As Goethe said in 1826, « Periods of decline and dissolution are subjective, while progressive periods advance in an objective direction. Our time is a time of decline, because it is subjective. » He also stated that « the universal sickness of the present is an excessive turning in onto oneself. »
It is easy to imagine how these thoughts arose in the midst of the Romantic period, and it is obvious that they are, unfortunately, still relevant today. In the present time, governed as it is by the media and bling-bling attitudes, subjective judgements are commonplace, and the packaging of a work has become more important than its content. This is of course not a new development, and the fact that speaking about one's art precisely and objectively is now perceived as almost indecent has only increased the problem. It is hardly surprising that wary composers attempt to justify their music in any possible way, going so far as to call on disciples and highly-visible "artists" for help, when in fact their works are actually much more complex than the rags they have been wrapped in, and are perfectly capable of standing on their own.
It is easy to understand the strategy of the musical world: crushed by commercial music, harassed and controlled by the obligation to produce "results", the composer has no choice but to justify his work in the very terms he has rejected. Consider for a moment the gussied-up "works" that we are forced to swallow no matter what, the televised music lessons that could not exist without the presence of commercial singers, and the set music for the French Baccalaureate exam, in which popular songs have replaced musical works worthy of the name. The only thing that matters nowadays is that people should instantly grasp music - for as long as a term of political office lasts. Consider the elitist position of confused concert organisers and politicians who believe that both the general public and young audiences are incapable of objectively appreciating the value of a complex work and of delighting in its beauty. And at the end of the day, it is always "our" music that comes up the loser: it is easier to talk about crowd-pleasing packaging than the work itself, and the popular music heard on television and used in school programmes is seen as the current incarnation of what Chopin and Schumann's music - which are heard as mere tokens on television and only touched upon in schools - once was. These are manifestations of the downhill trend in the musical and cultural worlds, neither of which knows, as a result of the subjectivity and fear that have engulfed them, whether they actually like what they produce.
Let us now take a closer look at several works, in the same spirit that Goethe the botanist scrutinised nature. We hope that in so doing we can leave behind the hasty judgements that slow the progress of Knowledge and Art.
Philippe Hurel