Illustrated, $4.95
DAVID EWEN
INTRODUCES MODERN
MUSIC
A History and Appreciation from
Wagner to Webern
Modem music, formerly heard only in
small, avant-garde circles, has in the past
decade become an everyday experience. It
is continually heard on concert programs
and over the radio; it crowds the record
catalogues; it is often found in the hack-
ground music for movies and television pro-
grams. Today modern music is everybody's
Yet, despite its new popularity, modern
music is still misunderstood by many peo-
ple, Sheer noise, they say. These people are
baffled by the strange sounds they hear.
They demand to know why composers of
modern music have abandoned recogniz-
able melody and harmony for discords,
piercing unrelated tonalities, and primitive
rhythms. Why docs one composer write
compositions which are performed by bang-
ing on the piano keys with fists and elbows?
Win 1 does another composer use radio
static as a basis for his music? What makes
composers score their symphonies for^such
outlandish non-musical "instruments" as
fin* sirens and automobile horns? Why, they
ask, do some very serious musicians regard
the squeals, whines, and burps produced by
tape recorders as the music of the future?
In short; why is the music being written
today so completely different from that of
the masters which we have come to love
and honor?
In this book the whole panorama of mu-
sical creativity since 1900 is unfolded. Bo
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DAVID EWEN Introduces MODERN MUSIC
A History and Appreciation from Wagner to Webern
Other Books by DAVID EWEN
The Story of America's Musical Theater
The World of Jerome Kern: A Biography
Complete Book of the American Musical Theater
Richard Rodgers
A Journey to Greatness
The Life and Music of George Gershwin
The Encyclopedia of the Opera
The Encyclopedia of Concert Music
A Panorama of American Popular Music
The Home Book of Musical Knowledge
Milton Cross's Encyclopedia of Great Composers
and Their Music
(with Milton Cross)
The Complete Book of 20th Century Music
Music for the Millions
Music Comes to America
The New Book of Modern Composers
Leonard Bernstein
The World of Great Composers
DAVID EWEN Introduces
CHILTON COMPANY BOOK DIVISION
Publishers
PHILADELPHIA AND NEW YORK
MODERN
MUSIC
A history and Appreciation
Trom Wagner to Webern
By David wen
Copyright 1962 by David Ewen
First Edition
All Rights Reserved
Published in Philadelphia by Chilton Company,
and simultaneously in Toronto, Canada,
by Ambassador Books, Ltd.
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 62-15168
Designed by William E. Lickfield
Manufactured in the United States of America by
Quinn & Boden Company, Inc., Rahway, N. J.
"You've got to learn to stretch your ears!"
-GEORGE E. IVES to his son CHARLES
"There Is no reason why anybody in the music world, pro-
fessional or layman, should find himself in the
position of not understanding a piece of 20th-
century music, if he is willing to give himself a
little trouble."
VIRGIL THOMSON
Acknowledgments
The quotations on Impressionism and Expres-
sionism by Thomas Craven in Chapters 3 and 5
come from Modern Art, copyright 1934, 1961 by
Thomas Craven. Reprinted by permission of
Simon and Schuster, Inc.
The quotation on Debussy by Oscar Thompson
in Chapter 3 comes from Debussy, Man and
Artist, copyright 1937 by Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc.
The definition of the twelve-tone technique
which appears in Chapter 5 comes from The
Harvard Brief Dictionary of Music by Willi Apel
and Ralph T. Daniel, copyright 1960 by the
President and Fellows of Harvard College. Re-
printed by permission of the Harvard University
Press.
Introduction: But Is It Music? ... 1
Chapter
1. The Wagnerites 24
2. The Eccentrics 45
3. The Impressionists 61
4. The "Everyday" Men 82
5. The Expressionists 105
6. The Primitives 126
7. The Neo-Classicists 142
8. The Nationalists 155
9. The American Nationalists . . . .178
10. The Hebraists 198
11. The Popularists 207
12. The Proletariat 223
13. The Traditionalists 241
14. The Eclectics 255
15. Men of Electronics 277
Index 283
DAVID EWEN Introduces MODERN MUSIC
A History and Appreciation from Wagner to Webern
But Is It
SINCE 1900, many composers In different parts
o the Western world have sprung up like
some well organized fifth column to overthrow the status
quo in music.
These rebels, these revolutionaries, have been deter-
mined to destroy once and for all many, If not all, of the
principles by which the making of music has been gov-
erned for so many centuries. After sweeping away the
ruins, they tried to build a new kind of musical art, with
new materials, techniques, and concepts; a musical art
freed forever from the tyranny of century-old textbooks
and precepts, subject only to Its own laws and principles.
The old forms had to be swept away like so many cob-
webs. Structures of the past had to be replaced by shape-
less organisms, seemingly without a logical beginning,
middle, and end. Sometimes these amorphous structures
were spacious In design. Sometimes, as in some of the
pieces by Anton von Webern, they consisted only of a
few notes which took no more than several seconds to
perform.
The discipline of tonality, to which composers had so
willingly subjected themselves since the days of Bach, was
superseded by the anarchy of no tonality at all. This new
music roamed about freely from one key to another, no
longer tied to the resting point of a tonal center. Lyricism
made way for seemingly disconnected snatches of ugly
1
ideas which the German and Austrian atonalists described
as "song-speech."
Polyphony now consisted of a marriage of melodies in
which each melody was in apparent violent disagreement
with the others. First Ives, then Stravinsky, and after that
Milhaud produced works in a "polytonal" style in which
two or more themes, each in a different key, were joined in
an unholy union.
Rhythm had to be unharnessed like some nuclear
power. Rhythms in more varieties, combinations, and
permutations than even the wildest imagination could
have dreamed of a century ago were released by Stravin-
sky in Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) a
composition which produced an atomic explosion all its
own. Olivier Messiaen wrote a huge ten-movement glori-
fication of rhythm, TurangaUlia. As he himself explained
somewhat awesomely, his hour-long work was filled with
"nonreversible rhythms, asymmetric augmentations with
several rhythmic identities, rhythmic modes, and the com-
binations of quantitative and sounding elements in rein-
forcing the values and timbre of each percussion instru-
ment by chords which form the resonance of these reso-
nances." Messiaen further assumed a role as a prophet of
rhythm by preparing a rhythm dictionary incorporating
the basic rhythms of the Eastern and Western worlds as
well as those of Greek music.
Harmonies long sanctified by conservatory rules and
textbooks were succeeded by piercing discords the more
the cacophony, and the greater the volume, the better.
Dissonant chords no longer demanded the relief of reso-
lution; they were self-sufficient, independent the re-
placement for consonance.
Emotion? This was just excess baggage, a useless carry-
over from the sentimental Romantic era, now dead. Mu-
2
sic had to be stripped of all feeling, all human experience,
and become as cut and dried as a mathematical formula.
Indeed, several composers actually did create formulas
to govern creation. Arnold Schoenberg devised the twelve-
tone technique which has mathematical precision and
exactitude. Boris Blacher Invented a strict arithmeti-
cal series for organizing rhythm and meter, sometimes In
strict succession (1, 2, 3, 4), and at other times evolved
by having each subsequent number become the sum of
two preceding numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 8). Joseph Schillinger
worked out a creative system based on scientific methods.
He produced an exact technique for writing music
through the application of formulas, charts, and graphs.
On one occasion he created a composition derived from
the week's stock-market quotations the rise and fall of
these quotations translated into equivalent rise and fall
of the melodic line. Heitor Villa-Lobos went one step
further. He wrote pieces about a South American moun-
tain range and the New York skyline by tracing the con-
tours of each on graph paper, then retracing the same
curves into melodic lines.
The stock market and the New York skyline were only
two of similarly off-beat subjects stimulating some of our
modern composers. In the Soviet Union, factories, Iron
foundries, collective farms, the reforestation program,
and a peace conference In Geneva all provided material
for musical exploitation. Honegger set a moving train
and a game of Rugby to music; Leonard Bernstein found
musical Inspiration In a cookbook, and Milhaud In a
catalogue of agricultural Implements. Manuel Rosenthal
described a lavish musical meal, Stravinsky a poker game,
Poulenc fish and marine life. One American even made
a musical setting of the Instructions preceding the In-
come-tax form. Esoteric settings, far removed from their
3
own everyday experiences with appropriately esoteric
musical idioms fascinated still other composers. Arnold
Bax and Sir Granville Bantock, both Englishmen, were
respectively influenced by Celtic lore and the Orient.
Two Americans, Colin McPhee and Alan Hovhaness,
based many o their compositions on subjects and mu-
sical styles relating to Bali, on the one hand, and Ar-
menia, on the other.
New sounds had to be concocted., sounds never before
heard in a serious musical creation grating, shrieking,
nerve-wracking sounds. When a composer exhausted the
sound potential of known musical instruments, he
reached for noisemakers, machines, electronics, even ra-
dio static. Satie used a typewriter and a spinning roulette
wheel in Parade, Ravel a cheesegrater in L' Enfant et les
sortileges, Mossolov a shaken steel-sheet in Iron Foundry.
One Italian modernist specified the need of a "whistler"
and a "snorer" in one of his compositions. When Richard
Strauss wanted to reproduce the noise o a storm, he in-
vented a thunder and a wind machine for Don Quixote
and An Alpine Symphony. One woman in Berlin, reading
that a wind machine was being introduced by Strauss,
inquired from a local paper whether it was necessary to
bring an umbrella to the concert hall A wind machine
also appears in Vaughan Williams' Seventh Symphony^
the "Antarctica/'
The world of electronics opened up entirely new pos-
sibilities for the projection of noises, and distortion of
noises. Some musical adventurers in France, Germany,
and the United States were quick to explore the com-
pletely new electronic world of musical creation. ''You
hear roars from an air terminal," one American critic
wrote in describing such an electronic composition,
"background effects from a cheap radio thriller, the stac-
4
cato click of rolling dice, screeching brakes, or the un-
pleasant vibrato of an electric organ. . . . What value
does such a work have as music? Your guess is as good
as mine." In the concluding chapter of this book we shall
say more about our musical men of electronics.
Edgar Varese, an American, devoted his life to compo-
sitions based mostly on dynamic effects, timbres, so-
norities of percussions, sirens, electronic instruments, and
so forth. For these experiments Varese concocted the de-
scriptive phrase "organized sound." Varese uses not only
musical instruments and machines, but even simulates
noises of insects and animals. In lonisation -written for
sixteen percussion, friction, and sibilation instruments
of undetermined pitch he uses two fire sirens. In Hy-
perprism the percussion group includes sleigh bells;
another composition, Arcana, requires five choirs of per-
cussion. Varese aspires, as Nicolas Slonimsky, one of
America's leading musicologists, once said, to reach "Into
the field of musical infinities/' But to W. J. Henderson,
another American critic, one of Varese's compositions
"shrieked, grunted, chortled, mewed, barked. ... It was
just a ribald outbreak of noise." Olin Downes was re-
minded of "election night, a menagerie or two, and a
catastrophe in a boiler factory." Varese's own simple ex-
planation is: "I try to fly on my own wings."
Other innovators uncovered new sounds not through
dynamics but through experiments with unusual intervals.
As a departure from the traditional use of whole tones and
half tones that has governed our scales since Bach proved
the feasibility of the "well-tempered" or "well-tuned"
clavier, Alois Hdba, a Czech, conceived an altogether new
type of music by means of quarter tones. In this idiom he
wrote operas, string quartets and various other instru-
mental works, devising his own system of notation, and
5
manufacturing new types of musical instruments capable
of performing his works, Hans Earth, an American, also
wrote quarter-tone music for a two keyboard, quarter-tone
piano which he had invented. The Mexican, Julian Car-
rillo, not only made notable experiments in quarter-tone
musiceven to the point of rewriting Bach's Well-Tem-
pered Clavier and Beethoven's nine symphonies in quarter
tones! but also created compositions in eighth tones and
sixteenth tones, inventing special instruments for this pur-
pose. Carrillo pointed out the vast new world that can be
uncovered through this means in the introduction to his
El Infinito musical (a valuable manual on modern musical
theory): "If there is anyone who would like to publish this
work, the first chapter will have to present 1,193,232 chords
for which it will be necessary to have 14,315 volumes of
five hundred pages each."
Was there any excess to which tonal adventurers would
not go in their efforts to explore a brave new world of
musical sound?
1 In the early 1920's, Henry Cowell then an enfant ter-
rible,, though now pretty much of a traditionalist-
became famous for his piano pieces performed by hammer-
ing fists, elbows, or forearms on the keyboard. He called
these violent eruptions of sound "tone clusters." How-
ever, tone clusters were not new with Cowell. Charles
Ives had used them many years earlier. In the middle
1910's a young man, Leo Ornstein, horrified concert au-
diences with compositions like the Wild Men's Dance
which made use of minor-second dissonances called "note
clusters/' But Cowell used this technique so extensively,
that the term "tone clusters" is invariably identified with
his name.
6
At one of his concerts In Germany a riot broke out
in the hall between those favoring his music and those
who were outraged by it. The police were called In to
quell the disturbance. But through it all Cowell was so
busily and so noisily engaged with his smashing sounds
that he did not even realize anything unusual was taking
place in the auditorium. Needless to say, each of CowelFs
public appearances proved a taxing physical feat. Ac-
cepting Cowell more in a spirit of fun than art, the man-
aging editor of a New York newspaper sent not his music
critic but the sports editor to cover a Cowell concert in
Carnegie Hall. And the headline of the review read:
"Cowell Wins in Bout with Kid Knabe."
A recent extension of this tone-cluster technique was
presented by Toshi Ichiyanagi In a program of avant-
garde music in New York on May 15, 1961. In one of his
compositions he used a hammer on the piano keyboard,
and repeated a single loud elbow-smash chord over five
hundred times.
George Antheil, another American bad boy of musk
in the 1920's, created a furor with a work named Ballet
mecanique. The composition was scored for airplane pro-
pellers, anvils, electric bells, automobile horns, and six-
teen player pianos. The cataclysm of sound that emerged
from the stage of Carnegie Hall on April 10, 1927, caused
one wag In the audience to attach a white handkerchief
to his cane and wave It frantically overhead as a symbol
of surrender.
If the instrumentation for compositions by Antheil and
Varese seems outlandish, then, surely, the last word was
had by the young composer, Harold G, Davison, In Auto
Accident. His score required the following instruments:
"Two plate glasses, each resting on a washing bowl or
crock, with a hammer or mallet, in readiness to smash
7
them/' Then the composer provided his performer with
the following instructions: "On page nine, measure four,
these plates are to be shattered with the hammer, one on
the second count, and the other on the second half of
the third count. In the next measure the bowls containing
the broken glass are to be emptied on a hard surface [such
as a] table or floor."
Hardly less audacious an innovator is John Cage. His
earlier works were written for a "prepared piano" a pi-
ano that had been "prepared" by stuffing dampers of
metal, wood, rubber, felt and other substances between
the strings to permit unusual sounds and sonorities. Each
of Cage's pieces required him to "prepare" a piano differ-
ently.
From the "prepared piano" Cage went on to far more
outlandish experiments. He has written compositions for
an audio-frequency oscillator, an electric-wire coil, and
regulated recordings of various industrial noises. Some of
his works need automobile brake drums, tubs of water,
flower pots, electric buzzers, and numerous other devices
capable of producing singular noises. In Water Music,
two containers are utilized, one empty and one full of
water; a stop watch regulates when and for how long a
time the water is poured from the full container into the
empty one. William Mix attempts to reproduce city and
country noises, electronic sounds, manually produced
and wind-produced sounds, and faint sounds audible
only through amplification. One of Cage's most novel
pieces was featured a few years ago on the Garry Moore
television show. It was offered there as a stunt, though
the composer himself regards it as a very serious artistic
production. In performing this music, Cage runs from
one device to another for a succession of sounds from
radios producing static and fragments of programs, to a
8
glass half-filled with water, to a pneumatic pump, to a
tape recorder, and so forth.
Cage has also tried to introduce spontaneity and im-
provisation into the creative process. One of his piano
works instructs the performer to drop the manuscript on
the floor. The pianist then picks up at random any sheet
and proceeds to play it; the composition thus becomes
a haphazardly conceived concoction, as the pianist pro-
ceeds to pick up one sheet after another. In one of his
orchestral works scored for 'cellos, basses, winds, per-
cussion and piano Cage does not indicate the individual
notes to be played by the men but merely tells them
whether to play high or low, loud or soft. (Zeitmesse by
Karl Heinz Stockhausen is similarly without a plan. The
score is made up of unrelated musical fragments which
the performer can pick out at will, one after another.
When the same fragment is repeated the composition is
over.)
In view of the almost harrowing noises produced in so
many of Cage's works perhaps the most welcome of his
creations is a piano piece entitled Four Minutes Thirty
Seconds. This is a "silent composition" in "three move-
ments/' during which the virtuoso sits at his piano all
the time and plays nothing!
Cage has his disciples and pupils, and the most pro-
vocative of these is Morton Feldman. Like his teacher,
Feldman is the creator of "silences" as well as "sounds."
He has never written a completely silent work; rather,
he uses carefully calculated periods of silence which in-
terrupt periods of soundor, as one critic described the
process, "spots of sound variously dropped on silence."
Feldman has written Pieces^ Extensions^ Intersections^
for string quartet, one or more pianos, violin and piano,
and so forth. These compositions demand a completely
9
new system of notation: graphs and charts In place of
formal notes, bars and dynamic markings. He has devised
a new system of figures, numbers and signs to indicate
pitch and time values, and such instrumental indications as
pizzicato and arco.
Opera has also had its non-conformists, adventurers,
and outright anarchists beginning with Debussy's Pel-
leas and Melisande which represented to Camille Bel-
laigue, the eminent French critic, "a structureless art"
abolishing rhythm and melody and containing "germs,
not of life and progress, but of decadence and death/' In
his Expressionist opera, Wozzeck, Alban Berg went on to
banish formal melody and rhythm, substituting a strident
"song-speech" for singable arias. But to many of Berg's con-
temporariesshocked by these yawps and outcries and
burps and yelpsthis was neither song nor speech. "As
I left the State Opera last night/' reported Berlin critic
Paul Zschorlich, after the premiere of Wozzeck, "1 had
the sensation not of coming out of a public institution but
out of an insane asylum."
In Carl Orff's opera trilogy, Trionfi (which includes
the now frequently performed Carmina Burana] the
style consists almost entirely of a kind of rhythmic decla-
mation, often without any orchestral accompaniment.
Repeated notes make up a good part of the melody, and
harmony is used economically.
If Orff sometimes dispenses with melody, normal
rhythm and at times even harmony in opera, Boris Bla-
cher has done away with the libretto. Abstrakte Oper
No. 1 has no continuity or plot; emotional states are
indicated by such headings as "Fear," "Love No. 1,"
"Panic No. F* and so forth. The dialogue consists almost
entirely of arbitrary sounds rather than words, and when
10
real words are used at Infrequent Intervals their mean-
ing is completely unintelligible.
What are these composers trying to do? Are they just
charlatans, publicity-seekers, sensation-mongers? Are they
scientists instead of creative artists, devising experiments
in their own kind of laboratories? experiments which,
in themselves, may not be art but which some day may
become the means by which art is created by musicians.
Or are these innovators powerful inventive figures,
evolving a musical art which, however strange to our
ears, will in a future day sound as pleasing, simple and
appealing as do Haydn and Mozart?
II
Before such a question can be answered, an important
fact must be stressed. Throughout the history of music
rebels and iconoclasts have broken down traditional
rules, customs, and procedures to open up new horizons
for music. Were this not the case, our musical experiences
today would still be confined to the unaccompanied poly-
phonic vocal music that dominated the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. From century to century, music has
been subjected to violent changes, and these changes
were effected as often by revolution as by evolution.
From the fourteenth through the sixteenth century,
music's first great era, polyphony was the prevailing
texture. The music of that age was contrapuntal unac-
companied, ecclesiastical, and vocal. In counterpoint
several different melodies were sung simultaneously. To
break away from this style and initiate the homophonic
variety, that is music with a single melody supported by
a harmonic accompaniment, represented a titanic up-
heaval This revolution came about during the Ren-
11
aissance through the efforts of a small group o Floren-
tine intellectuals who aspired to revive Greek drama
with music. In the early sixteenth century, a simple decla-
mationa one-voice melody accompanied by instru-
mentssounded as weird and without logic and reason
to ears so long accustomed to the multi-voiced choral
music of the times, as atonality first did in our own day.
But the simple device of declamation helped bring on
a new musical culture.
Opera's first undisputed master, Claudio Monteverdi,
was severely hounded by his contemporaries for his
"modernism." He was one of the earliest composers to
champion the major-minor tonal system; he was one of
the first to introduce dissonance in harmony; he was one of
the first to use such completely new instrumental devices
as the pizzicato and the tremolo. Many of his colleagues
were astounded and shocked by his innovations. Artusi,
a noted theorist of Monteverdi's day, remarked bitterly
that Monteverdi's music made no appeal to reason. In
1600 another of Monteverdi's critics wrote: "These kind
of air castles and chimeras deserve the severest reproof.
. , . You hear a medley of sounds, a variety of parts
that are intolerable to the ear. . . . With all the best
will in the world how can the mind see light in this
chaos?" Yet Monteverdi's revolution did represent light,
throwing illumination on paths which ultimately led to
the music drama.
After Monteverdi, notable pioneers of operas like
Jean-Baptiste Raineau and Christoph Willibald Gluck
were frequently abused and denounced for daring to
depart from clich& and formulas already long established
by Italian opera composers. Rameau and Gluck, like
Monteverdi, were far ahead of their times in trying to
change opera into a musical drama in which music and
12
text were equal partners In an artistic undertaking. Both
Rameau and Gluck were opposed to lilting tunes, pleas-
Ing duets, ensemble numbers, and pretty choral pieces
whose only raison d'etre was either to exploit a remark-
able voice or a set of voices, or else to please the ear of
the listener. These bold pioneers also objected vehe-
mently to big scenes, elaborate ballets, and spectacular
stage procedures; they preferred to have everything on
the stage arise naturally and inevitably from the needs
of the play. Finally, both Rameau and Gluck were de-
termined to make music reflect the emotional and dra-
matic nuances of the stage action and the characteriza-
tions, even if it meant producing music that was dramatic
and expressive Instead of merely melodious. "French
melody Is no melody at all," insisted Jean Jacques Rous-
seau about Rameau's operas, "and French recitative is
not recitative. I conclude, therefore, that the French have
not and cannot have music of their own/' The men of
the Opera orchestra In Paris jeered loudly when first
asked to play Rameau's music which, they said, was so
complicated that it did not even provide musicians with
an opportunity to sneeze. And the Viennese audiences
that first heard Gluck's epoch-making Orfeo ed Euridice
in 1762 were as baffled by Gluck's musical revolutions
as the French people had been by Rameau's.
In the same way that Monteverdi, Rameau and Gluck
first changed the course of opera, so other visionalres
in music continually revised the concepts of what struc-
ture, melody, harmony, and orchestration should be.
Each time these revisions were made, a new language
was Introduced which contemporaries even some of the
learned onesoften failed to comprehend. So revolu-
tionary was the vague tonality in the opening bars of
Mozart's String Quartet in C major that In listening
13
to It the master, Joseph Haydn (already the greatest
composer of his generation), could only shake his head
with wonder and Incredulity. He remarked: "If Mozart
wrote it he must have had a good reason to do so." In-
deed, to this day this composition Is known as the "Dis-
sonant Quartet/' though to us it represents a world of
grace and charm.
The radical way in which Beethoven opened his First
Symphony seemingly In the key of F, then passed on to the
key of G before arriving at the C major tonality, and
the prominent use he made of brass instruments and
timpani, ushered In a new day for symphonic writing.
But these procedures seemed like madness to Beethoven's
critics. One said this work sounded as if it had been
written for a military band; another described Beethoven
as a musical ignoramus, a "poorly tutored student." Of
Beethoven's use of shattering dissonant chords, In the
opening movement of the "Eroka" Symphony, one critic
remarked: "Poor Beethoven Is so deaf that he cannot
hear the discords he writes." After hearing the first move-
ment of the Fifth Symphony, Goethe exclaimed: "It Is
meaningless. One expected the house to fall about one's
ears."
About Berlioz, Ftls, the distinguished French critic,
wrote In 1837: "I believe that what Monsieur Berlioz
writes does not belong to the art which I customarily
regard as music." Yet Berlioz Is the genius who was
among the first to make a permanent break with the
classical past and to carry the musical art to Romanti-
cism. Berlioz evolved a new kind of flexible and ex-
pansive symphonic structure that was unified by a central
thought (or as he described the technique, the idee fixe);
he was one of the first to try producing a dramatic, pro-
grammatic, and pictorial symphonic style; he opened
14
new areas for rhythm, harmony, and orchestration
through never before essayed techniques. Consequently,
in the early nineteenth century, Berlioz was an innovator
no less brazen and fearless than some of our twentieth-
century modernists.
There were many in Berlioz' day who thought he rep-
resented the end of musical sanity. Yet time and again
after that composers were subjected to the most violent
attack even when their infringements on the status quo
were comparatively minor. Liszt suffered derision and
vituperation for daring to use the glockenspiel in his
First Piano Concerto. Cesar Franck's Symphony in D
minor was soundly abused for adding the English horn
to the family of symphonic instruments. (One eminent
professor of the Paris Conservatory shouted after the
concert: "This a symphony? Who ever heard of writing
for the English horn in a symphony?") Tchaikovsky's
delightful use of extended pizzicato passages in the
Scherzo of his Fourth Symphony led Henry E. Krehbiel
to remark that "as a symphonic movement, it is about
as dignified as one of the compositions which delight the
souls of college banjo clubs." Rossini so scandalized the
musicians of Milan by opening his overture to La Gazza
ladra with rolls of two snare drumseach drum in an
opposite side of the orchestra that (according to a fa-
miliar story) the concertmaster of the La Scala Orches-
tra threatened to kill him. Chopin's new approaches to
harmonic colorings, tonalities and techniques of piano
performance completely changed the course of writing
for the piano. But in 1833 Rellstab, a German critic,
insisted that Chopin's music (now the very essence of
the poetic) was nothing but "ear-rendering disso-
nances, tortuous transitions, sharp modulations, repug-
nant contortions of melody and rhythm."
15
The truth of this whole matter Is that what one genera-
tion may consider ugly and noisy and insane may very
well become the essence of beauty to a later era. In his
time Franz Schubert was attacked forof all things a
lack of lyricism. This was because Schubert was so intent
upon making his melody express the most subtle and
elusive nuance of the poem he was setting, that he ar-
rived at a new kind of expressive and dramatic melody
far different from the classical kind found in earlier songs
by Haydn and Mozart. Today we recognize Schubert as
one of the greatest creators of melody the world has
known because our ears are completely attuned to his
kind of musical beauty. The song composers who fol-
lowed Schubert (Schumann, Brahms, Hugo Wolf, De-
bussy) all tried to penetrate ever deeper into the mean-
ing and emotion of their poems. Each arrived at a new
concept of lyricism. These composers were also con-
demned by many critics for failing to create beautiful
melodies, yet each of these composers is now recognized
as a master.
Is there any opera more melodious than Verdi's Rigo-
letto? This is a work so full of lovable and familiar tunes
that some may be tempted to believe it full of "quota-
tions." Yet, In 1858, an unidentified Italian critic bel-
lowed that there was simply no melody in Rigoletto!
Is there any composer of songs more bitterly accused
in his time of avoiding melody than Debussy? But only
a half-century later one of these melodies was popular
enough to become an American hit-song!
If the concept of beauty in melody can change with
time, so can that of beauty In harmony. Because they
ventured into new worlds of harmonic sound to realize
a richer and more meaningful expression, masters like
Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Liszt, Brahms and Richard
16
Strauss were often described as noisy, Incoherent, mad.
How did a Boston critic react in 1878 to Brahms' First
Symphony? To him the music was only "noisy, ungrate-
ful, confusing," an "unattractive example of dry ped-
antry." What was it that another critic said in 1896 of one
of the most delightful, witty and ingratiating of all of
Richard Strauss's orchestral pieces, Till Eulenspiegel's
Merry Pranks? "The orchestration is sound and fury
signifying nothing, and the instruments are made to in-
dulge In a shrieking, piercing, noisy breakdown most of
the time."
One more point is well worth emphasizing. There is,
as the cliche tells us, nothing really new under the sun*
Some of the idioms and techniques first regarded in the
twentieth century as so outlandish and so without basis
In precedent or reason, can be found (however tenta-
tively suggested) in the works of earlier masters.
Dissonance? . . . The discords in the first movement
of the "Eroica" are as jarring as some found In The Rite
of Spring. And, as far back as 1770, Charles Burney, the
English historian, said that "discord seems to be as much
the essence of music as shade in painting."
Polytonality? . . . Stravinsky and Milhaud may have
shocked graybeards with this technique, yet polytonality
is certainly suggested in many eighteenth-century com-
positions where a pedal or organ point Is sustained
throughout a work and thus linked with unrelated tones.
And polytonality is forcefully foreshadowed in a canonic
passage by Bach quoted In Percy Scholes* Oxford Com-
panion of Music.
Syncopation? . . . The works of Bach, Beethoven,
Schumann, Brahms are full of it.
The Whole-Tone Scale? . . . Long before Debussy It
17
was used by Mozart, Schubert, Rossini, Berlioz, and Liszt.
Atonality? . . . There are recognizable examples of
twelve-tone composition in Liszt's Faust Symphony; one
musicologist even detected a twelve-tone row in Mozart's
G minor Symphony; and the last quartets of Beethoven
have decidedly atonal implications.
Sprechstimme? . . . The recitatives of Mussorgsky, in
which he consciously tried to imitate speech, are the
ancestors of song-speech.
Nor is the introduction of outlandish paraphernalia
to concoct new sounds, or the use of exotic instruments
a phenomenon peculiar to our century. Beethoven wrote
Wellington's Victory for a mechanical wind band known
as the "panharmonicon"; Tchaikovsky interpolated ac-
tual booming cannon into the scoring of the 1812 Over-
ture; Mozart utilized sleigh bells and a hurdy-gurdy in
his German dances; and in his overture to // Signor
Bruschino, Rossini had the violinists tap the music stands
with their bows.
Ill
One reason why composers tried new and unorthodox
techniques was to open new vistas for the musical art.
But another force has also been operating, sending com-
posers into revolt against existing institutions. That force
can perhaps best be summed up by the old bromide that
for every action there is a reaction. Or, to change the
image, music history is a pendulum swinging now to one
extreme, now to the other, before finding a resting point
midway between the extremes. After one style has been
carried to excess, composers invariably appear to react
decisively against that style with a far different kind of
music. After this reaction has spent itself, a compromise
is usually reached with a style assimilating tendencies
and mannerisms of both extremes.
18
We already have had occasion to remark that the poly-
phonic era was the first important one in music. As the
years passed this style grew ever more complex and
subtle under the influence of masters like Josquin des
Pres, Vittoria, and Palestrina. Eventually composers were
impelled to break away and try something new: some-
thing that was, by contrast, simple, one-voiced, harmonic.
Thus the reaction to polyphony brought on homoph-
ony a single melody against a harmonic accompani-
ment. Music could now move back from the intricate to
the elementary, from the esoteric to the universal. Thus
the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme of polyph-
ony, and when it finally came to rest, a middle ground
was reached with the masterworks of Bach and Handel.
The age of Bach and Handel has been designated by
historians as "baroque." The Baroque period was fol-
lowed by the Classical era, with the works of Haydn and
Mozart as its apex. In Classicism, order, discipline, sym-
metry, formality, and precise structures were combined
with an objective approach and an emotional restraint.
After Classicism had progressed to an extreme in its strict
adherence to law and order, reaction proved inevitable.
It came with the licenses of Romanticism. Forms became
flexible, and new structures were invented; style grew
freer; technique achieved elasticity. Emotion, subjectivity,
fantasy, and emphasis of the poetic element governed
the creative impulse. Romanticism reached its climax
with Berlioz, Schubert, Schumann and Liszt. Then an-
other middle ground was reached which combined ele-
ments of Classicism and Romanticism; this middle
ground found its expression in the music of Johannes
Brahms.
A good deal that has happened in twentieth-century
music is the result of history's pendulum swinging freely
now to one extreme, and now to the other. The greatest
19
single Influence upon the twentieth century was Wagner-
ism, a tidal wave that swept over the entire world of
music in the closing decades of the past century. Differ-
ent composers broke with Wagner in different ways and
each of these break-throughs represents some current or
cross-current in contemporary music-making.
Wagner was one of the greatest revolutionists in music.
His world was opera, and in that world he fashioned a
new art the music drama which he tried to make a
"synthesis of the arts." His ideal was a super-art in which
every element music, poetry, drama, scenery, acting-
was just a part of a monumental whole. He wrote his
own poetic dramas filled with symbolism and allegorical
allusions pointing up his own social and political think-
ing. He clarified his own ideas of staging, scenery, and
costuming. He wrote his own music. He was gifted in
every department, but a genius in only one music. With
a musical technique equalled by few before him; with an
inspiration that never seemed to fail him when he sum-
moned it for a big scene or a great emotion; with a
capacity for innovation which brought new dimensions
to harmonic and contrapuntal writing, to thematic devel-
opment, to tonality, to orchestration, he made his music
express the loftiest sentiments, the noblest concepts, and
the most sensual moods of his stage plays.
Music had to be as dramatically and poetically ex-
pressive as his inexhaustible invention could make it;
tone had to serve his most searching aims as a poet and
a man of the theater. He used a Gargantuan orchestra
because his musical ideas were Gargantuan, and he en-
dowed his music with colors, nuances and dynamics new
to the operatic theater. From his orchestra players he
20
demanded such virtuosity that for a long time they in-
sisted his music was unplayable. He gave his orchestra
an importance it had never before enjoyed in the opera
house; the orchestra became the human voice's equal in
his overall musical scheme.
Wagner had to evolve a new harmonic language to
project the subtlest and most elusive suggestions. He
used suspended ninth chords, six-four chords in pro-
tracted cadences, and chromatic harmonies which intro-
duced a new type of dissonance through continual modu-
lations until all sense of a consistent tonality was lost.
To achieve integration and unity he worked out an
elaborate scheme of continual, uninterrupted melody.
Wagner's kind of melody was so wide in its expressive
range and so technically demanding on the voice that
singers of his day said it was beyond their capabilities.
He also worked out a new technique of leading motives.
Each motive represented some character, situation,
mood, or emotion. These leading motives recurred
throughout the opera, often magically transformed, often
combined in the most complex and subtle contrapuntal
textures.
He was a giant who thought and worked in gigantic
terms. It took him over a quarter of a century to create
The Ring of the Nibelungs, a monumental cycle of four
music dramas, each of which (except for the first, a
prologue) required about four hours for performance.
As he worked on this vast project, he never wavered in
his belief in himself and his mission. What matter if
voices and orchestra players of his day could not meet
the demands made by his exacting music? In time mu-
sicians and singers would acquire the necessary tech-
nique! What matter if the stage of that day could not
cope with his advanced demands or his concept of an
21
ideal opera performance? In time there would be a
special theater built to do justice to his far-sighted ideas!
Meanwhile there was work to be done, a dream to bring
to lifenot only The Ring of the Nibelungs, but also
other mighty musical epics, such as Tristan und Isolde.,
Die Meistersinger, and Parsifal. For all he knew, as he
worked so passionately, none of these works would be
performed in his own lifetime. But he kept on working,
confident of his ultimate victory, confident that his music
was truly (as he himself called It) the "art of the future/'
For a long time he was the object of vilification and
vituperation such as few composers ever experienced.
The powerful Viennese music critic, Eduard Hanslick,
one of his most bitter antagonists, described the music
dramas as "formlessness elevated to a principle, a system-
atized non-music, a melodic nerve fever written out on
the five lines of the staff." Leading critics in France, Ger-
many, Austria, and England called him a "madman"
and his music "a monstrosity"; "the anti-Christ, incar-
nate of art"; "the enemy of melody, seeker after the un-
orthodox, corrupter of art, eccentric by nature"; "a
disease who contaminates everything he touches he has
made music sick." His immortal drama of love and death,
Tristan und Isolde, was described as "advanced cat mu-
sic. ... It can be produced by a poor piano player
who hits the black keys instead of the white keys, or vice
versa." The incomparable comedy, Die Meistersinger
was said to be a "horrendous Katzenjammer" which
"could not be accomplished even If all the organ
grinders of Berlin would have been locked up in Renz's
Circus, each playing a different waltz."
He had violent enemies, but he also had passionate
disciples who knew he was a prophet of the new music;
musicians like Hans von Buelow (whose wife he stole)
22
and Franz Liszt; patrons of all kinds, including the
mighty King of Bavaria, Ludwig II. They promoted his
music in every way they could. And it was through the
bounty of the King that many of Wagner's music dramas
were finally heard in Munich. After that, Wagner brought
one of his most cherished dreams to realization with the
building of a Festival Theater in the Bavarian town of
Bayreuth. There his mighty Ring cycle was given in its
entirety for the first time with the quality of perform-
ances he desired. Now Bayreuth is the shrine of Wagner's
music dramas to which music lovers stream from all
parts of the civilized world.
For vastness of artistic concept, for newness of musical
language, for independence of musical thought, Wagner
dominated the closing nineteenth century like a Colos-
sus. He might be hated or worshiped; but to ignore him
was impossible. The spell of Wagner was inescapable;
it was felt by every composer who followed him. There
were those who tried to write as he did (and not neces-
sarily for the stage). In following in his giant footsteps,
these men carried German Romanticism to a point
beyond which it could go no further. Then there were
those who reacted violently against his superstructures,
his harmonic and melodic extravagances, his determina-
tion to make music express ideas and concepts well
beyond the boundaries of tones. Such composers, break-
ing with Wagner, helped to swing the musical pendulum
to the extreme which opposed German Romanticism.
We shall see that many of the trends of the twentieth
century represent just such a violent reaction against
Wagner.
23
CHAPTER i
The Wagnerites
SOME composers carried Wagner's torch while
he was still alive; many others carried this
torch long after his death. All adopted his aesthetics, his
ideals and his personal creative mannerisms not merely
for music dramas but for orchestral compositions and
songs as well. These composers liked to employ huge
structures and vast vocal and Instrumental forces. They
utilized elaborate harmonic and contrapuntal schemes
and doted upon big sonorities and dynamics, and over-
rich colorings. They liked to express highly sensual or
theatrical moods or to speak of philosophical, meta-
physical, literary or spiritual concepts. Their speech was
filled with dramatized or pictorial tonal images. Wagner's
harmonic idiosyncrasies, Wagner's chromaticism, Wag-
ner's way of writing for large brass choirs and divided
strings was also their way of writing.
When Wagner was still alive, a Viennese composer
became identified as the "Wagner of the symphony/' He
was Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), a humble, naive man
who was a peasant at heart. Bruckner believed In only
two things outside his own music: Wagner and God
and there were times when he confused the two. He was
a composer of choral and organ music, and a church
organist, when in 1863 he heard Wagner's Tannhauser.
Here he found a musical religion. Henceforth he wor-
shiped at the Wagnerian shrine with all the humility of
24
a true believer. After attending the premiere of Parsifal,,
Bruckner fell on his knees before Wagner, kissed his hand,
and exclaimed: "Master, I worship you!"
Bruckner tried to write symphonies the way Wagner
wrote music dramas. He used large structures, dramatic
and passionate utterances; his music is filled with flights
towards the sublime and the grandiose. More than that,
Bruckner copied some of Wagner's own methods In har-
mony and orchestration, and on occasion even used
thematic material that had more than a passing resem-
blance to some of Wagner's. Bruckner's Third Symphony
was not only dedicated to Wagner but is filled with
Wagner-like speech. The slow movement of his Seventh
Symphony is touched with tragedy for as Bruckner wrote
It he had a premonition of the master's Imminent death,
Bruckner's immediate successor In symphonic music
in Vienna was Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), also a per-
fect Wagnerite. One of the greatest conductors of his
generation, Mahler was sophisticated and Immensely cul-
tured. He had studied philosophy at the University, and
all his life had been an omnivorous reader of great
literature. Cosmic problems tormented him; even as a
composer he grappled with them.
Like Bruckner (and Beethoven before that) Mahler
completed nine symphonies. All of them were super-
structures using large orchestral forces and filled with
Wagnerian conventions in harmony and instrumenta-
tion. Many of Mahler's symphonies are in five or six
movements, requiring an hour to an hour and a half
for performance. The oversized orchestra included many
instruments not generally found in traditional sym-
phonic works. The gigantic Second Symphony, the
"Resurrection/* requires (with the usual complement
of strings) four flutes, four piccolos, four oboes, two
25
English horns, five clarinets, two E-flat clarinets, a bass
clarinet, four bassoons and double-bassoons, six horns
(four off-stage), six trumpets (four off-stage), four trom-
bones, a tuba, two sets of timpani, a bass drum, one or
more snare drums, cymbals, small and large tam-tams,
a triangle, a glockenspiel, three bells, a rut he (bundle
of sticks), two harps, an organ, and in addition to all
this another timpani, bass drum, cymbals and triangle
"to be sounded from a distance." This giant score also
calls for a soprano, alto, and mixed chorus! In the Eighth
Symphony, so many singers are required (eight solo
voices, a double choir, and a boys' choir) that the work
has been dubbed the "symphony of a thousand voices/'
Mahler tried to make music convey ideas which belong
more rightfully in the province of philosophy and meta-
physics (just as Wagner had introduced social and polit-
ical concepts in The Ring of the Nibelungs). Contin-
ually in his nine symphonies Mahler wrestled with the
meaning of life and death, of the universe and nature,
of eternal love and fate, of suffering, and resignation,
and of resurrection. He used tones the way philosophers
used thoughts, to speak of Faustian struggles after knowl-
edge. In the mighty Eighth Symphony he probed into
the profound philosophical implications of Goethe's
Faust and tried to translate them into musical sound.
Mahler's symphonies are the last word in German or
Wagnerian Romanticism. Beyond his symphonic struc-
tures, his huge orchestral forces, and his efforts to express
the cosmic, the symphony could progress no further.
After Mahler, many composers of orchestral music who
wished to walk in Wagner's shoes had to seek out other
forms, directions, and means,
Then there was a third Viennese composer Hugo
Wolf (1860-I903)who was essentially a composer of
26
songs and who is often identified as the "Wagner of the
Lied/'
His adulation of Wagner was second only to that of
Bruckner. Wolf was still a conservatory student when he
heard a Wagnerian drama for the first time, this initia-
tion also taking place with Tannhauser as it had with
Bruckner. "I find no words for it," he exclaimed. "The
music of this great master has taken me out of myself."
Since Wagner was then in Vienna, at the Hotel Imperial,
the fifteen-year-old Wolf spent hours outside the hotel
hoping to catch a glimpse of the master. He not only saw
Wagner but even spoke to him, an experience he never
forgot. Never again did he meet the master face-to-face,
but his associations with Wagner's music lasted until the
end of Wolf's life, often taking place at Wagner's shrine
in Bayreuth. When Wolf heard Parsifal he was so shaken
that for hours after the performance he sat on a bench
in the street dazed, his head buried in his hands, "com-
pletely removed from the world" as a friend revealed.
In 1881, when Wolf came to Salzburg as an assistant
conductor, he carried a bundle under each arm: under
one arm was his clothing; under the other, a bust of
Wagner. When he learned about Wagner's death in 1883,
he "went to the piano and played the funeral music
from The Twilight of the Gods" as one of his friends
recalled. "Then he shut the piano and went silently.
... In the evening he reappeared, in a subdued and
deeply sorrowful mood. 1 have wept like a child,' he told
me."
As a composer of the art-song (Lied)and one of
the greatest since Schubert Wolf followed many of Wag-
ner's musical principles with complete dedication. He
would never have been able to penetrate as he did into
new realms of lyric and dramatic writing but for Wagner,
27
his Idiom and style having been shaped by Wagner's.
Wolf tried to fuse melody and word so that song might
become almost something "spoken." The melody, at
times with the character of declamation, was so closely
married to the text that it Invariably appeared as if poem
and melody were the work of a single person. His melody
required new kinds of modulations, new kinds of har-
monic accompaniments, new intervallic relations and pro-
gressions so that he might better be able to seek out the
essence of the poem he was setting. Only a poet steeped
in the Wagnerian tradition one who had completely
comprehended the Wagnerian dream of making word
and tone one could have brought to these poems that
newer melodic line in which we catch anticipations of
later and more daring schools of music.
Bruckner, Mahler and Wolf were, for the most part,
children of the nineteenth century. But in the twentieth
century there were also many composers who were under
the spell of Wagner. The most significant of these was
Richard Strauss.
It is a crowning paradox that Strauss, the apostle of
Wagnerism, should have been the son of a man who stood
at the head of Wagner's enemies. Franz Strauss was one
of Munich's most important horn players. He was a mem-
ber of the orchestra for Wagner's music dramas when
they were introduced in that city. He was also the central
force in most of the conspiracies and intrigues that
sprang up against Wagner, and he made no effort to
hide from Wagner the contempt he felt for his music.
At one rehearsal he rose from his seat and stalked angrily
out of the pit shouting that he simply would not play
such outlandish music. When the news of Wagner's
death was announced to the orchestra men, Strauss stub-
28
bornly refused to stand In silent homage. Franz Strauss
died in 1905, and until his last day he denounced Wagner
and Wagnerism. But he lived to see his son become not
only one o the world's foremost conductors of the Wag-
ner music dramas but also a composer who walked
proudly under Wagner's artistic banner.
Richard Strauss was born in Munich on June 11, 1864.
Since his mother was the daughter of a prosperous
brewer, the Strauss family was as wealthy as it was cul-
tured, and the boy's remarkable flair for all things musi-
cal could be nursed and developed. Richard received
a comprehensive training In both academic and musical
studies, but It was In the latter that he proved most un-
commonly gifted. Before he was seventeen, a string
quartet, a symphony, and three songs of his were per-
formed by leading organizations and performers In
Munich.
His talent was brought to the attention of Hans von
Buelow, one of Germany's leading pianists and con-
ductors, and the director of the renowned Meiningen
Orchestra. Von Buelow not only conducted some of
Strauss's early orchestral works, but in 1884 hired him
as an assistant conductor, initiating for Strauss a career
with the baton that was to carry him triumphantly from
Meiningen (where he soon succeeded Von Buelow as
principal conductor), to Weimar, the Berlin Royal Op-
era, Vienna and New York. His success as conductor
notwithstanding, he kept on producing ambitious musi-
cal compositions. A symphony was introduced in the
United States In 1884, and one of his string quartets re-
ceived first prize in an important competition in Berlin
immediately thereafter.
In these early works Strauss was the German Romantic
whose indebtedness to Brahms was as obvious as his own
29
technical skill and intensity of expression. Then he dis-
covered Wagner, and with it the Northern Star by which
to guide his own course. Tristan und Isolde and Die
Walkure (The Valkyries) were a revelation. Henceforth
he could speak in Brahms's language no longer, and it
was Wagner he had to emulate.
His new values as composer were further clarified
through conversations with the poet and philosopher,
Alexander Ritter, a close friend. Ritter (who married
Wagner's niece) held second place to no one in his
veneration of Wagner, and he aroused in Strauss the
ambition to adopt Wagner's aesthetics and ideals. Rit-
ter convinced Strauss to abandon the kind of objective,
absolute music he had thus far been producing within
the formal structures of the symphony, string quartet,
sonata and concerto; he also veered Strauss towards the
creation o music filled with dramatic, programmatic,
and poetic ideas. Ritter induced Strauss to seek out a
form of orchestral music more flexible than the sym-
phony; he was thinking specifically of the symphonic or
tone poem which Franz Liszt had brought into being
to carry over into orchestral writing some of Wagner's
dramatic principles.
Strauss's first work in the new manner came immedi-
ately following a visit to Italy in 1886. Aus Italien (From
Italy) was a symphonic poem based on realistic tone
pictures of Italian life. When first performed in Munich
in 1887, it was a fiasco. This was due mainly to the fact
that Strauss's excursions into dissonance and new tonal-
ities to heighten his expressive powers proved bewilder-
ing to a nineteenth-century audience. Strauss was one of
the first composers to bring a new importance to dis-
cords, and Aus Italien was his first composition to do so.
Dissonances, as we have already remarked, had been used
30
by many composers before Strauss, but were always re-
lieved through resolution with consonances. With Strauss,
and later modernists, dissonances were self-sufficient.
Even Hans von Buelow was taken aback by this kind of
unorthodoxy. "Does my age make me so reactionary?*'
he inquired after hearing Aus Italien. "I find that the
clever composer has gone to extreme limits of tonal pos-
sibilities . . . and, in fact, has even gone beyond these
limits without real necessity/' Franz Strauss, Richard's
father, shook his head sadly, heartbroken to witness how
the poison of Wagner had infected his son.
But, despite such an unfavorable reception to his new
style, Strauss had no intention of turning back. He would
continue writing programmatic and realistic tone poems
constructed from harmonic and instrumental designs first
suggested by Wagner. As Strauss himself explained, Aus
Italien was to be "the connecting link between the old and
the new/'
The "new" was sounded with a series of incomparable
tone poems which made Strauss one of the most contro-
versial, as well as one of the greatest, orchestral com-
posers since Wagner's day. First came Macbeth in 1887.
After that followed Death and Transfiguration, Till Eu-
lenspiegel's Merry Pranks,, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Don
Quixote, and A Hero's Life. Here, it seemed, music had
progressed as far as it could go In realistic writing, in
cacophony, In the use of brash sonorities and flaming
orchestral colors (often through unorthodox instruments
recruited into the orchestra for special effects), in the
exploitation of sensual harmonies, and in the fantasti-
cally complex and adroit transformations and develop-
ments of leading motives.
There was a good deal In these tone poems to outrage
the musical and aesthetic sensibilities of Strauss's con-
31
temporaries: the piercing cacophonies in the battle scene
of A Hero's Life, and those in Till Eulenspiegel describ-
ing the havoc wrought by this mischief-maker in a public
market place; the realism in which the bleating of sheep
and the howling of the wind is recreated in Don Quixote;
the sensuality of Strauss's overrich orchestrations and
harmonizations in Dow Juan; the introduction of such
unusual instruments as a wind machine in Don Quixote;
the egocentricity with which Strauss identified himself as
the hero in A Hero's Life by quoting some of his compo-
sitions in the "A Hero's Mission of Peace/' and his iden-
tification of music critics as the hero's "adversaries."
The carping critics intensified their attacks on Strauss
as, with each succeeding tone poem, they were shocked
by the kind of music they heard. Louis Elson, an Amer-
ican, wrote: "If such modulations are possible, then the
harmony books may well be burnt at once." Richard
Aldrich, the critic of The New York Times, commented:
"Strauss . . . deliberately affronted the ear with long
continued din and discord . . . consciously used ugliness
in music to represent conceptions of ugliness/' Even
highly distinguished musicians were upset. Cesar Cui of
the Russian nationalist school, had this to say: "His
method is to overwhelm the listener at once. That is why
he makes his violins scream, his flutes hiss, his trumpets
blare, his cymbals crash. A free-for-all, everybody for him-
self, resulting in a terrible cacophony and noise in which
one is lost. . . . This is not music, this is a mockery of
music/' And Debussy, himself no minor iconoclast, de-
scribed one of Strauss's tone poems as "an hour in an
insane asylum/'
We no longer hear in these Strauss tone poems noise,
ugliness, or bad taste. Instead we are consistently made
conscious of Strauss's incomparable dramatic surge and
32
sweep, the grandeur of his elocution, the wizardry of his
thematic development and orchestration, and his un-
common capacity to express non-musical ideas in tones.
Strauss's bent for realism, and his flair for sensuality
and eroticism, were even more pronounced in his operas.
If the tone poems upset the equilibrium of their audi-
ences, then Strauss's operas scandalized them.
Strauss began his career as an opera composer inno-
cently enough. His first opera was Guntram, in 1894.
He was his own librettist; his play was based on an old
German legend; his theme was redemption. On all these
counts, the hand is that of Wagner. The music for the
opera was also much like Wagner's. Guntram was a
failure. So was Strauss's second opera, Feuersnot, in 1901,
in which (as in A Hero's Life) Strauss once again un-
ashamedly identifies himself with the hero and does not
hesitate to indulge in some self-glorification.
Then Strauss turned to a text which could support
his extraordinary gift for realism and sensuality. The
text was Salome,, a decadent and erotic poetical drama
by Oscar Wilde based on the Bible story. Salome, daugh-
ter of Herodias, is in love with the prophet, John the
Baptist. When he rejects her, her love turns to hatred,
and she becomes determined to destroy him. She offers
to dance for the king if, in return, he grants her one
wish. Salome performs her celebrated "Dance of the
Seven Veils," then reveals that her price is the head of
John the Baptist, on a tray. When the head is brought to
her, she indulges in such a revolting dance around it
that the king orders her death.
Some of the methods, some of the harmonic and or-
chestral devices, and the use of a leading-motive tech-
nique all reveal Wagner's influence on Strauss. But in
33
many other respects, Strauss's writing is identifiably his
own. At every point in the score he is able to match
Wilde's sensual moods with sinuous melodies, orgies
of orchestral and harmonic colors, abrupt and rapidly
changing rhythms, and a striking literalness in trans-
lating stage action into musical sound. "The Dance of
the Seven Veils" is no less provocative or tantalizing in
music than it is visually on the stage. First the orchestra
erupts with shrieks and primitive rhythms. Then comes
the first dance, languorous and exotic, after that pas-
sionate and intense; the rhythms suggest the sinuous
movements of Salome's body. The second dance is more
sensual still. This is a slow and ecstatic melody for the
strings. After that the savage mood of the opening phrases
returns and is built into a shattering climax.
Both the play and music were so lurid that in the early
part of the twentieth century Salome was regarded as a
violation of existing moral codes. In Vienna and in
London the censors refused to allow it to be performed.
When Salome was first given in Dresden, in 1905, and
later introduced in Berlin, it was denounced in no un-
certain terms as "repulsive" and "perverted." The Amer-
ican premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on January 22,
1907, aroused an even greater tempest of public and
critical protest. One physician wrote to The New York
Times: "I say after deliberation that Salome is a detailed
and explicit exposition of the most horrible, disgusting
and unmentionable features of degeneracy that I have
ever heard, read of, or imagined."
Two of New York's foremost critics had this to say:
"There is not a whiff of fresh and healthy air blowing
through Salome except that which exhales from a cistern"
(Henry E. Krehbiel).
