The Beauty of the Ugly and the Ugliness of the Beautiful

Reflection in the field of aesthetics, at least since Friedrich Schlegel (Über das Studium der griechischen Poesie, 1797), has acknowledged the appeal of disturbing, irritating, or disharmonious contents and experiences. There are forms of “ugliness” which, instead of signalling the absence of artistic quality, are themselves capable of producing a meaningful aesthetic experience. In the mid-twentieth century, György Lukács (Skizze der neueren deutschen Literatur, 1953) greatly elaborated on this theme and offered contributions that make it possible to appreciate the breadth and complexity of this thought that has examined the issue throughout history.

Much less has been written—indeed, very little—about the “ugliness” of those works of art that our cultural history has placed on a pedestal and with which the so-called “classical canon” has been constructed, a canon before which it seems acceptable to show nothing but reverence. That musical events have existed, exist, and continue to be produced which have had—and still have—importance in the history of our culture is undeniable (we still call them “works” and “masterpieces,” thus forgetting their "processual nature", which, through the continual transformation of performance practices and modes of listening, allows them to endure through time). Yet we do not often reflect on the fact that our concept of “classical music,” curiously, also includes artefacts generally regarded as modest in quality: no one has ever claimed, for example, that Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory is a masterpiece (and yet it is considered “classical music,” although it is a kind of “classicity” one should not take as a model); and no one ever observes that the countless tiny-tiny-tiny pieces by J.S. Bach habitually inflicted on piano students—while not ugly—are by no means better than many other tiny-tiny-tiny pieces written by far less esteemed authors of the time, such as Mattheson, Marpurg, or Kirnberger.

But there is more, and worse, and one can become aware of it with the help of ethnographic experience—by looking at ourselves through the eyes of others. Before Western colonialism had conquered the planet, exporting and imposing our art and our concept of art, European music did not please everyone; indeed, in many parts of the world, it even appeared repugnant. When it was first brought to China, and Confucian-educated scholars had the opportunity to listen to Mozart for the first time, they found his music unspeakably vulgar. Mozart’s art—think of the Jupiter Symphony—imposes on the listener a roller coaster of changing moods. That could not help but clash with an ethics and aesthetics that prized balance and equilibrium, similar to the ataraxia advocated by Greek philosophers such as Epicurus. Then there is the famous anecdote told by anthropologist Franz Boas: that of the Inuit listening to German symphonic music on a gramophone record and, comparing it to their (apparently) simple little songs, and concluding that “the quantity of notes does not necessarily produce better quality.” And the other well-known anecdote reported by musicologist Curt Sachs, about that Albanian musician who called Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony “rather simple-minded”—a work built, like all our music, on a repetitive and tedious sequence of ternary or binary measures, lacking the variety of the additive aksák meters that seem so abstruse to Euro-trained musicians, yet are produced with total nonchalance by instrumentalists in the Balkan area.

To keep a sense of reality, it is useful to look at our music through the eyes of others. It is useful to listen to it with the ears—that is, through the perceptual categories—of today’s non-Europeans and, even more, to examine it through their attitudes before the contagion brought by European music: a contagion which induced Eastern countries to create symphony orchestras, all over the continents, while it would never even cross our Western minds to have a Gamelan or Gagaku orchestra in Milan, Zurich, or Stockholm—and yet we talk about multiculturalism!

If we look at ourselves with others’ eyes—if we try to listen to the music of our “classical canon” through the filter of the aesthetics governing Hindustani or Carnatic music, Gamelan, the Shakuhachi repertoire, or the Qin—it is hard not to reach the conclusion that we Europeans, at least since C.P.E. Bach, have created a music that constantly uses very blatant rhetorical effects: pianissimo and fortissimo, crescendo and diminuendo, speeding up and slowing down. No other culture on the planet has ever wished to express itself so crudely. After spending time with the music of many fascinating cultures of this planet, the writer of these lines has even developed a “crescendo phobia.” It has become difficult for him to attend a “classical music” concert because, at the first crescendo that pours over the hall, nausea and dizziness immediately follow.

What is beautiful—or rather, what is ugly—is that this classical canon of ours has consolidated its rhetorical idiosyncrasies and, even though performance practice changes over time, the underlying rhetoric stubbornly remains. It does not even seem influenced by that of other musics, which most people listen to anyway.

When we listen to jazz—for example, to Bill Evans—it is impossible not to notice that in his chords he avoids doubling the tonic, ot the fundamental note of chords) because the bass already provides it; there is no need to weigh it down with repetitions. Yet when we listen to a Mozart or Chopin concerto and reach the cadence… how many doubled tonics and fundamentals, and with what emphasis they are struck—how heavy-handed! They are indeed written in the score and (perhaps) it would not be legitimate to remove them, but one could at least lighten them, de-emphasize them. We have assimilated functional harmony for over three hundred years. Even if the tonic is not fired at the listener with brutal vehemence, there is no risk that he might fail to grasp its conclusive character.

The moral of the story: much of what our culture encourages us to consider beautiful is not necessarily—or not ontologically — beautiful. That is why I would like us, in relation to the arts and music of our own tradition, to adopt the balanced realism of parents who, while loving their children, are aware that they are not necessarily the most beautiful, the cleverest, or the most gifted in the world; and also adopt the equally healthy attitude of children who, though loving their parents, recognise that they do not embody the sum of all perfections. We are frequently urged to know other cultures without prejudice. What, then, should be the purpose of this openness to the world, if not to relativise the some of the ideas, principles, and practices we tend to take for granted?