GEORGE EDWARDS
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modernist agenda. She ends by proposing the "age old strategy of
rewriting the tradition in such a way as to appropriate Bach to our own
political ends."
After a lengthy but standard critique of 'formalism' McClary pro–
vides a superficial and misleading definition and description of tonality
(or, as a 'formalist' would put it, the 'tonal system'). But the first real
problem lies in getting from any definition of tonality to her statement
that 'the social values it articulates are those held most dear by the mid–
dle class: beliefs in progress, in expansion, in the ability to attain ultimate
goals through rational striving in the ingenuity of the individual strategist
operating both within and in defiance of the norm." McClary expects us
to unthinkingly accept the relationship between tonality and middle class
values as axiomatic; but, in fact, her reformulation of it is a totally
incoherent analogy. Does the tonic represent the 'ultimate goal' attained
through 'rational striving'? Or does it represent the social norm which
the 'individual strategist' both operates within and defies? Are not
progress and expansion inevitably nipped in the bud by the ultimate
triumph of the tonic? Does denying the 'formalist' claim that all of the
tensions of a piece are resolved within it give the individual enough
freedom in relation to the norm?
Tonality is usually and convincingly regarded as a richly layered hi–
erarchy: even McClary recognizes "two or more hierarchical levels" of
tonality ("a background progression and surface strategies"). So another
problem with McClary's argument is that tonality is so much more hier–
archical a means of organizing pitch than those that preceded or fol–
lowed it. One might therefore think that the aristocracy (who directly
or indirectly employed most composers in the eighteenth century) would
have found
its
social values confirmed by tonality. McClary's only
counter to this suggestion is to claim that the French musical establish–
ment under Louis XIV "recognized all too well the destabilizing, exu–
berant, subversive character of tonality and tried to prevent its infiltra–
tion." But this is an anachronism and a red herring. What the court of
the Sun King objected to was the "flamboyant, noisy Italian style" and,
above
all,
the seventeenth-century (i. e. most
pre-tonal)
music she describes
in terms of its "fragmented structures, illegitimate dissonances, and its
ornate, defiant arabesques."
McClary finds that the subversive elements of the first movement of
Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #5 "seems too powerful" to be resolved
by its conventional tonal structure and concerto format; and here I
would like to agree, since it would justify the presence of two more
movements. But what should be a strong argument is so consistently
marred by errors and distortions as to make one wonder how she can
expect musicians to take it seriously. Is she deliberately courting the kind
