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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Before entering the vast subject that I have determined upon, I must at least make a rapid sketch of the contemporary environment in which we are to place the role and position of music.
The title of the article mentions “industrial society,” an expression often used to designate and compare societies which have evolved economically. But it is necessary to go further and deeper: for the phenomena which are typical of the world today, such as mass-production and consumption, mass communications (or mass media), and mass culture, all these phenomena with which music in our time is confronted, are characteristic of a technical civilisation whose chief traits are found in all industrial societies, not only the Western European and North American, but also the Eastern collective ones.
1 A. Ripert and J. Dumazedier, Loisir et culture, Paris, Ed. du Seuil, 1966, pp. 145-154.
2 SEMA, Données Statistiques sur le système musical français, May 1967.
3 R. Kaës, Les ouvriers français et la culture, Université de Strasbourg, Institut du travail, 1962.
4 M. Crozier, Télévision et développement culturel, an inquiry carried out under the patronage of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the ORTF (Research Service) 1965.
5 A. Ripert and J. Dumazedier, op. cit., p. 157.
6 SEMA, report quoted.
7 H. H. Stückenschmidt, La musique au XXe siècle, Paris, Hachette, 1969, p. 191.
8 "La musique et la machine," Communications, 6, Paris, Ed. du Seuil, 1965. Is the amateur executant always a "potential source of musical power?" It is permissible to ask this question about, for example, the young lady who entertained the guests in bourgeois drawing-rooms with a barcarolle or an arietta after dinner, as was customary for a long time.
On the other hand, the great and multiform expansion of the guitar, with the greatest diversity in quality and standard, among the young of today, is writ large on the sociological musical table. The young "make music" just as the innumerable "pop orchestras" do, by seeking a seasonable communion between the public and the musicians in open-air festivals where hundreds of thousands of people get drunk and exhausted on sounds which are amplified to the four winds. But should one not, here again, in an inquiry which would be both sympathetic to, and critical of these great movements, ask to what extent both the amateur guitar players and the pop groups are "a potential source of musical power?"
9 Mille jeunes et la musique, an inquiry effected by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs with the aid of the IFOP, 1969.
10 5.7% only of radio listeners listen to it at least twice a week (SEMA, report quoted, 1957).
11 Madeleine Gagnard, Esprit, avril 1970, p. 782.
12 R. Francès, P. Roubertoux, M. Denis, Structure des intérêts artistiques de loisir, Paris, Institut d'Esthétique (to appear).
13 Let us note that there is one tendency which works in contrary motion to the movement we have described, and which has the effect of increasing the role and responsibility of the executant: the adoption by some composers of uncertain notation of various kinds, and their conversion to the aesthetic of the unfinished.
* This article originated as an introductory paper given at a colloquium organised by the International Council of Music in cooperation with the Conseil national frangais de la musique, the theme of which was: “The role and place of music in the world today” (Maison de l'Unesco, October 22-23, 1969).
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