Spenglerian Noise

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Spenglerian Noise: Reading Attali’s History of Music through Decline of the West

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Oswald Spengler and Jacques Attali share a common understanding of the history of Western Art Music, seen in their books Decline of the West and Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Spengler’s account of the decline of western music ends right before the major shifts in music to happen in postWar Austria, but Attali’s history to the 1970s is not just compatible with, but follows from Spengler. Spengler sees music as ending with a cheap repetition of a fixed musical language, and Attali’s analysis concurs. Other coincidences between their respective theories make it seem that their accounts represent a meaningful account of the history of music and give clues to the future of Faustian Art. Attali, a French economist and advisor to President François Mitterand, studies the history of music from a perspective that Spengler considers at best overly idealistic.1 Yet Attali’s Marxism is not a major hindrance to the study, especially considering Spengler’s consideration of the philosophy to be inherently Western.2 This Western perspective is also inherent in Spengler’s account, being that his ability to see across cultures is a possible manifestation of the Faustian infinite. Their insider perspective makes their histories have almost a personal connection to their copious examples, and allows a free crossing of their narratives in a way that completes both. Because of the heavy philosophical basis, an understanding of the terminology used in each authors’ narratives is crucial to following them to 1 Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (New York: Random House, 2006) 390. 2Spengler 34.

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their fullest extent. Spengler freely uses the general term art to describe both music and visual art, focusing on the superficiality of optical and acoustic means” of experiencing art.3 Similarly, Attali claims that “the world is for hearing,” and that music provides a prophetic glimpse into the new stage of the culture.4 Spengler takes a less prophetic view, but still he views music as crucial to the understanding of the culture. Music is the fulfillment of the Faustian, or Western, ideal in art.5 The Faustian soul strives through empirical barriers into infinity. It eschews reality in order to experience the supersensuous personality and feeling.6 The Faustian soul is in contrast to the Apollonian, or Classical, soul, which focuses on the purely empirical and visible.7 Classical art aims for a personality, but it is an idealized character put into the art, not brought out of the subject.8 While he does not discuss music in the Middle East, he views the Magian culture as a spiritual understanding of the world, focused not on expanding empirical knowledge as the West, but comfortable with the dark cavern of mystery.9 Attali has no common argument in this way, since he largely limits himself to Western Art music, and focuses heavily on France. However, his use of cross-cultural comparisons might be similar to Spengler’s concept of simultaneity, and one can see his discussion of free jazz as a fundamentally different style as an admission of a separation of 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Spengler 115. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1989) 3. Spengler 150. Spengler 137. Spengler 115. Spengler 141. Spengler 130.

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cultures. Both authors take an organic view of the history of music. Spengler explicitly describes the lifespan as an “inconspicuous beginning” followed by “slow growth” into a “brilliant moment of fulfillment” and a slow decline.10 Specifically, he views the organism of music visibly starting in the Gothic era, building through the Renaissance to its height and ultimate manifestation in the Baroque, and then falling throughout the 18th and especially the 19th centuries, leaving the state of music in irreparable disarray by the post-War era. This coincides with Attali’s history almost without change. Attali views the history of music as a four-part progression through networks of distribution. He starts in the Sacrifice stage, where music is not only heard at the place of Sacrifice, but all around. Distribution moves to one of Representation, where music is limited to the spectacle of a unique performance. It then moves to a Repetitious stage where music is no longer social and is mass-produced and individually stockpiled, regimenting and silencing aberrations from the general form. Finally, he posits a stage where the individualism manifests itself as individual Composition. These stages roughly coincide with Spengler’s stages: Sacrifice is in the nascent culture of the Gothic era, Representation is in full swing during the high culture of the Baroque era, and Repetition starts at the end of Culture in the late 1800s. His Composition stage does not occur in Spengler’s narrative, but can be seen as 10 Spengler 110.

