Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's OrchKids program. Credit: Jim WATSON / AFP
“What is classical music for?” So opened a Guardian editorial attacking the elitism of classical music, evoking hackneyed tropes of moneyed privilege and snobbery. True, the question is a bit of a cheap journalistic trick – it deflects from the subject’s true value and authenticity while inserting an irrelevant utilitarianism to suit the activist/journalist. But it is, actually, a good one to ask – because it leads to other ones.
Existential doubts can force a renewal of quicker thinking and commitment. We can all get tired and lazy about what we do, what we think important, and how we pursue our principal enthusiasms, motivations and beliefs. I’m sure there are some people at that once-respected newspaper asking “What is the Guardian for?”
At least the writer had the intelligence to then quote the German philosopher and composer Theodor Adorno: “Art keeps itself alive through its social force of resistance; unless it reifies itself, it becomes a commodity.” Unfortunately, the article upheld the clear belief that pop culture has achieved this feat, whereas what is referred to as ‘serious music’ has not.
The writer completely missed the fact that the most interesting and controversial thing about the 20th century’s foremost thinker on aesthetics and philosophy was his trenchant criticism of popular culture – especially the mass-produced, American-influenced sort so repetitively, monotonously and unquestioningly championed by the Guardian.
Adorno’s principal targets throughout his life were fascism and what he called “the culture industry” – a term also used by Max Horkheimer to describe how popular culture in capitalist society functions like an industry, producing standardised products which produce standardised people – and consequently standardised journalistic asininity.
Adorno argues that the culture industry (and its bride, the advertising industry) is a corrupt product of late capitalism in which all forms of culture (from literature, through films and all the way to elevator music) are all just part and parcel of the system of production. Capitalism has a deep cultural force as well as an economic one. The profit principal is paramount in contemporary pop culture, appealing to the lowest common denominator, with the aim of producing pliant consumers, adapted to the needs of the system.
I would expect to read in the Guardian – a Left-wing journal – constant probings of our ubiquitous pop industry and its umbilical link with the rich and powerful. But probings I find none. What I do find (which reminds me also of the BBC) is breathless, adoring praise for events such as the Glastonbury Festival and the elevation of the decidedly mediocre and banal to iconic genius status.
I also find criticisms, which baffle me, of the cost of classical concerts. As Richard Morrison explains in his counter-blasting response in The Times:
“You can get a standing-ticket for any of this summer’s 75 Proms for £6, and 70,000 punters will do so. Another 100,000 will buy seats costing £15 or less. Compare that with the £250 cost of attending the Glastonbury Festival. I’ve been promming for decades, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who owns a yacht. I did once meet someone who was off to his second home in Gloucestershire. He was the editor of The Guardian.”
The fact is that the pop-dominated, mass-produced culture industry and big business are inherently bound together to make a large-scale system of control and exploitation. In comparison to this behemoth, the experience of classical music for most of us is of a struggling, hard-pressed cottage industry. Those of us involved in it spend a lot of time fighting the political class (something the Guardian used to do) which is presiding over a state education system that marginalises music and the other arts.
I often come across people – sometimes on the Left but not always – who believe that complex, discursive music like classical and jazz isn’t what ordinary working-class kids should be doing, that these genres are too elitist and the preserve of “dead, white males” as the Guardian would have it. But if someone had told me and my parents this back in the day, we would have laughed in their faces.
I remember my Ayrshire home town of Cumnock as a very musical place, where ordinary men and women from humble homes would make music together. There wasn’t a lot of money around – a lot of people were genuinely poor – but it’s clear that this music making at an early age can transform lives – it certainly changed mine.
This was the beginning of a magical life in music for me. It’s a familiar path for many working-class Scottish kids who were given free music lessons and encouraged to be involved in school orchestras, bands and choirs back then in the Sixties and Seventies, where our teachers knew how to nurture our talents and enthusiasms into lifelong vocations and careers. This is now under threat – and youngsters from less well-off homes are being discouraged away from the world of music, sometimes by budget cuts, but also poisonously abetted by media pressure.
What needs to be said often and loudly – and in our press – is that discursive music, which is complicated and requires focus and concentrated skill (like learning to play an instrument or singing) can take a lifetime’s commitment, both for listeners and performers, as well as composers, of course. But it is a lifetime that is full of rewards, artistically, emotionally, socially and intellectually.
Active engagement with music brings benefits throughout people’s lives. Even very young children’s perceptual development is enhanced by musical engagement, affecting language development, improving literacy and rhythmic co-ordination; fine motor coordination is improved by learning to play an instrument.
