GEORGE EDWARDS
701
musical preferences differ from those of the right. While the right wants
to return to the thirties, to the American musical (not political) coun–
terpart of Socialist Realism (the 'American Symphonists'), the left wants
to move
forward
to the thirties: towards postmodemism. Neither side has
much use for modernism: although individual modernists held right-wing
views (Schoenberg's monarchism, Stravinsky's obscurantist anti-Semitism,
Webern's delusion that his highly distilled German romanticism would
represent just what the Nazis wanted), the right has no more use for
modernism than the left.
Postmodernism is hard to define. When did it begin? (Has it be–
gun?) Is it good or bad? Is it a continuation of modernism, or a break
with it? Because there are at least two separate strains of leftist thought
appropriating musical postmodernism, not all of their positions are en–
tirely consistent with one another.
Among those who see music in essentially social and political terms,
there is virtually unanimous hostility to the autonomous 'masterpiece.'
The work of art must be incomplete if it is to connect with anything
outside itsel(
It
must not only fail to present an 'organic' unity, but
must openly challenge any such possibility. In Bakhtin's terms, music
should be 'dialogic' rather than 'monologic.' For many leftist writers,
classical music is almost automatically 'monologic': dominated by one
controlling voice. McClary suggests, however, that if one simply ignores
classical music, leaving it to one's enemies, "one may inadvertently con–
tribute to the canon's stranglehold." She must therefore wrest the canon
away from the 'formalists' and interpret it as dialogically incorporating,
and
not
resolving, the voices of diverse social interests.
Yet even with help like this, the most classical music can hope for
from postmodernism is to be regarded as equal to popular and non–
Western musics. Once we stop regarding it as 'art' and strip away the
defenses of idealist aesthetics, classical music becomes attackable on a vari–
ety of grounds. It is said to be vulnerable, among other things, to
charges of sexism. According to John Shepherd, for example, male
hegemony is essentially visual; male (read: classical) music therefore con–
centrates on what can be
notated
visually (pitch and rhythm) and ratio–
nally controlled. It largely ignores more intuitive (feminine) areas such as
timbre. Even worse is the involvement of classical music with imperialism,
cultural or otherwise. Cultural imperialism is seen not just in relation to
the third world, nor merely as attempted social control of the masses (see
Lawrence W. Levine's
Highbrow/Lowbrow
for a good account), but also
as the experience of every child forced to take piano lessons.
When music is studied in its social and cultural context,
all
music
becomes of equal interest. As Shepherd says, "My own involvement in
the sociology of music is as a musicologist concerned to see all music
