At Los Angeles Review of Books Stephen Rohde reviews books that are, broadly speaking, for and against "free speech" in light of social media dynamics
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/free-speech-and-the-question-of-race
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/free-speech-and-the-question-of-race
Alan Jacobs has three quotes on journalism. The last quote topic of "post-journalism"
In the last year conservative friends have taken to talking about the "plandemic" and how it is, though they never use the term, a kind of elite class war against normal Americans. Postmillenial Reformed types may really just never read outside their bubbles because if they did they might find out how leftist/socialist they sound if they, say, read Leila Mechoui's and Alexander Davidson's riff on the pandemic as class warfare at The Bellows. Along the theme, there's also Alex Gutentag's "The Great Covid Class War".
There's ... actually litigation going on over the Philip Ewell presentation that sparked controversy about Schenkerian analysis? Having neither studied Schenkerian analysis nor felt any need to ever study it but having read Roger Scruton's criticism of it, it's a surreal thing to see that there's actual litigation going on in connection to it now. I suggested a while back that if even conservative philosopher and author on the aesthetics of music Roger Scruton concluded that we'd be better off not bothering with Schenkerian theory that granting it's not the "only game in town" would be easy. But this would be the point at which I concede I never got into academic music theory or musicology (and the two fields aren't really the same, as I have seen stated in conversations online in the last few years). So, uh, anyway, that's something that may keep making headlines.
1-30-2021 4:26pm
Throwing this one in
Kyle Gann's "Make Way for the Guitar Era" still seems relevant. As a guitarist, of course, I readily admit my bias! Not that I'm gonna stop reading Doug Shadle on symphonies, for instance, but just about any North American guitarist could point out that American music has probably always been an era defined by the guitar more than by the symphony.
24 comments:
31 January 2021 Part 1
------------------------
[There's ... actually litigation going on over the Philip Ewell presentation that sparked controversy about Schenkerian analysis?]
The litigation doesn't involve Ewell; he's not on Jackson's list of people charged with using facts to hurt Jackson's feelings.
Not this time, at least.
The case will likely boil down to the claim that UNT had no right to exercise its contractual right,
because its interest in doing so was not pure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_motive
We shouldn't be surprised that Jackson's attorney is acting like he's never heard of abusus non tollit usum,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abusus%20non%20tollit%20usum
because Jackson's attorney already sat there and did nothing while Jackson confessed to the thing that would later cost him his position,
after about 01:06:00 in this video; a main point of the video apparently being otherwise to deny the thing to which he somehow then confesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BYEmzYAMok
Jackson seems not to understand how light he's been let off for the way he abused his authority as Editor of Volume 12.
He's like someone who would spend a whole lottery jackpot on lottery tickets.
[Having neither studied Schenkerian analysis nor felt any need to ever study it but having read Roger Scruton's criticism of it, it's a surreal thing to see that there's actual litigation going on in connection to it now.]
It's 50 years past due, but at least partly for different reasons.
If you like, I can provide a list of links mostly to Youtube where you can see me arguing with Schenkerians.
But the larger pattern is that Schenkerians are only champions of free speech by people who already agree with them.
The most recent thing is that my comments were deleted from this article.
https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/a-canceled-music-theorist-fights-back-against-academic-tyranny?fbclid=IwAR2VaDEM09R5Dhl03-WoPyc7xal4KzXLiX9Ov_cxd39Ieg3DmTVHApgMvwU
------------------------
- Joshua Clement Broyles
31 January 2021 Part 2
------------------------
These were my comments:
From article: ["In this case, CRT scholars seek to replace actual Schenkerian musical analysis with ritual condemnations of that analysis."]
1) It's not just CRT scholars that have a problem with Schenkerism.
Even if it were so, though, Schenkerians have an ethical burden of evidence prime to that of the CRT scholars, because Schenkerians are using public money to do what they do;
authority without accountability is not legitimate in a free and democratic society.
2) If Schenkerism were removed and replaced with nothing at all, that would still be an improvement from the standpoint of total curricular utility to students.