Participation in music is said to also improve spatial reasoning, an aspect of general intelligence which is related to some of the skills required in mathematics. While general attainment is clearly affected by literacy and numeracy skills, involvement in music appears to improve self-esteem, self-efficacy and aspirations – all such important factors in improving young people’s commitment to studying and perseverance in other subjects.
Why would the political class, with their media allies, conspire to create a situation which allows children, especially poorer ones, to miss out on such a vital ingredient of their education? It’s as if their sanctimonious mantras about inclusion, access and diversity get thrown straight out the window as soon as they are asked to do something about it.
If the Guardian were really interested in finding an answer to that smart-arsed opening question, it might consider acquainting itself with the grass-roots ecology of art music – something that is now under attack from philistines and ideologues of all political stripes. It should be trumpeting the expansion of horizons, not shutting them down for the sake of some small-minded dogma.
James MacMillan is a Scottish composer and conductor. He is the artistic director of The Cumnock Tryst.
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SubscribePoor old Jimmy Carter!
He was certainly a talented individual – a polymath. But his promotion of the human right industry during his term in office propelled this philosophy to the forefront; and we live with the negative consequences today. The rise of wealthy human rights lawyers/politicians like Blair and Obama is one such outcome of Carter’s obsession with this concept. He never balanced his view with a corresponding emphasis on human responsibilities. Much damge was left in his presidential wake.
Carter’s meddling in the Middle East by calling Israel an apartheid state while remaining silent over the wider crimes of Assad Sr. was unalloyed disgraceful. Underneath Carter’s rural country boy persona was the distrust and dislike of rural Southern pastors toward Jews and the big city.
Carter was a good man, too idealistic though, which resulted in a certain naivety in foreign policy. His major success was the Egypt/Israel peace deal which both countries have benefited from since. Believing that the Shah of Iran provided stability in the middle east was a mistake, but that was a continuation of policy from the 1950s and past presidents including Nixon, unluckily for him this blew up on his watch. Had the rescue mission to free the hostages succeeded he may have been reelected, the military was not prepared in those days for such a mission. The hostage crisis killed his reelection chances. The invasion of Afghanistan was a typically opportunistic move by the Russians which eventually blew up in their face later, there was little Carter could do and the US had no vital interests there. The result was the Carter doctrine which drew a red line for protecting oil supplies in the middle east which the Soviets did not cross risking a major war. But by then it was election time , Iran was his undoing, so yes poor Carter was dealt a bad hand. So was Johnson with Vietnam, unlike Nixon with Watergate which was his fault.
Eisenhower left some similar to his last few days in the White House. Carter had the courage and the honesty but not the skill to do it earlier.
Carter was all that described above. Nobody ever mentions how he got to POTUS.
1. 1976 was the first post Watergate presidential election. ANY DEM, probably even Harris, was going to win.
2. Carter was from deep south. Dixiecrats had not yet been policied out of party. Thick southern drawl made him a lock. (Clinton used this in 1992, PLUS Perot drew votes from Bush)
So an unlikely man got drafted into office.
Can’t believe everyone’s falling for these MAGA lies about Jimmy Carter. Away from the cameras and in the presence of George Clooney and NYT the old peanut farmer is as sharp as ever and totally on top of his game. Fox News have mendaciously edited together a few unfortunate clips of him lying very still but he’s absolutely fine.
Maga lies about everything, why would it be any different with Carter, a Democrat
Carter was a good man, but totally unfit for the position, as many who have since followed him. He had no intuition, just vacillating policies that changed with events. No real leadership, vision, or the will to carry it out. His good works came after he was defeated. Rest in peace.
The sad Parable of Jimmy Carter from the eyes of the American public:
‘My new financial advisor promised me great investment returns if I hired him, but after all of his great promises, he then lost much of my retirement savings in bad trades.
‘He now tells me that earning good returns is much harder than used to be, that people are too worried about capitalism rather than doing the right thing, that his fellow financial advisors are the worst kind of narcissistic “sharks” that jealously guard their investors’ money and only care about making money for them, that he missed his career chance early on to be a small-town preacher in the South, that he’s a really nice guy who cares about Mother Earth and doing good, and so on.
‘Maybe my financial advisor is a nice guy. Maybe he speaks the truth now. But why didn’t he tell me all of his issues upfront before he destroyed my retirement and wasted my time?’
Despite all of his protests across the decades, Jimmy Carter had only one job when he chose to run and was elected the President of the United States of America. And he failed miserably at this job, regardless of his other, unrelated merits.
Carter now holds the dubious distinction of being second Worst President Ever in the eyes of the American public (only falling behind Joe Biden by a nose).
