On the last RCOTW post before the feature went into hiatus, a commenter questioned whether any of the composers I’d highlighted could really be described as “reactionary.” His reasoning seemed to be that if we apply the same definition of “reactionary” to the arts as we do to politics, morality, and metaphysics, the only composer worthy of the term would be one who had returned to writing exclusively Gregorian chants. (My own views on what constitutes a traditionalist or reactionary aesthetic are a bit more lenient, and close to Larry Auster’s. Scroll down to his reply to Karl D. to see the post I’m talking about.) Today’s reactionary composer, the Italian Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936), didn’t quite go that far, but he certainly came closer than most, basing many of his works on the church modes of the Middle Ages and Renaissance rather than the major-minor tonality of Classicism, Romanticism, and the better part of the Baroque, and sometimes even using actual Gregorian chants as thematic material.
Respighi is by far best known for his “Roman Trilogy” of orchestral suites, but he composed many other works as well. Here, I want to highlight the final movements of his Concerto in Modo Misolidio (Concerto in the Mixolydian Mode) for piano and orchestra and his Concerto Gregoriano for violin and orchestra. Aside from illustrating what I said about Respighi’s use of church modes and Gregorian chant, these movements also show that the man could really write a barnstorming finale–both have the complexity of good classical music and the sweep and emotional directness of film music.
Concerto in Modo Misolidio – Passacaglia (Allegro energico). Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Howard Griffiths (conductor), Konstantin Scherbakov (piano).
Concerto Gregoriano – Alleluia (Allegro energico). Performers not named in description.
Oddly, Respighi was a primary teacher of one of the most prominent American composers of the last century and one who is identified with a kind of stubborn, anti-modern romanticism: Howard Hanson. Hanson inherited his penchant for modal scales from his teacher. There are moments in Hanson that sound like Respighi and vice versa.
As I remarked in a previous post, I’m still not convinced that ‘reactionary’ is a description which has any meaning when applied to music. To the pedantic mind a ‘reactionary’ simply holds a set of views that are opposed to political liberalization or social reform. But good music seems to exist in an ethereal sphere unconnected with the material concerns of ‘reform’ etc. What exactly is a ‘reactionary aesthetic’ anyway?
Respighi’s arrangements of old music such as the suites of Antique Dances and Airs for Lute, could be described as transpositions of Renaissance and early Baroque music into a modern musical context. So do these sumptuous orchestrations constitute a ‘reactionary’ return to what Respighi called the ‘less sophisticated’ music of the past?
However these Airs and Dances are classified, they are lively and beautiful pieces and I like them very much
The effort to subordinate all things to politics is a pretty liberal concern, so in opposing it, we have to make clear that not all things are political. So, yes, reaction is a movement against a political movement but by necessity it’s a movement that is not itself entirely political.
If you think of “reactionary” as nothing but a political label, it certainly follows that one neither can nor should talk about “reactionary” aesthetics, since art neither can nor should be politicized. However, I define the term a bit more broadly than that: When I call myself a reactionary, I basically mean that I’m opposed to the moral, philosophical, religious, and political worldview of modernity. Since that worldview reaches far beyond politics, our critique of it must do the same—and if we want to offer a positive alternative to that worldview, a political ideology alone won’t do. That doesn’t mean that we should drag aesthetics (or religion, morality, and philosophy) down to the level of politics, as modern ideologies often do—it simply means that in attacking modernity at the root, we are attacking an all-encompassing worldview that is much more than a mere political ideology.
I have to admit that I haven’t given much systematic thought to what a “reactionary” or “traditionalist” aesthetic would look like, but here are my thoughts on the subject so far. As I see it, the key idea in the modernist aesthetic is that beauty is completely in the eye of the beholder; not a standard or thing “out there,” but a subjective matter of emotional responses and personal preferences. Since beauty is not objective, it cannot coherently be said to be the proper object or purpose of art, and some other standard—self-expression or originality, say—has to be be put in its place. (Or you can simply say that the concept of art is itself completely arbitrary and subjective. This is the point Marcel Duchamp was trying to make with his infamous urinal.) A reactionary aesthetic, in my mind, is simply one which rejects the modernist aesthetic and goes back to the traditional view: That beauty (and by extension, truth and virtue, since the three are all aspects of the same Good) is objective, and is the proper purpose and object of art. Therefore, any artist whose works reflect such a reactionary aesthetic is to that extent a “reactionary” artist.
Thank you for your lucid commentary on ‘reactionary music: your point of view is much clearer (to me) now. I had a vague apprehension that what you meant by ‘reactionary music’ would turn out to be a counterpoise to modernist militancy by taking us back to the civilizing role of art music.
Your remarks about how a ‘reactionary aesthetic’ should be understood, seem to engage with the last puzzling lines in Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn:
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
Was this a deliberate literary allusion or just a coincidence?
Glad my scattered thoughts clarified things! This is a very interesting topic, and would probably make a good subject for a longer post or essay. I can’t say I was thinking of Keats in particular–the notion that truth, beauty, and virtue are all aspects of the Good goes back to Plato, so it would be more accurate to say that I (and almost certainly Keats, too) was alluding to him.