Schenker classes abuse students' credulity and gaslight students who fail to read Schenkerism completely uncritically.
3) Schenkerian "analysis" isn't analysis.
Schenker, being modern Schenkerism's first victim, never called what he did analysis.
Schenker was trying to provide performers with an interpetive tool, and he did not claim to address either composer intent or compositional process.
But current Schenkerians consider their own work to be analytic rather than interpretive, and they routinely invoke both composer intent and compositional process.
The completion and promotion of Schenkerian "analyses" ambiguously depends upon:
A) The implicit claim that the intuitions of Schenkerians are essentially analytic in a way that the intuitions of other persons are not analytic;
further, that the intuition-dependent "analyses" of Schenkerians are more analytic than would be any competing analyses which do not depend upon intuition.
And/Or
B) Either communicating with dead composers or, at least, reading their minds.
4) I here charge David Randall with a use of the term "ritual" in a way which is culturally biased.
Moreover, the Schenkerians, themselves, by means of what they must to do to complete their "analyses",
more likely qualify anthropologically as Tribal Magicians.
As Tribal Magicians, they should not be allowed to use public funds for their own ritual activities.
5) Merely to condemn fraud as fraud need not be construed as ritual.
Schenkerian "anlysis", while arguably also fraudulent in other ways, meets some minimum definition of fraud merely on the basis that it is claimed to be analysis; a thing which it is not.
In analysis, an analytic object is reduced to its components.
The supposed "components" to which Schenkerians reduce a musical score are in many cases identified and partitioned in ways which the scientific community will not consider to be procedurally valid if asked to consider the matter in earnest.
"But,", some will of course say, "Schenkerism isn't a science."
And I agree that Schenkerism isn't a science. Schenkerism is an anti-science. And anti-science has no legitimate place in public music curricula.
--------------------------
- Joshua Clement Broyles
ah, good point that Ewell himself is in no way connected to the case. Problematic wording on a weekend post. It was interesting that in the VAN piece it was mentioned that Ewell has used Schenkerian ideas, something that has never come up in reactions to Ewell's presentation(s).
I saw over at Slipped Disc William Osborne has stated the NAS is a reactionary/neo-con group.
https://slippedisc.com/2021/01/fighting-back-against-critical-race-theory/#comments/658143
"The National Association of Scholars is a reactionary group in a long line of neocons who have objected to progressive thought in American universities. ..."
The reactionaries I've come across think of the neo-conservatives as flaming liberals so I'm not going to simply agree to a conflation of terms as Osborne used them, but it may be relevant to how and why some comments get deleted.
As I'm incubating blogging projects discussing guitar sonatas I am not sure how closely I want to keep tabs on the suit, to be plain about it.
I might keep track of how things progress but it's a reminder to me that I'm glad I didn't end up in academic music theory or musicology even though I considered music as a field of further study years and years ago.
Your interest in the matter need not be musical or musicological. You might just be interested in basic things like academic rigor and accountability.
In a somewhat related matter, if you find yourself stuck by a few too many coincidences in the comments seciton of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW-sQQ-PkDU
such as;
1) Meeus appearing right when Hucbald is leaving,
2) Meeus and Hucbald both trying to assign me a bunch of reading rather than answering what should be simple questions
3) Meeus and Hucbald both trying to get me to take the discussion somewhere else for the usolicited interest of Opera on the Verge
4) more if you'll dig for it
Then you'll be just as unsurprised as I was about which things Hucbald has edited on Wikipedia.
The "Schenkerian Analysis" article is an obvious enough problem,
but also look at Hucbald's role in managing the Wikipedia article about Meeús.
It seems like Hucbald and Meeús are awfully close to each other, doesn't it.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicolas_Mee%C3%B9s_(musicologue)&action=history
Joshua Clement Broyles
Here is a link to a recent Open Letter from Nicholas Meeús to the Society for Music Theory.
https://heinrichschenker.wordpress.com/open-letter-on-schenkers-racism-and-its-reception-in-the-united-states/
I have submitted my own comment to Meeús, which is awaiting moderation.
I don't think he'll approve it.
I mostly just wanted to make sure that he has my newest email address so that he can be investigated for any harassing email I get over then next few months.
(my comments)
PART 1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Such problems cannot be discussed in the same terms in Europe, in view of the varied situations in the different European countries, concerning both our societies for theory and/or analysis of music and the organization of studies in our Universities/Conservatoires/Hochschulen, etc.]
Why cannot the same be said of Europe? How many black music theory professors are there in Europe?
[We were at first surprised that Prof. Ewell chose to illustrate his legitimate concern with the situation of the SMT and of American universities mainly by an attack against Schenker, who died almost a century ago.]
Perhaps his point was not Schenker's racism, itself, but efforts to understate Schenker's racism.
If there is nothing to hide, then why try to hide it?
[but we fail to understand how and why modern American music theory could and should still be based on such old-fashioned ideas.]
Why and whether are two different questions. Regardless of the why, the answer to whether is: yes.
[He may fail to realize, however, that Schenker’s nationalism and possible racism have been discussed many times in the last forty years.]
When it was discussed in my Schenker class in Canada, it was discussed only to dismiss it as a misunderstanding;
my Schenker professor has repeated elsewhere that Schenker's racist statements were "visceral reaction(s)" which "went against his personal beliefs".
This was my first overt experience of a Schenkerian seeming to either communicate with a deceased person, or to read that deceased person's mind.
It certainly was not the last.
PART 2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[“an exclusive and dogmatically minded cult, speaking an impenetrable jargon, whose members proselytize ceaselessly while constantly bickering among themselves over the proper tending of the sacred flame.”]
What thing can you point to which would compellingly indicate that Schenkerism is not as described here?
[But the Journal of Schenkerian Studies answered from another point of view, more critical, more historically contextualized, as developed by the second generation of American Schenkerians, to which the authors of the JSS belong.]
Have you checked the JSS author list for non-Americans? I think "Anonymous" might be Belgian for some reason.
[This all could have led to an interesting and much needed debate,]
North American Schenkerism does not allow for debate. Skeptics are gaslighted and blacklisted.
[The situation was all the more promising that at least two authors published in the Schenker symposium of the JSS thanked Prof. Ewell for his comments on drafts of their paper.]
Two would seem to be the minimum number of such papers that can be counted in English plural for token purposes.
Jackson admits in this video that a majority of solicited responses actually favored Ewell's position.
Please see 01:06:30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BYEmzYAMok&t=3947s
[as if everybody in the United States had been somehow astounded.]
When Americans don't debate, it's probably not because they're astounded. That's not really how they think.
[The debate was replaced by censorship.]
Nothing was censored. A set of procedures was solicited, and only provided in some part.
This is how disputes are normally handled in functional societies;
someone usually asks for more than they expect to get, and they usually get less.
[The response by the executive board of the SMT “condemns the anti-Black statements and personal ad hominem attacks on Philip Ewell perpetuated in several essays included in the Symposium on Philip Ewell’s 2019 SMT Plenary Paper published by the Journal of Schenkerian Studies”. But we were unable to identify any anti-Black statement]
Maybe you missed the part where Jackson essentially said that he couldn't be a racist because black people hate Jews.
If that was not directed to Ewell, then to whom was it directed?
PART 2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[“an exclusive and dogmatically minded cult, speaking an impenetrable jargon, whose members proselytize ceaselessly while constantly bickering among themselves over the proper tending of the sacred flame.”]
What thing can you point to which would compellingly indicate that Schenkerism is not as described here?
[But the Journal of Schenkerian Studies answered from another point of view, more critical, more historically contextualized, as developed by the second generation of American Schenkerians, to which the authors of the JSS belong.]
Have you checked the JSS author list for non-Americans? I think "Anonymous" might be Belgian for some reason.
[This all could have led to an interesting and much needed debate,]
North American Schenkerism does not allow for debate. Skeptics are gaslighted and blacklisted.
[The situation was all the more promising that at least two authors published in the Schenker symposium of the JSS thanked Prof. Ewell for his comments on drafts of their paper.]