Good men don’t belong in the White House because they don’t know how things work in the real word. Jimmah was a micromanager who didn’t get the big picture. He spent time scheduling who got to play on the tennis court outside his window. Some were getting more time than others. Carter saw to it the problem was fixed. The time would have been better spent being a competent president.
It was during the Carter years that the United States implemented the Community Reinvestment Act. The explicit purpose of the Act was to force banks to advance “subprime loans”–that is, to advance home loans to people who no business getting home loans.
The CRA turned out to be a time bomb. It blew up in 2008.
It was also during the Carter years that the country implemented an “energy efficiency” standards regime. That regime has given us dishwashers that don’t wash and appliances that are much more expensive but only last maybe eight years.
The regime has morphed into the “Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy” program, a massive regulatory regime that supports the Green Dream of Net Zero. How’s that going?
The CRA was amended nearly a half dozen times after its implementation. Heavily during the Clinton years. Blaming the 2008 crisis on the original Bill may be shortsighted. Also, Equating energy efficiency initiatives by the Government with quality and planned obsolescence initiatives by Corporations is a reach.
Enjoy your heat pump!
Thats a great response. You make a good point. Living in Maine I don’t see the day when a heat pump will be a viable and cost effective alternative for me. Electricity rates are absurd and the efficiency of these units at low temps are not good. They are being installed all over, I even look out at one now at my neighbors house. One size fits all is a problem with many Federal Policies. Crazy.
Regardless of how many times it was amended, giving mortgages to people without the means to repay them, all the while knowing that the taxpayer was on the hook for the impending bad debt, should have been a criminal act.
That’s what happens when you have deregulation and encourage the greedy animal spirits to take over.
It was in November, 1999, that President Bill Clinton signed off on the singled most misguided Congressional legislation of his White House tenure titled “The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999”. Among other things, this act repealed critical provisions of the Depression Era Glass-Steagal Act. One major result was removing the prohibition on commercial banks (banks that had customers including businesses and people just like you and me) from providing investment advice and services on things like common stocks, various types of commercial paper, mortgage-backed securities and new products like derivatives that, under Glass-Steagal, were previously the sole province of investment banks, who were prohibited from providing the services commercial banks offered.
Intended to provide a life line to commercial blanks complaining that competition from overseas was making it impossible for them to remain solvent, the 1999 act had a few consequences that only the morons In Congress who drafted the legislation, as well as the nit-wit in the White House who signed it into law, failed to anticipate:
Commercial Banks started gaming the system such that they could choose which federal agency would audit their books, and determine their overall health. To the surprise of absolutely no one not an elected legislator, banks would look to the weakest regulatory institutions (I’m talking about you, Office of Thrift Supervision), and other agencies neither qualified, nor staffed, to conduct such financial audits.
With reduced oversight, and encouragement from the same Congressional morons, along with leadership of the Federal Reserve, looser mortgage qualifications and the advent of liar loans (“No, really, they pay me $100,000/year to wash dishes), while the Federal Government abdicated its responsibilities to keeps tabs on the financial industry, it came as a surprise to no one living outside Washington, DC, that mortgage defaults skyrocketed and mortgage back securities collapsed. Then, because of all the rest the stock market lost around 60% of its value between October, 2007 and January, 2009.
Everyday investors had their portfolios destroyed, their retirement plans obliterated, while the to-big-to-fail banks all tippy toed away from their roles as vile confidence tricksters luring unsuspecting, naive individuals with retirement accounts into “investments” that were anything but.
Of course, billions of taxpayer dollars went to bail out the financial institutions who led the charge into high risk investments, while local banks caught in the collapse were sold off to other banks with the taxpayers taking the loss on any assets from those sales.
Heads They win, and Tails taxpayers lose.
All of this is to say that Democrats and Republicans, President and Congress ruled by either party, pulled an incredible scam on the American people. And, we all–bamboozled and frightened as most of us were–let them all get away with it.
Quel surprise.
I’m wondering. When Jimmy Carter spoke about the moon landing (if he did at all) did he sound like he believed it happened?
I was in the States more or less at that time…Grad School at Vanderbilt…a mixture of West Coast/NE progressives and trainee “Good ole’ boys” from the old Confederacy…that speech didn’t help. But the failure to find helicopters that worked in the deserts of Iran was worse. One side hated the military/industrial complex and the other were in ROTC and planned to join it…
…but all of them expected it to work…!
I missed the opportunity to vote for Carter by one year. However, I did not miss some effects of his alternative energy policies since my folks had hydronic solar panels installed on our homes roof in middle class New York suburbs. I chose my Engineering discipline in Energy Co-Generation, a subset of Mechanical Engineering largely because of Carters policies. I graduated in the Boston area, a hotbed for co-generation Industries in the US.in the late 1970’s. Rachel Carson was a required reading at University. Unfortunately, those industries dried up as our government shifted focus to armament as the Reagan-Thatcher coalition restarted the Cold War and advanced the desires for US Hegemony. I know Carter was a Neo-liberal, policy wise but I honestly feel our world would be a better place if his type of leadership were an asset not a liability. Humility should be a foundational quality. I for one will miss Jimmy Carter.
The only other speech in the canon of American presidential rhetoric comparable to Carter’s “crisis of confidence” speech is Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address in March 1865. At his moment of victory, with the Confederacy on the point of total destruction, Lincoln did the most extraordinary thing — he blamed everyone
This is an idiotic comparison. Lincoln was trying to reunite the nation after four years or horrible civil war. The toll on Americans on both sides was disastrous. A victory speech of any sort would have been absolutely tone deaf and likely would have resulted in retaliation – on both sides – even worse than what occurred after the war ended. This guy’s ‘specialism’ is the American Civil War? Good grief.
Nixon, the greatest US President
Yes, he fully understood that his job was to look after and benefit the USA and its people. But the MSM hated him for ending the Vietnam War which the Democrats had expanded and prolonged. He was never forgiven and his downfall was their main aim.
Nixon did his share of prolongation of the war too.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461/
Only Bush II saves Carter from being the WOAT president. As bad as inflation, high interest rates and unemployment were (and having all three at the same time was pretty bad), his creation of the departments of energy and education was even worse.
His foreign policy was delusional. He thought there was such a thing as an inordinate fear of communism, a delusion which only the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan lifted from him.
His touted post-presidential legacy is also a delusion. All the houses he built are more than offset by his vouching to President Clinton for the Notth Korean regime’s basic benignity. (Of course, Clinton knew full well Carter would be the perfect knave to provide such testimony and relieve him of the opportunity to to eliminate North Korea while there was a chance: the fleeting, only chance.)
It’s not good to speak ill of the recently deceased but someone has to in view of the flood of revisionism sweeping the media presently.
WOAT? I’m sorry, have you never heard of Woodrow Wilson? FDR?
Those would be my favourites for the title, with perhaps Kennedy and Johnson
One of the architects of the Islamic Iranian revolution that his spirtual successor B Obama pursued so enthusiastically. Both leaders of Satan’s very own political party.
Am I alone in finding this a slightly graceless article at this time ?
Whatever Jimmy Carter was or was not as a president, the US electorate chose him in 1976. Blaming him alone – and excusing them entirely – for anything that went wrong seems rather facile. And if Carter was the best choice on the menu in 1976 , but Reagan was in 1980, I don’t see that as an automatic fault in Carter. Just as different times require different skills and leaders.
What Carter certainly was was a decent and honest man who continued working for the the public good well into his 90s. Surely in today’s context that’s not nothing.
I’m also a little sceptical of commentators who pronounce with great certainty on events they didn’t witness first hand. Professor Smith’s DOB doesn’t appear to be public information, but he’d need to be over 60 to have any meaninggful memory of the times in question and his biography suggests that’s quite unlikely.
I agree with you, Peter; this is a time to grieve for the lost, whether we see eye to eye with them on every issue or not.
Agreed. Cheers.
Graceless indeed. Well put.
I expect you will find this article even more graceless, even though it is peppered with truths:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/12/jimmy-carter-was-a-terrible-president-and-an-even-worse-former-president
Sorry, can’t read that without allowing the site to data dredge me.
There’s certainly a case to be made against Carter. But we should recognise that he largely did what he was elected to do. The US electorate may well have changed their minds between 1976 and 1980, but they got what they voted for. Carter didn’t do a complete “Boris 180” on what he was elected to do.
Agreed. Okay, he’d wind me up in many ways, but a bloke who keeps on giving years after being booted out as president, is ultimately on the right side.
To pick someone of the same era, can you imagine that of Ted Heath ? Or compare him to the Clintons ?
This article was going well until the author Lasched out at the incumbent Trump administration, like the twitch of a just-deceased intellectual corpse.
I asked myself: but does he have a point? The superficiality of the “pathological narcissism” charge is gainsaid by the mountain of votes cast for Trump by the swathes of the US population who aren’t narcissists so much as “deplorables” and “left-behinds”, in addition to those who can see a greater narcissism in the liberal progressive attempt to hoodwink them with a ghost candidate on the Democrat ticket: both before and after the deposition of Biden for Harris.
