Any jackass

From a fine interview with artist Larry Poons from last year:

Someone said to Brahms that they could hear some Haydn in a piece that he had just premiered, and Brahms replied that any jackass could hear that  --  which is really to the point of what is not understood. Any jackass can see that’s a f-cking soup can. And what else? . . .

What else? It’s the same situation. Any jackass can say, ‘that’s blue,’ looking at Barnett Newman’s Cathedra.

On Brahms’ terrific comeback line, TiR has been frustrated in its efforts to pin down the specifics of the when, where and to-whom of its utterance.

The oft-told tale of the remark usually substitutes Beethoven for, as Poons would have it, Haydn, for example as follows (.pdf):

The main theme in the finale of Brahms’s First [Symphony] bears a striking resemblance, however, to the ‘Ode to Joy’ theme from Beethoven’s Ninth. Brahms meant for these references to be overt -- when it was mentioned to him that this work shared some resemblances to Beethoven, he reportedly shot back with indignation, ‘Well, of course! Any idiot can see that!’

Yet another version (.pdf) swaps in Mendelssohn as “plagiaree” and puts an even finer point on Brahms’ retort:

 . . . the preceding discussion was not aimed at proving that Schubert ‘stole’ Hüttenbrenner’s ideas. . . Schubert might well have replied in the way Brahms is said to have done when someone pointed out that he used a theme of Mendelssohn, ‘Any fool can see that, but look what I did with it.’”

Schoenberg, as no one should be surprised, provides his own version, on the first page of his classic essay “Brahms the Progressive” (1947), and provides us with the original-language quote:

Contemporaries found various ways to annoy [Brahms].  A musician or a music lover might intend to display his own great understanding, good judgement of music, and acquaintance with ‘some’ of Brahms’ music. Hence he dared say he had observed that Brahms’ First Piano Sonata was very similar to Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. No wonder that Brahms’, in his straightforward manner, spoke out: ‘Das bemerkt ja schon jeder Esel.’ (‘Every jackass notices that!’)

[The same essay later contains the dangerous dictum:

Great art must proceed to precision and brevity. It presupposes the alert mind of an educated listener who, in a single act of thinking, includes with every concept all associations pertaining to the complex. 

Dangerous, because one maddening end result of such instant, automatic, all-inclusive single acts of thinking (or listening, or viewing, or analysis / critique) can be the phenomena described by The Misfits, here. ]

How perceptive exactly are jackasses, or donkeys, or even mules, when it comes to music criticism?  What do they notice, what do they “see”?

It’s hard to say:  Maybe we would hear more about music from them if there were more music about them.  

Country-western music has done most of the heavy     lifting   in this area.  In 1957, classic hillbilly band The Maddox Brothers & Rose recorded the somewhat apocalyptic and spooky “The Donkey Song,” which asked “Donkey, donkey, can’t you see?”  The song seems not so much to be about aesthetic perception, remained unreleased for 40 years, and is here-able here.

Does Larry Poons know the music of The Maddox Brothers & Rose?  We don’t know.  But we do know that he ended the above-mentioned interview with the following:

Poons: Do you want to listen to something nice?

Interviewer: Sure.

Poons: [Puts on a 1964 vinyl recording of the Stanley Brothers singing Train 45 live].

Poon’s recording by the legendary bluegrass duo might have been this one, which is indeed nice.

Finally, to close the loop on TiR’s (perennially pointless) ponderings here:

A 1966 bluegrass version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” from the immortal banjo of Pete Seeger, and which no jackass would ever mistake for the final movement of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, can be heard here.