The French
musician Paul Dukas (1865-1935) was not only a talented composer, but also a
critic, scholar and teacher, who wrote more than 400 articles. When I listened
to the radio programme “Composer of the week” on the Dutch Radio 4, which
presented the life and music of Dukas, I heard the following quotation from an
article that he had written in the 1920s (the quote was in Dutch, which I have
translated here into English):
“Every day
the blasé public is surrounded by the sound of telephones and cars that
transport them at top speed from one art manifestation to another. They hog the
conversation but they don’t want to waste a minute. When this operation has been
finished and has already been forgotten again, they do not ventilate an
impression but an opinion; especially one that is elegant and that has been
provided with a superior smile for the occasion in the midst of all these
tortures.”
Dukas went
on with some remarks in which he wondered whether music (and art in general) has
to be adapted to this rising superficiality and whether society still has a
need for a kind of art that follows its own fundamental principles.
When I
heard this quotation, I wondered whether much has changed since Dukas wrote
these words ninety years ago. Even more, hasn’t the situation become more
marked in these days of the Internet, Facebook, Twitter and so on, where everyone
has the opportunity and is in the position to express an opinion on who knows
what – not only on art – on any moment and to the whole world? Or is this quote
simply the thought of a frustrated critic who is himself blasé by thinking that
there is some kind of “high culture” that is not reserved for everybody and
that has to be admired with awe? For isn’t such a criticism as passed by Dukas
of all times? I think it’s double: The quote contains the unreal feeling of a
paradise lost but isn’t it so that we need standards of quality and aren’t they
always threatened by superficiality and laziness, not only in art but
everywhere in life? But what then is quality and who tells us what it is?
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