Criticism or Control? Hegemonic Left Aesthetics

Abstract

am writing this paper as a musician, that is from within music. But because am a musician, that doesn't mean that don't read books, or that look at the world only in terms of what's good or bad for music. Nor does it mean that am not intensely preoccupied with what goes on in the other arts. And am addressing readers who, although certainly hope that music is important to them, are fundamentally concerned about what happens to the world and people's lives, and who are struggling to change the way that world is run. All of my life the artists and critics of the left have been divided into two irreconcilable positions. One is the Stalinist position and the other is the Frankfurt position. The question between them has always been framed: Which one of these is the true revolutionary ideology for art? Notwithstanding the substantial contributions to human spiritual wealth made by adherents of both sides, most of the energy has gone up in mutual anathema and vilification. wish to do my bit to locate the real and the false issues in this division. Over and over again we see a liberating idea turn into an orthodoxy, in politics, in psychology, in art. An idea that opens up a dialogue ends by closing the door on dialogue. And sometimes it is very hard to see the identification between the original impulse and what eventually comes out of it. Both the classic left positions on the arts have liberationist origins. Their forbidding qualities have grown on them piecemeal, changing the Why not? into Thou shalt not. And this paper is an effort to open a discussion, to attempt to formulate some answers to the riddle of hegemonic aesthetics of the left. The issue lies not so much in the positions themselves, as in what was being searched for. Music in the 20th century has been plagued with two terrible obligations, either of which is capable of paralysing creative effort, and the combination of the two reduces us to practically a catatonic state. The first of these afflictions antedates the left and has been with us off and on ever since classical times. It was Horace who said of his odes: I have created a