1

Spenglerian Noise:

Reading Attali’s History of Music through Decline of the West

 2

Oswald Spengler and Jacques Attali share a common understanding of

the history of Western Art Music, seen in their books Decline of the West and

Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Spengler’s account of the decline of

western music ends right before the major shifts in music to happen in post-

War Austria, but Attali’s history to the 1970s is not just compatible with, but

follows from Spengler. Spengler sees music as ending with a cheap repetition

of a fixed musical language, and Attali’s analysis concurs. Other coincidences

between their respective theories make it seem that their accounts represent

a meaningful account of the history of music and give clues to the future of

Faustian Art.

Attali, a French economist and advisor to President François Mitterand,

studies the history of music from a perspective that Spengler considers at

best overly idealistic.1 Yet Attali’s Marxism is not a major hindrance to the

study, especially considering Spengler’s consideration of the philosophy to

be inherently Western.2 This Western perspective is also inherent in

Spengler’s account, being that his ability to see across cultures is a possible

manifestation of the Faustian infinite. Their insider perspective makes their

histories have almost a personal connection to their copious examples, and

allows a free crossing of their narratives in a way that completes both.

Because of the heavy philosophical basis, an understanding of the

terminology used in each authors’ narratives is crucial to following them to

1 Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (New York: Random House, 2006) 390.
2Spengler 34.
 3

their fullest extent. Spengler freely uses the general term art to describe

both music and visual art, focusing on the superficiality of optical and

acoustic means” of experiencing art.3 Similarly, Attali claims that “the world

is for hearing,” and that music provides a prophetic glimpse into the new

stage of the culture.4

Spengler takes a less prophetic view, but still he views music as crucial

to the understanding of the culture. Music is the fulfillment of the Faustian, or

Western, ideal in art.5 The Faustian soul strives through empirical barriers

into infinity. It eschews reality in order to experience the supersensuous

personality and feeling.6 The Faustian soul is in contrast to the Apollonian, or

Classical, soul, which focuses on the purely empirical and visible.7 Classical

art aims for a personality, but it is an idealized character put into the art, not

brought out of the subject.8 While he does not discuss music in the Middle

East, he views the Magian culture as a spiritual understanding of the world,

focused not on expanding empirical knowledge as the West, but comfortable

with the dark cavern of mystery.9 Attali has no common argument in this

way, since he largely limits himself to Western Art music, and focuses heavily

on France. However, his use of cross-cultural comparisons might be similar to

Spengler’s concept of simultaneity, and one can see his discussion of free

jazz as a fundamentally different style as an admission of a separation of

3 Spengler 115.
4 Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1989) 3.
5 Spengler 150.
6 Spengler 137.
7 Spengler 115.
8 Spengler 141.
9 Spengler 130.
 4

cultures.

Both authors take an organic view of the history of music. Spengler

explicitly describes the lifespan as an “inconspicuous beginning” followed by

“slow growth” into a “brilliant moment of fulfillment” and a slow decline.10

Specifically, he views the organism of music visibly starting in the Gothic era,

building through the Renaissance to its height and ultimate manifestation in

the Baroque, and then falling throughout the 18th and especially the 19th

centuries, leaving the state of music in irreparable disarray by the post-War

era.

This coincides with Attali’s history almost without change. Attali views

the history of music as a four-part progression through networks of

distribution. He starts in the Sacrifice stage, where music is not only heard at

the place of Sacrifice, but all around. Distribution moves to one of

Representation, where music is limited to the spectacle of a unique

performance. It then moves to a Repetitious stage where music is no longer

social and is mass-produced and individually stockpiled, regimenting and

silencing aberrations from the general form. Finally, he posits a stage where

the individualism manifests itself as individual Composition. These stages

roughly coincide with Spengler’s stages: Sacrifice is in the nascent culture of

the Gothic era, Representation is in full swing during the high culture of the

Baroque era, and Repetition starts at the end of Culture in the late 1800s. His

Composition stage does not occur in Spengler’s narrative, but can be seen as

10 Spengler 110.
 5

a corollary to the post-Civilization world without form.

