Why listening to classical music doesn't make you a better person

So this idiotic post has been going the rounds lately. The headline reads "Smart people listen to Radiohead and dumb people listen to Beyonce, according to study."

They charted students' SAT scores and found that "smart" students listen to Sufjan Stevens (j'adore!) and Radiohead while "dumb" students who don't perform as well on the SAT scores listen to Lil Wayne. There's absolutely no mention of race, class, and education in this study, no attempts to examine geography and its role in determining who gets into a place like Cal Tech vs. who gets in to Cleveland State University. This study doesn't "prove" anything; it just illuminates social stratification at work.

It did lead me to thinking how much we believe, though, that classical music makes us "smarter" and "better." Not musical education itself, which has shown to have all kinds of benefits on learning and the human mind. But classical music in particular. Why else has "Baby Einstein" been so popular, even though scientific study after scientific study debunks the myth that it makes your child a brilliant human being?

I think for the uninformed, putting on Baby Mozart or what have you is a form of exhibiting class aspiration, or that you want your child to succeed in life. Fine. But I also fear that it reinforces a social hierarchy of music and dismisses some forms of music as base.

I love western art music, I unashamedly love the Austro-German musical canon, I lose my mind over Mahler again and again and again. On my 30th birthday, I made the mistake of listening to Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings in C Major first thing in the morning when I was feeling especially emotionally vulnerable. I couldn't handle it. I promptly burst into tears. I was home visiting my parents in Atlanta at the time, and my mother came rushing down to my bedroom freaking out and asking what was wrong. In true, 13-year-old emo fashion, I croaked out "It's so beautiful" in between hiccup-sobs.

I still have to work myself up to hear Brahms's "Im Herbst" for the same reason. I'll probably be a hot mess by the time it's over.

Mozart's famous Serenade for 13 Winds (3rd movement) also gets me worked up (that oboe coming in softly at the beginning like that? Are you kidding me?):

But do you know who else loved this piece? Nazi intellectual and propagandist Joseph Goebbels. In fact, for a lot of people who learn about music in the Third Reich for the first time, discovering that many members of the Nazi party valued classical music challenges and threatens our belief in the intellectually and morally edifying nature of this music. Thomas Mann, I'm convinced, loved to explore this relationship between music, creativity, and humanity's descent into moral poverty for exactly these reasons: beware of music's power, Mann warns. Its listeners might not all be angels, after all. And why else were books such as Doktor Faustus and Buddenbrooks so popular during the 1930s and 40s if his ideas hadn't somehow struck a nerve?

I think this remains ever the challenge for us supporters and dedicated listeners and performers of art music in 2014. How can we get people to love this music and listen to it as much as we do without falling into the usual rhetorical traps and cliches when we talk about it? Cliches that Theodor Adorno, Thomas Mann, and the lives of Goebbels and other Nazi officials have exposed to be a falsehood? Because I suspect that a lot of people no longer believe in the civilizing mission of western art music anymore.

I don't think we can talk about art music in moralistic and edifying tones anymore, or not nearly as much as we used to before. I fear that describing art music as superior quickly leads others to judge us as snobby elitists, even (or perhaps especially) when we claim to be bringing this music to the masses for uplifting reasons (see: Anton Webern and his worker's symphony orchestra in Vienna).

So if classical music doesn't make us better people, why listen to it? Is it enough to say, "because it makes my heart soar"? When asked why we should read books, author Anne Lamott explained,
"Because for some of us, books are as important as almost anything on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don't get in real life - wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may not notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean."

My gratitude for beautiful musical compositions is also unbounded. I want others to love these pieces, too. I think the challenge remains for me to champion art music in ways that don't alienate new listeners (even the Beyonce-loving kind! Gasp!), especially those who, like me, are wary of its advocates.

A Night At The Opera (Klinghoffer edition)

It's not every day that a headline referencing opera graces the front page of the New York Post:

And perhaps that's a good thing.  Because what this cover does, in one hyperbolic headline, is remind us all of how misinformed the general public is about opera while simultaneously misleading the reader into thinking that murder happened over the Klinghoffer protests (that's inaccurate...but this is the NY Post here people.  Just a Buck!).  Murder is a relatively common phenomenon in opera, of course--in fact, when I taught music history survey, my students and I would track sopranocide over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the works that we studied.  If you're curious, it increases markedly.

