As regards musical composition, perhaps the most striking fact is that the important recent developments have taken place in the universities, at least as much as in the conservatories. There are reasons for this emphasis. The universities, due to their independence, seem more ready to experiment and are therefore less bound by tradition. They are more willing to adapt themselves to changing conditions. Since they are in no way bound to the exigencies of the large-scale music business, they are, as a rule, aware of the character of contemporary culture and especially of its creative aspects. It is significant that the universities were able to offer asylum to eminent composers among the European refugees, and, as well, positions to American composers. Of Europeans, Schönberg taught at the University of Southern California and later at the University of California at Los Angeles, Hindemith at Yale, Krenek at Vassar and at Hamline College, Milhaud at Mills, and Martinu at Princeton. As regards native American composers, one finds more or less distinguished names on university faculties all over the country, and of the young native composers a characteristically great number are university graduates.
That fact alone has had a strong influence on university curricula, and also has given rise to new problems. It has added an importance, and in fact a different character, to preparatory studies. It has thrown into conspicuous relief the necessity of reconciling the requirements of the all-important and indispensable basic technical training of the composer with those of general education. No one would claim that the problem has been solved in a satisfactory manner; and the composer who teaches composition in a university or elsewhere often faces problems which arise from the great disparity not only between the requirements of the craft and that which institutions can offer in this respect, but also between the degrees of preparation offered in various institutions. Perhaps the greatest of these problems is the cleavage between the age and general musical sophistication of students (who in the United States begin their music studies relatively late) and the elementary studies with which they must begin if they are to build a technique on a firm basis. In the last analysis, standards are often far too low; yet we must underline that there are also serious curricular problems which await solution. Some results shown in universities furnish convincing proof that these problems, on the whole, are soluble.
It may be asked why in this discussion of music education the music schools, the conservatories, have been left to the very end. There has been no thought of disparaging or underestimating what our conservatories have contributed to musical development. What they have accomplished, in the main, is precisely what one would expect. With exceptions such as a new (still problematical) approach to the teaching of theory at Juilliard, they have developed along normal lines. Instrumental and vocal instruction is often first class, they feed excellent players to our orchestras, and produce—as has been noted—an overabundance of young singers and instrumental performers. At Juilliard, the opera department deserves highest praise. For many years its productions have served as a model for those now almost the rule rather than the exception in music schools and music departments throughout the country; and in recent years it has given New York several of its relatively few experiences of contemporary opera. Equally impressive have been the achievements of the Juilliard School orchestra, which on repeated occasions has proved adequate to the demands of most difficult contemporary music.
We cannot terminate this discussion without some lively praise for the American student of today. It seems that in these postwar years a new generation of students has entered upon the scene—a generation which, in the purposefulness and the courage with which its representatives undertake most exacting tasks, and in the devotion and the maturity with which they seek out the real challenges music can present, is sufficient proof that we have moved forward. They, above all, give us the liveliest, most unqualified sense of musical vitality, and the certainty that it will continue to develop.
VI
Throughout this discussion we meet recurrent motives which should be remembered if we are to understand what “goes on” in our music life. These motives will continue to come to mind in connection with specific and concrete instances. It may be useful, therefore, to mention some of them as a point of departure for the discussion of music criticism, or better, musical opinion in the United States.
We have repeatedly referred to the characteristic fluidity of culture in the United States, to the fact that it is in a constant state of rapid development and under the lash of incessant self-criticism. It is impossible to exaggerate the significance of these facts which runs through the whole of our cultural life; but while it is easy to understand that one of their effects has been the extraordinary musical development of the past forty or fifty years, it must also be noted that they bring with them the danger of attitudes not entirely favorable to genuine artistic achievement. There is the easily and occasionally noted lack of spontaneity, not only in artistic judgment, but in relation to music itself. In a drive toward maturity, one can lose sight of the necessity for a full and rich musical experience. The danger lies, then, in a search for shortcuts to maturity, while actually maturity can be the result only of experience: in striving, as we sometimes do, to arrive at judgments in advance of genuine experience, which can be acquired only through love, that is, through an immediate and elementary response to music. The American public may gradually learn to surmount this danger as American listeners acquire more and more experience. However, the musical public is in constant growth, and we can scarcely be astounded that that public, being in part musically inexperienced, has not as yet learned to have confidence in its judgments. Newspaper criticism, therefore, wields far greater power here than it does in other countries; and a marked predilection for abstraction in musical ideas may be noted. We readily embrace or reject causes or personalities, and readily form our judgment with relation to them, rather than to individual works of art. While this is a tendency characteristic of the period in which we live, it seems to be carried to a greater extreme here than elsewhere.
Another principal motive in our discussion is the conflict between the idea of music as an imported European commodity and the indigenous impulse toward musical expression. Obviously, in music criticism this conflict is clearly visible; for in the beginnings of our musical development we imported not only music but musical opinion as well. In the period before World War I, the task of American criticism was precisely that of imparting some knowledge of the music to which one listened in the concert halls and opera houses; to introduce the public to the criteria, controversies, and, above all, to the then current ideas relating to music; to inform it on composers and their backgrounds, musical or spiritual, and on the backgrounds from which music had sprung. The critics of that time were often men of genuine, and even deep culture, and with cosmopolitan experience; but their criticism was neither bold nor original. Like the composers of the period, American critics remained circumspect and cautious in their judgments of contemporary music. They did not wish to be considered unorthodox. How could they have done otherwise? They knew perfectly well that decisive judgments were not made in the United States, and that intellectual boldness would fall on deaf ears when few people were in a position to understand what they conceivably had to say. At most, they could allow themselves an occasional word of encouragement to the efforts of some American composer, who understood well that it amounted to no more than a friendly gesture. In the case of young composers, such gestures, almost always benign, were often coupled with an express warning not to take themselves too seriously. But even such judgments were not problematical, since there was virtually nothing in the American music which offered a challenge to accepted ideas. In the United States of 1913, the Fourth Symphony of Sibelius was regarded with suspicion; the Valses Nobles et Sentimentales of Ravel were controversial; Strauss’s Elektra seemed a shrewdly calculated shocker which the composer himself had repudiated in a much touted and likewise suspect volte-face in Der Rosenkavalier. Stravinsky was but a name; and as for Schönberg, his First Quartet seemed quite obscure and the Five Orchestral Pieces wholly incoherent.
The third of the recurrent principal motives to be recalled here is the divergence between professional instruction and instruction designed for laymen. As has been pointed out, this divergence is found in no field other than music, and this author has tried to show that it is related to the idea that music—valid music, at least—is an imported article. He has tried to demonstrate, too, that it led, as far as music education is concerned, to a confusion of aims, creating problems for both teachers and gifted young men and women whose aims were serious. These problems still survive. A similar divergence is reflected in music criticism in a somewhat different form. It is evident that the principal task of the critic, certainly of the exacting critic, is that which has a bearing on the musical production of the time and place in which he lives. The music which comes from abroad or from the past calls for a serious attitude, to be sure, but it is not comparable to the critic’s responsibilities toward the culture of his own land and epoch. It does not inevitably imply a motive for attacking the real problems of either music or culture. Even research in regard to it is gratuitous to a point, for the very impulse toward research derives from a curiosity which, like the creative impulse, is a symptom of vitality or at least of restlessness in the general atmosphere of the time. It is an indication of an already highly developed music life.