Marxist music research

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Under Marxist Music Research is defined as the attempt of music criticism and theory, as well as musical composition and performance on the materialistic foundations of Marxist analysis of society, criticism of capitalism and socio-changing practice. You are thus z. In part in contrast to so-called "bourgeois" musicology, which it influences with its new analytical instruments, questions and categories at the same time. The Marxist approach is interdisciplinary and nowadays touches, among other things, the areas of music aesthetics , psychology , sociology , history , anthropology , ethnology , semantics , linguistics , psychology and bioacoustics .

In contrast to bourgeois musicology, Marxists did not understand pieces of music as absolute works of art and masterpieces, but rather explain them from the social and historical conditions of their creation. Existing traditions of everyday music are interpreted against the background of the living conditions of farmers, women or workers. With this paradigm it competes with the music sociology of empirical social research.

development

After the October Revolution of 1917, cultural policy in the Soviet Union was initially characterized by a great willingness to experiment. The writer Anatoli Wassiljewitsch Lunatscharski published on the sociology of music and, as a leading cultural politician, promoted aesthetically and technically avant-garde music projects. The composer Boris Vladimirovich Assafjew developed a theory of intonation as the smallest meaningful musical unit. Under the doctrine of socialist realism proclaimed by Andrei Alexandrowitsch Schdanow at the time of Stalinism in 1934, pre-Soviet Russian music was appropriated; Marxist models of thought were applied. The second Zhdanovshchina , issued in 1948, was directed against “objectivism”, “formalism” and “cosmopolitanism” in culture. In Eastern Europe this led to restrictions for musicology in dealing with modern music. After 1945 a school of music semiotics emerged in the CSSR from the tradition of the Prague School of Linguistics. Another center of Marxist music research became East Berlin with the "Hanns Eisler" University of Music and the Humboldt University . Theodor W. Adornos' music theory became influential in Western Europe . In contrast to traditional Marxism, Adorno defends the autonomy of the work of art. For him, Arnold Schönberg's twelve-tone music exposes the social lie of the late capitalist bourgeoisie by refusing to accept consumerism. In contrast, Marxists like Stuart Hall interpret the consumption of rock music as an act of resistance directed against the hegemony of the culture industry .

Today's focus of Marxist music research is the music and media industry, the consequences of globalization and the problem of conveying political and emancipatory content through music.

Remarks

  1. ↑ For British folk music , such an interpretation was first made by AL Lloyd from 1934 ( The Singing Englishman , 1944), s. Gregory, ED 1997
  2. ↑ Smrz, J. 2003
  3. ↑ Birger Petersen-Mikkelsen: On the topicality of the aesthetic theory Theodor W. Adornos and its preparation in the “Philosophy of New Music”, p.179 in Stroh, Mayer 2000

literature

Web links