This headline reminded me of a time when I attended a Met Opera broadcast of Salome, which my local movie theater had rated G for general audiences.  In case you are unfamiliar with the work, it features a beheading, a strip tease integral to the plot, and a woman singing to a decapitated head for an extended amount of time.  She also kisses the decapitated head.  A couple of theaters over, High School Musical 3 was playing, which was rated PG, indicating that parental discretion was advised.  In case you are unfamiliar with this work, it features high school seniors confronting the fact that they will be heading off to different places once high school is over.  To the best of my knowledge, it involves no beheadings, strip teases, or characters singing to/kissing decapitated heads.  What I see here is a perception that opera, as high art, does not deign to discuss subjects in sordid ways, and so can be consumed by all.  The recent controversy over Carmen by the West Australia Opera seems to suggest the same; the company decided that because smoking is depicted on stage, it was inappropriate to show (this decision also came in tandem with a partnership between the opera company and a healthcare company).  Certainly, if Carmen continued to smoke during her lifetime, she could suffer from devastating side effects, such as  cancer and heart disease.  But since she is choked to death by Don José in Act 4, I'm not sure that smoking is the most dangerous factor in this opera.

Controversies surrounding high art wane over time and, one could argue, are often less about the art itself.  A century ago, The Rite of Spring was sufficiently avant garde to warrant boos at its premiere (although likely this had more to do with the ballet than the music); twenty-seven years later, it served as background music for dinosaurs in a Disney film.  Prior to its debut in 1905, Salome was banned from several theaters because of its sordid subject matter.  There is little question that art should be controversial and should promote new and more complex understandings of the world.  There is also little question than when it does, it fuels protest.  Perhaps, then, Klinghoffer is one of the more successful modern works solely on its ability to confront contemporary issues--unlike the rated-G Salome.

It's worth acnkowledging that the furor surrounding Klinghoffer delves into the subject of the opera rather than the opera itself--few people seemed to be upset by Adams' compositional approach.  Protestors included people in wheelchairs wearing signs that said 'I am Leon Klinghoffer,' which seems like all kinds of wrong:

Klinghoffer was an American Jew who was shot by Palestinian terrorists while aboard the Achille Lauro in 1985.  This somewhat-ripped-from-the-headlines opera (it premiered in 1991) considers the position of Klinghoffer and the Palestinians, professing to offer viewpoints from each side.  Undoubtedly, much of the controversy over the Met's staging has to do with timing: the conflicts that took place in Israel this summer between factions of Palestinians and Israelis brought these same issues to the fore and do not have easy answers.  But the answer is not to simply ban the work.

I don't want to argue that the fact that Klinghoffer engenders controversy means that it is good, relevant art.  That is overly simplistic.  Bad art can also engender controversy.  What does argue in its favor is the fact that directors and artists continue to find value in it beyond the controversial subject matter.   The ultimate jurisdiction should be the work itself, which appears to have been successful in the pages of less incendiary publications.  Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times was impressed with the opera, libretto, and performance, addressing the concerns often leveled at the work in his review.  I'm sure that many of us could only hope that the work itself, and not merely the subject matter that it addresses, would be treated in the same way.  It's okay for an individual to dislike Klinghoffer for whatever reason: whether it is because the opera is viewed as elevating terrorists to heroes or because of the portrayal of Klinghoffer in stereotypical ways or because Adams' music isn't your thing.  What is less okay, to me, is limiting the ability of the public to make this decision.  The Met has taken only a tepid step in this direction by staging the work, but not broadcasting it in theaters.  But at least the show did go on.

Re-creating the operatic repertoire from an 1884 London costume guide

Thanks to a post from Mental Floss, I was recently introduced to the 1884 book Male Character Costumes for Fancy Dress Balls and Private Theatricals, a guide to appropriate costume-wear for the trendy 1884 man, both in the ballroom and for the stage.  Naturally this book is plenty of fun in and of itself, but what struck me in particular was the number of costumes that were influenced by opera.  One of my scholarly pursuits is trying to figure out what works were known by general audiences; our view of what was known historically is heavily skewed by what scholars later took as their points of study, and therefore there are often significant gaps in our knowledge of what the average audience member was attending throughout Europe.  Joseph Kerman and many other scholars have written about our short-comings due to the primacy that the canon of musical works has occupied with scholars.  I mention Kerman in particular because he makes a distinction between the canon and repertoire, suggesting that repertoire has more to do with works that are played/heard.  These may not be part of the imaginary museum of musical works that have traditionally provided the fodder for scholarly inquiry.  This guide turns out to be an ideal means of evaluating which works were part of the popular repertoire--and therefore presumably known by the audience for which this book was intended.  As the list shows, there are many works that might not be expected, along with a dearth of works that might be expected (spoiler alert: Wagner only has one entry).

