I got an email from someone who remembered better than I what was in my "100 Voices" chapter. My report on the conversation of Rand and Nathan's nephew is in that book.
Of course that doesn't solve the problem. We are stuck with what Rand wrote and said in public.
Shoshana Milgram, the Rand scholar, reported on the Ayn Rand Centre UK "Atlas Shrugged" Book Club that Rand listened to "Boris Godunov," the opera by Modest Mussorgsky, while she was writing "Atlas Shrugged."
I was at a party at Allan and Joan Blumenthal's, standing in line for food, behind Rand and one of Nathan's nephews. His two teenage nephews spent their summer vacation with him.
Rand asked the boy, about 16, if he knew what he wanted to do with his life. He said he didn't know but that he knew he needed psychotherapy first.
Rand asked why he thought he needed it. His answer was that he loved Beethoven's music. Rand waved that away. She said he shouldn't worry about that, that very little was understood about taste in music.
Once Rand knew that even Nathan's nephew thought that, it would have been great if her statement about it had been made public, so that decades later you wouldn't still be dealing with that idea.
I did 4 hours of phone call interviews with ARI. I haven't looked at my notes to see if this Rand/Beethoven memory of mine was part of what I spoke about. But what they put in my chapter of "100 Voices" was the least important of all I talked about.
Rand's views on music are a puzzle I've often thought about. As you say, it's bewildering that she considered Beethoven's music "malevolent." There is a definite pattern to her musical preferences, though, and it shows that what we love in music is often what we learned to love in childhood.
She disliked Beethoven. She disliked Strauss's "Blue Danube" Waltz; at least an article published in _The Objectivist_, which surely wouldn't have contradicted her views, expressed strong dislike for it. I've heard it said that she disliked Mozart, though I have no source for this. The composers she expressed admiration for include Tchaikovsky (in _The Fountainhead_, by a walk-on character who shared Roark's sense of life) and Rachmaninoff. Her radio show used an excerpt from Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, a part which is notable for its driving force. Richard Halley is a stand-in for Rachmaninoff, who wrote four piano concertos. Yet Rachmaninoff wrote many gloomy pieces, such as _The Isle of the Dead_, and Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony is the Platonic form of despairing music.
Is the pattern obvious? The composers she loved were Russian; the ones she despised were Germanic. She grew up in Russia during World War I; it isn't unreasonable to think she developed a hostility to Germanic culture which she may not have fully identified in herself. It's not a moral flaw that she developed a dislike of things she associated with Germany and Austria, at least when those things are only a matter of taste, but I don't think she entirely realized how much those associations drove her tastes.
She liked Dostoevsky, whom I might have expected she'd consider "malevolent," but she disliked some other Russian authors. She admired Schiller, so that certainly doesn't fit the pattern. With the literary arts, at least, she had more solid reasons for evaluating authors positively or negatively, so she depended much less on tastes she had grown up with.
Fascinating comparative analysis, Kurt! You make a great parallel case for the emergence of deliverence from struggle.
I'm curious what you think about Rand's relatively extensive discussion of music (about 14 pp.) in her essay "Art and Cognition" (in The Romantic Manifesto). There, she states: "Until a conceptual vocabulary is discovered and defined, no objectively valid criterion of esthetic judgent is possible in the field of music."
C-A, I agree with Rand's point in RM about no objective judgment of music being possible at this time. In my essay I put it in terms of judging other people's sensibilities, not the music itself, but I think it pretty much amounts to the same thing.