Existing throughout the entirety of Attali’s narrative is the concept of

noise. Noise for Attali is sort of a catch-all term, but it usually refers to the

underground movements – the highly dissonant, the counter-cultural, and

the cottage industry. It is similar to the technical term, where it means

interference with the message, regardless of meaningfulness. A “low” music

example, blues music, provides a clear understanding of what Attali means,

even though he does not use it expressly in his book. The shift from an

ametrical style of music with indistinct and poorly describable pitches,

unpolished and varying styles of singing, and a fan base of largely poor rural

Blacks to one with a tightly common time rhythmic feel with a codified chord

progression and melodic mode, a stylized and essentialized singing style,

and a broader, more cosmopolitan fan base shows the removal of noise from

a style of music.

As a final definitional note, two philosophical concepts Spengler

borrowed from Goethe’s writing are paralleled in Attali’s world. The concept

of becoming and become, living and existing, was extended to music as

imitation and ornament.11 Imitation reveals the soul of the culture, and

comes from the individual. On the other hand, ornamentation is its exact

opposite. It simply conjures a stock of forms, and employs a general

language of the whole. These concepts are very easily transferred to Attali’s

work. Imitation seems to be the Representative spirit divorced of the

11 Spengler 102-105.
 6

economics of the spectacle, while ornamentation is analogous to the

Repetitive world of the phonograph. Again, Attali’s book fills in the gaps that

Spengler could not focus on.

Attali argues that the seeds of Western music started in prehistory as a

minor form, or simulacrum, of ritual Sacrifice signifying change.12 He notes

the dichotomous role of the musician as excluded, seen in the Islamic law

that a musician cannot eat at the same table as another member of society,

and adored, seen in the fact that the distinction between musician and non-

musician is the first division of labor.13 Being a Marxist, Attali’s arguments

largely include economic parallels, and during this time-period, he sees no

economic hierarchy.14

Following this period, Spengler’s narrative begins with the Gothic age,

starting in the mid-1200s. Music was for the public, and the two styles of

music, the sacred and secular showed a split between a waking

consciousness and the reality the listener lived in. 15

Both musics were

monophonic, with simple melodies that appealed to the heart16 and did not

require a written system, 17 though one existed for church music as a

mnemonic device. Gothic music was architectural by nature, it built from

basic blocks of vocal melody.18 In this way, the simplicity worked to create an

imitation nearest to life.

12 Attali 4.
13 Attali 12.
14 Attali 13.
15 Spengler 119.
16 Spengler 119.
17 Attali 14.
18 Spengler 120.
 7

Attali discusses the role of the jongleur, the musical vagabond who

remained outside of society because of his demonized status in the church.19

During this time, even court music was like the music of the proletariat,

except for the use of an orchestra and less bawdy texts.20 The use of an

orchestra is seen as a foreshadowing of the spectacle inherent in

Representation.21 Despite the foreshadowing of an economic system, the

circulation of music was neither monopolistic nor elitist.22

At the same time, Attali notes that 1300 brought a major paradigm

shift. Before this shift, major strides were taken by the church and ruling

classes to silence folk music. He cites the Council of Avignon in 1209, the

Council of Paris in 1212, and the Council of Bayeux in 1300.23 Over the next

200 years, professional jongleurs are declining and are overtaken by the

ménestrel, who is not an entertainer, like the jongleur, but literally a

“functionary,” who acted as the voice of the people.24 The ménestrels

monopolized the ceremonies requiring music and relegated the jongleur to

an amateur status. Unlike in the past, ménestrels were free craftsmen,

selling themselves to a single social class: the royalty. They limited the stock

of forms by appropriating the melodies of the vulgate and making them

appropriate for royal ears. For Attali, this brings the beginning of the end of

the Sacrificial mode of production.

19 Attali 15.
20 Attali 15.
21 Attali 65.
22 Attali 15.
23 Attali 22.
24 Attali 15.
 8

From here on, music has entered into the realm of commodity and

exchange. The growth of capital and spectacle has fetishized music,25

making it only a secondary simulacrum of the violence it represented.26 Attali

uses this point to proselytize the Marxist view of the rise of capitalism, using

the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin to explain music’s role. Music is an

eliminator of violence as a redirection in the form of a simulacrum, and then

the usage of the music is exchanged for money. Afterwards, there is a

breakage of contract on the side of the state. Finally, music is reconverted as

violence again against the future.27

The assignment of value to what was once a Sacrificial code “gives

music a meaning and operationality beyond its own syntax.”28 As such, music

loses its role as an affirmation of the reality the listener lived in. Music

becomes valorized29 and codified.30 According to Attali, it is like a language

whose speakers remember the syntax, but not the meaning.31 There is no

use for music, but it is still promoted as either a placeholder or a regulatory

element.32

This temporary downfall of music is highlighted in Spengler’s

discussion of the Renaissance. He claims that this time period was

essentially “anti-musical.”33 It was an attempt to replace the Western

25 Attali 32.
26 Attali 24.
27 Attali 29.
28 Attali 25.
29 Attali 36.
30 Attali 25.
31 Attali 25.
32 Attali 26.
33 Spengler 121.
 9

