I once read an article titled “Untitled Music: Does It Lack Class Consciousness?” which I found quite interesting. It analyzed the class nature of music that does not explicitly specify its title or content with words. When discussing class nature with others before, there were people who opposed the idea that everything in a class society must bear the mark of class, and they used instrumental or untitled music as an example, arguing that these kinds of music are just variations of melodies, not related to class, and that the emotions conveyed are “universal human emotions.” But this article thoroughly debunked these fallacies: “Some people who praise bourgeois titled music often use empty talk about contrasting and changing certain emotions to cover up its class nature. This is a reactionary view of bourgeois humanism. The so-called emotions are nothing but reflections of people’s joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness. Different eras, societies, and classes have vastly different thoughts and feelings, and joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness will never be the same.” “Marxist-Leninists believe that musical works, whether titled or untitled, as forms of ideas, ‘are products reflecting certain social life in the human mind.’ Although untitled music does not specify a title or content, it is by no means just ‘the flow of sound forms.’ ‘Untitled’ is merely a technique to conceal the class content of the work. In fact, composers, when creating untitled music, are very clear about what they praise, oppose, express, and the feelings they evoke. For example: Beethoven (1770–1827), a German bourgeois composer, composed ‘Sonata No. 17,’ which has no title. When asked what his sonata meant, Beethoven replied: ‘Read Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”!’”
The original text is much more brilliant than what is written here. I recommend everyone read it. After reading, if you encounter people who use music to promote super-class theories or deny that everything bears a class mark, you can make targeted rebuttals. However, I can’t upload the file for now; the original text is a bit long to paste directly here, but I will think of a way to upload it later.
The so-called ethereal or light music created by the bourgeoisie now seems unrelated to class struggle, but in reality, it is still meant to instill in the working people the illusion of a utopian paradise, causing them to escape the reality of class struggle and seek an unrealistic, oppression-free fantasy world. It is truly harmful!
Untitled Music Has No Class性.pdf (191.6 KB)
I have re-uploaded the PDF, everyone can take a look (but at the end of this article there is a usage of “Comrade Zhou Enlai,” which should be due to the specific historical conditions at the time and can be ignored, it does not affect the correctness of the entire text).
Actually, I think the title here generally refers to all content that directly uses words to clearly express the author’s emotions and class characteristics, including lyrics and so on.
Indeed, there is no abstract emotional change; in the past, I wondered why this so-called electronic music, pure music, sounds “pleasant” and makes people feel calm. After reading these, I realized that human thoughts and feelings are class-based. It is because this kind of pure music can evoke fantasies of a reality-free, struggle-free utopia, which easily resonates with petty bourgeoisie escapism. Truly, class struggle is everywhere. I also thought about workers fighting against capitalists—would they listen to such songs? Certainly not, which is why those patriotic songs are highly combative. Since this kind of pure music has such obvious reactionary tendencies, songs created with fragile, sharp, and detached-from-the-masses virtual diva voices are even more so, and are completely yellow songs.
In a class society, everyone views things from a certain class standpoint; similarly, a rainstorm might not be thought of by the petty bourgeoisie or bourgeoisie sitting leisurely in a café listening to the rain as a concern that farmers might be worried about the damage this rain could cause to their crops.
The social basis for untitled music is that, under the historical conditions of Europe at the time, the bourgeoisie was not strong enough to directly express their views in the ideological realm, so many of these pieces only left a number. However, behind this, the feelings of the creator and their stance on a certain class still exist.
Yang Heping had an incorrect view on this issue; he once specifically discussed the large debate on untitled music during the CR period in a video, which seems to refer to this article. Now, he and his father both believe that this view during the CR period was incorrect. They think that proletarian music can express some passionate emotions, and bourgeois music can do so too. He also said that during funerals, whether the mourning music played is bourgeois or proletarian, as long as the feelings are sorrowful and mournful, it is indistinguishable.
He only starts from the subjective feelings of the listener, believing that if the listener cannot perceive the ‘class nature,’ then it does not exist. But even when creating mourning music, the emotions of different classes are different. Fascists might compose mourning music for Hitler’s funeral. Proletarian composers might compose mourning music for revolutionaries’ funerals. These two are emotionally completely different. Can they be confused just because the listener might not understand the underlying context and feel sadness?
Just as untitled music still hides the emotional expression of the creator’s certain class, when analyzing a work, it is not only about pure musical emotional analysis. If, at the same time, one studies the composer’s own class stance and the historical materials of the society at that time, one can to some extent understand the creator’s thoughts. For example, Chopin’s “Revolutionary Étude” was named by later generations. Considering Chopin’s social identity, the year 1831 when the score was composed, and the passionate emotions in the score, one can understand that this piece was influenced by the failure of the Warsaw Uprising in November 1830, expressing feelings of anger and grief.
During the CR period, the “Essay on Literary and Artistic Criticism” mentioned that when conducting literary and artistic criticism, analysis should not only focus on the pure text but also include a historical materialist study of the social class stance behind the work. It cited “Hai Rui Dismissed from Office” as an example, where Yao Wenyuan not only criticized the content of the play but also linked it to the broader class struggle environment at the time, pointing out that the author was indirectly defending Peng Dehuai and attacking the dark purpose of the People’s Commune movement. I believe that similar analysis should be applied to the study of untitled music. In fact, I have seen articles from socialist China attempting such analysis. This kind of analysis also exposes the absurdity of the claim that untitled music has no class nature.
Furthermore, regarding the social conditions that gave rise to untitled music, even in socialist China, there was a piano concerto “Yellow River” that incorporated Western musical forms. However, “Yellow River” is not untitled music; each movement has a title, helping listeners understand the meaning conveyed by each movement. I think that in the future, proletarian composers will no longer need to hide their views and purposes behind untitled music as the bourgeoisie did. On the contrary, having a clear stance and explicit viewpoint is a revolutionary attitude of the proletariat. Therefore, untitled music will eventually disappear with the progress of history.
Considering music as a specific vibration and then arguing that it has no class nature is not a reasonable argument. When describing music using the framework of physics, the social relations attached to music are already washed away. To then claim that it does not contain social relations such as ‘class nature’ is a circular argument.
Of course, using other frameworks is similar (whether it’s the framework of musical techniques or harmony theory). All of these arguments have already stripped away the social relations on the musical work at the beginning, and then claim that class nature does not exist. Clearly, this is an invalid argument.
As shown in the text, music indeed has a class nature. Perhaps the only difference is whether it is expressed explicitly or implicitly.
