Lev Navrozov and the "Dying of Western Culture"


I ran across an article by Lev Navrozov at (of all places) newsmax.com . It is unusual these days for someone to talk so frankly about the decline of western culture in terms of classical music versus "pop" music. Even more rare is to find someone with the courage to describe "pop" music as "screaming, banging, thumping, and roaring," since many people are offended by an denigration of the popular music. It's the price we pay for living in a democratic culture, as Mr. Navrozov himself notes.

We live in an age of excessive sensitivity, especially to hard truths. We don't want anyone to be telling us that the television we watch, the computer games we play, the "art" we put on our walls, the movies we admire, or the operating system we use is utter and total crap, and that if we had any soul or sense, we would know better than degrade ourselves in the pigsty of pop culture and pop consumerism. But we are particularly offended when someone questions our taste in music. With each generation tastes in music plunge to new lows. The trouble is that musical tastes tend to be formed during adolescence, which is the worst period in the development of the human being. In fact, I strongly suspect that, during adolescence, people cease to be human beings. They turn into something else — into mere personifications of glandular vulgarity. A few grow out that dreadful state into something more or less approximating a human being. But the majority simply continue their slide back towards the primeval slime from which they originally arose. How else can you explain this abomination known as "youth culture"? People who immerse themselves in such diabolical rot can't possibly be human, can they? If so, then we would have to conclude that human beings are little more than a very large species of vermin that infest the surface of the globe like so many boils on the surface of Karl Marx's ass. If any civilized person has doubts on this score, all you have to do is try to listen to the kind of "music" adolescents nowadays wallow in. I put music in quotes because, of course, it is not really music, but simply rhythmic sneering, a diabolical chant full of rage and bitterness in which the protagonist tries to spout as many profanities as he can while telling the story of how he murders, pillages, and rapes his way toward self-respect. This is the sort of stuff the devils themselves in hell roar as they writhe in agony.

The rock music of the previous two generations appealed to animal within us. Although that hardly commends the stuff, at least animals are not without a certain amount of charm. Almost all of us are fond of dogs, for instance, though we don't share their animal interests, such as urine smells in bushes or ripping cats to shreds with bare teeth. But the pop music of today's adolescent generation appeals to the devil within us. It is clearly Satanic. There is no redeeming feature about it whatsoever.

If you trace the decline of western culture through the decline of music, you will notice something very interesting. Western art music originally arose out of religious worship. Even when music was written for secular occasions, the inspiration always came from God. This, in any case, is the testimony of all the great composers down through the ages. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms — they all agree that inspiration comes from God. Brahms himself admitted to Arthur Abell, "All truly inspired ideas come from God." But as the culture became more secular, and fewer and fewer composers regarded themselves as religious, musical inspiration waned.

It instructive to note that, even among widespread decadence, the influence religion tended to pull composers in a positive direction. Just examine the mid-century avant-garde. Who among this group still receive performances today? Probably the two most frequently recorded and performed are Olivier Messiaen and Krzysztof Penderecki. Messiaen wrote some forbiddingly modern music, harsh, dissonant, amelodic, featuring little in the way of classical development. Yet his music seems old-fashioned and accessible when compared to other avant-garde composers of his age like Stockhausen and Cage. The reason for this is quite simply Messiaen's fervent faith. Messiaen used modern musical techniques to portray the bewildering mystery of God's omnipotence. In doing so, he often relapsed into traditional tonality. In his final work, the "Illuminations of the Beyond," he concludes with a spare yet harmonious chorale played on muted violins entitled "Christ, the light of paradise." Penderecki also illustrates how the influence of religion turns composer away from avant-garde nihilism toward traditional tonality. In his "Passion of St. Luke," Penderecki used all the avant-garde tricks in the book to portray the horrors of Christ's sufferings. It's sort of the musical equivalent of Mel Gibson's R-rated Passion. But when Christ himself speaks, he sings more or less tonal lines. And the piece itself ends affirmatively with a warmly tonal chorale of sorts, as if Penderecki sense intuitively that it will not do to portray the glory of God with Schoenbergian atonalism.

Posted: Sun - August 15, 2004 at 07:47 PM          

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