"Richard Strauss' music Is aesthetically criminal or at
34
least extremely coarse and Ill-mannered. His music often
suggests a man who comes to a social reception un-
kempt, with hands unwashed, cigar in mouth, hat on,
and who sits down and puts his feet on the table. No
boor ever violated all the laws of etiquette as Strauss
violates all the laws of musical composition" (W. J. Hen-
derson).
Clergy joined with the press in denouncing the Metro-
politan Opera for having dared to mount such a sacri-
legious work. The outburst of fury finally led the di-
rectors to remove the opera from the repertory after a
single performance. Not until about a quarter of a cen-
tury later did Salome return to the stage of the Metro-
politan.
Strauss followed Salome with Elektraan opera even
more sordid In Its realism, more sensual in mood, and
more shocking in moral tone than Its predecessor. Here
the libretto was prepared by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
(who became Strauss's favorite librettist) from the cele-
brated Greek tragedy of Sophocles. Queen Klytemnes-
tra, In league with her lover, Aegisthus, murders the king,
Agamemnon. Elektra, daughter of Agamemnon and Kly-
temnestra, vows vengeance. However, It Is her brother,
Orestes, who succeeds in killing their mother and her
lover. Jubilant that her mother has at long last met the
punishment due her, Elektra performs a corybantic on
her father's grave, then sinks to her death.
The play which had decidedly psychoneurotic over-
tones, was grim with depravity. And so was Strauss's
music. It rocked with a demoniac frenzy and quivered
with emotional hysteria. More shattering than ever grow
Strauss's cacophonies, more sensual and lush his harmo-
nies, more hypertensioned his moods, more agonized the
cries that stood for arias. This music, said one critic,
was "an orchestral riot that suggests a murder scene In a
35
Chinese theater"; another said of its melodies that they
"spit and scratch and claw at each other like enraged
panthers."
Moral codes, as well as our conception of what con-
stitutes beauty In music, change with passing generations.
Today the horror and shock of Salome and Elektra are
gone. When, for example, Salome finally came back to
the Metropolitan, in 1934, it met a far different reception
than the one accorded It a quarter of a century earlier.
Olin Downes said In his review of Salome which ap-
peared in The New York Times that "the opera as an
opera, aside from its sensational reputation . . . fasci-
nated and Impressed the audience. Its effect no longer lies
In its novelty, but in something quite else, namely, Its
convincing intensity and inspiration."
Both Salome and Elektra now are frequently given
by leading opera houses everywhere, and there are not
many who doubt that they represent twin peaks In twen-
tieth-century opera. As we listen to these operas today
we are overwhelmed by their dramatic force, by the many
pages of compelling theater, by passage after passage of
soaring eloquence, and by the extraordinary fusion of
text and music. Salome and Elektra are ever emotional
experiences that leave audiences exhausted after the
final curtains.
Strauss had travelled as far as humanly possible In
realism and sensuality. The opera that followed Elektra
was strikingly different. Der Rosenkavalier,, introduced
In Dresden in 1911, was a comic opera somewhat in the
style of Mozart and Johann Strauss, II. It Is sentimental
and tender on the one hand, light of heart and satirical
on the other. The setting is the Vienna of Empress Maria
Theresa. The central characters are Princess von Werd-
36
enberg, a woman of stately character, and her cousin,
Baron Ochs, a fat, lecherous fellow around whom most
of the opera's comedy revolves. The Princess is in love
with Octavian, a boy many years her junior. The Baron
is courting Sophie, the daughter of Faninal, a wealthy
man. Tradition dictates that a silver rose be dispatched
to a prospective bride. At the suggestion of the Princess,
Ochs enlists the services of Octavian to perform this
mission. Octavian and Sophie meet and fall in love, and
receive the blessings of the magnanimous and sympa-
thetic Princess. The Baron, meanwhile, is made the help-
less victim of a comical prank in a disreputable hotel
where he thinks he is having a rendezvous with a fetching
wench.
From the ultra-realism of Elektra we here pass on to a
musical idiom and manner that is poignant, wistful,
gay, ardently lyrical, and intensely human and compas-
sionate. The heart of the score is a series of waltzes
often played at symphony concerts in a special adapta-
tion written by the composer. These are in the style of
Johann Strauss, II, though, to be sure, with a more
modern harmonic and melodic vocabulary, and a richer
and more varied orchestral palette. But there are other
unforgettable musical pages as well: the extended mono-
logue of the Princess where she contemplates her lost
youth and fading beauty (one of the most poignant
scenes in all contemporary opera); the incomparable
trio in which the Princess stands ready to give up Oc-
tavian and permit him to pursue his love for Sophie;
and the ecstatic love duet of Sophie and Octavian that
follows,
With Der Rosenkavalier Strauss began his retreat from
modernism. After all, by 1911, there were many com-
37
posers In the public eye whose unconventional and dar-
ing writing was beginning to make even Strauss sound
old-hat! Henceforth, Strauss would be increasingly ro-
mantic, and sometimes he would even venture into
the classical world of Couperin and Lully. Toward the
end of his life, his evolution as a composer came full
circle with concertos and orchestral pieces in which he
reverted to the neo-Romanticism of Brahms. In his last
opera, Der Liebe der Danae he returned to the Wagner-
ian fold.
If he was no longer an innovator, he was still a genius
commanding respect for his technical virtuosity, fresh-
ness of musical thought, and over-all charm. Strauss was
the dean of twentieth-century music and a creative figure
who had lived to see himself honored by the entire
world. In America, where he appeared as a guest con-
ductor, directing his own works, audiences sprang to their
feet In homage to a master as soon as he appeared on
the stage. In Vienna, the government presented him with
a tract of land near the Belvedere Palace so that he might
build there a permanent home for himself. In Germany
he was the Meister who had no rival for public adulation.
At Garmisch-Partenkirchen In the Bavarian Alps near
Munich, where he maintained permanent residence, pil-
grims came to pay him tribute.
During the turbulent era In Germany just before
World War II when the Nazis first came to power, his
many admirers lost their veneration for the man rather
than the artist. At first Strauss allied himself completely
with the aims and principles of the Third Reich and
assumed the post of President of the Music Chamber, But
the excesses of the Nazis of which Strauss himself even-
tually became a victim when he was soundly taken to
task for having dared to collaborate with Stefan Zwelg,
38
a Jew disillusioned him completely. In 1935 Strauss
withdrew from the political arena to go into complete
retirement in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. During most of
World War II he resided in neutral Switzerland.
The war over, Strauss paid a visit to London in 1947
to participate in a monumental Richard Strauss festival.
Two years after that the entire world of music paid him
homage on the occasion of his eighty-fifth birthday. He
died a few months after that at his home in Garmisch-
Partenkirchen on September 8, 1949.
II
Strauss's realism was just one of several roads leading
from Wagner to twentieth-century music. Another road
was mysticism, its high priest being Alexander Scriabin.
Scriabin was Russia's first important composer of piano
music the "Russian Chopin" as he is sometimes called.
Truly Chopinesque are his early sonatas, preludes, and
etudes in elegance of form, poetic expression and ex-
quisite lyricism. But it was not long before Scriabin be-
came hypnotized by the wizard Wagner. Under this in-
fluence Scriabin aspired to write large orchestral compo-
sitions with Wagner-like harmonies and instrumentation.
To heighten the expressiveness of his musical vocabu-
lary, Scriabin devised a new type of chord to which he
gave the label, "Mystery Chord." It was constructed from
fourths rather than thirds (C, F-sharp, B-flat, E, A, D).
He went on to conceive a vast artistic edifice which he
called the "Mystery." The inspiration for this edifice was
Wagner's Parsifal, but Scriabin's "Mystery" was more
grandiose and visionary than anything Wagner had con-
templated. In essence it was not only a synthesis of every
possible art, but also a world philosophy, new social
thinking, and a new religion. Here was the first attempt
39
in music to tap theosophical ideas and draw from the
occult sciences. As one critic said, Scriabin's art now
was "but a means of achieving a higher form of life"; or
as Scriabin himself once explained, "art must unite with
philosophy and religion in an indivisible whole to form
a new Gospel which will replace the old Gospel which
we have outlived/'
Born in Moscow, on January 6, 1872, Scriabin was a
highly sensitive, and in some respects an eccentric, child.
His feelings expressed themselves in extravagant re-
sponses. When he first fell in love with the piano he would
kiss it continually as if it were a human being; when-
ever his piano had to be tuned, repaired, or moved he
suffered the physical torment of one seeing his beloved
operated upon by a surgeon. Later on, when Chopin
became his first musical god, Scriabin not only played
that master's music continually and talked about it in-
defatigably, but even assumed some of Chopin's personal
mannerisms. He never went to sleep before making sure
that a volume of Chopin's music was under his pillow.
Financial difficulties and the death of Alexander's step-
mother, broke up the Scriabin household. Young Alex-
ander went to live with his grandmother, who shared an
apartment with one of the boy's aunts. The two women
doted on Alexander, pampered, spoiled, and overpro-
tected him. They did not allow him to play with other
children or to go into the street unaccompanied; and
they worried to death every time he became physically in-
disposed. They succeeded in making him a self-centered,
introspective and socially uncommunicative lad who de-
veloped a neurotic fear of the outside world. Scriabin's
lifelong hypochondria made him wear gloves as protec-
tion from germs and use all kinds of quack medicines.
His first musical impressions came from an opera per-
40
formance when he was just five years old. Forthwith he
began to build a little theater of his own for the perform-
ance of operas in which he sang all the roles. After that
he lived almost entirely for music, especially for the pi-
ano, and spent hour after hour absorbed in improvisa-
tion. Though he hated systematic study, preferring to
express himself in music without impediments of any
kind, he did manage to get a competent preliminary
training at the piano from Conius and Zverev. He studied
harmony with Taneiev, and later on attended the Mos^
cow Conservatory.
Like Robert Schumann before him, Scriabin soon be-
came fired with the ambition of becoming one of the
world's great pianists. And, once again like Schumann, he
tried all kinds of artificial exercises to develop digital
dexterity to the point of suffering paralysis of the muscles.
But he refused to give up, keeping on with his finger
and muscle exercises until a certain amount of flexibil-
ity was restored. He won a gold medal for piano playing
at the Conservatory, and in 1894 he gave a successful
piano recital in St. Petersburg.
That concert made a forceful impression on Belaiev,
one of Russia's 'most powerful music publishers. Belaiev
now stood ready not merely to manage Scriabin's future
concerts, but also to publish his compositions. A concert
tour in 1896 brought Scriabin impressive successes in
many of Europe's leading capitals. At the same time, the
first of Scriabin's works published by Belaiev were en-
thusiastically received by some of Russia's leading mu-
sicians.
After Belaiev's death, Scriabin found another potent
and generous patron to promote him and his music the
world-famous conductor, Serge Koussevitzky. Kousse-
vitzky was founder and director of a publishing house
41
which now issued most of Scriabin's major compositions.
And, as conductor, Koussevitzky proved indefatigable in
introducing and presenting Scriabin's orchestral compo-
sitions. When Scriabin finally became obsessed with the
mission to create Ms "Mystery," Koussevitzky endowed
him with a generous income to enable him to carry on
his work without financial worries.
From the smaller piano pieces which Belaiev had pub-
lished, Scriabin progressed to the larger forms: a piano
concerto in 1897; his First Symphony in or about 1900.
The finale of that symphony provided the first important
clue to the growing dimension of Scriabin's thinking. It
was a large choral movement intended as a mighty reli-
gious paean to art. Thus Scriabin was not only beginning
to move within imposing structures, but also (like Mahler
before him) to use those superstructures for the projec-
tion of ideas pregnant with philosophy and mysticism.
He was first drawn to philosophic thought by attending
meetings of the Philosophic Society in Moscow just before
1900. Two years after that he read Nietzsche and began
to identify himself with Nietzsche's Superman. At that
time he planned but never realized an opera about a
Superman like Wagner's Siegfried, a hero who would con-
quer through the powers of his art. From philosophy
Scriabin progressed to theosophy and occultism. The
deeper he penetrated into these fields the more strongly
did he feel impelled to find some way to interpret these
abstruse ideas and concepts in music.
In his Third Symphony, entitled "The Divine Poem/'
which was completed in 1903, he tried to trace the evolu-
tion of the human spirit through pantheism to the final
affirmation of the divine ego. In the first movement the
conflict between man's slavish subservience to a personal
god and his eternal quest for freedom is depicted; in the
42
second, man surrenders helplessly to physical pleasures;
and In the third, the spirit frees Itself from Its constrict-
ing bonds and soars to the joy of free activity (or, as the
composer put It, to the joy of "divine play").
Scriabin's most famous work for orchestra is the Fourth
Symphony, "The Poem of Ecstasy/' written In 1907. Its
subject is the joy of creative activity, the ecstasy that
comes from unrestricted action. Five principal melodic
themes are enlisted to symbolize, in turn, yearning, pro-
test, apprehension, will, and self-assertion.
The destiny of all mankind, the struggle of man against
the world around him and his ultimate victory through
the assertion of his creative will Is the message of Scria-
bln's Fifth Symphony, "Prometheus." Man Is represented
musically by the piano; the Cosmos, by a giant orchestra.
Seeking new areas for heightening and expanding his
creative expressiveness, Scrlabin here made an experi-
ment to marry colors to sounds. He invented a color key-
board which projected a succession of hues on a screen
while the music was being played. When "Prometheus"
was performed for the first time the way Its composer con-
ceived it, the procession of colors proved so distracting
that the music came off only a sorry second best. Since
then the practice has been to perform the symphony
without the benefit of accompanying colors.
Scrlabin planned "Prometheus" as a kind of prelim-
inary study for the gigantic artistic and {heosophic vision
that had by now been absorbing his thoughts for several
years. "The Divine Poem," "The Poem of Ecstasy," and
"Prometheus" had only scratched the surface of those
monumental concepts Scriabin hoped to project through
his music. What Scrlabin aspired for was the summation
in music of the history of man from the dawn of time to
43
the final cataclysm which Sciiabin considered inevitable.
The perfect Wagnerite, Scriabin hoped to use music, po-
etry, drama, scenery and costumes in a single artistic crea-
tion; but he also sought to combine with these elements
the dance, perfumes, and colors. He concocted for his
text a new kind of language made up of sighs and ex-
clamations, expressing feelings which heretofore had
never found an appropriate vocabulary. As he dreamed
of this Gargantuan vision, he grew increasingly ambi-
tious. He wanted his "Mystery" (for this is the name he
gave his project) to be performed in India in a specially
constructed globular temple at the side of a lake. He
would have only those in attendance who were true be-
lievers of his cult.
For ten years he dreamed, planned, talked, sketched.
At the same time he acquired from a travel agency what-
ever information was available about India. During this
time he also gathered some of the paraphernalia (in-
cluding a sun helmet) necessary for living in India. But
all that he managed to get down on paper was his text,
and some musical sketches for a preamble entitled "Prop-
ylaea." "Propylaea," the entrance to the Acropolis in
Athens, was Scriabin's symbol for the beginning to all
arts and religion. He was confident he would live to com-
plete his "Mystery," just as he was unshakable in his con-
viction that once he wrote this "Mystery" and had it per-
formed, the end of the world would follow.
He never realized this vast dream. A small carbuncle
on his upper lip developed into gangrene of the face. He
died from this infection in Moscow on April 27, 1915.
The "Mystery' 1 died with him. Not so the wonderful li-
brary of music he had created for the piano early in his
career; nor his three last symphonies, all of which are
among the richest fruits of post-Wagnerian Romanticism*
44
CHAPTER 2
The Eccentrics
icHARD Strauss's realism and orgiastic or-
chestral colors, Mahler's superstructures
and inflated orchestral forces, and Scriabin's new gospel
had carried post-Wagnerian Romanticism to an extreme.
The time was ripe for the pendulum of music history to
swing back sharply. Several composers, repelled by the
emotional and structural extravagances of their contem-
poraries, simply had to produce a different kind of music
that was simple and unpretentious. A music which re-
fused to take itself seriously and was filled with mockery,
levity, irony, and wit.
Such a revolution against Wagner and his successors
took place In twentieth-century France with one of mu-
sic's greatest humorists and eccentrics Erik Satie. Satie
represented a complete rupture with the stuffy Romanti-
cism that had preceded him. "He had/' as Virgil Thom-
son once said, "the firmest conviction that the only
healthy thing music can do in our century is to stop being
impressive/ 7
It is not difficult to understand why so many of Satie's
contemporaries were bewildered by him and his music,
and were altogether incapable of recognizing their genu-
ine significance. These contemporaries were inclined to
regard Satie as a charlatan, a poseur, a buffoon. Here was
a supposedly serious musician who was earning his liv-
ing playing pop tunes and ballads In Montmartre caba-
45
rets; who was not beyond writing music-hall songs for
popular entertainers, nor for that matter introducing
popular styles in his supposedly serious creations. And,
as if this were not enough to damn him, here was a crea-
tive artist who insisted upon making a mockery of artistic
dignity, a shambles of high artistic purpose.
Satie often gave outlandish titles to his serious pieces
of music: "Desiccated Embryos/* "The Dreamy Fish/*
"Flabby Preludes for a Dog," "Disagreeable Sketches/'
"Sketches to Make You Run Away/' "Cold Pieces/'
"Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear." Within these com-
positions Satie liked to interpolate the most whimsical
instructions to the performer. At one point in a piece he
urged the pianist to put his hands in his pockets. One of
his phrases, he explained, was to be played "dry as a
cuckoo, light as an egg"; one section, he said, must sound
"like a nightingale with a toothache." On one occasion he
quoted Chopin's "Funeral March" from the Piano Sonata^
but in doing so he also indicated in his music that this
passage was taken from "a famous Schubert Mazurka."
Occasionally, Satie would append the most ridiculous
programs to explain his musical intentions. "This is the
case of the lobster; the hunters descend to the bottom of
the water; they run. The sound of a horn is heard at the
bottom of the sea. The lobster is tracked. The lobster
weeps." Or he would include strange "asides" to his audi-
ences: "Those who do not understand [the music] are
asked to be respectfully silent and to show an attitude
of complete submission and inferiority."
He was, in short, a musical/pixy, a boy who refused to
grow old. Carl van Vechten once called him a "shy and
genial fantaisite, part-child, part-devil, part faun." But,
though few in France knew it at the time, he was also a
powerful force in music despite his strange attitudes and
46
peculiar mannerisms and behavior. He was a pioneer in
his unorthodox harmonic writing; in his use of meters
and rhythms; in his experiments with barless notation. He
was, indeed, the first of France's twentieth-century mod-
ernists. But most important of all, he was the one, above
all others, who led music away from the post-Wagnerian
Romanticism. Satie was human, down-to-earth, and witty
where other musicians were pretentious and grandiose;
he was fresh and simple where they were affected and
complicated. They liked to regard themselves as high
priests of art, and kept up the legendary concept of the
long-haired composer creating masterworks in a cold gar-
ret. Satie was what W. S. Gilbert would call "a common-
place" and a "matter-of-fact" young man; the Romanti-
cists were "intense" and "soulful-eyed" young men, "ul-
tra-poetical, super-aesthetical, out-of-the-way" young men.
Satie enjoyed popular music and the night spots of
Montmartre. The kind of music he liked to write was of
the everyday variety. The Romanticists prized grandeur,
bigness, majesty, eloquence, and formidable messages of
all types. Satie, on the other hand, sought, as Thomson
wrote, "quietude, precision, acuteness of auditory obser-
vation, gentleness, sincerity, and directness of statement."
Many of the later French composers who were either his
contemporaries or successors were able to write the kind
of music they did, and to adopt their kind of musical prin-
ciples, only because of Satie. With Satie came an invig-
orating breath of fresh air, and a revitalizing burst of
warm sunlight into the dank and stuffy living room of
the post-Wagnerian epoch. Satie represented youth and
rejuvenation for modern music, where ultimately post-
Wagnerism could lead only to decadence.
Satie was bom on March 17, 1866, in the town of Hon-
fleur in the Calvados region of France, The town organ-
47
1st gave him his first music lessons and instilled in him a
passion for the polyphonic art of the past. When Satie
was thirteen, he entered the Paris Conservatory where
his bent for medieval plalnchant, modal music, and also
polyphony was In marked contrast to the passion other
students had for Romanticism and Wagner. During his
conservatory days Satie wrote somewhat esoteric and dis-
sonant pieces of music. His teachers did not regard him
highly, and he returned the compliment. After about a
year Satie called it quits, brushed the dust of academicism
off his shoes, and went on to shift for himself in music
as best he could.
Immediately he started to write the most unusual and
bizarre piano pieces, as strange in their sound as in their
subject matter. First came Ogives in 1886; then, in 1887-8,
the three Sarabandes; after that, Gymnopedies in 1888,
and Gnossiennes in 1890. In Sarabande his daring use of
the chords of the ninth in anticipation of Debussy proved
electrifying. In Gymnopedies Satie dared to write music
that was simple and forthright. "Gymnopedia" was an an-
cient Spartan festival in which naked youths celebrated
their gods through song and dance. The three dances
in Gymnopedies were clear, unemotional, economical,
pure in melodic line, and transparent in harmonic tex-
ture. Yet they were also filled with the most unusual pro-
gressions and harmonic combinations. In Gnossiennes^
Satie made his first experiments with barless notation,
and with continually repeated melodic phrases against
a persistent, fundamental bass,
Satie earned his living playing the piano at Le Chat
Noir in Montmartre. During this period he interested
himself temporarily in occultism and mysticism by join-
ing The Society of Rosicrucians, a religious sect made up
of reformers. Satie became its official composer, in which
48
capacity he wrote incidental music for two obscure plays
by the Society's high priest, Joseph Peladan. Satie did not
remain long with the Society. It soon tried controlling
and directing his musical thinking and style and this
Satie would not tolerate.
His temporary alliance with religion and mysticism
notwithstanding, Satie continued writing outrageous pi-
ano compositions with exotic and whimsical titles using
ever bolder techniques. When, in 1903, Debussy hap-
pened to mention to Satie that Satie's piano pieces were
without form, Satie countered by writing "Three Pieces
In the Shape of a Pear* 'tangible proof that his music
did have a form of sorts. Satie's titles grew more and
more quixotic as did his directions to performers and
program annotations.
His personality was as eccentric as his music. In 1898
he went to live in a second-floor room in the Arceuil
district of Paris where he remained for the rest of his life.
No human being was permitted access to these quarters,
In which Satie lived in monastic seclusion. Yet, in other
respects, he was no ascetic. When he inherited a legacy
he quickly spent all the money on a dozen velvet suits,
one hundred stiff collars, and a closetful of shirts and
then lived for months in semi-starvation on the meager
salary he drew as cabaret pianist.
But to most of the Parisians who knew him, the most
eccentric thing about him was the fact that he went back
to formal music study just before his fortieth birthday.
Dissatisfied with his technique, and determined to master
theory and counterpoint, he enrolled In the Schola Can-
torum. For three years he diligently attended the classes
of Vincent d'Indy and Albert Roussel with students many
years his junior.
This intensive period of study enabled Satie to under-
49
take creative assignments more ambitious than hereto-
fore. He now produced important works in the large
forms: a satirical ballet, Parade, in 1917; a lyric drama,
Socrate, in 1918; the opera Le Piege de Meduse, in 1920.
To the end of his days he remained a humorist, a pixy,
an eccentric, and above all else, an innovator. In Le Piege
de Meduse he had a stuffed monkey perform a dance
between the scenes. In Parade he became one of the first
foreign composers to make use of American jazz. No less
daring was his scoring which required the services of a
typewriter, dynamos, fire sirens, a discharged revolver, the
sound of waves simulated by tubs of water, and airplane
motors as well as the conventional instruments of the or-
chestra. Parade created a scandal when first performed.
One Parisian critic denounced Satie as an impostor and
a fraud; Satie replied with an insulting letter. The critic
dragged Satie to court for defamation of character.
Found guilty, Satie was sentenced to eight days in jail
(a sentence, however, that was suspended).
He also remained the rebel against excesses of all types
even excesses for which he had been responsible. He,
who had previously poked fun at and mocked the abuses
of post-Romanticism and Wagnerism, lived long enough
to do a similar service to the preciousness and oversensi-
bilities of Impressionism, the levity of the 'Trench Six,"
and the stark bareness and austerity of the "Arceuilists"
though he himself had virtually been the godfather of
these respective "schools" of contemporary music.
Erik Satie died in Paris on July 1, 1925. Olin Downes,
the music critic of The New York Times, met Satie in the
composer's last years and described him as "an amusing
old man, a dilettante of the future, who wore a blue,
shiny suit, a gleaming eyeglass, and misleading whisker-
age, and ate his food in a mincing and derisive manner."
50
An "amusing old man/' perhaps, but an artist whose Im-
pact upon the music of his time was cataclysmic. "The
performance of Parade," said Darius Milhaud, "will
stand in the history of French music as a date equally
important with that of the first performance of Pelleas
and Melisande" Mllhaud might have added that Satie's
first eccentric pieces for the piano were the cradle of mod-
ern French music.
II
America also had an individualist and eccentric, a con-
temporary of Satiethough each was completely oblivi-
ous of the other. Working in obscurity and seclusion, pro-
ducing composition after composition which remained
unheard for many years, completely uninterested in what
other composers were writing In other lands, this Ameri-
can also made a permanent break with the Romantic
past and served as a bridge into the future. Like Satle,
he combined humor, whimsy and personal idiosyncrasies
with the most advanced and iconoclastic musical idioms.
But even more so than Satie, he anticipated some of the
revolutionary methods which other, and later composers,
made famous. He used polyrhythms before Stravinsky,
atonality before Bart6k and Schoenberg, polytonality be-
fore Stravinsky and Milhaud, quarter-tones before Alois
Hdba, and tone clusters before Leo Ornstein and Henry
CowelL And long before Aaron Copland and Roy Harris
established an authentically American Identity in music,
he was able to create A merican music.
The name of this remarkable composer Is Charles Ives,
born in Danbury, Connecticut, on October 20, 1874. His
father was a musician who gave him his first lessons in
harmony, counterpoint, instrumentation, and music ap-
preciation. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree at
51
Yale, Ives served as organist and choirmaster of the Dan-
bury Congregational Church In 1887, and of the Central
Presbyterian Church In New York In 1900.
In 1900 he became a clerk for the Mutual Life
Insurance Company. Six years after that he formed
an insurance agency of his own (Ives and Company,
agents for Washington Life Insurance Company) which
became one of the largest of Its kind in the country. Thus
Ives achieved great success as a businessman; and he re-
mained a businessman for thirty years. Certainly there
was nothing of the eccentric or the recluse about him as
day by day he attended to his affairs and sought out new
accounts. It would have come as a shock to his business
associates if they had discovered that this efficient, practi-
cal and calculating insurance salesman was, In his alter
ego, a serious composer.
For almost half a century, Ives regarded his creative
process as an intimate function In which nobody but
himself could be Interested. He did not want to make
money from his music. He did not court fame or seek
applause. He had no intention ever of giving up business
to become a full-time composer. When he finally did re-
tire in 1930, It was only because of his failing eyesight
and weak heart. He long felt that it was creatively and
morally healthier for a serious artist if his art were just
one phase of his life, instead of the be-all and end-all of
his existence. He insisted that a composer could draw
wisdom and strength from business. "My business experi-
ence revealed life to me in many aspects that I might
otherwise have missed," he once confided to a friend. "I
have experienced a great fullness of life In business. The
fabric of existence weaves itself whole. You cannot set
an art off in the corner and hope for it to have vitality,
52
reality, and substance. There can be nothing exclusive
about a substantial art. It comes directly out of the heart
of experience of life, and thinking about life, and living
life. My work in music helped my business and my work
in business helped my music."
His music was the result of an irresistible inner com-
pulsion. And what a driving force that was! His wife
once revealed that when Ives's business hours were over,
he would rush to his piano to work on his compositions,
sometimes forgetting dinner. He kept at his music seven
evenings a week, during all the four seasons, at times
until the early hours of morning. He never went any-
where, or did anything else, during those hours. His
manuscripts kept accumulating. It never seemed to
bother him that what he was putting down on paper was
a dark secret, known only to his wife and a few close
friends.
Incapable of opportunism and innocent of expediency,
Ives never tried to get his works performed. Surely, never
before or since was a composer so completely indifferent
to an audience. It may have been that he knew that his
writing was much too unorthodox for public consump-
tion. It may have been that his extraordinary reticence,
where his creative life was concerned, made him guard
his isolation jealously rather than allow public attention
to shatter it. And so, though all of Ives's important works
were completed by 1920, and most of them before 1 910,
not one of his significant compositions was performed
publicly until about 1930. His masterwork, the Third
Symphony^ completed forty years earlier, received its
world premiere on May 5, 1947; his Second Symphony 3
written between 1897 and 1902, was heard for the first
time on February 22, 1951. Before World War II, about
53
all that was known of Ives's production was the Concord
Sonata for piano, which John KIrkpatrick Introduced In
New York on January 20, 1939; and the Three Places in
New England, for orchestra, first performed on January
10, 1931, Nicolas Slonimsky conducting. Yet when first
heard, each of these works made a profound Impression.
When Lawrence Gilman reviewed the Concord Sonata
In 1939, he described it as "the greatest music composed
by an American, and the most deeply and essentially
American in Impulse and Implication."
Then suddenly and unexpectedly at the dusk of his
life Ives achieved full recognition. He was given the
Pulitzer Prize in music for his Third Symphony and a
special citation from the New York Music Critics Circle;
and he was elected a member of the National Institute
of Arts and Sciences. Performances of his neglected works
now grew numerous; the critics and magazine writers be-
gan discussing his personality and his music; photogra-
phers began to beat a path to his door. In success Ives,
aged seventy-five, remained the same man he had so long
been sublimely Indifferent to acclaim and applause. He
refused to talk to Interviewers, to pose for photographs,
even to attend performances of his works. He permitted
only a handful of his most intimate friends and relatives
to shatter the privacy he had built up on his farm In Con-
necticut. The battered hat, rough shirt, mended sweater
and faded dungarees which for years had been his uni-
form, still reflected the asceticism of a man who had either
disciplined himself to reject the so-called good things of
life, or who had never been tempted by them. Thus, at
the climax of his strange career, Ives remained com-
pletely in character. And he stayed In character until
he died in New York City, on May 19, 1954, at the age of
eighty.
54
The need to work in seclusion, away from the glare of
public recognition, and freed from all possible associa-
tions with a listening or writing public, was not just the
idiosyncrasy of a strange man. It was an artistic necessity,
Only a man who wrote for himself could rid himself as
completely of inhibitions as Ives did. In the bassoon part
of one of his orchestral scores, Ives added the Satie-like
instruction that "from here on, the bassoon may play any-
thing at all." In his Violin Sonata there emerges, inex-
plicably and suddenly, a theme for a trumpet solo! In a
song for voice and piano there mysteriously arises a brief
line for violin obbligato. These are essentially the excur-
sions of an artist who desired complete freedom of move-
ment.
Similar examples of absurdity and whimsy overflow
in his various works. In the Second String Quartet, Ives
affectionately nicknames his second violin "Rollo." At
one point, where there is an extended rest for the second
violin, the following note is appended: "Too hard to
playso it just can't be good music, Rollo." As a foot-
note to one of his songs, Ives wrote: "This song is inserted
... to clean up a long-disputed point, namely, which is
worse, the music or the words/' In "Essays Before a
Sonata/* published as a programmatic analysis of his
Concord Sonata, Ives explained: "These prefatory essays
were written by the composer for those who can't stand
his music and the music for those who can't stand the
essays. To those who can't stand either, the whole Is
respectfully dedicated." In the preface to 114 Songs, Ives
wrote: "Some of the songs in this book cannot be sung.
. , . An excuse for their existence ... is that a song has
a few rights, same as other ordinary citizens. ... If it
happens to feel like trying to fly where humans cannot
fly to sing what cannot be sung to walk in a cave on all
55
fours or to tighten up its girth in the blind hope and
faith and try to scale mountains that are not who shall
stop it?"
In all his music Ives tried to fly where no composer
had flown before. Since he was writing for neither audi-
ence nor critic, nor for money or personal glory, but ex-
clusively for his own artistic satisfaction, he did not hesi-
tate to give his creative impulses full freedom of expres-
sion. And so, in his obscurity and solitude, Ives went his
lonely way in his music. "I found/' he said, "I could not
go on using the familiar chords, and so I found something
else."
Ives's iconoclasm was the heritage of a remarkable
father. George E. Ives, a bandmaster during the Civil
War, also tried to find new horizons for music. He was
always experimenting either with acoustics or a system
of quarter tones. An authenticated story related how he
made his son, Charles, sing "Swanee River" in one key
while he himself played the accompaniment in another,
to train the boy to new sound relations. "You see, my
son," he explained, "you've got to learn to stretch your
ears." Many years later, Charles Ives re-echoed his father's
sentiments when, hearing some severe criticism about the
dissonances used by an American composer, he shouted:
"Don't be a goddamn sissy! This is strong music!
Try to use your ears like a man."
Despite the formal training he had received at Yale from
Horatio W. Parker, Charles Ives yielded to an irrepressi-
ble urge to uncover new sounds when he started writing
music. In one of his earliest works, "Song for the Harvest
Season/' written when he was twenty, we find startling
polytonal combinations (a decade before The Rite of
Spring!). This song is set for voice, cornet, trombone
56
and organ; the music for each of these is written In a
different key. A string quartet and his First Symphony,
in 1896, abandoned the traditional concepts of harmony
and rhythm. His courage and individuality grew by leaps
and bounds as he kept on writing. In his songs, completed
during the first years of the twentieth century but pub-
lished in 1920 as 114 Songs, he opened vistas undreamed of
at the time by anybody else. In "Majority" tone clusters
appear, as the composer instructs the piano accompanist
to use fists and a ruler In hammering outlandish chords;
one of these chords encompasses fourteen white keys,
another ten black keys. "The Cage" is completely atonal,
and the rhythmic design is so free that no two consecutive
bars have the same time values. Dissonant chords prevail
in "The Children's Hour," still more polytonal combina-
tions of voices are heard In "Rough Wind." In three war
songs and five street songs, Ives made a conscious effort
to use popular American materials with serious intent.
Thus many of the later provocative tendencies of twen-
tieth-century music are forcefully foreshadowed.
The Third Symphony was written between 1901 and
1904. Inspired by camp meetings once prevalent in Dan-
bury, Connecticut, the symphony derived many of its mel-
odies from actual hymn tunes. Structurally, the work is
unusual in that it presents slow movements for the first
and third parts, and unusual chord progressions and
cross-rhythms throughout. It is most significant In its
strong, direct, and authentic American accents.
Ives began writing Three Places in New England the
year he completed the Third Symphony, but he did not
finish it until 1914. Whereas New England hymns had
been the stimulus for the Third Symphony, in Three
Places it is New England geography that stirs the com-
poser's imagination. Of technical interest is the remark-
57
able use of polyrhythm In the part describing the ap-
proach to town of two village bands, each playing a
different melody in a different tempo. Of aesthetic appeal
Is the subtle impressionistic tone painting of the "Housa-
tonic at Stockbridge" with which the trilogy ends.
In the now-famous (though once notorious) Concord
Sonata (1909-15), Ives drew the essence of his musical
thought from the school of Concord writers. The four
movements are respectively entitled "Emerson/' "Haw-
thorne," "The Alcotts" and "Thoreau." Each re-creates,
using the most advanced and experimental devices, the
composer's impressions of the celebrated author. The es-
sence of Emerson's transcendental philosophy is cap-
tured in the mystery and revelation of the first movement.
Hawthorne's "fantastical adventures into the half-child-
like, half-fairylike phantasmal realms" (Ives's own
words) are reflected in the demoniac music of the sec-
ond movement. A more idyllic mood Is created by the
music about the Alcotts and Thoreau.
The Concord Sonata is not only free In Its self-expres-
sion but inventive in Its unusual technical procedures.
In the "Hawthorne" section, a ruler, or a strip of wood is
used by the pianist to play an expansive two-octave clus-
ter. In the "Akott" musk, the first four notes of Bee-
thoven's Fifth Symphony are quoted (the Alcott children
used to play Beethoven's music indefatigably). In the
"Thoreau" part Ives suggests "a flute may play throughout
the page" because Thoreau "much prefers to hear the
flute over Walden."
And still Ives went forward! In the Fourth Symphony
(1910-20) we find percussive effects In the Scherzo that
are almost as imaginative and unusual as some o those
later produced by Edgar Varese, But It is In the finale
58
that Ives finally frees music from all possible restrictions.
There are no recognizable themes here, no formal rhyth-
mic patterns, no recognizable harmonic designs. Instru-
ments are permitted to go their own way at will Sud-
denly a chorus enters with a wordless chant. All is abstract
sound.
Though Ives lived for forty years after the completion
of this symphony he wrote little else. He did plan a fifth
symphony a Gargantuan venture with a half dozen or-
chestras and a fabulous chorus interpreting (Scriabin-
like) the whole of the Universe. But the project collapsed
(possibly under its own massive weight).
And after that Ives was silent.
If Ives was an ultramodern long before ultramoderns
came into their own, he was also an indigenous American
composer at a time when most Americans were copy-
ing Wagner, Brahms, Strauss, and Debussy. Ives, with a
sublime disregard for what was taking place across the
ocean, was creating music whose spirit and breath re-
flected American experiences and backgrounds. Almost
anything American seemed to serve his musical fancy:
American culture of the New England writers; American
customs as realized in revival meetings, camp meetings,
town meetings, or barn dances; American scenes like
those in picturesque New England; American history;
American holidays; American politics; and American
songs.
With his ungovernable spirit, Ives was led to create a
music which, in its severity, independent movement, and
brusque originality, could have arisen only in America.
For, as Lawrence Oilman once remarked, Ives's music
"is as indubitably American In impulse as Jonathan Ed-
59
wards; and, like the writing of that true spirit and mystic,
it has at times an irresistible veracity and strength and
uncormpted sincerity."
It is this intrinsic Americanism that gives Ives's music
its significance, and assures its permanence in our cul-
tural heritage. That Ives was one of the first to use various
modern techniques identified with other and later com-
posers is, after all, a historical curiosity to fascinate the
student of musical history. But the real importance of
Ives's music does not lie with this curiosity. Ives did much
more than create new techniques. He created an Ameri-
can art. And, for this reason alone, he deserves a place
with the foremost composers of the twentieth century.
60
CHAPTER
The
A#ONG those who visited Le Chat Noir regu-
larly, and enjoyed listening to Erik Satie
play music-hall tunes, was an intense black-eyed young
man who looked like a Syrian a man with a swarthy pal-
lor, an aquiline nose, jet-black hair, a lethargic manner,
and a soft voice. He was Claude Debussy, then still a
young and unrecognized composer searching eagerly for
an artistic identity. He had recently returned from Rome
where he had spent several years as a recipient of the
Prix de Rome.
It was not long before Debussy and Satie became
friends. Debussy liked Satie's pixyish ways, both in and
out of music, and was amused by his eccentricities. But
what impressed Debussy most of all about Satie was the
way in which he was liberating music from the tyranny
of textbook rules, and thereby achieving a new music,
free in style and unconventional in technique. As De-
bussy listened to Satie's music and heard him propound
his ideas, he knew he had found a kindred spirit.
As a student at the Paris Conservatory Debussy mor-
tified and, at times, astounded his teachers with his
strange and unusual compositions. Debussy could not
understand why it was always necessary to resolve sev-
enth chords; why parallel fifths and octaves had to be
avoided like the plague; why contrapuntal parts could
not be written in parallel instead of contrary motion. And
61
so, In his exercises he deliberately violated the basic laws
of the conservatory. Time and again fimile Durand, his
professor of harmony, would slam down the lid of the
piano angrily as his student veered off on a strange
course in his improvisations at the keyboard. One day in
1882, when Leo Delibes, professor of composition, was
out of the classroom, Debussy came to the front of his
class to teach his fellow students a new concept of har-
mony and composition. He played a work for them on
the piano filled with dissonances, strange progressions, star-
tling tonalities, and forbidden devices. When Delibes re-
turned precipitously and heard this demonstration, he
became so infuriated that without further ceremony he
ejected Debussy from the class.
Yet, for all his rebellious attitudes, Debussy was a bril-
liant student who managed to win the highest honor In
compositionthe Prix de Rome. Even so, he remained the
arch heretic, A Prix de Rome winner was required to
despatch to the conservatory directors various composi-
tions (called envois) as proof of progress. Those returned
by Debussy were so strange and exotic in idiom, and so
advanced in style and thought that the academicians in
Paris denounced them in no uncertain terms as "incom-
prehensible and impossible to execute/' Debussy's answer
was: "I can only make my own music."
Come what may, he decided to make his own music,
and for this reason he refused to complete the full three
year period required by the Prix. Back in Paris, still
groping for a definite direction and a crystallized style,
he met and befriended Satie who, for all his strange ways,
had the same kind of artistic independence as Debussy,
Satie's unconventional ideas, consequently, struck a
highly responsive chord in the younger man. But De-
bussy had no wish to write Satie-like pieces in a gro-
62
tesque or whimsical vein. Debussy's temperament re-
quired sterner stuff than this, more attuned with his own
sensitive, effeminate nature. What he sought was a style
in which the new sounds, colors and idioms with which
he was continually experimenting could be fused into an
eloquent and sensitive art.
He found that style in Impressionism.
Impressionism was a term coined in the mid-nineteenth
century for a school of French painters that included
Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Cezanne, Degas, and Seu-
rat. In 1867 some canvases by douard Manet were ex-
hibited in Paris. At that time the catalogue explained
that Manet's artistic aim was the rendering of "impres-
sions/ 9 At about the same time Claude Monet did a can-
vas of a sunrise at sea entitled Une Impression, From one
of these two sources probably from bothcame the word
"Impressionism" to identify a new way of painting.
Thomas Craven has defined the Impressionist movement
as "a view of Nature through a peephole; an eyeful of
Nature; a snapshot of a little fragment of the visible
world." He also described it as "an indirect method of
recording sensations of light and color." Degas put it an-
other way when he said that his aim was "to observe
his models through a keyhole."
All the Impressionist painters tried to create subjects
or images not as others saw them, but rather as they, the
painters, saw them. What was important to the Impres-
sionist was the feeling or impression that the subject or
image aroused. The conventional way the subject or
Image looked was not important. The emphasis, there-
fore, was not on the subject itself, but on its shape, de-
sign, color and light values. The technique of Impres-
sionism was (once again to quote Craven) "a flimsy con-
63
trivance to ensnare effects of natural light In pretty webs
of complementary colors/' Skies may be blue or gray, but
if the sky suggested to an Impressionist's feelings deep
purple, why then he painted skies deep purple. In paint-
ing grass, for example, the Impressionist did not use a
prepared green as his predecessors had done, but little
touches of blue and yellow, leaving the process of blend-
ing the colors to the eye of the beholder.
The parallel movement in French literature that took
place at this same time was known as Symbolism. The
main spokesman for this school was Stephane Mallarme.
Like the Impressionist, the Symbolist poet tried to appeal
to the senses rather than to the Intellect. Where the Im-
pressionist emphasized light and color, rather than sub-
ject matter, the Symbolist emphasized the sound of words
rather than their meaning. In short, just as the Impres-
sionists freed painting from the bondage of conventional
subjects treated in a conventional way, so the Symbolists
liberated poetry from the limitations imposed upon It by
language and tradition.
In Paris caf6s, Debussy met many of the leading Im-
pressionists and Symbolists. He saw their paintings and
read their poetry; he listened to their theories; he became
a member of a group which met each Tuesday evening
to discuss art and aesthetics. It was from the Impression-
ists and the Symbolists that Debussy finally realized his
mission as a composer: He would achieve In music what
the Impressionists were doing In painting and the Sym-
bolists in poetry.
Thus Debussy arrived at a new kind of music a music
no longer concerned with dramatic force or program-
matic realism or emotion per se, but with colors, nuances,
moods, sensations, atmospheres. Chords became for him
64
a means of projecting color and thus were used individ-
ually for their own specific effect rather than for their
relationship to chords that preceded or followed them.
Unresolved ninths and elevenths moving about freely
without concern for a tonal center evoked for Debussy
a world of shadows and mystery, just as the forbidden
fifths, the avoidance of formal cadences, and the use of
rapidly changing meters and rhythms helped him create
elusive moods and evanescent sensations. A new kind of
melody sensitive, refined, seemingly remote was real-
ized through the use of exotic Oriental scales, church
modes, and, most of all, through the whole-tone scale.
The last though appearing in the works of earlier com-
posersis always identified with Debussy, for it is Debussy
alone who used it so extensively and with such extraor-
dinary artistic effect. The whole-tone scale (as its name
indicates) is made up entirely of whole tones, the octave
being divided into six equal parts. Its unusual intervallic
structure is uniquely suited for melodies of a nebulous
and hauntingly strange character.
Thus, Debussy became music's first great painter, the
first to arrive at new textures, sensations, images and nu-
ances in sound. Oscar Thompson put it exceedingly well
when he described Debussy as a "poet of mists and foun-
tains, clouds and rain; of dusk and of glints of sunlight
through the leaves. He was moonstruck and seastruck and
a lost soul under a sky bespent with stars. . . . He felt
faint vibrations as he heard the overtones of distant bells.
He was conscious of the perfumes of a summer's day and
he could scent in fancy the odors of an Andalusian sky.
There was ... in all a wealth of fantasy as if he not
only saw but heard the dancing of shadows on velvet
feet/'
Debussy was born on August 22, 1862, a few miles out-
65
side Paris, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Such was the pov-
erty in the Debussy household that to relieve the eco-
nomic pressure the child had to go to live with an aunt.
This in the end proved fortuitous: the aunt was not only
a fine musician who recognized Claude's phenomenal
musical talent, but also possessed the wherewithal to give
it proper nourishment. First she had Madame Haute de
Fleurville (a onetime pupil of Chopin) teach him the
piano. Then, when Debussy was eleven, she had him en-
rolled in the Paris Conservatory.
After graduating from the Conservatory seven years
later, Debussy worked for two summers as household pi-
anist for Mme. von Meek, the wealthy Russian patroness
who had played such an important role in Tchaikovsky's
life. Beginning in 1882, Debussy started devoting himself
to composition with complete dedication. Sparked by a
love affair he wrote, between 1880 and 1882, several
haunting songs including Clair de lune (not to be con-
fused with the far more celebrated piano piece of the same
name), Mandoline and Apparition. None were as yet
Impressionistic, though the last was a setting of a Mal-
lann< poem. But they already betrayed Debussy's natural
bent for the sensitive and the delicate.
In 1884 Debussy received the Prix de Rome for a can-
tata, L'Enfant prodigue. He was not happy in Rome. For
one thing he was separated from the woman he loved; for
another, he disliked everything Italian. When the direc-
tors of the Paris Conservatory added insult to injury by
criticizing his music violently, he knew he had had
enough. He returned to Paris precipitously, became in-
fected with the new ideas then filling the atmosphere,
and slowly crystallized his own musical style and thinking.
But before he came to and embraced Impressionism,
he had been strongly attracted to Wagner. He had studied
66
Tristan und Isolde painstakingly and was smitten by
Wagner's creative power and originality. In 1888 and
1889 he visited Bayreuth one more pilgrim come to the
shrine. But it was not long before this adulation made
way for revulsion. "Don't you see/' he finally asked, "that
Wagner with all his formidable power yes, in spite of his
power has led music astray into sterile and pernicious
paths?" His own sensitive nature needed a musical me-
dium more exquisite, more objective, more controlled,
more suggestive than the cataclysmic surge and sweep of
Wagner's language and ideas.
Debussy's first masterworks in the Impressionist style
came between 1893 and 1894: the Quartet in G minor
and the exquisite orchestral prelude, Prelude a FApres-
midi d'un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun). The latter
was a highly sensitized tone portrait of a Symbolist poem
by St^phane Mallarme. A faun is lying in a state of half
sleep, deliciously recalling the nymphs that had come
to him in a dream. Fully awake, he becomes emotional
as he tries recalling that vision. Then languidly he once
again lapses into drowsiness and returns to his dream
world. A solo flute, with which the prelude opens, im-
mediately evokes the misty, half-real world of the faun.
A passionate song for oboe and a monologue for solo vio-
lin maintain the nebulous feeling until, toward the end,
the music dissolves like scattered mist.
From this time on, Debussy committed to music his
moody, dreamy, atmospheric impressions of many things:
of clouds, festivals and sirens in Three Nocturnes for or-
chestra; of the sea, now gentle and playful, now stormy
and elemental in power in La Her; of footsteps in the
snow, an engulfed cathedral, a girl with flaxen hair, in
his incomparable piano preludes; of moonlight, in the
67
universally beloved Clair de lune for piano, a movement
from the Suite bergamasque; of Chinese pagodas, gardens
in the rain, and reflections In water In the Estampes and
Images, for piano.
If any single work may be regarded as the quintessence
of Debussy's Impressionist art and consequently his mas-
terwork of masterworks It Is Pelleas and Melisande, still
the greatest Impressionist opera ever written, and one
of the most significant works of the twentieth century,
Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolical drama In verse, set In
a nebulous world of legend In which the characters move
like shadowy figures In a dream, was perfectly suited to
Debussy's style. In a mythical kingdom, Golaud, son of
King Arkel, meets Mellsande at a fountain. He Is so be-
witched by her beauty that he takes her back to his castle
and marries her. Then Pelleas (Golaud's brother) and
Mellsande fall In love with each other. In a fit of jealousy,
Golaud kills Pelleas. Soon afterwards Mellsande dies
after having given birth to a child. Golaud Is at her side
begging for a forgiveness which can never come.
The marriage of Maeterlinck's text and Debussy's mu-
sic Is as perfect as any to be found In opera. To realize the
remote, amorphous nature of Maeterlinck's drama, De-
bussy not only enlisted all the tools available in his Im-
pressionist shop but devised some altogether new ones to
meet the specific demands of opera. Like Wagner, he
avoided set arias and ensemble numbers, substituting for
them a fluid flow of uninterrupted musical sound. But
where Wagner had continually erupted Into sensual lyri-
cism, Debussy resorted to a declamation that sounded like
exaggerated speech. Debussy never reached In his opera
for those big, climactic scenes which Wagner developed
with such overpowering effect. In fact there Is little ac-
tion In Pelleas. The entire opera Is poised on a single
68
level of understatement, Its main impact coming from
unbroken moods of the utmost sensibility, and the most
tenuous kind of atmosphere. There is little emotional
stress, and even less dramatic conflict; all is suggestion
and nuance.
The premiere of Pelleas and Melisande (in Paris on
April 30, 1902) was charged with the electricity of dis-
sension, and dramatized by the violence of controversy
and scandal, Maeterlinck had expected his wife, Geor-
gette Leblanc, to play the part of Melisande, but the di-
rector of the Opra-Comique selected (with Debussy's con-
sent) the glamorous new Scottish-American soprano,
Mary Garden. Once Maeterlinck learned that his wish
had thus been flouted, he did everything he could to dis-
credit the opera and its premiere. In fact, he even threat-
ened Debussy with physical violence and, on one occa-
sion, challenged him to a duel. Maeterlinck published an
open letter hotly declaring that the production was
against his will, that Debussy's opera was an "enemy alien
to me/' and that he wished "its failure should be resound-
ing and prompt." He did more than this, too. On the day
of the dress rehearsal he distributed a satirical brochure
about the opera outside the theater. This was the spark
which set off an explosion within the opera house.
As if all this were not bad enough, other no less dis-
turbing problems beset composer and director. The man-
uscript of the opera had been copied so sloppily that at
the initial rehearsals the men of the orchestra were play-
ing, and the singers were singing, wrong notes; Debussy
was at wit's end to make the necessary corrections. Then
the scenic designers rebelled. They said that the thirteen
scene changes were impractical; Debussy had to write sev-
eral orchestral interludes to give the stage hands time to
make these changes. There was even trouble with the
69
censor who Insisted upon deleting several episodes he re-
garded as immoral.
The premiere finally did take place on the scheduled
day and hour but not without further incident. Maeter-
linck posted as many stooges as he could find in different
parts of the theater to create noisy disturbances. At the
second performance, the director of the Opera-Comique
countered by filling the balcony with sympathetic stu-
dents to outshout Maeterlinck's allies. Not until the sev-
enth performance was the furor In the audience com-
pletely dissipated.
In their own way, Parisian music critics perpetrated
some violence of their own In print. They just did not
understand Debussy's musical style, nor what the opera
was trying to say. "Morbid," "spineless," "a musical hash-
ish" were some of the epithets they threw at the new work.
A London critic, sending his dispatch from Paris, called
it a "refined concatenation of sounds. . . . The com-
poser's system Is to ignore melody altogether; his person-
ages do not sing, but talk In a sort of lilting voice to a
vague musical accompaniment of the text. . . . The ef-
fect is ... almost amusing In Its absurdity." Arthur
Pougin said: "Rhythm, melody, tonality, these are three
things unknown to Monsieur Debussy and deliberately
disdained by him." Camille Bellaigue wrote; "No one
is better qualified than the composer of Pelleas and Meli-
sande to preside over the decomposition of our art. The
music of Monsieur Debussy leads to the emaciation and
ruin of our essence. It contains germs not of life and
progress, but of decadence and death."
But the critics were wrong. Pelleas was one of those
masterworks that singlehandedly changed the destiny of
opera. This was a new kind of musical drama. Its Impact
was as overwhelming as Wagner's operas had been a half-
70
century earlier. Many composers found a new direction
and purpose through Pelleas; most of the subsequent
changes in twentieth-century opera could hardly have
taken place if Pelleas had not been written.
Largely because of Pelleas, Debussy became a cult
among French musicians, who now regarded him as the
greatest composer of his generation, and proclaimed Im-
pressionism a new musical dogma. He became a familiar
figure in Paris cafes, easily identified by his flowing cape
and broad-brimmed felt hat, and always surrounded by
fawning disciples.
If he knew the sweet taste of appreciation and recogni-
tion immediately after Pelleas, he was also to know the
gall of neglect. During his last years, as a victim of
cancer, he had to undergo serious operations which left
him, as he himself once said, "a walking corpse." The
outbreak of World War I gave him such pressing finan-
cial problems that often he could not pay for food and
fuel. And there were few to do him honor. Nevertheless
he kept on working, not on the high level on which he
had previously functioned, but with the same integrity
and high purpose, and completed three sonatas.
He died in Paris on March 25, 1918. Because the war
was still on, few knew about his passing, and only a
scattered handful cared enough to be present at his
funeral.
