Гармонии эпох. Антропология музыки

Harmonies through the ages by Leo S. Klejn

The author of this book is not a musician or musicologist, but a cultural anthropologist and archaeologist. In the book, he traces how harmony has changed over the course of history, how one system of harmony was replaced by another under the influence of shifts in social psychology. This approach allows him to compare the forms both of serious music and of light music. He believes that jazz and rock are not ‘anti-music’ (an opinion widely held in the Soviet Union) but proper forms of music. Accordingly they have their place in the overall development of musical culture, and many of their roots to be found engrained in musical tradition. From this perspective the question of the further development of music is considered.

There are twenty short chapters in the book. In the earlier ones, the idea is proposed that each epoch (age or generation) has its own musical language, and that generations are often unable to appreciate and assimilate the music of the preceding and following ones. In the ensuing chapters, the author considers monophony as the first such stage. Then organum harmony follows, after which come the next stages of harmony, as follows: Ars Antiqua, counterpoint, thorough-bass, functional harmony, then romantic harmony, and finally twentieth century harmony with its atonality, dodecaphony, aleatoric sounds, concrete music etc. Neoclassism is considered in this context, as well as the First and Second Avant-Guarde movements.

All of these stages can be confronted with stages of social psychological development: firstly, of classical antiquity and medieval man, of the Crusades and the Renaissance, later of the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, the Bourgeois Revolutions and Napoleonic Empire, nineteenth century technical achievements and twentieth century World Wars, totalitarian episodes and the disintegration of empires.

Each of these harmonic systems having a place in world history finds a response in the present, its main principles and devices being reiterated (mainly in the music of young people and in the music of the masses). This phenomenon is connected with the reappearance of certain modes of mentality within specific social milieus. So, for organum harmony a correspondence is found in hard rock; for counterpoint, jazz; for thorough bass, the music of the Beatles; for functional harmony, pop music and music for bayans and accordions; for romantic harmony, the jazz scale; and so on. Seven such comparisons are made, together with descriptions of successive harmonic systems and the corresponding stages of social psychology.

The struggle of Stalin and Hitler against the harmonies of the twentieth century is considered, along with a discussion of the fruitful components and destructive tendencies of rock music. Finally, there is a discussion of these problems with a young composer, a musician who is an adherent of dodeca-phony and of the Second Avant-Garde.