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a corollary to the post-Civilization world without form. Existing throughout the entirety of Attali’s narrative is the concept of noise. Noise for Attali is sort of a catch-all term, but it usually refers to the underground movements – the highly dissonant, the counter-cultural, and the cottage industry. It is similar to the technical term, where it means interference with the message, regardless of meaningfulness. A “low” music example, blues music, provides a clear understanding of what Attali means, even though he does not use it expressly in his book. The shift from an ametrical style of music with indistinct and poorly describable pitches, unpolished and varying styles of singing, and a fan base of largely poor rural Blacks to one with a tightly common time rhythmic feel with a codified chord progression and melodic mode, a stylized and essentialized singing style, and a broader, more cosmopolitan fan base shows the removal of noise from a style of music. As a final definitional note, two philosophical concepts Spengler borrowed from Goethe’s writing are paralleled in Attali’s world. The concept of becoming and become, living and existing, was extended to music as imitation and ornament.11 Imitation reveals the soul of the culture, and comes from the individual. On the other hand, ornamentation is its exact opposite. It simply conjures a stock of forms, and employs a general language of the whole. These concepts are very easily transferred to Attali’s work. Imitation seems to be the Representative spirit divorced of the 11 Spengler 102-105.

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economics of the spectacle, while ornamentation is analogous to the Repetitive world of the phonograph. Again, Attali’s book fills in the gaps that Spengler could not focus on. Attali argues that the seeds of Western music started in prehistory as a minor form, or simulacrum, of ritual Sacrifice signifying change.12 He notes the dichotomous role of the musician as excluded, seen in the Islamic law that a musician cannot eat at the same table as another member of society, and adored, seen in the fact that the distinction between musician and nonmusician is the first division of labor.13 Being a Marxist, Attali’s arguments largely include economic parallels, and during this time-period, he sees no economic hierarchy.14 Following this period, Spengler’s narrative begins with the Gothic age, starting in the mid-1200s. Music was for the public, and the two styles of music, the sacred and secular showed a split between a waking consciousness and the reality the listener lived in.

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Both musics were

monophonic, with simple melodies that appealed to the heart16 and did not require a written system, 17 though one existed for church music as a mnemonic device. Gothic music was architectural by nature, it built from basic blocks of vocal melody.18 In this way, the simplicity worked to create an imitation nearest to life. 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Attali 4. Attali 12. Attali 13. Spengler 119. Spengler 119. Attali 14. Spengler 120.

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Attali discusses the role of the jongleur, the musical vagabond who remained outside of society because of his demonized status in the church.19 During this time, even court music was like the music of the proletariat, except for the use of an orchestra and less bawdy texts.20 The use of an orchestra is seen as a foreshadowing of the spectacle inherent in Representation.21 Despite the foreshadowing of an economic system, the circulation of music was neither monopolistic nor elitist.22 At the same time, Attali notes that 1300 brought a major paradigm shift. Before this shift, major strides were taken by the church and ruling classes to silence folk music. He cites the Council of Avignon in 1209, the Council of Paris in 1212, and the Council of Bayeux in 1300.23 Over the next 200 years, professional jongleurs are declining and are overtaken by the ménestrel, who is not an entertainer, like the jongleur, but literally a “functionary,” who acted as the voice of the people.24 The ménestrels monopolized the ceremonies requiring music and relegated the jongleur to an amateur status. Unlike in the past, ménestrels were free craftsmen, selling themselves to a single social class: the royalty. They limited the stock of forms by appropriating the melodies of the vulgate and making them appropriate for royal ears. For Attali, this brings the beginning of the end of the Sacrificial mode of production.

19 20 21 22 23 24

Attali Attali Attali Attali Attali Attali

15. 15. 65. 15. 22. 15.

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From here on, music has entered into the realm of commodity and exchange. The growth of capital and spectacle has fetishized music,25 making it only a secondary simulacrum of the violence it represented.26 Attali uses this point to proselytize the Marxist view of the rise of capitalism, using the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin to explain music’s role. Music is an eliminator of violence as a redirection in the form of a simulacrum, and then the usage of the music is exchanged for money. Afterwards, there is a breakage of contract on the side of the state. Finally, music is reconverted as violence again against the future.27 The assignment of value to what was once a Sacrificial code “gives music a meaning and operationality beyond its own syntax.”28 As such, music loses its role as an affirmation of the reality the listener lived in. Music becomes valorized29 and codified.30 According to Attali, it is like a language whose speakers remember the syntax, but not the meaning.31 There is no use for music, but it is still promoted as either a placeholder or a regulatory element.32 This temporary downfall of music is highlighted in Spengler’s discussion of the Renaissance. He claims that this time period was essentially “anti-musical.”33 It was an attempt to replace the Western 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Attali 32. Attali 24. Attali 29. Attali 25. Attali 36. Attali 25. Attali 25. Attali 26. Spengler 121.