What an interesting essay, Kurt! I'll be revisiting to read it again because there's so much here to mentally digest. I will say, I am a bit biased on this matter because Beethoven is my favorite composer. After reading your essay, I realize more firmly that it is because he and I share similarities in our "sense of life." It's interesting because though, in my opinion, Rand had a misunderstood view of Beethoven, she wasn't the only one who viewed his music as containing the malevolent universe premise. Recently, I attended a concert at the symphony that featured Beethoven's work, along with a piece written by a modern Germanic composer in honor of him. When I listen to Beethoven's work, especially Ode to Joy, I'm filled with a sense of resolve. But the modern composer who created a composition in honor of him felt much like Rand did, both in his description of his work and the work itself. I'll have to find the play bill, but he essentially stated what Rand did, and that his work was all over the place, fiery, and full of doom. I was shocked by this, and unfortunately, shocked (not in a good way) by the composition. Anger was the main motive of the piece. But for Beethoven, regarding his work, it was desperation. For many, these two appear to be the same. But understanding nuance, these two emotional drivers are very different. Bukowski once said, "Artist are desperate people. When they stop being desperate, they stop being artists." I agree with Bukowski, and I think that's how Beethoven ran his creative world. I guess it is the fate of great minds to be misunderstood. Or maybe it takes going through a similar situation to Beethoven's personal life, when dealing with his "fate's hammer," to appreciate his work properly. I do admit, I'm a sucker for sad songs so maybe there's bleed over with that into classical 😂
Thank you for reading, Michael. I don't think Rand would say that Atlas had a tragic ending. The final scene consists of Galt saying to Dagny that the road is clear and they can go back to the world. It would have been fun to read a sequel that showed them rebuilding and dealing with the leftover looters.
Interesting take on the novel, but I think it's ultimately unsupported. If you look at the last few images in the book you see Haley practicing his music, Rearden planning a steel mill, Mulligan plotting his investments, Narragansett correcting the constitution, and Ragnar brushing up on Aristotle so he can teach philosophy. It's clear that these men are on the verge of going back to their true vocations now that "the road is clear." The story of the strike is over--it succeeded when the lights of New York went out. I think that we're supposed to believe that such competent men will have little trouble rebuilding, and the story of how they do so would require another novel. Maybe when the copyright on Atlas expires, someone could write it!
I got an email from someone who remembered better than I what was in my "100 Voices" chapter. My report on the conversation of Rand and Nathan's nephew is in that book.
Of course that doesn't solve the problem. We are stuck with what Rand wrote and said in public.
Shoshana Milgram, the Rand scholar, reported on the Ayn Rand Centre UK "Atlas Shrugged" Book Club that Rand listened to "Boris Godunov," the opera by Modest Mussorgsky, while she was writing "Atlas Shrugged."
I was at a party at Allan and Joan Blumenthal's, standing in line for food, behind Rand and one of Nathan's nephews. His two teenage nephews spent their summer vacation with him.
Rand asked the boy, about 16, if he knew what he wanted to do with his life. He said he didn't know but that he knew he needed psychotherapy first.
Rand asked why he thought he needed it. His answer was that he loved Beethoven's music. Rand waved that away. She said he shouldn't worry about that, that very little was understood about taste in music.
Once Rand knew that even Nathan's nephew thought that, it would have been great if her statement about it had been made public, so that decades later you wouldn't still be dealing with that idea.
I did 4 hours of phone call interviews with ARI. I haven't looked at my notes to see if this Rand/Beethoven memory of mine was part of what I spoke about. But what they put in my chapter of "100 Voices" was the least important of all I talked about.
From Iris Bell
Thank you for reading, Iris. Have you thought of publishing the full interview you did with AR?
I'm going to look over my notes of the 4 hours of talking with ARI.
I may be able to cover what's most interesting or important of it with The Rational Egoist podcast.
Rand's views on music are a puzzle I've often thought about. As you say, it's bewildering that she considered Beethoven's music "malevolent." There is a definite pattern to her musical preferences, though, and it shows that what we love in music is often what we learned to love in childhood.
She disliked Beethoven. She disliked Strauss's "Blue Danube" Waltz; at least an article published in _The Objectivist_, which surely wouldn't have contradicted her views, expressed strong dislike for it. I've heard it said that she disliked Mozart, though I have no source for this. The composers she expressed admiration for include Tchaikovsky (in _The Fountainhead_, by a walk-on character who shared Roark's sense of life) and Rachmaninoff. Her radio show used an excerpt from Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, a part which is notable for its driving force. Richard Halley is a stand-in for Rachmaninoff, who wrote four piano concertos. Yet Rachmaninoff wrote many gloomy pieces, such as _The Isle of the Dead_, and Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony is the Platonic form of despairing music.
