Mozart and all that jazz...

Lenin was once asked what he thought about music.
He replied simply:Music is dangerous.

How right he was.

He could never have realised that merely forty five years after making that remark a cheeky pipsqueek in Liverpool with bizarrely the same sounding name would plant the seed that would grow and crack the seemingly eternal concrete monolith of American cultural dominance,that would thereby cause the Soviet Communist Empire to drop its guard and then collapse and usher in an age politically dominated by a terrifying woman revolutionary,not declaiming from some bloodstained balcony but speaking in the precise prissy tones of the British middle classes...

All that from music-?

Visiting one of my more intellectual friends ,I once asked him what had been his greatest musical experience .We were sitting in his flat overlooking the Danube talking about some recent musical pleasures: a fine performance of Parsival ,an early Handel oratorio ...

He was a typical Central European , a big bald domed head, rimless glasses,long sensitive face.Fluent in half a dozen languages ,he had moved effortlessly from being a Communist apparatchik and probably KGB agent to an important governmental position connected with the EU and medicine.
We sat in the study of his flat, its walls from floor to sixteen foot ceilings completely covered with books crowding rather menacing black teak shelves,newer additions were scattered about on tables with his latest cds-a Bach Partita collection ,some early Monteverdi ...His daughter was in another room studying for her medical exams -there was no piano but if there had been, one could imagine her practising Schubert impromptus...
At my question his sensitive face assumed a deep intensity of thought:leaning forward frowning, he slowly topped up my glass with one of the unblended scotches he was so proud of..
I think ...I think it must have been in nineteen sixty six ,his Bronofskian voice intoned...I had tuned to the BBC World Service and suddenly heard for the first time..the Rolling Stones...it changed my life forever....

It was easy for the Russians to block out American popular culture.They didnt really need to use electronic jamming .From Playboy to Presley its essential glossy cheapness was vulgar-despite Presleys energy and charm.It was essentially a false concoction, knocked up in backrooms by paunchy middle aged gentlemen not entirely unlike my European intellectual-it needed little effort to despise it
Britains cultural explosion of the sixties ,however many millionaires it produced ,was at least at heart genuine. It had its roots in centuries of class anger and struggle, little different from the racial struggles of the blacks who had been its inspirers
Those in the east who had found nothing of value in the cultural systems of the west now had something genuine to hold on to .Tentacles of a real free life began pulsing across the divide..
.
And yet it has always seemed to me that ironically the origins of the entire Thatcher philosophy that has so seduced the world-or at least large parts of it- can be traced to the British pop phenomenon

I like to imagine her being driven by Denis past Wembley Stadium after some concert or other
Mrs Thatcher is expressing her disgust.'We must do something Denis, these communists or whatever cant be allowed to subvert our young as they are doing by providing these free pop concerts .It must cost a fortune alone to rent Wembley.'Actually my dear youve got it wrong,these concerts arent free in fact I'm told tickets are quite expensive.
But thats impossible surely ,that would mean these musician fellows would all be millionaires.Well they are millionaires dear ,everyone of the buggers .But I dont understand-they always seem to be angry working class revolutionaries-at least thats what they look and sound like,dressed in scruffy jeans and fishermens jackets.Are you saying that these young people dress up like revolutionaries to go to see millionaires dressed up like workers? Exactly.
But that means-that means that these young people dont object in principle to the rich ?True darling
They are only really pretending to have working class socialist principles?I suppose so .
But if they dont object to their musician heroes being millionaires I dont see they can object to anyone being a millionaire.You know Denis Ive always assumed that my ideas about a really free market system would founder because of the weight of anti wealth predudice against it -but it seems to me now looking at these young people -that isnt really true-its all a huge pretence-what the Americans call phoney.I think Denis the time is ripe for my ideas after all .
If you ever get into power darling...