II
No single composer affected the music of the twentieth
century more than Debussy, Composers great and small
tried writing the way he did, sometimes at one phase of
their careers, sometimes during their most fruitful and
productive periods. Impressionism, for example, pro-
foundly influenced such important French creative figures
71
as Florent Schmitt (1870-1958), Albert Roussel (1869-
1937) and Paul Dukas (1865-1935); such English mu-
sicians as Frank Bridge (1879-1941) and John Ireland
(1879- ); such Americans as Martin Loeffler (1861-
1935) and John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951).
One of the most significant Impressionists outside
France was the Englishman, Frederick Delius. Born In
Bradford, on January 29, 1862, the son of a prosperous
wool merchant, Delius (for all his apparent musical
inclinations) originally planned a mercantile career. For
a while he worked In his father's establishment. But an
ungovernable wanderlust made him restless for travel
and adventure. He finally prevailed on his father to buy
him an orange plantation In Solano, Florida, a wild,
primitive area along the St. John River. There, detached
from the world, Delius spent several languorous years
in isolation. His only diversion was making music. For a
six-month period he studied harmony and counterpoint
with Thomas F. Ward, an organist from Jacksonville,
whom he had Induced to come to Solano.
After leaving Solano, Delius spent some time in Jack-
sonville, singing In a synagogue choir, and after that
in Danville, Virginia, where he taught music in a woman's
school and gave private lessons to the daughters of
wealthy families. His savings enabled him to return to
Europe in 1886 and attend the renowned Leipzig Conserv-
atory as a pupil of Jadassohn, Sitt and Reinecke. There
he gave convincing proof of his talent as a composer with
the orchestral tone poem, Florida. This made such a
favorable Impression upon Grieg (then visiting Leipzig)
that he used his Influence and powers of persuasion to
get Delius* father to support the young man while he
tried making his way in music.
For about eight years Delius made his home In Paris.
72
There he completed three operas, some songs and cham-
ber music, the tone poem Over the Hills and Far Away 3
and the orchestral nocturne Paris: The Song of a Great
City. While in Paris he met and married Jelka Rosen,
a cultured girl from a wealthy family, who brought him
financial security, emotional stability, and the encourage-
ment and stimulation he needed for composition. They
set up a permanent residence in a villa in the little
French town of Grez-sur-Loing, where Delius stayed for
the rest of his life. He withdrew from the society of
people for whom, truth to tell, he had a good deal of
contempt to lead a solitary existence of contemplation
and work. Creatively he thrived in this monastic seclu-
sion. In 1901 he completed his opera, A Village Romeo
and Juliet which he described as a "lyric drama in six
pictures" but which one commentator considered as a
kind of a tone poem with a play for program. "The Walk
to the Paradise Garden/' one of its orchestral interludes,
is often given at symphony concerts. Between 1903 and
1907 Delius produced several of his most significant
choral works including A Mass of Life and Sea Drift.
And between 1907 and 1912 he wrote his finest orchestral
tone poems with which he won greatness and recognition.
The latter came gradually, first in Germany, after that
in England, and finally in the rest of the music world
and largely through the devoted efforts of several impor-
tant conductors (and most notably of all Sir Thomas
Beecham) who recognized his genius and were indefatig-
able in performing his music until it finally achieved
worldwide acceptance.
After World War I, Delius was a pathetic victim of
complete paralysis and total blindness. He accepted this
shattering tragedy with incomparable calm and resigna-
tion. "I have seen the best of earth/' he said, "and done
73
everything that is worth doing. I am content. I have had
a wonderful life. He maintained contact with the world
of ideas by having his wife, and one or two friends, read
to him regularly. And he continued producing major
musical works by dictating them, note by note, to a young
amanuensis and disciple, Eric Fenby, who came to live
with him.
In the fall of 1929, there took place in London, through
Beecham's efforts, a one-week festival of Delius' music.
For this occasion, the composer was brought back to
England by ambulance, and wheeled into the concert
auditorium in his wheelchair. "This festival/' said Delius,
"has been the time of my life/' It was his last public
appearance. He died in Grez-sur-Loing on June 10, 1934,
and was buried in the local cemetery. But one year after
that his body was brought to Limpsfield, in southern
England, to be reburied in the churchyard.
Among Delius' most frequently performed composi-
tions are the three tone poems in which his Impressionist
writing is most sensitive and exquisite: On Hearing the
First Cuckoo in Spring^ Summer Night on the River, and
In a Summer Garden. Here he used the Impressionist's
equipment in his own way to create a mood or picture
whose spell remains unbroken from beginning to end.
In On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring a phrase
simulating the distant call of the cuckoo is expanded into
a page of haunting beauty and serenity which reveals
to us how deeply the composer was affected by nature;
a second melody, also in an idyllic vein, was derived
from a Norwegian folk song. Summer Night on the River
conveys an unforgettable impression of boats, embraced
by darkness and the mist, rocking gently in the waters;
the mystery of a summer night unfolds in an eloquent
song in the 'cellos around which other sections of the
74
orchestra weave delicate arabesques. In a Summer Gar-
den was Inspired by Delius' own garden in Grez-sur-
Loing in full bloom. The music is touched with our
ineffable sadness "in the presence of beauty/' and, as
Arthur Hutchings has noted, "our reflection that it must
fade as the flowers."
Ill
The one who can most rightfully be said to be De-
bussy's heir is one of his countrymen Maurice Ravel
Debussy was still alive when, in 1907, Ravel became the
target for annihilating attacks from Parisian critics who
judged him to be just an imitator of Debussy. The im-
mediate cause for this onslaught was the premiere of
Ravel's Histoires naturelles, a curious composition its
text, by Jules Renard, being some caustic poems about
a peacock, kingfisher, guinea hen, and cricket. Ravel's
music was in a similarly mocking vein. Some important
critics were outraged by a work they regarded as just
"a cafe concert with ninths/' Some found it "labored and
unmusical/' others said it was "a collection of laborious
rarefied harmoniesand successions of involved and com-
plicated chords/' What angered critics most was that
Ravel appeared to be copying Debussy's personal stylistic
mannerisms. As Pierre Lalo said, in Ravel there could
be detected "the unmistakable echo of Debussy's music/'
But there were also some perceptive musicians and
critics who saw the forest and not just the trees. They
realized that while Debussy had influenced Ravel, the
latter was not just a Debussy imitator but Debussy's heir.
These musicians realized that Ravel was using Debussy
as a starting point from which to proceed in his own
directions, led by his own drives and impulses. M. D.
Calvocoressi, Henri Ghon, Georges Jean-Aubry, and La-
75
loy were some of these who rose stoutly to Ravel's
defense by pointing out In Ravel's music a love of clas-
sical symmetry and order, a virility of style, irony and
wit and intellectualism and precision in place of vague-
nesstraits rarely, if ever, encountered in Debussy. If
this was Impressionism as, indeed it was it was actually
^^Impressionism, Impressionism of a later vintage,
Impressionism with a new flavor and texture.
For months the Parisian newspapers were crowded
with the pros and cons of what soon became known as
faff air Ravel Nor did the accusations against Ravel
completely die down until he had finally succeeded in
producing some masterworks of his own in which his
personality was established unmistakably: compositions
like the Rapsodie espagnole for orchestra; Gaspard
de la nuit for piano; the one-act comic opera, UHeurc
espagnole; the Mother Goose Suite, written both for the
orchestra and for four-hand piano; and most significant
of all, the music for one of the crowning works in con-
temporary ballet, Daphnis and Chloe. Now the critics
could say: "Monsieur Maurice Ravel has created an or-
chestral language which belongs exclusively to himself"
(Jean Marnold). Now they could describe him as "a
painter, a goldsmith, a jeweler" (Emile Vuillermoz).
Ravel was born in Ciboure, in the Basque region of
southern France, on March 7, 1875. A musical child whose
interest had been stimulated by his father an engineer
who loved music deeply-Ravel began studying with
Henri Ghys, composer of the popular Amaryllis, in 1882,
and soon after that with Charles-Ren^. For fifteen years,
beginning in 1889, Ravel attended the Paris Conserva-
tory where he was both a consistently brilliant pupil
and a rebellious one. One Conservatory professor had
76
a particularly far-reaching influence upon him: Gabriel
Faure. Faure knew how to encourage the young man's
need for independent thinking and his restless search
after new musical sounds. Under Faure, Ravel completed
two individual compositions: Sites auriculaires for two
pianos, and the overture Sheherazade, both performed
in Paris between 1898 and 1899, and both dismal failures.
After that came a poignant and evocative piece for the
piano (later orchestrated by the composer) which still
is among his most popular pieces, Pavane pour une
Infante defunte. (Its melody was lifted by American pop-
ular writers in 1939 for the successful "pop" tune, "The
Lamp Is Low.") This work, coupled with another equally
remarkable one, Jeux d'eau, was introduced at a con-
cert of the Societe Nationale in Paris in 1902 and brought
Ravel his first success. An unqualified masterwork, the
String Quartet in F major (dedicated to Faure), followed
two years later; one French critic remarked that this
work "placed its author ... in the foremost rank of
French musicians/'
In or about 1904, Ravel and some of his friends (in-
cluding Florent Schmitt, Stravinsky, and Manuel de
Falla) formed an artistic cult, the Societe des apaches. An
apache, of course, is a member of the Parisian under-
world; the term was used by Frenchmen to describe
every kind of social outcast. Ravel and his friends re-
garded themselves as musical outcasts or outlaws because
of their passionate dedication to innovation and experi-
ments. These musical apaches met first in a Paris studio
and subsequently in a studio in Auteuil. They talked,
argued, played each other's music. All-night sessions were
not unusual "We were happy, cultured, and insolent/'
was the way one of the members described the group.
One of Ravel's greatest works for the piano, Miroirs,
77
was introduced at one of these sessions. The increasing
originality of Ravel's thinking and style, the daring of
his harmonic writing, and the perfection of his post-
Impressionist style were all revealed in this work which
was so strongly affected by his contacts with the musical
apaches.
This apache influence is evident in several other Ravel
masterworks written after 1905. Some were in a Satie-like
vein of irony, mockery, and laughter: the Histoires
naturelles and L'Heure espagnole, for example. Some
reflected Ravel's fascination for everything Spanish: the
Rapsodie espagnole and Alborada del gracioso. Some
were in the style of fantasy as in the Mother Goose Suite.
And some were eloquent Impressionist pictures that
were extensions of Debussy. In the last category we find
what is probably Ravel's greatest work, and one of the
most important ballets produced in France in the twen-
tieth century, Daphnis and Chloe.
Ravel wrote this music on a commission from Serge
Diaghilev, the brilliant impresario of the Ballet Russe.
The scenario, the work of Michel Fokine, was based on
a Greek pastoral. Daphnis, stretched out before a grotto
of nymphs, dreams about his beloved Chloe. She appears
with her shepherdesses, wearing a crown which Pan had
presented her in remembrance of the nymph, Syrinx,
whom all the Gods loved. Daphnis and Chloe now mime
the story of Pan and Syrinx. More and more agitated
grows their dance, as Daphnis suddenly begins to per-
form a melancholy tune on a flute fashioned from a stalk.
Finally Chloe falls into the arms of Daphnis before the
altar of the nymphs. When Daphnis vows eternal fidelity,
girls dressed as bacchantes, and a group of young men,
join in a joyous and tumultuous dance.
78
To this score Ravel brought all his technical wizardry,
all his powers as a magic colorist, all his sensitivity for
projecting the most subtle and elusive atmospheres. Like
the Debussy prelude about the afternoon of a faun (of
which It is a legitimate offspring), this music evokes with
haunting beauty the unreal world of nymphs and satyrs.
''The score/' Jean Marnold said In his review, following
the premiere of the ballet in Paris on June 8, 1912,
"abounds In tableaux of the most exquisite plastic
beauty; among these the appearance of the gracious
nymphs in the twilight shadow of a dream is a page with-
out precedent or model in the whole of music. . . .
Never has the magic of picturesque sonority reached such
an intensity."
The music for Daphnis and Chloe is a familiar item
today on symphonic programs by virtue of two suites
(or, "series of orchestral fragments" as Ravel himself
described them) which the composer derived from his
ballet score.
During World War I, Ravel tried to enlist in the army
and air corps. After being turned down for physical rea-
sons, he joined a motor corps with which he served at
the front. After the war, he bought "Belvedere," a beauti-
ful villa in the small French town of Montfort FAmaury,
which became his home from then on. Here he worked
on his compositions with his customary meticulous at-
tention to detail and dedication to the highest principles.
He entertained his friends, and he spent reflective hours
In his library and garden. His everyday life was shared
by a servant who took care of him with almost maternal
solicitude (Ravel never married), and by a family of
Siamese cats on whom he lavished excessive tenderness,
79
and to whom he liked to talk In "cat language" which,
he Insisted, they understood. (Debussy had also been a
lover of cats, and invariably had one as a companion.)
During this period Ravel wrote many Impressionistic
compositions. These included a delightful stage fantasy,
L'Enfant et les sortileges, in which furniture and toys
come to life to taunt a mischievous boy; a remarkable
orchestral fantasy, La Valse y In whose misty Images we
can discern a ball In a Viennese Imperial court In or
about 1855 set against a waltz melody growing from an
embryo into a vibrant living organism; a violin sonata
In which Ravel experimented with the "blues" idiom;
a remarkable work in a pseudo-Spanish idiom that lit-
erally took the world by storm, Bolero. His last compo-
sitions, completed In 1931, were two piano concertos
(one of them for the left hand alone) In which American
popular jazz styles are once again employed.
If Daphnis and Chloe is Ravel's greatest work, then
Bolero is his most popular. Ida Rubinstein, a famous
French dancer, asked him to write this music for her,
and she Introduced it with phenomenal success In Paris
on November 20, 1928. But it was at symphony concerts
that this music went on to become one of the most cele-
brated concert pieces since 1900. It had a kinetic appeal
which was irresistible. A single melody in two sections
grows and develops both In volume and In changing
orchestral colors for about seventeen minutes. As the
theme passes now to one section of the orchestra and now
to another, It grows louder and louder, more and more
brilliant, until, at last, a thunderous climax Is proclaimed
by the full orchestra.
When Bolero was heard for the first time In America
Toscanini conducted It In Carnegie Hall one of the
greatest demonstrations ever seen In that auditorium
80
was let loose. Then Bolero was played by virtually every
other American orchestra; it was immediately released
in six different recordings; it was adapted for every pos-
isible instrument or combination of instruments (in-
cluding a jazz band!); it was featured in a Broadway
revue and in a night club show; it even lent its name
to a movie starring George Raft.
In the fall of 1932, Ravel suffered an accident in a
Paris taxicab. At first his injuries seemed minor, but as
the months passed he began to lose his powers of co-
ordination. Then partial paralysis set in. In 1935 his
physical deterioration necessitated an operation on his
affected brain. Ravel never survived that operation. He
died in the hospital on December 28, 1937.
81
CHAPTER 4
The "Everyday" Men
E Impressionist school was not the only
JL school affecting French music in the early
twentieth century. There was also the group that clus-
tered around and developed from Cesar Franck which,
like its patron saint, brought to music a kind of religious
consecration, a feeling for the spiritual, an unwavering
idealism. If the Impressionists helped carry music to an
extreme in nebulousness and preciousness, the Franckists
were also extremists in their sanctimoniousness, preten-
tiousness, and scholasticism.
The inevitable reaction to the extremes of both these
schools came with the "French Six" or Les Six. This
group of six young Frenchmen had sympathy for neither
the Impressionists nor the Franckists. "The Six" ex-
pressed their disdain in little, unpretentious pieces of
music, slight in structure, and filled with impish, tongue-
in-cheek attitudes, and other light, gay moods. "The Six"
believed in une musique de tons Us /ours everyday
music. They stood in sharp contrast to those who re-
garded themselves as high priests of their art
The "French Six" differed from other modern groups
or schools traveling under a single artistic banner. In
other instances, composers banded together for the pur-
pose of carrying out set principles. The "French Six"
did not come together for any such purpose, nor, for
that matter, for any purpose whatsoever. They did not
82
follow a single style of composition. In fact, the six men
wrote a good deal of music in many veins other than the
light and jaunty one in which they expressed their re-
bellion against Impressionism and Franckism. The force
coalescing "The Six" into a single group was not an
artistic motivation, but a synthetic process in the person
of one of Paris's leading music critics. On January 16,
1920, Henri Collet reviewed in Comedia an album of
piano pieces containing the work of six Frenchmen:
Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius
Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre.
Collet drew a parallel between the famous nineteenth-
century Russian nationalist school, known as "The
Five/* and the six French composers. "Russian music/*
he wrote, "cultivated by the illustrious Five Balakirev,
Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky, and RImsky-Korsakov united
in their aims, became the object of universal admiration.
. . . The Six Frenchmen . . . have, by magnificent
and voluntary return to simplicity, brought about a ren-
aissance of French music, because they understood the
lesson of Erik Satie. . . . The different temperaments
of the six composers jostle without jarring, and their
works, Individual and distinct, reveal a unity of ap-
proach to art, In conformity with the spokesman of the
group, Jean Cocteau."
One week later, Collet published a second article on
French music In which he discussed the personalities and
achievements of Les Six Franfais or "The French Six."
This label henceforth stuck to the group, though each
member did not particularly relish being artistically as-
sociated with the others.
Collet was not altogether accurate in maintaining that
the six French composers revealed "a unity of approach
to art." Actually they did nothing of the sort. From time
83
to time, each of the sk men produced compositions that
bore no spiritual affinity or stylistic resemblance to the
works of the other five. But it was quite true that all six,
at one point or another, wrote simple, easily compre-
hended compositions that were down-to-earth. These
compositions had catchy tunes and rhythms; i texts or
scenarios were used they usually were outlandish in
theme and quixotic in development. This was the com-
mon ground on which the members of "The Six'* stood
for several years, and it was from this ground that they
launched their attacks against Impressionism and Franck-
ism.
II
Throughout a rich, long, prolific career which has
yielded hundreds upon hundreds of compositions, Da-
rius Milhaud has employed many styles in every possible
form. As an ultramodernist he was one of the first to use
polytonality extensively. He has written Hebrew music-
even a religious service; Provencal music; music of the
French West Indies; music that exploited the classic
dances of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He
has written a good many symphonies, string quartets
and operas combining a variety of styles from the ro-
mantic to the modern, from the esoteric to the popular
sometimes within a single work. But the music with
which he first achieved worldwide recognition, or if you
will notoriety, was that in the insouciant manner which
carried music from the high ivory tower of Impression-
ism and Franckism to the common man in the street
Milhaud wrote large and small works in which the tango,
the shimmy, the blues, jazz, ragtime, and music hall tunes
were used, sometimes for humorous or ironic effects,
84
sometimes to introduce surprise, and sometimes with the
most serious artistic intent.
Milhaud was unusually sensitive to the influence of
poets. Three of them led him away from Debussy's misty
and unreal world. The first poet was Francis Jammes,
author of the text for Miihaud's first opera, La Brebis
egaree, completed when Milhaud was still a Conservatory
student. Jammes, as Milhaud himself once confessed,
led him "out of the symbolists' fog and revealed to me a
new world, to be captured merely by opening one's eyes."
Until now a passionate disciple of Debussy (as so many
other young Frenchmen were at the time), Milhaud was
soon able to free himself from the lure of Impressionism
and wander off freely into the green pastures of Satie's
whimsy and impishness. The second French poet was
Paul Claudel (who was also a diplomat). Because of
Claudel, Milhaud started writing music that either imi-
tated or used popular musical styles of North and South
America. The third French poet was Jean Cocteau, a
nonconformist in living as well as in art. Cocteau had
a particular weakness for satire, for "fresh-air realism"
and for fantasy. Through his unorthodox poems and
texts, which Milhaud set to music, he was able to en-
courage similar light moods and feelings in the young
composer.
Milhaud was born on September 4, 1892, in Aix-en-
Provence, a town in the sun-drenched regions of Pro-
vence made famous by Van Gogh's painting. (Some of
the old dance melodies of this district were used by Mil-
haud in one of his finest and most popular orchestral
works, the Suite provengale.} Miihaud's music study took
place first with local teachers; then at the College of Aix;
and from 1909 to 1914 at the Paris Conservatory with
85
Paul Dukas, Charles Wider and Andre Gedalge. Milhaud
was an outstanding student, winning prizes in virtually
every department, and undertaking the most ambitious
projects for composition. His earliest works were Im-
pressionistic. With the opera La Brebis egaree, he took his
first step away from Impressionism. The second step
away from Impressionism was taken with his incidental
music for Protee, a satirical play by Paul Claudel. Here
Milhaud's style drifted toward popular areas, as he made
a skillful use of the tango and other South American
dance rhythms.
Both the opera and the music for Pro tee were written
while Milhaud was attending the Conservatory. The out-
break of World War I brought his Conservatory school-
ing to an abrupt end, and frustrated Milhaud's ambition
to win the Prix de Rome. By this time, his association
with Paul Claudel had flowered into such friendship
that, in 1917, when Claudel was appointed France's Am-
bassador to Brazil, Milhaud accompanied him as a Lega-
tion attache. This South American visit not only afforded
Milhaud a first-hand opportunity to learn the country's
popular songs and dances but also to become acquainted
with American jazz, then becoming extremely popular
throughout Latin America.
In South America Milhaud completed a major score-
the music for a farce in pantomime, Le Boeuf sur le toit.
Jean Cocteau had written the highly offbeat scenario
but only after Milhaud had completed his score. Cocteau
placed his action in an American speakeasy, the hangout
for a strange assortment of American characters~~a Negro
boxer, a Negro dwarf, a bookie, and a woman with paper
hair. A brawl ensues. A policeman come to quell the
riot is decapitated by a revolving electric fan. The dwarf,
after singing a romance to the lady, refuses to pay his
88
bar bill. When some of the characters leave the speak-
easy, the bartender calmly goes about the business of
restoring the head of the policeman to its body. Then,
revived, the policeman presents the dwarf with a two-
foot bill for payment.
Though background and characters were American,
Milhaud's style came not from jazz but from popular
Brazilian music. Brazilian songs and dances also were
the source for a remarkable orchestral suite, Saudades
do Brasilj which also exists in a version for the piano.
A saudade is a "nostalgic recollection." In this twelve-
movement work, Milhaud recalls Brazil through the
rhythms of Brazilian dances.
One of Milhaud's most remarkable works in a popu-
lar style is the Negro ballet, La Creation du monde (The
Creation of the World), in 1922. This was one of the
first large-scale serious works to employ jazz preceding
Gershwin's more popular Rhapsody in Blue by two years;
it is still one of the best jazz works in a symphonic idiom.
The scenario describes the world's creation through the
eyes of an aborigine. Dancers (who walk about on stilts)
represent herons. Animals caper about on a darkened
stage on all fours. Out of this mass, human beings slowly
begin to emerge. We soon recognize a Negro Adam and
Eve, who embrace in a sustained kiss. The score begins
with a haunting American blues for the saxophone, and
includes a fugue based on a jazz motive; throughout,
the music is rich with syncopations and ragtime.
These and other similar excursions into wit and irony
by way of unconventional and offbeat subjects made
Milhaud popular in Paris after his return from South
America in 1919. Further publicity came his way when
the title of "French Six'* was attached to him in con-
junction with five other rebellious spirits in music. Mil-
87
baud continued writing other compositions with down-
to-earth, popular, and unorthodox approaches. Le Train
bleu y In 1924, was a "danced operetta" dealing with
gigolos and girls at a fashionable beach. Les Maries de
la Tour Eiffel, a ballet in 1921, was the only Instance in
which Milhaud joined forces with his colleagues of "The
Six" for a common artistic effort,
A good many critics found the kind of music Milhaud
was producing for these more popular efforts refreshing
and invigorating after the hothouse atmosphere of Im-
pressionism. Others looked askance and described Mil-
haud as a "sensation monger" and a "vulgarian." But
whether damned or praised, Milhaud was frequently per-
formed, and discussed, thereby becoming one of the most
provocative figures In French music since Satie.
On occasion, in later years, Milhaud paid hasty re-
visits into popular areas, as in the Suite provengale, the
Scaramouche suite for two pianos, and the Suite fran-
$aise. Nevertheless Milhaud had grown weary of his
former levity, and was Impelled by a severe artistic con-
science to seek out more serious, sober, and flexible kinds
of self expression. And so he completed all kinds of
major works symphonies, quartets, operas, song cycles,
as well as shorter works In every possible shape and
form. A masterful use of modern idioms and techniques
was here combined with a personal lyricism and at times
a deeply affecting emotion.
With the death of Ravel, In 1937, Milhaud's position
as France's first composer was not seriously questioned.
He had by then become, as Virgil Thomson later wrote,
"one of the most completely calm of modern masters
... by adding - . . depth and penetrating and simple
humanity to his gamut/' To Boris de Schloezer, the
Russian-born authority on contemporary French musk,
88
Milhaud was "after Stravinsky, the most richly endowed
and the most powerful musician of our times . . . [who
belongs] to the race of great creators."
During World War II, Milhaud lived in the United
States where he made numerous appearances as guest
conductor, lecturer, and pianist besides serving as a mem-
ber of the music faculty at Mills College, in Oakland,
California. Though stricken by a crippling attack of
arthritis, which made him a prisoner to a wheelchair or
to two canes, he continued writing remarkable music
in a truly formidable outflow of compositions Includ-
ing his Second Piano Concerto, his Second 'Cello Con-
certo, his Third and Fourth Symphonies, and his Four-
teenth and Fifteenth String Quartets. The last two
are unusual in that they can be played separately as
string quartets or can be combined as a string octet.
Though he had to conduct from a seated position, he
continued appearing with the foremost American orches-
tras.
After the war, Milhaud paid his first return visit to
France. Since then he has been dividing his year and his
activities between his native land and the United States.
Arthur Honegger and Francis Poulenc were two other
members of "The Six" who progressed from levity to
sobriety, from trivialities to profundities. Nevertheless,
they did not fail to make a profound impression upon
the French musical thought of their time with some of
their earlier slight efforts.
Honegger was perhaps the one member of "The Six"
least interested In the kind of musical trifles the others
enjoyed dispensing. Honegger's most significant com-
position in the lighter vein is a pleasing little Concertino
for Pianoa, simple, lyrical, bouncy, syncopated, and at
89
times, jazzy composition. But before he wrote this con-
certino in 1924, Honegger had become famous for some-
thing quite different a powerful oratorio with an almost
Handel-like grandeur, Le Roi David, first heard in Swit-
zerland in 1921, and a few years later given with huge
success in Paris, Zurich, Rome, and New York. During
this period Honegger had also achieved a measure of
notoriety with a provocative piece of music, so cacopho-
nous and jarring that he was instantly numbered with the
enfants terribles of the day. This work was Pacific 231
in which the composer reflecting a lifelong passion for
locomotives went to painful extremes to reproduce the
sounds and motion of a moving train through shattering
dissonances, nervous rhythms, and abrupt chords.
Although Honegger was born in France and main-
tained his permanent home there, he was all his life a
Swiss citizen, by virtue of his parents. They came to the
coastal town of Le Havre to set up a business establish-
ment. Here the composer was born on March 10, 1892.
A Bach cantata and some excerpts from Mozart's The
Magic Flute heard in his boyhood aroused his ambition
to start music study so that he, too, could write an opera.
Nevertheless for a long while he seriously contemplated
a career in business. When he was sixteen he entered
his father's establishment But his heart lay with music
and not with commerce, a fact his father reluctantly sub-
mitted to when he allowed the boy to enter the Zurich
Conservatory. In 1912, Honegger was transferred to the
Paris Conservatory where he was Milhaud's fellow-stu-
dent. Four years later Honegger made his bow as com-
poser when some of his songs were introduced in a Paris
concert hall, and a piano piece was played by Andr^e
Vaurabourg at a soiree. (Andr<e had been Honegger's
classmate; later on she became his wife.) By 1920, Hon-
90
egger's name had begun to attract attention by being
linked with those of the other "Six." But in the next half
dozen years he asserted his own artistic personality and
independence with works like Le Roi David which was
far removed from the kind of writing for which "The Six"
had become so famous.
Honegger's real creative personality was more accu-
rately reflected in Le Roi David than in the little piano
concertino. It was this personality which he allowed to
unfold in his later works. Most important of all were
the symphonies Honegger completed during and after
World War II. Not Gallic wit or charm do we find here,
nor razor-edged satire but a dramatic and virile style,
sometimes acidulous and astringent, but often touched
with an encompassing humanity and a kind of spiritual
exaltation.
The Second Symphony was written while Paris was
occupied by the Nazis during World War II. Through-
out the work we are plunged into the mood of despair
that at the time had seized most Frenchmen, and par-
ticularly Honegger, a member of the Resistance move-
ment. But there is also a note of defiance in this sym-
phony, and it ends not on a note of sorrow but with an
exultant paean, prophetic of ultimate liberation.
Honegger's Third Symphony commemorated the fif-
tieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony. Subtitled
Liturgique, it has been described as the search of the
human spirit for serenity in a world of unrest. The
subtitles to each of the three movements (Dies Irae,
De profundis clamavi and Dona nobis pacem) suggest
a strong religious identity. The Fourth Symphony uses
quotations from old songs popular in Basel, Switzer-
land, and for this reason has acquired the name Delidae
basilienses (Basel Delights). The Fifth Symphony has
91
come to be known as De Tre Re (Of the Three D's),
because the note D Is a unifying element, heard at the
conclusion of each of the three movements.
Honegger's Fifth Symphony, completed in 1950, was
his last He had been in poor health for a long time.
Indeed, when he paid his second visit to the United
States in 1949 to conduct a master class in composition
at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, he was
physically incapable of fulfilling this obligation. After
1950 his health deteriorated, making sustained creative
work difficult. He died in Paris on November 27, 1955.
Francis Poulenc's brevity and wit revealed themselves
most forcefully in some of the earlier works with which
he gained membership in "The Six'* and popularity in
French music. One was Rapsodie negre (Negro Rhap-
sody), a setting of a Negro poem in gibberish, supposedly
the work of a native Liberian, but actually a hoax con-
cocted to meet the then prevailing vogue for all things
Negro. Poulenc took this hoax at face value. Placing
tongue squarely in cheek he wrote a score full of spice
and satire for a poem that begins with the following
lines: "Honoloulou, poti lama, Honoloulou, Honolou-
lou, Kati moki, mosi boulo, Ratsku sira, polamal" The
Negro Rhapsody came in 1917, long before "The Six"
had been officially baptized by Collet. The work was
such a "roaring success" that the career of the eighteen-
year-old composer was vigorously launched. After that
Poulenc wrote Le Bestiaire (The Bestiary), a song
cycle vividly and humorously describing six specimens of
animal and marine life. This, in turn, was succeeded by
music for Les Biches, a witty ballet produced by Dia-
ghilev, adapted from French popular songs. After that
92
came a charming little concerto for harpsichord and a
two-piano concerto, in both of which the thematic ma-
terial resembled music-hall tunes.
Poulenc continued to tap this satirical and light-
hearted vein for a long time. But just before, and soon
after, World War II, he created large works rich in emo-
tional content and poetic expressiveness, at times drama-
tized by a tragic undercurrent. In 1943 he wrote a violin
sonata in memory of Federico Garcia Lorca, a poet
killed during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930's, in
which his "speech" is in turn vehement and turbulent,
lyrical and tender. Poignancy, and at times, tragedy, are
encountered in songs written in the 1930's and 1940's
some of the best songs created in France since Debussy.
And tragedy pervades Poulenc's greatest work for the
stage the opera, Les Dialogues des Carmelites, intro-
duced with outstanding success at La Scala in Milan in
1957. The period is the French Revolution, the setting
Paris. Sixteen nuns are commanded to dissolve their
order. Rather than do this, they proudly meet their death
at the guillotine. For this deeply emotional and pro-
foundly religious subject, Poulenc created a score that
was continually lyrical but which progressed toward its
shattering dramatic climax with a relentless tread. Les
Dialogues was first heard in the United States in 1957,
then in 1958 was telecast over the NBC network when
it was awarded the New York Music Critics Circle Award
as the best new opera of the year.
The other three members of 'The Six"-Georges
Auric (1899- ), Louis Durey (1888- ), and Ger-
maine Tailleferre (1892- )-have remained for the
most part effervescent wits. Durey and Tailleferre have
93
long since fallen by the wayside and are almost never
performed anymore. Auric has preferred to concentrate
his efforts on music for motion pictures, the popular
theater, and the ballet. Americans will surely remember
Auric for his hit song, the title number in the motion-
picture biography of Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin Rouge.
"The Six" were not the only ones in France leaning
toward lighter moods and styles. Many other com-
posers were similarly disposed. The most significant of
these has been Jean Fran^aix. Fran^aix born in Le Mans
in 1912 was a child prodigy who began improvising
when he was four, and completed his first composition
at ten. After attending the Paris Conservatory, he caxne
to prominence before his twentieth birthday with a Baga-
telle, for string quartet, introduced at the modern-music
festival in Vienna, and his First Symphony, performed
in Paris by the Orchestre Symphonique under Pierre
Monteux.
Fran<jaix' reputation was solidly established between
1934 and 1936 with a piano concertino and a piano
concerto, each with the kind of terse, tart statements
within slender structures that, a decade earlier, had char-
acterized so many works by "The Six/' It was with the
Piano Concerto that Fran^aix made his American debut
in 1938, when he appeared as soloist with the New York
Philharmonic. On that occasion, one of the music critics
in New York referred to him as "the white hope o French
music." As that white hope, Fran<jaix later completed
several fine operas, one of which, U Apostrophe, was in-
troduced at the Holland Festival in 1951. So sparkling
were both the text and the music that the New York
correspondent reported that "even the non-French speak-
ing section of the audience was lured into laughter by
the caprices of the score."
94
Ill
This trend toward "everyday music" by "everyday com-
posers" was not an exclusively French phenomenon. A
parallel movement swept across Germany in the 1920's
and early 1930's where it was designated as Zeitkunst, or
"Contemporary Art." Followers of this cult liked treating
racy modern subjects, filled with all sorts of contempo-
rary allusions and references, in a timely and provocative
musical style. In such a vein Paul Hindemith wrote a
controversial opera, Neues vom Tage (News of the
Day), first produced in Berlin in 1929 where it shocked
audiences and critics out of their senses. The farcical
subject involved a marital dispute in which the couple
becomes the "news of the day" through their efforts to
get a divorce. When they arrive in court they do not
want to separate. But the public now expects them to
get a divorce, and a divorce is what they get. Within
this general plot structure are found all kinds of amus-
ing and provocative episodes. The heroine, seen taking
a bath, sings a hymn in praise of hot water. Stenog-
raphers chant to the accompaniment of clicking type-
writers. The protagonists engage in a lusty fight, ac-
companied musically by the sounds of smashing crockery.
A chorus of men at the registrar's office announce births,
deaths, marriages, and divorces. Everything is topsy-
turvy in this opera. Other operas might have a love duet,
but this one has a hate duet. Others might feature a
wedding march, but this one has a divorce ensemble.
Through it all we hear music written with broad strokes
generously spiced with the colorations and rhythms of
jazz.
In line with this "Contemporary Art" Hindemith also
created a whole library of music with popular content
95
for mass appeal. For these pieces the term Gebrauchs-
musik (Functional Music) was concocted. Gebrauchs-
musik consisted of "practical music" for amateurs-
operas and instrumental compositions for performance
by schools and colleges in which the audience could
sometimes participate. This music also embraced pieces
for animated cartoons, radio, movies, pianola and brass
band. "Practical music" also included music with polit-
ical or social implications intended for large and gener-
ally unsophisticated audiences. Thus, Hindemith pro-
duced compositions for various mechanical instruments;
a score for Felix the Cat, a motion-picture cartoon; func-
tional instrumental and choral pieces of all sorts; and,
in 1931, an opera for children, about children, to be
performed by children Let's Build a Town. Explaining
his purpose in creating these compositions, Hindemith
said in 1927: "It is to be regretted that in general so
little relationship exists today between the producers and
consumers of music. A composer should write today only
if he knows for what purpose he is writing. The days of
composing for the sake of composing are perhaps gone
forever. On the other hand, the demand for music is so
great that composer and consumer ought most emphati-
cally to come at last to an understanding/'
Despite this pronouncement, and despite his many at-
tempts at Zeitkunst and Gebrauchsmusik, Hindemith has
become since 1930 one of the most complex, esoteric,
and original musical creators. He has given the lie to his
own dictum that "the days of composing for the sake of
composing are perhaps gone forever/* The far more
serious endeavors with which this composer became one
of the supreme creative figures in twentieth-century
music will be discussed in a later chapter.
96
Another exciting and sensational German example of
Zeitkunst in a jazz idiom was Jonny spielt auf! (Johnny
Strikes Up the Tune], an opera by Ernst Kfenek (1900-
). When introduced in Leipzig in 1927, it took the
city by storm, then went on to conquer all of Germany,
and the rest of the music world. In less than two years
it was performed in over one hundred European theaters
and translated into eighteen languages. Johnny, the cen-
tral character, is a Negro jazz-band leader who wins
hearts and starts feet tapping whenever he strikes up a
popular tune with his band. He inspires a mass per-
formance of the "Charleston" at the North Pole and in
the end bestrides the world like a conqueror, still playing
his intoxicating and irresistible jazz. In setting this un-
usual text, Kfenek deliberately set out to write a jazz
opera with "rhythms and atmosphere of modern life"
interpreting "this age of technical science/' His score
overflows with blues melodies, jazz harmonies and
rhythms, and music-hall ballads. After Jonny, Kfenek
wrote two more operas in a jazz idiom, but neither one
matched its popularity. Then Kfenek left jazz for good,
first to assume a Romantic and almost Schubertian lyr-
icism in various chamber music and orchestral composi-
tions, and after that to embrace the twelve-tone tech-
nique to which he has since remained faithful.
Nobody was more successful in producing Zeitkunst
or in becoming an "everyday" composer than Kurt
Weill, born in Dessau, Germany, on March 2, 1900.
After attending the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik and
studying privately with Ferruccio Busoni, Weill started
out as an ivory-tower composer of avant-garde music in
the most advanced idioms. His career ended in New
97
York where he had become one of its most distinguished
composers of musical comedies and musical plays. In
between these two polar points of composition and
while he was still a German he wrote operas in a new
format which he dubbed "song plays." "I want/' he said
in explanation, "to reach the real people, a more repre-
sentative public than any opera house attracts. I write
for today. I don't care about writing for posterity." And
so he tried to make opera an everyday form of stage en-
tertainment for the masses, with music that belonged
more legitimately in the European music hall than in
the opera house. Ballads, popular tunes, current dances
like the tango and the shimmy, jazz devices like the blues
and ragtime, all found their way into his operas.
One of WeilFs most sensational song-plays was The
Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny (text by Bertolt
Brecht), first seen in Germany in 1930. Stink bombs
were thrown into the theater at the premiere; boos and
shouts of disapproval disrupted the performance. Even
fist fights ensued between those who liked the opera and
those who denounced it. During that whole first-night
performance the manager of the theater insisted upon
keeping the lights on in the theater to avoid possible
disaster. As it was, one man was shot and killed.
Brecht's play was unusual, irreverent, and at times
obscene. It is set in Mahagonny, a fictional town in
Alabama. Three ex-convicts, fleeing from the law, es-
tablish in this city a new kind of society in which people
can do whatever their hearts desire without any of the
limitations imposed upon them by ethics, morality, or
the law. The only thing in Mahagonny that was un-
pardonable was the lack of money. Thus Brecht drew a
caricature of modern society, laying bare the corruption,
decadence and materialism of modem living. "First, for-
98
get not, comes devouring food/* explains one of the
choral numbers; after that, the song says, come love, box-
ing, and drink, in descending order of importance.
Weill's music also consisted of jazz episodes, ditties and
popular songs of the Tin Pan Alley variety. Of the last,
the most popular was "Alabamy Song," in gibberish
English.
The greatest artistic and popular success of Brecht
and Weill, came with Die Dreigroschenoper (The Three-
Penny Opera), a work that literally circled the globe.
It opened in an intimate and unpretentious little theater
in Berlin in 1928, before an audience that had been
forewarned by rumor that this little opera was just a
"dud," jSlled with "unsingable music" and a text gener-
ously sprinkled with "filthy lines." "Then," as Lotte
Lenya recalled (at that time appearing in the leading
female role of Jenny), "after the Kanonen song, an un-
believable uproar went up, and from that point on it was
wonderfully, intoxicatingly clear that the public was
with us." After that, The Three-Penny Opera infected
Berlin like a contagious disease. Everywhere one went
one heard its tunes; there was even a bar opened named
the Dreigroschenoper which featured the music of the
opera exclusively. And Berlin was not the only place to
be thus affected. During its first year, the opera was given
over a thousand times by more than one hundred Ger-
man theaters; in five years it was seen ten thousand times
in Central Europe, and translated into eighteen lan-
guages. It was made into a fine German movie directed
byG.W.Pabst
Nor did its history end there. In 1954, it was presented
off Broadway with a text revised by Marc Blitzstein, but
with WeilFs music left intact. It lasted there over six
years-one of the longest runs ever accumulated by any
99
American musical production. After that it toured the
country in performances by several national companies.
In that time one of its principal songs, "Mack the Knife"
twice became a national hit: In 1955 it received over
twenty recordings and was at the top of the Hit Parade
for several weeks. In 1959, it helped establish the career
of young Bobby Darin, whose new recording of that
song sold over a million discs.
The Three-Penny Opera was a modernization of the
venerable ballad opera of John Gay, The Beggar's Op-
era, but with a completely new score. The latter, first
produced in London in 1728, was a political travesty
which pointed up the political corruption of the times
and the callousness of the upper English classes to pov-
erty and human suffering. The main characters were
drawn from the lowest strata of English society thieves,
highwaymen, a beggar, and so forth. The music by John
Christoph Pepusch consisted for the most part of adap-
tations of tunes, airs, and ballads then popular in Eng-
land. What these authors wanted to do, of course, was
not merely to write a political and social satire, but to
mock at the pretensions of the Handelian-type opera then
so greatly in vogue in London.
So successful was The Beggar's Opera that it created
a passion for this new genre the ballad opera. Over a
hundred ballad operas were produced in London be-
tween 1728 and 1738. Serious Italian operas were thrown
completely into the shade by these more popular stage
productions.
In the late 1920's, The Beggar's Opera was revived in
Berlin. It was this production that gave Brecht the idea
to rewrite it along modern lines and make it a commen-
tary on the social and political decadence in post World-
War I Germany. He enlisted the cooperation of Kurt
100
Welll who, to give the play a genuine twentieth-century
flavor, wrote a lively and unusual score made up of Tin
Pan Alley tunes, sentimental ballads, the blues, a shimmy,
and vivacious choruses. When the older musical forms
were utilized such as a canon, a chorale, or a formal
opera aria they were usually dressed in a jazz or Tin
Pan Alley garb to point up, as it were, the contradiction
between the old and the new. Thus in text and in music
The Three-Penny Opera was the rebel voice of a coun-
trysinging and whistling in mocking tones as it inched
ever closer toward the abyss of the swastika and the
second World War.
Though Weill was the top composer of the German
musical theater in 1933, he had to flee when the Nazis
came to power, since he was a Jew. He finally came to
America, became an American citizen and soon was one
of Broadway's most successful composers. He wrote scores
for Lady in the Dark, Knickerbocker Holiday, Street
Scene, and Lost in the Dark, as well as many other mu-
sicals. Toward the end of his life, in 1947, he completed
a one-act American folk opera, Down in the Valley. He
died in New York City on April 3, 1950.
IV
It is singularly appropriate to find Marc Blitzstein
modernizing Weill's The Three-Penny Opera and mak-
ing it a triumph of the American musical theater. For
Blitzstein, who is a composer, as well as a librettist and
lyricist, is Weill's American counterpart as an everyday
composer of song-plays. Born in Philadelphia in 1905,
Blitzstein (like Weill) received a comprehensive musi-
cal schooling at the Curtis Institute, and later privately
with Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg. Then,
once again like Weill, he started out professionally as a
101
composer of avant-garde music. Such were the dissonances
and jarring sounds of his esoteric compositions that one
Philadelphia critic was tempted to describe them as full
of "Donner und Blitzstein" But as the Depression deep-
ened and aroused the social and political consciousness
of many Americans, Blitzstein felt a need to make his
music an instrument for social propaganda, and at the
same time to simplify and popularize his style so he
might be able to speak to the common man. And so he
wrote a Three-Penny Opera of his own, calling it The
Cradle Will Rock. He wrote his own text, building it
around the efforts of workers in Steeltown to form a
union despite the obstructionist tactics of the employers
and other town leaders. Eventually, the workers tri-
umph and the union comes into being. Though desig-
nated a proletarian opera, The Cradle Will Rock is ac-
tually a Kurt Weill-like song-play. Weill-like is Blitz-
stein's highly appealing musical texture, made up of
patter songs, parodies, ballads, torch songs, the blues,
pop tunes, recitatives, and chorales.
When first produced, The Cradle Will Rock was given
oratorio style, that is, without costumes or scenery. The
characters stood on a bare stage, wearing their everyday
dress. There was no orchestra. The composer sat on the
stage at the piano, playing his score, and between
scenes giving the audience an informal commentary on
what is taking place in the play.
And thereby hangs a tale one of the most dramatic
and unusual in the history of opera performances. A
production of the WPA Federal Theater (a government
subsidized agency to provide work to actors and writers),
The Cradle Will Rock was scheduled for a formal pre-
mifere (scenery, costumes, orchestra and all). Then, as
this writer has had occasion to explain in The Story of
102
America's Theater, "soon after the dress rehearsal, in
June of 1937, such pressure was brought to bear on the
Federal Theater by powerful government officials and
agencies against a play with a pronounced left-wing slant,
that the decision was finally arrived at to cancel the
production. But the cast did not receive notification of
the cancellation until a few hours before curtain time
on opening night. A feverish search ensued to find a
nearby empty theater in which the play could be given
without government auspices. Luckily that theater was
found, and the cast and audience were transferred there.
Since the scenery belonged to the Federal Theater, and
no funds were available to pay the men in the orchestra,
both had to be dispensed with. . . . Strange to say the
play gained in dramatic force and emotional impact
through this untraditional presentation, and The Cradle
Will Rock became a box-office attraction. A producer
was now found ready to finance a regular run on Broad-
way, which began on January 3, 1938. Still presented
without scenery, costumes, or orchestra but this time
through choice rather than necessity The Cradle Will
Rock stayed on Broadway for about four months. It was
also performed in other parts of the country, and was
recorded in its entirety."
A decade after this premifere, The Cradle Will Rock
was revived in New York by Leonard Bernstein, who
conducted a concert version of the opera with the New
York City Symphony. The opera was so generously hailed
by critics and the audience, that once again it was
brought to Broadway, but with much less success than
originally; this revival lasted only thirteen performances.
For a while, Blitzstein continued writing song-plays
on provocative political or social subjects; I've Got the
Tune for radio in 1937; No for an Answer in 1940
103
(closed down by the city authorities soon after its pre-
miere because of its controversial left-wing slant). Since
then Blitzstein has abandoned the political arena to write
compelling musical dramas in which some of the popular
elements of his earlier song-plays are wedded to the most
serious and ambitious techniques of musical-dramatic
writing, as well as to some of the advanced idioms of the
avant-garde composer. Among these later stage works are
Regina in 1949, based on Lillian Hellman's play, The
Little Foxes; and, a few years after that, Juno, adapted
from Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock.
104
CHAPTER 5
The Expressionists
r
FF Satie and Impressionism were reactions
against Wagnerism, and if "The Six" and
Zeitkunst were reactions against Impressionism, then Ex-
pressionism is the reaction against Wagnerism, Impres-
sionism, the levities of "The Six" and the functionalism of
Zeitkunst and Gebrauchsmusik. As a matter of fact, Ex-
pressionism rebelled against everything that had been
governing musical creation for generations. For while
the new harmonic and tonal language of Wagner, De-
bussy, Ives, Milhaud, and Stravinsky had been an am-
plification and revision of older systems, the vocabulary
of Expressionism was a complete break with the past
through the creation of altogether new methods. Expres-
sionism was revolution, not evolution.
Expressionism bears the same relation to music that
Abstractionism does to painting. The abstract painter
sought a pure and absolute art, governed by its own
laws, and divorced from all sense of reality. "I paint what
I think/' Pablo Picasso once said, "not what I see." In
amplification, Thomas Craven, the American author of
Modern Art, has written of Picasso: "He believes that
art is a purely material thing; that is to say, a picture is
a composition in the same sense that a pile of neatly
arranged bricks is a composition; that its value is meas-
ured simply and solely by the skill, the orderliness and
the novelty of the arrangement; that a picture represents
105
nothing; that even when dealing with the human form,
it does not communicate emotions inseparably con-
nected with figures; that it is not a symbol charged with
.human implications, an instrument employed by art-
ists to express their experience with life; that, in short,
the material constituents the actual mud and oil when
arrestingly consolidated, contains the true esthetic val-
ues.
The expressionist, paraphrasing Picasso, might well
say: "I write the kind of music I think, not what I hear/'
The sensual perception is not important, only the
thought processes. The expressionist composer tries to
strip music of all possible feeling, emotion, and human
relationships. He wants to get down to the barest es-
sentials. He seeks a logic of thought as exact as a mathe-
matical formula. He strives for the full freedom of an-
archy. Through a strict adherence to dissonant chords
unrelieved by consonance; through the absence of any
basic tonality; through the freedom of his melodic line
to move at will horizontally and vertically through all
this the expressionist has freed music once and for all
from the long-held concepts of harmony, counterpoint,
and melody.
Atonality the absence of tonality is his basic tool.
Since Bach, a musical composition has been identified
as being in a specific key, say C major or D minor* This
means that the basic tone of that key (the tonic) domi-
nates the other eleven notes of the chromatic scale. The
other eleven notes revolve around that basic tone, and
are dependent upon it. But the expressionist who writes
atonal music abandons this practice by eliminating keys.
In atonal music each of the twelve notes of the chromatic
scale is independent of the other, and is unrelated to any
focal point.
106
II
Arnold Schoenberg is the apostle of Expressionism.
Like Debussy, he started out as a disciple of and true
believer in Wagner, before overthrowing the old gods
and promulgating a new faith of his own.
He was born in Vienna on September 13, 1874. While
attending public school he studied the violin and 'cello
by himself. Without any formal training, he soon started
putting down musical ideas on paper. By the time he
was sixteen he had come to the conclusion that more
than anything else he wanted to become a professional
musician. Seeking guidance, he came to Alexander Zem-
linsky, a distinguished Viennese composer and teacher,
who was so impressed by the boy's compositions that he
forthwith took him under his protective wing. He began
teaching Schoenberg harmony and counterpoint, found
for him a job as 'cellist in one of Vienna's lesser or-
chestras, and introduced him to a circle of dedicated
musicians.
By 1897, Schoenberg had completed a string quartet,
his first large-scale work. His indebtedness to Wagner
was evident in the sensual lyricism and indulgence in
chromatic harmonies. Thus the Wagner camp had
claimed young Schoenberg just as it had done so many
other of the younger Viennese musicians; and for a long
time Schoenberg remained faithful to it.
When that first string quartet was Introduced In Vi-
enna it was well received. This was Schoenberg's first
pleasant association with audiences and critics and it
was also destined to be his last for many years to come.
Although his next few compositions were still steeped
in Wagner, were still essentially romantic in feeling and
traditional in technique, they encountered hostility.
107
These works included an orchestral tone poem, Pelleas
and Melisande; Verklaerte Nacht (Transfigured Night);
and some songs. When Transfigured Night was heard
for the first time at the turn of the twentieth century,
the antagonism Schoenberg was henceforth to experience
erupted forcefully for the first time. To present-day ears
there is nothing here to cause surprise or offense. But
this music rubbed Viennese sensibilities the wrong way,
and evoked a response of stamping and hissing. "From
that time on/' said Schoenberg, "the scandals never
ceased."
Transfigured Night and Pelleas and Melisande also
aroused the anger and aggressiveness of Viennese music
audiences. The former was completed in 1899 as a string
sextet, and in 1917 was transcribed for string orchestra.
Here Schoenberg is the Wagnerian who brings intensity
and passion to a glowing poem by Richard Dehmel. The
poem describes a walk by a man and a woman through
a moonlit grove. She confesses that she has loved another
man. Her partner is all-forgiving. They sink into each
other's arms, then continue their walk through the
wondrous night
Pelleas and Melisande was no less lush in its harmonic
writing, no less sensual in mood, no less a recognizable
child of Wagner than Transfigured Night. Yet when first
heard in Vienna on January 26, 1905, it encouraged
catcalls from the audience and hostile attacks from the
critics. "Schoenberg's tone poem ... is not just filled
with wrong notes ... it is a fifty-minute long pro-
tracted wrong note," exclaimed Ludwig Karpath. "What
else may hide behind those cacophonies is quite impossi-
ble to find out. . . . One deals here with a man either
devoid of all sense or who takes his listeners for fools."
The Chamber Symphony (1907) described as a dou-
108
ble-faced mirror looking back at Schoenberg's Romanti-
cism and forward to his Expressionism, provoked an
even greater scandal. A dispatch to Musical America tells
the story: "If this concert was intended to be a 'mem-
orable occasion* It surely succeeded, for it occasioned
the greatest uproar that has occurred In a Viennese
concert hall. . . . Laughter, hisses, and applause con-
tinued throughout a great part of the actual perform-
ance. . . . The dispute became almost a riot. The po-
lice were sought after and the only officer who could be
found actually threw out of the gallery one noisemaker
who persisted in blowing on a key for a whistle. But the
policeman could not prevent one of the composers from
appearing in the box and yelling to the crowd, 'Out with
the trash!' Whereat the uproar increased. Members of
the orchestra descended from the stage and entered into
the spirited controversy with the audience."
After the Chamber Symphony, Schoenberg abandoned
Wagner once and for all and fearlessly embarked on his
own artistic journey. Seeking precision and economy of
thought, complete independence of movement, and ab-
straction, he began to write a new kind of music: as
logical as a syllogism; its lyric line as austere as the
spoken word; its tonality completely free; its harmonic
language completely dissonant. The last time Schoenberg
now used a central key was in the Quartet in F-sharp
minor (1908). After that his music became atonal. He
arrived at the threshhold of Expressionism in 1912 with
Pierrot Lunaire } a set of 21 songs based on poems (or
as the poet specified, "melodramas") by Albert Giraud,
for speaking voice, piano, and four instruments. Once
and for all tonality had been discarded. In this work
dissonance replaces consonance; Sprechstimme (a kind
of gliding song-speech in which rhythm and pitch are
109
rigidly controlled) takes the place of lyricism; thematic
material is terse and concentrated; the meter is extremely
free. This is absolute music completely divorced from
extra-musical meanings, deriving its interest and force
exclusively from musical values. Indeed, the music seems
to make no attempt to interpret the poems, and at times
seemingly is irrelevant to the text. In the nineteenth song
("Serenade") the poem makes mention of a viola while
the musical background is scored for 'cello.
