Don’t Bother Reading Joshua Fineberg’s Classical Music, Why Bother?

The reader in search of a passionate defense of classical music will be sorely disappointed by Joshua Fineberg’s Classical Music, Why Bother? Hearing the World of Contemporary Culture through a Composer’s Ears, Routledge, 2006. The book, oddly, divides in two: a plea for government funding for contemporary classical music (not classical music in general) and then an introduction to Fineberg’s allegedly objective answer to contemporary music’s ills: a music “designed for human hearing,” which is, not surprisingly, the kind of music Fineberg writes (“spectral” music). Neither half accomplishes what it sets out to do, which, along with the curious divide, renders the work a curious mess. Fineberg’s writing style is maddeningly incomplete, as he introduces many ideas in both halves of the book without developing them, while progressing as if the argument is settled. There is a comically small chapter on the massive issue of taste (he recommends just listening more), and a superfluous chapter on technological solutions to the artist/perceiver divide (note: he dismisses tech solutions, but then relies on computer aided composition in subsequent chapters). A better title may have been, Funding Non-Functional New Art Music and Other Essays; but titles and subtitles are often provided by the publisher, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt there and evaluate the content.

The best place to look for a well-argued defense of Classical Music is Julian Johnson’s Who Needs Classical Music? Oxford, 2002 (yes, Fineberg may have modified Johnson’s title for his tome). Johnson’s main theme unfolds over several chapters: Music-as-art (or any art-as-art and not entertainment) requires the listener confront something other than himself and his own thoughts. The time and attention that listener can give to the object is more is a moral choice about what will enter his ears and what kind of respect he will give it, much like the other choices of what that person will doe how that person will treat other people in his life. Fineberg does mention submission to another’s vision (p.21), but only as a hurdle one may not chose to jump these days. Fineberg’s two main points are: “We must convince people that it has real value – not just to me or a handful of others like me, but in absolute terms (p.10) and “[B]ut making these choices, right or wrong, will do something wonderful: It will open to those selected individuals (worthy or not) enormous possibilities to freely explore their artistic abilities…by granting this opportunity to even a few individuals, all of us will benefit. The first thing that happens is that we can compare the works these artists produce…we begin to establish a context. We start to see what people are capable of freed from most of the constraints that are normally present” (p.54). He thinks this would be wonderful, but the public who views shit in the gallery and hears shit in the concert hall tends to resent it, do they not? Fineberg hardly believes it does not matter who gets funded, or else the following advertisement for spectral composition would be completely unnecessary. After “we must convince people it has real value?” (p.10) a number of arguments could have followed, including a comparison with the value (lack of value) of rock music, or lasting philosophical ideas about the arts in society. He does, however, appeal to science: “the kinds of useful approximations of truth we are familiar with in science might also become available as tools for evaluating the worth of art” (p.15.) Care to guess how science can help? Why it is the “spectral” analysis of sound as the basis of Fineberg’s kind of music, of course, and that’s coming in the second half of the book. Fineberg wants to help the poor NEA panel with their work, for they, to be trusted by the public would be “able and willing to go through those 50 million paintings on the off chance of finding one masterpiece. This screening process means that when you or I decide to spend time on art, we can reduce our choices to works that have already been evaluated and recommended” (p.23). Well, this is precisely what the NEA has become so bad at doing, and what so many university music departments have lost a grip of: the ability to judge great art. In the face of the fascistic relativists, they have thrown up their hands and let anything and everything in the hallowed halls of great art. But Fineberg’s pseudo-scientific conclusions can rectify that: like-minded musical experts would have more objective bases for evaluating works to be funded (he admits this would be imperfect but suggests they’d have to keep trying to improve their bases). An objectivist position on art, however, implies that there is one perfect work of art, when even those the most skeptical of relativism know that diversity in art is the name of the game.

In the second half of the book, the warmed-over argument for the objective success of tonality emerges: it’s all about the harmonic series (naturally generated by any sound in nature). His scientific case for this and its relation to his “spectral approach” consists of exactly two studies. One in which infants can recognize out-of-tune notes in non-symmetrical scales, and another in which the number 7 (plus or minus 2) is revealed to be ideal for human understanding. Both of which are supposed to support the 7-note non-symmetrical scales of tonal music over the symmetrical non-tonal scales (especially the total chromatic scale). He’d like to limit the “design space” (a term taken from contemporary evolutionary theory – another instance of Fineberg trying to legitimize his position by invoking scientific jargon) of the harmonic aspect of music. “If we admit that some sequences of notes that may be logically coherent are not musically coherent even in principle, is it possible to determine the “design space” in which a musical language must reside to be viable? Furthermore is it possible to use this information to design a musical language that is both novel and comprehensible?” (p.86). The viable residence is in the harmonic series and its elevated status is the alleged great revelation of spectral composers. Earlier, Fineberg proposed the existence of a (universal) musical beauty organ in the brain, using the analogy to Chomsky’s Universal Grammar. For the entire second half of the book, he does not seem to understand that it is that musical grammar is what counts, and a great composer like Stravinsky could use three or four different harmonic worlds in his lifetime (lush tonality, bi-tonality, hyper extended tonality and serialism) and produce great works in each period. Imagine a linguist trying to exalt the sound of German as being more viable a language because of the effects its phonemes produced on the brain – he’d be excoriated as a fascist. Are hardcore spectralists any different?

He seems unaware that the successful model of tonality is not actually a model. As any teacher of novice composers knows, tonal pitch organization guarantees nothing for the composer, just as twelve-tone music or spectralism does note lead to certain results. He does not seem to recognize that he “spectral approach” is not yet music, and the proof of the pudding is what the composer can do with harmony and the other aspects of composition she uses. Although he calls notes, rhythms and dynamics “musical symbols”, he seems not to know that these symbols create musical rhetoric, and human minds (yes, minds, not just ears) can follow discursive narratives with them. His odd introduction on spectralism as “Music Designed for Humans” (complete with an unnecessary history of the movement) is nearly belligerent to non-spectral composers who are allegedly writing music “in the abstract as a piece of sonic speculation” (p.137). Fineberg is correct that composers oblivious to the sonic effect they produce are missing something, but there’s nothing new about this. Good composers of all times have been sensitive to the precise quality of sound at any moment in a piece; it’s called orchestration, and it is always in play as a compositional aspect. The contemporary composer who fantastically orchestrates bad musical ideas has not accomplished much. Fineberg claims “all of these (spectral) composers share a central belief that music is ultimately sound evolving in time” (p.112). Well, neat-o, that makes my washing machine a spectralist composer once a week.

His “spectral approach” could be one of many valid paths in the panoply of contemporary concert music to appreciate, but Fineberg grinds his axe sharper and singles out the “evil empire” of twelve-tone composers (the usual punching bag for reactionaries) as the enemy against which the spectral approach works. It is true that some composers wrote (and still write) a lot of twelve-tone music that deserves to gather dust. Of course, composers wrote (and still write) good music with the twelve-tones (do I need to mention them…OK, for starters: Schonberg, Berg, Webern, Stravinsky, Copland, Sessions, Dallapicolla, Martino…) “Serialism” (note that Fineberg won’t call the “spectral approach” an “-ism”) is clearly not for every composer and every listener, but it is certainly not “invalid”. If spectral pieces were for every man, as Fineberg implies, then the empirical data would be filling the seats of concert halls, but this is just not the case. Forty-Five Harvard students wrote a paper for me on the last Fineberg piece I heard, with three finding any pleasure; perhaps the “spectral approach” does not win over the masses as advertised. As spectral music requires an expensive orchestra or at least a large ensemble to work its alleged magic (the bigger the better), we realize the need for the odd form of Fineberg’s book; American taxpayers should pony up the cash to keep the author’s style of music from dying a slow chamber music death, because he believes it has “objective value”. The assertions he presents for believing that are insufficient and the book reeks of self-promotion. This book was published just before Fineberg’s tenure review at Harvard University. They saw through his pseudo-intellectual writing and sent him packing. Other sensitive readers of this book will reject it too.

Timothy Melbinger, March 2007