Why do we give music a human face?
A decade ago, I was sitting in my university bedroom listening to James Levine conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. I still recall the music’s luminescent textures filling the room — expansive and seductive, stripping away the walls. It was just me, the sound and the space.
In 2018, Levine was fired from his post as music director emeritus at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, following an investigation into claims of sexual abuse: allegations that Levine denies.
The dilemma such stories pose — can we separate the art from the artist? — has been replayed throughout the #MeToo movement’s march across the culture industries: when artists are accused of terrible acts, what are we to do with their artworks? Some leap to say that the separation can and should be made. Others would seek to “cancel” both wholesale. But is either solution self-evident or even sufficient? Is aesthetic rejection an adequate response to morally outrageous acts?