Two would seem to be the minimum number of such papers that can be counted in English plural for token purposes.
Jackson admits in this video that a majority of solicited responses actually favored Ewell's position.
Please see 01:06:30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BYEmzYAMok&t=3947s
[as if everybody in the United States had been somehow astounded.]
When Americans don't debate, it's probably not because they're astounded. That's not really how they think.
[The debate was replaced by censorship.]
Nothing was censored. A set of procedures was solicited, and only provided in some part.
This is how disputes are normally handled in functional societies;
someone usually asks for more than they expect to get, and they usually get less.
[The response by the executive board of the SMT “condemns the anti-Black statements and personal ad hominem attacks on Philip Ewell perpetuated in several essays included in the Symposium on Philip Ewell’s 2019 SMT Plenary Paper published by the Journal of Schenkerian Studies”. But we were unable to identify any anti-Black statement]
Maybe you missed the part where Jackson essentially said that he couldn't be a racist because black people hate Jews.
If that was not directed to Ewell, then to whom was it directed?
PART 3
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[which merely is censorship.]
It's not censorship if there is some other legitimate excuse to do it.
Being falsely accused of racism wouldn't be license to editorial misconduct.
[Several of us wrote to the UNT authorities, expressing our concern with this situation, without answer up to now.
Maybe your response was sent to Hucbald by mistake.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicolas_Mee%C3%B9s_(musicologue)&action=history
[We do believe that Prof. Ewell raised important questions, not only about whiteness in American music theory, which remains beyond our competence, but also about how Schenker should be understood today and how his theories (and the further developments thereof) should be taught in music theory classes. We very much regret that his keynote address and the JSS symposium that followed did not spur to the general debate for which we believe the time has come. We urge the SMT and the UNT to reconsider the matter and to open a much necessary worldwide debate, to which we are eager to participate.]
I don't really blame you for trying to position yourself to take over the JSS and move it to Europe.
But there's no reason why I should just let that happen.
....
[I have been informed that Philip Ewell, on Twitter (which I don’t read), declared on 12 January 2021 that the above is « a remarkable statement of antiblackness ». I am afraid that my knowledge of American English leaves me unable to find any antiblack statement in the above, but I am grateful that, at least, he read the letter (or did he?).]
Your denial of the fact that Jackson characterized black people as having a special problem with Anti-Semitism supports tolerance for that statement.
I don't even have to be black to imagine how a black person might be capable to construe your statement as also being anti-black in effect.
I'm glad we were able to clear this up.
Joshua Clement Broyles
draft of letter to send to list of signatories to the Open Letter:
- - -
Dear X,
In an Open Letter to the Society for Music Theory, Meeús cites you as one of the persons agreeing with his denial that the following statement by Timothy Jackson is an anti-black statement.
"Ewell's scapegoating of Schenker, Schenkerians, and Schenkerian analysis, occurs in the much larger context of Black-on-Jew attacks in the United States."
The further specific context paragraph of Jackson's statement consists of an effort to disqualify Ewell from criticizing Schenker,
not on the basis of clear historical evidence, but merely on the basis of the racial identities of Ewell and Schenker.
I am confident that if you will re-examine the pertinent paragraph, itself, this cannot be unclear to you.
Moreover, a statement which insinuates that a black person in NEVER qualified to criticize a Jew is an anti-black statement,
and Jackson's statement, in context, insinuates that a black person is NEVER qualified to criticize a Jew.
As it is now almost inevitable that the Texas legal system will make an official determination that the above statement is an anti-black statement in context,
it behooves you, if only socially, to consider clarifying your own position on Jackson's statement before that official determination has been made.
Meeús, who has in the past abused my own trust in other ways, is a person of deficient integrity;
it is an error to allow one's own positive reputation to become in any way dependent upon the reputation of Meeús.
There are now compelling reasons to consider Wikipedian "Hucbald SaintAmand" and Nicholas Meeús to be one and the same person,
and thus, also, to consider Meeús to be editing his own biographical Wikipedia page, as well as treating the Wikipedia article "Schenkerian Analysis"
as a de facto extension of his own blog, and as a means of promoting his own publications and his own personal interest.