The premiere of Pierrot Lunaire in Berlin on Octo-
ber 16, 1912, was the occasion for one of the greatest
scandals witnessed in a German concert hall before
World War I. Not only did the audience bellow its
disapproval after each of the songs, but tried its best
to drown out the music with loud, rhythmic stamping
of the feet. Fists began to fly as adherents of Schoen-
berg tried to quell the noise. One critic regarded this
music as "the most ear-splitting combinations of tones
that ever desecrated the walls of a Berlin music hall."
The Berlin music critic, Otto Taubman, remarked
simply: "If this is music, then I pray my Creator not
to let me hear it again."
Even among the usually staid and undemonstrative
music audiences of London the sparks began to fly
at a Schoenberg premiere, this time of the Five Pieces
for Orchestra, on September 3, 1912. As the concert
progressed, the laughter mounted and heated argu-
ments developed. The critic of the London Daily Mail
described the music as "scrappy sounds and perpetual
discord" while the Daily News reviewer expressed
heartfelt sympathy for the composer who had thus
depicted so gruesomely his own experiences in music.
Elaborating on the same theme, the critic of The Globe
said: "The music of Schoenberg's Five Pieces resem-
110
bled the wailings of a tortured soul and suggested
nothing so much as the disordered fancies of delirium
or the fearsome, imaginary terrors of a highly nervous
infant/'
The Schoenberg scandals had become such a habit
by 1913 that they erupted with very little provocation.
The Gurre-Lieder is a case in point. This work ac-
tually belonged to Schoenberg's post-Romantic, Wag-
nerian period, most of it having been written in 1900-
1901. Many of its pages have an arresting beauty and
a deeply moving emotional intensity. Yet when the
Gurre-Lieder was finally heard in Vienna on Febru-
ary 23, 1913, a veritable tempest was unleashed. At
the rehearsals, the first horn-player attacked the com-
poser with his instrument, then left the hall in a rage
vowing he would never play this kind of music. (Ac-
tually after he calmed down he not only played the
work but grew to like it.) At the concert, the shouts
of denunciation drowned out vocal expressions of en-
thusiasm. A brawl developed. One woman fainted.
Some years later the reverberations of this concert
were felt in the law courts. One man, who had at-
tended the premiere, had brought suit against another
for assault during the concert. A prominent physician
testified that the music had been so nerve-racking that
it provoked neuroses in its hearers. Yet this supposedly
nerve-racking music was tame stuff, indeed, even for
1913.
All this hostility succeeded in drawing Schoenberg
away from the world of audiences, critics, and public
performances. He surrounded himself with an intimate
circle of friends, pupils and disciples. They founded
in Vienna the Society for Private Performance which
since it barred all critics, and admitted only those
111
sympathetic to the new style allowed for a more favor-
able climate in which the works of Schoenberg and
his followers could be heard. On the few occasions
when established musical organizations played his
works he refused to attend the performance. He would
wait until concert audiences and critics caught up
with him and understood what he was trying to say.
Meanwhile, he would strike out even more boldly into
the virgin territory he had been the first to explore.
And so with the single-minded purpose and the pas-
sionate zeal of a prophet he looked neither to the
right nor to the left, but marched steadfastly toward
a still greater revolution. From atonality he progressed
to the twelve-tone system with which he has since be-
come so intimately identified.
As Schoenberg plunged ever deeper into the world
of atonality he began to realize that the style had
brought him not freedom but anarchy. As a creative
artist he now felt the need for discipline and order,
and a new set of principles to replace the old ones of
tonality he had long since abandoned. Thus he came
to the "twelve-tone technique" or "row" or, to use
a more formidable designation, dodecaphony. His first
tentative experiments in this direction came in 1915
with a Scherzo in which the black and white notes
of the octave were used without an established pattern.
Soon after that came the Piano Pieces (Op. 23) in
which he experimented with a technique which he
described as "composing with the tones of the basic
motive." In contrast to the old way of building themes
or melodies from motives, which in turn followed es-
tablished rules of melodic construction, Schoenberg was
already beginning to build entire sequences with mo-
tives constructed from twelve basic tones. Thus the
112
idea of writing music around the twelve-tone frame-
work kept simmering within him, sometimes over-
flowing in his writings. At last in 1922, in the Suite
for Piano, the basic formula for a twelve-tone system
was set for the first time; and it was clearly realized
in 1924 in the fourth movement of his Serenade.
The twelve-tone system is a complex method of com-
position. The Harvard Brief Dictionary of Music offers
the clearest explanation:
Every composition is based on a so-called series
or tone row, containing all the twelve chromatic
tones in a succession chosen by the composer. The
chosen order of tones remains unchanged through-
out the composition, except for the modifications
explained below. The entire composition, there-
fore, consists of nothing but restatements of the
series in any of its numerous formations (hori-
zontal and vertical).
In addition to its original form (S), the series
can be used in its inversion (S 1 ), in its retrograde
form (S r ), and in its retrograde inversion (S ri ).
The above four forms of the series can be used
in transposition to any step of the chromatic scale.
Thus the series becomes available in 48 (12 X 4)
modifications.
From this basic material innumerable forma-
tions can be derived, differing as to rhythm, chordal
grouping, polyphonic juxtaposition, etc., and it is
with these that the actual process of composition
begins. The technical premises explained above are
no more restricting (actually, less so) than those of
any other method (e.g., the triads and harmonic
progressions as employed by Classical composers).
113
The melodic patterns made possible by this arrange-
ment and rearrangement of twelve tones are virtually
infinite: One theorist, Hauer, computed that there
are 479,001,600 possible melodic combinations in this
technique!
Schoenberg utilized the twelve-tone row with ex-
traordinary skill and ingenuity in his Third String
Quartet in 1927 and the Variations for Orchestra in
1928. But the sounds produced were cold, hard, and
repellingly ugly. This new music was the work of a
highly analytical brain that handled the problems of
composition as if they were mathematical. Human
feeling was dispensed with altogether. What the lay-
man heard was a baffling, seemingly disorganized and
overcomplicated pattern of musical sounds. Even highly
trained musicians listened, perhaps with admiration at
the ingenuity, but without affection.
In any event, this was certainly not the kind of
music that could finally win for Schoenberg receptive
audiences and admiring critics. The first performance
of his Third String Quartet once again inspired
hissing, stamping, laughter. When the Variations for
Orchestra was given in Berlin, the "give and take of
remarks for and against the piece" (as Max Marschalk,
the German music critic, reported) "grew to greater
dimensions and took more unfortunate forms than we
have experienced at a Schoenberg premiere." Even
the usually docile American audiences were provoked.
When Leopold Stokowski performed the work in
Philadelphia there was such a noisy reaction that the
conductor had to address the audience and take it
severely to task for its "bad manners."
After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933,
Schoenberg disavowed his country and, at the same
114
time, returned to the Jewish faith which he had aban-
doned early in life through conversion. On July 2,4,
1933, in a Paris synagogue, he went through a cere-
mony reinstating him as a Jew his gesture of protest
against the savage persecution of Jews which had
become a government policy in Germany. In 1933 he
came to America, and soon became an American citi-
zen. He set up home in Brentwood, in Southern Cali-
fornia and became a member of the faculty of the
University of Southern California. Later he joined
the faculty of the University of California, and gave
private instruction in composition to a few selected
pupils. At this point he directed himself to the writing
of several new major works. Composition so absorbed
his time and energies that in his seventieth year he
retired from the faculty of the University of California.
However, he kept on teaching a small circle of stu-
dents (about eight in all) until a month before his
death, on July 13, 1951.
A change of nationality, a return to his race, and
the impact of world events affected Schoenberg's mu-
sic. No longer did he create cold, mathematical com-
positions. As he became concerned with the turbulent
world around him, a human equation began to in-
trude into his mathematics. He now took his subject
material and his artistic stimulation from the con-
temporary world. The Ode to Napoleon was basically
an indictment of dictatorship. The Survivor from War-
saw was a moving and powerful account o the heroic
uprising in the Warsaw ghetto of the Jews against the
Nazi war machine. Schoenberg even made an attempt
at writing functional music, as was the case with his
Theme and Variations, intended for performance in
schools. And in completely abstract works the Concerto
115
for Pianomi Infusion of warmth and charm could be
detected.
Schoenberg also revised his one-time ascetic ap-
proach to the twelve-tone technique. As a teacher he
had never imposed his own theories and techniques
on his pupils. His students, who came to him to learn
the twelve-tone technique from its source, were star-
tled to find the master devoting so much of his time
to a dissection of masterworks by Mozart, Bach, and
Beethoven. The same broad view now characterized
Schoenberg's creative thinking. He no longer felt the
compulsion to write exclusively in a twelve-tone row.
In some of his last works the idiom is found in random
pages; in others, not at all. The range of his composi-
tions, consequently, was immeasurably expanded. On
occasion he even felt compelled to revert to the romantic
mode of his youthful compositions. The artist had mel-
lowed.
At long last, recognition and homage came to this
musical prophet who for so many years had been de-
spised and rejected. In 1947, the American Academy
and the National Institute of Arts and Letters con-
ferred on him a Special Award of Distinguished
Achievement. His seventy-fifth birthday was celebrated
in many principal cities of the United States with com-
memorative (and often sold-out) all-Schoenberg con-
certs. Magazines and newspapers published eloquent
tributes. Fellow musicians showered him with congratula-
tions and gifts. And one of the world's greatest writers,
Thomas Mann, wrote Doctor Faustus, a novel whose
main character was a composer like Schoenberg, and in
which the technique of twelve-tone composition was elab-
orately described as part of the narrative. Even the critics
116
had come to hail him. Virgil Thomson called the Five
Pieces for Orchestra "among the most celebrated works
of our century/' Similarly high praise attended the world
premieres of the Ode to Napoleon, Survivor from Warsaw,
the Piano Concerto, the orchestral Theme and Varia-
tions of 1944; the last of these was performed by vir-
tually every important American orchestra within two
years of its premiere by the Boston Symphony under
Koussevitzky.
But the greatest tribute of all which Schoenberg lived
to witness was the way in which his twelve-tone tech-
nique was embraced by famous composers in all parts
of the Western world. His pupils and disciples, who
never swerved in their allegiance, and whose life work
represented the fruition of Schoenberg's theories and
beliefs, were not the only ones to employ the twelve-tone
system. Famous composers like Ernst Kfenek (1900- )
and Ernest Toch (1881- ) both of whom had long
since achieved world acclaim with other methods and
other styles became partial to the twelve-tone row late
in their lives. (So did Stravinsky, though Schoenberg did
not live to see this come to pass.) Rene Leibowitz (1913-
) in France; Luigi Dallapiccola (1904- ) in Italy;
Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961), Roger Sessions (1896-
) and Ben Weber (1916- ) in the United States-
these were some of many composers for whom the twelve-
tone row became a basic idiom. With other important
composers, the twelve-tone row became a valuable
method for special artistic effects within compositions
which were not essentially dodecaphonic: Bla Bart6k in
his Violin Concerto, Walter Piston in The Incredible
Flutist, and Leonard Bernstein in The Age of Anxiety.
Ill
Ill
Of Schoenberg's disciples, Anton von Webern was
the one who, in certain respects, was holier than the
apostle himself. Webern not only began to favor the
rules as established by his teacher, but even went a step
beyond him by introducing a twelve-tone color system
(in his Symphony). Each instrument is rarely permit-
ted to play two successive notes, but after sounding a
note must wait until the other instruments have made
their appearance. If Schoenberg liked conciseness and
brevity, Webern could outdo the master by producing
a composition (the fourth of his Five Pieces for Orches-
tra) that required only nineteen seconds for perform-
ance. If Schoenberg wanted to get down to the barest
essentials of harmony and counterpoint, Webern, in
his use of isolated tones, could virtually exile harmony
and counterpoint from his musical world. If Schoen-
berg aspired for the most elementary kind of expres-
sion, Webern could produce a Bagatelle for string
quartet in which, as Schoenberg himself once said, "a
whole novel is expressed in a single sigh."
Webern was nine years younger than Schoenberg.
He was born in Vienna on December 3, 1883, and re-
ceived a doctorate in philosophy from the University
there, where he also took courses in musicology. In the
beginning he earned his living conducting theater or-
chestras. His first composition, a Passacaglia for orches-
tra (1908), was in a traditional post-Romantic style.
His association with Schoenberg took place at about
this time, and forthwith Webern had come upon his
musical identity. His unique style was crystallized in
the Five Pieces for Orchestra, one of the works given
in Vienna in 1913 on a program devoted entirely to
118
the Schoenberg school. That concert, as we have al-
ready remarked, caused a riot. One critic, commenting
upon Schoenberg's pupils, said: "They may be called
'Ultralists,' though by any other name they could by
no means lose any of their fragrance,"
Webern's first twelve-tone work was Three Sacred
Songs (1924). Thereafter he advanced ever more
boldly into the world of musical abstraction with the
Symphony, the Piano Quartet, the String Quartet, and
Orchestral Variations. Each met a violent reception
when first performed.
Webern met a sudden and tragic death in 1945. He
was staying with his daughter in Mittersill, Austria,
when, late at night on September 15, he decided to take
a stroll and smoke a cigarette. He was unaware that
a curfew had then been imposed on all Austrians by
the occupying American forces. An American officer
challenged him to stand still. Webern misunderstood
the order, stepped forward, and was shot and killed.
Webern's artistic stature has grown considerably
since his death. Performances of his works have become
more numerous, and have encountered a more cordial
press and responsive audience than heretofore. Most of
his compositions have been recorded for wide distribu-
tion. His influence on contemporary musical thought has
been far-reaching. When, in his old age, Stravinsky
adopted the twelve-tone technique, it was Webern rather
than Schoenberg who was his model. And some of the
more recent idioms of progressive jazzparticularly in
way of color are derived from Webern's methods.
IV
Alban Berg is regarded as the Romanticist of the
twelve-tone school, since he succeeded in infusing ex-
119
pressiveness and emotion into the harsh, austere sounds
of atonality. It was Berg who created what is surely one
of the crowning achievements of the Expressionist school,
Wozzeckzn endurable monument of twentieth-century
opera.
Like his teacher, Schoenberg, and his colleague, We-
bern, Berg encountered derision, sardonic criticisms,
misunderstanding, and vehement attacks most of his
life. Yet, he had the courage of both Schoenberg and
Webern and remained unshaken in his purpose. Berg
was convinced that it was he who was right, and his
critics who were wrong; he knew with an unshakable
conviction that the music he was writing had perma-
nent value, would survive, and in time would gain uni-
versal acceptance.
Berg was born in Vienna on February 9, 1885. With-
out any training to speak of, he made his first attempts
at composition when he was fifteen. Four years after
that he met Schoenberg, and from that moment on
Berg knew he wanted to be a composer. To support
himself, Berg worked as a government official, but he
spent all his free hours studying music, listening to
it, and experimenting with composition. His first
model was Wagner an early piano sonata being filled
with Wagnerian chromatic harmonies and sensual lyri-
cism. Then he vigorously brushed Wagner aside and
stepped fearlessly into Expressionism.
His first significant atonal work was Five Songs with
Orchestra in 1912, also one of the compositions per-
formed and annihilated at that 1913 concert in Vienna
devoted to Schoenberg and his pupils. But Berg did
not lose heart. He now began to plan an atonal opera
based on Georg Biichner's expressionist play Wozzeck.
120
The outbreak of World War I, when Berg served In
the Austrian army, interrupted this ambitious project.
But when the war was over, Berg returned to his opera
with undiminished excitement, finally completing the
work in 1920.
The episodes and characters in Wozzeck are like dis-
torted reflections from a cracked, uneven mirror. The
hero is a poor downtrodden soldier who finds in a drum
major a rival for his sweetheart, Marie's, love. Woz-
zeck's suspicions mount when he discovers her with a
pair of earrings which the drum major has given her.
He openly accuses her of infidelity, and she defies him.
Later on, the drum major boasts before Wozzeck of his
friendship with Marie. When Wozzeck turns down his
invitation for a drink, the drum major beats the soldier
soundly. Now Marie repents of the shabby way she has
treated Wozzeck, and offers to take a walk with him.
Distraught and incoherent, Wozzeck suddenly turns on
her and murders her. He returns to the scene of the
crime to try and retrieve his murder weapon, a knife
he had carelessly thrown into a nearby pool. Seeing
it floating on the surface of the water, Wozzeck jumps
into the pool and drowns.
Berg's basic tool is the Sprechstimme, or song-speech,
with which he replaces all former concepts of operatic
lyricism. The voice swoops and soars and plunges to
strange intervals, made even more stark and grue-
some by the background of harrowing atonal harmo-
nies. A most unusual orchestra is called for to set off this
Sprechstimme. It is made up of several ensembles
a chamber orchestra, a restaurant-orchestra of high-
pitched violins, and a military band. The formal in-
121
struments are supplemented by some less conventional
ones, such as an out-of-tune piano, an accordion, and a
bombardon (the predecessor of the bassoon).
Within the seemingly formless organization of his opera,
Berg interpolated various old musical structures pas-
sacaglia, march, rhapsody, suite, invention, symphony
(though none of these is readily recognizable as such).
His purpose was to have each of these forms serve as a
symbol for what was transpiring on the stage.
The sounds that soar from voices and instruments
may prove bewildering in their haunting strangeness
and piercing cacophony. The complexity of Berg's
forms and techniques might not be readily compre-
hended. Nevertheless, as this drama of murder and
death proceeds to its overpowering conclusion made
continually more tense and compelling through Berg's
musical language it carries an irresistible emotional
impact. Whether or not one understands what Berg Is
doing, or why he is doing it, one readily admits that
listening to Wozzeck is a shattering experience. Not
since Pelleas and Melisande has there been an opera
in which music and text are so inextricably one.
Why does Wozzeck grip even the listener with no
theoretical background? The question was once asked
by England's most distinguished critic, Ernest New-
man, who also provided this answer: "I suppose it Is
because of the unique oneness of the dramatic situa-
tions, the psychology of the characters and the musical
expression. The first two of these elements are so con-
sistently Irrational that a certain irrationality (as the
ordinary listener conceives it) in the music also seems
right, especially in view of the fact that what revolts
our harmonic sensibility in black and white can be
122
made not only tolerable but gladly acceptable by
means of orchestral color." Then Mr. Newman con-
cludes: "The non-technical listener . * finds himself,
perhaps for the first time in his life, taking a vast amount
of non-tonal music and not merely not wincing at It
but being engrossed by it. That simple fact is the true
measure of Berg's achievement; whether the listener
can account for his interest or not the fact remains
that he is interested in Wozzeck throughout, that he
feels the music to be not only 'right' for the subject
but the only musical equivalent conceivable for it."
As one of the most original operas ever written, Woz-
zeck did not have an easy time winning admirers. In
fact, few operas ever confronted such a rain of venom
as that which met Wozzeck when it was first produced
in Berlin on December 14, 1925. The Neue Freie
Presse remarked: "Whether one sings or plays wrong
notes in such an insalubrious style is utterly immate-
rial." And Paul Zschorlich wrote in the Deutsche
Zeitung: "As I left the State Opera I had a sensation
not of coming out of a public institution but out of
an insane asylum. On the stage, in the orchestra, in the
hall, plain madmen. ... In Berg's music there is not
a trace of melody. There are only scraps, shreds, spasms
and burps. Harmonically, the work is beyond discus-
sion, for everything sounds wrong. ... I regard Al-
ban Berg as a musical swindler and a musician danger-
ous to the community. . . . We deal here, in the realm
of music, with a capital offense."
Whenever Wozzeck was performed in the 1920's,
both in Berlin and elsewhere, it created a disturbance,
and sometimes even inspired physical violence. The
situation was so bad in Prague in 1926 that the authori-
125
ties called it a menace to public safety and had to
withdraw it from the repertory. But being a highly con-
troversial work, one attracting worldwide publicity as
well as conflicting viewpoints and curiosity, W ozzeck
was widely given. (In Vienna, a booklet was published
quoting, commenting upon, and analyzing the oppos-
ing critical viewpoints inspired by the opera.) In less
than a decade it had been given over a thousand times
in twenty-eight European theaters. It was introduced
in the United States in 1931, in performances directed
by Leopold Stokowski in Philadelphia and New York.
From an opera produced mainly for its shock value,
Wozzeck has risen to the position of a modern classic,
whose performances are artistic events of the first im-
portance. When Dimitri Mitropoulos directed a con-
cert version with the New York Philharmonic in 1951,
Arthur Jacobs said in Musical America: "The work is
a masterpiece. ... At the end, the audience, showing
every sign of being deeply moved, called and recalled
the conductor to the platform/' (This performance
was recorded in its entirety by Columbia, and to the
amazement of that company sold remarkably well)
When, later the same year, the opera was given at the
Salzburg Festival in Austria, Virginia Pleasants re-
ported in the same journal that "it was an enormous
artistic triumph/* In 1952, Wozzeck was given in Eng-
lish at the New York City Opera to be called by Robert
Sabin "one of the incontestable masterpieces of twenti-
eth-century music/' And when soon after that it
entered the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera, Woz-
zeck not only gathered critical accolades but was even
played to sold-out auditoriums-the final testimony, if
such be needed, that the opera had finally won over
not only the critics but the public as well.
124
Berg was never a prolific composer. Only a handful
of compositions came after W ozzeck. One was the Lyric
Suite; another, the eloquent Violin Concerto, written
as a threnody for a young girl. Both are in the twelve-
tone technique, and both are charged with compell-
ing emotion. The operatic successor of Wozzeck
Lulu-was never completed. Though in many respects
Lulu was even more stark in its Expressionism, and
more advanced in its atonality, it was cheered when
an orchestral suite adapted from its score was heard
for the first time in Berlin in 1934. The only dissenting
voice came from the balcony a shout of "Heil Mo
zartl" The first stage presentation of Lulu took place
in Zurich on June 2, 1937. At that time the audience
rose to its feet to give the opera a fifteen-minute ova-
tion.
A rehearsal of the orchestral suite from Lulu was the
last piece of music Berg was destined to hear. Suffering
from a tooth infection, and too poor to consult a den-
tist, Berg was stricken by blood poisoning. He died on
Christmas Eve in 1935.
125
CHAPTER 6
The Primitives
WHILE the Expressionists were thus shaking
the music world out of its complacency, a
Russian rebel was creating an upheaval of his own with
his own brand of avant-gardism. He was Igor Stravin-
sky, of whom Erik Satie once said: "More than anyone
else he has freed the musical thought of today." Like
the Expressionists, Stravinsky was opposed to the ex-
cesses of Wagner and Debussy. But his rebellion came
not in the form of precise, abstractionist and mathe-
matical-like music, but through a reversion to an un-
inhibited primitivism. He, too, replaced pleasant har-
monies with searing dissonances; traditional counterpoint
with jarring combinations of disjointed tonalities; spa-
cious melodies with epigrammatic ideas, some consist-
ing of hardly more than a limited number of notes. But
most of all, he unleashed a force that was like an atomic
explosion through the use of rapidly changing meters,
polymeters, varied rhythms and polyrhythms. Rhythm
had never been an important element with the Roman-
tics, or with the Russian nationalists, or with Wagner,
or with Debussy. But with Stravinsky rhythm achieved
full emancipation. And with this rhythm came flam-
ing orchestral colors, a new emphasis on percussion,
and brilliant orchestral sound. This was Neo-Primitiv-
ism: a return to the dynamic and elementary forces of
primitive music.
126
Stravinsky's Neo-Primltive style became fully devel-
oped with a ballet describing a pagan rite in old Rus-
sia-- Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring). In
this ballet a ritual is taking place the adoration of Na-
ture by primitive man. In the first of the two sections,
"The Fertility of Earth/* we witness a barbaric dance
("The Ballet of Adolescents") in which the excitement
reaches a fever pitch. Then comes a second ritual, "The
Games of the Rival Tribes/' a contest between two
groups in battle and gymnastics. The earth is then
'consecrated by the Sage, and a demoniac dance of the
s earth ensues. The second part opens with a portrait of
pagan night, touched with awe and mystery. A dance
"of the mysterious circle of adolescents'* is succeeded
by two ritual dances: "Evocation of the Ancestors" and
"Ritual of the Ancestors/' Then the sacrifice must take
place: a female victim dances to her death. This dance
becomes a corybantic. In a last orgiastic outburst, the
rite comes to an end.
Explosive rhythms, volatile meters, shattering dis-
cords, and orgies of orchestral sound and color create
a momentum in which the tensions become almost
excruciatingly painful and whose kinaesthetic appeal
is cyclonic. This surely was the apotheosis of barbaric
music in sophisticated terms. Nobody-not Richard Strauss
with Realism, Debussy with Impressionism, nor Schoen-
berg with Expressionismshook the music world to its
very foundations the way Stravinsky did with The Rite of
Spring.
It can, therefore, be readily understood why The
Rite of Spring should have been the instrument for
the discharge of such violent, at times uncontrollable,
reactions at its premiere performance. This premiere
took place at the Theatre des Champs Elys^es in Paris
127
on May 29, 1913, in a presentation by Diaghilev's Bal-
let Russe. The dance and the music had hardly pro-
ceeded more than a few minutes when the grand'-
homme of French music, Camille Saint-Saens, rose
haughtily in his seat, made a bitter remark about the
music, and stalked out of the theater. Perhaps en-
couraged by the reaction of so formidable a musical
authority, others now made their feelings known. The
Austrian Ambassador guffawed so loudly that his bel-
lows reverberated over the discords of the music. The
Princess de Pourtal&s left her box shouting: "I am sixty
years old, but this is the first time that anyone dared
to make a fool of me!" The critic, Andre Capu, yelled
as loudly as he could that Stravinsky was a fraud.
In Music After the War, Carl van Vechten further
describes what took place at this unprecedented occa-
sion.
"A certain part of the audience, thrilled by what it
considered to be a blasphemous attempt to destroy
music as an art, and swept away with wrath, began
very soon after the rise of the curtain to whistle, to
make catcalls, and to offer audible suggestions as
to how the performance should proceed. . . . The
orchestra played on unheard, except occasionally
when a slight lull occurred. The figures on the
stage danced in time to music that they had to im-
agine they heard, and beautifully out of rhythm
with the uproar in the auditorium. I was sitting in
a box in which I had rented one seat. Three ladies
sat in front of me, one young man occupied the
places behind me. He stood up during the course
of the ballet to enable himself to see more clearly.
The intense excitement under which he was labor-
128
ing, thanks to the potent force of the music, be-
trayed itself presently when he began to beat
rhythmically on the top of my head with his fists.
My emotion was so great that I did not feel the blows
for some time. They were perfectly synchronized
with the music/'
But the provocative new work had admirers as well
as critics. Maurice Ravel kept shouting the word "ge-
nius' 5 into the din. The distinguished critic, Roland-
Manuel, was so loud in his praise that somebody near
him tore the collar from his neck. Claude Debussy
quivering with rage, begged the audience to quiet
down and listen to what was being played. One society
lady spat in the face of a particularly obnoxious demon-
strator, while another slapped the face of a man who was
hissing.
As for the principal characters in this drama. . . .
The composer Stravinsky, the impresario Diaghilev,
the principal dancer Nijinsky all went with Jean Coc-
teau for a slow, late drive through the Bois de Boulogne
to ease their overwrought nerves and tensions. Nobody
spoke until Diaghilev suddenly began to quote Push-
kin, as the tears flowed down his cheeks. Not a word
was said about that evening's scandal. "It was dawn
when we returned/' recalled Cocteau. "No one can
imagine how quiet and nostalgic these three men
were."
But the furor did not die down after the final cur-
tain of that premiere performance. Indeed, it contin-
ued in the press for several years more. "The most es-
sential characteristic of Le Sacre du printemps" said
Pierre Lalo, "is that it is the most dissonant and the
most discordant composition ever written. Never was
129
the system and the cult of the wrong note practised
with so much industry, zeal, and fury." Another Pari-
sian critic remarked: "The music . . . baffles a verbal
description. To say that much of it is hideous as sound
is a mild description. . . . Practically it has no rela-
tion to music at all as most of us understand the word."
When The Rite of Spring was introduced in London,
also in 1913, an English commentator said: "A crowd
of savages . . . might have produced such noises."
And when the orchestral suite was heard in America
for the first time, in 1924, an unidentified wit contrib-
uted the following lines to the Boston Herald:
"Who wrote this fiendish Rite of Spring?
What right had he to write this thing?
Against our helpless ears to fling,
Its crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing!"
Who wrote "this fiendish Rite of Spring?" Naturally
a good deal of curiosity was now aroused concerning
its creator, who had become one of the most provoca-
tive and highly publicized musical figures in the world.
The floodlight of world attention was consequently di-
rected on the man and his personal history.
Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, near St. Pe-
tersburg, on June 17, 1882, the son of a famous opera
basso. Highly musical, Igor received his first instruc-
tion at the piano when he was nine. Later on, his first
acquaintance with Glinka's folk operas, Russian and
Ludmilla and A Life for the Czar, through the pub-
lished scores, and with Tchaikovsky's Symphonie pa-
thttique through a performance marked "the begin-
ning of my conscious life as artist and musician."
He attended local public schools, then the University
of St. Petersburg for the study of law. But his pursuit of
130
music went on. He studied harmony from a private
teacher, and counterpoint from a textbook. Before
Ipng he was also moving socially with some of the city's
most famous musicians, one of whom was the renowned
composer and teacher Rimsky-Korsakov. He also was
in frequent attendance at concerts of contemporary
French music then presented by a Russian music so-
ciety. Stimulated by these contacts and experiences he
started to write several musical compositions, one of
which a piano sonata encouraged Rimsky-Korsakov
to accept the young man as his pupil.
In 1905 Stravinsky completed his law courses at the
University. The idea of practising law, however, never
seriously entered his mind, for by now he had become
determined to make his way in music. In this resolve
he was strongly encouraged by his cousin, whom he
married in January of 1906. Under the guidance of his
teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky now completed
a symphony and a suite for voice and orchestra, both
performed in St. Petersburg in 1908. After that came
a brilliant orchestral tour de force, Fireworks, written
to honor the marriage of Rimsky-Korsakov's daughter,
and a Scherzo fantastique for orchestra introduced in
St. Petersburg in 1909.
The concert at which the Scherzo fantastique was
heard changed Stravinsky's destiny, for among those
present was that remarkable dilettante of the arts, Serge
Diaghilev. Before he had founded the world-renowned
Ballet Russe with which he made ballet history, Dia-
ghilev had dabbled in various arts. First, he tried his
hand at musical composition, but was soon convinced
by Rimsky-Korsakov that this was not his forte. After
that he founded and edited a magazine of the arts in
which he analyzed and propagandized European art
131
movements for Russia. Then he inaugurated an an-
nual art exhibit in Russia to familiarize his coun-
trymen with the latest schools of European painting.
Having devoted himself thus far to the promotion
of European culture in Russia, Diaghilev now decided
to do a similar service for Russian culture in Europe.
In 1906 he arranged in Paris an art exhibit of Russian
painting; in 1907 he arranged, in the same city, a series
of Russian concerts; and in 1908 he brought to Paris
Mussorgsky's monumental folk opera, Boris GodunoV;
with Feodor Chaliapin in the title role.
A casual conversation in a Parisian cafe, in which
Diaghilev boasted to some Frenchmen of the unique
distinction of the Russian ballet, inspired him in 1909
to bring to the French capital some of the finest ex-
amples of the Russian dance. Thus he founded the
Ballet Russe, with Fokine as ballet-master, and with
Karsavina, Anna Pavlova, and Nijinsky as principal
dancers. From the beginning, Diaghilev was the guid-
ing genius of the company.
In his own way, Diaghilev was as inventive a creator
as the remarkable men who worked under him. A dilet-
tante in the finest sense of the word, Diaghilev was, as
Arnold L. Haskell once said of him, "a master painter
who never painted, a master musician who never wrote
or played, a master dancer who never danced or de-
vised the steps of a ballet." Diaghilev had both a pene-
trating knowledge of each of the arts and a genuine
flair for recognizing genius in the raw. Thus he was
able to gather around him a company that included
not only Russia's greatest dancers and choreographers,
but also the foremost living painters and artists for the
sets and costume designs, and the most gifted of twenti-
eth-century composers for the music. Everybody who
132
came Into contact with him was stimulated by his in-
fallible taste, penetrating intelligence and dynamic
personality.
Stravinsky was only one of the many composers who
were comparative unknowns when Diaghilev first rec-
ognized their creative potential, had them write for
the Ballet Russe, then urged them on to formidable cre-
ative achievements. Diaghilev sensed latent powers in
Stravinsky's Scherzo fantastique and contracted the
composer to work for the Ballet Russe. Stravinsky's
first assignment was the orchestration of two pieces by
Chopin for the ballet Ghopiniana, produced in Paris
in 1909. But this was just a stepping stone. In 1910,
Diaghilev turned over to Stravinsky a major assign-
mentthe writing of music for a ballet based on an
old Russian legend about the Fire-Bird. Stravinsky
completed his score in May 1910, and on June 25
L'Oiseau de feu (The Fire-Bird) was introduced by
the Ballet Russe in Paris and became the outstanding
triumph of the ballet season.
In the Fokine adaptation of the age-old Russian
legend, the Fire-Bird is first captured and then released
by Ivan Czarevitch. Grateful that he has thus been
set free, the Fire-Bird presents Ivan with the gift of one
of his fine feathers. Suddenly a castle comes to view,
the abode of Kastchei, capturer of wayfaring strangers;
the castle is the prison of thirteen beautiful girls. Pro-
tected by the feather of the Fire-Bird, Ivan penetrates
the castle, destroys Kastchei, and effects the release of
the girls, one of whom becomes his bride.
The Stravinsky of The Fire-Bird is still a man greatly
devoted to his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov. There is a
good deal of Le Coq d'or in The Fire-Bird: the love of
133
fantasy, the pseudo-Oriental melodies, the rich har-
monic colorations, the interest in Russian folklore. The
haunting and lovely "Berceuse" is of the Russian mu-
sical past. But there were things in the score of The
Fire-Bird which were also of the future: the adventures
in dissonances and the exercise in cogent rhythms in an
episode like "The Dance of the Kastchei"; the primi-
tive force that swept through the entire music; the ex-
traordinarily effective orchestration. There were some
who already thought Stravinsky too audacious. The
ballerina, Anna Pavlova scheduled to appear in The
Fire-Bird stoutly refused to be associated with this
"horrible music." Some remarked that there was too
much in the score that was either noisy or vulgar. But
a few perceptive musicians heard a new voice in this
music. "Mark that man Stravinsky/' said Diaghilev af-
ter one of the early rehearsals. "He is on the eve of
celebrity." Immediately after the premiere, Debussy
rushed backstage to embrace Stravinsky.
Though the composer today regards the score with
a good deal of condescension, The Fire-Bird is one of
Stravinsky's most frequently performed works, through
the three different suites which upon different occa-
sions Stravinsky had himself prepared.
The umbilical cord that tied Stravinsky to Rimsky-
Korsakov was cut once and for all in Petrouchka, in-
troduced by the Ballet Russe in Paris on June 13, 191L
Petrouchka is the uncouth hero of a puppet-show in a
Russian carnival. He is in love with the puppet bal-
lerina, who rejects him. Against the colorful, noisy, and
swirling background of the carnival, the tragic love of
Petrouchka unfolds. He discovers his ballerina with
a Moor, and is driven away rudely. Then the Moor
pursues him and kills him, much to the consternation
134
of the carnival public. But the pleasure seekers are
soon calmed by the police, who remind them that
Petrouchka, after all, is not a human being but a pup-
pet.
Stravinsky's score was at turns vividly pictorial (the
depiction of the bustle and gaiety of carnival life),
subtle and revealing in its characterization (as in the
gentle portrait of the puppet-ballerina by the piano,
later joined by flute), humorous and sardonic (as in
the amusing picture of the heavy-footed dance by the
tuba), and vividly national (the Russian dance of the
coachmen, and the music for the gypsies). Yet the score
said all this in an altogether new voice. Bolder than
ever was Stravinsky in his use of unresolved dissonances.
His experiments with polytonality were both so bril-
liant and successful, that from here on this technique
would be favored by many modernists. The long
flowing melodies of The Fire-Bird made way for terse
statements, loosely strung together.
This was the music of the future, bold and free. To
many of the younger European artists it represented
a spearhead with which to attack tradition and formal-
ity. In Italy, the futurist Marinetti, paraded the streets
of Rome with a banner proclaiming: "Down With
Wagner. Long Live Stravinsky."
Immediately after Petrouchka came the exciting The
Rite of Spring to place Stravinsky solidly with the foremost
musical modernists of his generation. His influence was
felt the world round, his Neo-Primitivism was widely
emulated. He pursued this same Neo-Primitive cult
with Le Chant du rossingol (The Song of the Night-
ingale). This work had three lives first as an opera,
then as a ballet, and finally in its most familiar form,
as a tone poem.
135
A change in Stravinsky's personal life was respon-
sible for a radical transformation of artistic outlook.
In 1919, after revolution had broken out in Russia,
Stravinsky broke all ties with the land of his birth. For
the next fifteen years his country was France, and his
permanent home was in Paris. He even became a
French citizen. Russian music with its elementary sav-
agery, inherent power and brilliant Oriental colors no
longer fascinated him. He became increasingly French
in his music as well as in his outlook by reaching for a
style that was refined rather than powerful and passion-
ate, restrained rather than emotional, delicate and
symmetrical rather than of Gargantuan size and pro-
portions. And so rejecting the Primitivism which had
made him, in the opinion of many, the first composer
of the world, Stravinsky embraced an entirely different
way of writing music.
II
Serge Prokofiev was another Russian whose dynamic
approach to musical creativity placed him with the
Primitives. Born in the Ukraine, in the little town of
Sontzovka, on April 23, 1891, Prokofiev was a prodigy
whose musical achievements tempted comparison with
those of the child Mozart. Prokofiev started writing
music when he was five. Three years after that he had
written words and music of his first opera. And by the
time he was twelve he had completed two more operas
together with numerous piano pieces.
He entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory in his
thirteenth year, staying there a decade, and working
under such masters as Rimsky-Korsakov and Liadov.
He was a precocious and brilliant student, but like
Debussy, he took inordinate pleasure in harmonies
136
and tonalities frowned upon by textbooks and pro-
fessors. He was writing music all the time whose rhyth-
mic momentum and outlandish sounds outraged his
professors; one of his student pieces, the Suggestion
diabolique for piano, is still remembered. When his
First Piano Concerto was given at the Conservatory,
Alexander Glazunov, distinguished professor and com-
poser, fled from the hall in horror, covering his ears
with his hands as he ran. The discords of another of
Prokofiev's pieces were so disquieting that a member
in the audience shouted in derision: "Run for it men!
We're being attacked by the heavy artillery!" Maxim
Gorky, the novelist, reacted to "The Ugly Duckling,"
a Prokofiev song with weird progressions and an angu-
lar melodic line, by saying: "He must have written this
music about himself." And when Prokofiev's Second
Piano Concerto was played, soon after the composer's
graduation from the Conservatory, a St. Petersburg
paper said: "The . . . Concerto concludes with a merci-
lessly dissonant combination of brass instruments. There
is a regular riot." Nevertheless Prokofiev was graduated
in 1914 with diplomas in composition, piano, and con-
ducting; and his Second Concerto received the coveted
Rubinstein Prize.
One of his most important and controversial com-
positions in the Primitive style came soon after he had
left the Conservatory. This was the Scythian Suite, for
orchestra. He had been asked by Diaghilev to prepare
a ballet for the Ballet Russe. Prokofiev's subject, the
ancient race of Scythians and their gods, proved highly
distasteful and Diaghilev rejected it. The composer
then went on to change his ballet score into an orchestral
suite, its premiere performance taking place in St. Pe-
tersburg in 1916 with Prokofiev conducting. Once
137
again Glamnov ran out of the hall; once again the
critics were disconcerted. The strangest review of all
came from Leonid Sabaneyev in the News of the Season.
"If one could say that this music is bad, cacophonous,
that no person with a differentiated auditory organ can
listen to it, he would be told that this is a 'barbaric
suite'. ... So I shall not criticize the music; quite to
the contrary, I will say that this is ... the best bar-
baric music in the world. But when I am asked whether
this music gives me pleasure or an artistic satisfaction,
whether it makes a deep impression, I must categori-
cally say: 'No!' The composer conducted with barbaric
abandon." The reason why this review is so strange is
that it was published before the composition was per-
formed. What had happened was that the Scythian
Suite had been scheduled for a concert which, at the last
moment, had been postponed. Sabaneyev, unaware
that the concert had not taken place, published his
report the following morning. The fact that he had not
heard the work he had thus attacked, that he could not
possibly even have seen the score since the only manu-
script copy was in the composer's possession, stimu-
lated a scandal that reacted unfavorably against the hap-
less critic but helped arouse considerable sympathy
for the abused composer.
Other compositions in a more or less similar barbaric
manner followed rapidly, each now considered a work
of first importance: the First Violin Concerto; the
Third Piano Concerto; the ballet, Chout; the Second
Piano Sonata; Visions fugitives, for piano. When Pro-
kofiev paid his first visit to the United States in 1918,
appearing as pianist in performances of his works, his
music was described as "Bolshevism in art" and "Rus-
sian chaos." Richard Aldrich said in The New York
138
Times: "He is a psychologist of the uglier emotions.
Hatred, contempt, rage above all rage disgust, de-
spair, mockery and defiance legitimately serve as
models for moods." H. E. Krehbiel, for forty years the
principal music critic of the New York Tribune^ de-
scribed one piece as "sheerly bestial in its assaults upon
the ear and intellectual fancy." The critic of the New
York World explained: "The recipe for this sort of com-
position is as simple as that for boiling an egg. Write
anything that comes into your head no matter how
commonplace. Then change all the accidentals, put-
ting flats in the place of sharps, and vice-versa, and the
thing's done."
Even while he was "going Primitive," Prokofiev was
perfecting those creative mannerisms which set him
apart from the other Primitives. Those mannerisms
identified most of his. pre-World War I compositions,
and became the trade-marks of all his later significant
works. His main bent was for what he himself described
as "grotesquerie": a kind of whimsy which expressed
itself in saucy themes with capricious leaps to un-
expected intervals; in sudden alternations between the
highly complex and the elementary and the naive; in
the placement of a tart, cacophonous harmony against
a trite little melody; in the use of simple everyday
harmonies in unusual progressions. Those who have
come to know Prokofiev through some of his more
popular works are familiar with this method. The
saucy little march from the opera, The Love for Three
Oranges, which for so many years identified the Amer-
ican radio program, "The F.B.L in Peace and War";
the charming Peter and the Wolf, about which we
shall speak in a later chapter, are examples of this
139
method. But this style appears even in his most am-
bitious sonatas and symphonies.
Soon after Revolution erupted in Russia in 1917,
Prokofiev left his native land. He set up home in Paris
where he lived for more than a decade, and from which
he set off on numerous world tours as pianist and con-
ductor in presentations of his major works. Among his
most significant creations during this Parisian decade
were a ballet, The Age of Steel; the Fifth Piano Con-
certo; and the Fourth Symphony. The last was written
on a commission from the Boston Symphony to help
commemorate its fiftieth anniversary.
Then in 1933 Prokofiev decided to go back to the
land of his birth. He was welcomed back as a hero.
Forthwith he occupied a dominant place in the cul-
tural life of the Soviet Union. Both as a man and as a
composer Prokofiev became a member of the proletar-
iat. As a spokesman in music for the new social order
in Russia he entered upon an entirely new creative
phase which will subsequently be discussed.
Ill
What may very well be considered the ultimate in
Primitivism was achieved in 1948 by Olivier Messiaen
(1908- ) in Turangalila, a symphony. Though usually
inspired by religious subjects and mysticism, as in Les
Offrandes oubliees, L' Ascension, and Les Visions de
ramen, Messiaen digressed in Turangalila to produce
a mammoth ten-movement symphony which was an
apotheosis of rhythm. From beginning to end the sym-
phony is a most complex and, at times, abstruse exer-
cise in rhythmic virtuosity for which not only are the
more usual percussion enlisted, but such rarer ones
140
as temple blocks, wood blocks, Chinese cymbals, and
tam-tams.
In opera, Primitivism probably went as far as it
could go but in a direction completely opposite to
that of Turangalilam the remarkable trilogy, Trionfi,
by Carl Orff. Orff is a German composer born in 1895
who, in 1935, discarded everything he had thus far
written for completely new avenues of thought, form,
and expression. Believing that music, in the long-ac-
cepted classical or romantic tradition had outlived its
usefulness, Orff ventured into a primitive operatic world
in which everything was reduced to barest essentials.
He made no effort to describe the scenery, costuming,
or staging he required, leaving these matters entirely
to the discretion of producers. And his score was con-
cerned primarily with rhythm; his lyric line was a dec-
lamation made up of rapidly repeated notes often with-
out any accompaniment whatsoever. His music had the
most rudimentary harmony and melody, and no counter-
point or thematic development to speak of. In such an
ascetic and austere vein he completed between 1937 and
1951 the three operas of his trilogy, respectively entitled
Carmina Burana, Catulli Carmina, and Trionfi di Afrodite.
The first was based on thirteenth-century medieval
poems of unknown authorship (discovered in a Ba-
varian monastery); the second, was based on poems
of Catullus and had a classic-Latin text; the third, with
a text alternately in Latin and Greek, came from a
Latin poem of Catullus and Greek poems by Sappho
and Euripides. "Orff," says Henry Pleasants, "has re-
treated to the Middle Ages and even to the Greeks,
turning his back on the entire fund of harmonic, poly-
phonic, rhythmic and instrumental resources inherited
by the contemporary composer/'
141
CHAPTER 7
The Neo-Classicists
r
-N his return to classic simplicity, Carl Orff re-
verted to the Greeks. The Neo-Classicists, in
their search for simplicity and condensation, and in
their desire to eliminate non-essentials, went back to
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Neo-
Classicists wrote concert! grossi, ricercari, passacaglias,
or fugues, but brought to these earlier forms atonality,
discords, polyrhythms, and other present-day idioms.
The man most often credited with being the father
of Neo-Classicism is Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) an
Italian-born but German-trained musician. The same
restless and inquisitive intelligence that made Busoni
a classical scholar, a poet, a painter, and an essayist
and at the same time an outstanding composer and one
of the foremost concert pianists of his time com-
pelled him to seek out new horizons for music. He
devised new scales, worked out a new system of musi-
cal notation, and experimented with new harmonies
and with quarter-tones. He was continually formula-
ting new theories and putting them into practice. If
any single prejudice dominated his musical thinking
it was against Romanticism and Wagnerism the bom-
bastic kind of music that liked to sprawl across vast
structures and give lip service to philosophic or theo-
sophic concepts. Mozart was his ideal. In his own com-
142
positions In the Comedy Overture,, the Rondo arlec-
chino, or the opera Doktor Faustus, for example Bu-
soni aimed at Mozartean clarity, lucidity, economy; he
also used all the modern resources at his command.
"What he sought to achieve was a Neo-Classicism in
which form and expression may find their perfect bal-
ance," explains Professor Edward J. Dent, professor of
music at Cambridge. Busoni progressed so far along
this path that to Ernst Kfenek, "the concept of Neo-
Classicism originated with Busoni/*
Igor Stravinsky was the first Neo-Classicist to be-
come world-famous, and by the same token, the first
to become a world influence. When Stravinsky estab-
lished a new permanent home in Paris in 1919 and
became a French citizen, he did more than just re-
nounce the land of his birth. He was also forsaking
the Primitive style and materials with which he had
achieved world fame. After 1919, he became more par-
tial to a purer and more objective kind of musical ex-
pression; an abstract rather than a pictorial art whose
principal interest lay in musical values. Now as a re-
action against his former Primitivism, he wrote com-
positions that were lean and spare in texture, concise,
lyrical, contrapuntal rather than rhythmic In tech-
nique, classical in structure, and calling for compara-
tively modest forces. He went back to such old classical
forms as the concerto grosso, the concerto, the sym-
phony, the oratorio, the Mass, opera buffa, and the
highly stylized serious opera of the eighteenth century.
From eighteenth-century music he expropriated its
logic, its symmetry and most important of all, its purity
of expression.
There were several important steps that led Stravin-
sky from Primitivism to Neo-Classicism, from pictorial
143
representation of Russian subjects and legends to a
pure and absolute musical expression. First, in 1918,
came the ballet UHistoire du soldat (The Soldiefs
Tale) which required only three characters and a nar-
rator, and an orchestra of only seven instruments. In
1919, came the ballet Pulcinella, in which the eight-
eenth-century melodies of Pergolesi were dressed in
twentieth-century orchestral garb. In 1920, the Sym-
phonies for Wind Instruments represented an even
more advanced stage of Neo-Classicism, particularly
the coda, with its classical balance and objectivity.
Mavra^ in 1922, was a conscious attempt to return to
the opera buffa of the eighteenth century. The cantata,
Les Noces (The Wedding), in 1923, employed an
orchestra consisting merely of four pianos and a bat-
tery of percussion.
Stravinsky's Neo-Classic style became completely
crystallized with the Octet, introduced in Paris on Oc-
tober 18, 1923. Aaron Copland, who was in the audi-
ence, has attested to the "general feeling of mystifica-
tion'* that characterized the reaction to this work. The
audience had come expecting a Neo-Primitive work
like those with which Stravinsky had previously made
his mark. They heard something entirely different,
something not readily identifiable; a work of classical
structure and contrapuntal texture completely di-
vorced from any Russian association whatsoever.
The Neo-Classic period lasted about forty years as
far as Stravinsky himself was concerned. Meanwhile, soon
after World War II broke out, Stravinsky once again
made a radical change of home and nationality. This
time he became an American citizen, and set up home
in Beverly Hills, California. For a while he continued his
Neo-Classical tendencies, and in this vein he completed in
144
1951 his first full-length opera, The Rake's Progress.
Here his model was primarily Mozart, but the Neo-Classi-
ical style also drew some of its character from Gluck and
Handel.
Then Stravinsky once again broke new ground for
himself by adopting wholeheartedly the twelve-tone
technique. Drawing upon the personal methods and
outlooks of Anton von Webern rather than Schoen-
berg, Stravinsky approached the writing of a "serial tech-
nique" a principle in which the twelve-tone row was
often applied not only to melody but also to rhythm.
The shock that had greeted Stravinsky's conversion from
Primitivism to Neo-Classicism was just a faint flutter com-
pared to the reaction of his fellow musicians to Stravinsky's
new trend. Stravinsky had always held the twelve-tone row
and Schoenberg in more or less disdain as long as Schoen-
berg was alive. Indeed, though their homes in California
were within a few miles of each other, the two masters
had very little traffic with each other. Then five years after
Schoenberg's death, Stravinsky-age seventy-fourfound
a new musical gospel to propound. He first used the
serial technique in the cantata Canticum sacrum in
1956, and after that in the ballet Agon and the Move-
ments for piano and orchestra.
II
The escape from complexity to simplicity, from
modernity to the past, which characterizes Neo-Classi-
cism, can be found with Prokofiev in one of his most
frequently performed and best-liked masterworks for
-orchestra, the Classical Symphony. Written in 1917,
and first heard in Leningrad about a year after that,
the Classical Symphony is one of the earliest successful
145
attempts a la Busoni to return to the structures and
instrumentation of Classicism. The third movement,
as a matter of fact, is in the seventeenth-century dance
form of the gavotte. As Prokofiev himself explained his
aim was "to catch the spirit of Mozart and put down
that which, if he were living now, Mozart might put
into his scores." Thus Prokofiev is not merely imitating
the old masters. His form may be Classical, but the
Prokofiev style as previously identified was evident
throughout. Terse, pellucid, of an old-world grace,
the Classical Symphony is nevertheless aglow with Pro-
kofiev wit and whimsy, often generously spiced with
tart Prokofiev harmonies and capricious Prokofiev-
like melodic inflections. Despite the Classical Sym-
phony, and its pronounced artistic success, Prokofiev
never did become an avowed Neo-Classicist the way
Stravinsky did. He refused to graze permanently in
these fields. But many other composers were ineluctably
drawn to the Neo-Classical style and remained true to
it for many years, producing in this vein a great num-
ber of outstanding compositions. The most significant
of these composers is Paul Hindemith.
Ill
Counterpoint is a basic element in the works with
which Hindemith first gained world fame. But with
Hindemith this essentially sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century technique is skilfully combined with the most
modern resources and devices to achieve a new kind of
idiom linear writing. In linear writing the voices
acquire relative freedom to move independently of all
harmonic relationships.
Hindemith's Neo-Classicism was first developed in
seven works completed between 1922 and 1930 for
146
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG Courtesy of Musical America
SERGE PROKOFIEV
Courtesy of Boosey and Hawkcs
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Courtesy of Boosey and Hawkes
SAMUEL BARBER Courtesy of G. Schirmer, Inc.
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
Courtesy of Boosey and Hawkes
DlMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Courtesy of Musical Americ;
JOHN CAGE
Courtesy of
Musical America
HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS
Courtesy of
Musical America
JAN SIBELIUS Courtesy of the Finnish National Travel Office
LEONARD BERNSTEIN and IGOR STRAVINSKY Courtesy of CBS Television
chamber orchestra or for solo instrument and chamber
orchestra. These received the general designation of
Kammermusik (Chamber Music}. Here we find Hinde-
mith making his first efforts to marry the old and
the new: the contrapuntal style of the past with mod-
ern rhythmic, melodic and tonal idioms. This was
Bach, but in terms of the twentieth century or, as
one German put it facetiously, "the Brandenburg
Concertos upside down/* No less successful in real-
izing a modern counterpoint was the opera Cardillac.
The operatic structure may here be more or less for-
malarias, recitatives, duets, ensemble numbers but
the style is primarily polyphonic. Hindemith originally
completed this opera in 1926, but a quarter of a century
later he subjected it to drastic revision.
Hindemith was born in Hanau, Germany, on No*
vember 16, 1895. The compulsion to make music
proved so powerful and irresistible that, since his
parents opposed his studying music, he ran away
from home when he was eleven. He supported himself
while attending the Frankfort Conservatory by playing
the violin in theater and cafe-house orchestras. After
completing his studies, and winning the Mendelssohn
Prize for his First String Quartet, Hindemith joined
the Frankfort Opera orchestra, and later for eight years
served as its concertmaster. During this period he
began developing himself as a violist of the first order.
