Dionysos Rising: The Birth of Cultural Revolution Out of the Spirit of Music

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as "Degenerate Moderns". . .
Review: . . .but important nevertheless.

In his first book, Jones postulated that much of the decay of modernism could be traced to the sinful rationalizations of evil behavior by Freud, Jung, and others. In this volume, Jones tackles the role of modern music in this societal decay. The chapter on Wagner was very good -- although not nearly enough was said about the importance of Wagner's later work (which caused an irreparable break with Nietzche.

The chapters on Nietzche and Schonberg were informative -- but one got the impression that material was being repeated over and over. A bit of editorial direction would have helped here.

When Jones gets into modern pop music, his argument is both strengthened and weakened. Strengthened by the truly uncontrolled behavior of many of today's rock musicians (to say nothing of the lyrics). Weakened in the attempt to lump pretty much ALL jazz and pop into one category -- a serious mistake in my estimation.

All in all, however, a good book -- but not as good as his first.

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as "Degenerate Moderns". . .
Review: . . .but important nevertheless.

In his first book, Jones postulated that much of the decay of modernism could be traced to the sinful rationalizations of evil behavior by Freud, Jung, and others. In this volume, Jones tackles the role of modern music in this societal decay. The chapter on Wagner was very good -- although not nearly enough was said about the importance of Wagner's later work (which caused an irreparable break with Nietzche.

The chapters on Nietzche and Schonberg were informative -- but one got the impression that material was being repeated over and over. A bit of editorial direction would have helped here.

When Jones gets into modern pop music, his argument is both strengthened and weakened. Strengthened by the truly uncontrolled behavior of many of today's rock musicians (to say nothing of the lyrics). Weakened in the attempt to lump pretty much ALL jazz and pop into one category -- a serious mistake in my estimation.

All in all, however, a good book -- but not as good as his first.

Rating:
Summary: the end of the world as we know it
Review: Although the first chapter about Wagner was at times fascinating, most of the book is a rather catty rant about rock 'n' roll and jazz which seems to have been the cause, according to the author, of a myriad of culture-shattering "evils" including free love, Harlem ghettos, abortion and the civil rights movement (!). On page 85, he writes, "The civil rights movement was nothing more than the culmination of an attempt to transform the Negro into a paradigm of sexual liberation that had been the pet project of the cultural revolutionaries since the 20s." Gee, and I'd always thought it came about to right the wrongs of the last 100 years since the Civil War! This kind of revisionist history (which much of the book is) can at times be humourous and at times frightening, especially when one worries that the people reading it might not know much about the 19th century and believe everything written here. According to the book, "Tristan and Isolde probably did more than anything else to bring about this mood of yearning for sexual liberation." Gee, and I thought it was the sexual repression of the 19th century... there I am, wrong again! At times the book is quite insulting to the readers' intelligence and certainly to jazz and rock and roll which the writer seems to think the 20th century chose as music simply because there was nothing left worth listening to in the classical realm. He sees the choice as a lowering of standards... often I wondered exactly what he was trying to say here. Anyway, a pity. A lot of the history was interesting, but I certainly wouldn't recommend the book to the gullible who might start walking the streets with a sign which reads "The end is near!"

Rating:
Summary: Jones really doesn't understand Schoenberg
Review: E. Michael Jones has written much on the problems of modernism and the modern world. Gropius and his cohorts have given us an architecture that is bland in the extreme. The sexual revolution has caused untold harm. I admire and respect some of his earlier work, but I really must disagree with Jones with respect to Arnold Schoenberg.

Schoenberg was in many ways a traditionalist. Despite his often groundbreaking work, and with exceptions such as the Five Orchestral Pieces, he kept Brahmsian rhythms and more or less worked in classical forms. This is especially true of Schoenberg's last period. Schoenberg did not see himself as a revolutionary. He saw himself as one carrying on the Austro-German school of composition, a school that he viewed as absolutely central to music as a whole. It was his hope that his new theories of composition would maintain the dominance of the Austro-German school for at least a hundred years.

This has not happened. If anything, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern are the summation of the Austro-German school of composition. Schoenberg was at the heart of the Austro-German school.

Jones, in stating that Schoenberg ventured into atonality because of an unfaithful spouse, really is taking things too far. I don't think that he adequately understands Schoenberg's place in music. It is a pity because rock music and other forms of popular music have been terribly destructive as he rightly points out. Unfortunately, Jones does not posess an adequate understanding of the traditionalist roots of Arnold Schoenberg.

Rating:
Summary: Jones really doesn't understand Schoenberg
Review: E. Michael Jones has written much on the problems of modernism and the modern world. Gropius and his cohorts have given us an architecture that is bland in the extreme. The sexual revolution has caused untold harm. I admire and respect some of his earlier work, but I really must disagree with Jones with respect to Arnold Schoenberg.

Schoenberg was in many ways a traditionalist. Despite his often groundbreaking work, and with exceptions such as the Five Orchestral Pieces, he kept Brahmsian rhythms and more or less worked in classical forms. This is especially true of Schoenberg's last period. Schoenberg did not see himself as a revolutionary. He saw himself as one carrying on the Austro-German school of composition, a school that he viewed as absolutely central to music as a whole. It was his hope that his new theories of composition would maintain the dominance of the Austro-German school for at least a hundred years.

This has not happened. If anything, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern are the summation of the Austro-German school of composition. Schoenberg was at the heart of the Austro-German school.

Jones, in stating that Schoenberg ventured into atonality because of an unfaithful spouse, really is taking things too far. I don't think that he adequately understands Schoenberg's place in music. It is a pity because rock music and other forms of popular music have been terribly destructive as he rightly points out. Unfortunately, Jones does not posess an adequate understanding of the traditionalist roots of Arnold Schoenberg.

Rating:
Summary: What we know is true but don't want to admit
Review: My difficulty with reading this book the first time as a Yale grad student in 1994 was that I had a conservative worldview when it came to everything but music. I knew deep down inside that Jones was onto something, but I couldn't bring myself to admit it, because I was so close to my music. Now that I am a bit older and have gone back and re-read the book--and now that I am further from adolescence and from my music--I see that what he was saying is on the mark. If you start with a more liberal set of cultural assumptions about culture and the arts, you will disagree with Jones. However, if you have a basic conservative worldview and don't like this book, it's probably because you're going with your heart and not your head.

Rating:
Summary: Jones reaches...and grabs hold of some truths
Review: The negative reviewers have a point; Jones' rough-and-ready version of history fails to fill in the gaps of the entire lives of his subjects. However, they too, in their lack of historical comprehension fail to see (the critical) something: that his basic theses, that these revolutionary men (the former reviewers do not even understand this _historical_ term!) had a profound effect on our culture, and were in turn profoundly affected by their vital deviancies, are correct. Shame on them for writing such poor reviews.