In addition to publish David Leung's (theorydavid, or Leung Sir) teaching, and musical activities, the blog Music and Arts:音樂與藝術 is also used to reflect his ideas of and aesthetic respones to music, literature, poetry, painting,and various arts written in the form of articles, poems, and academic papers.Your heartfelt responses are my great support. For those who are interested in advance music learning, please also visit my personal website: http://www.davidmusiccenter.com/。
A proverb says, “one man’ s meat is another man’s poison’. It is very true that the taste of man is different from one another. This can happen in food, in fashion or even in music. However, if you like one piece of music, you may have some reasons for it. You may be attracted by its charming melody, its exciting rhythm, or some other non-musical reasons, such as, the underlying ideas of that piece of music. The music that you hate, likewise, may also have some reasons for it. To me, there is one kind of music that I really love to hate. This kind of music is the music that is written for political propaganda.
We all agree that an artwork usually possess certain ideas and thoughts concealed within. Sometimes, this is called motivation or the inspiration of the artist. Similarly in music, a composer often wants to express something, perhaps his ideas, personal affection, or even only his favorite musical sound through his music. His duty is to transform all these abstract ideas and feelings accurately into concrete musical sound in a logical and understandable way through the creative and artistic process. No matter what underlying idea that the music contains, this piece of music has its artistic value. But, it is greatly unsufferable if the music is only written for the purpose of promoting politics.
In my opinion, politics are dirty, hypocritical, greed and selfish. If an artwork connects with political purpose, unavoidably, it becomes spoiled. We should remember that the preciousness of art is valued by its genuineness, goodness and beauty. This is a common standard to evaluate an artwork. I regard music as an art. I can accept that the purpose of writing music is for making money. This is very common in the commercial world. I think, to some extend, the composers are concerned how to make their music more popular, and at least, they are doing something that is genuine to him, or to the audience. But the political music is totally different. They are only selling the so-called ‘perfect image’ of the government. The motivation behind is duplicitous. It is not strange to find that a politician boosts his plan to do everything for the people before the election but never moves one finger after officially elected. I cannot find any genuineness and goodness in this kind of music. The selfish purpose of the music makes its text, melody, and sound absolutely disgusting. I prefer the music written for advertisements to this kind of music though they seem to have the same motivation - promoting an object or idea. It is because the music of advertisements, at least, possesses some beauty. The product that the music promotes may be nice and lovely. But the product of the political music promoted is only nasty and unpleasing.
Owing to the above reasons, I consider the political music is not an art. It has no artistic and aesthetic value. The dirty underlying political ideas make the music nauseating. Undoubtedly, the political music, therefore, is the kind of music that I really love to hate.