The Rhetoric Analyser (pat pending: Lawes Industries 2009). False Dichotomy warning light on, now with added feature specifying a 'standard' or 'binary opposition' form.
Rufus Wainwright's new 'opera' is discussed in the Independent here. I don't have much to say about it really, not my sort of music so on the one hand good luck to him, I hope people like it. On the other hand, at least as per the quotes in the article, he comes out with some rather challenged guff about the state of the art which seems worth commenting on. The issue primarily is the false dichotomy* presented here...
"Opera seems to have been hijacked by intellectual elements," he said. "For a long time I wanted to make it a little less intellectual and have more emotional engagement. You have to remember it was a populous form, like the bandstand of its time."Let's assume we know what he means by the terms 'intellectual' and 'emotional engagement' and go on to contrast the two (let's also give him the benefit of the doubt and assume the grammatical error, malapropism even, was a product of faulty transcription, of course it should be popular, not 'populous', that would suggest opera was once densely populated, like the Netherlands).
So, apparently, the intellect and the emotions are A: possible to define and separate B: antonymous. The caption underneath a moody looking picture of Wainwright reads.. 'Rufus Wainwright: Opera is for all, not just intellectuals'.
It might as well say 'Opera is for all, intellectuals and emotional people', this reframing highlights the false nature of this dichotomy (* it's not, perhaps, exactly a false dichotomy depending on which definition you use, there is no 'excluded middle' in Wainwright's formulation as he uses the term 'less', it's not an either/or argument specifically either, erm, see a philosopher UPDATE: a philosopher speaks, see comments)
Emotional states are of course, impossible to avoid if one is conscious, that is if we accept the concept at all. Card carrying 'intellectuals' are just as emotional as erm, normal (?) people. 'Intellectual' opera (whatever that is) is just as emotional as erm, emotional opera? (help me out here Rufus.)
I don't want to pick on him too much, he might not have even said the stuff attributed to him in the Independent article (as tends to happen in newspaper interviews, I remember my brother being interviewed by a local newspaper years ago about a BBC drama soundtrack he had composed, at the end of the article it quoted him as saying 'it was a real boon', he never said that, he never says that, the journalist just made it up and it became an mildly amusing catchphrase for a few weeks. I still use variations of the phrase now and then like in this previous post.)
However, this creaky old trope is a bit annoying and worth challenging or at least poking fun at. It gets trotted out every now again when someone trying to preempt criticism from those 'intellectual' meanies wants to justify making some 'nice' music ('emotional' could just be replaced by the terms 'romantic' or 'traditional' in Wainwrights 'world'.)
Nothing wrong with writing melodic romantic opera, not my bag but who cares, go with it, no need for polemics (by protesting it suggests he does think there is something wrong with it.)
Anyway, I don't want to be mean, just to suggest that the dichotomy intellectual/emotional is specious rubbish, and that Wainwright should have more confidence in his work, whatever sort of music it is (the rhetoric of enmity not required.)
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