Real Problem with “Kill the Wabbit”
“The attraction was essentially erotic. This music bespoke emotion liberated from reason. In the musical realm, the assault on tonality corresponded to an assault on sexual restraint in the moral realm and an attack on the social order in the political realm. Wagner could achieve all three, which would correspond to the deepest needs he …
As Norah Jones Once Sang With Ray Charles, “Here We Go Again”
I am sure that there were many times during his trek to the North Pole that Admiral Peary had occasion to remark on the vista ahead being the “utter frozen limit.” But then, three days later, there would be more. As we have dealt with the monkeyshines of our intolerabuddies, I have used that expression (UFL) …
Wagner and Cultural Revolution
“Wagner was as committed as ever to the overthrow of existing conditions. However, the scope of his rebellion had changed. His desire for change now went deeper than the political process in terms of its end and beyond the political process, beyond even revolutionary politics, in terms of the means to bring that revolutionary change …
High Standards Lead to Relativism
“Even so, most people still tend [to] think of the popular arts as ‘lowbrow’ entertainment and not something to be thought about or evaluated as art. This has disastrous consequences for the cultivation of Christian discernment . . .Undermining the status of popular art has not led to education of the audience to heighten appreciation; …