Trump is the anti-Carter. Vulgar, immodest, impulsive, but an effective, popular, and competent President.
Well said. Too many people vote for the POTUS as if they should be a buddy, not a President. The world is a mean place and it takes a certain someone to keep our interests at heart so our people can prosper. And yes, even if it results in others not prospering. Hard truth to swallow.
The CEO of a successful company is often possessed of hard-driving character traits.
I can no longer marvel that the President of the United States when I was born was still alive. People born as recently as 20 January 1993 could not say that. But I could.
Once he was no longer President, then I would not bet against another 20 years for Joe Biden. But it is all visibly catching up with Bill Clinton, always the archetypal Boomer.
Carter was an incompetent president who knew very little about foreign policy, and even less about economics.
His success in getting Egypt to cry uncle against a far stronger Israel is heavily outshadowed by his enfeebled bungling in Iran, a far larger and more important threat, and his weakness against the USSR and China was very obvious.
We are still dealing with fallout from the incompetence of Carter era foreign policy, even today.
Carter’s reliance on FDR era wasteful spending, along with libraries full of federal regulations, created economic misery throughout the US, dooming the Rust Belt and much of our working class to soaring inflation, unemployment, and high interest rates. Carter’s policies were ultimately the last few nails in the coffin of our industrial base, before so called free trade threw dirt on top.
Much like outgoing President Biden, Carter was unable to govern. The country fired both men, rather than re-electing them, and rightly so.
Were the oil crisis and the fact US Industry could no longer compete with Japanese and European competitors really his legacy?
Also Reagan spent much more than Carter.
Democrat supporting unions opposed new technology and priced car workers out of the market.
All true. But party was over by first oil crisis in 73. Coincidentally this when US got off the gold standard. So oil price had to rise. Japan was ready with small high mileage cars.
So, clearly not an admirer!
However, to whom is Iran a threat? Obviously not the USA, or nuclear armed Israel; an attack on either would mean Iran ceasing to exist, so it won’t.
Surely inflation was caused by the “Nixon shock” of detaching the US dollar from gold and becoming merely a fiat currency, propped up by being the “oil currency” as agreed with Saudi Arabia by Kissinger? We continue to live with the consequences of currencies being just nicely printed bits of paper (in fact just “bits” nowadays, not even pieces of paper…).
Even the “oil crisis” was effectively the oil producing Arab nations trying to maintain the real value of their product in relation to gold as opposed to printed pieces of paper called dollars.
With regard to China it was Nixon/Kissinger who further detached it from the USSR, and created a better relationship with it. It was a great idea at the time, not looking so good now.
Also Carter had to deal with the effects of the USA losing the Vietnam war, a severe blow to the USA’s pride and confidence which was bound to result in a sort of national nervous breakdown. The realisation that, having been the top dog, one can lose, is devastating to self worth.
So Carter had a poor hand to play…and played it appallingly badly. The USA, and the West, needed not a counsellor, but an inspirational leader…and he wasn’t it.
Happily Reagan, ” the Great Communicator” was. And happily the UK had Thatcher, who was lucky enough to have Reagan during the Falklands War. Without his help she would have lost the war and the next election, and the UK would have entered a terminal nervous breakdown (although possibly it was just postponed for some years…).
How did Reagan have anything to do with the UK winning the Falklands war?
Because the USA, at Reagan’s direction, supplied extremely helpful intelligence information.
Sorry, but I thought this was widely known. Without it, Thatcher would have lost…and many in the US establishment opposed it.
American assistance to the British campaign went beyond the sharing of intelligence. The Reagan administration allowed British aircraft and vessels to use American bases and provided logistical support. The U.S. military was even ready to lend aircraft carriers to the British in case theirs got damaged or sunk.
Ascension is actually a British base which is leased by the US.
Reagan also rushed through supplies of the then-new AIM-9L variant of the Sidewinder. In a TV interview a Sea Harrier pilot described its performance as ‘a bit of an eye-opener’. ‘And a bit of an eye-closer too’, Alan Bennett noted in his diary.
I’m not an expert. Nonetheless, without any ingratitude towards the United States, I don’t see a way in which the UK could have lost the war in the absence of US help unless the Argentinians had managed to sink a couple of carriers. British losses in men and material could easily have been worse without US support, but I think Argentina would have needed extraordinarily good luck in order to exact losses of servicemen and equipment so grievous as to prevent the UK waging a successful land campaign.
Best regards
Well said, although put in a more polite way than I would. Carter was a spinless piece of ****. I have no regard for him as a leader.