Is the pattern obvious? The composers she loved were Russian; the ones she despised were Germanic. She grew up in Russia during World War I; it isn't unreasonable to think she developed a hostility to Germanic culture which she may not have fully identified in herself. It's not a moral flaw that she developed a dislike of things she associated with Germany and Austria, at least when those things are only a matter of taste, but I don't think she entirely realized how much those associations drove her tastes.
That's a very interesting observation, Gary. Would you say the pattern extended to any other area of art? It doesn't seem to include literature.
She liked Dostoevsky, whom I might have expected she'd consider "malevolent," but she disliked some other Russian authors. She admired Schiller, so that certainly doesn't fit the pattern. With the literary arts, at least, she had more solid reasons for evaluating authors positively or negatively, so she depended much less on tastes she had grown up with.
Fascinating comparative analysis, Kurt! You make a great parallel case for the emergence of deliverence from struggle.
I'm curious what you think about Rand's relatively extensive discussion of music (about 14 pp.) in her essay "Art and Cognition" (in The Romantic Manifesto). There, she states: "Until a conceptual vocabulary is discovered and defined, no objectively valid criterion of esthetic judgent is possible in the field of music."
C-A, I agree with Rand's point in RM about no objective judgment of music being possible at this time. In my essay I put it in terms of judging other people's sensibilities, not the music itself, but I think it pretty much amounts to the same thing.
What an interesting essay, Kurt! I'll be revisiting to read it again because there's so much here to mentally digest. I will say, I am a bit biased on this matter because Beethoven is my favorite composer. After reading your essay, I realize more firmly that it is because he and I share similarities in our "sense of life." It's interesting because though, in my opinion, Rand had a misunderstood view of Beethoven, she wasn't the only one who viewed his music as containing the malevolent universe premise. Recently, I attended a concert at the symphony that featured Beethoven's work, along with a piece written by a modern Germanic composer in honor of him. When I listen to Beethoven's work, especially Ode to Joy, I'm filled with a sense of resolve. But the modern composer who created a composition in honor of him felt much like Rand did, both in his description of his work and the work itself. I'll have to find the play bill, but he essentially stated what Rand did, and that his work was all over the place, fiery, and full of doom. I was shocked by this, and unfortunately, shocked (not in a good way) by the composition. Anger was the main motive of the piece. But for Beethoven, regarding his work, it was desperation. For many, these two appear to be the same. But understanding nuance, these two emotional drivers are very different. Bukowski once said, "Artist are desperate people. When they stop being desperate, they stop being artists." I agree with Bukowski, and I think that's how Beethoven ran his creative world. I guess it is the fate of great minds to be misunderstood. Or maybe it takes going through a similar situation to Beethoven's personal life, when dealing with his "fate's hammer," to appreciate his work properly. I do admit, I'm a sucker for sad songs so maybe there's bleed over with that into classical 😂
Thank you for reading, Michael. I don't think Rand would say that Atlas had a tragic ending. The final scene consists of Galt saying to Dagny that the road is clear and they can go back to the world. It would have been fun to read a sequel that showed them rebuilding and dealing with the leftover looters.
Interesting take on the novel, but I think it's ultimately unsupported. If you look at the last few images in the book you see Haley practicing his music, Rearden planning a steel mill, Mulligan plotting his investments, Narragansett correcting the constitution, and Ragnar brushing up on Aristotle so he can teach philosophy. It's clear that these men are on the verge of going back to their true vocations now that "the road is clear." The story of the strike is over--it succeeded when the lights of New York went out. I think that we're supposed to believe that such competent men will have little trouble rebuilding, and the story of how they do so would require another novel. Maybe when the copyright on Atlas expires, someone could write it!