The Anger of Compassion

Smackdown II: Beethoven vs Bigots

Lee Harris writes:

The President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has decided to ban all Western music from his nation's state radio and TV stations. The website of the Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, of which Ahmadinejad is the head, explained that "blocking indecent and Western music from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is required."

Ahmadinejad isn’t just banning Eminem, Fifty Cent, and Arnold Schönberg’s Moses und Aron, which might be reasonable; nor banning the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Weber, which would be positively commendable. No, Ahmadinejad is banning Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (obviously); Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde; the wonderful songs of Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, and Jerome Kern. Also forbidden are Handel’s endlessly diverting Concerti Grossi, Opus 6, Gabriel Fauré’s chamber music, Eric Clapton’s guitar, and Anton Bruckner’s vast cathedrals of sound.

Equally outlawed are Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, Lerner and Lowe’s My Fair Lady, along with The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and the complete works of Lully, Couperin, and Rameau. No more will the music of Verdi, Tupac, and Petula Clark be heard in the land of the Islamic faithful. None of the feet of the true believers will tap to rap or dance to the ballets of Tschaikovsky. No one will sway to the beguiling Cole Porter when he begins the beguine; no one will be hypnotized by Ravel’s Bolero. Out with Puccini, out with Irving Berlin -- who will care about the tear-jerking fate of Madame Butterfly, or the much happier one of the Annie who got her gun? No one in Iran will be allowed to.

Now, it's true that some people are bored by classical music. Some people hate show tunes. And The Rolling Stones may be past their prime -- hell, they may even suck when they perform at this year's Super Bowl -- but banning them? Banning it all? This truly is motivated by willful, flat-earth ignorance. Daniel Pipes gives us an example from an earlier Iranian leader, of whom you may have heard:

Ayatollah Khomeini had similar views, as he explained to an Italian journalist:
Khomeini: Music dulls the mind, because it involves pleasure and ecstasy, similar to drugs. Your music I mean. Usually your music has not exalted the spirit, it puts it to sleep. And it destructs [sic] our youth who become poisoned by it, and then they no longer care about their country.
Oriana Fallaci: Even the music of Bach, Beethoven, Verdi?
Khomeini: I do not know these names.

Got that? "I do not know these names." Khomeini lived in Paris for what, twenty years, and he doesn't recognize the names Bach, Beethoven, Verdi? Not any specific music, mind you, but not even their names. Pipes goes on to contrast Iran with Japan:

European classical music has shed its foreign quality in Japan, becoming fully indigenous. In this, Japan resembles the United States, another country which has imported nearly all of its classical music. Just as Americans have adapted the music to their own tastes and customs -- playing the 1812 Overture on the 4th of July, for example -- so have the Japanese. Thus does Beethoven's Ninth Symphony serve as the anthem of the Christmas and New Year's season. Not only do the country's leading orchestras play the symphony over and over again during December, but gigantic choruses (numbering up to 10,000 participants) rehearse for months before bellowing out the Ode to Joy in public performances.

Wow. I have to say, I lived in Japan for a year and I don't recall that sort of thing. Maybe it simply wasn't done on the island of Okinawa -- although the very first time I ever heard a compact disc player was in an Okinawan shop, and it was playing a Beethoven symphony (the Fifth).

But that gives me an idea: why not borrow that custom from the Japanese and make it our own? From the day after Thanksgiving, through Christmas and Boxing Day, let's be hearing some Beethoven. The Ninth Symphony, just as the Japanese do. Especially in any areas near Iranian embassies or consulates. Hell, let's extend it to the Russian Orthodox Christmas, which was just celebrated within the last few days.

Hmmm....and on Revolution Day, February 11... why, I think I may have just the song to suggest for President Ahmadinejad...

Whatever. As Lee Harris says, "Beethoven's Ninth can never really be heard for the last time."

Let The Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council do its worst; it can never hope to erase either Beethoven’s sublime melody or the poetry of humanitarianism with which it will forever be associated. As long as men can hum to themselves, it will continue to stir men’s souls and to elevate them above all the pettiness that divides us. It will remain long after Ahmadinejad has become merely a footnote in the history of our dark and troubled times.

Posted by Craig Ceely at January 9, 2006 03:42 PM