Sabby Sagall - MUSIC and CAPITALISM: Melody, Harmony and Rhythm in the Modern World

the effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence. A. Schopenhauer .

Music is something which has made life worth living

Without music, life would be a mistake. Friedrich Nietszche.

Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Everyone loves musicif not every kind of music, then some kind or kinds. Nearly everyone in the modern world has experienced, mostly enjoyably, some public performance of some kind of music, whether it be a classical concert, an opera, a Broadway musical, or a pop concert, either live or on television or radio. Moreover, cinema is a central part of modern culture, and virtually all feature films and many, if not most, documentaries, carry a sound track with music.

Can we go further, however? Can we say that all human beings in all societies, including pre-modern and non-European communities, have created some kind of music, some specific style or form. There is no doubt that musical expression, whether public and collective or private and individual, is a universal experience. All human beings have experienced some form of public, collective musical performance. This is true whether we are ardent music lovers or feel we can take it or leave it. Nor should we forget informal, social musicschool choirs, teenage parties, weddings, music from other drivers car radios, buskers, musakthe list is endless.

Thirdly, I want to argue that music, in common with the other arts, does not simply happen to be a universal phenomenon. Enjoyment of music, participation in music, either as practitioner or listener, is not a contingent matter, but a necessary one. We may not feel music is particularly important to us in our daily lives. We may rarely attend a public music performance. Nevertheless, the love of and need for music exists in all of us as a universal potential feature. It is an aspect of human nature, as is the need for the other arts.

But can we go further still? Can we apply this to our earliest development? Can we conclude that music is not simply a potential, an optional add-on, a luxury in the education of middle-class children, rather like a foreign language, but an essential subject for the training of all our children? Most politicians and educators relegate music to this minor league of subjects, assuming that music is an ephemeral pleasure, not something essential to the development of all children as human beings in a social world. It is for this reason that music is always the first subject to be cut when governments trim educational budgets. Their assumption is that music may be enjoyable, uplifting even, but it is an indulgence rather than a necessity, an extra that should remain within the private preserve of the family, not a discipline that warrants demands on the public purse, especially in a period of financial retrenchment. So, let us enjoy music, they say, but let us not go overboard in our estimation of its meaning and potential role, especially in a period of pandemic and economic crisis. In an education system that has become increasingly utilitarian, we prepare children to fulfil necessary jobs in the economy so that, as adults, they can work to bolster our countrys position in the world. In such an atmosphere, music acquires a backseat, banished from the schools, or, if it features at all, it is confined to the sidelines, the Cinderella of the disciplines.