concept of infinite space with the Classical empirical body, influenced most

by the Magians, ostensibly through North Africa and Spain.34 He calls the

Renaissance the “only dream of the Faustian Soul in which it was able to

forget itself,”35 comparing it to the simple counter-movement of the

Dionysiacs.36 It did not fundamentally change any ways of thought.

Musically, Spengler mentions two schools, the Ars Nova supported by

the Medici and the Low-German Counterpoint of Florence Duomo. Both were

essentially gothic. 37 He also notes the early movement toward free

chromaticism, mentioning the artistry of the time started using a “studio

brown.”38 Spengler refers the patina, or deconstructing sheen, artists used

during this time, drawing a parallel to Attali’s concept of noise. When he

mentions the use of the visual brushstroke as an important innovation of

Venetian artists, he mentions its connection with the “accents of personal

temperament” during that time, such as Monteverdi’s orchestrations or

specific flows of the melody of a particular composer’s madrigal.39

Attali begins to mention the influence of technology during this time.

He claims that technology serves as reinforcement for the existing code of

production, yet it can still profoundly change the use of the code.40 During

the rise of Representation during the Renaissance, this means that the rise of

printed music serves as a catalyst. Music is not fully a commodity until

34 Spengler 123.
35 Spengler 125.
36 Spengler 122.
37 Spengler 122.
38 Spengler 132.
39 Spengler 131.
40 Attali 35.
 10

merchants gained the power to control production, and until 1527, publishers

can only sell their scores through and to the royalty. After that point,

however, the publisher begins to have exclusive rights over the reproduction

and sale of his printing.41 This gives meaning to the advent of new musical

forms such as polyphony, and the rise of a scalar, instead of modal, form of

pitch organization.42

Much like the foreshadowing of the orchestra and the printing press,

Spengler sees the origins of ornamental music in the infinite space of

polyphony started during this time.43 He notes that the a capella music of

Palestrina and de Lasso no longer expressed the “passionate drive into the

infinite.”44 For this reason, purely instrumental music overtook the vocal

music of the time, and music moved “from a superpersonal form to a

personal expression of mastery.”45 Closing his discussion of the most

distasteful period until the modern age, he describes the high point of the

Renaissance as the time when music had apparently been expelled from

culture.46

Breaking free from the musical low of the Renaissance, Spengler sees

the height of Western music as the Baroque era. By the 1600s, music

becomes familiar. We hear the common instrument groups, such as strings,

called the “noblest of all instruments,”47 woodwinds and horns; characteristic

41 Attali 52.
42 Attali 35.
43 Spengler 119.
44 Spengler 119.
45 Spengler 120.
46 Spengler 120.
47 Spengler 120.
 11

timbres of instruments;48 and common-practice orchestral structures, like the

proto-sonata suite symphony and concerto grosso.49 Baroque music rose out

of an opposition to the vocal masses and motets of the Renaissance, taking

with it the polyphony and thematic development those styles began.50 Yet

from that low point in music, the string quartet and other chamber musics

bring Western art to its highest point.51

Spengler talks again about the “color” of the music of the time,

mentioning blue-green specifically. He considers the atmospheric and

insubstantial basso continuo to be blue-green, as the base, the rhythmic and

harmonic ground, of the music.52 This base provided the last form of musical

ornamentation, the four-part fugue, and the imitative sonata movement.53

These Baroque forms were motivic and originally pictorial in form,54

transforming art into a portrait-study. It is finally here that music fully

overtakes art,55 effectively ending sculpture except for the “entirely musical,

unrefined, unclassical and counter-Renaissance art” of porcelain.56

Music’s victory is said to be 1670. Most of the masters of oil painting

were dead or dying. Newton and Leibniz abstracted mathematics into

differential calculus. Most importantly, pictorial music ended with the deaths

of Schütz, Carissimi, and Purcell. The cantata, with its image-themes and

48 Spengler 118.
49 Spengler 120.
50 Spengler 120.
51 Spengler 121.
52 Spengler 128.
53 Spengler 120.
54 Spengler 120.
55 Spengler 149.
56 Spengler 121.
 12