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concept of infinite space with the Classical empirical body, influenced most by the Magians, ostensibly through North Africa and Spain.34 He calls the Renaissance the “only dream of the Faustian Soul in which it was able to forget itself,”35 comparing it to the simple counter-movement of the Dionysiacs.36 It did not fundamentally change any ways of thought. Musically, Spengler mentions two schools, the Ars Nova supported by the Medici and the Low-German Counterpoint of Florence Duomo. Both were essentially gothic. 37 He also notes the early movement toward free chromaticism, mentioning the artistry of the time started using a “studio brown.”38 Spengler refers the patina, or deconstructing sheen, artists used during this time, drawing a parallel to Attali’s concept of noise. When he mentions the use of the visual brushstroke as an important innovation of Venetian artists, he mentions its connection with the “accents of personal temperament” during that time, such as Monteverdi’s orchestrations or specific flows of the melody of a particular composer’s madrigal.39 Attali begins to mention the influence of technology during this time. He claims that technology serves as reinforcement for the existing code of production, yet it can still profoundly change the use of the code.40 During the rise of Representation during the Renaissance, this means that the rise of printed music serves as a catalyst. Music is not fully a commodity until 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Spengler 123. Spengler 125. Spengler 122. Spengler 122. Spengler 132. Spengler 131. Attali 35.

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merchants gained the power to control production, and until 1527, publishers can only sell their scores through and to the royalty. After that point, however, the publisher begins to have exclusive rights over the reproduction and sale of his printing.41 This gives meaning to the advent of new musical forms such as polyphony, and the rise of a scalar, instead of modal, form of pitch organization.42 Much like the foreshadowing of the orchestra and the printing press, Spengler sees the origins of ornamental music in the infinite space of polyphony started during this time.43 He notes that the a capella music of Palestrina and de Lasso no longer expressed the “passionate drive into the infinite.”44 For this reason, purely instrumental music overtook the vocal music of the time, and music moved “from a superpersonal form to a personal expression of mastery.”45 Closing his discussion of the most distasteful period until the modern age, he describes the high point of the Renaissance as the time when music had apparently been expelled from culture.46 Breaking free from the musical low of the Renaissance, Spengler sees the height of Western music as the Baroque era. By the 1600s, music becomes familiar. We hear the common instrument groups, such as strings, called the “noblest of all instruments,”47 woodwinds and horns; characteristic 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Attali 52. Attali 35. Spengler 119. Spengler 119. Spengler 120. Spengler 120. Spengler 120.

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timbres of instruments;48 and common-practice orchestral structures, like the proto-sonata suite symphony and concerto grosso.49 Baroque music rose out of an opposition to the vocal masses and motets of the Renaissance, taking with it the polyphony and thematic development those styles began.50 Yet from that low point in music, the string quartet and other chamber musics bring Western art to its highest point.51 Spengler talks again about the “color” of the music of the time, mentioning blue-green specifically. He considers the atmospheric and insubstantial basso continuo to be blue-green, as the base, the rhythmic and harmonic ground, of the music.52 This base provided the last form of musical ornamentation, the four-part fugue, and the imitative sonata movement.53 These Baroque forms were motivic and originally pictorial in form,54 transforming art into a portrait-study. It is finally here that music fully overtakes art,55 effectively ending sculpture except for the “entirely musical, unrefined, unclassical and counter-Renaissance art” of porcelain.56 Music’s victory is said to be 1670. Most of the masters of oil painting were dead or dying. Newton and Leibniz abstracted mathematics into differential calculus. Most importantly, pictorial music ended with the deaths of Schütz, Carissimi, and Purcell. The cantata, with its image-themes and 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler

118. 120. 120. 121. 128. 120. 120. 149. 121.

