Litnet

Abstract

Winfried Lüdemann is one of the prominent examples of South African musicologists who are sometimes regarded as practising a neutral and apolitical approach to their discipline. In this regard, my research in this article thoroughly investigates Lüdemann’s thinking. My criticism throughout of Lüdemann should be understood as an attempt to understand South African musicology’s disciplinary problem of effecting a transition from apartheid’s intellectual framework to that of the post-apartheid era, specifically by using one academic’s work as an important example. Lüdemann’s weighty and complex theorisation about music, cultural diversity, human dignity and South African democracy – or, more briefly, what in my article title is called his theorisation of a musical dialogue of reconciliation – is the overriding theme, selected from more or less three decades of his musicological research, through which this investigation into the transition of South African musicology is conducted.

My problem statement in this article has to do, first, with how Lüdemann theoretically positions art music, through a framework for peace, as a type of music that must survive in post-apartheid South Africa’s cultural environment. For a proper understanding of his peace-framework theorisation I present a lengthy and thorough summary of his carefully formulated methodology or blueprint. This is done to make clear how his thoughts about South African social cohesion (achieved through a musical dialogue of reconciliation) work and often also falter. With his theorisation about a musical dialogue of reconciliation, Lüdemann formulates a methodology – or even a blueprint – of social cohesion that propagates the organised protection of post-apartheid South Africa’s music-cultural diversity. His suggested course of action for undertaking dialogue where music is concerned presents musical dialogue as a mechanism for reconciliation without which the conceptual possibility of a multicultural democracy can be scuppered.

The mechanism of musical reconciliation that Lüdemann proposes – a dialogue based on the shared respecting of humanity and human dignity – is formulated according to the deductive reasoning of a syllogism. The first proposition of Lüdemann’s syllogistic reasoning is that human dignity (a term he uses interchangeably with humanity) is the only characteristic universally present in every type of musicality and musicianship. The second proposition is that the success of South Africa’s multicultural democracy depends on a musical dialogue of reconciliation, in which all cultures reciprocally observe, investigate and recognise one another’s human dignity or humanity. The conclusion is that the observation, investigation and recognition of other cultures’ musicality and musicianship – from which their human dignity or humanity apparently automatically emanate – represent the only possible musical dialogue of reconciliation that can secure South Africa’s multicultural democracy. 

Together with indicating a small number of significant fallacious arguments in Lüdemann’s syllogistic method for implementing and maintaining music-cultural diversity, my research leads me to disagree with his opinion that the peaceful co-existence of multicultural societies depends on musical interaction and the conduct of a reconciliatory musical dialogue constructed around the shared value of humanity and human dignity. Most significantly, my examination of Lüdemann’s theorisation of a musical dialogue of reconciliation criticises his use of a single biological universal (in the purported absence of any cultural universals) where music is concerned: His view that the human capability of making music automatically constitutes the expression to others of one’s own human dignity or humanity. Considering that human beings often also use music to conduct unethical practices such as warfare and torture, Lüdemann’s supposed biological universal of human dignity and humanity in the practice of musicality and musicianship obviously does not hold water.

Moreover, although the theoretical framework of Lüdemann’s train of thought borrows complicated points of entry from, among other disciplinary frameworks, palaeomusicology and ecumenical theology, I argue that there is an uncomplicated similarity between his plea for the protection of music-cultural diversity and contemporaneous, specifically Afrikaans campaigns at universities like Stellenbosch for the protection of language diversity in post-apartheid South Africa. Ripe for criticism in this regard is how the musical dialogue of reconciliation that Lüdemann proposes is aimed at arresting an anticipated full-scale South African cultural crisis; how he positions both Western and South African art music as types of music that are supposedly irreplaceable – on grounds of being the types of music best suited to stopping the formation of a music-cultural uniformity, or an irreparable fusion of all of South Africa’s musical diversity into one mediocre grey musical landscape or music type.

I therefore ask probing questions about Lüdemann’s conviction that especially Western and South African art music have to enjoy protection in order to function as a bulwark against the anticipated uniform fusion of music-cultural diversity and the concomitant supposed undoing of South Africa’s post-apartheid democracy. I also examine how any application of Lüdemann’s suggested methodology or blueprint would inadvertently prop up the anachronistic cultural landscape of apartheid, in a scenario where monistic music cultures would need to try to meet one another on an imaginary middle ground to conduct a dialogue of reconciliation with one another there. 

Lastly, I critically question Lüdemann’s conviction that intercultural dialogue with music cannot be conducted through acts of translation, by pointing out his erroneous use of Steven Mithen’s writing about translating language and music between English and Japanese cultural contexts. I ascribe Lüdemann’s aversion to the very possibility of the translation of music to his probably subscribing to, and being too invested in, the ideal of work-fidelity, or Werktreue, where the performance of the musical works that constitute the canon of art music is concerned.

My article concludes with several observations: an observation that Lüdemann’s peace-framework theorisation privileges a musical ethos regularly expressed by South Africa’s white bourgeois class, specifically through his identification in both symphonic music and 19th-century opera, and additionally in South Africa’s democratic constitution, an “enlightened and bourgeois genius” that gives voice to identical aspirations; observations about the discursively eccentric nature of Lüdemann’s research; observations about South African musicology’s slow incorporation of multicultural discourses that are commonly prevalent, and have been for decades, in the local and international iterations of music education; and observations about the necessity for better conducting of dialogue in the South African musicological discipline, provided that said dialogue is allowed to be critical.

Keywords: apartheid; art music; bastardisation (fusion); democracy; dialogue; diversity; ecumenical theology; evolution; humanity or human dignity; hybridity; language issue; Lüdemann, Winfried; multiculturalism; music; music education; musicianship; new South Africa; palaeomusicology; reconciliation; social cohesion; survival; transformation; translation

Lees die volledige artikel in Afrikaans

’n Kritiese beskouing van Winfried Lüdemann se teoretisering oor ’n musikale versoeningsdialoog