variety of color, had, for all purposes, ended. With all these shifts in style,

Lully becomes the hero of Spengler’s narrative.57 With him, the baroque

system starts to break down. Monteverdi’s opera and the sonata for

orchestra, organ, and string trio end, bringing the mature forms of the

concerto grosso, the suite, and the three-part sonata.58 Building on the

abstraction of mathematics, the theme is no longer an image, but a

“pregnant function.” Music has been freed from empiricism and becomes

absolute in the “ceaseless process of differentiation and integration” of

Bach’s fugue.59

Lully is also important to Attali as a key player. He was the last link

between music and the feudal world.60 His dedication of his opera Persée is

used as an example of what Marmontel’s Encyclopedia decries as an

outdated symbol of submission.61 And yet, these cracks were not enough to

destroy patronage completely, it was the dwindling power of the feudal

leaders that ended it. In 1672, the first concerts for profit provided new

power to the bourgeoisie, giving the merchant class the possibility for

musical power.62

The end of feudal power coincides with the end of culture. The pure

symbolism of mathematical rigor provided for Bach’s Kunst der Fuge and

Wohltemperirte Clavier.63 The pure forms in the music were saturated with

57 Spengler 150.
58 Spengler 150.
59 Spengler 150.
60 Attali 47.
61 Attali 49.
62 Attali 50.
63 Spengler 151.
 13

meaning, making the separation between the math of beauty and the beauty

of math impossible.64 As such, the origins for the pure ornamentation and

repetition of the Rococo period were set.

Spengler’s section on the transitional Rococo period is appropriately

short. The disdain he holds over the Hellenic-influenced Renaissance is

shared over the Rococo. He calls this period the “death of architecture,”65

since the time’s style was focused on minutely detailed and almost garish

art. He considers it to be simple ornamentation, a repetition of the stock of

forms.66 Despite his negativity, the Zwinger Palace was the “most artistic” in

the world, and he compares it to an allegro fugitivo for a small orchestra.67

This comparison highlights Attali’s argument that music is inscribed within

the reality of a system of power. This ornamentation was an attempt to hide

the reality of the world, contrasting with the original intent of music. It was at

this time that Germanic peoples in Dresden and Vienna hosted the home of

chamber music.

Following the Rococo period, the Classical era – not to be confused with

the Hellenic era of the Apollonian soul – took root. It was the Faustian search

for an expanded tonal and timbral palette. 68

Spengler lists a number of

musicians he considers to be in this idiom, the younger Bachs, Hadyn,

Mozart, and Beethoven among them. Attali sees this stage exemplified by

Mozart, who, as of 1778, showed that the Classical era was a transitional
64 Spengler 151.
65 Spengler 152.
66 Spengler 152.
67 Spengler 152.
68 Spengler 151.
 14

stage. Music was not a sign of power, since the feudal lords had lost their

monopoly over music production, but there was no new force yet to take

over.69 However, it is clear that the Representation Attali focuses on was in

full force by this time, due to the almost total freedom from the “shackles of

aristocratic control.”70 By this point, clients were rich enough to pay for

entertainment, but not rich enough to pay for it for themselves only.71 These

concert-goers first funded a composer, Hadyn, in 1741.72

However, Attali sees this era as slightly lower than earlier. “When

music entered the game of competition,” he says, “it became an object from

which income could be drawn without a monopoly; it fell subject to the rules

and contradictions of the capitalist economy.”73 The musician moved back

from domesticity into entrepreneurship,74 especially once the first permanent

concert hall opened in an inn during 1770.75 Because of the entrance into a

competitive economy, there became a gulf between the musician and the

audience seen through a spectacle exogenous to the music itself.76 Finally,

Attali sees the harmony of this time as self-undermining as large orchestras

dictated a conductor, a further separation of the audience from the music

through spectacle.77

Technologically, Attali makes a very similar argument to Spengler’s

69 Attali 50.
70 Attali 47.
71 Attali 47.
72 Attali 50.
73 Attali 51.
74 Attali 57.
75 Attali 50.
76 Attali 47.
77 Attali 66-67.
 15

about the math of the Baroque. In 1785, Cordorcet’s combinatoric theories

deconstructed choices into a formula. Bolstering this, Fourier and others

decomposed not only functions into polynomials, but sine waves into

summed component sine waves.78 This abstraction and its application to

music was a clear view of the Faustian infinite.