From 1921 to 1929 he was violist of the Amar String
Quartet (which he had helped to organize), a group
devoted mainly to the performance of new music. It
was for this quartet that Hindemith wrote his first
significant chamber music. His Second String Quartet,
was introduced by the Amar Quartet at the Donaue-
schingen Festival in 1921, and was so enthusiastically
147
received that it had to be repeated at this same festival
a year later; other of his works were also heard here
with marked success, including the Kammermusik No.
1 and the song cycle Die junge Magd. Still more of
his chamber music was given at the Salzburg Festival
and in Venice. His opera, Cardillac, introduced in
Dresden on November 9, 1926, solidified his position
as one of the most brilliant and inventive new com-
posers to appear in Germany since World War I.
It was at about this time that Hindemith began
doing those functional pieces for which the term Ge-
brauchsmusik was devised, as well as specimens of
popular "contemporary art" (Zeitkunsf) with which
he reached out to the masses. But Hindemith was much
too trenchant a musical intellect, too profound a crea-
tive artist, and too complex a technician to find per-
manent asylum in such areas. By the late 1920's he
was through with Gebrauchsmusik and Zeitkunst. He
preferred concentrating on a contrapuntal technique,
on developing his "linear" style into a subtle and highly
expressive medium.
By the time the Nazis rose to power in Germany
in 1933, Hindemith was second only to Richard Strauss
as that country's most highly esteemed musician. As
a composer, as a professor of composition at the Berlin
Hochschule, as a violist, as a chamber-music performer,
and as a theorist he dominated German music in vir-
tually all its facets. His prominence and significance
were both officially recognized when he was made a
member of the renowned German Academy.
Then the Nazis set out to establish a new order in
German music as well as in German society and poli-
tics. All Jews had to be purged from Germany's mu-
sical life; all avant-garde art had to be considered
148
degenerate. Music, like every other facet of human
endeavor, had to be a spokesman for, and the glorifica-
tion of, the new ideals of the Third Reich, The Nazi
Chamber of Culture (Kulturkammer} set the rules
while the Gestapo saw to it that these rules were rig-
idly followed.
In such a scheme of things, a man of Hindemith's
high principles could find no resting place. He was
not a Jew, but he refused to disavow his Jewish friends
and colleagues, and insisted upon performing with
eminent Jewish musicians. Besides, Hindemith's wife
was Jewish. Finally, Hindemith was the composer of
complex and cerebral music that was most distasteful
to Nazi tastes. The high officials of the party insisted
that Hindemith had committed "the foulest perversion
of German music" by creating his "degenerate" works.
One composition above all others brought Hinde-
mith into immediate conflict with the powershis op-
era, Mathis der Maler, which many critics regard as
one of his finest achievements. The text had for its
central character the German religious painter of the
sixteenth century, Mathias Griinewald; its plot re-
volved around his leadership in the peasants' uprising
against the tyranny of nobility and church. Once
Griinewald becomes embroiled in the struggle he is
disenchanted by the oppressive measures employed by
men in his own ranks, and by their display of bigotry.
He deserts the world around him to return to the
sanctuary of his own art which, as Hindemith ex-
plains, is "henceforth rooted in the talent bestowed
upon him by God and in his attachment to his native
soil."
The Kulturkammer had never liked Hindemith to
begin with, and it liked his new opera (completed in
149
1934) even less. For one thing, the Kulturkammcr
was disturbed by HIndemlth's advanced style and tech-
nique which, it insisted, did not reflect the spirit of
the times. ("Technical mastery/' bellowed Dr. Goeb-
bels, Minister of Propaganda, "is not an excuse but
an obligation. To misuse it for meaningless musical
triies is to besmirch true genius! Opportunity creates
not only thieves but also atonal musicians who in
order to make a sensation . . . befoul their works
with the most atrocious dissonances of musical im-
potence/*) But what disturbed the Kulturkammer most
about Mathis der Maler was the way in which it
treated the defeat of German liberalism during the
Peasants' War. Such a theme was too delicate for dis-
cussion in the Third Reich. Consequently, Die Musik
considered Hindemith's opera "unbearable/' Richard
Strauss then still in harmony with the new order-
insisted that the opera be kept from the boards. All
the leading Nazi musical societies joined in boycotting
all of Hindemith's music.
One voice rose loud and clear in this wilderness to
defend Hindemith. This voice belonged to Germany's
most eminent conductor, Wilhelm Furtwaengler, head
of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Berlin Phil-
harmonic, the Berlin State Opera, and the Bayreuth
Festival. In some ways he, too, was a Nazi. In the all-
important post of Deputy President of the Third Reich
Chamber he did little to oppose the destructive musical
policies of the Kulturkammer. But in 1934, and only
because of Mathis der Maler, he put himself squarely
in opposition to the Nazi ruling powers. For one
thing, he regarded the opera as a masterwork and
was eager to be the one to introduce it to the world;
for another, he had only the highest regard for Hinde-
150
mith's genius. Consequently, he insisted upon per-
forming the opera's premiere. But personal pride also
had a good share in his courageous decision to defy
his superiors. As the foremost musical figure in Ger-
many he felt that both his position and integrity had
been seriously jeopardized by the Kulturkammer in
their efforts to dictate artistic policy.
In 1934, without consulting the Kulturkammer, he
placed on one of the programs of the Berlin Phil-
harmonic a "symphony'* which the composer had
adapted from the opera score. This consisted of three
eloquent orchestral episodes, now a staple in the reper-
tory of contemporary symphonic music. When no wave
of reaction swept in upon him from the ruling powers,
Furtwaengler was emboldened to take an even stronger
position. He firmly announced that he planned to con-
duct the world premiere of Mathis der Maler at the
Berlin State Opera. At the same time he despatched
a fiery letter to Marshal Goering insisting that as the
music director of the Berlin State Opera Furtwaeng-
ler, and Furtwaengler alone, was in authority. Furt-
waengler also published an open communication in
a prominent German newspaper in defense of Hinde-
mith and his new opera. Furtwaengler seemed sure of
his ground. He was confident his great position in
German music would protect him. To his astonish-
ment, he discovered he had miscalculated. The Nazi
authorities relieved him of all his official posts in
Germany, and sent him into a six-month period of
"retirement." When he was finally restored to his
former posts, and to the government's good graces,
Furtwaengler proved much more docile to the de-
mands and wishes of his Nazi bosses.
Hindemith, too, had to leave Germany. He first
151
went to Turkey where that government had asked him
to help modernize Its music-educational system and its
concert activities. After that, in 1937, he came to the
United States, where he established permanent resi-
dence and applied for citizenship. During the next
quarter of a century he was on the music faculty of
Yale University. He also gave occasional lectures and
seminars at Harvard University and the Berkshire
Music Center in Tanglewood.
Ever an extraordinarily prolific composer, Hinde-
mith proved even more fertile in America than he had
previously been In Europe. He completed numerous
symphonies, concertos, ballets, chamber music, songs
and choral and orchestral compositions of all sorts.
He also completed a new opera, Die Harmonic der
Welt. These of his works were of particular signifi-
cance: Noblissima visione, both a ballet and an or-
chestral suite; the Symphony in E-ftat and Symphonia
serena; Theme and Variations According to the Four
Temperaments; Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes
by Carl Maria von Weber; the Fifth String Quartet. Dur-
ing this same period he wrote Ludus Tonalis, a monu-
mental work for piano comprising twelve fugues in as
many keys of the chromatic scale-a twentieth-century
equivalent of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.
In these scores, Hindemith's linear writing grew
ever more subtle, and the train of his musical thought
ever more complex. But in later efforts, beginning in
the middle 1930's, Hindemith revealed a -new bent for
expressive lyricism and a more studied effort to achieve
clarity and precision. There were times when a kind
of spiritual radiance hovered over his writing, as in
Noblissima visione; occasionally, he demonstrated his
152
gamut of emotion to be unusually wide, as in Sym-
phonic Metamorphosis; and in his American requiem,
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, he reached
a profound emotional depth rarely encountered in
his earlier works.
As one of the world's greatest composers-and cer-
tainly the foremost German composer after Richard
Strauss's death-Hindemith was given a hero's wel-
come when he paid a return visit to his native land
in 1949, following a fifteen-year absence. Honors and
tributes were heaped upon him by leading German
musicians and journals; a street was named after him.
But every attempt to get him to stay in Germany fell
on deaf ears.
When in 1953 Hindemith returned to Europe for
good, he settled in Zurich, Switzerland, where he joined
the faculty of its University. One year later he received
one of the highest honors that could come to a com-
poser, the Sibelius Award of $35,000 for outstanding
creative achievement in music.
IV
The Neo-Classical movement even touched and in-
fluenced many composers whose greatest talent lay
in music of a radically different character. Ottorino
Respighi is most widely represented on concert pro-
grams by his picturesque programmatic impressions
of Rome The Fountains of Rome, The Pines of Rome,
and Festivals of Rome. But Neo-Classicism lured him
into the writing of many compositions in that vein.
Gustav Hoist wandered into the Neo-Classical camp
after a lifetime of successful exploitation of other
idioms, with his very last two works. Alfredo Casella,
153
Jean Fran<;aix 9 Albert Roussel, Manuel de Falla were
several others who, at certain periods, turned tem-
porarily to Neo-Classicism.
One of the by-products of the Neo-Classic movement
was the revitalization of old forms, long since in dis-
card. The concerto grosso, for example, had passed
from general usage once the solo concerto was devel-
oped. But in the twentieth century the concerto grosso
acquired a new lease on life with some major creations
by Ernest Bloch, Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959), Sir
Edward Elgar, Jacques Ibert (1890-1962), and Ilde-
brando Pizzetti (1880- ). Other earlier forms were
suddenly lifted out of their century-old neglect to be-
come the media for some distinguished twentieth-century
music. Alexander Tansman (1897 ) and Norman
Dello Joio (1913- ) wrote ricercari; Vaughan Williams,
Alfredo Casella (1883-1947) and Sir William Walton,
partitas; Roy Harris, passacaglias, and preludes and fugues.
154
CHAPTER 8
The Nationalists
the many currents and cross-currents of
twentieth-century music, one in particular
has caught and swept composers of many lands to ar-
tistic fulfillment: nationalism. This is a significant
carryover from the nineteenth century when the tides
of nationalism, political upheaval and emancipation
swept over and inundated Europe and Scandinavia.
Composers there became increasingly conscious of
their national heritage and sought the inspiration for
their music In the cultural and historical backgrounds
of their native lands.
When Chopin wrote Mazurkas and Polonaises, when
Liszt wrote his Hungarian Rhapsodies, and when
Glinka wrote operas like Russian and Ludmilla and
A Life for the Czar, musical nationalism was begin-
ning to take root. But it did not come to full flower
until late in the nineteenth century when a national
school came into being in Russia, Identified in the
history book as "The Five" and comprising Mussorg-
sky, Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, and Rimsky-Korsakov
this group set for itself the mission of producing an
authentic Russian musical art based on Russian folk
songs, dances, and church music. These composers
sought out Russian subjects for operas and program-
matic symphonic music, and paid tribute to Russian
history, religion, and culture. All this represented
155
a complete divorce from the Germanic traditions so
long governing musical creation in all parts of the
civilized world. This new movement also represented
a reaction against Wagnerism, whose impact had been
strongly felt in Russia.
The success of "The Five" in realizing a native
Russian musical art inevitably inspired imitation in
other countries. Dvorak and Smetana, for example,
wrote Bohemian music; Grieg, Norwegian music;
Felipe Pedrell and Isaac Albeniz, Spanish music.
This goal to produce a national expression in music
is probably pursued more eagerly in the twentieth
century than ever before. There is hardly a country
anywhere today that has not found a musical spokes-
man for its national pride and aspiration.
Folk music, to be sure, is the music of the people
handed down from one generation to the next. By its
very nature, and by virtue of its origin, it is usually
simple in structure and direct in emotional appeal.
Though the contemporary composer may often lapse
into complexity through the employment of modern
techniques, he has often succeeded in capturing the
fresh, spontaneous and unsophisticated spirit of his
country's folk music in large and ambitious concert
works of a national identity. He has successfully
blended the simple and homey material of the native
folk song and dance with the advanced idioms with
which this material is handled. Some composers have
used actual folk songs and dance tunes for symphonic
treatment. Many others wrote nationalistic music using
only their own thoughts and materials, but thoughts
and materials which had skilfully assimilated many of
the more obvious Idioms, traits, and mannerisms of
their country's folk music.
156
II
In the latter group we find one of the giants of
twentieth-century music Jean Sibelius. He forged no
new trails the way Stravinsky and Schoenberg did.
His music was a natural outgrowth o the German
Romanticism of the late nineteenth century, and to
the end of his creative days he stayed an avowed Ro-
manticist. His writing never betrayed the influence
of the newer ideas that were changing the face and
body of music. For the most part he was a tradition-
alist. Yet, he was one of the most original composers
of his generation a composer whose identity is readily
in evidence in any one of his masterworks. And that
identity is Finland.
He was not only Finland's greatest composer; he
was Finland in music. His tone poems and symphonies
were directly or indirectly stimulated by Finnish legends,
literature (particularly the monumental epic, the Kale-
vala), history and landscapes, and are all unmistakably
Finnish in spirit and mood. In Sibelius' music we rec-
ognize the turbulence and the passion of old Finnish
sagas contrasted with the tranquillity and pastoral beauty
of the Finnish countryside. To his writing there clings
the bleakness and loneliness of a Finnish landscape under
a gray sky. His rugged rhythms and occasional piercing
sonorities suggest Finland's repeated struggles for in-
dependence, just as in his stately and angular melodies
there can be found something of the fierce pride of a
people determined to stay free.
No cultural figure in Finland has done more to
propagandize the country's ideals and aspirations to
the outside world than Sibelius. No cultural figure
was more greatly honored in Finland than he. Sibe-
157
If us was a national hero, an "uncrowned king/' as some
of his compatriots spoke of him. He was the first
living composer in Finland honored with a postage
stamp bearing his picture; and* if he had not vigor-
ously opposed the project in 1940, he also would have
been the first living composer to have a statue in a
Finnish public square. Finnish children in the streets
not only recognized him, but even hummed his
melodies paying him the same kind of adulation chil-
dren elsewhere usually reserve for a renowned athlete.
His seventy-fifth, eightieth, eighty-fifth and ninetieth
birthdays were celebrated throughout the country as
national holidays; and his death sent the whole coun-
try into public mourning.
He was born in Tavastehus on December 8, 1865.
He received his first music instruction on the violin.
His first piece of music, written when he was ten, was
a descriptive duet for violin and piano, Drops of
Water. After leaving high school, he attended the
Helsingfors University where he studied law. At the
same time his music study was continued at the Musical
Academy. After a single year at the University he
knew with finality that it was music he wanted as
a life's career, and not law. He abandoned academic
study for good to concentrate on music. Under such
distinguished teachers as Ferruccio Busoni (then in
Helsingfors) and Martin Wegelius he made impres-
sive progress. In 1889 a scholarship brought him to
Germany where he studied composition with Albert
Becker. After additional study in Vienna with Karl
Goldmark and Robert Fuchs, Sibelius returned to his
native land in 1891.
Absence from Finland had not only stirred his nos-
talgia for home but also fed his love of his country.
158
These feelings became crystallized in Berlin at a con-
cert in which a Finnish symphony, Aino, by one of his
compatriots, Robert Kajanus was being performed.
For the first time, while listening to this music, Sibelius
caught a glimmer of what his own destiny as composer
should be. Until now he had imitated either Brahms or
Tchaikovsky, his writing aglow with the ardor and pas-
sion of a Romanticist. Though he would never desert his
Romantic tendencies, he now became dissatisfied with
compositions distilled from the German or Russian
schools. The need for a more personal form of self-
expression became pressing.
Back in Finland, he earned his living teaching theory
at the Musical Academy and the Philharmonic Society
School, and playing the violin in a string quartet. At
the same time he was thrown into the vortex of his
country's struggle against the ruthless despotism of its
Russian rulers. Underground movements in Finland
spread the gospel of freedom to patriots, and set off the
sparks of a nationalist movement soon to erupt into
an uncontrolled conflagration. Sibelius was profoundly
affected by this political movement. He now started to
write Finnish compositions which paid tribute to his
country, his people and his culture. He gave voice to the
proud determination of a courageous people to free
itself of foreign tyranny.
Sibelius' first national composition was a five-move-
ment tone poem, Kullervo, based on the Finnish national
epic, the Kalevala. It was a tremendous success when
introduced in Helsingfors under the composer's direc-
tion in 1892. This was followed by several other remark-
able Finnish works: in 1893, the tone poem En Saga, still
one of Sibelius' best-loved symphonic creations, and
the Karelia Suite; the Four Legends for orchestra, in
159
1894, once again inspired by the Kalevala, one of whose
movements is the exquisitely sensitive tone portrait, "The
Swan of Tuonela"; and most famous of all, In 1899,
Finlandia; surely the work above all others which through
the years has been the instrument to promulgate Fin-
nish national ideals to the rest of the world. The robust
chords with which this tone poem opens seem to direct
a closed fist against oppressors. The poignant subject
for the woodwinds that follows Is like a prayer for peace
and deliverance. And its most celebrated melody, an ex-
alted subject for the woodwind, speaks with unforgettable
accents of a world where liberty, truth and tolerance
prevail at last, and where the people are free to pursue
a good life with dignity and self-respect. Then the work
surges to a conclusion with a thunderous climax an
exultant paean to ultimate, inevitable deliverance. So
thoroughly Finnish in mood and feeling and texture are
these and other themes in Finlandia that for many years
the belief was in general circulation that Sibelius was
here quoting actual Finnish folk melodies. But this is not
the case. All the thematic material in Finlandia is Sibelius'
own.
Sibelius wrote Finlandia primarily as a way of pro-
testing a wave of censorship and repression then im-
posed on the little country by Russia. It was first per-
formed in 1899 under the title of Finland Awakes, and
as the last movement of a suite. One year after that, the
composer divorced the composition from the other move-
ments, revised It drastically, and gave it the title of
Suomi ("Suomi" is the name Finns use for their coun-
try). In France, however, it was performed under the
name of La Patrie, in Germany under Vaterland.
Recognizing the emotional impact this fiery patriotic
music had upon an inflammable people, the Russian
160
authorities banned it in Finland, and allowed perform-
ances elsewhere in the Empire only if some such un-
descriptive generic title as Impromptu were used for
it. But, in 1905, a successful revolt led to far-reaching
political concessions on the part of Russia, including a
greater freedom of speech and press. Sibelius' master-
work could now once again be performed in its own
country. It was at this time that the composition was
finally named Finlandia. For the next dozen years, until
Finland won full independence, Finlandia was the
country's eloquent battle cry of freedom. Some have said
that this single piece of music did more to help bring
about Finland's liberation than all the fiery speeches
and pamphlets combined. Outside Finland, no single
piece of music not even the Finnish national anthem-
served so effectively to speak of this country's national
purpose. When, during the era of World War II, Finland
was overrun by the Soviet army and once again was
victimized by oppressors, Finlandia was heard through-
out the free world to speak once again of the hope of
liberation that stirred so restlessly in every Finnish heart.
Among Sibelius' later national compositions the most
significant was Tapiola in 1926. Tapiola is one of sev-
eral names by which Finland is often identified Tapio
being the country's ancient forest god. This deeply brood-
ing and sober music is a picture of the Finnish forests,
and the gnomes and sprites reputed by legend to inhabit
them.
But Sibelius' creative significance rests even more sol-
idly on his symphonies than on his national tone poems.
He is, perhaps, the most significant symphonist of the
twentieth century, and the most frequently performed
since Tchaikovsky. Sibelius' first two symphonies writ-
161
ten in 1899 and 1902-are still the legitimate offspring
of the late nineteenth-century Romantic movement, even
though Sibelius had successfully freed himself from this
influence in his national tone poems. In their partiality
for dramatic or grandiloquent statements, in their emo-
tional outbursts, in their intensity and passion these
two early symphonies bear the recognizable fingerprints
of Tchaikovsky and Brahms.
In the five symphonies that followed between 1907
and 1924, Sibelius achieved a highly individual, a dis-
tinctly Finnish, personality through broad and spacious
melodies touched elegiacally by subdued harmonies,
pastoral moods, and expressive sonorities. He also ar-
rived at a personal concept of the symphonic structure.
In place of the traditional contrasting themes of sonata
form, subject to development and recapitulation, Sibelius
shaped a flexible mold of his own and filled it with
terse, concentrated ideas progressing towards a climactic
point with a great surge of power and, at times, a
grandeur of utterance.
Sibelius was already recognized in his own country as
Finland's foremost composer when in 1897 the first
annual grant ever bestowed on a Finnish musician was
given him. This endowment enabled Sibelius to give up
teaching chores and to take more time for composition
and undertake tours as composer-conductor. He paid
only a single visit to the United States, in late spring of
1914 to direct a concert of his works at Norfolk, Connec-
ticut. After World War I he made several tours of Eu-
rope. But after 1924 he lived more or less in retirement
in his villa in Jarvenpaa, a small town near Helsingfors.
His main contact with the outside world was through
the newspaper, the radio, and an endless stream of visi-
162
tors who stopped off at his town to pay him tribute. He
was not personally molested when the Red Army over-
ran Finland. The food raised on his grounds was enough
to feed him and his family adequately; and the im-
ported cigars, so basic to his well-being, kept corning as
gifts from his American admirers.
After World War II he withdrew more than ever. Now
he did not even stop off to visit the local tavern to gossip
and drink wine with his neighbors the way he used to do
frequently before the war. He even discouraged foreign
visitors from calling on him. There were continual ru-
mors that he was working on an eighth symphony, but
these were without any foundation whatsoever. In fact,
Sibelius' last published work Esquisses for piano had
come out as far back as 1929. After that he wrote virtually
nothing. He died in his villa on September 20, 1957, at
the patriarchal age of ninety-two.
Ill
Another twentieth-century giant of music to domi-
nate the nationalist school was Bta Bartok. He was bom
in Hungary, in the town of Nagyszentmikl6s in Transyl-
vania, on March 25, 1881. As a boy he received some
piano instruction from his mother and at the age of ten
made his public debut as pianist. Subsequently he studied
the piano with Laszlo Erkel in Pressburg, and from 1899
and 1903 was a pupil of Thomin and Koessler at the
Liszt Academy in Budapest. Under the stimulus of
Academy life, Bart6k, who had been writing music since
he was nine years old, intensified his creative efforts. He
completed a symphony, Kossuth, performed in 1903 by
the Hall6 Orchestra in Manchester, England. After Bart6k
left the Academy in 1903, he earned a precarious living
by teaching, playing the piano, and making musical
163
transcriptions. Some financial relief came in 1907 with
an appointment as professor o the piano at the Acad-
emy.
One day in 1905 he overheard a servant girl singing
a song with strange progressions and a most unusual
melody. Upon being pressed to identify the piece, the
servant could only reveal that she had learned it from
her mother, who knew many other such tunes. This was
the first clue for Bart6k that there existed a storehouse
of Hungarian folk music about which little or nothing
was known outside the regions in which it was heard.
With the excitement of a detective tracking down a crim-
inal, Bartdk set forth on a journey through many far-
flung towns and villages of Hungary to search for these
songs and dance tunes. What he found exceeded his
wildest expectations. Here, indeed, was a treasury of the
most original, unusual, and haunting folk melodies.
Bart6k now set for himself the goal of uncovering as much
of this unfamiliar music as possible. For about eight
years often in collaboration with his friend and col-
league, Zoltdn Kodily, who was also to achieve note as
a nationalist composerhe traveled into the remotest
regions of Hungary. Everywhere he took down on
paper and through a recording apparatus the melodies
that were sung to him. Thus he discovered about six
thousand Hungarian folk songs and dances which he
edited and had published. The world of music found
to its amazement that this folk art was completely differ-
ent from the sentimental, meretricious gypsy melodies
which for so many years had been regarded as Hungarian
folk music, and long since exploited by such masters
as Brahms and Liszt as authentic native material The
exotic character of the music discovered by Bartok was
a result of the frequent deployment of church modes. In
164
place of sensuality and sentimentality, this music had
vigor and brute force in the severity of its melodic line
(which often followed the inflections of the Hungarian
tongue) and irregular rhythms.
This folk material, as Bartok himself once said, was
"destined to serve as the foundation for a renaissance
of Hungarian art music." In the vanguard of this renais-
sance stood Bartdk himself, whose music now assimilated
the traits and idiosyncrasies of the Hungarian folk art
he had helped to discover. As he once wrote: "The ap-
propriate use of folk-song material is ... a matter
of absorbing the means of music expression hidden in
the treasury of folk tunes. ... It is necessary for the
composer to command this language so completely that
it becomes the natural expression of his own musical
ideas." Bartok's melodic line, like that of the Hungarian
folk song, had a declamatory character; his use of free
tonalities (which almost had the semblance of atonality)
and modal harmonies endowed his writing with an eso-
teric character. His music had a savage thrust in its
abrupt and shifting accents and intricate rhythms. Yet
his compositions were as subtle in their thought as they
were complex in technique.
A key to Bart6k's modern style in general and his nation-
alist style in particular is provided by a remarkable
suite of 153 pieces for the piano assembled in six books
and collectively entitled Mikrokosmosa. word that can
be translated as "little world." Bart6k completed this
mammoth work between 1926 and 1927 for the func-
tional purpose of teaching children such modern idioms
as polytonality, polyrhythm, the five-tone scale, disso-
nance, and so forth. In the first four volumes we get
pieces, each planned as an exercise for a particular mod-
ern technical problem designated in the title. In the
165
next two books, children are given the opportunity of
learning something about Bart6k*s national idiom through
examples of various types of folk music from the Balkan
countries. The six books also contain many delightful
descriptive pieces in some of which extra-musical sounds
are suggested, as in "Buzzing" and "Clashing Sounds.'*
For a more adult audience, Bart6k created a library of
piano pieces that included the early Allegro barbaro
and Bear Dance, both highly discordant. His six string
quartets, written between 1908 and 1939, are perhaps
the greatest single contemporary contribution to cham-
ber-music literature. Other important works are the
Second Piano Concerto in 1931, the distinguished Music
for Strings, Percussion and Celesta in 1936, and the
Violin Concerto in 1938. Discriminating critics and mu-
sicians recognized all these as works of first importance;
but for the general music public they were too intricate
for pleasurable consumption. When Bartok paid his first
visit to the United States in 1927 in performances of
his major workshe received little more than a polite
welcome. And when once again he came to the United
States, this time during World War II to make America
his permanent home, he still found very little general
interest in and understanding of his life work. His music
was a comparative stranger in American concert halls at
that time.
The last years of Bartdk's life, all of them in America,
were for the most part unhappy. He was sick from the
ravages of leukemia. The loss of his homeland made him
lonely, and the failure of his music to get frequent hear-
ings left him frustrated. Besides, he was in such a bad way
financially that he had to be supported by a special fund
created for him by the American Society of Composers,
Authors, and Publishers. But all this notwithstanding,
166
he kept on producing masterworks: the Concerto for Or-
chestra in 1943, now his most celebrated symphonic work;
the Third Piano Concerto; a Viola Concerto which he
did not live to complete.
Bartok knew he was dying as he worked on the Third
Piano Concerto^ which he had planned as a last touch-
ing testament to his beloved wife. On the last bar of his
sketches he wrote the Hungarian word vege meaning
"the end" something he had never before done as
an indication that his creative life and the piano concerto
had both come to a simultaneous conclusion. He died
just before he put his last pen strokes on this concerto:
the last seventeen bars, for which he had left Instruc-
tions, had to be written In and scored by one of his
friends.
In the works of these last years, and most particularly
In the Concerto for Orchestra^ Bart6k had not only sim-
plified his methods and means but also introduced into
his writing a humanity and emotion never encountered
In his earlier austere works. And it Is these last works
that finally brought about the full recognition of Bar-
tok's formidable stature. Just before his death, the pre-
mi&re of his Concerto for Orchestra in Boston on De-
cember 1, 1944 actually inspired an ovation. But it was
really only after Bartok had died, in New York on Septem-
ber 26, 1945, that he came fully into his own in American
concert halls. Within a few months there took place
almost fifty performances of his major works, including
the world premieres of his Third Piano Concerto and the
unfinished Viola Concerto. After that came alKBartok
concerts even cycles of Bart6k concerts in several Amer-
ican cities, together with recordings of his most signi-
ficant orchestral works and all the six string quartets.
Today, of course, Bart6k Is no stranger to American con-
167
cert audiences. Music so long elusive to the general pub-
lic is now readily accepted by it as one of the most vital
contributions made by any single composer to the music
of our times.
IV
The career of England's foremost nationalistic com-
poser, Ralph Vaughan Williams, parallels that of Bar-
t6k in one significant respect: Vaughan Williams did not
realize his creative potential until he had discovered his
country's folk music and had absorbed its elements into
his own style. Born in Down Ampney, England, on Oc-
tober 12, 1872, Vaughan Williams received a thorough
training in music: first at the Royal College of Music;
then privately with the composer, Max Bruch in Berlin;
after that at Cambridge from which he received his doc-
torate. Upon completing these studies he entered pro-
fessional ranks by becoming the organist of the St. Bar-
nabas Church in London where for three years he gave
recitals, trained and directed a choral group, and par-
ticipated in church services. By the time he was thirty-
two, the sum total of his creative achievements con-
sisted of some minor church hymns, a few unimpressive
works for orchestra, and the editing of an English
hymnal. He gave little evidence, then, that he was des-
tined for greatness.
Then a "new planet" swam into his ken the English
folk music of the Tudor period. So absorbed did he
become with these remarkable examples of early English
vocal and polyphonic music that, in 1904, he joined the
Folk-Song Society, a group which did research in this
field. Several years of digging into England's distant
musical past followed. In that time he helped to resurrect
a wealth of forgotten folklore, including such gems as
168
"The Turtle Dove/' "We've Been Awhile A~wandering' ?
and "Down In Yon Forest" which he introduced to his
contemporaries through his skilful adaptations and har-
monizations.
The reverberations of this old music were soon ap-
parent in his own creative thinking. Between 1905 and
1907, he wrote three Norfolk Rhapsodies for orchestra,
their melodic material derived from melodies from the
King's Lynn district of Norfolk. Vaughan Williams
planned the three compositions as the movements of a
folk symphony, but he abandoned this project upon
recognizing the inferior quality of the second and third
rhapsodies. After scrapping those two works, he issued
the first in the key of E minor a masterful orchestral
fabric utilizing the colorful thread of such songs from
Norfolk as "The Captain's Apprentice/' "A Bold Young
Sailor/' and "The Basket of Eggs/ 1 The Rhapsody was
introduced at a Promenade concert in London on Au-
gust 23, 1906, and was well received.
Feeling the need of strengthening his technical re-
sources, Vaughan Williams went to Paris in 1908. For
a while he studied with Maurice Ravel, from whom he
learned how to make effective use of nuance, color, and
subtle effects. This training period over, Vaughan Wil-
liams proceeded to create his first masterwork in 1909:
the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, for double
orchestra. Tallis was a sixteenth-century English church
composer. In the Fantasia one of his tunes is quoted
by Vaughan Williams before being subjected to consid-
erable enlargement and transformation. As the melody
grows, changes, expands, as it appears now antiphonally,
now contrapuntally, now in passing statements by solo
instruments, a mood of tranquillity is created which is
never permitted to lapse. First heard at the Three Choirs
169
Festival in Gloucester, on September 6, 1910, this work
placed Its composer as the foremost musical nationalist
of his country and one of its significant creative figures
in music. The Fantasia has always remained a strong
favorite in the symphonic repertory.
What was particularly important about the Fantasia,
as far as Vaughan Williams' development as a com-
poser was concerned, was that here he had learned that
folk music could not be an end In itself as had been the
case with his Norfolk Rhapsody. He knew now that folk
music was only the beginning. Henceforth, he realized,
he might occasionally quote an English folk song or a
popular song to achieve a certain local or native flavor;
he would do so in his London Symphony, in his beautiful
Fantasia on Greensleeves, and sundry other works. But
for the most part he must use folk music merely to stir
his own creative processes. When he would fail to use
actual folk material-and this proved most frequently
the case with his later works his compositions nonethe-
less often had the same kind of modal writing, con-
trapuntal texture, and serenity of mood associated with
so many English folk songs and madrigals.
Thus, like Bart6k, he arrived at his personal idiom, in
which he created nine symphonies, numerous concertos,
many shorter orchestral works, incidental music to plays,
chamber and choral music, the masque Job, and the
operas The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains and
The Pilgrim's Progress. As he grew older his style be-
came bolder and more original. There were times
when he introduced a note of introspection into his mu-
sic; at times a mystical quality was evident in his works.
On several occasions he had recourse to the most modern
approaches of harmony, tonality, and rhythm. But the
170
essentially English character of his style was never al-
together obscured.
After Elgar's death in 1934, Vaughan Williams usurped
the first place in English music. He was not only Eng-
land's foremost composer, but also one of its most no-
table teachers: for over thirty years he was professor of
composition at the Royal College of Music. A grateful
country honored him with the Order of Merit in 1935.
Two decades later he was presented with the Albert
medal by the Royal Society of Arts. His eightieth birth-
day, In 1952, was celebrated throughout England with
commemorative concerts of his major works,
He remained productive and at the height of his crea-
tive powers to the very end. His last symphony, the ninth,
was completed only a year and a half before his death.
This work had been planned by him as a kind of sum-
mation of all the artistic principles, all the articles of
faith by which he had been governed. But as it turned
out, the symphony became a document of despair and
frustration, rather than an affirmation. After the last bar,
the composer scribbled the word niente or "nothing"
almost as if he had by now been completely over-
whelmed by futility. He died in London on August 26,
1958, at the age of eighty-six.
V
Manuel de Falla was Spain's foremost twentieth-cen-
tury composer. He, too, was a dedicated musical nation-
alist. Born in Cddiz, in southern Spain, on November 23,
1876, Falla was a highly musical child. He received in-
struction in piano as well as in harmony from his mother
and local teachers. As a child he joined his mother in
performing a four-hand arrangement of Haydn's The
171
Last Words of Christ in one of Cadiz' churches; and
he was still only a child when he started to write music
of his own. Later on he attended the Madrid Con-
servatory where he won several prizes in piano playing,
and where his teacher, Jos Trago, tried to develop him
into a virtuoso. But the Conservatory faculty included
another professor whose influence on the young student
was more profound and lasting. That professor was
Felipe Pedrell, one of Spain's most distinguished music
scholars. Pedrell had done a considerable amount of
research in Spanish folk and church music and had be-
come convinced that the destiny of Spanish composers
lay in drawing their inspiration and material from these
sources. In Falla, Pedrell found a willing disciple. Before
long, Falla rejected all thoughts of the concert stage and
directed his energies into creative channels; at the same
time he became Pedrell's ally in the promotion of na-
tional music. In 1905, Falla completed a Spanish national
opera, La Vida breve> which won first prize in a com-
petition conducted by the Academy of Fine Arts in Ma-
drid. Two delightful Spanish dances from this opera
are still popular.
To gain still further mastery of the tools of his trade,
Falla came to Paris in 1907 and stayed there seven years.
Plunging into the maelstrom of its musical life, and
coming into contact with its leading musicians, proved
an important factor in Falla's artistic development. De-
bussy was a revelation, not only for his Impressionist
style and theoriessome of which Falla now tried to
absorb into his own writing but also for his Spanish
compositions in which he had succeeded in catching the
spirit and essence of Spanish life and backgrounds.
Largely as a result of the examples he found in that
French master, Falla now veered toward a new direction
172
as a nationalist composer. Henceforth the mere exploita-
tion of Spanish folk songs and dances would not be
enough. He became a mystic seeking out the soul of his
country and his people, not just a literal tone painter
interpreting specific programs. His musical style would,
to be sure, remain unmistakably Spanish in the sinuous
line of his flamenco-like melodies, in the old-world
modalities of old Spanish church music, and the elec-
trifying and varied rhythms of Spanish dances. But
perfecting and refining an essentially Spanish style of
composition would not be an end in itself. It could only
be the means by which to cany over into music the
essence of the Spanish people, the culture, and the geog-
raphy. The Spaniards had a word for this essence
Evocation. Falla's music became a vibrant evocation of
Spain, rather than a picture of the land. As he himself
said: "You must go really deep, so as not to make any
sort of caricature. . . . You must go to the natural
living sources, study the sounds, the rhythms, use their
essence, not just their externals."
While he was busily engaged in Paris absorbing mu-
sical experiences, he composed several Spanish songs and
a number of Spanish pieces for the piano. He also worked
upon the sketches of a large Spanish work for piano
and orchestra. Some of his music was performed. The
Pieces espagnoles for piano were given at a concert of
the Societ^ Nationale in Paris in 1908. In 1913, La Vida
breve finally received its world premiere at the Casino in
Nice. It proved so successful that soon after that the
Opera-Comique in Paris accepted it for its repertory.
Just before World War I, Falla returned to his native
land where he wrote the score for the ballet, El Amor
Brujo } the first of his masterworks to win world acclaim.
The scenario, based on an old Andalusian legend, tells
173
of the love affair o Candeia and Carmelo an affair soon
complicated by the fact that the ghost of Candela's hus-
band insists upon haunting them. Carmelo finally erases
this annoyance by getting an enticing little gypsy girl to
engage the time and interests of the ghost. Falla com-
pleted his score in 1914, and the ballet was first produced
in Madrid on April 15, 1915. It was an outstanding
success. The orchestral suite which Falla adapted from
his score, comprising twelve sections, is one of the crown-
ing works of the twentieth-century symphonic repertory.
This is languid and sensual music, as haunting and as
deep-throated in its lyricism as gypsy songs, as passionate
and abandoned as Andalusian folk dances. A climactic
point comes with the "Ritual Fire Dance," now familiar
not only in its original orchestral version but also in all
kinds of transcriptions, including an electrifying one for
the piano which has long been a tour de force at con-
certs by Artur Rubinstein and other virtuosos.
After El Amor Brujo, in 1915, Falla completed Nights
in the Gardens of Spain, the ambitious work for piano
and orchestra which he had sketched in Paris. It was
introduced in Madrid a year later. This composition is
made up of three sensitive and occasionally Impressionist
symphonic pictures of Spain. The first evokes the cele-
brated Generaliffe gardens near the Alhambra in Gra-
nada; the second recreates a native Spanish dance; the
third describes the gardens of the Sierra at Cordoba.
The basic style is the same that characterizes Andalusian
folk songs and dances. Falla's orchestration, at times,
even imitated the effects produced by native Spanish
instruments. But this music is not imitative but evoca-
tive. The three impressions are the work not of a realist
but of a poet and mystic who makes us catch a glimpse
of the soul of Spain through his own eyes.
174
In 1922 Falla went to Granada where he lived for the
next seventeen years, leading a completely withdrawn
life consecrated to creative work. He was never a pro-
lific or facile composer; each composition entailed many
years of the most fastidious and exacting effort. After
1922, his principal works were the ballet, The Three-
Cornered Hat, popularized by its exciting Spanish
dances, which Diaghilev's Ballet Russe introduced in
London in 1919; a remarkable Neo-Classic concerto for
harpsichord, flute, oboe, clarinet and 'cello in 1925; a
little marionette opera based on episodes from Don Quix-
ote, El Retablo de Maese Pedro, in 1922.
A profoundly religious man, Falla regarded the Span-
ish uprising of 1937, headed by Generalissimo Franco,
as a crusade. Falla became one of Franco's most ardent
supporters and, by reciprocity, Franco made him president
of the Institute of Spain. But Franco's iron-rule dictator-
ship over the Spanish people soon disillusioned Falla
completely. Though weak and sick, Falla voluntarily ex-
patriated himself in 1939 and found a new home in
Argentina. There, living practically like a hermit, he
worked passionately on his last, and what he hoped
would be his greatest workLa Atlantida, for chorus,
soloists and orchestra. He did not live to complete it,
dying in Alta Gracia, Argentina, on November 14, 1946.
VI
Other countries besides Finland, Hungary, England
and Spain had their musical nationalists. Georges Ene-
sco (1881-1955) wrote two brilliant Roumanian Rhap-
sodies between 1901 and 1902, the first of these now an
established classic. Filled with the most exciting con-
trasts of rhythm, color, and feeling, the music of the
First Rhapsody is at turns languorous, sensual, melan-
175
choly, Introspective and uninhibited in Its frenetic out-
bursts.
Jaromlr Weinberger (1896- ) and Bohuslav Mar-
tinu (1890-1959) created a national musical idiom for
modern-day Czechoslovakiabut deeply rooted In the rich
soil of Dvorak and Smetana. Weinberger is the composer
of a remarkable Bohemian folk opera, Schwanda, the
Bagpipeplayer,, introduced in Prague on April 27, 1927.
The hero, Schwanda though married tries to win the
heart of Queen Ice-Heart. When she learns he is married,
she orders his execution. But Schwanda's magic music-
making saves him from this fate. He gets into trouble
again when a rash oath sends him into Hell. Once again
he manages to extricate himself, and is now happy to
become reconciled with his wife. From this colorful score,
the modern symphonic repertory has plucked the charm-
ing Polka and Fugue.
Martinu*s Bohemian nationalism belongs to a com-
paratively early phase of his career. In the early 1920's
he wrote the ballet Istar and the Czech Rhapsody for
orchestra in a Bohemian style and Idiom. Both Wein-
berger and Martinu came to live in the United States
where their writing took directions remote from Bohe-
mian nationalism; Martinu became a Neo-Classicist,
while Weinberger experimented in several different
veins, one of which brought him to a strongly American
idiom based on popular or folk American melodies.
Moravia is a part of Czechoslovakia, and the foremost
composer of its national music was Leos Jandek
(1854-1928), among whose works will be found Mora-
vian Dances, National Dances of Moravia, The Ballad
of Blanik for orchestra. Janicek's most celebrated work is
the opera Jenufa, which some regard as the most success-
ful Bohemian folk opera since Smetana's The Bartered
176
Bride. It took Janicek seven years to write Jenufa, which
was produced in Briinn in 1904. Jenufa is a peasant girl
who bears a child to her stepbrother, Stewa. When Stewa's
brother, Laca, discovers that Stewa no longer loves Je-
nufa, he (Laca) stands ready to marry her and accept the
child as his own. But Laca's mother, to thwart the mar-
riage, murders the child, buries it hastily, then tells Je-
nufa the baby died of natural causes. During the marriage
ceremony of Jenufa and Laca, the dead body of the
child is found. The mother now openly confesses her
crime and is arrested. Jenufa is a grimly realistic opera
of great dramatic power in which the recitatives are
shaped from the patterns of Bohemian speech (Janicek
referred to these patterns as "melodies of the lan-
guage"), and the lyrical passages are based on Moravian
peasant music.
Musical nationalism emerged in Italy in compositions
like the Italia of Alfredo Casella (1883-1947), a rhapsody
depicting Sicilian and Neapolitan life which quotes such
popular Italian tunes as Funiculi, Funicula and Ama~
rechiare. In Sweden, Hugo Alfven (1872-1960) wrote sev-
eral Swedish rhapsodies, of which the most notable is
Midsummer Vigil, depicting a revel celebrated during
the St. John's Eve Festival, and based on native folk
songs and dances. One of Poland's most significant
twentieth-century nationalists was Karol Szymanowski
(1882-1937). His national identity is most clearly rec-
ognized in Stabat Mater, a large choral work rooted in
old Polish religious music, and in the ballet Harnasie,
many of whose melodies are adaptations of peasant mu-
sic of the Carpathian Mountains.
177
CHAPTER 9
The American Nationalists
ONE of Europe's most significant Romantic
composers gave the first boost to American
nationalism in music. He was Antonin Dvorak, whose
Slavonic Dances and other compositions in a Bohemian
style placed him in the vanguard of Europe's musical
nationalists. In 1892, Dvorak came to New York to assume
the post of director of the National Conservatory. He
stayed three years. In 1893, he paid a visit to the town
of Spillville, Iowa, which boasted a large Bohemian
colony. At that time three Iroquois Indians visited him
and played some of their tribal songs. This experience
led Dvofdk to write several major works imitating some
of the thematic ideas and rhythms of the American In-
dian: the American Quartet; the String Quintet in
E-flat major; and the Violin Sonatina in G major, whose
plangent slow movement was transcribed by Fritz Kreis-
ler and renamed Indian Lament. In all these works
Dvofik used his own thematic material exclusively. He
took special pains to explain that while this material
embodied "the peculiarities of Indian music," it never-
theless was developed with "all the resources of modern
rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and orchestral color."
In New York, at about the same time, Dvof ak was also
initiated into the world of the Negro Spiritual. This
folk music moved him so profoundly that tears would
come to his eyes as he listened to it. "They are the folk
178
songs of America/ 9 he said of these melodies, "and your
composers must turn to them. In the Negro melodies of
America I discovered all that Is needed for a great and
noble school of music." Perhaps with the hope of point-
Ing the way to this goal, he himself produced two master-
works in which the Negro idiom was prominent. One
was the 'Cello Concerto in B minor, where the second
theme of the first movement (first heard In the orchestral
introduction in solo horn against strings) Is in the style
and spirit of a Negro Spiritual. The other was his fa-
mous Symphony from the New World, his fifth, in the
key of E minor. Here the second theme of the first move-
ment bears a striking family resemblance to the Spiritual,
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." And the main elegiac
melody for English horn, in the slow movement, sounds
so much like a Spiritual that many have long held the
erroneous belief that it actually was one. This beautiful
melody has since been adapted into a Spiritual-like
song, with lyrics by William Arms Fisher "Coin* Home/*
Up until the 1890's, and for some years after that, most
serious composers in America copied the Romantic
style of Europe In general, and Germany in particular.
What they produced was unmistakably foreign. But sev-
eral composers soon started to experiment with a native
art involving the musical idioms of either the American
Indian or the American Negro. Edward MacDowell
(1861-1908), perhaps America's foremost composer of
the late nineteenth century, wrote an Indian Suite, for
orchestra; Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881-1946), one
of America's most successful composers at the beginning
of the twentieth century, became popular with the Thun-
derbird Suite for orchestra, the opera Shanewis, and
especially with his concert song, "From the Land of the
Sky-Blue Water." Victor Herbert (1859-1924), essentially
179
a composer for the popular musical theater, also com-
pleted a serious opera about the American Indian, Na*
toma.
Other composers went to the Negro melodies for
materials and stimulation. Rubin Goldmark (1872-1936)
wrote the Negro Rhapsody, fox orchestra; John Powell
(1882- ), the Rapsodie negre, for piano and orches-
tra; Henry F. Gilbert (1868-1928), the Comedy Overture
on Negro Themes.
Extensive research throughout the United States in
the 19!0 J s and 1920's revealed that the area of folk music
was far greater, and far more fertile, than the limited
grounds offered by Negro and Indian music. Through
the field work of musicologists, through publications
and recordings, a rich harvest of American folk songs
was reaped. There were songs with which the lumber-
jacks (or shantyboys) brought down the timber in the
West; the chanteys with which American sailors light-
ened the oppressive burdens of their shipboard duties;
the songs born, and developed during the American mi-
gration West which continued throughout the nineteenth
century, the "white Spirituals/' fiddle tunes, and the
music for square dances and play parties. There were
the songs on the lips of the Forty-niners en route to Cali-
fornia to find gold. There were the bleak, lonesome
tunes of the Western cowboy as he drove his herd across
the Texan plains to a shipping point in Dodge City,
Kansas. There were the varied work songs that sprouted
among steel-workers, railroad-workers and Negro chain
gangs. And, finally, there was a vast repertory of English
ballads that were preserved for generations in the Ap-
palachian and Cumberland mountains.
180
II
Aaron Copland, the dean of American composers, Is
best known for his work with folk music.
Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York on No-
vember 14, 1900. He started studying the piano when he
was fourteen, then entered Rubin Goldmark's class in
harmony. Hearing about the opening of a new music
school for Americans in Fontalnebleau, France, he ap-
plied for admission and discovered he was the first stu-
dent to be accepted. He went through Its curriculum
with more assiduity than enthusiasm. One day he sat In
on the harmony class of Nadla Boulanger. "I Immediately
suspected/' he later said, "that I had found my teacher,"
That fall he became a private pupil of Boulanger in
Paris, and the years he spent with her fashioned him Into
a trained musician. Under her guidance he wrote a
ballet, Grohg y together with some choral music and pi-
ano pieces. His teacher also commissioned him to write
a large symphony with organ which she hoped to In-
troduce in the United States during her American tour
as an organist.
Copland came back to America in the summer of 1924.
That fall his symphony was introduced by the New York
Symphony Society, with Walter Damrosch as conductor,
and Nadia Boulanger as organ soloist. This music was
so discordant, so unpalatable to the ear, that during one
of the rehearsals Damrosch remarked acidly: "A man
who can write this kind of music can commit murder."
Copland first attracted general Interest with two large
works employing a jazz idiom. The first was Music for
the Theater, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky, who
led its premiere performances in New York and Boston.
Copland had no specific play in mind, but tried to con-
181
vey the Idea that his music had some of the dramatic
qualities of the theater. The second and fourth move-
ments (respectively a "Dance" and "Burlesque") of
Music for the Theater were exciting examples of jazz
within a symphonic structure.
Music for the Theater was immediately followed by
Copland's Piano Concerto, first given in Boston by the
Boston Symphony under Koussevitzky with the com-
poser playing the piano. Jazz rhythms and blues melodies
predominate in this work which has considerable vitality
and bounce, and is consistently pleasurable listening.
But Copland soon grew weary of jazz, soon became
convinced he had exhausted its artistic possibilities. He
now embraced an avant-garde style, complex in har-
monic and rhythmic structure, austere and esoteric in
style. The Dance Symphony (based on material from his
earlier ballet, Grohg) received a prize of $5,000 in a
contest sponsored by RCA Victor. His Symphonic Ode
introduced by the Boston Symphony was commissioned
to help commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the or-
chestra. After that came Statements, for orchestra, and
the complicated Piano Variations.
In the early 1930's Copland began to feel that by
becoming so cerebral and complicated he had lost con-
tact with his audiences. He sensed the need for greater
simplicity of technique and a wider mass-appeal of
materials. He put it this way: "I felt that it was worth
the effort to see if I couldn't say what I had to say in the
simplest possible terms."
During a visit to Mexico in 1932, he dropped into a
Mexican dance hall where he became intrigued with
some of the popular Mexican dance tunes played there.
The idea suddenly came to him to write a symphonic
work in which these popular Mexican tunes were used
182
and developed. He completed that work In 1935, and
called It 1 Salon Mexico, that being the name of the
dance hall he had visited. One of the tunes he heard
there, El Mosco, was quoted directly In this work, while
other Mexican tunes were suggested rather than real-
ized. "My purpose/' Copland explained, "was not merely
to quote these tunes literally but to heighten them with-
out In any way falsifying their natural simplicity. . . .
I adopted a form which is a kind of modified potpourri
in which Mexican themes, and their extensions, are some-
times inextricably mixed for the sake of conciseness
and coherence/'
Without "writing down" in the least for El Salon
Mexico is a work of extraordinary skill, effect, and of the
highest integrity Copland had here succeeded in pro-
ducing a rhythmically and melodically exciting native
Mexican work which had completely captured the spirit
of the Mexican dance hall. Audiences loved It, and for
the first time Copland managed to win over the general
public completely and decisively.
From a successful exploitation of Mexican popular
melodies, It was just a step to the employment of Amer-
ican folk music. Copland took that step and with it
achieved greatness. It is with his works in an American
folk style and works stimulated by American folk back-
grounds and idioms that Copland finally achieved his
creative identity.
In 1938 he wrote the music for a ballet, Bitty the Kid.
Its chief character was the notorious frontier-town out-
law who effects legendary escapes from justice but in the
end meets his doom at the hands of a posse. For this score,
Copland made copious use of cowboy songs, including
"Git Along Little Dogie," "The Old Chisholm Trail,"
"Goodbye, Old Paint" and "O, Bury Me Not." Rodeo,
183
a ballet in 1942 described as "a love story of the Amer-
ican Southwest" was another highly successful attempt
to exploit cowboy songs.
With the ballet Appalachian Spring, introduced in
Washington, B.C. in 1944 by Martha Graham and her
dancers, Copland achieved his greatest artistic and pub-
lic success up to that time. The music received the
Pulitzer Prize and the New York Music Critics Award;
the symphonic suite adapted from the ballet score be-
came a staple in the contemporary American orchestral
repertory. The ballet setting is the Pennsylvania hills;
the main characters, Pennsylvania pioneer folk. The
action is built around a celebration attending the com-
pletion of a newly built farm house, the future home
of a farmer and his bride. Square dances, fiddle tunes,
revivalist hymns, and an actual Shaker melody ("Simple
Gifts," which is quoted literally, then subjected to five
variations) form the warp and woof of Copland's re-
markable musical fabric.
Though Copland's Third Symphony, one of his master-
works, does not quote a single American folk melody
or rhythm, its folk personality is so unmistakable that
one Boston critic described its composer as "the Sho-
stakovich of the Appalachians." The symphony was in-
troduced by the Boston Symphony under Koussevitzky
in 1946, and it was the recipient of the Boston Symphony
Award of Merit and the New York Music Critics Circle
Award. This is a work in a monumental design, so
compelling in emotion and so personal in speech that
Koussevitzky was tempted to call it "the greatest Amer-
ican symphony," a work that "goes from the heart to
the heart."
No less deeply rooted in American nationalism is
Copland's opera, The Tender Land (libretto by Horace
184
Everett), Introduced by the New York City Opera in 1954.
Above and beyond his compositions of an obviously
national identity, Copland has written a good deal of
music for the screen, theater, radio and public-school
performances. Other major concert works Include a Piano
Sonata, a Clarinet Concerto, and a Clarinet Quintet. Every
work that leaves Copland's hands reveals a mastery of tech-
nique and a musical articulateness that never fall to com-
mand respect.
Ill
Of the many different strains that course through the
works of Roy Harris, that of American nationalism is
both the most prominent and the most significant. Oc-
casionally, Harris has leaned upon structures and con-
trapuntal procedures of the sixteenth century; some-
times his thematic material springs from Celtic folk-song
sources or Protestant hymns; he has employed archaic
modality and asymmetrical rhythms time and time again.
But whatever the methods or means, whatever the ar-
tistic purpose, Harris has never failed to create music
with an unmistakable American identity. His music,
as Aaron Copland once remarked, "is American in
rhythm, especially in the fast parts, with a jerky, nervous
quality that is peculiarly our own. It is crude and un-
abashed at times, with occasional blobs and yawps of
sound that Whitman would have approved of. . . .
American, too, is his melodic gift. . . . His music comes
nearest to a distinctively native melos of anything yet
done, at least in the ambitious forms."
While sometimes he bases his melodies directly on
American folk music, on other occasions he allows his
musical thinking to be governed, as John Krueger, a
noted authority on Roy Harris, has written "by the same
185
emotional natures that caused our ancestors to sing as
they did. If he uses a folk song for a theme, he generally
does not quote it literally. ... At times the folk song is
almost unrecognizable, but the essence of it is still present/'
Harris came from pioneer American stock. His grand-
father drove a pony express between Chicago and points
west. His father traveled by ox-cart during the Cimarron
rush to Oklahoma, staked a claim, and built a log cabin
in Lincoln County. It was there, on Lincoln's birthday
in 1898, that Roy Harris was born and lived for the first
five years of his life. After two of his brothers had suc-
cumbed to malaria, the family sought a new home in
Gabriel Valley, California. Thus Harris spent his child-
hood and boyhood on a farm in pioneer country. While
attending public school in Covina, he took music lessons
from a local teacher, and learned to play the organ and
clarinet by himself. He also did a good deal of reading
practically everything in print that invaded his home. By
the time he finished high school, his intellectual world
embraced not only music and literature, but also philos-
ophy and poetry.
When Harris was eighteen he acquired a farm of his
own which he cultivated for two years while continuing
his cultural pursuits during leisure hours. Service in
the Armed Forces during World War I was a hiatus
separating Harris the farmer from Harris the musician.
Once out of uniform he knew where he wanted to go.
He entered the University of California, where he
took courses in harmony. After that he studied composi-
tion with Arthur Farwell, piano with Fanny Charles
Dillon, and orchestration with Modest Altschuler. "I am
convinced," Farwell said of him, "that he will one day
challenge the world/'
He gave the first unmistakable sign of creative talent
186
with an Andante, for string orchestra, introduced in
Rochester in 1926, and soon thereafter performed at the
Lewisohn Stadium in New York and the Hollywood
Bowl in California. A few patrons, impressed by this
music, financed a trip to Europe for Harris. As a pupil
in Paris of Nadia Boulanger, Harris completed his first
major work the Concerto for String Quartet, Piano
and Clarinet, introduced in Paris in 1927. This was per-
formed in the United States on the concert stage, over
the radio, and even recorded, and was largely respon-
sible for bringing Harris the Guggenheim Fellowship
in 1927.
An accident in Paris in 1928 turned out to be a blessing
in disguise. An injury to his back confined Harris to a
plaster cast After a while he had to return to the United
States for a serious operation on his spine. For several
months he was a prisoner in a hospital bed. To escape
boredom, he soon had to go back to composition. Where-
as up to now he had done his writing at the piano, he
was now compelled by his confinement to work away
from the instrument, to set down his thoughts on paper
without previous experimentation at the keyboard. This
he says, freed him from his former subservience to
harmonic thought. His ideas now took wing and ex-
pressed themselves in broad, sweeping melodic lines and
in counterpoint.
Thus he began evolving his own idiom, and used it
to create the first compositions which made him one
of the most highly regarded and widely performed Amer-
ican composers of his time. A piano trio, the String
Sextet and the Second String Quartet were among his
early works in this new style. His Symphony written in
1933, was outstandingly successful when introduced by
the Boston Symphony under Koussevitzky in 1934. In
187
1935 a poll among radio audiences of the New York
Philharmonic placed Harris as the most popular living
American composer; he was returned to this position
two years later by still another poll, this time one con-
ducted by Scribner's Magazine.
In 1938, Harris completed the Third Symphony, his
greatest work up to then, and still one of the most im-
pressive symphonic works by an American. Koussevitzky,
who introduced it in Boston early in 1939, called it the
"greatest orchestral work yet written by an American/*
Said Modern Music at the time: "For significance of
material, breadth of treatment, and depth of meaning;
for tragic implication, dramatic intensity, concentra-
tion; for moving beauty, glowing sound, it can find no
peer in the musical art of America." Before long prac-
tically every important American orchestra played it;
it became the first American symphony conducted by
Toscanini; and it sold exceptionally well on records.
The Third Symphony was still, for the most part,
contrapuntal and modal. But in succeeding works Harris
stressed American nationalism with compelling effect:
in two works inspired by Walt Whitman, Song for Oc-
cupations and Symphony for Voices; in the Folk-Song
Symphony consisting of five choral movements in which
the thematic material consists mainly of American pop-
ular and folk songs, including cowboy, Negro and moun-
tain tunes, fiddle dance melodies and ballads of the Civil
War; in a symphony inspired by Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address.
IV
The career of Elie Siegmeister parallels that of Cop-
land. He was born in Brooklyn, New York (on Jan-
uary 15, 1909); studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger;
188
and first realized his full potential as a composer with,
works grounded In American folk music.
Slegineister had literally absorbed the style and spirit
of American folk music before he assimilated these into
his own work. For many years he was conductor o the
American Ballad Singers, which gave concerts of folk
music throughout the United States; with Oiin Downes
he was editor of A Treasury of American Folk Music;
he wrote the folk-music score for Sing Out Sweet Land,,
produced by the Theater Guild In New York in 1944,
starring Burl Ives; and he has done a considerable
amount of basic research work In different parts of the
country digging up native folk songs. The effect that all
this study and activity In folk music had upon his own
creative thinking became evident in large orchestral
compositions like Ozark Set, Wilderness Road, Prairie
Legend^ and Western Suite.
There were many other composers who found that
our folk music could be the starting point from which
to set forth on creative journeys. Morton Gould used
cowboy songs in the Cowboy Rhapsody. In Spirituals,
for string choir and orchestra, he imitated the style of
"black" and "white" Spirituals. Negro Spirituals also
played an Important role in Louis Graenberg's (1884-
) fine opera The Emperor Jones, based on Eugene
O'NeilFs famous play; "Standin* In the Need of Prayer*' Is
used with overpowering effect in the second act as Jones
falls on his knees and begs God to forgive him for his sins.
Spirituals and hillbilly music are simulated in Gruen-
berg's Violin Concerto. Fiddle tunes of the West and
Negro Spirituals are quoted In Douglas Moore's (1893-
) delightful orchestral suite, The Pageant of P. T.
Barnum> with which he achieved his first success in 1924.
Cajun folk tunes are the source of Virgil Thomson's (1896-
189
) Louisiana Story, a score originating as background
music for a documentary film. Later it became sufficiently
famous as a symphonic suite to earn the Pulitzer Prize
In music.
Kurt Weill, apostle of "contemporary art" in Ger-
many, and a leading composer of Broadway musicals
In America, wrote an excellent folk opera at the dusk of
his career Down in the Valley, first heard at Indiana
University in 1948. Arnold Sundgaard's libretto related
the tale of Brack Weaver, sentenced to die for the murder
of Bouche. Brack escapes In order to visit his beloved
Jenny a last time. He reviews with her the circumstances
that led him to kill Bouche in a brawl after Bouche had
obnoxiously forced his attentions upon Jenny. Strength-
ened In the knowledge that Jenny still loves him,
Brack gives himself up to a posse. Within the framework
of WeilFs thoroughly American score can be found five
folk songs: "The Lonesome Dove/' "The Little Black
Train," "Hop Up," "My Ladies/' and "Sourwood Moun-
tain."
There are many outstanding American concert works
in which either folk tunes or old hymn tunes are quoted
or imitated. In Charles Ives's remarkable Third Sym-
phony, the old church hymn "O for a Thousand Tongues"
is treated fugally in the first movement and "Just as I Am/'
another hymn, is quoted in the finale. Henry Cowell
(1897- ), first famous (or notorious) as the creator
of discordant "tone clusters/' became mellow enough
later in life to produce conventional music whose ideas
came from American hymnology and American folk
songs. In or about 1941, Cowell encountered an old col-
lection of hymns, Southern Harmony, which revived in
him memories of songs heard in boyhood among the
Primitive Baptists In Kansas and Oklahoma. "Cowell be-
190
gan to wonder," explains his wife, "what the result would
have been If our musical culture had not cut Itself off
from Its living roots as It did during the last century, . . .
Suppose the musical elements which formed the style of
the shaped-note hymns had been allowed to develop and
to penetrate our art music, what might they have become
in the modern symphonic fabric?" Cowell answered this
self-questioning by producing a series of compositions for
various instrumental combinations, all of them entitled
Hymn and Fuguing Tune. The most celebrated Is the
second, introduced in 1944 a work exalted In mood,
classic in its purity, and contrapuntal In style.
Fuguing tunes had been the invention of America's
first composer, William Billings, who lived during the
Revolutionary War and was an outstanding creator of
psalms and hymn tunes. The contemporary American
composer, William Schuman, took some of Billings"
church melodies as the point of departure for the New
England Triptych for symphony orchestra, In 1956.
Among the Billings hymns and anthems elaborated upon
here were "Be Glad America/' "When Jesus Wept" and
"Chester." The last of these, incidentally, appeared soon
after the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. With new
martial lyrics it became the Marseillaise of the American
Revolution.
V
The two greatest Latin-American composers are na-
tionalists: Heitor Villa-Lobos of Brazil, and Carlos Chd-
vez of Mexico.
Villa-Lobos was probably the most prolific composer
of the twentieth century, if not of all time. Nobody can
say for sure how many works he wrote; Villa-Lobos him-
self could never approximate the number. A fair esti-
191
mate would be about two thousand, In every shape, man-
ner, and form, including musical comedy. He used to pile
Ms manuscripts all over his study in Rio de Janeiro;
when one of them was lifted by a visitor as a souvenir he
never seemed to care, knowing there were more where
that came from. The inevitable result of such formidable
creative fertility is an unevenness of quality. Few top-flight
composers wrote so much actually bad music as did Villa-
Lobos. But he also created many works of singular im-
agination and power, and these were invariably stimu-
lated by both the folklore and the popular art forms of
his native land, Brazil. So deep were the national ties of
Villa-Lobos to Brazil that on one occasion, when an inter-
viewer asked him what Brazilian folklore was, he replied:
"lam Brazilian folklore/'
Villa-Lobos devised two new musical forms, and into
these molds he poured some of his finest inventions. One
new form was the "Bachiana Brasileira." This was a
suite combining Bach's contrapuntal style with some of
the traits of Brazilian folk music. Villa-Lobos completed
nine such works, of which the second and fifth are es-
pecially popular. The second, in 1930, contains a de-
lightful descriptive movement entitled "The Little Train
of Caipira," a toccata that closes the suite and portrays
the course of a little train as it puffs its way along the
Brazilian countryside. The fifth Bachiana Brasileira has
two movements. The first movement, "Aria," completed
in 1938, has become outstandingly successful This is a
three-part song for voice and an orchestra of 'cellos in
which the outer parts consist of a passionate folk melody
utilizing no words but just the syllable "ah."
The other form invented by Villa-Lobos was the Cho-
ros. The Choros is a popular Brazilian dance performed
192
by a street band. The composer borrowed this term to
designate popular Brazilian music in which the differ-
ent modalities of Brazilian, Indian, and popular music
are embodied. Villa-Lobos' various choroses (fifteen in
all) are for many different combinations of instruments:
piano solo; winds and male chorus; horns and trom-
bones; flute and clarinet; violin and 'cello; chamber or-
chestra; orchestra and chorus; two orchestras and band;
and large orchestra, military band, and mixed chorus.
One of the best is the fifth, Alma Brasileira, for piano
solo a three-part composition with the middle lyrical
section in the style of a Brazilian folk song and the
flanking parts in the restless rhythmic movement of a
Brazilian popular dance. The sixth and the tenth are
also frequently heard. The former is scored for orches-
tra, guitar and native percussion instruments, and is a
polyphonic treatment of several Brazilian folk and popu-
lar tunes. The latter, for chorus and orchestra, was
described by the composer as "music . . . full of nostal-
gia and of love 1 ' reflecting "the reaction of a civilized
man to stark nature."
Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro on March 5,
1887. He is unique among contemporary composers in
that he received virtually no formal instruction in music.
As a child he did get a few lessons on the 'cello from his
father, while later on in life he made a brief and un-
successful attempt to attend a conservatory. But this rep-
resents about all the musical training he ever received.
He hated lessons, exercises, school discipline; he would
have no traffic with any of them. He preferred picking
up his musical knowledge haphazardly, by experiments,
by trial and error. He learned to play the violin in a
vertical position on his knee (like a 'cello) because he
193
just did not know that the violin was to be played any
other way. He taught himself to play several wind instru-
ments and picked up the elements of piano playing.
His real conservatory was Brazilian popular music to
which he listened endlessly, and which he tried to recreate
on any musical instrument he happened to have on hand.
When his normal academic schooling ended with the
death of his father Villa-Lobos was then just eleven the
boy made his living playing in popular theater and res-
taurant orchestras. Later on he came to know well Bra-
zilian folk songs and dances, which held for him an even
greater fascination than did popular music. By 1909 he
had completed a major work based on Brazilian folk mu-
sican orchestral suite. In 1912 he made the first of sev-
eral expeditions into the interior of Brazil to acquaint
himself not only with its indigenous music, but also with
its ceremonies and rituals.
Slowly he developed his own style of composition as-
similating the more recognizable features of Brazilian
popular and folk music. His writing, like that of his coun-
try's songs and dances, tended towards improvisations,
vital rhythms and syncopations, dramatic alternations of
moods, vivid harmonizations and orchestrations. He also
made frequent use of native instruments.
With such means he produced a fabulous library of
symphonies, concertos of all sorts, shorter works for
orchestra, chamber music for many different combina-
tions of instruments, piano works, songs, operas, choral
music, and operettas. In 1915, a concert of his works,
given in Rio de Janeiro, did little to attract attention to
his pronounced gifts. When interest in him was finally
aroused, it came through the efforts of Artur Rubinstein,
the world-famous piano virtuoso. While touring Brazil
in 1919, Rubinstein happened to hear a Villa-Lobos com-
194
position in a movie theater. This impressed him so
strongly that he paid a personal call on the composer.
A few days later, Villa-Lobos returned the visit, by bring-
ing to Rubinstein's hotel suite a small orchestra. The
whole day was spent in a performance of Villa-Lobos's
music. Now made aware of the extent and nature of
VUla-Lobos's creative gift, Rubinstein used his influence
to get for the young composer an annual stipend from
the Brazilian government A few years later, la 1926,
Villa-Lobos expressed his gratitude to Rubinstein by writ-
ing a remarkable piece (originally for piano, but later
orchestrated) entitled Rudepoema. The title means "sav-
age poem/* and the music was intended as a tonal por-
trait of Rubinstein.
The government stipend made it possible for Villa-Lo-
bos to go to Europe in 1923, and live for three years in
Paris. After a brief journey to Brazil in 1926, Villa-Lobos
returned to Paris for three more years. But though he
loved the French capital dearly and was delighted with
his personal contacts with the foremost French musicians
of the time, French music had little effect upon him. By
now he knew where his creative strength lay, that first
and foremost he was a Brazilian composer. He had no
intention of being deflected by the startling new works
he was continually hearing in Paris. His aim was to spread
propaganda in Paris for Brazilian music in general, and
his own in particular. As he told a French interviewer
one day: "Did you think I came here to absorb your
ideas? I came here to show you what I've done. If you
don't like what I do, I'm going away/'
Back in his native land in 1930, Villa-Lobos was ap-
pointed Director of Musical Education, an office in which
he revolutionized the methods and techniques of teaching
music to children. From now on he achieved recognition
195
In and out of Brazil as that country's foremost musician.
Consequently, when he paid his first visit to the United
States In 1944-5, the occasion was celebrated throughout
the country with a "Villa-Lobos Week/' and perform-
ances of some of his major orchestral works by leading
American symphonic organizations.
In the last years of his life, Villa-Lobos spent a good
deal of his time In the United States, a country he came
to regard as his second homeland. Though seriously 111
most of the time, Villa-Lobos did not relax his prodigious
creative activity. Up to his last days he continued to pro-
duce one work after another. He died in Rio de Janeiro
on November 17, 1959.
In the music of Carlos Chavez we find many of the at-
tributes of Mexican-Indian folk music: the simple, aus-
tere, bleak melodic line; the hard percussive sounds; the
elemental rhythmic power; the occasional archaic idiom.
He often uses native Mexican instruments, as in Xochi-
pili-Macuilxochitl which is scored entirely for a Mexican
orchestra, or the Toccata for Percussion Instruments
which requires Yaqui drums, hardwood sound sticks, rat-
tles, and small Indian drums. Sometimes he has had re-
course to actual thematic quotation, as was the case with
one of his most popular works, Sinfonia India, in which
actual Mexican-Indian tunes are heard. Most often, how-
ever, the material is his own, but given shape and design
by the folk music of his native land.
Chivez was born in Mexico City on June 13, 1899, Like
Villa-Lobos, he was virtually self-taught in music. He
often has said that his complete creative independence,
and his daring to try the new and the unusual, came
from the fact that he had never been hampered by a
conservatory training. Though he began composing seri-
196
ously when he was eighteen, he did not find himself crea-
tively until a few years later when he happened to come
upon some examples of Mexican-Indian music. He then
went to live with several tribes, steeping himself in their
art and customs, learning to play their instruments. He
also made several arduous trips into the mountain re-
gions in search of rare examples of native songs and dances.
The first significant music in which the impact of this
research is felt can be found in two ballets: New Fire in
1921 and H.P. in 1926-7. Both are Mexican in subject
matter; the scores for both derive their strong fiber, linear
style, and abounding contrasts of mood from Mexican-
Indian music. In his later works symphonies, operas,
concertos, string quartets, sonatas, and various shorter
pieces Chdvez combines these and other native Mexican
elements skilfully with the most advanced techniques of
modern music.
After a considerable amount of travel in Europe and
America in the middle 1920's, Chlvez settled down in his
native country to become its foremost composer and its
most influential musician. He founded, and for many
years led, the National Symphony; he founded and di-
rected the National Conservatory; he became head of the
Department of Fine Arts, He was Mexico's musical
spokesman to the rest of the world. In his many visits
as guest conductor in Europe and the United States, as
well as through his many compositions, he has passion-
ately espoused the cause of native Mexican music.
197
CHAPTER 10
The Hebraists
r
[N 1927, the Swiss-born American composer,
Ernest Bloch, completed America, an epic
rhapsody that won first prize of |3,000 in a contest spon-
sored by the journal Musical America. Written in three
sections, this rhapsody is a tonal representation of three
periods in American history: 1620, when the Pilgrims
landed on soil previously inhabited by the Indians; the
period of the Civil War; and finally, the year of 1926,
with a prognostication of the future. In the first move-
ment, Bloch quoted the famous old American hymn,
"Old Hundredth," and used other melodies in the style
of American-Indian songs and dances. In the second
movement, we find quotations of American patriotic
and war songs, Creole folk songs, and Negro Spirit-
uals. And in the finale we are reminded again of "Old
Hundredth," of several Negro tunes, and of "Yankee
Doodle."
America is the only work by Bloch in a distinctly na-
tional character. Bloch's roots reach not into a national
soil but a racial one. Often consciously, but at times even
unconsciously, Bloch set out to write Hebrew music that
mirrored "the Jewish soul ... the complex agitated
soul that I feel vibrating through the Bible." As he him-
self once explained, "the freshness and naivet6 of the Pa-
triarchs; the violence of the prophetic Books; the Jew's
198
savage love of justice; the despair of the Eccleslastes; the
sorrow and the immensity of the Book of Job; the sensu-
ality of the Song of Songs. ... It is all this that I en-
deavor to hear in myself, and to translate in my music;
the sacred emotions of the race that slumber far down
in our soul/ 1
Of course, Bloch was not the first composer stimulated
by Hebrew musk. In Russia, in 1908, there was founded
by Joel Engel (1868-1927) the Society for Jewish Folk
Music. The Society spent a decade doing scholarly re-
searches into old Hebrew religious music and Jewish folk
songs, adapting them to modern harmonizations, and
gathering them into significant publications. The Society
arranged thousands of concerts of Jewish music through-
out Europe. It also encouraged Russian-Jewish compos-
ers to write racial music in ambitious forms for concert
performance.
But Bloch was the first serious composer whose Hebraic
concert works achieved International recognition. He
devoted himself to composition and for a number of
years specifically to Hebrew music with an almost reli-
gious consecration. When he was a child he made a vow
he would devote his life to music, writing that oath down
on paper. He placed the paper under a mound of rocks
over which he built a ritual fire. He remained true to that
vow, just as he remained ever true to the highest ideals of
his calling.
The son of a shopkeeper, he was born in Geneva, Swit-
zerland, on July 24, 1880. Music study began early; at
fourteen he studied the violin with L. Rey, and compo-
sition with fimile Jaques-Dalcroze, the creator of "eurhyth-
mies." After that Bloch's musical education was contin-
ued in Brussels and Germany with such eminent masters
199
as Eugene Ysaye, Ivan Knorr, and Ludwig Thuille. Bloch's
first mature work, the Symphony in C-sharp minor, was
completed when he was twenty-two.
His father's business reverses compelled him to go to
work in the Geneva shop. But he did not forget his vow.
All his spare hours, sometimes deep into the night, were
devoted to creative work which he pursued with undi-
minished intensity. Thus, he completed several impor-
tant works Poemes d'automne for voice and orchestra;
Hiver-Printemps, two symphonic sketches for orchestra;
an opera, Macbeth.
Macbeth was his first work to get an important per-
formance. This took place at the Opera-Comique in Paris
on November 30, 1910. Romain Holland, France's eminent
musicologist, was so moved by the opera that he made a
trip to Geneva to persuade Bloch to give up his work as
shopkeeper and concentrate on music. Holland's faith
in Bloch was further strengthened when, at long last, the
early Symphony in C-sharp minor received its world pre-
miere, in Geneva in 1915. "Your symphony," Holland
wrote the composer, "is one of the most important works
of the modern school. . . . Continue expressing yourself
in the same way, freely and fully; I will answer for your
becoming one of the masters of our time."
Bloch's early works were a mixture of Romanticism
and Impressionism. But soon after he had left commerce
to become a full-time composer, Bloch found his personal
style in Hebrew music. This period began in 1912 with
Three Jewish Poems. It reached its summit within the
next few years with Schelomo, for orchestra with 'cello
obbligato, and the Israel Symphony.
As a composer of Hebrew music Bloch made no effort
to quote synagogue chants or Jewish folk songs, or to
adapt them. But he did imitate some of the stylistic at-
200
tributes of this music the Intervals, rhythmic patterns,
and the progressions found In authentic Jewish music.
The broad rhapsodic feeling, the spirituality and mysti-
cism, by which so much of Hebrew music Is Identified
also are apparent In his compositions.
Schelomo, completed in 1915, is a rhapsody for 'cello
and orchestra glorifying the Biblical Jew, King Solomon.
The solo 'cello represents the king, and as Guldo M. Gatti
once wrote, It "lends itself to a reincarnation of Solomon
In all his glory." Israel Symphony, which absorbed Bloch
from 1912 to 1916, was Inspired by the Day of Atonement,
the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, when the pious
Jew seeks mercy for his year's sins through grief and re-
pentance. The conclusion of this one-movement work Is
a poignant prayer for chorus: "Adonol, my Elohim, O my
Elohim! Alleluia, O My Elohim! Hear my voice my
Elohim, Hear my prayer!" And it Is on such a note of
humility that the symphony ends.
In 1916 Ernest Bloch came to the United States as the
conductor of the Maud Allen dance troupe then touring
the country. He did not stay long with this organization
since it soon went into bankruptcy. All-Bloch concerts
were now given in Boston, Philadelphia and New York
by such eminent conductors as Karl Muck, Leopold Sto-
kowski and Artur Bodanzky. Further attention was direc-
ted to Bloch when, in 1919, he received the Elizabeth
Sprague Coolidge Prize of $ 1,000 for his Suite for Viola
and Piano.
From 1920 through 1925 Bloch was the director of the
Cleveland Institute of Music. This period saw the crea-
tion of one more significant Hebraic work, the Baal
Shem Suite, for violin and piano; its inspiration and sub-
ject were the late eighteenth-century Hebrew seer and
201
founder of a sect known as Hasldism. But Bloch also
wrote many non-Hebraic works. The Concerto Grosso
for piano and string orchestra in 1923, was one of Bloch's
rare excursions into Neo-Classicism. He wrote it to prove
to his pupils that "modern" music could be created
within a strictly classical structure and with traditional
means. But the First Piano Quintet > also in 1923, while
never intended as a Hebraic work, is steeped in religious
and spiritual feelings. Its rhapsodic style, brooding mys-
ticism, and occasional exaltation, place it unmistakably
with Bloch's Hebrew compositions.
In 1927, Bloch transferred his teaching and directorial
activities to San Francisco. There he completed the al-
ready described America rhapsody, which was introduced
simultaneously by several major American orchestras.
Bloch stayed in San Francisco until 193L A generous en-
dowment from a patron then enabled him to spend sev-
eral years in Switzerland and concentrate on the writing
of a major religious work, the Sacred Service, to a text
derived from the Sabbath morning liturgy. He completed
it in 1933, and it was introduced the following year in
Turin. A work of rare eloquence and power, and imbued
with religious fervor, the Sacred Service while intended
for the synagogue was nonetheless a testament to all
mankind and to all faiths. "It symbolizes," said Bloch,
"a philosophy acceptable to all men."
After returning to the United States, Bloch made his
home in Agate Beach, Oregon, overlooking the Pacific
Ocean. He lived there for the rest of his life. Though
often seriously ill, he did not interrupt his creative ac-
tivity. On the contrary, he proved more productive than
everl Symphonies, concertos, quartets, and various other
orchestral and chamber music left his industrious pen in
abundance. In 1942, the American Academy of Arts and
202
Letters presented him with a gold medal. Five years later,
the New York Music Critics Circle gave him its annual
award for his Second String Quartet; and in 1954 Bloch
became the first composer ever to receive in a single year
from that Circle an award in two different categories,
in chamber music for his Third String Quartet^ and in
orchestral music for his Second Concerto Grosso.
Occasionally, in his later works, Bloch returned to the
Hebraic fold, as in the Suite hebraique, for viola and or-
chestra, in 1952. But most of the time neither by title nor
by program notes did he identify his works as Hebraic,
though in style, intensity of feeling, and little mannerisms
they remained racial. Bloch died in Portland, Oregon,
on July 15, 1959.
II
Bloch's Sacred Service, on the one hand, and his Israel
Symphony and Schelomo, on the other, represent two
directions a Hebraic composer can take. One is to bring
his invention and techniques to Hebrew liturgy, and set
actual prayers to music for service in synagogues. The
other is to use Hebrew subjects, and the identifying finger-
prints of Hebrew music, for concert-hall music. Many im-
portant composers in writing Hebrew music have success-
fully worked in both areas. Darius Milhaud wrote an ex-
cellent Sacred Service for the Sabbath morning services;
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895- ) and Paul Dessau
(1894- ) have set to music the Friday evening services.
These and others have also written music for individual
prayers rather than complete services: Arnold Schoenberg
with the K ol Nidrei for speaker, choir, and orchestra, a free
adaptation of the famous Yom Kippur chant; Castel-
nuovo-Tedesco with Lecho dodi, which he wrote for a
synagogue in Amsterdam, Holland; Leonard Bernstein,
203
with Hashkivenu for four-part mixed chorus, cantor, and
organ; Jan Meyerowitz with Shir Hadash L'Shabbat.
More plentiful still are the concert works in a Hebraic
style and idiom. In such a vein Castelnuovo-Tedesco
wrote the Hebrew rhapsody for orchestra, Le Danze del
re David, and the Violin Concerto, "The Prophets"; Mil-
baud wrote Poems juifs, the Chants populaires hebrai-
ques, and the opera, David; Jan Meyerowitz (1913- )
wrote the oratorio, Esther; and the American composer,
Henry Brant (1913- ), wrote the symphony, "The
Promised Land/'
One of the most successful of these Hebraic concert
works is Leonard Bernstein's "Jeremiah Symphony. The
wonder-boy of American music famous as conductor,
pianist, teacher, musical commentator, author, composer
of musical comedies, and composer of serious music-
Leonard Bernstein made his bow as a composer for or-
chestra with this "Jeremiah" Symphony in 1944. It was
forthwith played by most of America's leading orchestras;
was recorded in its entirety by Victor; and was the re-
cipient of the New York Music Critics Circle Award. In
writing "Jeremiah/* Bernstein was more than passingly
influenced by Bloch. "Jeremiah" has much of the rhap-
sodic sweep, the rich emotional content, the sensuality,
and the burning intensity of Schelomo. Sometimes Bern-
stein makes use of quotation. The first theme of his
second movement is based on a phrase used for the read-
ing of the Haftorah on Sabbath morning; the opening
phrase of the vocal section in the finale comes from a
liturgical cadence heard in the synagogue during the
holiday of Tisha B'Av. But most of Bernstein's music,
while genuinely Hebraic in style, feeling and texture, is
of his own invention. As he himself explained: "Other
resemblances to Hebrew liturgical music are a matter of
204
emotional quality rather than of the notes themselves.
The first movement aims to parallel in feeling the in-
tensity of the prophet Jeremiah's pleas with his people;
and the Scherzo, to give the general sense of destruction
and chaos brought up by the pagan corruption within the
priesthood and the people. The third movement being
a setting of a poetic text (from the Book of Lamenta-
tions) is naturally a more literary conception. It is the cry
of Jeremiah as he mourns his beloved Jerusalem, ruined,
pillaged, and dishonored after his desperate efforts to
save it."
On several notable occasions, the exotic nature of He-
brew music appealed strongly to non-Jewish composers.
There is a Jewish Song in Ravel's Chants populaires of
1910; in 1914 he wrote Deux melodies hebraiques which
includes the memorable "Kaddish." It is mainly on the
strength of these works that Ravel was for a long time
erroneously identified as a Jew. Prokofiev wrote an Over-
ture on Jewish Themes, for clarinet, string quartet, and
piano in 1919. In 1936, the American composer, Harl
McDonald (1899-1955), wrote Three Hebrew Poems for
orchestra, based partly on Aramaic, and partly on Hebrew
folk music (including a quotation from the very popular
Jewish melody, "Eili, Eili").
In Palestine, and subsequently in the State of Israel, the
boundaries of Hebrew music were considerably extended
through researches undertaken in that country not only
in old Hebrew and Jewish music, but also in the music of
the Persian, Yemenite and Bukharian Jews. One of the
earliest pioneers in seeking out native folk songs and
dances indigenous to Palestine was Joel Engel (1868-
1927), the same man who had founded the Society for
Jewish Folk Music in Russia in 1908. Engel came to Pal-
estine in 1924 where he lived for the three years that still
205
remained to him. In that time he collected numerous ex-
amples of Palestinian folk music, some of which was pub-
lished after his death.
Jewish composers from both Eastern and Central
Europe, in Palestine to find a new homeland, discovered
there a rich Jewish-Oriental folk vein to tap. Paul Ben-
Haim, who was born in Germany in 1897, and emi-
grated to Palestine in 1933 wrote a symphony (his sec-
ond, completed in 1945) in which a climax is reached
with an exciting hora. He used a native Palestinian folk
song for a set of variations for piano trio, and old He-
braic and Chassidic themes for his Liturgical Cantata.
Marc Lavry (1903- ) from Riga, also used a hora with
impressive effect in Emek, an eloquent paean to his new
land. Among his other works are Country Dances of
Israel, an oratorio, Shir Hashirim (The Song of Songs),
and an opera, Dan Hashomer. Oedoen Partos (1907- ),
from Budapest, completed in Palestine a Fantasy on
a Yemenite Theme, Yizkor (Memorial Service), and
a symphonic fantasy, Ein Gev.
Ben-Haim, Lavry, and Partos represent the older gen-
eration of Hebrew-music composers. Since the birth of
Israel, new young men have arisen not only in Tel-Aviv,
Haifa, and Jerusalem but also in the kibbutzim to enrich
further the literature of Hebrew music produced for the
synagogue, opera house, and concert hall.
206
CHAPTER 1 1
The Popularists
E Six" in France, and Vilia-Lobos and
JL CMvez in Latin America, were not the only
ones to use popular tunes with serious intent. Many
American composers wrote ambitious concert works
based on familiar melodies. Roy Harris wrote an ex-
cellent concert overture on "When Johnny Comes March-
ing Home/* a Civil War song by Patrick S. Gilmore.
Stephen Foster's beloved ballads have been adapted into
symphonic compositions by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
in Humoresques on Foster's Themes; by Werner Janssen
in the Foster Suite; by Lucien Caillet in Fantasia and
Fugue on Oh, Susanna; and by Morton Gould in Foster
Gallery. Jaromir Weinberger wrote the Prelude and
Fugue on Dixie "Dixie/' of course being the minstrel-
show tune by Dan Emmett which became a classic of
the Civil War.
The one branch of popular music that has proved the
most fertile area for exploitation by American composers
is jazz. The embryo of jazz was fertilized in West Africa.
To jazz the native songs and dances of Africa contrib-
uted their complex rhythms, accentuations and syncopa-
tions, the blues tonality, and such structural devices as
the "break" and the "call and response." But jazz for all
that is an essentially American product, an outgrowth
of the religious, work, and play songs with which the
American Negro sought escape from his grim world of
207
slavery and oppression. The word "jazz** is believed to
have come out o Chicago in or about 1914. It may pos-
sibly be a corruption of the name of some famous Negro
musician ("Charles" into "Chas" or "J as ")>" or it may
be a contraction of a term long popular in minstrel
shows jasbo. But as a style of popular music, jazz ap-
peared long before 1914 and far from Chicago.
Jazz was born in the honky-tonks of New Orleans in
the closing years of the nineteenth century. Since New
Orleans was a wide open and tolerant city, it welcomed
Negro musicians and readily found employment for them
in its many night spots. Most of these musicians could not
read a note of music; consequently they were compelled
to depend mainly on improvisation for their music-mak-
ing. Most of these musicians never had any sort of formal
training and so were not inhibited by textbooks or teach-
ers; they experimented freely with the most unusual and
unorthodox sounds produced in the most unconventional
ways.
And so jazz sprang up in New Orleans, more as a style
of performance than a style of composition. At first no-
body put jazz down on paper. Improvisation became a
basic element in all good jazz, sometimes occurring in a
solo passage by an individual performer, and at other
times produced by several members of an ensemble in a
remarkable network of rhythm and melody. Two im-
portant idioms distinguished these improvisations and
henceforth characterized real jazz. One was "ragtime."
The term came from Negro clog dancing referred to by
the Negro as "ragging." Ragtime consisted of syncopa-
tion in the treble against an even, inflexible rhythm in
the bass. The other idiom was the "blues," an offshoot of
the sorrowful songs in which Negroes lamented their
sad lot in a world they never made. The blues introduced
208
the flatted third and seventh notes Into the diatonic
scale, from this point on Identified as "blues notes." Out
of the blues also came the dissonant harmonies in the
accompaniment when the blues note was absent, and
the interpolation of "breaks" in the melody to allow
for such exclamations as "Oh, Lawdy" and "Oh, Baby."
Later on "breaks" were used to permit a jazz musician to
indulge in some spontaneous improvisation. Add to
ragtime and the blues the distinct colorations of saxo-
phones, muted trumpets, squealing clarinets, and novel
percussion effects, and you get the basic physiognomy of
New Orleans jazz.
II
Long before Americans started writing symphonic
works in a jazz style, significant European composers
were tentatively using now one element, now another of
American popular music. Debussy used the cakewalk
rhythm in "Golliwog's Cakewalk" from the Children's
Corner in 1908, and syncopation and ragtime in Minstrels
from the first book of Preludes in 1910. In 1917, Erik
Satie interpolated jazz rhythms into his score for the bal-
let Parade. Stravinsky introduced a ragtime tune in A
Soldiers Tale in 1918. He also wrote two compositions
entitled Ragtime, one for eleven instruments in 1918, and
another for orchestra in 1920. Milhaud used jazz with
uncommon effect in his remarkable ballet La Creation du
.
But it was an American whose extensive utilization of
jazz melodies and rhythms with serious artistic purpose
firmly established jazz as an idiom deserving concert
treatment. That man, of course, was George Gershwin.
From boyhood on, Gershwin seemed to know his mu-
sical mission: To bring to American popular songs the
209
resources of serious music, and to bring to serious music
the vitality and personal idiosyncrasies of jazz. Later on
in his career, he had this to say about his purpose: "1
regard jazz as an American folk music, a very powerful
one which is probably in the blood of the American
people more than any other style of music. I believe that
it can be made the basis of serious symphonic works of
lasting value." He also wrote with prophetic insight: "Jazz
has contributed an enduring value to America in the
sense that it has expressed ourselves. It is an original
American achievement that will endure, not as jazz per-
haps, but which will leave its mark on future music in
one way or another."
Even as a boy he held these convictions strongly. Time
and again he argued with his teacher, Charles Hambitzer,
that there was artistic validity and importance to a song
like Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band"; that a
serious composer would do well to work within the frame-
work of the popular song; that an American composer
could achieve a national identity by affiliating himself
with American popular idioms. "The boy is a genius
without doubt," Hambitzer wrote to his sister. "He wants
to go in for this modern stuff, jazz and what not. But I'm
not going to let him for a while. Ill see that he gets a firm
foundation in the standard music first."
Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York, on Sep-
tember 26, 1898, but spent most of his boyhood in New
York's East Side. His was a normal American boyhood.
He liked to play with his friends the games of the streets;
he was a baseball fan; he hated anything that smacked
of culture. In the East Side, any boy who took lessons on
a musical instrument or showed any interest in music,
was derisively referred to as a "Maggie." For a while
Gershwin had no intention of being called that. Never-
210
theless, in spite of himself, several musical experiences
did stir him profoundly: Rubinstein's Melody in P,
which he heard in a penny arcade; the sound of jazz
drifting from the window of a Harlem night club; a vio-
lin performance in the public-school assembly by one of
his fellow students, Maxie Rosenzweig. (Maxie, who be-
came a famous violinist, later changed his name to Max
Rosen). When Gershwin came upon a piano in the home
of one of his friends, he enjoyed playing around at the
keyboard. Sometimes he would try to reproduce a favorite
popular song, but most of the time he would create little
melodies of his own. One day he played something of his
own for Maxie. The young violinist said firmly: "You'd
better forget about music, George. You haven't the talent
to be a composer."
He was twelve years old when a piano entered his own
home. From then on he monopolized the instrument,
spending tireless hours working out tunes. He also started
taking piano lessons with local teachers, and in 1912 he
sought out Charles Hambitzer for advanced instruction.
A remarkable musician, Charles Hambitzer proved a
powerful influence in Gershwin's musical development
and was the greatest single factor in transforming an
ebullient amateur into a sound musician. Because of
Hambitzer, Gershwin not only started going to concerts
but began the study of theory, harmony and counter-
point with Edward Kilenyi.
Determined to make his way in popular music, and
equally determined to learn as much as he could about
it, Gershwin, aged fifteen, found a job in Tin Pan Alley
as song plugger and staff pianist. He was writing popular
songs all the time. The first to get published was "When
You Want 'Em You Can't Get 'Em"; the first to be heard
on the Broadway stage was "The Making of a Girl" in
211
the Passing Show. This was In 1916. Three years later
came La La Lucille Gershwin's first Broadway musical
comedy and "Swanee," his first hit song.
Between 1920 and 1924, Gershwin wrote the complete
scores for the annual George White Scandals. In songs
like "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" and "Somebody
Loves Me" he revealed an uncanny skill in rhythm
and meter, and an uncommon freshness of lyricism. Beryl
Rubinstein, a concert pianist and renowned teacher, was
so impressed by Gershwin's songs that he told an inter-
viewer that Gershwin had "the spark of musical genius."
Then he added: "When we speak of American compos-
ers, George Gershwin's name will be prominent on our
list." Another eminent musician who was impressed by
Gershwin was the concert singer Eva Gauthier who pre-
sented some Gershwin songs in a recital at Aeolian Hall,
with Gershwin as her accompanist.
Gershwin's artistic horizon began to expand. For the
Scandals of 1922, he wrote a one-act Negro opera to a li-
bretto by Buddy De Sylva. Originally called Blue Mon-
day it received only a single performance on opening
night. George White considered it too somber for a revue
and had it deleted from the program. But Paul Whiteman,
the orchestra leader who was one of the stars of the Scan-
dals that year, was convinced of the importance of this
little opera. (Later on he gave it several times in
Carnegie Hall and elsewhere under its new title of 135th
Street.) When, late in 1923, Whiteman planned an ail-
American music concert of popular music at Aeolian
Hall, New York, he asked Gershwin to write an extended
concert work for him.
That work was the Rhapsody in Blue for piano and
orchestra, introduced by Paul Whiteman and his orches-
tra, with the composer at the piano, on February 12, 1924.
212
From the opening trill of the clarinet followed by its
seventeen-note ascent toward the first jaunty theme
through the broad and rhapsodic song for strings (prob-
ably the most celebrated single melody in all contempo-
rary American music), the Rhapsody sounded a new
voice both for jazz and for music. This was American
music and music of the 1920's in its brashness, vulgarity,
muscular energy, and emotional abandon. The vocabu-
lary of jazzthe blues, ragtime, jazz instrumental colors-
were here assembled for a new kind of music, pulsing
with vitality, and as fresh as youth. Some of the critics,
failing to see the forest for the trees, were disturbed by
the occasional awkward technique, diffuse form, and
lapses in inspiration. But others knew that something
important in contemporary music was happening that
afternoon in Aeolian Hall. "Mr. Gershwin/' said Gilbert
W. Gabriel, the noted drama critic, "has an irrepressible
pack of talents/' Deems Taylor reported that the Rhap-
sody "revealed a genuine melodic gift and a piquant and
individual harmonic sense to lend significance to its
rhythmic ingenuity. Moreover it is genuine jazz music.
. . , Mr. Gershwin will bear watching; he may yet bring
jazz out of the kitchen." In an outburst of what is surely
excessive excitement, H. O. Osgood regarded the Rhap-
sody as "greater than Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring";
and Henry T. Finck proclaimed it with equally excessive
enthusiasm to be "far superior to Schoenberg, Milhaud,
and the rest of the futuristic fellows."
The Rhapsody in Blue first became known to the na-
tion at large through a Victor recording by Paul White-
man and his orchestra that sold a million discs. But this
was just an echo of a gathering storm. Before long, the
Rhapsody was heard in the concert hall, over the radio,
on the stage, on screen, and in the ballet theater, achiev-
213
ing a popularity equalled by few serious works of modern
music before or since. Royalties mounted to over a quar-
ter o a million dollars in a decade. But the Rhapsody
not only made Gershwin a wealthy man; it also spread his
fame around the globe, and gave him, for the first time,
status as a serious American composer.
The Rhapsody has never lost its popularity. It is per-
haps the most frequently performed composition in the
entire contemporary American concert repertory. It
would be impossible to estimate the number of millions
o records sold of this work; there are no less than two
dozen different versions on the active list in the present-
day catalogue. Its title was used for Gershwin's screen
biography in 1946, and its main melody has been used
through the years as Paul Whiteman's signature over ra-
dio and television.
With a remarkable capacity to grow both in his tech-
nique and in his inspiration, Gershwin went on from the
Rhapsody to produce a handful of other remarkable
works with which jazz became fully emancipated. For one
thing, though the Rhapsody had been orchestrated by
Ferde Grofe, Gershwin himself orchestrated all his later
symphonic works. Gershwin continually demonstrated a
greater self-assurance in his use of form, of thematic de-
velopment, of subtlety of expression. A year and a half
after the Rhapsody came the Concerto in F, for piano
and orchestra, introduced by the composer with the New
York Symphony conducted by Walter Damrosch. In 1926
Gershwin wrote the Three Preludes for piano solo; that
in C-sharp minor, a poignant three-part blues melody, is
particularly famous. The orchestral tone poem, An
American in Paris, was first heard in 1928 in a perform-
ance by the New York Philharmonic under Damrosch.
This was a vivid programmatic work describing an Amer-
214
lean's emotional responses both to Paris and to home as
he saunters along the boulevards. To simulate the sounds
of the Paris streets, Gershwin interpolated into his orches-
tration actual Parisian taxi horns. The Second Rhapsody
followed, its premiere performance taking place in Bos-
ton with Koussevitzky conducting. After that came the
Cuban Overture, in which effective use is made of some
native Cuban percussion instruments. Gershwin's last
work for the concert hall was a set of variations for
piano and orchestra on "I Got Rhythm/' This was the
song that Ethel Merman had introduced in the musical-
comedy Girl Crazy when she made her Broadway debut.
Gershwin was so completely wrapped up in his music-
writing it, playing it, talking about it that he was often
accused of being egocentric. He was a man of many inter-
ests and diversions; he was also a man who through the
years loved many women. But his music always came first.
One day he was deeply absorbed in revising his music for
a forthcoming Broadway show when he received a tele-
phone call from one of his girl friends, whom he had been
planning to marry. She told him she was tired of waiting
and was marrying somebody else. "You know," he told his
brother Ira, when he returned to the piano, "I would
be heartbroken if only I weren't so terribly busy." This
incident is revealing. Perhaps the reason Gershwin never
married was because he refused to let anyone usurp even
a small part of the place music held in his life. He worked
at his music all the time with complete dedication. Time
and again he sacrificed a fortune in contracts to spend
weeks, sometimes even months, on a serious piece of
music from which he could only earn a pittance.
That he was not egocentric was perhaps proved by the
fact that he never stopped studying. After studying with
Hambitzer and Kilenyi, he entered the harmony class of
215
Rubin Goldmark. Later on, he studied counterpoint with
Henry Cowell, and after that, the Schillinger method
with Its creator. Until the end of his life, Gershwin sought
guidance and instruction in a ceaseless effort to
strengthen his technique and to enrich his fund of mu-
sical knowledge. He was continually studying the scores
of modern composers Berg's Wozzeck, for example, or
Schoenberg's string quartets. He worked painstakingly
over textbooks on orchestration, harmony, and theory.
He never hesitated to "pick the brains" of every famous
musician with whom he came into contact, questioning
them about their own work and seeking from them valu-
able advice and criticism about his own. Here, there,
everywhere, he picked up little stylistic tricks, methods,
approaches, effects which he forthwith fixed into his own
equipment. "What I don't know about music/' he once
told an interviewer when he was at the height of his suc-
cess, "is enough to keep me occupied for the rest of a
normally long life/' It was this unquenchable thirst for
musical information, this restless search for answers to
his creative problems, that made it possible for him to
grow all the time.
Gershwin's last work in a serious vein was his folk op-
era, Porgy and Bess, first introduced in Boston on Sep-
tember 30, 1935, then given in New York on October 10.
At first a box-office failure and treated with no little con-
descension and lack of appreciation by the critics Porgy
and Bess went into temporary discard, and seemed des-
tined for the oblivion that seemed to await most contem-
porary operas. But in 1942, more than four years after
Gershwin's death, the opera was revived in New York to
unqualified critical and public acclaim. Virgil Thomson,
originally quite harsh in his estimate of the opera, now
216
described it as "a beautiful piece of music and a deeply
moving play for the lyric theater." Olin Dowries, who
had also found a good deal to condemn in it when he
reviewed it for the first time, now said that "Gershwin
has taken a substantial step, and advanced the cause of
native opera." The New York Music Critics Circle
singled it out as the most significant musical revival of
the year. The audience response was so enthusiastic that
its run of eight months proved the longest of any revival
up to that time in the history of the Broadway stage.
After it closed on Broadway, it went on an extended
tour of twenty-six cities, establishing box-office records
in several of them.
Then, between 1952 and 1956, an American-Negro
company, under the auspices of the State Department,
made a monumental tour with Porgy and Bess, achiev-
ing an artistic triumph of the first magnitude in Europe,
the Near East, the Soviet Union, countries behind the
Iron Curtain and Latin America. In Vienna, Porgy and
Bess was hailed as "an unqualified masterwork"; in
Yugoslavia, reported a cable to The New York Times,
"the Communist officials, the man in the street, the stu-
dents, all are singing the songs of George Gershwin and
the praises of the cast of the folk opera"; in Israel it was
described as "an artistic event of first-class importance."
It became the first opera by an American-born composer
given in the historic La Scala in Milan; this was also the
first time that a single opera held the La Scala stage for an
entire week. In the Soviet Union it was rapturously hailed
not only by the general public but by most of the leading
Soviet composers.
Today we know that Porgy and Bess is an enduring
classic, the only American opera that is continually being
revived in different parts of the country; the first Ameri-
217
can opera made into a motion picture; one of the few
American operas recorded in its entirety, with its princi-
pal excerpts found in more than twenty-five recordings
in the present-day catalogue. Porgy and Bess finds Gersh-
win at the peak of his career as a composer bringing ar-
tistic significance to the styles and idioms of American
popular music.
Though Porgy and Bess makes extensive use of Negro
folk material, the melodic invention is entirely Gersh-
win's. He models his chants, choral numbers and songs
on Spirituals, Shouts (chants improvised during the ac-
tual religious service by the congregation) and work
songs. His recitatives are given shape by the inflections
of Negro speech. He interpolates street cries simulating
some of those heard in Charleston. The ease and authen-
ticity with which Gershwin brought the style of Negro
music into his writing was one indication of his expand-
ing creative power. Other indications came from his ca-
pacity to portray through music many different moods,
backgrounds, and incidents. This new power is evident
in the subtle way he kept the action moving by using
vocal glissandi, alternation of chords, and ostinato rhyth-
mic patterns. The use of spoken dialogue for the white
people (the only time that dialogue replaces recitatives)
to provide a contrast between the races, the distinguished
tone-speech, the powerful antiphonal choruses, expres-
sive dissonances and chromaticisms, the skillful coun-
terpointall showed Gershwin as a serious musician at
the height of his technical and creative powers.
In Porgy and Bess there are also overtones of Tin Pan
Alley popular styles and methods employed with the
most consummate skill and artistic effect. Tin Pan Alley
echoes and re-echoes in songs like "It Ain't Necessarily
So," "There's a Boat That's Leavin' Soon for New York,"
218
and in the blues-melody, "A Red-Headed Woman Makes
a Choochoo Jump Its Track." In this juxtaposition of the
serious and the popular, in this merger of the Metropoli-
tan Opera with Tin Pan Alley, there is never a feeling of
incongruity. Popular tunes and ditties are basic to Gersh-
win's artistic purpose and have their specific function in
the overall design.
Of course, while developing himself as a serious com-
poser Gershwin did not desert his more popular endeav-
ors. He wrote scores for many outstanding Broadway mu-
sicals and Hollywood motion pictures, filling them with
some of the most remarkable popular songs written dur-
ing this period. The peak of his career on Broadway was
reached in 1931 with Of Thee I Sing!, the political satire
which became the first musical comedy in Broadway his-
tory to receive the Pulitzer Prize.
Gershwin died in Los Angeles on July II, 1937 after
an unsuccessful operation on the brain. He was thirty-
nine.
Ill
Gershwin's success in utilizing American popular idi-
oms in classical music had profound worldwide reper-
cussions. There is little doubt that it was Gershwin's ex-
ample which led many important composers to emulate
him. Maurice Ravel openly conceded the impact Gersh-
win had had upon him when he wrote a "blues" sonata
for violin and piano and injected jazz in his last two
piano concertos. Other composers were perhaps more
hesitant in expressing their indebtedness, but consciously
or unconsciously they were affected and given direction
by Gershwin.
In America, Gershwin's impact was felt by a good many
composers. Ferde Grof6 (1892- ), who had orches-
219
trated Rhapsody in Blue for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra
followed Gershwin's lead by writing Broadway at Night,
his first symphonic composition in a jazz style, late in 1924.
In 1925 he wrote the Mississippi Suite, his first successful
work in this new vein, and in 1931, he completed his
greatest work, Grand Canyon Suite. Aaron Copland pro-
duced his two major jazz works (his Piano Concerto and
Music for the Theater) immediately after the success of
the Rhapsody in Blue and the Gershwin Piano Con-
certo. Among other American composers to enter the
symphonic-jazz world were the following: John Alden
Carpenter (1876-1951) with Krazy Kat and a remark-
able jazz ballet, Skyscrapers; Robert Russell Bennett
(1894- ) with the Charleston Rhapsody and the Con-
certo Grosso for jazz band and orchestra; Louis Gruen-
berg (1884- ) with Daniel Jazz and the Jazz Suite for
orchestra; Edward Burlingame Hill (1872-1960) with the
Jazz Studies.
Many European composers besides Ravel found jazz
a rewarding medium for serious creations; Georges Auric
(1899- ) in a fox trot for piano, Adieu New York;
Alexander Tansman (1897- ) in his Triptych; Ernst
Kfenek (1900- ), Hindemith and Kurt Weill in their
operas, Jonny spielt auf!, Neues vom Tage, and The
Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny; Constant Lambert
(1905-1951) in Rio Grande; William Walton in Facade.
Perhaps the most significant and the most successful
American popularist besides Gershwin is Morton Gould.
He was born in New York City on December 10, 1913,
and received his musical training at the Institute of
Musical Art, New York University, and privately with
Abby Whiteside. He made several successful appearances
on the concert stage as a prodigy pianist. After his studies
were completed, he earned his livelihood playing the
220
piano in motion-picture theaters and on the vaudeville
circuit. In his eighteenth year he found a job as staff
pianist at the Radio City Music Hall. Three years later
he received his first important radio assignment to con-
duct an orchestra. Meanwhile he had begun to tap the
resources of jazz for serious compositions by producing
the Chorale and Fugue in Jazz (introduced in 1931 by
the Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokowski), the
Boogie-Woogie Etude for piano (extensively performed
by Jose Iturbi at his recitals), and a Swing Sinfonietta.
Gould acquired national fame as a conductor of radio
orchestras for many important programs. His fresh and
invigorating arrangements of popular classics, in which
new instrumental effects were continually exploited,
made him a successful radio feature for many years, as
well as a highly successful recording artist. But his great-
est significance in American music came from his abun-
dant compositions for the concert stage, in many of which
he made astute and artistically rewarding use of either
American folk or American popular styles. The blues
can be found in his Third Symphony and in Interplay.