You deserve better than to risk being eventually "painted with the same brush" when Meeús is finally banned permanently from Wikipedia,
and your professional community deserves better leadership than that which you have so far allowed Meeús to provide.
Perhaps it deserves your leadership.
Please either personally retract or organize a collective public retraction of the attributed claim that Jackson's statement is not anti-black.
You owe it to yourself to produce a better intellectual legacy.
Thank You,
Joshua Clement Broyles
Well I'll be darned. Meeús published my comment. Should I ask the French police to consider treating him as a suicide threat?
I've read a bit of Ewell's work and his clear knowledge of Hepokoski & Darcy's elements of sonata theory and of Russian theoretical work shows that he hasn't merely been attacking Schenker, he clearly knows of compelling alternatives.
The object lesson for me is that if Norman Lebrecht lambasts a music theorists odds are surprisingly good that's a reason to actually go read them, whether Ethan Hein or Ewell! :)
I'm now seeing the Kholopov citation by Segall in the JSS link, which Meeús provided in his blog. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dTOWwlIsuiwsgAa4f1N99AlvG3-ngnmG/view You'll notice that Jackson is so tight-fisted with publicly funded Schenker content that the article of Koslovsky, Parkhurst, and Stoia are excluded from the link. I guess Jackson realizes that the cost and risk of looking like even more of a dick are outweighed by the value of preventing someone like me from scrutinizing recent Schenkerian "analyses" in anything like the same way I am presently scrutinizing mere Schenkerian commentary.
Anyway, Point One is my quick swipe at Schenkerians using a publicly funded format to promulgate necromancy. I really wish I could see those other 3 articles in order to show that the more important pattern is their "analytic" use of necromancy.
-
I'll start with the more innocuous examples...
DAVID BEACH
-
Beach determines that Schenker posthumously recants earlier statements:
"He (Ewell) states that Schenker's anti-black racism informed his theory. This is simply not correct."
-
JACK BOSS
-
Boss puts the word "genius" in Allen Forte's dead mouth.
"... Forte's own project - to use Schenker's method to reach the conclusion that far more composers and songwriters could be placed under the 'genius' umbrella..."
-
CHARLES BURKHART
-
Burkhart determines that Schenker posthumously recants earlier statements:
"...but (Ewell) goes way over the top whe he equates Schenker's ideas on the inequality of the races with his statement on the inequality of the inequality of the tones of the scale..."
-
STEPHEN LETT
-
Lett determines that Schenker posthumously recants earlier statements:
"... how the world Schenker hoped to create through his analytic tools relates to the world described by their displacement..."
(Schenker actually denied that what he did was analytic)
Dear Lett: Josh does appreciate the irony of having to add you to this list.
-
RICH PELLEGRIN
Pellegrin determines that Schenker posthumously recants earlier statements:
"In this statement Smith seems to misunderstand the essence of Schenkerian analysis."
(Schenker actually denied that what he did was analytic)
-
By now, I realize that skimming for necromancy only scratches the surface of what else is wrong with most of these commentaries, which I guess I'll also have to explain later.
Meanwhile, more necromancy:
-
ALLEN CADWALLADER
-
Cadwallader determines that Schenker has presently changed his mind about hierarchies:
"The fact that Ewell assigns racial properties to deep levels of hierarchy evinces a gross misunderstanding of Schenker's thought and the ways in which we organize our perceptions."
NB: The syntax of the word "we" produces ambiguous reference to A) Cadwallader and Ewell, B) Cadwallader and Schenker, or C) Cadwallader, Ewell, and Schenker. While it could be easily construed that Cadwallader means to correct Ewell as to how Schenker currently organizes Schenker's own perceptions (as inconsistent with the way Schenker explained the organization of his own perceptions while Schenker was alive), one must concede that it is also possible that Cadwallader merely means to correct Ewell's misperception of how Ewell organizes Ewell's own perceptions.
