HERMANN HESSE AND THE DIALECTICS OF TIME Salvatore C. P. ...

'Bine Arbeitsnacht' (1928), he points out that we ask ourselves questions about
existence not so much to find an answer as to feel engaged in life and partake in its
joys and sorrows:
Und indem ich alle diese Fragen wieder einmal fur eine Nachstunde in mich
einliefi - nicht um sie zu beantworten, denn die Antwort weifi ich, seit ich lebe
-, sondern um ihr Leid in mich einzulassen, um ihren bitteren Trank wieder
einmal zu kosten. (SW 12,126-27)
3.4 Jazz and the dissolution of art
Wagner, Strauss, and virtuosi were not the only target of Hesse's criticism; he was
not sparing in his remarks on contemporary light music either. The aesthetics of
Wagner and R. Strauss did not meet his ideal of music and possibly betrayed signs of
cultural decadence but, to him, dancehall tunes lacked any aesthetic significance,
having reduced the rich language of music to an oversimplified babble. As with
Wagner and Strauss, Hesse felt that music meant for the sole purpose of entertaining
was 'Untergangsmusik', and its diffusion was a symptom of social and cultural
degradation.76
The split between serious and 'light' music can be traced back to Romanticism
which, promoting a shift in music consumption, made the middle class the major
recipient of music and concert-halls along with bourgeois drawing-rooms (as
opposed to palaces and salons) the principal venues of performances. In this context,
Hauser notes:
The broader masses, who take a growing interest in musical entertainments,
demand, however, a lighter, more ingratiating, less complicated music. This
demand in itself promotes the creation of shorter, more entertaining, more
varied forms, but leads, at the same time, to a division of musical output into
serious and light music. (206)
Hauser also stresses how the change in the demand of music prompts a new general
attitude of composers towards their music:
76 See Hesse's views on what he, paraphrasing Lii Buwei, refers to as 'Verfallskunst' (3.2) and the reference to
'Untergangsmusik' in note 36 (included therein).
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