The latter is a composition for piano and orchestra first
entitled American Goncertette, and later used by Jerome
Robbins as background music for an original modern
ballet. The old-fashioned and sentimental waltzes rever-
berate in the Philharmonic Waltzes for symphony or-
chestra. There are times when Gould manages to com-
bine the old classical forms with popular modern Amer-
ican styles with unique effect as in Interplay, whose
second movement is a gavotte; or as in American Sym-
phonette No. 2, one of whose movements is a pavane.
There are other times when he gives a scintillating mod-
ern orchestral dress to our popular songs, as was the
case with Foster Gallery (based on several beloved mel-
221
odies of Stephen Foster), Yankee Doodle Went to Town
("Yankee Doodle" in modern symphonic dress) and
in his symphonic adaptations of "When Johnny Comes
Marching Home" and Gershwin's song, "I Got Rhythm."
An altogether new direction in symphonic jazz has
recently been taken by a young American composer,
Gunther Schuller, born in New York in 1925. Schuller
is the creator of a new style which he has identified as
the "third stream of music." It is not jazz, nor classical
music, but a combination of both. This new kind of
symphonic jazz is found in works like the Variations on
a Theme of Thelonius Monk, Abstraction No. 1, and
Concertino for Jazz Quartet and Orchestra. When an
entire program of Schuller's music was given in New
York on May 16, 1960, John S. Wilson reported in The
New York Times: "Mr. Schuller's compositions reveal
a highly provocative mind at work, for he composes not
only with a sense of adventure but also with an extremely
sensitive feeling for proportion and balance. At this
stage in the use of techniques from both jazz and classical
music, both of these qualities are all important."
222
CHAPTER 12
The Proletariat
A FTER the Revolution in Russia on Novem-
jTA. ber 6, 1917, musical nationalism in that
country was directed into an altogether new channel.
Music now became an instrument of government propa-
ganda. It had to promote the ideals of the state and
glorify the achievements and the heroes of the Revolu-
tion. It had to pay tribute to the common man. It had
to speak out loud and clear for the economic and social
reforms of the new regime. It had to seek out the gran-
deur of labor, the factory, the collectivist farm, the five-
year plan. Most important of all, perhaps, it had to be
addressed to the masses and, by the same token, had to
be simple, tuneful, rooted in Russian folk and military
music.
In 1924, the Association for Proletarian Musicians was
formed to "cross the t's and dot the i's" of what consti-
tuted good music in the proletarian sense. One of their
manifestoes read: "In their creative work, composers,
members of the Association of Proletarian Musicians,
strive above all to reflect the rich, full-blooded psychol-
ogy of the proletariat, as historically the most advanced,
and dialectically the most sensitive and understood class.
. . . New musical forms are created and will be created
by the proletariat. Proletarian music must 'penetrate into
the innermost masses of workmen and peasants, unite
the thought and the will of these masses and raise them*
223
for further struggle and construction, organizing their
class consciousness in the direction of the ultimate vic-
tory of the proletariat as builder of Communist society."
And so, Soviet composers trimmed their sails to the
prevailing winds. They wrote work after work in praise
of Lenin, Stalin, and other revolutionary leaders. They
wrote ballets and operas about the ideals and problems
of the working class. They paid tribute to each and every
important economic or social policy promulgated by the
government. Sometimes a composer might feel the im-
pulse to wander off in his own direction, driven by the
urgency to express himself rather than his government.
But he would soon be steered by government order or
threats of reprisal to the proper course. The chang-
ing political currents might carry the Soviet composer
now in one direction, now in another, but always he
steered his course by the Northern star of government
edicts.
II
Dimitri Shostakovich was a child of the Revolution.
He grew up to become its foremost musical voice. Born
in Leningrad on September 25, 1906, he was only eleven
when the Revolution erupted. The new regime and the
young musician, consequently, went through their grow-
ing pains together. As a child, Shostakovich proved his
exceptional musical gifts by continually associating im-
ages with musical sounds; by being perpetually at the
piano; and by trying to compose music before he could
even read or write. He wrote his first large work very
early in his boyhood, while he was attending the Glasser
Music School; it was a Theme and Variations, for piano.
After the Revolution, he became a student at the Lenin-
grad Conservatory, where his phenomenal musical abil-
224
ity was remarked and frequently commented upon by
his teachers Nikolaev and Maximilian Steinberg. During
his initial year at the Conservatory he completed a re-
markable set of eight piano preludes; he also saw his
first publication, Three Fantastic Dances, for the piano.
Alexander Glazunov, director of the Conservatory, com-
pared him to Mozart. A fellow pupil, Simon Barere
later world-famous as a piano virtuosoreferred to him
at the time as "a musician who deeply feels and under-
stands his art. Shostakovich's compositions . . . are fine
examples of serious musical thought."
Upon being graduated from the Conservatory in 1925,
Shostakovich completed his First Symphony. It was in-
troduced in Leningrad on May 12, 1926, after which it
was heard in Moscow, in Berlin under Bruno Walter's
direction, and in the United States conducted by Leopold
Stokowski. A work of extraordinary vitality and exuber-
ance filled with the most exciting musical ideas and con-
structed with a master's hand, this symphony helped
make Shostakovich world-famous by the time he passed
his twenty-second birthday. And it lifted him to the top
rank of Soviet composers.
There was nothing in this symphony to suggest pro-
letarian music. Here Shostakovich had no political or
social program to propound, no dogma to promote, no
dictated formula to follow. He merely had to give voice
to his inmost emotional urges and express them with
honesty and conviction. For this reason, this work, writ-
ten when the composer was only nineteen, is still one
of his best, and the one that is most popular today.
But it was not long before Shostakovich made the
transition to proletarian music. During 1926 he wrote
nothing, while evaluating himself and his mission as a
Soviet musician. When, in 1927, he returned to his work,
225
it was with a new purpose and direction. "I cannot
conceive/' he now said, "of my future creative program
outside of our socialist enterprise, and the aim which I
assign to my work is that of helping every way to en-
lighten our remarkable country." He also said: "There
can be no music without an ideology. . . . Lenin him-
self said that 'music is a means of unifying broad masses
of people'. . . . Even the symphonic form * . . can be
said to have a bearing on politics. . , . Good music . . .
is no longer an end in itself but a vital weapon in the
struggle/'
And so he completed the Second Symphony to com-
memorate the tenth anniversary of the October Revolu-
tion; and the Third Symphony, honoring May Day,
which concluded with a choral movement. He wrote an
opera, The Nose, satirizing government officialdom, his
first work to be subjected to severe criticism by the au-
thorities who regarded his tentative experiments with
atonal devices as "bourgeois decadence/* He wrote three
ballets with strongly political overtones. The first, The
Age of Gold, mocked capitalism, Fascism and "bour-
geois psychology/' (Still popular from this score are the
"Polka" and "Russian Dance/' The first satirized the
Geneva Peace Conference.) His second ballet, The Bolt,
tried to expose the pettiness of bourgeois living. In the
third, The Limpid Stream, he treated the subject of
collective farming frivolously. He also produced a good
deal of background music for Soviet plays and motion
pictures.
The two symphonies were complete failures. The bal-
lets were moderately successful. But in all instances
Shostakovich proved himself a composer with an en-
gaging bent for lyricism and dynamic rhythmic forces;
226
a composer with a remarkable flair for wit, burlesque, and
satire.
The first time Shostakovich's position in Soviet music
and culture was severely threatened was in 1936. Two
years before this, his opera, Lady Macbeth of Mzensk,
had been introduced in Leningrad to tremendous public
and critical acclaim; during the next two years it was
performed throughout the length and breadth of the
Soviet Union. It was also given in Cleveland and New
York in 1935. Then, without much warning, the govern-
ment bludgeon descended on the opera and its composer.
Suddenly Pravda described Lady Macbeth as "pande-
monium, instead of music," as "crude, primitive, vulgar."
Pravda concluded: "The composer apparently does not
set himself the task of listening to the desires and ex-
pectations of the Soviet public. He scrambles sounds to
make them interesting to formalist-aesthetes, who have
lost all good taste." Apparently this brisk rap on Sho-
stakovich's knuckles had come not only because some
Soviet officials regarded several scenes in the opera as
pornographic, but also because they felt that by em-
ploying modern techniques and styles Shostakovich was
losing contact with the Soviet masses. A similar point of
view was expressed about The Limpid Stream. "The com-
poser," said Pravda editorially, "apparently has only
contempt for our national songs."
For over a year Shostakovich was more or less persona
non grata in Soviet musical circles. If the critics men-
tioned him at all it was only to denounce him; leading
Soviet musicians avoided him socially; performances of
his compositions were reduced to a trickle. It seemed
that to all intents and purposes he was "through." But
then, as several times later, Shostakovich proved his re-
227
markable resiliency and bounced back Into govern-
ment and public favor. The premiere of his Fifth Sym-
phony on November 21, 1937 given during the celebra-
tion of the twentieth anniversary of the Soviet Republic
was a triumph. One of the leading Soviet critics spoke
of it as a "work of great depth, with emotional wealth
and content/' and considered it "of great importance as
a milestone in the composer's development." The work
Is, indeed, an unqualified masterwork, with a breadth of
structure, a maturity of expression, and a dramatic sweep
and surge previously not often encountered in Shostako-
vich.
After that, by rapid degrees, Shostakovich not only
returned to his former high position in Soviet music but
even mounted a few notches higher: He became a na-
tional hero. In 1940 he received the Stalin Prize for
the Piano Quintet. Soon after that, the Soviet Union
was invaded by the Nazis during World War II. He
completed a new monumental symphony (his seventh),
entitled "Leningrad/* and dedicated "to our struggle
against Fascism, to our future victory, to my native city
Leningrad." The symphony was first heard with the war
in the Soviet Union at its height; the performance took
place in Kuibyshev, the temporary capital set up by
the government on the Volga when Moscow seemed in
danger of falling. The highest officials of the army and
government joined the leading representatives of foreign
military and diplomatic corps to attend the premiere,
which excited unprecedented enthusiasm. It brought
Shostakovich the Stalin Prize for the second time. After
that, his Seventh Symphony traveled around the free
world, a vibrant testament of the times, a dramatic ex-
pression of the will to victory. In 1942 virtually every
228
important American orchestra played it; as Life wryly
remarked it almost became treasonable not to be en-
thusiastic about it. Stirring in its martial moods, and
ending with a mighty paean to victory, this is music that
does not achieve effect either through subtlety or under-
statement. It wears its heart on its sleeve. As a result,
the symphony remained popular only so long as the war
fever infected the world. Since the war's end, it has been
rarely given.
In a totalitarian state a hero one day can become the
goat the next. This is what happened once again to
Shostakovich after the war. His Ninth Symphony, in
1945, was found to contain "ideological weakness/' to be
a distorted reflection of the life in and ideals of the Soviet
Union. This indictment was just a straw in the wind.
When the wind came, it turned out to be a typhoon.
On February 10, 1948, the Central Committee of the
Communist Party announced a new policy for music.
No one can say for certain why this policy was suddenly
invoked. The general opinion is that when Stalin at-
tended the premiere of a new Soviet opera (Muradeli's
Great Friendship), he expressed his dislike of composers
who go to such great lengths to be noisy, modernistic,
complicated. This was enough to set off a wave reaction
which affected Soviet music for many years. A new set
of standards was established for Soviet musicians. All
avant-garde music was to be avoided and a studied at-
tempt was to be made to write music easily compre-
hended by the masses. The ideal toward which Soviet
composers were now to reach was a melodious music,
simple in structure, straightforward in appeal and
grounded in the country's folk songs and dances. "Dec-
adent formalism," "bourgeois decadence/' "cerebral-
229
ism" were some of the official words and phrases used
to describe "modern music" a music which "negated
the basic principles of classical music" and preached
a "sermon for atonality, dissonance, and disharmony."
This blanket indictment covered virtually every major
Soviet composer, Shostakovich included. Forthwith, each
composer made a public demonstration of beating his
breast in repentance, of confessing the error of his artistic
ways, of promising to make amends. Here is what Sho-
stakovich said in an opportunistic effort to rehabilitate
his sadly shaken position and prestige:
"As we look back on the road traversed by our art,
it becomes quite clear to us that every time the
Party corrects errors of a creative artist and points
out the deviation in his work, or else severely con-
demns a certain tendency in Soviet art, it invariably
brings beneficial results for Soviet art and for indi-
vidual artists. ... I now can clearly see that I over-
estimated the thoroughness of my artistic reconstruc-
tion; certain negative characteristics peculiar to my
musical thought prevented me from making the
turn that seemed to be indicated in a number of
my works of recent years. I again deviated in the
direction of formalism, and began to speak a lan-
guage incomprehensible to the people. Now, when
the Party and our entire nation, speaking through
the Resolution of the Central Committee . . . con-
demn this tendency in my music, I know that the
Party is right. . . . The absence in my works of
the interpretation of folk art, that great spirit by
which our people lives, has been with utmost clarity
and definiteness pointed out by the Central Com-
mittee. . . . On the basis of the principles clearly
230
given in the Resolution . . . I shall try again and
again to create symphonic works close to the spirit of
the people from the standpoint of ideological sub-
ject matter, musical language, and form/'
Hewing closer to the official line forcefully set down
by the Central Committee, Shostakovich proceeded to
create works with one eye on his political bosses, and
the other on the public. His Tenth Symphony, an orato-
rio glorifying Stalin's reforestation plan ("Song of the
Forest"), incidental music for a movie (Fall of Berlin)
and sundry other functional pieces, helped to restore him
to the good graces of the Soviet authorities. In 1949 he
was selected as one of seven to represent the Soviet Union
at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World
Peace in New York. This was his first visit to the United
States. In 1950 he was once again the recipient of the
Stalin Prize.
When the dictum of the Central Committee against
"decadent formalism" was officially revoked after Stalin's
death, Soviet composers were given somewhat greater
latitude in utilizing modern techniques and styles in
their writing. Shostakovich profited from this laissez-
faire policy. He wrote several distinguished symphonies,
concertos and string quartets more advanced in style
and thinking than anything he had produced in a dec-
ade. With these works he once again gave assurance of
being one of the most impressive and original musical
creators of the twentieth century.
Ill
Long before Prokofiev returned to his native land for
good following his self-imposed exile, he had produced
important proletarian music: the ballet, The Age of
231
Steel, completed In 1925, introduced by the Dlaghilev
Ballet In Paris on June 8, 1927. Its scenario was a glori-
fication of the growth of Industrialization In the Soviet
Union. The music was strident with factory noises, and
the rhythms of machines and engines in motion were
so realistically produced by musical instruments that
one unidentified critic described the score as "an apothe-
osis of machinery."
When Prokofiev had once again become a Soviet citi-
zen In 1933, he identified himself completely and un-
equivocally with the goals of Soviet music. Much of what
he produced was functional, but even in this area he was
able to complete several works of lasting value. The
background music to two Soviet motion pictures (Lieu-
tenant Kije and Alexander Nevsky) were adapted by
the composer into a pair of his most famous symphonic
works.
Lieutenant Kije was a satire on Czarist stupidity. Kije
is a mythical character who comes into existence when
the Czar misreads a military report. The Czar's aides,
unable to tell him he has erred, are compelled to invent
Kije and from time to time to fabricate for him all sorts
of heroic exploits. But when the Czar insists that the
Lieutenant be brought to him, the aides are forced to
create the fiction that the Lieutenant died a hero's death
in battle. This merry satire gave the composer ample
opportunity to release his remarkable gifts at irony and
grotesquerie. A fanfare of cornets, a roll of the drums,
and a mocking tune for fifes caricatures our hero. A mock
sentimental tune tells us about his love affair, and a section
full of pseudo pomp and ceremony describes his mar-
riage. After that the music depicts no less vividly and
amusingly the Lieutenant regaling himself in a tavern
232
and after that his death in battle. The score ends with
trumpet tones evaporating in air, even as did the life of
the mythical Kije.
Alexander Nevsky was of more serious intent and of
far greater sobriety. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein and
Vasilev, the motion picture told of the defense of Nov-
gorod in 1242 under the leadership of Prince Nevsky
against the invading Knights of the Teutonic Order.
Prokofiev shaped his motion-picture score into a stirring
choral cantata made up of seven tonal pictures begin-
ning with a bleak description of desolate Russia in the
grips of invasion. A chorus then lifts a song of praise to
the hero Nevsky. We then catch a glimpse of the Teutonic
knights masquerading as religious crusaders. The Rus-
sian people are urged to rise as one against the enemy.
Now is depicted a realistic picture of a savage battle on
the frozen waters of Lake Chud, after which a young
girl voices grief for the dead in a poignant lament. The
cantata ends with a mighty hymn of triumph, by chorus
and orchestra, to celebrate Nevsky's victory and hail his
arrival into the city of Pskov.
A composition intended for school children has also
become one of Prokofiev's most popular works for or-
chestra: the fairy tale, Peter and the Wolf, for narrator
and orchestra. It was meant to teach children the instru-
ments of the orchestra, and was first given at a children's
concert in Moscow in 1936. The story tells about Peter,
a boy who defies the warning of his grandfather, and goes
out into the meadow. There he comes face to face with
a wolf, who has just frightened the life out of a cat, bird,
and duck. But Peter is not afraid. He captures the wolf,
ties him up with a stout rope, and proudly leads him
off to the zoo.
233
Each character in this tale is represented by a different
musical instrument: the bird by a flute; the duck by an
oboe; the grandfather by a bassoon; the wolf by French
horns; Peter by the string quartet Each character is
also represented by his own Leitmotiv. Thus with an
equal measure of wit and technical skill Prokofiev weaves
the different melodies for the various instruments con-
tinually varying them to meet the demands of his story
into an integrated work combining the spoken word with
musical sound.
The grim events of World War II greatly changed
the quality and texture of Prokofiev's music. This was
no time for comedy; the satire, grotesquerie, and whimsy
had to be curbed. Music now had to be either an instru-
ment for war propaganda or a mirror reflecting the epic
struggle. Prokofiev produced a goodly amount of mili-
tary marches and anti-fascist songs. He also completed
several works of major dimension. In 1942 he wrote a
monumental piano sonata, his seventh, now known as the
"Stalingrad' 1 because its stirring and strong-fibered mu-
sic spoke of the heroism of the Red Army at that be-
leaguered city. For this sonata, Prokofiev received the
Stalin Prize. Equally significant artistically, and equally
effective in echoing the overtones of those turbulent
years, was the Fifth Symphony, perhaps the greatest of
the seven works by the composer within the symphonic
frame. Here we get first a picture of the tragedy and
destruction of war, and after that we hear the proud
affirmation of faith and hope. Throughout the symphony
we hear a tremendous sweep of melody, an intensity of
expression, and an overpowering strength of rhythm
which places this symphony with the greatest of the
twentieth century. In and out of the Soviet Union the
234
Fifth Symphony has enjoyed successes of formidable di-
mensions.
Perhaps the most significant of all of Prokofiev's war
compositions was an epical opera that took him over a
decade to write. It was based on Tolstoy's epic, War and
Peace. Napoleon's invasion of Russia was used by
Myra Mendelssohn (Prokofiev's librettist and wife) as
a historic counterpart to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet
Union. Thus, while the opera was set in the past, the
theme and message were vibrantly immediate. In a vast
work of five acts, which required two evenings for full
performance (and called for sixty characters), the com-
poser tried to depict, as he once explained "the Russian
people's struggle, their sufferings, wrath, courage, and
victory over the invaders. In this part, the people them-
selves constitute the hero of the opera in the person of
the peasants, of the popular militia, the regular Russian
army, the Cossacks and guerillas/' Big choral episodes
are combined with descriptive orchestral tone poems to
depict a mighty drama of war and its havoc. War and
Peace was first heard in Leningrad in 1946. But after
that, Prokofiev kept on revising the opera, virtually up
to the time of his death; the last and definitive version
was introduced in Leningrad in 1955.
Not even a giant creative figure like Prokofiev was
able to escape censure when the Central Committee de-
cided in 1948 to frown upon all forms of modernism in
music. All of Prokofiev's major works had used the
fullest resources of dissonances and modern techniques.
"Prokofiev's creative style" this was the way the official
indictment read "was formed to a considerable extent
during his years in the West, where the external novelty
of his manner pleased the narrow, bourgeois circle of
235
aesthetes, for whom he wrote his music. . . . For that
reason, Prokofiev was unable to reflect the greatness of
our people. The unfeeling essence of his music is alien
to our reality/*
Prokofiev might grumble to his fellow musicians at
a Moscow meeting that "they should stick to politics and
leave music to musicians/* But, like Shostakovich, he had
no Intention of defying the all-powerful State. He
forthwith despatched a humble apology to the head of
the General Assembly of Soviet composers. "Elements
of formalism were peculiar to my music as long as fifteen
or twenty years ago/' he confessed, repeating almost by
rote what was expected of him. "Apparently the infection
was caught from contact with Western Ideas/' Then he
swore to make amends. "Lucid melody, and as far as
possible a simple harmonic language, are elements which
I intend to use/'
And so, as atonement for his past sins, Prokofiev wrote
Winter-Bonfire, a vocal symphonic suite which was in
a pleasing lyric style but completely unoriginal and with-
out a suggestion of vitality; he also wrote an oratorio,
On Guard for Peace,, one of the few of his works to
suggest a hack, contrived for the purpose of condemning
"Western warmongers" and at the same time of singing
the praises of the "Soviet international peace move-
ment/' These two works did the trick. In 1951 they
received the Stalin Prize, and restored him to his exalted
station in Soviet music. In that same year his sixtieth
birthday was celebrated throughout the Soviet Union,
highlighted by a concert of his works broadcast through-
out the country. And when Prokofiev died of a cerebral
hemorrhage in Moscow on March 5, 1953, his passing
occasioned nationwide mourning.
236
IV
Shostakovich and Prokofiev are the leaders of Soviet
proletarian music. But this movement had followers as
well as leaders. These other composers were of lesser
stature, perhaps, but nevertheless achieved widespread
recognition in and out of the Soviet Union.
Aram Khatchaturian, born in Tiflis, Armenia on June
6, 1903, combined his Soviet proletarian tendencies with
Armenian folk songs and dances. Until his twentieth
year, the folk songs of Armenia were the only kind of
music he knew. Then, at twenty, he started music study
for the first time, at the Gniesen School of Music in
Moscow; after that he attended the Moscow Conserva-
tory. His success came between 1935 and 1937 with two
significant works: his First Symphony, and a piano con-
certo, the latter a rousing tour de force that became a
favorite with many piano virtuosos. In 1939, Khatcha-
turian received the Order of Lenin for his contributions
in developing Armenian music. After that he won the
Stalin Prize three times: for his Violin Concerto in 1941;
the ballet, Gayane, in 1942; and his Second Symphony
in 1946.
Into his music, Khatchaturian carried the intonations,
Oriental mannerisms, rhythmic peculiarities, striking con-
trasts of mood and tempo, and the improvisational char-
acter of melody which abound in Armenian folk music.
Khatchaturian can be effective both in his lyricism and
in his dramatic moods; his music, falling easily on ear
and heart, has an immediate impact.
Gayane, in 1942, was one of his most characteristic
scores. It was introduced in Molotov, the Soviet Union,
in 1942. Described as a "patriotic folk ballet," Gayane
carries us into a collective farm where Giko, a traitor
237
to his country, joins up with a group of smugglers, sets
fire to his farm, and tries to murder his wife, Gayane,
and their daughter. The farm, Gayane, and her daughter
are all saved by the hero, Kazakov. After Giko has been
brought to trial and sentenced to death, Gayane and
Kazakov, who are very much in love, are married.
The score from which come two delightful and fre-
quently played orchestral suites is rich with songs and
dances of an unmistakable Armenian character. One of
the most poignant in its lyricism is the "Lullaby," a
good example of the composer's pronounced gift at pro-
ducing a soaring melody. A dramatic and exciting page,
irresistible in its rhythmic force, is the "Saber Dance."
This has been heard so often in this country that there
is perhaps no single piece of Soviet music better known
to the average concertgoer. It has been repeatedly played
at concerts (both in its original orchestral version and
in a dynamic transcription for piano), has been heard
over radio and records, has even been adapted for a jazz
ensemble, and was featured in the motion picture, One,
Two, Three.
Another extraordinarily successful Soviet ballet came
from the pen of Reinhold Glire (1875-1956): The Red
Poppy written in 1927. As a matter of fact, this was the
first important Soviet ballet to use a revolutionary theme
as text. The setting is a Chinese port where the arrival
of a Soviet ship has a far-reaching influence on the lives
of the exploited coolies. Beautiful Tai-Hao falls in love
with the Soviet captain, and is inspired by him to fight
for the freedom of the Chinese masses. When she meets
death at the hands of the port commander, she hands
over to some Chinese children a red poppy, symbol of
liberty. With her dying breath she exhorts them to die
for their freedom. The first act rises to a climax with a
238
series of dances for sailors of various nationalities. Here
we find the thrice-familiar orchestral excerpt, "Russian
Sailors Dance" which has found a secure place in the
oi^chestral repertory.
In 1911 Gliere wrote a remarkable programmatic sym-
phony Ilia Mourmetz. Here the protagonist is an an-
cient Russian hero of the twelfth century who achieved
fabulous exploits in war and peace. The principal me-
lodic theme in this symphony is a chorale subject in free
meter with which the work opens and which recurs
throughout the work with variations; at the conclusion
of the symphony this subject is built with overwhelming
effect. Two other basic melodies describe two different
facets of Ilia's personality: One is heard in strings and
bassoons in the low register and has a moody character;
the other, more virile, is sounded by the trombones.
Dmitri Kabalevsky, born in St. Petersburg on Decem-
ber 30, 1904, has paid tribute to the political and social
ideologies as well as to the historic and cultural past of
the Russian people in several symphonies, concertos,
and chamber-music works. His Second Symphony has
enjoyed particular success. Introduced in 1934, it tells
of man's salvation through the building of a new society.
The symphony was followed by several equally impres-
sive compositions: the Second Piano Concerto, in 1935,
one of the composer's most frequently played works;
the opera Colas Breugnon, in 1938, whose sprightly over-
ture is a perennial favorite in our concert halls; and
the Violin Concerto, in 1948, dedicated to the "Soviet
youth," for which the composer received the Stalin Prize.
Nikolai Miaskovsky (1881-1950) was one of the most
prolific symphonists in twentieth-century music. He
239
wrote twenty-seven works In that form, many stimu-
lated by the accomplishments of the Soviet regime. His
Sixth Symphony was inspired by French revolutionary
songs; his twelfth, by a collective farm. His greatest sym-
phony is the twenty-first in F-sharp minor, written in
1940. More abstract than most of Miaskovsky's other
symphonies, it is a short single-movement composition
that opens in a contemplative vein but soon rises to
great emotional peaks before reverting to the introspec-
tive character of the first measures. This symphony
earned the Stalin Prize for its composer, an award he
received several times later: for his Ninth String Quartet;
his Cello Concerto; his Twenty-Seventh Symphony; and
his Thirteenth String Quartet.
240
CHAPTER
The Traditionalists
^N and off through the preceding pages we
have talked a good deal about composers
who have broken with the past to create new sounds, new
systems, new techniques. But not all modern music is
"modern." Much of it is traditional. A good many com-
posers still prefer to use the established forms, and to
follow accepted procedures. Their aim, like that of com-
posers before them, is to create beauty and to express
emotion.
"Music, I have always felt, should be the expres-
sion of a composer's complex personality; it should
not be arrived at cerebrally, tailor-made to fit certain
specifications. A composer's music should express
the country of his birth, his love affairs, his religion,
the books that have influenced him, the pictures
he loves. It should be the product of the sum total
of a composer's experience. ... I try to make my
music speak simply and directly that which is in my
heart at the time I am composing. If there is love
there, or bitterness, or sadness, or religion, these
moods become a part of my music and it becomes
either beautiful or sad or religious. For composing
music is as much a part of my living as breathing
and eating. I compose music because I must give
utterance to my feelings, just as I talk because I
must give utterance to my thoughts."
241
Words such as these might have been the credo of
a nineteenth-century Romanticist. Actually they were
spoken by a twentieth-century composer, perhaps the
most significant of the traditionalists: Serge Rachmani-
noff. Rachmaninoff wrote symphonies, concertos and
many shorter pieces for the piano. He evolved no new
forms; he did not experiment with new chords, scales,
intervals, or tonal combinations. He respected innova-
tion in others, but as far as he himself was concerned he
would have none of it. Instead, he leaned heavily upon
Tchaikovsky, whom he admired extremely. He followed
Tchaikovsky's lead in creating a lyricism that was filled
with sentiment and at times melancholy, and that was
Russian in personality. Tchaikovsky discovered no new
worlds of sound, and neither did Rachmaninoff after
him. But both opened new vistas of beauty for the mu-
sical art.
Rachmaninoff was born in Onega, in the district of
Novgorod, Russia, on April 1, 1873. The Rachmaninoffs
were prosperous landowners, until their estates went
into bankruptcy in 1882. At that time, the family moved
to St. Petersburg. There Serge entered the Conservatory.
But he was indolent, indifferent to classwork, lackadaisi-
cal about doing his lessons, often playing truant. In spite
of all this, he still managed to reveal a brilliant musical
intelligence. His grandmother wisely decided that a
change of scene might be beneficial. She brought him to
Moscow and placed him under the strict musical tutelage
of Nikolai Zverev, who prepared the boy for the Moscow
Conservatory. The young Rachmaninoff still continued
more or less on his shiftless and irresponsible ways, which,
fortunately for him, were partially negated by his natural
gifts. In spite of himself, he outstripped his friends in
class and became the recipient of honors. At one ex-
242
animation, playing one of his own piano pieces for a
jury that included Tchaikovsky, that master gave him the
highest possible rating. Soon afterward, In 1892, Rach-
maninoff received the gold medal for piano playing, and
his name was inscribed on the school's Honor Roll.
While still at the Conservatory as a student of composi-
tion, Rachmaninoff completed a piano piece that carried
his name throughout the civilized world: The Prelude
in C-sharp minor, one of a set of five piano works pub-
lished in 1892. Siloti performed It In London and set
into motion a wave of popularity that gave more per-
formances to the piece, and a greater sheet-music sale,
than any single twentieth-century composition. Rach-
maninoff, however, never profited from this success, since
he had failed to copyright the Prelude.
Compositions in more ambitious forms and with
greater scope included Aleko, a one-act opera performed
at the Bolshoi Theater In 1893, and his First Symphony,
introduced in St. Petersburg in 1897. The opera was a
success; the symphony, a disastrous failure. Always hy-
persensitive, extremely delicate in nervous makeup,
Rachmaninoff broke under the impact of the hammer
blows leveled on him by the critics. He suffered a nervous
breakdown which left him permanently scarred. From
this time on he was a composer who continually ques-
tioned his own ability, and a man who was perpetually
overwhelmed by melancholia.
It was some time before he found the courage to
continue composing. In this he was helped by Dr. Dahl,
a Moscow physician and a pioneer in the use of auto-
suggestion. Dr. Dahl subjected Rachmaninoff to psycho-
therapeutic treatment. Each day, for three months, he
kept repeating to his patient: "You will compose again.
You will write your concerto. You will work with great
243
facility. The concerto will be of excellent quality." The
treatment seemed to fill Rachmaninoff with the necessary
courage to return to work. He completed a new piano
concerto, his second. When he himself introduced it with
the Moscow Philharmonic in 1901, it was a triumph.
As it turned out, this is Rachmaninoff's most celebrated
composition; possibly it is the best loved concerto
written in the twentieth century. Dramatic in its force,
passionate in its speech, and highly emotional, this
lyrical music never fails to affect audiences favorably.
(One of its most beautiful melodies was made into the
American popular song, "Full Moon and Empty Arms/')
After the success of the Second Piano Concerto, Rach-
maninoff followed three careers in music. He became
one of the world's foremost piano virtuosos in some
respects second to none and in this capacity he toured
the world many times. From 1904 to 1906 he was the
principal conductor of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow;
after that he made many guest appearances with major
orchestras in and out of Russia in performances of his
symphonic works. And, of course, he kept on producing
major works. Two major works for orchestra came in
1907: the Second Symphony, the most famous of Rach-
maninoff's three works in that form; and a sensitive and
at times Impressionist tone poem, The Isle of the Dead,
inspired by a painting by Arnold Bocklin.
The first of his many tours of the United States took
place in 190910. On this occasion he gave the world
premiere of the Third Piano Concerto which he had
written expressly for this American visit.
Completely unsympathetic to the "anarchistic up-
heaval" in his country, and revolted by the death and
destruction he saw everywhere in Russia, Rachmaninoff
decided in 1917 to leave the land of his birth forever.
244
For a year he lived In Scandinavia, and in 1918 he es-
tablished his permanent winter home in the United
States. Summers were spent in a villa near Paris, and
after 1932, In a beautiful home on the edge of Lake
Lucerne in Switzerland. He continued to tour as concert
pianist, and he never stopped making music. Among the
works he now completed were his Third Symphony,
his Fourth Piano Concerto, and a large work for piano
and orchestra, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
But his heart was heavy. He missed Russia. Honored
though he was everywhere, he felt he was a stranger
without roots. He also knew he would not live to see
Russia again.
Toward the end of his life, Rachmaninoff made his
home in Beverly Hills, California. "This," he said when
he entered his new abode, "is my last home on earth.
Here I will die/' He was embarking on a new extended
tour of the United States when he collapsed in New
Orleans. Brought back to California, he died there on
March 28, 1943.
II
There is a good deal of Brahms' respect for Classical
form combined with strong Romantic tendencies in the
music of Sir Edward Elgar. He is often described as
England's greatest composer since the seventeenth-cen-
tury composer Henry Purcell. Elgar lived to see three
decades of the twentieth century, but musically speaking
he never left the nineteenth century. We hear in his
music the echoes of Brahms, Delibes, and Wagner. He
was the musical spokesman of the Edwardian era. He
wrote with an excess of emotion that sometimes touched
the sentimental, and with a passion and ardor we as-
sociate with the last century. But Elgar's music also
245
had dignity, a nobility of style, an elevation of thought,
and an infectious charm. For these reasons his greatest
compositions enjoy high rank even though they may seem
to lack a strong personal identity.
He was born in the town of Broadheath, near Worces-
ter, England, on June 2, 1857. He was the son of an
excellent musician. Father Elgar played the organ in
the Worcester Cathedral; was a violinist in a local or-
chestra; and was the proprietor of the town music shop.
Inevitably, the boy Elgar became music-conscious early
in life. He learned to love the organ works of Bach while
sitting at his father's feet in the Cathedral organ loft. He
became acquainted with symphonies and operas by read-
ing the scores in his father's shop; he learned musical
theory by memorizing textbooks.
His father wanted him to be a lawyer, and with this
aim in view he was sent to London. But his passion for
music soon made him abandon law and return home.
There he was indefatigable making music: playing the
violin in an orchestra; becoming a member of a wind
quintet; giving violin recitals in small auditoriums; some-
times even playing the organ for Cathedral services. For
a brief period he returned to London to study the violin
with Adolf Pollitzer.
He was without direction or purpose in his music until
1889 when he married Caroline Alice Roberts. His wife
convinced him not to scatter his energies so recklessly
and to concentrate his enormous drive and industry on
composition. Elgar and his wife left Worcester and for
a time lived in London. After that they settled in Mai-
vern, where Elgar completed several choral works that
were performed at English festivals.
Two major works written between 1899 and 1900 made
him famous. One was the Variations on an Original
246
Theme for orchestra, better known as the Enigma Varia-
tions. It was introduced in London under Hans Richter's
direction, on June 19, 1899. Elgar later revised this com-
position extensively and directed the new version at the
Worcester Festival. From the beginning, the Enigma
Variations was popular with audiences; it was, In fact,
the first symphonic work by an Englishman to acquire
permanency in the symphonic repertory. Elgar intended
it as a tonal portrait of fourteen friends and relatives,
each variation a character sketch to which he appended
either initials or nicknames for identification. The iden-
tity of each of these personalities is one of the reasons
why Elgar referred to this work as an "enigma." Another,
often cited in program notes, is that Elgar used a "hidden
theme," never actually played, but frequently suggested;
it serves as a "silent accompaniment" to each varia-
tion. (Some suggest that this silent theme is "Auld Lang
Syne," others that it is a motif from Wagner's Parsifal)
Whatever the enigma, the work as a whole is stately
music in which a highly expressive melody (presented
by the strings in the opening measures) undergoes four-
teen variations. The work rises to a peak of eloquence
in Elgar's portraits of his wife and his friend August
Jaeger, and in the self-portrait with which the work
concludes.
Successful though the composition was from its in-
ception, it was eventually outdistanced in public esteem
by The Dream of Gerontius, an oratorio based on the
poem by Cardinal Newman. The work was first given at
the Birmingham Festival on October 3, 1900. English
audiences had been partial to oratorios since the time
of Handel, and they embraced The Dream of Gerontius
with the ardor they had previously reserved only for
Handel's Messiah and Mendelssohn's Elijah. Almost
247
Wagnerian in Idiom, The Dream is suffused with the
poetic and touched with the mystic. Richard Strauss did
not hesitate to proclaim it a "masterpiece" when he
first heard it at the Lower Rhine Festival in 1901. Re-
peated hearings on the concert stage and in recordings
have fully confirmed Strauss' lofty estimate.
In the Enigma Variations and The Dream of Geron-
tins, Elgar was the unashamed Romanticist, drawing his
material from the depths of his heart. He remained the
nineteenth-century Romanticist in subsequent works,
of which the most significant are a violin concerto, two
symphonies, a 'cello concerto, and several delightful
shorter orchestral compositions including the Cockaigne
Overture, In the South, and the Introduction and Allegro
for string quartet and orchestra.
But Elgar was an Englishman as well as a Romantic.
As Basil Maine, the biographer of Elgar, has written:
"In a broad sense, the First Symphony can be regarded
;as a salute to national heritage and attainment, the
Second Symphony as a last exulting in the glories of an
epoch which has already closed, and the Violoncello
Concerto as a lament for the irrevocable years. They are
respectively a paean, an epic, and an elegy/*
But his national pride is felt even more strongly in
many of the functional pieces he created for State oc-
casions; and it is felt most strongly of all in his set of
five marches, Pomp and Circumstance, written between
1901 and 1930 to prove that march music could be writ-
ten with the most serious artistic intent. The second of
these inarches, in A minor, is the most famous. Its ma-
jestic main melody for strings later used as music for
Laurence Houseman's patriotic poem, Land of Hope
and Glory is almost as celebrated an English patriotic
hymn as "God Save the King."
248
As England's foremost twentieth-century composer,
a distinction disputed by few, Elgar was the recipient
of many high honors. He was knighted in 1904, was made
Master of the King's Music in 1924, and in 1931 became
a baronet. He died in Worcester, England, on February
23,1934.
Ill
Among the American composers preferring to travel
a traditional route is Howard Hanson. Probably nobody
has done more through the years to promote every facet
of modern musical expression, or to encourage the
avant-garde tendencies of the younger men, than Han-
son as conductor and the director of the Eastman School.
Yet in the privacy of his own study, while setting down
on paper his own musical thoughts, he has been faithful
to Romantic language within a Classical structure. Thus,
one of his most popular works is his Second Symphony,
the "Romantic," written in 1930 on a commission from
the Boston Symphony to help celebrate its fiftieth an-
niversary. This is music of a highly emotional character,
its emphasis placed on pleasant sounding melodies and
harmonies. But Hanson's pronounced Romanticism is
also combined with a strong Nordic strain which makes
its presence felt in exotic melodies of modal character
and the subdued colorations of some of his harmonic
writing. Thus, too, another of his symphonieshis first,
completed in Rome in 1923 is subtitled "Nordic."
Similarly Nordic in color and style are some of his early
tone poems (including North and West) and choral
music (such as Hymn for Pioneers), all of which earned
for their composer the sobriquet, "the American Sibe-
lius." Yet whether he is Romantic or Nordic, or both, his
works are unmistakably American. It is music, as Han-
249
son himself once said, "of the plains rather than of the
city" reflecting "something of the broad prairies of my
native Nebraska."
He was born in Wahoo on October 28, 1896, and
received his early academic and musical education at
the Luther School of Music in Wahoo, and Wahoo High
School Later he studied at the Institute of Musical Art
in New York and at Northwestern University. When he
was twenty he was appointed professor of theory and
composition at the College of the Pacific in San Jose,
California; from 1918 to 1920 he was Dean of its Con-
servatory of Fine Arts. In 1920, Hanson was the first
American to get a fellowship in the then recently in-
stituted American Academy of Rome. He spent three
years in Italy years of study and creation. During this
period he completed a tone poem Lux Aeterna and his
First Symphony, both introduced in Rome.
When he returned to the United States in 1924, he
conducted the American premiere of his First Symphony
in Rochester, N.Y. Soon after that he received an ap-
pointment as director of the Eastman School of Music
which he has held with pre-eminent distinction. Since
1925, Hanson has also led an annual festival of American
music in Rochester: It has been estimated that over a
thousand works by more than seven-hundred and fifty
composers were heard at these concerts.
Hanson's Third Symphony, completed between 1936
and 1937, pays tribute to the valiant pioneers who settled
the first Swedish community on the Delaware in 1638.
The Fourth Symphony, in 1944, earned for Hanson the
Pulitzer Prize in music. This is a deeply emotional work
with strong religious overtones inspired by the death of
the composer's father. For its four movements the Latin
titles of the Requiem Mass are utilized. The Fifth
250
Symphony, in 1954, is even more strongly religious both
in subject and character. Entitled Sinfonia sacra it relates
the story of the first Easter as described in The Gospel
According to St. John. The composer's aim, in his own
words, was "to invoke some of the atmosphere of tragedy
and triumph, mysticism and affirmation of this story
which is the essential symbol of the Christian faith."
Among Hanson's many other works is the American
opera, Merry Mount, whose first stage performance was
given by the Metropolitan Opera in New York on Febru-
ary 10, 1934. Based on a poem by Richard Stokes, which
in turn derived its subject from Nathaniel Hawthorne's
story The Maypole of Merry Mount, Merry Mount was
a highly melodic work with a strong bent for old-style
lyricism, and with an occasional excursion into the kind
of modal writing that prevailed in old American Puri-
tan hymns.
IV
While Samuel Barber has never disdained to use mod-
ern harmonies, rhythms and other advanced contem-
porary idioms, he may well be placed in the American
traditionalist camp by virtue of his respect for Classical
structure, his use of lyricism, and his strong Romantic
bent. The nephew of Louise Homer, the celebrated con-
tralto of the Metropolitan Opera during its "golden age,"
Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on
March 9, 1910. Precocious in music, he began composi-
tion when he was seven; at twelve he played the organ
at church services. In 1924 he entered the then recently
founded Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where
he studied composition with Rosario Scalero and piano
with Isabella Vengerova. Winning the Bearns Award for
a violin sonata in 1928 provided some testimony to his
251
creative talent. Even stronger evidence came from two
excellent orchestral works: the Overture to the School
for Scandal, introduced in Philadelphia in 1933, and
Music for a Scene from Shelley, first heard at a concert
of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1935. Be-
tween 1935 and 1937, Barber traveled in Europe by
virtue of two Pulitzer Traveling Scholarships and the
American Prix de Rome. While in Italy he completed his
First Symphony, introduced in Rome under Molinari's
direction in 1936. This one-movement work became the
first composition by an American composer given at the
world-famous Salzburg Festival, a performance that took
place in the summer of 1937, Artur Rodzinski conduct-
ing. Barber's reputation achieved an even more solid
foundation when, in 1938, Toscanini introduced two of
his orchestral pieces with the NBC Symphony. One was
the beautiful Adagio for Strings, transcribed by the com-
poser for string orchestra from one of the movements
of an early string quartet. Here a serene melody, sounded
by the first violins, and commented upon by the other
strings, is treated canonically, and then built up to a
powerful climax. The other work was the Essay No. L
This work was an attempt by the composer to carry
over into music the literary form of the essay by en-
larging upon some reflective subjects in an improvisa-
tional manner. The Adagio and this first Essay are still
Barber's most frequently played compositions.
Between 1939 and 1942, Barber was a faculty member
of the Curtis Institute in the department of orchestra-
tion. He left Curtis to join the Army Air Force. While
serving in the Air Force he wrote a most unusual work,
the Second Symphony, in which sights and sounds fa-
miliar to air pilots are reproduced. In the second move-
ment Barber recreated the staccato sounds of a radio
252
beam on a special electronic instrument. In the third
movement, a rapid figure for strings depicts a plane
descending to the ground. The style of this symphony
is discordant and rhythmic, in sharp contrast to Barber's
earlier lyrical and Romantic compositions. In 1947 Bar-
ber revised this symphony to eliminate some of the more
realistic passages.
After leaving the Air Force, Barber settled In Mt
Kisco, New York, in a house which he shared with the
opera composer, Gian Carlo Menotti. Honor after honor
helped to confirm his significance in American music:
the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947; the New York Music
Critics Award for his 'Cello Concerto; most significantly,
the Pulitzer Prize in music for his opera, Vanessa, libretto
by Menotti.
The opera, Barber's first, was introduced by the Metro-
politan Opera in New York on January 15, 1958. Later
the same year, it was given at the Salzburg Festival
the first American opera to earn this distinction. The
score combines Barber's well-known lyrical powers with
dramatic strength and an uncanny gift for projecting
mood and atmosphere. Here the Romanticist never sac-
rifices the traditional values of melody and harmony to
attain his powerful theatrical effects. The setting is a
Scandinavian city in 1905. In her baronial manor, the
heroine, Vanessa, has been waiting twenty years for the
return of her lover. But her lover is dead. His son, how-
ever, comes to visit Vanessa. Renouncing his own sweet-
heart, he substitutes for his father and runs off with
Vanessa.
Among Barber's other works, mention should be made
of the ballet Cave of the Heart, based on the legend of
Medea and Jason. Introduced in 1946, it was extensively
revised a year later. Other impressive achievements in-
253
elude a remarkable piano sonata In 1949 which the critic
of the New York Post said "encompasses realism and
fantasy, conflict and resolution, poetry and power*'; the
choral Prayers for Kierkegaard; and Summer Music, for
wind quintet.
254
CHAPTER 14
The Eclectics
THERE are many composers both In Europe
and America whose style is a cloth of many
colors and textures. Sometimes in different compositions,
sometimes in the very same one, these composers travel
with remarkable agility from one pole of expression to
its very opposite: from the very old to the very new;
from Romanticism to Neo-Classicism; from Impression-
ism to Expressionism; from austere Classicism to jazz.
These composers like to take from each style that which
best serves their artistic purpose at the moment. The
composer's personality becomes the catalytic agent to
combine these varied, often opposing, elements into a
single compound.
Leonard Bernstein whose First Symphony, "Jere-
miah," has already been commented upon is such an ec-
lectic. Before he wrote "Jeremiah/ 1 he had produced a
clarinet sonata in the Neo-Classical idiom of Hindemith.
"Jeremiah," which followed, represented for Bernstein
a completely different world. So did the music that suc-
ceeded "Jeremiah": the ballet, Fancy Free, with its jazz
melodies, its bouncy rhythms, its jazz colors. Bernstein's
Second Symphony, "The Age of Anxiety," fuses some of
the elements found in his earlier works (Neo-Classicism,
Romanticism, jazz) with polytonality, unresolved dis-
sonances, and even the twelve-tone row. Yet so superb a
technician is Bernstein, and so articulate is he in every-
255
thing he Is trying to say, that every style he undertakes
becomes completely convincing.
II
Two of the most successful and significant opera com-
posers to appear on the musical scene since the end of
World War II are eclectics: Benjamin Britten in Eng-
land, and Gian Carlo Menotti in the United States. Each
is extremely sensitive to the demands of the stage and to
the most exacting requirements of their text. Each com-
poser never hesitates to use any musical equivalent to
reflect every change of emotion, every nuance, every
dramatic episode in their plays. Thus often within one
and the same opera, Britten and Menotti continually
change styles and techniques to invoke realism, mysti-
cism, broad comedy, poetic moods, and grim and searing
drama.
On several occasions, in preceding chapters, we had
opportunities to remark some of the trends in opera
since Wagner: notably, the Impressionism of Debussy's
Pelleas and Melisande, the Expressionism of Alban
Berg's Wozzeck, the Realism of Richard Strauss* Salome,
the Primitivism of Carl Orff's Trionfi, the American folk-
lorism of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, and so on. But
there were several other tendencies deserving mentioa
In Italy, at the close of the nineteenth century, opera
was caught up in a movement known as Verismo. In
Verismo, opera librettos departed from the costume
plays or historical themes so greatly favored by earlier
opera composers to relate everyday problems in familiar
settings. Verismo became popular in 1890 with Cavalleria
Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945); the movement
gained further stimulus in 1892 from Ruggiero Leon-
cavallo (1858-1919), composer of Pagliacci; and it reached
256
its zenith with Giacomo Puccini (1858-1919), whose La
Boheme in 1896, Tosca in 1900, and Madama Butterfly in
1904 are the most important, and the most successful Ital-
ian operas since Verdi. Puccini's canvas may have been a
limited one. He himself once said that "the only music I
can make is of small things." But though he worked with
miniatures, his creations are integrated masterworks un-
forgettable for their sweet and personal lyricism; for their
gentle and tender moods; for their subtlety of harmonic
and orchestral writing; for their elegance of style and won-
derful sense of the theater; and for their remarkable capac-
ity to project three-dimensional female characters.
In France, a counterpart to Verismo could be found
in 1900, in Louise, a naturalistic opera by Gustave Char-
pentier (1860-1956). With Montmartre in Paris as the
setting (toward the close of the nineteenth century),
and with its main characters drawn from seamstresses,
other plebeians and Bohemian artists, Louise was filled
with realistic touches of all kinds and socialist view-
points. The central story concerns the love affair of
Julien, a painter, and Louise, a seamstress. The idea
the play tries to bring into the operatic theater for the
first time is the right of a woman to live her own life
without interference from parents or society.
Ill
The Verismoists and the naturalists produced a hand-
ful of genuine operatic masterworks in the twentieth
century. The eclectics, of whom Britten is undoubtedly
the most gifted and celebrated, made no less a contribu-
tion.
Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, on November
22, 1913, Britten revealed such a remarkable childhood
gift for music that comparison between his musical ex-
257
ploits and those of Mozart was inevitable. Britten was
hardly more than two when he first became conscious
that music could come from a piano. At seven he could
read the scores of symphonies and operas as if they were
fairy tales. He was only nine when he finally embarked
upon composition with an adult seriousness of purpose,
producing a string quartet and an oratorio. Nothing
seemed capable of stemming the tide of his production.
By the time he was sixteen he had written six quartets,
ten piano sonatas, a symphony, and many shorter instru-
mental and vocal works. He used some of the thematic
material from this juvenilia in 1934 for one of his earliest
mature creations, Simple Symphony.
All this composing was done while he was deep in
the study of all phases of his beloved art. While attending
the Gresham School, in Holt, Norfolk, he studied com-
position with Frank Bridge; from 1930 to 1933 he at-
tended the Royal College of Music, where his teachers
included John Ireland and Arthur Benjamin.
As an avowed pacifist, Britten left Europe just before
the outbreak of World War II and spent several years
in the United States. Here he completed his first opera,
Paul Bunyan, not a particularly impressive achievement;
also an orchestral work that was impressive, the Sinfonia
da Requiem, inspired by the death of his father. It was in-
troduced by the New York Philharmonic under John Bar-
birolliinl94L
By 1942, England was suffering devastation from the
blitz attacks of the Nazis. Though still convinced of the
futility of warand still refusing to admit any validity
for mass murder Britten now felt impelled to go home
and see what he could do to help his stricken country-
men in areas outside the battle front. He became an
indefatigable morale force by giving concerts in hospi-
258
tals, bomb-proof shelters, and villages ravaged by air
attack. Despite the exacting demands made by these du-
ties upon his time and energiesand despite the absence
of serenity in time of warBritten nevertheless managed
to work upon a new opera commissioned by the Kous-
sevitzky Foundation in the United States. He worked
upon his opera through the war years, completing it
several months before V-E day. It was this opera, Peter
Grimes, that first made him a world figure in music.
Its world premiere at Sadler's Wells Theater in London
on June 7, 1945 was a red-letter day in more ways than
one. It marked the first reopening of a theater that had
been bombed out of existence by the Nazis five years
earlier. It was the first major artistic event in London
since the end of the European phase of the conflict. It
was the first important new opera by an Englishman
since 1939. Long before the premiere, tickets for all
scheduled performances were sold out; for the premi&re
itself, queues encircled the theater for cheap seats and
standing room hours before curtain time. This event
excited so much curiosity and interest that most of the
world's leading newspapers had correspondents on hand
to send in a report.
Perhaps anything less than a masterwork would have
been anti-climactic. Fortunately, Peter Grimes was a mas-
terwork whose dramatic thrust had a sledgehammer force.
Between each act, flowers were showered upon the stage.
After the final curtain the approval of the audience
was a five-minute thunder. The curtain calls for the com-
poser seemed endless. And the critics were as excited as
the audience. Ernest Newman described the opera as
"a work of great originality"; a correspondent for The
New York Times called it "a milestone in the history
of British music."
259
Peter Grimes soon traveled through most of the civil-
ized world. In less than a year it had been given over
a hundred performances in eight foreign translations,
in Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Hun-
gary, and Germany. Its American premiere took place
at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Massachusetts, on August 6,
1946, Leonard Bernstein conducting. It was first per-
formed at the Metropolitan Opera on February 12,
1948.
Based on a poem by George Crabbe, "The Borough"
(adapted for the operatic stage by Montague Slater),
Peter Grimes strongly reflects Britten's own pronounced
social consciousness. The play pointed up the struggle
of reason against hate and bigotry; the conflict of the in-
dividual against hostile masses. Peter Grimes, an Eng-
lish fisherman, is unjustly accused of having killed his
apprentice. Though found innocent in the courts of law,
Grimes is never completely cleared in the minds of his
fellow villagers, who henceforth regard him with suspi-
cion and malice. When Peter hires a new hand, his
neighbors become convinced that in time this apprentice
will also be murdered by his employer. To save the life
of the boy, they descend in a mass upon Peter Grimes
in his lonely hut. Seeing the mob approaching, Peter
and his apprentice flee, and while running the appren-
tice stumbles, falls and meets a fatal injury. The mob,
now convinced that Peter Grimes is a murderer, is de-
termined to take justice in its own hands. Fear and anger
unbalance Peter's mind to the point where he seeks es-
cape from his neighbors in death. He goes out to sea to
sink in his boat.
