It is indeed to Strawinsky, whose strange harmonies evoked new fairy worlds in The Nightingale and whose barbaric rhythms stirred the angry pulses of a Paris audience threatened with the shame of an emotion in the theatre, to whom we may turn, perhaps, for still new thrills after the war. Strawinsky has so far showed his growth in every new work he has vouchsafed the public. From Schoenberg, and Korngold in a lesser degree, we may hope for messages in tone, disharmonic by nature, and with a complexity of rhythm so complex that it becomes simple. (In this connection I should like to say that there are scarcely two consecutive bars in Strawinsky’s ballet, The Sacrifice to the Spring, written in the same time-signature, and yet I know of no music—I do not even except Alexander’s Ragtime Band—more dance-compelling.) We may pray to Karol Szymanowski for futurist wails from ruined Poland; a rearranged, disharmonic version of the national airs of the warring countries may spring from France or Italy; but for the new composers, the new names, the strong, new blood of the immediate future in music, we must turn to Russia. The new music will not come from England, certainly not from America, not from France, nor from Germany, but from the land of the steppes—a gradual return to that orientalism in style which may be one of the gifts of culture, which an invasion from the Far East may impose on us some time in the next century.
June, 1915.
Music for Museums?
Music for Museums?
I SAW people actually enjoying themselves at a recent piano recital. During the performance of some of the numbers they laughed; at other times they nudged one another and made comments. The conclusion of each piece was punctuated by a certain amount of vociferous applause, and an almost equal amount of disapprobation. One group of pieces on the programme, Claude Debussy’s Children’s Corner, was familiar; as a result, it aroused less interest than some of the other music played. Albeniz, one of the new men who is making the list of Spanish compositions extend beyond the folk-song, was represented by his El Albaicin; Maurice Ravel by Gaspard de la Nuit, a very successful attempt to paint atmosphere and character in the very limited tonal medium of the pianoforte; Scriabine by four preludes and a sonata; and Leo Ornstein, the pianist, by Seven Sketches and Two Shadow Pieces. Mr. Ornstein’s compositions have no truck with majors and minors, thirds and fifths, pentatonic and diatonic scales. His descending fingers strike masses of keys; some auditors seemed to think there is no plan in these assaults on the board. Personally, I am willing to wager that the last piano sonatas of the deaf Beethoven meant just as little to their first hearers. We have become accustomed to the sweet and unsubtle way of the tonic and dominant. Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Strawinsky are yet discordant to our melody-soaked and harmony-demanding ears.
Yet, if concert programmes are consulted, one will find in them very little music earlier than the eighteenth century. The symphony orchestra is really a discovery of the nineteenth century. When our symphony orchestras play Bach, Haydn, or Mozart, the reënforcements, the rearrangements, would astonish those old composers as much as the electric signs on Broadway, could they be brought back to hear them. Either one-half the band—nay, two-thirds—must sit still during the playing of these numbers, if the original body of tone is to be preserved, or else some readjustment is necessary. For instance, it is quite customary to allow the full body of strings to play a Mozart symphony, although the wood-winds and brasses are not appreciably greater in number in the modern orchestra than they were in Mozart’s time. Lack of proportion and over-emphasis are the natural results.
It is only the composers who have invented the modern orchestra, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Strauss, Reger, Strawinsky and Scriabine—to mention a few names—who get justice done to their compositions. In fact, as it stands, the modern orchestra exists for the perfect playing of modern music. It is a dizzy, vertiginous force; floods of sound are let loose on the hearer to drown his sensibilities and to make him “feel.” Now, there was something very precise and exact and prim about the peruked band of the day of Haydn, which would have played the Symphonie Pathétique as if it were the Marche Funèbre d’une Marionnette. Music in the good old days did not cause women to swoon and men to swear. There were no Wagnerites then. (Are there any now?) The composer of Armide would not have inspired an Aubrey Beardsley drawing. So when the modern orchestra plays Mozart it makes just a little too much of it. Mozart and Strauss! It is the difference between Cimabue and Michael Angelo.
The conflict between periodic conventions and contemporary methods and tastes is always great and will always serve as an excuse for discussion. There seems to be no adequate reason why we should give up Shakespeare because we do not perform his plays in the Elizabethan manner. After all, a tune is a tune, and Voi che sapete would probably sound very well played on mandolins if Mme. Sembrich did not happen to be handy to sing it. The Anglican church has found it well adapted for hymnal purposes, as anyone knows who has heard Adeste Fideles. So, perhaps, Bach rearranged by Gustav Mahler, or Josef Stransky, or anybody else who happens to have the time, is to be listened to, just as we are all forced to lend our ears several times a year, whether it be in a concert hall or a restaurant, or on an ocean liner, to Gounod’s idea of a Bach prelude.
There is a great deal of the old music which gives a pleasant impression to the ear if it be not heard too frequently. Mozart, Bach, and Gluck, however, stand the test of frequent repetition better than Beethoven. It would also be a mistake, perhaps, not to give the students of music an opportunity to hear past examples of the art, to establish in their minds a knowledge of the successive steps which have been taken in building up this arbitrary thing which we call “art-music,” although it is neither the music of the Chinese, who, after all, may be considered an artistic race, the African negroes, the Indians, nor the Japanese. It would not be advisable, perhaps, to have any admirer of present-day art-music believe that it was all that could be said or done in music; an historical survey is necessary. For some of us there is always the question of relative importance. It may be a fact that nobody in the future will be able to extract more beautiful arbitrary art-music out of the air than has been composed by Mozart and Wagner. We are sure that Berlioz, Liszt, Meyerbeer, and Mendelssohn can be improved on because they have been. Perhaps Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is really better music than any which has been composed before or since. (Personally, I do not for a moment think so.) For the purpose of argument, however, it is necessary to presuppose that some people set up standards of this sort. There are those, doubtless, who are really sincere in their devotion to the composers whose names begin with a B; but there is a larger group whose ears find it easier to listen not merely to music based upon a certain scale, but to certain music based on this scale. As a result, one might say that the very limited attendance on which our symphony orchestras may count is largely made up of middle-aged people who are never contemptuous of familiarity.
The principle, of course, is all wrong. Still, when every person in a vast population is expected to enjoy arbitrary art-music, one cannot expect perception or taste. In our civilization everybody is supposed to “love” music. Poor though we may be, we send our daughters to the music-masters. From cottage to cottage the echoes of the pianoforte resound and, especially in the beginning, each pupil is given a taste of what is known in the provinces as “classical” music. Czerny is hauled out to teach the fingers how to be agile. There must be a taste of Bach’s Wohltemperirtes Clavier, a Chopin waltz or two.... Heller is a favorite with small-town teachers, and then the student may burst gaily into the intricacies of the latest air by Irving Berlin. Now, why is it that the newest of the arts—at least the newest from the arbitrary point of view from which we consider music as an art—is taught to almost all the children of all the lands? They are actually beaten with sticks to drive them to the keyboard. To be sure, children are also taught to read, for more cogent reasons. It would do no harm to anyone to be taught to read music; but to be taught to play it is like being taught to act. What if we should all be taught to paint?—Well, after all, why not?