A few caveats.  First, this collection is not a universal guide, but seems pretty clearly tied to London.  There are numerous advertisements included in the book and the guide itself makes reference to costume shops where outfits can be purchased.  That being said, I suspect--for reasons outlined below--that this guide may have originated in France.  Second, I am not providing very much historical context for this guide (this is SGS, not a scholarly article).  I don't have a very good knowledge of what was happening in London theater at this time, but if anyone does, I hope that this kind of information can help with other research.  Third, it is entirely possible that there are more operas in the guide which I was unable to identify.  For instance, there is a reference to some work called Heloise and Abeilard, but I did not find anything for the stage on this subject. 

Not all of the costumes are for/from operas, of course.  There are--not surprisingly--numerous ethnic costumes, ranging from the unusual (Norwegian?) to the highly politically incorrect (I'll leave that to your imagination) to the huh (both Algerian costumes are Jews) to the strangely specific ('Fisher Boy of Nice').  There is the occasional creature, such as the Bear, which is 'simply a dress made out of a bear skin' and can be rented from your local (London) costume store.  Many of the costumes are historic in nature, including a slew from 18th-century France--for one of them, a 'conical hat of beaver' is mandatory.  Because this is also a guide for stage productions, there are several Shakespearean plays.  One of the most puzzling suggestions that I found is for Macbeth, who should be wearing sandals.  Scotland and sandals do not go together in my mind.  In case you are curious, a Tourist needs a straw hat and alpine staff

Of the almost 120 costumes though, at least 48 are from operas or operettas, which means that around 40% of them are tied to specific works.  In part, this high percentage might be expected since these costumes are also appropriate for amateur theatrics--it is not hard to imagine, for instance, that the costume suggestion for The Pirates of Penzance would have been seen on the contemporary stage.  But in some cases the prevalence of opera characters for specific categories suggests that what was seen on stage affected the general public's understanding of eras or places.  Many of the entries for Spain are directly associated with operas such as Carmen (Don Jose and Escamillo) or The Barber of Seville/Marriage of Figaro/Don Giovanni (Figaro, Don Juan, Leporello).  In terms of historical characters, Pollione from Norma is presented as an example of 'ancient Roman.'  While many of the operas are listed in brackets with the entry, in some cases, the characters were presumably recognizable without this additional information--Figaro, Leporello, and William Tell all fit into this category.  In the case of Don Juan (Don Giovanni), a description of the specific costume of baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure is provided: 'Doublet of plum-colored velvet, with trunks to match.  Sleeves of striped silk.  Sleeveless overcoat of velvet, lined silk.  Lavender silk tights.  High leather boots reaching nearly to the hips.  Large hat with a plume.  Leather belt and sword belt.  White gauntlets.'  I have some questions about the combination of lavender and plum.  I also have some questions about whether a London audience would recognize this costume, since I'm not sure that Faure performed there.  The preponderance of French costumes, particularly historical French costumes, makes me wonder if there is an earlier French version of this guide which was then translated and modified for London.  However, since this is SGS and not a scholarly article, I am leaving that right there.

I also made some assumptions about the references to Faust.  As a literary and stage figure, Faust was, of course, a nineteenth-century favorite, so it is entirely possible that references to him are not tied directly to Gounod's 1859 opera.  However, the opera was immensely popular, so I included these characters as connected to the stage work.  Also, Valentin is a character in the opera, so that assumption seems reasonable.

It should come as little surprise that the single work with the largest number of costumes (six in total) is Giacomo Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, a phenomenally popular opera that started dropping out of the repertoire in the early twentieth century and rarely appears on stage now.  The question of why Huguenots is rarely seen today is a complicated one: Wagner's disdain for the opera (and its composer) seemed to have little effect on its popularity during the nineteenth century, although it may have had a disproportionate effect on scholars interested in studying the opera during the twentieth.  The costume guide has specific outfits for Marcel, Saint Bris, Conte de Nevers, Raoul, Valentin and Page.  If you're curious, 'Page' costumes are quite popular and likely provided a generic look for historic stage works.  There are ten entries for various pages, primarily for both British and French courts.

