MUSIC, PHILOSOPHY, AND MODERNITY

402 music, philosophy, and modernity

impoverished as a consequence of this lack of contact seems to me

incontrovertible. The situation should therefore already be sufficient

to justify the argument that music education and the dissemination of

music are in need of transformation.^24 The less problematic aspects of

the ubiquity of music in everyday modern life do, on the other hand,

have important echoes in Wittgenstein’s concern with how music relates

to the other non-verbal ways in which we understand (and misunder-

stand) each other and the world. The obvious contradiction here is,

therefore, between the sheer fact of the growing presence, made possi-

ble by technology, of all kinds of music in people’s lives, and the demand

for critical interpretation and relentless innovation if music is to play

a role in cultural self-reflection and so, directly or indirectly, affect or

criticise society.

The temptation is to leave it at this contradiction, by opting for one

of the extremes. It should be apparent, however, that no music can be

said completely to belong at either extreme of this, in any case notional,

continuum. The location in such a continuum of particular music will

change as society changes, and as the reception and production of music

changes. These are predominantly matters for specific inquiry, of the

kind carried out in the best academic and journalistic work on music,

which has increasingly made music that was previously marginalised

by the academic study of music part of that study. What most inter-

ests me is the veryexistenceof music as something which cannot be

reduced to other forms of articulation and expression, but which also

does not make sense without its relationships to those forms, including,

of course, its relationships to philosophy.

The historical shifts in the relationship of music to its ‘other’, whether

that other be philosophy, theology, language, history, literature, or what-

ever, should not, however, just be interpreted in terms of an explanatory

theory. These shifts should also be understood as manifestation of the

24 The difficulty of maintaining this in contemporary conditions is a result of the domi-
nance of the ideology of the ‘free market’ (a notion which is laughable in the protection-
ist world of transnational corporations). In a free market people can supposedly choose
what they like. However, it is clear that endless money is spent in that market manipulat-
ing people into not making informed choices. People who ‘do not like/choose’ classical
and other important music have often never really heard any, or associate it with the class
divisions that influence its role in the public sphere. One consequence of my objections
to both the analytical philosophy of music and some other theorising about music is
the idea that they can help to stop people making the kind of imaginative connection
to serious music that can change their lives. If one mainly argues about whether music
arouses emotions, or whether x is presenting bourgeois ideology in their music, one is
not contributing to opening up great music to a wider audience.