The Faustian soul reaches its zenith in 1800 with the founding of the

Civilization. At this point, Spengler agrees with Attali’s earlier insight that the

modern artist is now a workman.79 However, moving the artist into the

economy allows for subtlety to disintegrate, leaving only “crude

commonplaces, pilings and mixings and daubing of points, squares, and

broad inorganic masses.”80 The meditative discoverer of the Renaissance For

Spengler, this time period’s archetype is Beethoven.

Under Beethoven, music diverted back to painting.81 It is unsurprising,

then, that Spengler resumes his discussion of the colors of music. Brown

music, though first applied by Nietzsche to the Romantic, and therefore

lesser, composer Bizet, is the noise aspect of the visible brushstroke brought

forward into music. Spengler considers the strings in the music of Beethoven

to be the clearest example of this brown music.82 It is something that refers

to older forms, such as the Baroque string music, but maintains its own

identity. He compares it to the West’s reverence for ruins of older cultures,

78 Attali 65.
79 Spengler 154.
80 Spengler 154.
81 Spengler 155.
82 Spengler 133.
 16

saying, “It is not the classical statue, but the classical torso we love.”83

Beethoven also provides Attali with a chance to discuss the role of

technology again. Giving the example of his Sonata #106, the first major

work for piano, Attali argues that an instrument predates the expression it

authorizes,84 suggesting that Beethoven may not have seen the full use of

the piano, but it is also impossible to imagine Beethoven without the piano.85

This impossibility speaks to the rock-star-like quality that Beethoven has in

the minds of the public.

Civilization brings with it the Star System. 1830 saw the inception with

Liszt’s concerts of his contemporary’s works, creating a spatial repertory. At

the same time, Mendelssohn rediscovered Bach’s Baroque works, creating a

temporal repertory.86 The star system, at least at its inception, creates hard-

working musicians. Liszt was known to play six concerts in 15 days, while the

American pianist Gottschalk played 70 to 80 concerts a year.87 The star

system does have its shortcoming. It limits the collective memory of music

by not respecting the impure, fluid structure of music styles. It also lays

some of the final foundations for the Repetitive stage, with the rerouting of

usage towards the spectacle.88 Despite the rise of the star system, a

countermovement to its garishness appeared during the same time.

It is clear from Spengler’s writing that Impressionist art is a

83 Spengler 134.
84 Attali 35.
85 Attali 35.
86 Attali 69.
87 Attali 71.
88 Attali 68.
 17

controversial point in the history of art. He is quick to mention that the term

is originally one of contempt, as with most period names.89 It is the inverse of

the empirical Euclid’s world-feeling, and its mindset is closest to that of

music.90 Because the subjects are not there in reality, they can affect only

the light.91 It is an expression of the world-feeling of late culture, focused on

systematic analysis which transcends sensory limitations.92 This

transcendence forces the actuality of the subject to become ethereal, and for

music, the tone picture moves from a holistic concept, as in the themes of

Bach’s fugues, to a more motivic style akin to Wagner’s leitmotif.93

Despite the highly musical era, the adoption of the micromotif brings

the last of the Faustian arts to its death in Tristan und Isolde. Comparing

Wagner’s compositional style to that of the Gigantomachia frieze at

Pergamum, Spengler condemns the decadence, self-importance, and

theatricalness94 in a way that would seem to coincide with Attali’s concept of

the spectacle. He also notes the use of ancient, discredited myths,95 which

may point to a realization of the stage in which art existed.

Spengler uses Wagner as the poster child of the final age of music.

Emancipated from proportion, there becomes a taste for the gigantic. This

“swagger in specious dimensions” is common to all civilizations, with

Pergamum already mentioned, but the Colossus of Rhodes and the American

89 Spengler 152.
90 Spengler 152.
91 Spengler 152.
92 Spengler 153.
93 Spengler 153.
94 Spengler 156.
95 Spengler 156.
 18

skyscraper as obvious manifestations. This gigantic cannot be compared to

the Pyramids of Egypt or the cathedrals of the Gothic era, since it proclaims

outward greatness instead of expressing the inward.96 This proclamation is

filled with arbitrariness and immoderateness which tramples and shatters

conventions.97 These conventions once allowed the destiny of form to rest in

a school or region, but with the end of art and the bucking of those

conventions, the individual is the only power. As such, full achievement is

rarely possible, since reasoning is a poor substitute for training.98

Wagner, according to Spengler, was “getting the last ounce” out of the

best moments of music.99 He condenses “swaths of symbols” into a few bars,

100
while ignoring the simple melody line. This moves music away from the

Representation inherent in harmony.101 This shift allows for the death of

Faustian art, since the actualization of the inward possibilities of Western

harmony was the goal of Western music.102 The music has been fully

explored, leaving no original creativity left.