What might come as a greater surprise is the number of works by Offenbach included in the guide.  Seven are mentioned, ranging from Les contes d'Hoffmann to his operettas.  In fact, no composer is more heavily represented.  The runner-up is Charles Lecocq, a composer virtually forgotten today, but one who had four different works featured in the guide.  Verdi comes in at only two (Rigoletto and Manrico from Trovatore).  The preponderance of French works reinforces my theory about the possible French origins of this guide, but also suggests that London audiences were familiar with them as well.

One of my favorite costume notes from the opera characters is for Jean de Nivelle, the titular character from Léo Delibes' 1880 work.  He requires a 'cap of maintenance,' which, as it turns out, is an actual thing and pretty fancy besides:

Here is his costume:

Some, but not all, of the costumes do have illustrations ('Norwegian' has one, for example).  I am a bit skeptical about that qualifying as a Cap of Maintenance.

I would like to invite other scholars interested in questions of repertories to seek these types of unorthodox sources to help fill in the many blind spots that continue to exist in our disciplines.  While this post is nothing more than a superficial skimming of a source, I hope that it shows the wide variety of primary documents that can be used for research.  Also, if you need inspiration for Halloween, this costume guide should provide you with a great start (particularly if you know where to rent a dress of bear skin).

The Costume List, organized by composer [a slash indicates that a character is listed as ideal for depicting an ethnic/historic type.  For example, Scindia from Le roi de Lahore is a prototype for 'Hindoo prince'] :


Auber, Daniel: Italian Brigand from Fra Diavolo
Audran, Edmond: Fratellini and Page from La Mascotte
Bellini, Vincenzo: Pollione/Roman, ancient from Norma
Bizet, Georges: Escamillo/Spanish Bullfighter and Don Jose/Spanish Brigand from Carmen
Cœdès , August: Abbe from La belle Bourbonnaise
Delibes, Léo: Compte de Charolaise, Isolin and Jean de Nivelle from Jean de Nivelle
Flotow, Friedrich von: Fabrice from L'Ombre
Gounod, Charles: Faust, Mephistopheles and Valentine from Faust
Halévy, Fromental: Eleazar and Leopold from La Juive
Lecocq, Charles: Trenitz from La fille de Madame Angot
Lecocq, Charles: Moor (Spanish) and Marasquin from Giroflé-Girofla
Lecocq, Charles: Annabal from La Marjolaine
Lecocq, Charles: Podestat from La petite mariée
Massenet, Jules: Alim and Scindia/Hindoo Prince from Le roi de Lahore
Meyerbeer, Giacomo: Marcel, Saint Bris, Conte de Nevers, Raoul, Valentin and Page from Les Huguenots
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: Don Juan and Leporello from Don Giovanni
Offenbach, Jacques: Capamstrel from La belle Lurette
Offenbach, Jacques: Bernadille, Coquebert, Delicat and Flameche from La boulangère a des écus 
Offenbach, Jacques: Bibletto and Huntsman (Grotesque) from Les Braconniers
Offenbach, Jacques: First Empire [costume] from Les contes d'Hoffmann
Offenbach, Jacques: Drogan and Gendarmes from Geneviève de Brabant
Offenbach, Jacques: Jupiter and Pluton from Orphée aux enfers
Offenbach, Jacques: Fridolin/Hungarian from Le roi carotte
Rossini, Giacomo: Figaro/Spanish Troubadour from The Barber of Seville [Obvi, Figaro could also be from Mozart]
Sullivan, Arthur: Smuggler from The Pirates of Penzance
Verdi, Giuseppe: Rigoletto from Rigoletto
Verdi, Giuseppe: Manrico from Il Trovatore
Wagner, Richard: Lohengrin from The Swan Knight

Replaceface and the Mutability of Historical Figures in Film

A few days ago, I discovered Steven Payne's fantastic Tumblr Replaceface, which takes portraits of Russian generals from the Napoleonic Wars made by George Dawe (1781-1829) and updates them with contemporary figures:

And at first I thought, 'ZOMG, these are totally plausible.  I can totally see Sean Connery as a Napoleonic-era Russian general' (and mad props to the creator of this Tumblr for his mad skills in making these portraits appear authentic).  Then I realized part of why I was thinking this is because these are actors, and I am used to seeing them in various roles.  For example, I have totally seen Sean Connery as a Cold War Russian submarine captain:

Dat hat

We are accustomed to these actors transforming themselves into various fictionalized (and sometimes historical) characters.  But this point raises an interesting issue about how popular history has become thanks to movies, and how movies affect the ways in which we see history.  As I started to think this issue over, I realized how vastly our understanding of the past has changed over the last century or so thanks to film.  I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, simply that major changes have taken place.  For example, if I ask the average person on the street (who has seen the movie Gladiator) what Emperor Commodus looks like, the average person might respond thusly:

A film buff might remember Christopher Plummer in the role of Commodus from the 1964 film The Fall of the Roman Empire:

A most subtle statue in the background

 However, if I were to ask the average person in a 19th-century street what Emperor Commodus looked like, that person would likely look at me askance.  That is because the only way that a person might know what Commodus looked like would be if that person had had the privilege of visiting a museum that had unearthed one of the remaining statues of Commodus--or possibly if that person had read a book on the history of Rome that included plates or illustrations.  I am going to assume that the number of people who had seen one of these pales significantly with the number of people who saw Gladiator (although perhaps on a par with the number of people who saw The Fall of the Roman Empire).  In case you are curious, here is a contemporary statue of Commodus.  He liked to imagine himself as Hercules:

This notion of actors filling in our sense of history through film is one that I now find particularly fascinating.  For example, how integral were Westerns to the popular understanding of frontier America?

I chose this one on purpose in part because this music has become synonymous with the Old West, but also because it features Clint Eastwood.  However, Clint Eastwood could just as plausibly be a Russian general from the Napoleonic era:

Идем дальше, сделать мой день

Or an unnamed extra from the 1955 film Lady Godiva of Coventry:

We live in an age, I suspect, when history is taken more from film than from the classroom, books, or any other single source.  This leads into the topic of how and why history gets transmitted through popular means, a subject that I have talked about in my scholarly work and one that raises many fascinating questions (perhaps more blog posts?).  At any rate, what is clear is that if you have ever wanted to own a shower curtain with Bill Murray as a Napoleonic-era Russian general, then you are very fortunate to live in the right age:

1970s Identity on the Disco Floor (and 1980s Identity on the Sitcom)

I want to start by offering an apology to our dedicated readers.  My apology is not for my recent hiatus, which has been necessary due to numerous recent changes in my life.  But I do want to apologize for not posting this gem sooner because it is things like this that make us fully appreciate the potential that the internet has to enhance our daily lives:

If you're curious, here is the original Stevie Wonder performance from 1973.

Why is this such a gem?  First, because the editing could not be better.  In fact, the first time I saw this video, my immediate reaction was to declare Daft Punk to be genii of the nth degree for making this happen--for a split second, I thought that they had somehow recreated a near-perfect replica of an episode of Soul Train for the official video (nope).  Second, because this song belongs without question to the aesthetics of 70s music while maintaining a contemporary sound, as a quick comparison to Stevie Wonder's 'Superstition' performance makes clear.  Both songs rely heavily on repetition.  In 'Superstition,' this can be heard in the opening line, which comes back frequently in the song.  Overall, though, 'Superstition' still adheres to the basic form of pop music, including a refrain, verses, and even a bridge.  Daft Punk has moved away from these conventions, taking instead what can best be summarized as a minimalist approach (which is to say very little musical material that is repeated many times) while integrating a pop aesthetic of layering a variety of different ideas together.  You hear the exact same thing in the BeeGee's 'Night Fever,' for instance (WARNING: Travolta is in his undies in that clip); you just need to follow that fantastic opening scratchy bit that comes back at times, then think about how many layers are in the 'Night Fever' chorus.

It's worth watching that clip even if you skip the Travolta underwear part because you should see the scene where they are dancing on the world's most amazing lit-up disco dance floor.  What strikes me here is how little individuality is conveyed.  Indeed, that is part of the function of this scene within Saturday Night Fever: the local disco is a place where Tony [Travolta] and his gang have carved out their very small world, one where they can get away from nagging parents and dead-end jobs.  Our first introduction in the movie to the disco is in the 'Night Fever' scene, where we see how carefully Tony has prepared for this night, but also how he fits into the place, as represented by the group all dancing together (yet alone!).  It is their version of losing themselves to dance, but it is a place where they primarily want to feel that they fit in.  Certainly Tony is the most talented of the dancers there--and therefore often stands out--but we also see that he has a lot he tries to escape from.  The importance of this territory is attested to later in the movie, when this space will be threatened by Puerto Rican dancers during a contest.  While Tony is declared victorious by the home-disco crowd, he believes that they were the better dancers and starts to see his world as limited.  As any good 1970s New York movie character does, ultimately Tony seeks the glitz and glamor of Manhattan over Brooklyn, even after he prevails at the disco in his famous white suit:

Escaping Brooklyn via seriously graffiti-laden subway car

 
If you compare the dance that introduces the viewer to Tony's disco with the Soul Train clip, you will see a remarkable contrast.  In Soul Train, each of the featured dancers is doing his or her own thing, particularly during the walk down the line.  But there is very little here that is uniform.  The fashion is strikingly different from person to person.  The plaid is found in unexpected places, mostly as pants.  The hair is also notable.  In fact, the hair is really notable because--with the exception of topknots--there is a lack of obvious attempts to conceal natural hair (unless, of course, people have very fancy wigs).  This is 1973, people.  And these are black people looking like black people and delineating themselves as individuals through their dancing.

Soul Train was extremely popular, airing in markets across the country and--even more significantly--in both black and white households.  So it is hard not to make a connection between it and a show that had the same kind of impact a decade later: The Cosby Show.  Take the season 2 introduction, for instance:

A few things here: we see each member of the family dance along to the theme song.  Having two people in the frame is somewhat reminiscent of the Soul Train Line, particularly as each person does his or her own thing.  However, there is no question of the individuality of each family member in question.  The one that stands out the most, of course, is Cliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby), who seems less able to dance than the rest of his family.  Undoubtedly, part of this is simply Cosby hamming it up, as he is prone to do (in the best possible way).  But could this be a statement about the image of black people projected by Soul Train?  Perhaps Cosby is covertly saying that some black people can't dance, a point that might be missed by white audience members accustomed to seeing African-Americans in limited roles on television.  Unlike on Soul Train though, they are not limited to demonstrating their dancing prowess; indeed, they have a voice.

It's entirely possible that I am reading too much into this and that I need to take a break from Daft Punk/Soul Train mashups, but then again, it is more fun sometimes to lose yourself to dance.

The Aesthetics of Hate

Over this long summer break at SGS, the following three events happened:

1. I attended a workshop on the Holocaust at Northwestern University in Chicago:

2. I visited a plantation in North Carolina:

3. Against all common sense, against all previous warnings, against the advice of serious film-goers, and against his own better judgment, my husband watched another Lars von Trier film by himself again:

Lars von Trier's film, Nymphoniac, like his last film, Melancholia, made Joel have a sad.

All three events, believe it or not, have led me to think about this one topic all summer, which is the relationship between aesthetics and hatred, or what I'm choosing to call the aesthetics of hate.

I'd written before on this blog about the Viennese architect Otto Wagner, who preached and practiced beauty and utility in his work. What makes Otto Wagner's so great, I argued, was that he showed us how art -- modernist art, no less - can serve the public. That it could be integrated in daily life and into public infrastructures.

But this summer has made me think more seriously about how art and architecture can also be used for horrible purposes. What I've become especially fascinated by is the idea that the more aesthetically pleasing the artistic portrayal of hatred is, the more powerful the creator's message can be.

Our first (and lightest) example of this is Lars von Trier's film, Melancholia, which I was completely fascinated by in 2012:

The first five minutes were breathtakingly beautiful. Stunning.

Against the backdrop of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" overture, you watch the world as you know it explode. It's haunting, beautifully filmed, visually stunning, a wonder. No, really. Watch the first 5-10 minutes or so. It's so aesthetically pleasing. It's so beautiful.

But, numerous critics pointed out, this film is really hateful. NPR's film critic David Edelstein called it "as hateful as it is hate-filled." Lars von Trier brings out the worst in us all, makes us turn against each other, and by the end of the film condemns humanity to a violent and horrible fate. There's no redemption in this film because he thinks we're really not worth saving. But von Trier's aesthetic is so beautiful, so totalizing, so completely realized that he makes it difficult to resist watching as the main characters' lives get destroyed (in both a physical and metaphysical sense). Beauty is Lars von Trier's weapon; it lures us into a film intent on destroying our will to live.

