Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don’t Get Stockhausen

David Stubbs’ Fear of Music is neither about Talking Heads’ third LP nor is it about a chronic disorder known as musicophilia. The book is concerned with a phenomenon many of us are familiar with – the author narrows it down to one simple question: why is it that people get Rothko but don’t get Stockhausen? This Zero Books publication fails to provide a convincing answer but it at least offers food for thought for those interested in the histories of avant-garde and experimental forms of art.

Fear of Music opens with a particularly engaging chapter aptly titled “schism.” In these first few pages, Stubbs takes the reader along for a tour of London’s Tate Modern where it is possible to marvel at some of the world’s greatest works of art. The museum is a popular attraction for tourists and modern art aficionados capable of processing and partially engaging with all kinds of works – including Rothko’s arresting and evocative paintings. Stubbs notes, “Rothko’s murals go some way to transcending the limits of the canvas, stimulating the all-enveloping, dark ambient, abstract effects of a certain kind of music.”

There is, however, little place for music in the Tate Modern. People’s willingness to engage with modern art does not result in the celebration of its sonic equivalent. “The same people who flock from miles around to mill in the presence of abstract art run screaming, hands clasped to their ears (…), from abstract music,” writes the author.

“Why can the general public apparently not get enough of one avant-garde and yet barely be aware of the existence of the other? Why the schism?”

Stubbs begins by tracing the parallel evolution of modern art and modern music starting with cubism and Arnold Schoenberg’s atonalism. He discusses dadaism, Luigi Russolo’s Art of Noises, Nazi campaigns against “degenerate art” and Fluxus musicality. Unfortunately, Stubbs quickly drifts away from the main topic to focus on music history. He returns to the above questions toward the end of the book (mostly in the conclusion where he discusses scarcity, corporate sponsorship and “music’s potential to distress”) but it is too little too late.

Fear of Music does not fully deliver on its promises but it at least offers a digestible introduction to modern music. Stubbs does not depart much from established narratives but he writes with unflinching enthusiasm and a genuine appreciation for a music that has endured more than its fair share of abuse…

… in the authors’ words:

One of the great reasons avant-garde music needs to exists is that it does not need to exist. It defies, momentarily, the glum, onward and upward propulsion of Western society into which the majority of us are whipped or whip ourselves, on a daily basis. It fails, successfully, to be commandeered into the ranks of function. It posits and evokes entirely alternative modes, worlds, possibilities, stepping off the tramlines and running aground on new, virgin territory. It goes nowhere. It repeats. It radiates energy, wastefully into the air. It leaks out from the grid. Yet none of this is a reason to condemn it as indulgent, or degenerate. It is the threat it notionally poses to civilization that makes it so supremely civilized. It is its refusal to be co opted by the forces that drive us on towards eventual death that make it so affirmative.

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David Stubbs is a music journalist and author, who has written for The Wire, The Guardian, NME, and Melody Maker among others
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