Defining the Term: “Neo-Mythologism” as Assertion of Myth's Artistic Validity

In a December 9, 1997, interview, the composer George Crumb observed that “music tends to be mythological, at least some of it. Some of my music is mythological just in expression. People tell me that it has that sense sometimes–ancient.” The mythological aspect of which Crumb spoke clearly relates to what is perceived nowadays as myth in the narrow sense of the word, as opposed to its broader sense, which implies a system of beliefs that is ultimately artificial, untrue, misconceived, based on false ideology, or, in the well-chosen words of Richard Taruskin, “an operational fiction or assumption that unless critically examined runs a high risk of tendentious abuse.” This latter model, the heritage of the French encyclopedists, is among the most cherished by present-day deconstructionist critics, who seek to deconstruct precisely these kinds of myths. In contrast, recent historiography advocated myth's conscious integration as a model of intelligent activity,4 not to mention the artistic application of myth. Consider, in this introductory discussion, Crumb and his “mythological expression” an example of such an application.

Crumb regarded the mythological as venerated in its archaic symbolic realm. This narrow interpretation of myth may be seen as the mode of artistic creativity that never ceases to exist, in spite of any attempts to demystify myth and thus turn it into “logos.” In Plato's writings, mythos is juxtaposed with logos. While logos is associated with analysis, argument, proof, and differentiation (it also is translated as “word”), mythos is based on belief, imagination, recollection, and wholeness. Crumb's definition of myth reveals his connection to the Platonic tradition of linking myth to poetry. He states: “Myths and those mythical gods continue to live culturally. They represent poetic truths.”

The composer's view of myth loosely matches the first and third categories of Bruce Lincoln's classification of assertions about the validity of myth: 1) strongly positive (e.g., myth is “primordial truth” or “sacred story”); 2) strongly negative (myth is “a lie” or “an obsolete worldview”); or 3) something in between (“poetic fancy”).