The other two examples of beauty and the worst of humanity coming together that I'd like to share with you all are two different architectural sites that I visited or discussed at length this summer: Auschwitz-Birkenau and a Southern plantation in North Carolina. Paul Jaskot, an art historian at Northwestern, has written extensively on the fact that architects helped to design concentration camps like Auschwitz. Not "Nazi architects," as in Himmler, Hitler, and the rest (although they of course played a role in this, too) but actual architects who had been trained to design and construct buildings, who had most likely at some point taken an architecture history class and been exposed to Romanesque architecture, Baroque ornamentation, and neo-Gothic design. Some had even trained in the avant-garde and modernist Bauhaus style under the direction of Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. These Nazi architects' buildings were functional, yes, but also aesthetically pleasing and referenced to older historical styles and traditions:

This famous view of Auschwitz, for example, is haunting and horrible, true, but it's haunting and horrible because it's aesthetically pleasing. We remember it because it's appealing for the eye to look at. It's easy for us to remember. Look at how the tower centers the structure, how the buildings on the left and right are perfectly symmetrical. Our eye like this image, it likes this view. It likes this building. Jaskot taught us this summer that this is no coincidence; again, by making this entry into Auschwitz aesthetically appealing, the architects made this passageway to a death camp powerful. 

In early August, I experienced aesthetic pleasure in another setting that was also a site of oppression, torture, and death: a plantation in North Carolina. Prior to visiting, I was really ambivalent about taking a tour of a plantation that used to enslave nearly 1,000 people. But I'm glad that I did. The historic state-run Stagville Plantation was a wonderful example of public historians getting it right, resisting the usual Gone With The Wind narrative and focusing on the lives of those who transformed the economy of the South into the economic wonder it became. If you're going to go to a plantation, go to Stagville. Be very wary of the others, especially those that focus on the good ol' days before Abraham Lincoln ruined everything.

Again, what was striking at this site was the beauty and simplicity of the buildings that housed slaves:

Built in the woods, these slave cabins comprised of 4 rooms, with 1 family in each room. But considering that each family consisted usually of at least 7-13 members, you're looking at a cabin that housed roughly 50 people. There was no insulation, of course, no glass windows.

The builders and laborers who erected these structures were the slaves themselves, who, our tour guide said, were masterful in their work. Look at the chimney they built out of brick. Notice how tight the construction is:

This 1850s chimney, our guide said, could probably be fired up today and work just fine. There's something simple yet beautiful about this construction, which, to me, explains why these sites still have the power to haunt us.

In a weird way, because of the seminars I attended this summer, I'm now especially intrigued by/appreciative of directors Steve McQueen and Quentin Tarantino, both of whom I'm starting to suspect understood the aesthetic power of hate and used it in their works in subversive ways. Quentin Tarantino chose a beautiful site to tell a story of hate for his film Django Unchained:

Isn't this house so beautiful? Doesn't it then become even more disturbing when we think about its purpose? When we see it as a symbol for humanity at its worst? Quentin Tarantino, of course, revels in this. He revels in taking pure white cotton puffs and spraying them with red blood, making them look pinkish:

That's his aesthetic. Plenty of more erudite and informed film buffs have written loads about this already.

Steve McQueen's film, 12 Years A Slave, also demonstrates the power of beauty in a similar way. Like Tarantino, McQueen chose to film his movie on a historic plantation, thus also making the site function as a symbol of moral depravity:

And Steve McQueen's film worked not just because McQueen was telling a powerful story, but because he told it beautifully. The more beautiful the rendering, the more difficult it is for us to resist the aesthetic object's power. Although this next image is really and truly upsetting, it's also beautifully composed and arranged. Remember that McQueen did so intentionally:

It follows the golden ratio of math that's found in nature but also in art and music: according to this principle, the highlight in a work of art naturally falls at the 2/3 mark. In this still, the dangling, lynched body appears at the 2/3 mark. The victim's body makes the golden ratio complete for it appears at the perfect moment to our eye. It creates the same perfect perpendicular axis that artists and art historians have admired for hundreds of years.

Again: because our eye finds these compositions and arrangements appealing, we find them all the more powerful and capable of truly upsetting us. In Steve McQueen's case, I think he's using these aesthetic principles to make it difficult for the film-goer to deny the realities of the past and to force the viewer to confront the ongoing traumas of the present. Beauty is the blunt instrument that he employs to show us (often against our will!) something appalling.

There's something really powerful, fascinating, and subversive to using beauty for horrible ends. Don't be dismissive of art or aesthetics, these historic structures and these provocative films warn us, don't belittle their power. Beauty is all around us. What's it being used for?

Setting Operas in the Heart of Darkness

To avoid the unpleasant task of writing my book, I've decided to spend a few minutes ruminating on 19th century operas that deal with African settings and characters. Many years ago, I sent out a query to the American Musicological Society's listserve inquiring about operas that have black characters in them. Based on the answers I received, I compiled a list of operas to investigate at some point in my life. Little did I know at the time that some really great scholars were also working on interrogating blackness in opera, and they published a book later that year that's literally called Blackness in Opera:

Coolness, right? Anyway. What I want to focus on, however, are 19th century operas that specifically used an African setting or African character. Because they all share a trait that musicologists have kind of picked up on but I'm not sure anyone's discussed at length: although most of these operas claim to be set in "Africa" (as in "sub-Saharan Africa"), they're really not. 

