In this patrons-only episode, Jeremy dons his professorial gown to deliver the first of two lectures on music and Marxism. What is historical materialism? What does it mean to apply historical materialist analysis to culture? Jeremy shows how Marxist theory can be - and has been - applied to music from Bach to Jazz, illustrating ways in which we can explain cultural and aesthetic changes with Marxian thinking.

In this episode Jeremy gives a whistlestop refresher on Marxist thought, then introduces us to some of the writers whose work can be applied to analysing music: Lukács, Bakhtin, Voloshinov, and members of the Frankfurt School including Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer. Jeremy considers the main innovation of the interwar period - the development of recording technology -  and introduces the idea of reification as both a positive and negative phenomenon. He also considers how various forms of music-making embody egalitarian or bourgeois subjectivities, and tees us up for the next episode, starting in the 1940s.

Tracklist:

Beethoven - Symphony No. 3 in E flat major

Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 in C minor

Igor Stravinsky - Firebird

Arnold Schoenberg - Verklärte Nacht

The SAGE Handbook of Marxism

Jeremy Gilbert - A Brief History of Marxist Cultural Theory (https://jeremygilbertwriting.wordpress.com/2022/07/24/a-brief-history-of-marxist-cultural-theory/)

György Lukács - History and Class Consciousness

Valentin Voloshinov - Marxism and the Philosophy of Language

Walter Benjamin - The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Adorno & Horkheimer - The Dialectic of Enlightenment