Gotterdammerung and Gemeinschaft

"Das Wesen des Menschen vervollkommnet sich nur in Gemeinschaft, in der Einheit des Menschen mit dem Menschen"

The other day we stumbled into a video clip of Solti's 1964 recording session of Gotterdammerung. Needless to say, the sound coming through a compressed file on a desk top computer was less than full force and purity.

Nevertheless, from the outset, we were astonished by the sheer sym-phonization of human endeavour. To be sure, such coordination of effort is something that takes place even in a quartet, but the sheer size of romantic orchestras renders the synchronization an immensely complicated and astonishing event.

As we watched these rehearsals we kept on thinking of "sinews... sinews..." Every individual musician, with his piece, was a sinew of the whole who had to be integrated flawlessly and cooperatively into a sonic organism. The result was beauty.

Oddly enough it was the cymbalist, in a related clip, who brought this realization home. Such a simple and singular thing a cymbal, and yet there was, in fact, nothing very singular about it. We watched as the cymbalist stood intent and imminent, his ears, eyes, and nervous reflexes attuned to make the crashing gong at just the right moment with just the right reverberation. Watching him, tense and poised to make the perfect klang, we glimpsed an internal coordination of sense and synapse that was an equally amazing correlative of his external coordination with the whole.

If the cymbalist illustrated what it means to integrate, Solti's conducting provided a visual impression of what it means to draw out a consensus. Because this was an in-studio work-session, Solti's body language was much more demonstrative than would he would allow in a public performance and his body became an incorporation of the orchestra's members.

I was fascinated at how physical gestures in space reflected tonal modulations in time -- how Solit's torso said "lunge," how his arms said "full" or how his fingers said "tremolo" and his wrist, "gentle fade and ...lift off lightly" -- in short, how these sights matched the sound and made sense.

And so, we were brought to think of something Pope Benedict said recently, this past April, when he referred to the study of music as a "gymnasium" which exposes students to the challenges of interacting collectively, not only on an artistic or professional plane, but as human beings.

Speaking to a visiting youth orchestra, Benedict pointed to their "constant practices carried out with patience; the exercise of listening to the other musicians; the commitment not to play 'in solitude,' but to do so in a way that the different 'orchestral colors' -- while maintaining their own characteristics -- were established." Such exercises, he said, reflected a "common search for the best expression" with implications that went beyond just making music. Music, the Pope said, is "capable of opening minds and hearts to the dimension of the spirit and of leading persons to raise their gaze on High, to open to absolute Goodness and Beauty, which have their ultimate source in God."

From a pontiff who does not shy away from reminding Christians of their Greek roots, it was hardly surprising that he should consider musical practice to be an exercise in political formation; and from an academic steeped in the heritage of Christian thought it was no surprise to hear that, ultimately, the political city should be ordered toward reflecting Truth, Beauty and ultimately God.

At the same time, one could not but hear echoes of Hegel in the Pope's remarks; for, at the core of Benedict's orchestral metaphor was the what Germans call the Gemeinschaft.

In its more modern signification "gemeinschaft" means little more than community, association, a working-together. But within the tradition of German idealism, the word denotes that vision of society as a living organism -- not a collection of individuals pursuing their happinesses but a living, dynamic union in which and through which the individual is allowed to discover and express his individuality. As Ludwig Feuerbach put it,

"Isolated man by himself has not the essence of man in himself, the essence of man is contained only in the community, in the unity of man and man, a unity, however, which depends only on the reality of the difference between I and you. Man by himself is man (in the ordinary sense), man and man, the unity of I and you, is God"

... or at least Gotterdammerung.

This is a theme Benedict had repeatedly returned to in his papal writings. In his first encyclical, Spe Salvi, he drew a sharp distinction between faith as a social reality and as a subjective experience. Taking a swipe at Luther's "I saw, therefore I am saved", Benedict asked, "are we not in this way falling back once again into an individualistic understanding of salvation, into hope for myself alone, which is not true hope since it forgets and overlooks others?"