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variety of color, had, for all purposes, ended. With all these shifts in style, Lully becomes the hero of Spengler’s narrative.57 With him, the baroque system starts to break down. Monteverdi’s opera and the sonata for orchestra, organ, and string trio end, bringing the mature forms of the concerto grosso, the suite, and the three-part sonata.58 Building on the abstraction of mathematics, the theme is no longer an image, but a “pregnant function.” Music has been freed from empiricism and becomes absolute in the “ceaseless process of differentiation and integration” of Bach’s fugue.59 Lully is also important to Attali as a key player. He was the last link between music and the feudal world.60 His dedication of his opera Persée is used as an example of what Marmontel’s Encyclopedia decries as an outdated symbol of submission.61 And yet, these cracks were not enough to destroy patronage completely, it was the dwindling power of the feudal leaders that ended it. In 1672, the first concerts for profit provided new power to the bourgeoisie, giving the merchant class the possibility for musical power.62 The end of feudal power coincides with the end of culture. The pure symbolism of mathematical rigor provided for Bach’s Kunst der Fuge and Wohltemperirte Clavier.63 The pure forms in the music were saturated with 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

Spengler 150. Spengler 150. Spengler 150. Attali 47. Attali 49. Attali 50. Spengler 151.

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meaning, making the separation between the math of beauty and the beauty of math impossible.64 As such, the origins for the pure ornamentation and repetition of the Rococo period were set. Spengler’s section on the transitional Rococo period is appropriately short. The disdain he holds over the Hellenic-influenced Renaissance is shared over the Rococo. He calls this period the “death of architecture,”65 since the time’s style was focused on minutely detailed and almost garish art. He considers it to be simple ornamentation, a repetition of the stock of forms.66 Despite his negativity, the Zwinger Palace was the “most artistic” in the world, and he compares it to an allegro fugitivo for a small orchestra.67 This comparison highlights Attali’s argument that music is inscribed within the reality of a system of power. This ornamentation was an attempt to hide the reality of the world, contrasting with the original intent of music. It was at this time that Germanic peoples in Dresden and Vienna hosted the home of chamber music. Following the Rococo period, the Classical era – not to be confused with the Hellenic era of the Apollonian soul – took root. It was the Faustian search for an expanded tonal and timbral palette.

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Spengler lists a number of

musicians he considers to be in this idiom, the younger Bachs, Hadyn, Mozart, and Beethoven among them. Attali sees this stage exemplified by Mozart, who, as of 1778, showed that the Classical era was a transitional 64 65 66 67 68

Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler

151. 152. 152. 152. 151.

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stage. Music was not a sign of power, since the feudal lords had lost their monopoly over music production, but there was no new force yet to take over.69 However, it is clear that the Representation Attali focuses on was in full force by this time, due to the almost total freedom from the “shackles of aristocratic control.”70 By this point, clients were rich enough to pay for entertainment, but not rich enough to pay for it for themselves only.71 These concert-goers first funded a composer, Hadyn, in 1741.72 However, Attali sees this era as slightly lower than earlier. “When music entered the game of competition,” he says, “it became an object from which income could be drawn without a monopoly; it fell subject to the rules and contradictions of the capitalist economy.”73 The musician moved back from domesticity into entrepreneurship,74 especially once the first permanent concert hall opened in an inn during 1770.75 Because of the entrance into a competitive economy, there became a gulf between the musician and the audience seen through a spectacle exogenous to the music itself.76 Finally, Attali sees the harmony of this time as self-undermining as large orchestras dictated a conductor, a further separation of the audience from the music through spectacle.77 Technologically, Attali makes a very similar argument to Spengler’s 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

Attali Attali Attali Attali Attali Attali Attali Attali Attali

50. 47. 47. 50. 51. 57. 50. 47. 66-67.

