Francis Pagnon

Francis Pagnon was a French musicologist who died on January 11 1990. Pagnon was associated with the situationist movement.
Critique of Wagner
Francis Pagnon was the author of a study of Richard Wagner and the history of music entitled En Évoquant Wagner. La musique comme mensonge et comme vérité ("Evoking Wagner. Music as a lie and as truth") published by Éditions Champ Libre in December 1981. It undertakes a political critique of "music as a mass totalitarian ideology." For the author, musical evolution is enslaved to the demands of retrograde social organization. Modern mass music, by returning to the pre-individual stage, satisfies the need of annihilation and is submission to the violence by a society whose continuation is possible only through coercion extended to all aspects of life.
The book presents a historical perspective of the contradictions between music and contemporary class society. The subtitle of the book, "Music as a lie and as truth", refers to the lie expressed by mass music and the revolutionary truth expressed by classical music, considered by the author as the only genuine music, including that of Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, and of course, Wagner.
For the author, the music of Wagner music condemns capitalist society in which history is made impossible by production enslaved to the perpetual cycle of exchange value. The fight against the emptiness of the market involves music, which is false when it posits an aesthetic ideal which offsets the horrors of the world.
The writer and critic Guy Debord had a good opinion of the book.
Death
Francis Pagnon committed suicide on January 11, 1990.
Bibliography
* Francis Pagnon, En Évoquant Wagner. La musique comme mensonge et comme vérité, Champ libre, 1981.

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