Day Six: “High” vs “Low” Art
In 2018, Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for music with his album, DAMN. It was the first time in the award’s history that the honour went to an artist outside of the rarified precincts of classical (or very occasionally, Jazz) music. With Lamar winning a prize of such recognition and renown, he stirs the old debate of “high” versus “low art”, beating "classical music” with rap. It was also a testament to the high standing that Rap now has in US culture, Lamar confronting the hierarchies between what constitutes high art and low art, and breaking down the class, and often race barriers usually associated with these two labels. The Pulitzer board described Damn as “a virtuosic song collection, unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life”
Who decides what is high and what is low art? Indeed, the parameters of this dichotomy are vague and perhaps a touch outdated. Already in the 1700’s, writers began to make distinctions between high art and low art, the former concerning the aesthetics of a work, the latter more concerned with the works function and utility.
For today’s listening, I have chosen two works which could not be further apart in terms of their aesthetic, Kendrick Lamar’s DNA (from his Pulitzer winning album DAMN) and Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C minor.
John A. Fisher, in his essay “High art vs Low Art” says, “high art” has become synonymous with most classical music, most poetry and most art that is displayed inside prestigious museums. It is defined by a certain sense of form, of enjoyment experienced not in momentary pleasures but with deep, intellectual reflection and is dependent, on the whole, on the perceiver having a certain amount of a priori knowledge of the subject matter so as to identify its nuance and skill.” It is undeniable that a Beethoven Symphony or an Impressionist painting takes on a greater significance when one can appreciate the mastery of technical skill, the musical humour or significance, as opposed to experiencing something without this knowledge. To play the devil’s advocate, if those of us who spend the majority of our time with predominantly classical music were to equip ourselves with the necessary cultural context, an understanding of the musical syntax of rap, then perhaps a similar intellectual engagement to Kendrick Lamar’s music would provide the possibility of intellectual reflection, albeit of a slightly different kind. The jury of the Pulitzer prize had never heard DAMN before it was unanimously awarded the prize. Yet with aesthetic prejudice aside, an analysis of the lyrics and both content and context, it was felt that Lamar’s music was engaging with, reflecting and challenging society in a way that art should, and far too often “classical” or “high” art these days doesn’t.
Theodor Adorno in particular is very critical of “low art”, especially with regard to its status as a commercial product that tames the masses through its repetition and simplicity. What he fails to acknowledge is the difference between the ideas of high and low in relation to notions of quality; good and bad. It is certainly not the case that high equals good and low equals bad. With the notion of high art comes a great deal of snobbery and elitism at the expense of art that really might say something profound, might be groundbreaking in its own right and yet come in the form of a pop song. One pertinent example, of course, would be Kendrick Lamar winning the Pulitzer Prize for music. Lamar was commended for his ability to combine the personal with the political, religion with sex and to provide a key voice to issues of race. If art should be a progressive voice for humanity, then it would be hard to argue he wasn’t deserving of such a prize; one wonders which contemporary classical composers (or, for that matter, older works from the canon) would be able to showcase such pertinent issues in their art.
Lamar’s win also raises the idea of musical fetishism discussed by Adorno. Whilst discussing “higher art”, Adorno puts forward the notion that classical music has been reduced to a collection of classics under the wing of a star system whereby success and popularity are to do with box office figures rather than intrinsic quality. What is interesting about Kendrick Lamar’s win, therefore, is that he combines both of these aspects. That is to say, he is a very commercially successful artist of what Adorno and Fisher would consider “low art”, an example of a product of musical fetishism, of regressive listening (through repetition and ease of comprehension) and yet, he is able to speak on a human level both physically and intellectually that emancipates what he does from the shackles of commercialism and the characteristics of “low art”.
Here, therefore, must be the discussion of the difference between high and low and good and bad. I wonder whether or not the ability of much of what would be considered “low art” to communicate on a human, physical level, deal directly with emotions and appeal, for example, to the impulse to dance, can necessarily be considered bad simply because it is less complex in its construction? The labels of high and low art are extremely derogative to much of the latter, and one must wonder whether this is because the social classes are stereotypically more concerned with pop music as opposed to classical music, have not had the voice or simply don’t care to make the distinction. Of course, the borders around what constitutes high and low art are becoming increasingly blurry, and, with special regard to social class, pop music is seeing a growing appeal across all social groups, acting as less of a class marker than it used to, say in the 1960’s.
Of the aspects of musical fetishism that Adorno puts forward; exchange value versus actual value, repetition of standardised works, the idolisation of stars, the desire to instantly gratify and the subservience to a market, the twenty-first century offers little distinction between high and low art with all factors applicable to both sides. As such, whilst the intellectuals may find comfort in degrading popular art in favour of their mighty high art, the conversation should rather centre around measurable qualities of skill, social context and therefore, of good and bad. The “worst”, (if we consider worst to be poorly constructed, lacking in technical and spiritual content as well as an absence of originality of ideas ) pieces of classical music by composers that history will never remember, had far less to say than some of the groundbreaking music by Radiohead, the Beatles or Lamar.
In a world whereby we encounter all forms of media all the time, where pressing issues of race and class deserve our utmost attention and deepest engagement, whether or not one listens to Mozart, Kendrick Lamar, Beethoven or The Beatles, it should be done with a critical ear, an understanding of the subject matter and in the spirit of destroying binary parameters that have dominated music for so long. In the words of the legendary jazz musician Miles Davis “Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.”
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