-
Cadwallader cites Rothgreb as concluding the same hidden content of Schenker's mind,
accessed by Cadwallader and Rothgreb by apparently secret means or mechanisms as yet unstated:
"I believe that John Rothgreb was correct in asserting that Schenker's musical thought is 'not at all dependent on any of his extra-musical speculations', despite what Schenker himself might have believed."
-
Cadwallader cites Schachter as similarly (to Cadwallader) calibrating the unmeasured mental propensities of both the living and the dead:
"[Schenker's] politics would hold no interest for anybody were it not for the music theory and analysis."
NICHOLAS COOK
-
Cook, by unspecified means, determines that Schenker does not consider German compositional behavior to be a matter of biology:
"Schenker is saying that true Germannness cannot be established by a blood test, because it is not a matter of biology."
Note that Cook's claim necessarily includes that Schenker rejects as inferior to a test of germanness,
as compared to music analysis, not only whatever "racial science" (Schenker) existed while Schenker was alive,
but also (genetic?) blood tests; something which did not exist during Schenker's lifetime.
Thus, Cook is speaking of Schenker's opinion not only in the past, but speaking also of Schenker's expanded, posthumous opinion.
TIMOTHY L. JACKSON
-
Jackson asserts special knowledge of when to take Schenker at Schenker's word and when not to:
"(...)I doubt that Schenker made these 'proclamations' in order ingratiate himself with the Germans(...)
Rather, he genuinely believed(...)"
Note that Schenker's various comparative belief states as asserted by Jackson receive tacit support from
other Schenkerians, who have in no way contested the matter;
implicitly, magically seeing into Schenker's mind must tell them all exactly the same thing.
-
Jackson determines by unstated means that early skeptics of Schenkerian theory in the United States were not importantly motivated by anything other than antisemitism:
"(...)he was adminished(...)not to be too interested in 'that Schenker stuff' -"
Please see context of this statement.
-
Jackson determines by means unstated that Schenker's citation of universal access to musical tools also indicates Schenker's belief in a universal capability to make use of those tools, contrary to other statements by Schenker:
" 'Since linear progression(...)The race of the musician is irrelevant."
Please see context.
BOYD POMEROY
Pomeroy reads the minds of thousands of dead German-speakers who rejected Schenkerism, and determines the prime reason for their rejection
as political (rather than possibly scientific, for example):
"The other side of the coin is the issue of Schenker's post-war reception in the German-speaking countries,
where the taint of nationalism hung heavy, in an almost complete failure of the theory to gain a foothold..."
-
BARRY WIENER
Wiener apparently reads the minds of unnamed, probably dead persons whom Oster mentions in 1969,
and determines that those people were resistant to Schenkerism for political rather than possibly scientific reasons:
"Oster complained, 'The basic trouble is Schenker.... With very few excpetions, people still don't want it.'."
The other contributors provide plenty to further put under the microscope, but the things most immediately striking about the total content are the things which, if UNT's lawyers are worth anything, will easily be enough to cause Jackson to lose his defamation case.
-
Other factors that already put Jackson at a disadvantage include:
1) burden of evidence (Jackson is the plaintiff),
2) that UNT's stated reason for removing Jackson from the editorial position (apparently the harm he intends to show the alleged defamation caused) wasn't racism, but editorial misconduct. Being falsely accused of racism is not license to editorial misconduct, and even if it were, the accusations that it appears Jackson is contesting came after the acts UNT says were editorial misconduct. Moreover, as I've already pointed out, Jackson offers what is probably a conclusive civil level confession of editorial misconduct after about 01:06:00 in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BYEmzYAMok Even if UNT were motivated to remove Jackson for the racism, the editorial misconduct gives them a legitimate excuse to do it, probably even without his unsolicited public confession.
3) that it would be really hard to prove that someone isn't a racist, even if it were not Jackson.
But even if you put these things aside, the fact that Jackson is a racist should still be enough to destroy his defamation claim.
How do I know Jackson is a racist?
It's right there in JSS12.
