Instrumental music is often described as the most pure of all art forms. The idea is that as it uses no words music can communicate something deeper than language can capture, and is understood by people who can’t even understand each other. But what is it to understand a piece of music, and what do we understand if not a meaning? Can music communicate a political message, for instance? Music has been used throughout history to both oppress and liberate, it has been blasted at rallies and marches, brought people together at state occassions through national anthems and political songs, and now is employed as a method of behaviour control at train stations and supermarkets. But does instrumental music say something in and of itself when listened to on its own terms?

Can we hear dissent from Communism in a Shostakovich symphony, or discern a Nietzschean ethic in the theme of a Wagner opera? Do we take Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring to be as polically subversive and progressive as it was at its 1913 premiere when we listen to it today? And what about avant-garde music, dense, complicated and obscure as it often is? Can music as structurally subversive as Schoenburg’s ever aspire to something as robust as a meaning? And could modern music like that of Thomas Ades ever give a critique of British politics?

In this final ‘Can the arts change the world?’ session, Professor Colin Lawson, with Claire Thirion, will perform Xavier Lefevre’s Sonata No. 7 in A minor from Methode de Clarinette (1802) on period instruments. This piece from the French Revolution will be followed by a discussion on music and social change.