In addition to “nowhere else to go,” music after Wagner is impotent,

according to Spengler,103 and this could be a product of the recession of the

ritual Sacrifice behind the spectacle of music.104 This leads to a less

signifying, but more powerful organization of music.105 The lack of a ritual

96 Spengler 156.
97 Spengler 156.
98 Spengler 156.
99 Spengler 157.
100 Spengler 157.
101 Attali 81.
102 Spengler 157.
103 Spengler 158.
104 Attali 83.
105 Attali 83.
 19

makes the pursuit of artistic progress to be a false hope.106 Spengler cites the

“unabashed farce of Expressionism,”107 a just barely new style when he was

writing, while Attali points to the individualism of Romanticism108 as

examples of this false hope of progress. The end result of this reach for non-

existent progress is an endless repetition of a stock of fixed forms, making

dating anything within centuries, or even decades, impossible.109

It is at this point that Spengler can no longer discuss the history of

music, since he can not discuss what he has not seen. Yet, the concept of the

post-Civilization world must stay present, since it adequately describes the

rise of Repetition as described by Attali. According to Attali, harmony, an

excess of order, leads to the pseudodisorder exhibited in the dodecaphonic

and later serial movements in a sort of dialectic.110 Yet, there is no synthesis

of concept, since music lead to aleatory and other free musics. Through this

aborted dialectic and progression, the entirety of the sound spectrum has

been explored.111

Much of the argument concerning the relatively recent past concerns

the use and exchange of signs. Attali argues that the material production of

music has recently been replaced by the exchange of signs, such as through

show business, the star system, and the hit parade. He equates this to

institutional and cultural colonization. While the exchange of signs is

106 Spengler 158.

107 Spengler 158.
108 Attali 34.
109 Spengler 158.
110 Attali 83.
111 Attali 83.
 20

increasing, these signs are growing more and more ambiguous, and concepts

are crumbling into a conglomerated and lesser theory: there is no dominant

code. 112

With no dominant code to characterize the period, the rise to

Repetition is the most technologically driven stage. Attali points to the rise of

recording as the main impetus into the stage of Repetition. Due to recording,

capitalism loses interest in the Representation mode of production. There are

pricing problems, especially when radio and television become involved.113

One could argue that the transfer of music over the Internet proves to be just

as problematic.

Recording was originally a secondary function in society. While Aaron

was the voice, it was Moses who was respected. 114

At its inception, the

gramophone was seen as at worst a harmless diversion, and at best a tool

for continuing Representation through pedagogy.115 But technology made it

possible to use recording as a replacement for Repetition. This ended the

society of the spectacle and made useless stockpiling possible, making

Representation invalid.116 In this way, accessibility replaces the festival and

removes almost all simulacra from the system.

Attali moves from the historical Repetition to his present of 1977. By

his time, the power was no longer in control of either capital or force.117

112 Attali 89.

113 Attali 84.
114 Attali 87.
115 Attali 85.
116 Attali 88.
117 Attali 90.
 21

Because of this lack of control, only psuedoevents and random events

occur.118 These nonevents are a result of the lack of meaning in society,

which is seen as a legitimizing force for the technocracy. Attali outlines five

aspects of technocratic ideals: high levels of abstraction; “imperial

universality,” or the control by the elite bureaucrats; depersonalization of

meaning; deconcentration of power, seen in aleatoric music; and elitism

above the popular code.119 These five aspects are in full swing as of 1977.

However, Attali is not as negative about the future of music as

Spengler. Attali predicts a situation where no code reigns, and music is made

for the enjoyment of the individual musician himself.120 This era has a similar

aesthetic to free jazz. Yet Attali sees the flaw in free jazz. It is connected to

the mode of Repetition by way of record labels. Due to this connection to the

commodity, “it subsided after being contained, repressed, limited censored,

expelled.”121 In order to correctly understand the Composition era, we must

imagine an omnipresent selfish art devoid of any intended listener.