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about the math of the Baroque. In 1785, Cordorcet’s combinatoric theories deconstructed choices into a formula. Bolstering this, Fourier and others decomposed not only functions into polynomials, but sine waves into summed component sine waves.78 This abstraction and its application to music was a clear view of the Faustian infinite. The Faustian soul reaches its zenith in 1800 with the founding of the Civilization. At this point, Spengler agrees with Attali’s earlier insight that the modern artist is now a workman.79 However, moving the artist into the economy allows for subtlety to disintegrate, leaving only “crude commonplaces, pilings and mixings and daubing of points, squares, and broad inorganic masses.”80 The meditative discoverer of the Renaissance For Spengler, this time period’s archetype is Beethoven. Under Beethoven, music diverted back to painting.81 It is unsurprising, then, that Spengler resumes his discussion of the colors of music. Brown music, though first applied by Nietzsche to the Romantic, and therefore lesser, composer Bizet, is the noise aspect of the visible brushstroke brought forward into music. Spengler considers the strings in the music of Beethoven to be the clearest example of this brown music.82 It is something that refers to older forms, such as the Baroque string music, but maintains its own identity. He compares it to the West’s reverence for ruins of older cultures,

78 79 80 81 82

Attali 65. Spengler 154. Spengler 154. Spengler 155. Spengler 133.

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saying, “It is not the classical statue, but the classical torso we love.”83 Beethoven also provides Attali with a chance to discuss the role of technology again. Giving the example of his Sonata #106, the first major work for piano, Attali argues that an instrument predates the expression it authorizes,84 suggesting that Beethoven may not have seen the full use of the piano, but it is also impossible to imagine Beethoven without the piano.85 This impossibility speaks to the rock-star-like quality that Beethoven has in the minds of the public. Civilization brings with it the Star System. 1830 saw the inception with Liszt’s concerts of his contemporary’s works, creating a spatial repertory. At the same time, Mendelssohn rediscovered Bach’s Baroque works, creating a temporal repertory.86 The star system, at least at its inception, creates hardworking musicians. Liszt was known to play six concerts in 15 days, while the American pianist Gottschalk played 70 to 80 concerts a year.87 The star system does have its shortcoming. It limits the collective memory of music by not respecting the impure, fluid structure of music styles. It also lays some of the final foundations for the Repetitive stage, with the rerouting of usage towards the spectacle.88 Despite the rise of the star system, a countermovement to its garishness appeared during the same time. It is clear from Spengler’s writing that Impressionist art is a 83 84 85 86 87 88

Spengler 134. Attali 35. Attali 35. Attali 69. Attali 71. Attali 68.

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controversial point in the history of art. He is quick to mention that the term is originally one of contempt, as with most period names.89 It is the inverse of the empirical Euclid’s world-feeling, and its mindset is closest to that of music.90 Because the subjects are not there in reality, they can affect only the light.91 It is an expression of the world-feeling of late culture, focused on systematic analysis which transcends sensory limitations.92 This transcendence forces the actuality of the subject to become ethereal, and for music, the tone picture moves from a holistic concept, as in the themes of Bach’s fugues, to a more motivic style akin to Wagner’s leitmotif.93 Despite the highly musical era, the adoption of the micromotif brings the last of the Faustian arts to its death in Tristan und Isolde. Comparing Wagner’s compositional style to that of the Gigantomachia frieze at Pergamum, Spengler condemns the decadence, self-importance, and theatricalness94 in a way that would seem to coincide with Attali’s concept of the spectacle. He also notes the use of ancient, discredited myths,95 which may point to a realization of the stage in which art existed. Spengler uses Wagner as the poster child of the final age of music. Emancipated from proportion, there becomes a taste for the gigantic. This “swagger in specious dimensions” is common to all civilizations, with Pergamum already mentioned, but the Colossus of Rhodes and the American 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler Spengler

152. 152. 152. 153. 153. 156. 156.