And of course it is both true and phoney .In a consumer oriented society you cant angrily throw an empty can of Coca cola at a rich man in a Rolls Royce if hes the chairman of Coca Cola and is only rich because hes persuaded you to buy Coca Cola -a rather unneccessary drink...

Yet undoubtedly the tensions about wealth are still there They quietly bubble just beneath the complacent surface of even the most capitalistic of societies.And intense social tensions are created because-if we are honest, no one really knows what to do!Even out wealth! pull out the rug from the fat cats-and maybe the whole thing will come tumblimg down-But thats great! Thats just what we want!- Until we look for our 24-hour supermarket,multi screen cinemas, the corner Blockbuster video store -all gone. We have been here before....For all the immense social power structures sustaining it,the dynamic-capitalist-profit motive system-call it what you like -that modern societies operate on, are suprisingly sensitive-stock markets crash over night,entrepeneurs pull in their horns,the lights go out, the shutters come down...


The huge switch in Western political philosophies from an underlying apparently inevitable march towards social equality to a largely unrestrained free market system would have seemed inconceivable merely thirty years ago.Its progress has gone hand in hand with what must be called the liberating forces of rock music and its descendants.

It could of course be argued that this movement was not entirely new.There is almost nothing so liberating ,so exultant in the sense of freedom that it conveys than a piece of lively New Orleans jazz-music created by freed slaves . The technique of ensemble playing ,then each instrumentalist performing their piece, then coming together with an orgasmic sense of togetherness has never been equaled (except ironically in Bach) though the interlacing of the individual and the group is obviously found throughout classical music

It is interesting to discuss music and its forms in societal terms though as everyone admits ,its a thankless task,nothing can actually be proved regarding its effects ,only interpolated.Its easy to see the societal freedoms of the jazz age twenties changing to more integrated smooth swing manipulated rythyms of the thirties and forties as huge numbers of people were conscripted and controlled in dictatorships or wartime conditions-does anything epitomise the sense of people working together for a single common purpose than Glenn Miller?

And yet a tiny chink of light ,a gleam as from a distant new found star has recently emerged to open up a whole can of musical and cultural worms.Not perhaps entirely recent as the idea has been around for some time but new experiments have been more decisive in analysing its effects...
The effect being that listening to Mozart increases ones intelligence and awareness .

It is interesting to see how these latest reports have been presented .It is natural for any new scientific idea to be treated with skepticism yet I note a particular wariness about this suggestion.
And not unaturally. Social attitudes have followed as I have suggested , the pattern laid down forty years previously .The mass of people are stimulated by popular music into thinking they are freer and more equal than ever before while in fact social inequality and class differences actually increase at alarming rates and increasingly become more rigid than before.

The realisation that music is really a powerful mind conditioner -that people may be as it were -tricked by their musical preferences is a potentially dangerous discovery.It leads to many other strange and dangerous paths...
If some music can improve your intelligence it is reasonable to suppose that other music can limit or restrict your intelligence...
Even that is not all ,for if musical harmonies can produce these effects then other art forms may also act in the same way.Perhaps eating ones sandwiches in the National Gallery may not be such a bad idea after all

There is no doubt that what can be called high culture is usually a required need and desire of those who operate at a mentally high powered level -it is not merely a social attribute.
Music that emphasises its beat essentially emphasises the here and now -the immediate quality of life ,something that has been naturally appealing to many young people thoughout history .
So called 'Classical music' undoubtedly opens up the mind ,induces an almost drug like effect in which rationality of whatever kind becomes enhanced.Such rationality may not always be to the human good-it may produce ideas about building gas chambers or dropping napalm etc but these are the unfortunate by products of the thinking mind-the unthinking mind may of course avoid these rationally induced horrors -but then may quite suddenly decide to chop your arms off...

The analysis of music and other cultural forms in their relationship to intelligence and awareness is something that is going to continue. The results in relation to the whole structure of culture and society may be quite shattering-indeed so powerful and surprising that it may be in these areas that attempts may be made to suppress them.

Now theres an idea for a film producer!