Attali wonders out loud if the new era is even possible. He cites Boulez,

who expresses the impossibility of improvisation. He argues that creative

improvisation will never occur, since improvisation is only based in previous

forms. Lévi-Strauss argues that the omnipresence will never occur, since

music creation is not an innate part of every person’s life. But Attali still

champions his concept, saying that both arguments are value statements

118 Attali 90.

119 Attali 113-117.
120 Attali 144.
121 Attali 138.
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and that creativity in a general sense may not equate to the present code.

Evaluating his theory more, Attali adds one more caution: Composition

cannot come about by willful act.122 These three arguments are weak, but

show that even Attali is unsure of the future of music.

The concept of Composition is the most important divergence between

Spengler and Attali. It is not the description of a formless, selfish world that

differs, since Spengler’s description of the post-Civilization era matches

closely, but the attitude each author holds referring to this time. Attali is

clearly hopeful that this time comes, providing a burst of creativity and

ending the cycle of Repetition. It is almost as if he simply wants a different

code of production. Spengler, though a defender of his writing as not

pessimistic, does not seem too enthused with the state of music either

during his time or in the time to come. Despite this difference of outlook, the

two keep a similar argument from start to finish.

It is a common criticism of Spengler and Attali that they simply do not

fully understand what they are talking about. Their theorizing and narratives

are the result of cherry-picking facts and placing intent where there is none.

Lee Margaret Steelman writes her graduate dissertation on just the two

chapters of Spengler that immediately concern music, writing a book longer

than those sections. But it is important to understand that Spengler and

Attali are both of the same school of history. They prefer “proclamation to

proof,” in the words of musicologist Arthur Mendel.123 Yet even Mendel also
122 Attali 146.
123 Arthur Mendel, Spengler’s Quarrel with the Methods of Music History (Musical Quarterly, Vol. 20, No 2, April
 23

states that “while Spengler’s views are often incorrect, they are not simply

negligible.”124 What this means is that as a theory, Spengler and Attali’s

collective narrative is consistent and useful to the musician.

However, this usefulness raises the question of where we are. Spengler

is clear, we are past the zenith, and rapidly declining to a sea of

formlessness. Attali, however, sees us still within his narrative, stuck in

Repetition. It is clear when looking at popular music that Repetition is the

mode of production, but art music becomes less and less important in his

theory, since it relies less on record production. This is not a flaw in his

theory, since it parallels the current lack of popularity of art music, but it

does beg a serious question: What about art music?

Art music is stuck in Repetition as well. Whether stifled through formal

and stylistic evocation or commodified into film music, which abuses the

violence of noise by using supersonic and subsonic sounds to create tension,

art music has become devoid of meaning. From this very low point, it takes a

great optimist to see the cracks in Repetition.

Yet those cracks are there. Though its influence may too often be

pointed to, the Internet provides for the formless and selfishly personal

Composition. Attali expects a world where music is made by anyone. The

Internet provides the free distribution he seeks, either through modified

traditional publishing, online communities, or personal sites. This do-it-

1934) 137.
124 Mendel 138.
 24

yourself spirit makes the coming of the Composition era to seem more

imminent than Attali had predicted. This is also reflected in the weakening

dominion of radio stations, with the Internet and satellite radio becoming

main competitors. On the other hand, the Internet makes stockpiling of

music significantly easier, supporting the Representative code. People can

post albums, either their own or others’, in order to archive the music. But

this stockpiling would increase the amount of music being played, since the

effort to play music has decreased. Because of the highly personal nature of

the Internet, the foundation is there; art music can leave repetition.

It is clear from a reading of Spengler and Attali that their narratives of

the history of music are not only compatible, but highly accurate, despite

factual errors. Spengler’s story brings us progressively and logically through

the ages, while Attali’s fills in the why of each step Spengler makes. In this

way, Attali grows out of Spengler and posits the music of his post-Civilization

world. What music might come out of a new Culture that overtakes the West?

Or will music simply not have the same Faustian interest, as it was the past?
 25

Works Consulted

Attali, Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University

of Minnesota, 1989).

Mendel, Arthur. Spengler’s Quarrel with the Methods of Music History

(Musical Quarterly, Vol. 20, No 2, April 1934).

Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West (New York: Random House, 2006).

Steelman, Lee Margaret. A Critical Review of Oswald Spengler’s

Misconception of Baroque Music (University of Pennsylvania, 1954),
dissertation.