Benedict answered: "Within Catholic teaching, salvation has always been considered a “social” reality. The Christian message was not only 'informative' but 'performative'."

One might paraphrase: " It is not enough to say 'I believe', the true believer says 'We do!'"

More recently, in his encyclical on Social Justice, Caritas in Veritas, the Pope wrote that "Every Christian is called to practise [a public ] charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis." This institutional or political form of charity was, he said, no less excellent than personal acts of charity. On the contrary,

"Man's earthly activity, when inspired and sustained by charity, contributes to the building of the universal city of God, which is the goal of the history of the human family. In an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family, that is to say, the community of peoples and nations, in such a way as to shape the earthly city in unity and peace, rendering it ... an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God."

Clearly, Benedict is working on a theme. In the passages we have cited , the words "music" and "charity" could be substituted and the "score" would still make sense. Benedict most emphatically espouses the view that the best way to kill beauty is to reduce it to a question of aesthetics -- the what do "I" see. But if beauty becomes a mode of action, in music, in sport, in charity and in politics, then we get a panoramic intuition of God's Gemeinschaft so that contemplating Solti's recording sessions becomes a way of meditating on Aristotle's dictum that "man is a social animal".

Looking at the "orchestral gemeinschaft", the first thing we notice is that it consists of an inter-locking of sounds and it is readily apparent that no one instrument could itself produce the whole-sound. But does the whole diminish the part? In the final scene of Gotterdammerung the horns appear subordinated to the whole-sound. One would think that the full expression of what it means to be a horn (or a violin or flute) would take effect in a solo composition. But if Feuerbach is right, a horn only becomes fully a horn in differentiation with a violin.

What individuality, exactly, does man discover in gemeischaft with his others? Anything else other than that he discharged the function of a timpano or a meister shoemaker? What creative scope does such an individual member have? Benedict, at least, is quite clear that there is a script to perform.

"Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation ..."

When he speaks of "Charity in Truth", Benedict emphatically means that there is a truth which must inform charity just as charitable disposition must inform truth.

So too Wagner. Watching Solti makes it clear that there is a responsibility to the score; one that allows for subtle interpretations, perhaps, but which unmistakably requires an immense amount of discipline. This social working together is no ad hoc jam session.

The Enlightenment Mind protests: Is it not totalitarian for every member to play from a dictated script, as interpreted in details by the conductor? Each musician may be singular but where does his uniqueness shine out and fulfill itself? It is true that the a "con"cert by a cymbal solo would consist of several klangs... spaced 15 or 37 minutes apart. But if such roles are meaningless "on their own" they have been made so by the script for the whole.

One is left not with "I have performed." but rather with "I have participated."

There arises then, an opposed view; one that is characteristically American and which holds that the good of all comes from the individual pursuit of happiness.

It goes without saying, that such a paradigm easily lends itself to mere individual gratification. But the Framers of the America polis weren't laying the foundations for a desert. They intended a gemeinschaft but one, which in their view, was to be driven and shaped by indiviudal pursuits. What shape such a society would take was impossible to say precisely because the individual pursuits are random. One is left to believe in an invisible hand or, in the manner of Tolstoy, a divine calculus of history, in which "strategies" are displaced by the unfathomable and unpredictable flowing together of individual impulses.

What would such a polis sound like? Not surprisingly, a typically American jazz session comes to mind, although the contrast is perhaps illusory given that even "free form" jazz entails adherence to chord structures and rythmic rules. It seems to us that the sound of such a polis (as opposed to the spontaneity of its becoming) is more likely to be something like Putnam Camp by Charles Ives,

Or perhaps Circus Band

Is cacophony symphonic? The answer is not clearly, no. At least Ives heard symphonies in nature and in the discord of man. And, this view leads to a third spiritual alternative: faith as acceptive which posits a beauty beyond perception.

What kind of orchestration is required of us as humans? A chipster brain is not big enough to encompass an answer. And perhaps there is no answer other than that there are many ways to make music. But it does seem to us that observing how musicians co-ordinate and don't, how they are at one and in many and what is required to make music together is a living metaphor for what is entailed in being human.

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