"The English are the only cultured nation without its own music (except street music)"
- Oskar Schmitz
(via Ed, identifying the more nuanced source of the famous "the land without music" claim, which sounds harsher and more contemptuous in German: Das Land ohne Musik)
This was the title of a 1904 book seemingly dedicated to this mystery: Das Land ohne Musik : Englische Gesellschaftsprobleme
Here's an even larger portion from the book with the quotation above embedded:
''I have long sought to understand the nature of that lack which repeatedly becomes apparent behind so many English good qualities and has such a dulling effect. I have asked myself what is missing from this nation, perhaps kindness, love of humanity, piety, humour, aesthetic sense? No, all these qualities are present in England, some even more visibly than in our country. Finally I discovered something that distinguishes the English from all other civilised nations to an amazing extent, a lack which everyone admits – thus no discovery at all – but the implications of which have probably not yet been emphasised: THE ENGLISH ARE THE ONLY CIVILISED PEOPLE WITHOUT MUSIC OF THEIR OWN (apart from street ballads). That does not mean that they have less fine ears but that their whole lives are the poorer for it. To have music in oneself, even if ever so little, means being able to forget oneself and to tolerate dissonance, even linger with it, because it is resolved in harmony. Music gives us wings and makes everything miraculous easy to understand.''
Wonder how many people in England bought this insult in book form and how much indignation and disagreement it stirred up?
An interesting discussion of the Schmitz quote and the fact that this was quite a common prejudice on the part of Germans in the 19th Century.
Heinrich Heine, for instance, wrote:
"These people have no ear, neither for the beat nor indeed for music in any form, and their unnatural passion for piano-playing and singing is all the more disgusting. There is verily nothing on earth so terrible as English musical composition, except English painting."
The phrase "Land Without Music" has been picked up by other people over the years for books about English music traditions
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche says the English can't philosophise. But objectively, Britain and Germany have been the dominant European nations in modern European philosophy (out of the major western philosophers, only Descartes is the uncontested French entry). Around the time Nietzsche was writing, there was some crossover between the German and British traditions: Bradley, Frege and Whitehead, with the Austrian Wittgenstein's Tractatus the great crossover of British logical atomism and German idealism. But after that, the division became too broad and jagged to bridge (an oversimplification, but not much of one). And then the Americans took over. Still, the British and Germans are united in the Catholic countries' disdain for their cooking.
ReplyDeleteIn The Naked Jape, Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves cite a sociological study stating that Britain and Ireland place a far higher social value on humour and wit than other developed European nations. Though curiously, the two philosophers I recall being noted for their writings on humour are Bergson and Nietzsche.
Vaughn Williams was part of that paradoxically international trend reacting against the French-German-Italian dominance of classical music by mining their native country's folk music for inspiration. But isn't Elgar considered, in the States at least, a classical one-hit wonder with Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 (the American graduation song)?
Would you be inclined to the idea that the British "discovered" music by the import of rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues, and made it British by the addition of wryness, irony and good old sarkiness?
I should clarify that I meant if Elgar is considered internationally a one-hit wonder.
DeleteOh, I forgot to mention Wittgenstein and humour. Wittgenstein's writings are peppered with suitably austere jokes (from Philosophical Investigations: "It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language. (Including the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)) Wittgenstein also said a serious work of philosophy could be written consisting only of jokes, and that humour is a way of looking at the world, suggesting that Nazi Germany's humourlessness meant they'd killed off something deep and important to the German psyche.
DeleteThat's interesting about the philosophy. I applied to do PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics - I planned to drop the E bit as soon as possible) at Oxford, but at the interview, they surmised that my interest was in the Continental philosophers and that I would not do well with the Anglo logic stuff, so they offered me History and Economics.
ReplyDeleteInteresting too about the greater value placed on humour in British Isles culture. That does seem to chime with my sense of Britishness - often a sense of humour is opposed to ideology or religiosity - any kind of fervent deadly serious belief. The idea (Amis Snr and Jnr both trafficked in this) is that the ideologue and the devout are a little less than fully human because they are too serious, they don't have a feeling for folly.
Don't know anything about Elgar. And in truth, British music pre-1960 is quite blurry for me. I ought to read that new-ish Bob Stanley book about popular music before 'pop' as we understand it. Although I'm not sure if it's purely about the UK side of things - probably it's America as well but with a bit of UK slant. He covers things like music hall and Tin Pan Alley.
On the 'cheap music' side of things, seems like there's a native proclivity for melody, but perhaps not so much for rhythm. That came imported as jazz and then rock'n'roll. So it's not so much the Brits discovered 'music' as discovered rhythmatized music, with jazz and then the later Black American (and Caribbean) musics.
Then again, Morris Dancing is music to move to.
What else does British music prior to the rock era have?
Well, there was Gilbert and Sullivan.
I should say (though I hope it was already obvious) that German philosophy was absolutely kneecapped by Nazism and the postwar division. Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss were fortunate enough to escape to America, and Wittgenstein, Popper and Freud to Britain. The Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers inspired by Wittgenstein's Tractatus, disbanded due to the rise of Nazism, with prominent member Moritz Schlick assassinated by a Nazi student in 1936.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Nazism, the major intellectual (if one can call him that) to lay the philosophical foundations of Nazism was a British writer called Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a late Victorian who wrote claptrap about the natural superiority of the German race and their battle for world domination against Jews, and who became a naturalised German and married one of Wagner's daughters. Hitler even attended his funreal in Bayreuth. The British-German philosophical crossover could get quite grubby.
Spengler's "Prussianism and Socialism" is one long diatribe against the English. The Speng posited that there had only been three nations with the will to dominate the world - Spain, England and Germany.
ReplyDeleteSpain had dropped out, leaving the competition between the rapacious, Viking-like English and the egalitarian knightly Germans. Obviously The Speng thought the Germans would be the inevitable winners, and when in 1918 that proved not to be the case he wrote "The Decline of the West".
A lot of this pre-WW1 German commentary on the English is a manifestation of this challenger vs. champion mentality. A mixture of admiration, fascination, and fear. The most bizarre manifestation of this phenomenon is Junger's "Storm Of Steel" - he wants the Great War to go on forever because the English are such excellent foes.
Yes, the publication date for this is significant. A lot of cultural production in Germany was dedicated to laying the groundwork for the war that many among the elites saw as inevitable. Just as a lot of the commentary in Britain was dedicated to stoking anti-German sentiment, for the same reason.
DeleteAlso worth noting the English were banging out dis kinda ting more than a century before Bach turned up:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sQfYxw9OaQ
Fair point: that is absolutely gorgeous. Taverner and Byrd no slouches, either.
DeleteHeine's crack about English painting seems like a cheap shot. Turner, Constable and Gainsborough can go toe-to-toe with anyone Germany produced in that era.
ReplyDelete