This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To become a patron from just £3 a month, got to Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod
In this patrons-only episode, Jeremy dons his professorial gown to deliver the first of two lectures on music and Marxism. What is historical materialism? What does it mean to apply historical materialist analysis to culture? Jeremy shows how Marxist theory can be - and has been - applied to music from Bach to Jazz, illustrating ways in which we can explain cultural and aesthetic changes with Marxian thinking.
In this episode Jeremy gives a whistlestop refresher on Marxist thought, then introduces us to some of the writers whose work can be applied to analysing music: Lukács, Bakhtin, Voloshinov, and members of the Frankfurt School including Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer. Jeremy considers the main innovation of the interwar period - the development of recording technology - and introduces the idea of reification as both a positive and negative phenomenon. He also considers how various forms of music-making embody egalitarian or bourgeois subjectivities, and tees us up for the next episode, starting in the 1940s.
Tracklist:
JS Bach - Harpsichord Concerto No.1 in D Minor BWV 1052
Beethoven - Symphony No. 3 in E flat major
Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 in C minor
Igor Stravinsky - Firebird
Arnold Schoenberg - Verklärte Nacht
Books and Articles:
The SAGE Handbook of Marxism
Jeremy Gilbert - A Brief History of Marxist Cultural Theory (https://jeremygilbertwriting.wordpress.com/2022/07/24/a-brief-history-of-marxist-cultural-theory/)
György Lukács - History and Class Consciousness
Valentin Voloshinov - Marxism and the Philosophy of Language
Walter Benjamin - The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Adorno & Horkheimer - The Dialectic of Enlightenment