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skyscraper as obvious manifestations. This gigantic cannot be compared to the Pyramids of Egypt or the cathedrals of the Gothic era, since it proclaims outward greatness instead of expressing the inward.96 This proclamation is filled with arbitrariness and immoderateness which tramples and shatters conventions.97 These conventions once allowed the destiny of form to rest in a school or region, but with the end of art and the bucking of those conventions, the individual is the only power. As such, full achievement is rarely possible, since reasoning is a poor substitute for training.98 Wagner, according to Spengler, was “getting the last ounce” out of the best moments of music.99 He condenses “swaths of symbols” into a few bars, 100

while ignoring the simple melody line. This moves music away from the

Representation inherent in harmony.101 This shift allows for the death of Faustian art, since the actualization of the inward possibilities of Western harmony was the goal of Western music.102 The music has been fully explored, leaving no original creativity left. In addition to “nowhere else to go,” music after Wagner is impotent, according to Spengler,103 and this could be a product of the recession of the ritual Sacrifice behind the spectacle of music.104 This leads to a less signifying, but more powerful organization of music.105 The lack of a ritual 96 Spengler 156. 97 Spengler 156. 98 Spengler 156. 99 Spengler 157. 100 Spengler 157. 101 Attali 81. 102 Spengler 157. 103 Spengler 158. 104 Attali 83. 105 Attali 83.

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makes the pursuit of artistic progress to be a false hope.106 Spengler cites the “unabashed farce of Expressionism,”107 a just barely new style when he was writing, while Attali points to the individualism of Romanticism108 as examples of this false hope of progress. The end result of this reach for nonexistent progress is an endless repetition of a stock of fixed forms, making dating anything within centuries, or even decades, impossible.109 It is at this point that Spengler can no longer discuss the history of music, since he can not discuss what he has not seen. Yet, the concept of the post-Civilization world must stay present, since it adequately describes the rise of Repetition as described by Attali. According to Attali, harmony, an excess of order, leads to the pseudodisorder exhibited in the dodecaphonic and later serial movements in a sort of dialectic.110 Yet, there is no synthesis of concept, since music lead to aleatory and other free musics. Through this aborted dialectic and progression, the entirety of the sound spectrum has been explored.111 Much of the argument concerning the relatively recent past concerns the use and exchange of signs. Attali argues that the material production of music has recently been replaced by the exchange of signs, such as through show business, the star system, and the hit parade. He equates this to institutional and cultural colonization. While the exchange of signs is 106 107 108 109 110 111

Spengler 158. Spengler 158. Attali 34. Spengler 158. Attali 83. Attali 83.

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increasing, these signs are growing more and more ambiguous, and concepts are crumbling into a conglomerated and lesser theory: there is no dominant code. 112 With no dominant code to characterize the period, the rise to Repetition is the most technologically driven stage. Attali points to the rise of recording as the main impetus into the stage of Repetition. Due to recording, capitalism loses interest in the Representation mode of production. There are pricing problems, especially when radio and television become involved.113 One could argue that the transfer of music over the Internet proves to be just as problematic. Recording was originally a secondary function in society. While Aaron was the voice, it was Moses who was respected.

114

At its inception, the

gramophone was seen as at worst a harmless diversion, and at best a tool for continuing Representation through pedagogy.115 But technology made it possible to use recording as a replacement for Repetition. This ended the society of the spectacle and made useless stockpiling possible, making Representation invalid.116 In this way, accessibility replaces the festival and removes almost all simulacra from the system. Attali moves from the historical Repetition to his present of 1977. By his time, the power was no longer in control of either capital or force.117 112 113 114 115 116 117

Attali Attali Attali Attali Attali Attali

89. 84. 87. 85. 88. 90.

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Because of this lack of control, only psuedoevents and random events occur.118 These nonevents are a result of the lack of meaning in society, which is seen as a legitimizing force for the technocracy. Attali outlines five aspects of technocratic ideals: high levels of abstraction; “imperial universality,” or the control by the elite bureaucrats; depersonalization of meaning; deconcentration of power, seen in aleatoric music; and elitism above the popular code.119 These five aspects are in full swing as of 1977. However, Attali is not as negative about the future of music as Spengler. Attali predicts a situation where no code reigns, and music is made for the enjoyment of the individual musician himself.120 This era has a similar aesthetic to free jazz. Yet Attali sees the flaw in free jazz. It is connected to the mode of Repetition by way of record labels. Due to this connection to the commodity, “it subsided after being contained, repressed, limited censored, expelled.”121 In order to correctly understand the Composition era, we must imagine an omnipresent selfish art devoid of any intended listener. Attali wonders out loud if the new era is even possible. He cites Boulez, who expresses the impossibility of improvisation. He argues that creative improvisation will never occur, since improvisation is only based in previous forms. Lévi-Strauss argues that the omnipresence will never occur, since music creation is not an innate part of every person’s life. But Attali still champions his concept, saying that both arguments are value statements 118 119 120 121

Attali Attali Attali Attali

90. 113-117. 144. 138.

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and that creativity in a general sense may not equate to the present code. Evaluating his theory more, Attali adds one more caution: Composition cannot come about by willful act.122 These three arguments are weak, but show that even Attali is unsure of the future of music. The concept of Composition is the most important divergence between Spengler and Attali. It is not the description of a formless, selfish world that differs, since Spengler’s description of the post-Civilization era matches closely, but the attitude each author holds referring to this time. Attali is clearly hopeful that this time comes, providing a burst of creativity and ending the cycle of Repetition. It is almost as if he simply wants a different code of production. Spengler, though a defender of his writing as not pessimistic, does not seem too enthused with the state of music either during his time or in the time to come. Despite this difference of outlook, the two keep a similar argument from start to finish. It is a common criticism of Spengler and Attali that they simply do not fully understand what they are talking about. Their theorizing and narratives are the result of cherry-picking facts and placing intent where there is none. Lee Margaret Steelman writes her graduate dissertation on just the two chapters of Spengler that immediately concern music, writing a book longer than those sections. But it is important to understand that Spengler and Attali are both of the same school of history. They prefer “proclamation to proof,” in the words of musicologist Arthur Mendel.123 Yet even Mendel also 122 Attali 146. 123 Arthur Mendel, Spengler’s Quarrel with the Methods of Music History (Musical Quarterly, Vol. 20, No 2, April

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states that “while Spengler’s views are often incorrect, they are not simply negligible.”124 What this means is that as a theory, Spengler and Attali’s collective narrative is consistent and useful to the musician. However, this usefulness raises the question of where we are. Spengler is clear, we are past the zenith, and rapidly declining to a sea of formlessness. Attali, however, sees us still within his narrative, stuck in Repetition. It is clear when looking at popular music that Repetition is the mode of production, but art music becomes less and less important in his theory, since it relies less on record production. This is not a flaw in his theory, since it parallels the current lack of popularity of art music, but it does beg a serious question: What about art music? Art music is stuck in Repetition as well. Whether stifled through formal and stylistic evocation or commodified into film music, which abuses the violence of noise by using supersonic and subsonic sounds to create tension, art music has become devoid of meaning. From this very low point, it takes a great optimist to see the cracks in Repetition. Yet those cracks are there. Though its influence may too often be pointed to, the Internet provides for the formless and selfishly personal Composition. Attali expects a world where music is made by anyone. The Internet provides the free distribution he seeks, either through modified traditional publishing, online communities, or personal sites. This do-it1934) 137. 124 Mendel 138.

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yourself spirit makes the coming of the Composition era to seem more imminent than Attali had predicted. This is also reflected in the weakening dominion of radio stations, with the Internet and satellite radio becoming main competitors. On the other hand, the Internet makes stockpiling of music significantly easier, supporting the Representative code. People can post albums, either their own or others’, in order to archive the music. But this stockpiling would increase the amount of music being played, since the effort to play music has decreased. Because of the highly personal nature of the Internet, the foundation is there; art music can leave repetition. It is clear from a reading of Spengler and Attali that their narratives of the history of music are not only compatible, but highly accurate, despite factual errors. Spengler’s story brings us progressively and logically through the ages, while Attali’s fills in the why of each step Spengler makes. In this way, Attali grows out of Spengler and posits the music of his post-Civilization world. What music might come out of a new Culture that overtakes the West? Or will music simply not have the same Faustian interest, as it was the past?

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Works Consulted Attali, Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1989). Mendel, Arthur. Spengler’s Quarrel with the Methods of Music History (Musical Quarterly, Vol. 20, No 2, April 1934). Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West (New York: Random House, 2006). Steelman, Lee Margaret. A Critical Review of Oswald Spengler’s Misconception of Baroque Music (University of Pennsylvania, 1954), dissertation.