Let us
imagine a contemporary composer writing a sonata that in its form, its
harmonies, its melodies resembles Beethoven’s. Let’s even imagine that this
sonata is so masterfully made that, if it had actually been by Beethoven, it
would count among his greatest works. And yet no matter how magnificent, signed
by a contemporary composer it would be laughable. At best its author would be
applauded as a virtuoso of pastiche.
Kundera
is well aware of a possible, and natural, response to the above evaluation of
the contemporary composer’s anachronistic piece. Indeed, he mimics such a
response:
What? We
feel aesthetic pleasure at a sonata by Beethoven and not at one with the same
style and charm if it comes from one of our own contemporaries? Isn’t that the
height of hypocrisy? So then the sensation of beauty is not spontaneous,
spurred by our sensibility, but instead is cerebral, conditioned by our knowing
a date?
But
he insists that there is “[n]o way around it: historical consciousness is so
thoroughly inherent in our perception of art that this anachronism (a Beethoven
piece written today) would be spontaneously
(that is, without the least hypocrisy) felt to be ridiculous, false,
incongruous, even monstrous”. Put more straightforwardly, his point is that “it
is only within the context of an art’s historical evolution that aesthetic
value can be seen”.
Is
Kundera right about the relation between historical consciousness and aesthetic
evaluation? This is a big topic and I won’t attempt to show that Kundera is
wrong. What I would like to point out is that he might have conflated aesthetic
experience and aesthetic judgment. Aesthetic experience necessarily has phenomenological
features; by contrast, although aesthetic judgment is usually accompanied by
aesthetic experience, the judgment itself is cerebral and does not have to have
its own phenomenology. In Kundera’s own words, there is “aesthetic pleasure” or
“sensation of beauty”, and there is “perception of art” or “aesthetic value [that]
can be seen”; my point is, the two don’t overlap perfectly.
The
main subject matter of Kundera’s book is the (modern European) novel, but since
he uses a musical example in the passage quoted above, let me use another
musical example to illustrate my point.
Prokofiev’s
first symphony, completed in 1917, was marked by imitation. As the composer confesses
in his autobiography:
I had in
mind the thought of writing a symphony in the style of Haydn … If Haydn were
living today, I thought, he would keep to his way of writing, while at the same
time incorporating some newer ideas. I wanted to compose just such a symphony
--- a symphony in the classical style. I finally gave it the name Symphonie classique
--- firstly because it was so simple: also in the hope of annoying the Philistines, and in the secret desire to
win in the end, if the symphony should prove itself to be a genuine ‘classic’.
The last sentence is intriguing, particularly
because of the combination of the word ‘genuine’ and the word ‘classic’ in scare
quotes. Prokofiev’s first symphony can never be a genuine classic, but it can
be a genuine ‘classic’. As a matter of fact, the symphony was well-received and
is still enjoyed by classical music lovers today. It is not felt to be ridiculous,
false, incongruous, or monstrous.
Is this a counterexample to Kundera’s
view? There is no simple answer to the question. On the one hand, Prokofiev
himself admitted that he imitated Haydn and tried to write a symphony in the
classical style; on the other hand, it could be maintained that the symphony is
not ridiculed because there are enough “newer ideas” in it to distinguish it from
a mere imitation --- the classical
style is more apparent than real.
In any case, we can still distinguish
between the aesthetic experience one has when listening to the symphony and the
judgment one may make about the aesthetic value of the piece. Even if the aesthetic
judgment has to be made within the context of the historical evolution of the
symphony as a form of art, it does not follow that the aesthetic experience
cannot be independent of such a context. We don't have to deny that aesthetic judgment can affect aesthetic experience, but we can at
least imagine that someone who knows nothing about Haydn, Prokofiev, or the
classical style may still enjoy Prokofiev’s Symphonie
classique.
The following is the charming, and
very short, third movement of the symphony; experience it yourself:
