Music and the Decline of Civilization

> an excess of liberty, a confusion of social norms, and the weakening of authority that soon descends into lawlessness.

Well, that describes about every ranting grumpy grandpa unhappy with the younger generation. Seems a tad too generic and conservative to be worth anything.

> social breakdown begins with an increase in prosperity and the weakening of sexual restraint ...

> that the decline of a civilization can begin in the decline of its music.

This essay suffers by ignoring the elephants in the room.

Any such analysis must look at how, for example, the Nazis objected to the "weakening of sexual restraint" during the Weimar Republic, and the "decline of ... music" to justify why they needed to take power. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_music

Nor was Nazi Germany unique. Authorities in the Soviet Union and the US both opposed, for example, jazz music; in the US, for the racist view that “wild African jungle music” was a plot to destroy American culture. (Eg, https://archive.org/details/ChristianPatriotsCrusadeF.AllenM... )

This is quite relevant as the author specifically regards jazz music as a sign of not being in decline.

Who gets to determine if music is in decline? She doesn't say.

In the article one will find several points of apparent confusion between symptoms and causes: e.g., of course decadence can easily be accompanied by «weakening of authority» - that is because those that raise to power cease to be authoritative after the decadence in quality. Edit: but it is because of the compromise after the difficulty of properly organizing text in descriptive (historic) essays.

But surely, when you see societies that have become insensitive, and especially insensitive to the quality of sound tapestry - societies which have forgotten the value of silence, which is health and especially mental health - you can immediately see the signs of a downfall.

Its an interesting take and insight that old, independent cultures and philosophies came to the same conclusion about music, as well as tying it back to Eliot, the eternal and universal.

Not sure how it relates to today though. Did Woodstock signal the beginning of the end? Plato would be horrified by our drug fueled raves.

Also spending a whole article lamenting discordant music and then on the last note praising jazz is a great punchline.

What a lot of waffle, with a few examples but no actual attempt to prove or disprove the assertion.

Is this what gets you a History degree nowadays?

A few interesting historical tidbits buried inside a pompous vehicle for the author's many subjective value judgments. This gatekeeping rant about 'degenerate' music is a generational drum beat by moral conservatives many times over.

Music is universal to all cultures and time periods, and has as many facets. It's incredibly arrogant to think that you've landed on some unique vision of the 'right' kind of music, especially when you've fallen into the easy trap of thinking harmony is the true core of music simply because it's intellectually interesting. If anything, the core of music in most cultures is dancing.

"Such poets, being “ignorant of what is right and legitimate in the realm of the Muses,” rebelled against the traditional conventions of music and poetry."

this is the much fabled Plato? The genius? The big brain who thought there was a "right and legitimate" taste in music? Glad to see this fluff has been preserved for millenia

The article essentially claims that changes in musical styles and traditions can lead to broader societal changes, potentially undermining the established order and laws of the state, and that the emergence of "new music" that prioritized sensationalism and audience pleasure over traditional forms and harmony could be seen as a threat to social and political stability (based on Plato's assumptions). From my humble point of view yet another instance of "correlation does not imply causation".

impossible to read without "LLM, whats the key point of bellow in a single sentence please?"

Having done my graduate work on large scale music analysis, I read the entire article with great interest. The author makes great arguments, though they have not addressed one key topic – whether all this is causation or correlation, or perhaps reflection (causation in reverse.)

The author’s thesis is here: “The poets’ disregard for musical laws, provoked by their museless art, soon inspired in their audiences a contempt for all laws. This occurred because the poets engendered a skepticism toward the very idea of the good—precisely the kind of skepticism that results from the sophistry defined by Plato elsewhere.”

We can think about this from the perspective of two recent artistic movements – gangsta rap (think Wu Tang Clan, Biggie, Raekwon, Eminem) and melancholy pop (specifically, Lana del Rey.) Both are derided by civil society. In college (in the 1990s) there were plenty of debates on whether Rap even constituted music. Both are often pointed to as the cause for decline. Yet, both seem to the author to be either reflections or outcomes of civil decline.

Gangsta rap is the reflection of a society which progressed ahead, but left a sector of neighborhoods to decay, extracted from them, and celebrated success without acknowledging the costs. Gangsta rap, as violent and explicit as it may be, exposes this, comments on this, and brings the hypocrisy into full view for all to hear. Gangster rap was an outcome (not a cause) of purposeful policies which drove urban decay in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

On the opposite side, not all is well with the “successful” side of society. Lana del Rey reveals it well. The excesses and extreme freedoms are equally harmful within.

With Gangsta rap, the author sees people who had no voice, were disenfranchised from traditional media, and worked hard to establish their own voices and get their own stories out.

Also, the author notes “He did, however, condemn another kind of poet who had “native genius” but abused his talent to subvert order and harmony.” I wonder though – “order and harmony” for whom? Order and harmony often have winners and losers. The losers do not consider it harmony. As exemplified by Lana del Rey, even the winners may not consider it harmony.

The author points out: “Instead, they experimented with strange and unearthly sounds to arouse the excitement of the audience.” Could this be because the narrow confines of music – as the winners have described it – limit full freedoms of speech and expression. Could it be that the narrow confines might purposefully be narrow to only allow a set of specific narratives which perpetuate the status quo?

I’m glad the article notes “Such a hermeneutic of suspicion might have us believe that the mousikoi’s governance of the theater was no more than an exercise of power for power’s sake and that their laws were simply a set of arbitrary rules designed to control the masses.” But the author notes “Thus, harmony—understood not just as the momentary agreement of musical notes but as a complex unity born out of opposition and contrast—sustains the universe. Such a notion of harmony formed the criterion not only for good music but for the very idea of justice itself, defined by Plato as the flourishing of diverse individuals within a unified social body.” The key error is that Plato has defined Justice (as the article notes.) I wonder whether the slaves of ancient Greece agreed there was justice? Finally, the author highlights a line about bringing “audiences into communion with divine reason” yet I highly doubt there was true communion when a third to half of society were slaves.