I think the main example that people are aware of here is Giacomo Meyerbeer's popular 1865 opera, L'Africaine:

Supposedly a tale about Vasco de Gama's adventures around the world, a good chunk of it takes place on an African island where the "natives" practice a religion much more akin to Hinduism. The island also appears to be in the Indian Ocean, perhaps near Madagascar or someplace like that. Here's the wonderful opera singer Shirley Verrett singing part of it with Placido Domingo at the San Francisco Opera in 1988:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoTNo5Zz3RU
(for some reason, the blog won't let me upload the video directly onto the page today)

If you watch the clip, you'll see that Girlfriend is straight-up wearing an Indian sari in the opera. How "African" is Meyerbeer's L'Africaine, I (and numerous musicologists) have wondered?

But Meyerbeer's opera, L'Africaine, isn't the only one that side steps Africanism in its quest to be exotic. Countless scholars have debated how we're supposed to interpret Verdi's Aida:

The opera's set in ancient Egypt, and the main femme fatale/femme fragile is an Ethiopian princess. How "Ethiopian" the opera director chooses to make her has greatly fluctuated over time.

Here's Grace Bumbry as "Aida":

The fabulous diva, Leontyne Price, serving it as usual (girlfriend don't PLAY):

Violetta Urmana at the Met recently (in brownface. Yes, I said it):

And as much as audiences enjoyed the opera when it premiered, some felt uncomfortable with its black African qualities. Here's Hanslick complaining about the work in 1880:

“The politics and religion, the oddities of dress and civilization of the ancient Egyptians are altogether too strange for us [Viennese/Germans]. We do not feel at ease among a lot of brown and black painted men. It may be urged that this is merely external, yet, for all, the spectator's sympathies are chilled…Think of nothing but dark-colored singers on the stage! Then, besides, the ugly, vaulting negroes and the dancing women dressed and painted in the most repulsive manner! An opera should present something of the lovely and agreeable, and no ethnological exactness can compensate for a total lack of beauty."

 (Taken from Dwight's Journal of Music, December 18, 1880, p. 201)

 
Yikes. In Hanslick's review, it seems unimaginable or inconceivable that one could depict black characters in an aesthetically pleasing way.

David Brodbeck has done some really fascinating work looking at Viennese reception of Karl Goldmark's opera, Queen of Sheba (Königin von Saba). Reviews were laced with thinly-veiled (or oftentimes open and hostile) anti-Semitic remarks that claimed that the music and setting reminded the critics of a Jewish service at the synagogue (as if any of them had ever been. But whatever):

Lastly, I want to point out Franz von Suppe's operetta, Die Afrikareise, from 1885:

 Zoe has a fancy fellowship at Harvard this summer to do some digging around, and she's been flipping through the score and libretto for this operetta. So far, she's discovered that the work really isn't set in Africa at all, although they do mention the country Chad at one point. Rather, it seems to have a more traditional orientalist setting (in the Saidian sense of the word).

So what gives, 19th century opera composers? Why this weird avoidance to actually set your "African" operas in Africa? Why limit your stereotyping to Asian characters and North African/Middle Eastern ones?

I wonder, however, if this hesitancy to depict sub-Saharan Africa goes across all of the arts. Orientalist paintings usually focused on North Africa, for example:

Horace Vernet, The Lion Hunt (1836)

And Joseph Conrad's book, Heart of Darkness, might very well be one of the first major cultural products to orientalize Africa that was widely consumed by Europeans:

But it came out in 1899. Were there really so few cultural products that depicted Africa/Africans/Africanness/Blackness that held European popular attention before then?

I remain dissatisfied with our knowledge/lack of knowledge of 19th century musical works dealing with African themes and notions of blackness. All of this stuff is much more fleshed out when it comes to talking about the 20th century (Porgy and Bess, Johnny Spielt Auf, Show Boat, etc.). But there's an earlier history here, ripe for an investigation and analysis, one that can benefit from postcolonial analysis, from a musicologist's fine ear and critical eye looking at the score. Heavens knows that I can't tackle this project right now. But I encourage anyone interested in this blog post to investigate further.