The elements in Britten's immensely effective score
are many and varied. Dissonance and polytonality
heighten the tensions and underscore the climactic scenes;
260
choral numbers in the style of sea chanteys provide the
proper atmospheric background for a play about the sea
and fishermen; orchestral tone painting is vivid in its
realism in setting forth a program; beautiful arias ac-
centuate emotion on the one hand while, on the other,
stark lyricism almost simulates speech for the sake of
dramatic effect; the most complicated harmonic and
contrapuntal schemes alternate with many light mo-
ments. But here, as later, Britten proves himself to be a
master craftsman who can fuse diverse material in a
drama of inescapable power, yet for all that, a drama
that also has compassion and tenderness.
Britten's eclecticism was proved not only by the varied
means he employed in this opera, but also in the variety
of subject, style and treatment of his later works for
the stage. Where Peter Grimes was a work of Wagnerian
dimensions, The Rape of Lucretia (Britten's next opera
in 1946), was an economical work of chamber-music
dimensions. The cast had only six principals; each of
the two so-called "choruses" consists merely of a
single person, one male, and one female, to interpret
the action of the play. The harmonic and contrapuntal
writing are reduced to essentials; scoring and the emo-
tional pitch are subdued; the style is primarily lyrical.
Then came Albert Herring in 1947 with still another
approach, still another style. Albert Herring is witty to
the point of burlesque; in format it is reminiscent of
opera buffa, partial to formal arias, duets and ensemble
numbers. Albert Herring was also of smaller size and
scope as to cast, orchestra, and scenic requirements.
In his next important opera Britten returned to a
large canvas, Billy Budd, in 1951, like Peter Grimes,
was a story of the sea, and a bitter commentary on in-
justice and of man's capacity for cruelty. The story came
261
from Herman Melville's novel, adapted by E. M. Forster
and Eric Crozier. The action takes place aboard an eight-
eenth-century British vessel. Billy Budd, a happy-go-
lucky, lovable sailor, is hated by John Claggert, master-
of-arms, to the point where the latter invents false charges
of treason against his enemy. Aroused to blind and un-
controlled fury by this unjust charge, Billy attacks and
kills Claggert For this he is court-martialed and sen-
tenced to hang. Only one officer, Captain Vere, is sym-
pathetic, understanding full well the provocation that
had led Billy to commit murder.
Billy Budd is an opera of the most ambitious structural
dimensions, one enlisting extensive musical and stage
forces. In this, as well as in its overall thesis of man's
inhumanity to man, it bears a close kinship with Peter
Grimes. But there are several technical details that set
Billy Budd apart from the earlier opera. The melodic
line is made up almost entirely of recitatives, song being
virtually eliminated except for a few minor sections. The
chorus is exclusively male. And the musical interest is
subsidiary to the dramatic. Britten utilizes every resource
at his command to further the movement of the plot
and to strengthen the delineation of character; he is
much less concerned with the interest or appeal of
musical sound as such.
This greater interest in dramatic values than in mu-
sical ones is characteristic of The Turn of the Screw,
written in 1954. The libretto by Mufanwy Piper is based
on an eerie ghost story by Henry James in which a theme
close to Britten's heartthe struggle between good and
evil, with evil triumphantis personified in two children.
They are haunted by the ghosts of two former servants,
and are attended to by a neurotic governess. The little
262
girl becomes a victim of uncontrolled terror, while the
boy goes to his death.
The style is intimate; the opera requires only six voices
and a chamber orchestra of only fifteen players. Never-
theless the score is sufficiently elastic to range from
Impressionism to Expressionism, from the poetic to the
realistic. An unusual feature of this opera is the intro-
duction of an orchestral prelude preceding each of the
sixteen scenes to comment upon what is happening on
the stage. All these preludes are based on a twelve-note
theme built from fourths and thirds.
A somewhat more romantic and lyrical approach can
be found in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1960. This
opera demonstrates a remarkable capacity on Britten's
part to find the proper musical equivalent for three
different groups of characters: the fairies, the mechan-
icals, and the lovers. He preserves, as Eric Walter White
has noted, "their musical identity while subordinating
their development to the plan of the opera as a musical
whole."
Britten has also been an eclectic in his orchestral music.
The early composition, Variations on a Theme by Frank
Bridge, for example, ranges in feeling and emotion from
a funeral march to a gay waltz, from burlesque and
parody to the sentimental and the dramatic, from lyri-
cism to strident dissonances. In a similarly wide arc of mood
and technique is his delightful First Piano Concerto,
which opens with a classical toccata but in a modern
idiom, continuing with a waltz and an impromptu, and
ending with a march. In the song cycle Les Illumina-
tions, for high voice and string orchestra, Britten adapts
his style flexibly to meet the requirements of ten deca-
dent poems by the French Symbolist, Rimbaud, with
263
their delicate imagery and sensitive suggestions. In A
Ceremony of Carols, for treble voices and harp obbligato,
Britten tries to recreate in modern terminology the style
of the medieval plain chant. In Spring Symphony, a
large work for chorus, soloists and orchestra, we get a
setting of fourteen English poems of past and present
about Spring; the musical style here is at times reminis-
cent of an Elizabethan madrigal, and at times of a Ro-
mantic Lied.
Britten's most popular orchestral work, The Young
Person's Guide to the Orchestra, is consistently tuneful.
This composition describes the instruments of the or-
chestra, and for this purpose Britten uses a theme by
Henry Purcell and subjects it to thirteen variations. In
each of the variations, a different instrument, or group
of instruments, is featured prominently. In the conclud-
ing fugue, these instruments reappear in the order in
which they had first made their entry in the variations.
IV
Gian Carlo Menottf s eclecticism carries him from a
Puccini-like lyricism to the most advanced avant-garde
idioms. He can be romantic or mystic, esoteric or pop-
ular, lyrical or dissonant, impressionist or broadly satir-
ical. Yet he never seems to sacrifice unity of concept, or
coherence of dramatic or musical viewpoint. With his
wonderful feeling for effective theater he always seems
to find the mot juste for every stage requirement. His
music in itself is rarely original, or for that matter con-
sistently distinctive. But married to a play its emotional
and dramatic force is irresistible. For Menotti above
everything else is a man of the theater. He writes his
own librettos, serves as his own stage and casting direc-
tor, and is personally involved in every phase of the
264
production. As a man of the theater he has made his
operas not just a vehicle for musical invention, but a vi-
brant and pulsating stage experience. Perhaps for this
reason he has commanded a larger and more varied au-
dience than any other opera composer since 1900. This
popularity is not confined to the opera house but ex-
tends to the Broadway theater, to television, to motion
pictures, and recordings.
Menotti was born in Cadagliano, Italy, on July 7, 1911,
to wealthy parents well able both by their financial and
cultural backgrounds to nurse his immense musical pre-
cociousness. At four he started taking piano lessons; by
the time he was six he was inventing his own melodies.
When his mother presented him with a puppet theater
on his ninth birthday he not only wrote his own plays
for that little stage but also his own music. He also de-
vised the sets and costumes, and contrived the stage
effects. His first full-length opera for a more normal
stage was written in 1922, when he was eleven.
His family moved to Milan where Gian Carlo pursued
his academic education, and from 1923 to 1928 attended
the conservatory. During this period he completed a
second full-length opera besides making numerous ap-
pearances as pianist in the fashionable salons. In 1928
he came to the United States, enrolling in the Curtis
Institute of Philadelphia as a pupil in composition of
Rosario Scalero. He also had to learn a new language-
English and he did so by going to the movies four times
a week.
His first mature opera was a one-act opera buffa, Ame-
lia Goes to the Ball, produced in Philadelphia and New
York by the forces of the Curtis Institute under Fritz
Reiner in 1937. Menotti here wrote his libretto in Ital-
ian (subsequently translated into English by George
265
Mead); henceforth he would write his librettos in Eng-
lish. Amelia is a fluffy, witty diversion about a girl who
is being delayed from going to a fashionable ball in
Milan by a dispute between her husband and her lover.
Upset by their refusal to come to terms, she throws a
vase at her husband and calls to the police to arrest her
lover. With the husband in hospital, and her lover in
jail, Amelia can proceed to her ball in the company of
the police officer. The musical format is a traditional
one with formal arias, romanzas, duets, trios, and recita-
tives; the style is consistently gay and tuneful, though
at times piquantly spiced with the salt and pepper of
discords and polytonality.
Menotti was visiting his native city in Italy during the
summer of 1937 when the local postmistress came breath-
lessly to his door waving a telegram and yelling "II
Metropolitano!" She came bearing the news that the
Metropolitan Opera had accepted Amelia for its 1937-8
season. Several years later, the Metropolitan commis-
sioned Menotti to write a new opera; unfortunately,
this opera, The Island God> produced on February 20,
1942, was a dismal failure.
Meanwhile, Menotti had written a second opera in
the sprightly and light-hearted manner of Amelia, ex-
pressly for radio transmission. The Old Maid and the
Thief j commissioned by the National Broadcasting Com-
pany, was a comic opera in a single act; it was first broad-
cast on April 22, 1939. A decade later it received in
Philadelphia its first stage presentation. The subtitle gives
a clue to the slight plot. It reads: "A virtuous woman
makes a thief of an honest man." An old maid welcomes
a tramp into her house as a permanent lodger, only to
have him rob her of her most precious belongings and
her attractive servant girl as well.
266
Thus far Menotti had proved that his gifts lay ex-
clusively with comedy; his only tragic opera, The Island
God> had been a stodgy and insufferably dull effort. With
a new opera written on a commission from the Ditson
Fund between 1945 and 1946, Menotti returned to a
tragic libretto with a weighty and at times somber treat-
mentbut this time with uncommon success. The Me-
dium, first heard in New York on May 8, 1946, at Colum-
bia Universitylater transferred to Broadway for an ex-
tended run in 1947 proved for the first time Menotti's
far-reaching dramatic powers. The macabre play is built
around a fake medium, Flora, who perpetrates her fraud-
ulent seances with the assistance of a mute, Toby, and
her daughter, Monica, with whom Toby is in love. Dur-
ing one of her sessions, Flora becomes panic-stricken
when she feels a clammy hand gripping her throat; she
shrieks out the confession that she is just a fake. Her
terror leads her to excessive drinking. In one of her
drunken stupors she suspects Toby of trying to do away
with her, and kills him while he is hiding in a closet.
For such eerie, high-tensioned, and melodramatic pro-
ceedings, Menotti often had to alternate his Puccini-
like lyricism with a severe kind of song-speech; his lighter
moods had to make way for the harsh, strident sounds
of dissonant chords and polytonal combinations.
When The Medium was transferred from Columbia
University to Broadway, the audience response was ini-
tially negative despite the high opinion of the critics.
Opera on Broadway had never done particularly well,
and Broadway theatergoers avoided The Medium. But
slowly, by word of mouth, the report began to spread
that The Medium was superb theater and enthralling
entertainment. Each time the producers announced a
closing date, a sudden spurt at the box office impelled
267
them to keep the opera running. At the end of that sea-
son It had had an impressive run and had made a sizable
profit. Since then, The Medium has become one of the
most frequently played American operas. It has been
given over a thousand performances throughout the
United States, semi-professional as well as professional.
It has been seen in London, Paris, and Italy. It was also
recorded in its entirety, and made into a stirring motion
picture.
Perhaps as a temporary respite from the grimness of
The Medium, Menotti briefly reverted to levity with
The Telephone in 1946. This is a one-act trifle which
the composer himself described most aptly as "a skit
with music/' Only two characters are involved: a young
girl addicted to talking on the telephone, and her frantic
lover who is trying to propose to her between telephone
calls. He finally leaves her, rushes to the corner drug
store, and proposes to her by phone. The whole thing
is a tongue4n-the-cheek affair in which the sprightly
descriptive music nimbly matches the wit and satire of
the text.
Then, having caught his breath (so to speak), Menotti
returned to tragedy with The Consul, an opera that
brought him the Pulitzer Prize in music and the Drama
Critics Circle Award for drama during its successful
Broadway run beginning on March 15, 1950. The Consul
is set in an unidentified European police state where a
woman haunts the offices of the local consul trying to get
a visa for a foreign free country so that she can join her
husband. She never gets that visa, and ends up a suicide.
The consul himself never appears as a character, but
looms in the background as a foreboding deus ex ma-
china. In most of the play, Menotti exploits to the full
his leanings towards the macabre. Yet he fills both play
268
and music with a wonderful compassion which we do
not encounter in The Medium. He writes with an over-
whelming sense of pity for the inextricable forces that
enmesh his principal characters and finally crush them.
As Olin Downes wrote in his review in The New York
Times: "He has produced an opera of eloquence, mo-
mentousness, and intensity of expression unequalled
by any native composer . . . written from the heart,
with a blazing sincerity and passion of human under-
standing/'
While tragedy and the macabre continued to absorb
Menotti's creative interest after The Consul, he has also
tilled other fields with equal success. For television,
Menotti completed in 1951 a radiant religious legend
with music, Amahl and the Night Visitors, inspired by
a Flemish painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Introduced
over the NBC television network on Christmas Eve of
1951, Amahl has since become an annual Yule tide tele-
vision feature. It tells in expressive recitatives, extended
songs, and deeply affecting choral numbers, the story
of a crippled boy at whose hovel arrive the Three Wise
Men enroute to the Manger in Bethlehem. The crippled
boy has only a single gift to bestow on the Holy Child
his crutches and these he gives without hesitation. This
generous gesture is rewarded when the child is cured
miraculously. Amahl is the first opera written expressly
for television, and the first opera commissioned by a
commercial organization. Its first stage production took
place at Indiana University on February 21, 1952, and
it was successfully produced at the Florence May Music
Festival in 1953.
In a similar category of fable and legend, lies The
Unicorn, The Gorgon and the Manticore (1956), Here
Menotti revived the age-old form of the madrigal se-
269
quence which often used to be staged in the seventeenth
century. Menotti's "madrigal fable" consists of an intro-
duction, six orchestral interludes, and twelve choral
madrigals (some of them unaccompanied) in the style
of Monteverdi, the seventeenth-century master. The re-
quired forces include ten dancers, nine instruments and
a chorus. The "unicorn," the "gorgon," and the "manti-
core" are three animals the pets of a lonely poet. When
the poet takes now one, now the other, for a Sunday
stroll, the women of the village are so stricken by envy
that they demand from their husbands similar pets. At
the poet's deathbed, he severely castigates his women
neighbors for their petty envy and silly efforts to imitate
him. The entire work is symbolic. The three animals
represent the poet's youth, middle and old age; and his
last address is intended to upbraid petty individuals
for being the destroyers of a poet's dream.
In sharp contrast to Amahl and The Unicorn, The
Gorgon and the Manticore are The Saint of Bleecker
Street in 1954, and Maria Golovin in 1958. Both are
compelling dramas on contemporary subjects with con-
temporary characters. The Saint takes place on Bleecker
Street, in the Italian section of New York. Annina, a re-
ligious mystic, is a sickly girl who inspires the religious
awe of her Catholic neighbors by receiving the stigmata
on her palms. Michele, her brother, an agnostic, is singu-
larly devoted to her. His sweetheart, Desideria, is aroused
to such a pitch of jealousy over Michele's attachment
to Annina, that she attacks him, and in the ensuing
brawl is killed. Michele goes into hiding, but when An-
nina is accepted by the Church as the Bride, he emerges
to witness the festive ceremony. Thus he is a spectator
when Annina, in a frenzy of emotion and joy, falls dead.
Arias of both the florid and sentimental variety, reli-
270
gious chants, dramatic recitatives, dissonant harmonies
and as a welcome change of pace humorous ditties and
satirical songs are the varied means by which Menotti
"dexterously underscores every word o dialogue and
every instant of action," as Olin Downes wrote. One of
the most powerful dramas of the theatrical season, The
Saint of Bleecker Street received the Drama Critics
Award as the season's best play together with the Pulitzer
Prize in music.
The National Broadcasting Company commissioned
Maria Golovin for the Brussels Exposition where it was
introduced on August 20, 1958. The opera is set in a
European frontier town, a few years after "the recent
war." Maria's husband has been a prisoner of war for
several years. While waiting for his release, she makes
her home in a villa owned by Donato, a blind maker o
bird cages. Their proximity to each other, combined with
the emotional starvation each has suffered, draw Maria
and Donato to each other. When Maria's husband is
finally released from confinement, she comes to Donato
to say good-bye. Donato, determined to have no other
man possess Maria, shoots at her, but misses. Being
blind, he is convinced he has killed her, and thus finds
solace in the sad delusion that Maria and her husband
can never again be reunited. Here, as in his earlier
tragedies, the score continually underlines the emotional
torment of the characters and enhances at every turn
the dramatic conflicts of the play with realistic, program-
matic, or lyrical writing.
Besides writing his own operas, Menotti has had a
share in the success of operas by other composers. He
was not only the librettist of Samuel Barber's Vanessa,
but also was that opera's producer in New York and
Salzburg. In 1958 he founded the "Festival of the Two
271
Worlds" in Spoleto, Italy. As founder and president, he
has been responsible for the presentation of several pro-
vocative contemporary operas.
V
In England, the mantle of Ralph Vaughan Williams
fell on the shoulders of Sir William Walton. Walton is
included among the eclectics, but not because he lacks
a consistency of style in any single work. But, as Eric
Blom once pointed out, each time Walton tackled a new
composition "it turns out to be entirely different from
the last"
Facade, the first work to bring Walton forcefully to the
attention of the music world, indulges in burlesque, par-
ody and satire, often in a jazz idiom. The orchestral over-
ture, "Portsmouth Point," imitates the style of eighteenth-
century English nautical songs. The cantata, Belshazzafs
Feast, has the majesty of a Handel oratorio, but with
modern overtones. The two symphonies, the Violin Con-
certo, the Viola Concerto, and the Partita for orchestra
are essentially the work of a dedicated modernist. And
in his opera, Troilus and Cressida, complex harmonic
and rhythmic structures are supplemented by extended
lyrical passages in which the composer permits his me-
lodic line to soar.
Walton, a child of singing teachers, was born in Old-
ham, Lancashire, on March 29, 1902. Since his father was
the choirmaster of the local church, the boy had an op-
portunity to sing in the choir. After attending the Choir
School of Christ Church, he became the youngest student
to receive his baccalaureate in music at Christ's Church,
Oxford. At Oxford he was interested only in his classes
in music, and completely indifferent to all other studies.
272
He was expelled before he could get his Bachelor of Arts
degree.
Leaving Oxford, he came to London and for a while
lived with the Sitwell family its members (Edith, Osbert,
and Sacheverell) were not only literary people of im-
mense culture but also had formidable social station and
wealth. Their guidance and encouragement led Walton
to serious musical creation. In 1923, a string quartet was
given at a modern-music festival in Salzburg; in 1924, a pi-
ano quartet was published with funds provided by the
Carnegie Trust.
In both these chamber-music works Walton dabbled
with experimental styles and techniques. Yet when he
first became famous it was with a composition of far differ-
ent character, one in which advanced writing made way
for hilarity and mockery. This was Fagade, a "melo-
drama" for reciting voice and seven instruments based
on twenty-one abstractionist poems by Edith Sitwell writ-
ten in 1922. Unusual and provocative as Walton's musical
style was, the novelty of the composition was considerably
enhanced by the way in which it was presented on June
12, 1923. Edith Sitwell recited her poems in sing-song fash-
ion against an instrumental accompaniment. She was
hidden from view (as were the instrumentalists), and her
voice seemed to emerge from a huge megaphone-shaped
mouth painted on the drawn curtain. The Sitwell po-
ems were completely unintelligible, since they were con-
cerned not with meaning but with rhythm and sound.
Walton's music, on the other hand, was down to earth in
its salty humor, in its jaunty tunes, sacrilegious parodies,
calculated cliches, Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Mo-
zart's Don Giovanni were gaily mocked through brief and
hasty quotations; jazz was used to caricature the popular
273
song and the fox-trot; and the essential nature of such folk
dances as the waltz, tarantella and polka were distorted
in gay parodies. In 1923, this work aroused a good deal
of comment and argument. But when it was revived about
three years later with a revised and expanded score, it was
nothing short of a triumph. The composer prepared two
highly successful orchestral suites from this score for the
concert stage, while the basic score was adapted in 1931
for a ballet, choreographed by Frederick Ashton,
After that Walton abandoned this note of levity for a
style that was complex in texture and material. In this
new style he assumed an imperial position in contempo-
rary English music with the Sinfonia concertante, for or-
chestra with piano obbligato in 1927; the Viola Concerto
in 1929; the monumental Belshazzafs Feast in 1931, prob-
ably the most successful choral work produced in Eng-
land since Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius; the two sym-
phonies; the Violin and Cello Concertos; the A minor
String Quartet; the opera, Troilus and Cressida; the Par-
tita, for orchestra.
Formal recognition of his formidable achievements
came in 1951 when the government bestowed on him
knighthood. When Vaughan Williams died in 1958, the
opinion was universal that nobody deserved more than
Walton to be now regarded as England's foremost living
contemporary composer.
VI
In the United States, William Schuman and Walter
Piston have been two composers with a pronounced in-
dividuality and a sufficiently varied style to warrant their
inclusion among the eclectics.
For many years Schuman combined his activity as a
composer with administrative duties as the President at the
274
Juilliard School of Music. In the future, creative work
will be combined with his work at the Lincoln Center of
Performing Arts, where he was appointed President in
1961. He was born in New York City, on August 4, 1910.
After completing his academic education in the city
public schools and Columbia University, he turned to in-
tensive music study for the first time: privately with Max
Persin and Charles Haubiel; then at the Mozarteum in
Salzburg; finally with Roy Harris. Recognition first came
to him with the American Festival Overture which Kous-
sevitzky introduced in Boston in 1939, and with the Third
String Quartet which received the Town Hall Composers
Award. The Third Symphony, a work of compelling
power and invention, advanced his reputation after the
Boston Symphony under Koussevitzky had introduced it
in 1941. A further giant stride in his career came two years
later with the first Pulitzer Prize given in music, for the
cantata A Free Song. After that came more symphonies
and string quartets; the ballets Undertow, Judith, and
Night Journey; a violin concerto; shorter works for or-
chestra; and a baseball opera, Casey at the Bat.
Most of Schuman's music Is characterized by a motor
energy combined with expressive counterpoint and lyri-
cism. His eclecticism shows in the variety of his com-
positions. Some of his works are light and humorous or
satirical: the American Festival Overture, Newsreel, Cir-
cus Overture and Casey at the Bat, Some have a pro-
nounced dramatic or romantic bent: Judith, and the
Third and Sixth Symphonies. Some draw their material
from popular or folk sources: the New England Triptych.
Some are filled with the most personal and original ut-
terances: the Violin Concerto.
From 1926 to 1960 Walter Piston was professor of music
at Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1924 summa
275
cum laude In music* Born in Rockland, Maine, on Janu-
ary 20, 1894, Piston graduated from Normal Arts School.
He studied music for a long time with private teachers.
After World War I, and service in the Navy, he pursued
music study more intensively at Harvard. Between 1924
and 1926 he was a pupil of Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Re-
turning from Paris, he pursued the dual career of
teacher and composer, the former at Harvard where he
stayed thirty-five years. His debut as composer came with
the Symphonic Suite, performed in 1928 by the Boston
Symphony. After that he wrote a considerable amount of
orchestral music which was performed by major orches-
tras, but most of all by the Boston Symphony. His Second
Symphony received the New York Music Critics Circle
Award in 1945; his Third and Seventh Symphonies
earned the Pulitzer Prize in music in 1948 and 1961. In
these and other compositions, Piston combines classical
structures with Romantic viewpoints; but on more than
one occasion he has wandered off into the world of
dissonant harmonies and linear counterpoint. On the
other hand a work like The Incredible Flutist > which
originated as a ballet in 1938 but has become famous as
a symphonic suite, is vividly programmatic, and gener-
ously spiced with the condiments of wit and burlesque.
Eclecticism is particularly marked in a work like the
Concerto for Orchestra, where the first and third move-
ments are rooted in the eighteenth century both as to
structure and style, while jazz makes a seemingly in-
congruous appearance in the middle movement.
276
CHAPTER 15
Men of Electronics
T
FT was perhaps inevitable for electronics, which
has affected human life so profoundly, to leave
its influence upon musical creation. Since World War II
an altogether new area has opened up with electronic
music: music, or musical sounds, produced by electro-
phonic instruments through electromagnetic vibrations
converted into sound waves by various electronic devices,
or by means of a loudspeaker.
Experiments in this direction have been taking place
since the turn of the present century. In 1906, a scientist,
Cahill, devised the Telharmonium in which alternating
current generators produced powerful tones. Later on,
various instruments were devised, such as the Organova
which transformed rays of light into sound waves.
What is perhaps the first significant achievement in
electronic music came from Leon Theremin, a Russian
scientist born in St Petersburg in 1896. He was a student
of both physics and music before becoming director of the
Laboratory of Electrical Oscillations at the Physico-Tech-
nical Institute in Russia in 1919. It was there that a year
later his first electronic instrument was produced. It was
originally called "Aetherophone," since the sound was
generated by the movement of the hands through ether
(or "aether"); this instrument subsequently became fa-
mous as Thereminvox. In 1927, Theremin came to the
United States where he obtained a patent for his ether in-
277
strument. On August 29, 1930, he gave a concert of elec-
tronic music through ten electronic instruments on the
stage of Carnegie Hall. In 1932, he introduced in Carne-
gie Hall the first electronic orchestra (conducted by Albert
Stoessel). The Thereminvox was also heard as a solo in-
strument with several major American orchestras. Joseph
Schillinger wrote an Airphonic Suite for Thereminvox
and orchestra which was introduced by the Cleveland Or-
chestra.
A significant technical advance over the Thereminvox
was made in Paris by Maurice Martenot, conductor and
professor at the cole Normale de Musique. In 1928, he
brought out the Ondes Musicales (now known as the On-
des Martenot) a radio-electric instrument which was
equipped with a keyboard able to produce definite sounds
in the tempered scale. He gave hundreds of concerts
throughout Europe in collaboration with his sister. Many
eminent French composers, including Milhaud and Ho-
negger, have written compositions for this instrument;
some of these works were given at the International Ex-
hibition of Art and Technics in Paris in 1937, where Ondes
Martenot received the Grand Prix. Martenot was also the
author of a textbook, Methode d'ondes musicales, the first
such instructional work on an electrophonic instrument.
II
Since World War II, a new school of composers has
sprung up whose art consists of drawing fantastic noises
and sounds through electronic means. In Paris, on April
15, 1948, Pierre Schaeffer, an engineer for Radiodiffusion
jrangaise, devised ''concrete music/' This consists of music
produced from actual sounds recorded on tape, or distor-
tions of those sounds. He recorded on tapes all kinds
of street noises, radio commercials, conversations and
278
other sounds. He then ran the tape backwards, sometimes
increasing and sometimes decreasing the speed, and thus
manufactured still other types of sound. These various
sounds were combined into musical compositions. Perhaps
the most significant composer in this school of "concrete
music" is Pierre Boulez.
In his report from an international congress of experi-
mental music in Venice, in 1961, Everett Helm provided
a revealing description of the tonal art of "concrete mu-
sic.'* He wrote: "Often the electronic music had certain
resemblances to known sounds: whistles, the rushing of
water, explosions, strong winds, or a dropped tray of
china even it must be added to Hollywood 'haunted
house' music and dissonant chords played on an organ."
A Polish composer, Wlodzimierz Kotonski, created the
Etude concrete pour un seul coup de cymbale, in which
electronic music and the twelve-tone row are amalga-
mated. Here is how Nicolas Slonimsky described Kotonski's
method of composition: "He recorded the sound of a cym-
bal on tapes, transposed it electronically to eleven differ-
ent pitches of the chromatic scale, thus forming a twelve-
tone row, and assigned to them different durations and
dynamic intensities. The ingredients thus obtained were
then arranged according to the serial method of compo-
sition."
One of the most notable composers of electronic mu-
sic in Germany is Karl Heinz Stockhausen. One of his com-
positions dramatizes the conflict between electronic and
more traditional composers Contest Between Electronic
Sound and Instruments introdnctd in 1960.
Tape-recorded sounds are featured prominently in
Aniara, an opera by Karl-Birger Blomdahl written in
1959, and since recorded in its entirety. Aniara is a space-
ship with eight thousand people aboard. It has been trav-
279
ellng for twenty years on its journey from earth to Mars
when the terrifying news reaches the travelers that the
ship is off course and must forever after travel in space,
The electronic portions in the score are not numerous but
to Alfred Frankenstein, writing in High Fidelity, they rep-
resent the high point of the composer's invention. As Mr.
Frankenstein maintains, the opera is "at its best in the
zooming, chattering, liquefying tape recorded sounds
which are often employed for interstellar atmosphere, and
there is one quite remarkable place wherein, by means of
electronic sound we are able to hear the supplicating
voices of an incalculable multitude at an enormous dis-
tance/'
Henk Badings, a prominent Dutch composer, has cre-
ated an electronic ballet, Cain and Abel. A "sinusoidal
wave generator/' a "multivibrator/* and a "reverberation
machine" are here used to create all kinds of eerie sounds
to illustrate this Biblical story of fratricide.
There are several important organizations in Europe
which pursue experiments in electronic music with com-
plete dedication. Among them are the Electronic Music
Studio of Radio Cologne in West Germany, headed by
Karl Heinz Stockhausen; the Electro-Acoustic Institute
in Switzerland; the Studio di Fonologia Musicale of Milan;
and Joseph Tal's electronic studio at the University in
Jerusalem, Israel
III
American composers have also been active in these elec-
tronic experiments. In 1951 John Cage wrote Imaginary
Landscapes scored for twelve radios. These are manipu-
lated by twenty-four performers, two for each instru-
ment. The performers toy with the dials not only to get
snatches of a program, a commerical, or even static, but
280
also to control the volume. Cage has also written compo-
sitions for audio-frequency oscillators and electric-wire
coils.
Vladimir Ussachevsky, a Chinese-born musician now
living in New York, has been doing significant experi-
ments at Columbia University with "sonic contours." He
explains: "In magnetic tape we have, for the first time I
believe, the multiple means of modifying musical sounds
after they have been recorded. . . . This is possible be-
cause of the flexibility with which tape can be cut up,
spliced in any order, reversed for playing backward,
speeded up, or slowed down, or erased at any point/' One
of Ussachevsky's compositions (written in collaboration
with Otto Luening, also from Columbia University) is
Rhapsodic Variations for Tape Recorders and Orchestra,
introduced by the Louisville Philharmonic Orchestra. In
his review in the Courier- Journal, William Mootz said:
"A basic weakness of the work ... is that the hearer can-
not help identifying some of the emanations from the
speaker with more mundane associations."
To these adventurers in the world of electronics even
the most advanced methods and systems of twentieth-
century music are obsolete. They feel that the music of
the future lies solely with the sounds produced by elec-
tronic means. "My guess," sums up Faubion Bowers in the
Saturday Review, "is that they are right. The fact of their
music is with us, whether we oppose or proclaim it. Elec-
tronic music is here to stay, for too many serious people
are working on it, too many rockets are shrieking up
into the skies, too many children are watching TV, too
many people have stood at the corner of 42nd Street and
8th Avenue and listened to noonday traffic, heard an elec-
tronic recording and recognized the closeness in the
sounds of our times. If something has to give, it probably
281
won't be electronic music; it will have to be our sensitive
attitudes towards the unfamiliar, our fear of being adrift
in a sea of sound where we don't know how to feel,
whether to cry or laugh or nod our heads in time to the
beat, or even when the composition has ended so that we
may applaud or boo and hiss. . . . Well, rich or poor,
young or old, the fact stands. The noise of the world is
soon in our concert halls controlled and organized, if not
always premeditated and a new aesthetic is evolving. All
of it has the sound of this new music in it: electronic."
And so, our music in the twentieth century has reached
the extreme where performers and traditional musical in-
struments are dispensed with. Eliminated, too, are rule,
order, and calculation: "Aleatory" music, in which the
sounds are produced primarily by accident or chance rather
than through a planned process, is an important element
in electronic-made compositions. On occasion, even the
human being as composer is expendable. In 1956, Lejaren
A. Hiller, Jr., and Leonard M. Isaacson fed various types
of data on rhythm, melody, harmony and orchestration
to a computer machine at the University of Illinois, and
out came the Illiac Suite for string quartet. Thus, music
as we have so long known it, makes way for organized, or
disorganized, sound.
Perhaps this is the way the music of tomorrow will go.
Or, if the pendulum of music history continues to swing
away from extremes, it is just as likely that it will revert to
the greatest art of all, the art of simplicity, in which a
world of sentiment and thought and experience is caught
within the simple lines of a beautiful melody.
282
Index
Abstraction No. 1, 222
Abstractionism, 105
Abstrakte Oper No. 1, 10
Academy of Fine Arts in Ma-
drid, 172
Adagio for Strings (Barber), 252
Adieu New York, 220
Aeolian Hall, 212
Aetherophone, 277
Africa, music from, 207
Afternoon of a Faun, The, 67
Agate Beach, Oregon, 202
Age of Anxiety, The, 117, 255
Age of Gold, The, 226
Age of Steel, The, 140, 231
Agon, 145
Aino, 159
Air Force, Army, 252
Air phonic Suite, 278
Aix, College of, 85
Alabamy Song, 99
Albe"niz, Isaac, 156
Albert Herring, 261
Albert medal, 171
Alborada del gracioso, 78
Alcotts, the, 58
Aldrich, Richard, 32, 138
Aleatory music, 282
Aleko, 243
Alexander Nevsky, 232, 233
Alexander's Ragtime Band, 210
Alfven, Hugo, 177
Allegro barbaro, 166
Allen, Maud, 201
Alma Brasileira, 193
Alpine Symphony, An, 4
Altschuler, Modest, 186
Amahl and the Night Visitors,
269
Amar String Quartet, 147
Amarechiare, 177
Amaryllis, 76
Amelia Goes to the Ball, 265-266
America, 198, 202
American Academy of Arts and
Letters, 116, 202
American Academy of Rome,
250
American Ballad Singers, 189
American Concertette, 221
American Festival Overture, 275
American music, 51-60, 249-254
contemporary, 98-104
nationalistic, 178-197
American in Paris, An, 214
American Quartet, 178
American Society of Composers,
Authors, and Publishers, 166
American Symphonette No. 2,
221
Amor Brujo, El, 173
Aniara, 279
283
Antheil, George, 7
Apaches, musical, 77
Apostrophe, 94
Appalachian Spring, 184
Apparition, 66
Arcana* 5
Arceuilists, 50
Armenian folk songs, 237
Army Air Force, 252
Art-song, 27
Artusi, 12
Ascension, 140
Ashton, Frederick, 274
Association for Proletarian Mu-
sicians, 223
Atlantida, La, 175
Atonalists, 1-2, 18, 106
Auld Lang Syne, 247
Auric, Georges, 83, 93, 220
Aus Italien, 30
Auto Accident, 7
Baal Shem Suite, 201
Bach, 1, 5, 6, 17, 19, 90, 106, 116,
147, 152, 192, 246
Bachiana Brasileira, 192
Badings, Henk, 280
Balakirev, 83, 155
Ballad of Blanik, The, 176
Ballad operas, 100
Ballet mecanique, 1
Ballet Russe, 78, 128, 131, 132-
134, 137, 175
Ballets (see specific titles)
Bantock, Sir Granville, 4
Barber, Samuel, 251-254, 271
Barber of Seville, The, 273
Barbirolli, John, 258
Barere, Simon, 225
Barless notation, 47, 48
Baroque period, 19
Bartered Bride, The, 176
284
Barth, Hans, 6
Bart6k, Bela, 51, 117, 163-168,
170
Basel Delights, 91
Basket of Eggs, The, 169
Bavaria, Festival Theater in, 23
Bax, Arnold, 4
Bayreuth, 23, 27, 67
Bayreuth Festival, 150
Be Glad America, 191
Bear Dance, 166
Beams Award, 251
Becker, Albert, 158
Beecham, Sir Thomas, 73, 74
Beethoven, 6, 14, 16, 17, 18, 25,
58,116
Beggar's Opera, The, 100
Belaiev, 41, 42
Bellaigue, Camille, 10, 70
Belshazzafs Feast, 272, 274
Belvedere Palace, 38
Ben-Haim, Paul, 206
Benjamin, Arthur, 258
Bennett, Robert Russell, 220
Berg, Alban, 10, 119-125, 216,
256
Berkshire Music Center, 92,
152
Berlin, Irving, 210
Berlin Hochschule fiir Musik, 97,
148
Berlin Philharmonic, 150
Berlin State Opera, 150, 151
Berlioz, 14, 16, 19
Bernstein, Leonard, 3, 103, 117,
203-205, 255, 260
Bestiaire, Le, 92
Biches, Les, 92
Billings, William, 191
Billy Budd, 261-262
Billy the Kid, 183
Birmingham Festival, 247
Blacher, Boris, 3, 10
Blitzstein, Marc, 99, 101-104
Bloch, Ernest, 154, 198-203, 204
Blom, Eric, 272
Blomdahl, Karl-Birger, 279
Blue Monday, 212
Blues, 208
Boeuf sur le toit, le } 86
Boheme, La, 257
Bohemian music, 156, 176
Bold Young Sailor, A, 169
Bolero, 80-81
Bolshoi Theater, 243, 244
Bolt, The, 226
Boogie-Woogie Etude, 221
Boris Godunov, 132
Borodin, 83, 155
Borough, The, 260
Bosch, Hieronymus, 269
Boston Herald, 130
Boston Symphony, 91, 117, 140,
182, 184, 187, 188, 215, 249,
275, 276
Boulanger, Nadia, 101, 181, 187,
188, 276
Boulez, Pierre, 279
Bowers, Faubion, 281
Brahms, Johannes, 16, 17, 19,
29,38,159,162,164,245
Brandenburg Concertos, 147
Brant, Henry, 204
Brazil, music in, 87, 191-196
Brebis egarie, La, 85, 86
Brecht, Bertolt, 98, 100
Bridge, Frank, 72, 258
Britten, Benjamin, 256, 257-264
Broadway at Night, 220
Brooklyn, New York, 181, 188,
210
Bruch, Max, 168
Bruckner, Anton, 24-25, 27
Brussels Exposition, 271
Biichner, Georg, 120
Buelow, Hans von, 22, 29, 31
Burney, Charles, 17
Busoni, Ferruccio, 97, 142-143,
146, 158
Cadman, Charles Wakefield, 179
Cage, The, 57
Cage, John, 8-10, 280
Cahill, 277
Caillet, Lucien, 207
Cain and Abel, 280
Cajun folk tunes, 189
Cakewalk rhythm, 209
California, University of, 115,
186
Calvocoressi, M. B., 75
Canticum sacrum, 145
Captain's Apprentice, The, 169
Capu, Andre*, 128
Cardillac, 147, 148
Carmina Burana, 10, 141
Carnegie Hall, 7, 80, 212, 278
Carnegie Trust, 273
Carpenter, John Alden, 72, 220
Carrillo, Julian, 6
Casella, Alfredo, 153, 154, 177
Casey at the Bat, 275
Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Mario,
203-204, 207
Catulli Carmina, 141
Cavalier ia Rusticana, 256
Cave of the Heart, 253
Cello Concerto (Barber), 253
Cello Concerto (Dvofak), 179
Cello Concerto (Miaskovsky),
240
Cello Concerto (Walton), 274
Ceremony of Carols, A, 264
Cezanne, 63
Chaliapin, Feodor, 132
Chamber Music, 147, 148
Chamber Symphony, 108
Chant du rossingol, le, 135
Chanteys, 180
285
Chants populaires (Milhaud),
204
Chants populaires (Ravel), 205
Charles-Rene", 76
Charleston Rhapsody, 220
Charpentier, Gustave, 257
ChatNoir,Le,4$, 61
Chavez, Carlos, 196-197, 207
Chester, 191
Chicago, Illinois, 208
Children's Corner, 209
Children's Hour, The, 57
Chopin, 15, 39, 40, 46, 66, 133,
155
Chopiniana, 133
Chorale and Fugue in Jazz, 221
Chord, Mystery, 39
Choros, 192-193
Chout, 138
Christ Church Choir School, 272
Ciboure, France, 76
Circus Overture, 275
Civil War, American, 56, 188,
207
Spanish, 93
Clair de lune, 66, 68
Clarinet Concerto (Copland),
185
Clarinet Quintet (Copland), 185
Classical Symphony (Prokofiev),
145-146
Classicism, 19
Claudel, Paul, 85, 86
Cleveland Institute of Music, 201
Cleveland Orchestra, 278
Clusters, tone, 190
Cockaigne Overture, 248
Cocteau, Jean, 83, 85, 86, 129
Colas Breugnon, 239
Cold Pieces, 46
College of the Pacific, 250
Collet, Henri, 83, 92
Columbia University, 267, 275,
281
286
Comedia, 83
Comedy Overture, 143
Comedy Overture on Negro
Themes, 180
Computer machine, music from,
282
Concert! (see specific titles)
Concertino for Jazz Quartet and
Orchestra, 222
Concertino for Piano, 89, 91
Concerto in F (Gershwin), 214
Concerto grosso, 154
Concerto Grosso (Bennett), 220
Concerto Grosso (Bloch), 202, 203
Concerto for Orchestra (Bart6k),
167
Concerto for Orchestra (Piston),
276
Concerto for Piano (Schoenberg),
115-116,117
Concerto for String Quartet,
Piano and Clarinet, 187
Concord Sonata, 54, 55, 58
Concrete music, 278-279
Conius, 41
Consul, The, 268-269
Contest Between Electronic
Sound and Instruments, 279
Coolidge Prize, 201
Copland, Aaron, 51, 144, 181-
185, 220
Coq d'or, Le, 133
Counterpoint, 11, 146
Country Dances of Israel, 206
Couperin, 38
Courier- Journal, 281
Cowboy Rhapsody, 189
Cowboy songs, 180, 183
Cowell, Henry, 6-7, 51, 190-191,
216
Crabbe, George, 260
Cradle Will Rock, The, 102-103
Craven, Thomas, 63, 105
Creation du monde, la, 87, 209
Crozier, Eric, 262
Cuban Overture, 215
Cui, C&ar, 32, 88, 155
Cultural and Scientific Confer-
ence for World Peace, 231
Curtis Institute of Music, 101,
251,252,265
Czech Rhapsody ,17 '6
Czechoslovakia, music in, 176
Dahl, Dr., 243
Dallapiccola, Luigi, 117
Damrosch, Walter, 181, 214
Dan Hashomer, 206
Danbury, Connecticut, 51
Dance of the Seven Veils, The,
33,34
Dance Symphony, 182
Daniel Jazz, 220
Danville, Virginia, 72
Danze del re David, Le, 204
Daphnis and Chloe, 76, 78-79
Darin, Bobby, 100
David, 204
Davison, Harold G., 7
De Profundis Clamavi, 91
De Tre Re, 92
Death and Transfiguration, 31
Debussy, Claude, 10, 16, 17, 32,
49, 61-71, 75, 80, 85, 93, 105,
107, 126, 127, 129, 134, 136,
172,209,256
Declamation, 12
Degas, 63
Dehmel, Richard, 108
Delibes, Le"o, 62, 245
Deliciae basilienses, 91
Delius, Frederick, 72-75
Dent, Edward J., 143
Dessau, Paul, 203
Desiccated Embryos, 46
De Sylva, Buddy, 212
Deutsche Zeitung, 123
Deux melodies hebraiques, 205
Diaghilev, Serge, 78, 92, 128, 129,
131-133, 137, 175, 232
Dialogues des Carmelites, Les, 93
Dieslrae,9l
Dillon, Fanny Charles, 186
Disagreeable Sketches, 46
Dissonance in music, 13-15, 17,
30-31, 57, 109
Dissonant Quartet, 14
Ditson Fund, 267
Divine Poem, The, 42
Doctor Faustus, 116
Dodecaphony, 112
Doktor Faustus, 143
Don Giovanni, 273
Don Juan, 32
Don Quixote,4, 31, 32, 175
Dona nobis pacem, 91
Donaueschingen Festival, 147
Down in the Valley, 101, 190
Down in Yon Forest, 169
Downes, Olin, 5, 36, 50, 189, 217,
269, 271
Dream of Gerontius, The, 247,
274
Dreamy Fish, The, 46
Dreigroschenoper, Die, 99
Drops of Water, 158
Dukas, Paul, 72, 86
Durand, Emile, 62
Durey, Louis, 83, 93
Dvofak, Antonin, 156, 176, 178-
179
Eastman School of Music, 249,
250
Eccentrics, 45-60
Eclectics, 255-276
Edwards, Jonathan, 59-60
Eighth Symphony (Mahler), 26
Eighth tones, 6
1812 Overture, 18
Eighteenth century music, 13
Eili, Eili, 205
287
Ein Gev, 206
Eisenstein, Sergei, 233
Electro-Acoustic Institute in
Switzerland, 280
Electronic Music Studio of
Radio Cologne, 280
Electronics, 4, 277-282
Elektra, 35-36
Elgar, Sir Edward, 154, 171, 245-
249, 274
Elijah, 247
Elson, Louis, 32
Emek, 206
Emerson, 58
Emmett, Dan, 207
Emperor Jones, The, 189
En Saga, 159
Enesco, Georges, 175
Enfant prodigue, 66
Enfant et les Sortileges, 4, 80
Engel, Joel, 199, 205
England, nationalism in, 168-171
English composers, 245-249
Enigma Variations, 247
Erkel, Laszlo, 163
Eroica Symphony, 14, 17
Esquisses, 163
Essay No. 1 (Barber), 252
Essays Before a Sonata, 55
Esther, 204
Etude concrete pour un seul
coup de cymbale, 279
Eurhythmies, 199
Everett, Horace, 185
Ewen, David, 283
Expressionists, 105-125, 127
Facade, 220, 272, 273
Fall of Berlin, 231
Falla, Manuel de, 77, 154, 171-
175
Fancy Free, 255
Fantasia and Fugue on Oh, Su-
sanna, 207
288
Fantasia on Greensleeves, 170
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas
Tallis, 169-170
Fantasy on a Yemenite Theme,
206
Farwell, Arthur, 186
Faur, Gabriel, 77
Faust, 26
Faust Symphony, 18
F.B.I. in Peace and War, The,
139
Federal Theater, WPA, 102
Feldman, Morton, 9
Felix the Cat, 96
Fenby, Eric, 74
Festival Theater in Bavaria, 23
Festival of the Two Worlds, 271
Festivals of Rome, 153
F^tis, 14
Feuersnot, 33
Fifteenth century music, 1 1
Fifteenth String Quartet (Mil-
baud), 89
Fifth Piano Concerto (Prokofiev),
140
Fifth String Quartet (Hinde-
mith), 152
Fifth Symphony (Beethoven),
14,58
Fifth Symphony (Hanson), 251
Fifth Symphony (Honegger), 91
Fifth Symphony (Prokofiev), 234
Fifth Symphony (Scriabin), 43
Fifth Symphony (Shostakovich),
228
Finck, Henry T., 213
Finland Awakes, 160
Finland, music in, 157-163
Finlandia, 160-161
Fire-Bird, The, 133-135
Fireworks, 131
First Piano Concerto (Britten),
263
First Piano Concerto (Liszt), 15
First Piano Concerto (Proko-
fiev), 137
First Piano Quintet fBloch), 202
First Rhapsody (Enesco), 175
First String Quartet (Hinde-
mith), 147
First Symphony (Barber), 252
First Symphony (Beethoven), 14
First Symphony (Bernstein),
204-205, 255
First Symphony (Brahms), 17
First Symphony (Elgar), 248
First Symphony (Fran^aix), 94
First Symphony (Hanson), 250
First Symphony (Ives), 57
First Symphony (Khatchaturian),
237
First Symphony (Rachmaninoff),
243
First Symphony (Scriabin), 42
First Symphony (Shostakovich),
225
First Violin Concerto (Proko-
fiev), 138
Fisher, William Arms, 179
Five, The, 83, 155-156
Five Pieces for Orchestra, 110,
117, 118-119
Five Songs with Orchestra, 120
Flabby Preludes for a Dog, 46
Fleurville, Madame Maute" de,
66
Florence May Music Festival,
269
Florida, 72
Fokine, Michel, 78, 132, 133
Folk music, 155-177
American, 178-197
Brazilian, 193-194
Jewish, 199
Mexican, 197
Folk-Song Symphony, 188
Fontainebleau, France, 181
Forster, E. M., 262
Foster, Stephen, 207, 222
Foster Gallery, 207, 221
Foster Suite, 207
Fountains of Rome, The, 153
Four Legends, 159
Four Minutes Thirty Seconds, 9
Fourteenth century music, 1 1
Fourteenth String Quartet (Mil-
haud), 89
Fourth Piano Concerto (Rach-
maninoff), 245
Fourth Symphony (Hanson),
250
Fourth Symphony (Honegger),
91
Fourth Symphony (Ives), 58
Fourth Symphony (Milhaud), 89
Fourth Symphony (Prokofiev),
140
Fourth Symphony (Scriabin), 43
Fourth Symphony (Tchaikov-
sky), 15
Fran^aix, Jean, 94, 154
Franck, Csar, 15, 82
Franckism, 82
Franco, Generalissimo, 175
Frankenstein, Alfred, 280
Frankfort Conservatory, 147
Frankfort Opera orchestra, 147
Free Song, A, 275
French music, 82-94
French Six, 50, 82-94, 105, 207
From Italy, 30
From the Land of the Sky-Blue
Water, 179
Fuchs, Robert, 158
Fuguing tunes, 191
Full Moon and Empty Arms, 244
Functional music, 96, 105, 115
Funeral March (Chopin), 46
Funtculi, Funicula, 177
Furtwaengler, Wilhelm, 150, 151
289
Gabriel, Gilbert W., 213
Garden, Mary, 69
Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 38
Caspar d de la nuit, 76
Gatti, Guido M., 201
Gauthier, Eva, 212
Gay, John, 100
Gayane, 237
Gazza ladra, La, 15
Gebrauchsmusik,96, 105, 148
Gedalge, Andre*, 86
George White Scandals, 212
German Academy, 148
German music, 95-101, 146-153
Gershwin, George, 87, 209-219,
222, 256
Gershwin, Ira, 215
Ghe"on, Henri, 75
Ghys, Henri, 76
Gilbert, Henry F., 180
Gilbert, W. S., 47
Gilman, Lawrence, 54, 59
Gilmore, Patrick S., 207
Giraud, Albert, 109
Girl Crazy, 21$
Git Along Little Dogie, 183
Glasser Music School, 224
Glazunov, Alexander, 137, 138,
225
Gliere, Reinhold, 238-239
Glinka, 130
Globe, The, lift
Gluck, Christoph Willibald, 12-
13, 145
Gniesen School of Music, 237
Gnossiennes, 48
Goebbels, 150
Goering, 151
Goethe, 14, 26
Goin' Home, 179
Goldmark, Karl, 158
Goldmark, Rubin, 180, 181, 216
Golliwog's Cakewalk, 209
Goodbye, Old Paint, 183
290
Gorky, Maxim, 137
Gould, Morton, 189, 207, 220-
222
Graham, Martha, 184
Grand Canyon Suite, 220
Great Friendship, 229
Gresham School, 258
Grez-sur-Loing, France, 73, 74
Grieg, 72, 156
Grofe", Ferde, 214, 219-220
Grohg, 181, 182
Gruenberg, Louis, 189, 220
Griinewald, Mathias, 149
Guggenheim Fellowship, 187,
253
Guntram, 33
Gurre-Lieder, 111
Gymnopedies, 48
Haba, Alois, 5, 51
Haftorah, 204
Halle" Orchestra, 163
Hambitzer, Charles, 210, 211,
215
Hanau, Germany, 147
Handel, 19, 100, 145, 247, 272
Hanslick, Eduard, 22
Hanson, Howard, 249-251
Harmonie der Welt, Die, 152
Harnasie, 177
Harris, Roy, 51, 154, 185-188,
207, 275
Harvard Brief Dictionary of Mu-
sic, 113
Harvard University, 152, 275
Hashkivenu, 204
Haskell, Arnold L., 132
Haubiel, Charles, 275
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 58, 251
Haydn, Joseph, 11, 14, 16, 19,
171
Hebraists, 198-206
Hellman, Lillian, 104
Helm, Everett, 279
lelsingfors University, 158
lenderson, W. J., 5, 35
lerbert, Victor, 179-180
Zero's Life, A,$l, 32, 33
leure espagnole, 76, 78
'iigh Fidelity, 280
lill, Edward Burlingame, 220
filler, Lejaren A., 282
lindemith, Paul, 95-96, 146-153,
220, 255
'iistoire du soldat, 144, 209
'listoires naturelles, 75, 78
'liver-Printemps, 200
lofrnannsthal, Hugo von, 35
lolland Festival, 94
iollywood Bowl, 187
lolst, Gustav, 153
lomer, Louise, 251
iomophony, 19
lonegger, Arthur, 3, 83, 89-92,
278
lonfleur, France, 47
lop Up, 190
lora, use of, 206
ftousa tonic at Stockbridge, 58
houseman, Laurence, 248
Sovhaness, Alan, 4
H.P., 197
Humoresques on Foster's
Themes, 207
Humorists, 45-60
Hungarian Rhapsodies, 155
Hungary, music in, 163-168
Hutchings, Arthur, 75
Hymn and Fuguing Tune, 191
Hymn for Pioneers, 249
Hyperprism, 5
[Got Rhythm, 215, 222
[bert, Jacques, 154
[chiyanagi, Toshi, 7
r lia Mourometz, 239
['11 Build a Stairway to Paradise,
212
Illiac Suite, 282
Illinois University, 282
Illuminations, Les, 263
Imaginary Landscapes, 280
Impressionism, 50, 61-81, 82,
105, 127
Improvisation, in jazz, 208
In the South, 248
In a Summer Garden, 74
Incredible Flutist, The, 117, 276
Indian Lament, 178
Indian Suite, 179
Indians, American, 178-180
Indiana University, 190, 269
Indy, Vincent <T, 49
Infinito musical, El, 6
Instrumentation, new forms of,
2-10
Interplay, 221
Introduction and Allegro
< (Elgar),248
lonisation, 5
Ireland, John, 72, 258
Iron Foundry, 4
Isaacson, Leonard M., 282
Island God, The, 266, 267
Isle of the Dead, The, 244
Israel, music in, 205
Israel Symphony, 200, 201, 203
Istar, 176
It Ain't Necessarily So, 218
Italy, music in, 177
Iturbi, Jos, 221
I've Got the Tune, 103
Ives, Burl, 189
Ives, Charles, 2, 6, 51-60, 105,
190
Ives, George E., 