The paragraph starting with "Ewell's scapegoating" and ending either with "etc", or with "gestating disease", is where Jackson most clearly attempts to disqualify Ewell, specifically, from criticizing Schenker; not on the basis of anything else, but merely on the basis that Ewell is black. I recommend to read this paragraph carefully a couple of times by itself, then read Jackson's total statement in order to understand the paragraph both in isolation and in context. If what it says is different from saying that a black person is never qualified to criticize a Jew, I don't see how what it says is really different from that. Do you? Help me understand, please.
In the later paragraph starting with "Be that as it may", Jackson seems to clarify that he does not consider it the mission of his public research university to make the music curriculum in any way relevant to the public that signs his paychecks; that he, instead, considers it the responsibility of American families who want kids to become music professors like he did to make an early commitment to raising kids in Central European musical culture, rather than in American musical culture, as his Central European family did with him.
See specifically: "young African Americans must want to be classical musicians". This is where I am to understand that he dictatorially defines the mission of music departments at American public research universities as a classical mission, and where he implies that classical music is music written either by Germanic persons, or by their imitators.
Given that African Americans have been refining their own musical culture since before the Baroque era, and it is now a tradition with notation and theory, that seems like a lot to just push aside in order to, instead, assimilate past musical culture from a different continent, that seems to me like a pretty big sacrifice to make in order to be allowed to call one's self a music theory professor.
Jackson also fails to acknowledge that even where African Americans have actually done this, it mostly hasn't worked;
that what makes Ewell an exception is not that he even tried, but that he somehow succeeded. And even Ewell reports that this has not worked the way it was supposed to have worked.
An obvious improvement, roughly what Ewell suggests, and which Jackson implicitly rejects, is simply to treat American music in the United States the way that other national musics are treated in public research universities in most other nations; to treat national music as if it were legitimate enough to warrant at least some earnest mandatory treatment as part of the core music curriculum. If people in nations bordering Germany and Austria don't need to study more than 50% Germanic music in order to become music theory professors, it's really unclear to me what scholarly purpose is served by forcing African Americans to do that. But maybe the purpose isn't precisely scholarly?
I guess that comes down to whether we consider the primary mission of music departments at public research universities to be music utilities or whiteness utilities. It is reasonable to think that we know Jackson's real opinion on this.
But wouldn't that just be too obvious? Jackson doesn't understand "obvious". Did you see him after 01:06:00 in that video?
I haven't seen the video. Had things going on over the weekend but I did want to make sure to bring some comments out of moderation.
The next obvious thing with JSS12 is how many contributors offer alomost verbatim statements about Schenker's "wife" (widow).
-
The only importance of her death, for Schenkerians, seems to be that it indicates how easily one can construct Heinrich Schenker's own inchoate identity as an honorary Holocaust victim. This because, had he not died of something else first, the Nazis would have got him.
-
This unfalsifiable hypothesis has some instrinsic merit.
But I can just as fairly point out that if Richard Wagner had converted to Judaism and then simply also lived long enough,
Nazis probably also would have got him.
-
So, while everyone has been invited to participate credulously in Schenkerian speculative counterfactual history,
there's no clear reason for me not to offer an alternative hypothesis about Julia Schenker:
-
If Heinrich Schenker had not died in 1935, Felix Salzer might have had less incentive to leave Julia to the Nazis,
because Heinrich Schenker might have insisted that Salzer help rescue Julia along with him.
-
But with Heinrich Schenker gone, nothing could probably have been more convenient for Salzer either from the standpoint of political marketing, or from the standpoint of intellectual property rights, that Heinrich Schenker's widow was murdered by Nazis.
-
To be fair to Salzer, his later diagnosis of Dementia was earlier hinted at by his apophenic redefinition of Schenker's interpretive method as an analytic method, offering not only performance suggestions, but essentially offering supernatural insight into composer intent.
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So Salzer's judgement may have been neurologically imparied when he apparently did nothing to help Schenker's widow escape the Holocaust.
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If anyone cares, here's a thing I should have done a LONG time ago.
This is what most explains what's wrong with Schenkerian theory:
"The Ursatz is NOT TONAL."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u5J-Eg9vlE
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