Music for the People

Once upon a time I found a collection of G.B. Shaw’s music criticism in a second-hand bookstore. It only cost a dollar, so I bought it. I didn’t know much about Shaw – only that he’d written a play I very much liked (Arms and the Man) and that he had a reputation for a fierce wit. Well-earned. Leafing through the book I found gems such as:

“There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem."

Happy are those composers, performers, musical impressarios and organisers of choral festivals who did not happen to be living and working during his tenure as a music critic, for he was that most dangerous of creatures: an honest man. I took it home to read in more detail. After all, it was only a dollar. And at some point in the following days I found this:

“What we want is not music for the people, but bread for the people, rest for the people, immunity from robbery and scorn for the people, hope for them, enjoyment, equal respect and consideration, life and aspiration, instead of drudgery and despair. When we get that I imagine the people will make tolerable music for themselves, even if all Beethoven’s scores perish in the interim.”

I was training to be a musicologist at the time – in other words preparing for a life focused around ensuring that scores – Beethoven’s and others – don’t perish, literally or figuratively.

I typed out Shaw’s words, printed them off and propped them up on top of my monitor. The rest of that term, I used to glance up at them occasionally, while I wrote about fourteenth-century motets, or – yes— Beethoven’s approach to form. But whether or not I looked at that piece of paper, it looked at me. After that term I don’t remember what happened to it: perhaps it was lost or discarded when I moved. It no longer mattered by then: Shaw’s accusation, his question, was in my head every time I set finger to keyboard or pen to paper.

I fought him. Every day for more than six years, I fought. I accused, I denied, I contradicted, justified and rationalised, weaved, dodged, ducked and dived with the best of them. For though I was an economic emigrant, money was not my only motive. And I had something to lose: I had left a lot of people and all the places I knew, to pursue this particular future.

The opening salvos in that long war of attrition were sadly predictable.

“How dare you, George?” (he just hated being called George, so I called him George on every possible occasion – Georgie Porgie if I were feeling particularly vindictive), I said between clenched teeth, “How. Dare. You. Judge. By what possible right? You –a writer of clever social comedies for the leisured classes – yourself a music critic! You are a complete hypocrite. Shame on you.”

“What we want,” he replied with infuriating calm, “is not music for the people, but bread for the people, rest for the people, immunity from robbery and scorn for the people, hope for them, enjoyment, equal respect and consideration, life and aspiration, instead of drudgery and despair. When we get that I imagine the people will make tolerable music for themselves, even if all Beethoven’s scores perish in the interim.”

But this time, I heard what had been there in those words the first time too. Accusation? Yes. Perhaps. But self-accusation in equal measure. And whereas he was dead, I was still alive.

“But George.” I said after some pause. “This isn’t my fault. Really. It isn’t. I did not invent Empires. I did not make the munitions. I didn’t go soldiering. I did not build the barbed wire borders. The thumb screws, the hoods, the exposed wires, those prison cells with grated drains? – these were not of my construction. The maquiladoras? Not of my manufacture. I have not grabbed land in the Taranaki, or anywhere else for that matter. In the bigger scheme of things I am innocent: there are no flies on me. I am not to blame for sexism, for racism, for xenophobia, for homophobia, for imperialism, for any of that. Why then should I not live my life in peace and quiet, doing something which – after all – does not cause anyone any particular harm? There are many far worse things I could choose to do.

“What we want,” he replied, rootling through my well-stocked fridge, rummaging through my full cupboards and wardrobe, casting a sceptical eye over my over-burdened bookcase and peering out my dorm window out over the peaceful snowbound town, “is not music for the people, but bread for the people, rest for the people, immunity from robbery and scorn for the people, hope for them, enjoyment, equal respect and consideration, life and aspiration, instead of drudgery and despair. When we get that I imagine the people will make tolerable music for themselves, even if all Beethoven’s scores perish in the interim.”

I had little reply. The point was clear enough.

Truth be told, those opening salvos were brief. A week? Two weeks max. And from there, Georgie and I settled down in our respective trenches for a long slow war of attrition. The weapons of choice? Justification. Rationalisation. Prevarication.

“Hey George,” I shouted across No-Man’s Land, “I teach people – students, yeah? That’s useful isn’t it? And music can be political and we need to know how that works don’t we?”

But George was having none of it. He just sat there, hunkered down in his trench, darning his socks, looking smug. “What we want –” he began to call back –

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Shut up already.”

I told George to ‘Shut up’ most days for a good few years, but he just didn’t seem to do so. And in that time I came up with any number of variants on the general theme, but the answer stayed the same.

“Hey Georgie” I yelled much later, thinking that maybe this time I’d discovered a devastating new tactic that would keep him quiet once and for all, “Look at this – I’m doing all this union work. Lots of it – oodles of it. That makes it ok, right? I can keep on with the music thing if I’m doing stuff like this the rest of the time, can’t I?”

He didn’t even bother opening his mouth. He just raised an eyebrow from across No-Man’s-Land and even at that distance I could see he was going to give me one of those Looks.

It was a long slow war: in the end it was a relief to lose.

The more I tried to justify what I was doing, the more my deeds required justification.

The more I tried to give reasons, the more they seemed like rationalisations.

And the thing about both justifications and reasons is that sooner or later, they run out. About six years in, I found myself one day with nothing left. There was nothing more I could say to Shaw's words.

“Yes,” I was finally forced to concede, “That is what we want. And yes, if we have that, people will make tolerable music for themselves, even if . . .”

It was the first moment of peace I’d known for a long time, that moment when I realised I couldn’t be a musicologist after all.

(Though to an external observer it might have seemed that nothing changed, or rather, not immediately. I still finished (most of it was already written by then, after all – and figuring out what one cannot do is not the same as discovering what one can) but what usually serves as one’s introduction to a field became, to all intents and purposes, my farewell.)

It’s not that I sleep better now exactly, but what keeps me sleepless is not that particular angst, not that particular maze of justification. It’s not that I’m out of the woods, either – but it is true the trees do seem sometimes a little less entangling. So there’s something I want to say which is well overdue:

Hey Bernard. Thanks. A thousand thanks. And I’m sorry that I called you names.