VI
Throughout this discussion we meet recurrent motives which should be remembered if we are to understand what “goes on” in our music life. These motives will continue to come to mind in connection with specific and concrete instances. It may be useful, therefore, to mention some of them as a point of departure for the discussion of music criticism, or better, musical opinion in the United States.
We have repeatedly referred to the characteristic fluidity of culture in the United States, to the fact that it is in a constant state of rapid development and under the lash of incessant self-criticism. It is impossible to exaggerate the significance of these facts which runs through the whole of our cultural life; but while it is easy to understand that one of their effects has been the extraordinary musical development of the past forty or fifty years, it must also be noted that they bring with them the danger of attitudes not entirely favorable to genuine artistic achievement. There is the easily and occasionally noted lack of spontaneity, not only in artistic judgment, but in relation to music itself. In a drive toward maturity, one can lose sight of the necessity for a full and rich musical experience. The danger lies, then, in a search for shortcuts to maturity, whileactually maturity can be the result only of experience: in striving, as we sometimes do, to arrive at judgments in advance of genuine experience, which can be acquired only through love, that is, through an immediate and elementary response to music. The American public may gradually learn to surmount this danger as American listeners acquire more and more experience. However, the musical public is in constant growth, and we can scarcely be astounded that that public, being in part musically inexperienced, has not as yet learned to have confidence in its judgments. Newspaper criticism, therefore, wields far greater power here than it does in other countries; and a marked predilection for abstraction in musical ideas may be noted. We readily embrace or reject causes or personalities, and readily form our judgment with relation to them, ratherthan to individual works of art. While this is a tendency characteristic of the period in which we live, it seems to be carried to a greater extreme here than elsewhere.
Another principal motive in our discussion is the conflict between the idea of music as an imported European commodity and the indigenous impulse toward musical expression. Obviously, in music criticism this conflict is clearly visible; for in the beginnings of our musical development we imported not only music but musical opinion as well. In the period before World War I, the task of American criticism was precisely that of imparting some knowledge of the music to which one listened in the concert halls and opera houses; to introduce the public to the criteria, controversies, and, above all, to the then current ideas relating to music; to inform it oncomposers and their backgrounds, musical or spiritual, and on the backgrounds from which music had sprung. The critics of that time were often men of genuine, and even deep culture, and with cosmopolitan experience; but their criticism was neither bold nor original. Like the composers of the period, American critics remained circumspect and cautious in their judgments of contemporary music. They did not wish to be considered unorthodox. How could they have done otherwise? They knew perfectly well that decisive judgments were not made in the United States, and that intellectual boldness would fall on deaf ears when few people were in a position to understand what they conceivably had to say. At most, they could allow themselves an occasional word of encouragement to the efforts of some American composer, who understood well that it amounted tono more than a friendly gesture. In the case of young composers, such gestures, almost always benign, were often coupled with an express warning not to take themselves too seriously. But even such judgments were not problematical, since there was virtually nothing in the American music which offered a challenge to accepted ideas. In the United States of 1913, the Fourth Symphony of Sibelius was regarded with suspicion; theValses Nobles et Sentimentalesof Ravel were controversial; Strauss’sElektraseemed a shrewdly calculated shocker which the composer himself had repudiated in a much touted and likewise suspectvolte-faceinDer Rosenkavalier. Stravinsky was but a name; and as for Schönberg, his First Quartet seemed quite obscure and theFive Orchestral Pieceswholly incoherent.
The third of the recurrent principalmotives to be recalled here is the divergence between professional instruction and instruction designed for laymen. As has been pointed out, this divergence is found in no field other than music, and this author has tried to show that it is related to the idea that music—valid music, at least—is an imported article. He has tried to demonstrate, too, that it led, as far as music education is concerned, to a confusion of aims, creating problems for both teachers and gifted young men and women whose aims were serious. These problems still survive. A similar divergence is reflected in music criticism in a somewhat different form. It is evident that the principal task of the critic, certainly of the exacting critic, is that which has a bearing on the musical production of the time and place in which he lives. The music which comes from abroad or from the past calls for a seriousattitude, to be sure, but it is not comparable to the critic’s responsibilities toward the culture of his own land and epoch. It does not inevitably imply a motive for attacking the real problems of either music or culture. Even research in regard to it is gratuitous to a point, for the very impulse toward research derives from a curiosity which, like the creative impulse, is a symptom of vitality or at least of restlessness in the general atmosphere of the time. It is an indication of an already highly developed music life.
Generally speaking, music criticism in the United States remained amateurish for a long time; but if such a state of affairs adequately served conditions in the years before World War I, it was insufficient in the twenties, when young composers were beginning to take both themselves and their musical aims seriously. Theinfluence of the critics was as powerful in those days as it remains to this day, up to a certain point; but the criteria which criticism furnished had little or nothing to give young composers. There was little understanding for either the needs or the demands of these young creators or for that which they wished to accomplish.
We think of a well-known and extremely important personality of that period: Paul Rosenfeld. He was very friendly to young creative musicians, and a sympathetic promoter of everything they wished to accomplish. He was a passionate amateur, especially of music that was new, and above all of the music of the young Americans he knew. In this respect he stood virtually alone; he dared to write with great passion and enthusiasm of everything in the “new” music that interested him—of Schönberg,Stravinsky, Bártòk, Scriabine, and Sibelius—and he conducted a bold propaganda for new music in a period when the attitude of other critics, and certainly of the public, was at best cautious and hesitant. He was also a personal friend of Ernest Bloch, from the moment the composer, a completely unknown figure in the United States, arrived here in 1916; Rosenfeld worked tirelessly for the recognition of Bloch’s music and personality. It is impossible to overestimate Rosenfeld’s contributions as a writer and as an enthusiastic propagandist for the contemporary music of his period, and for the development of music in this country. It is not surprising that this contribution is still remembered.
True, Rosenfeld had little understanding for the real and characteristic tendencies of the period between the twowars, and his ideas remainedau fondthose of postromanticism, with a strong admixture of American nationalism. There is no doubt, however, that he played a significant role in the formation of the musical generation of the twenties. The present author belongs to that generation; Rosenfeld was not in complete sympathy with him, but Rosenfeld’s interest and his willingness to discuss issues were of the greatest possible value to all who came in contact with him. One found in him, as in few others of that time, a genuine awareness of the issues, and a desire to understand the motivating forces behind them.
The foregoing notwithstanding, Rosenfeld was in no sense of the word a music critic. It may seem paradoxical to say that he possessed neither authentic musical knowledge nor, very probably, strong musical instinct. Not only did heshy away from acquiring technical knowledge which he considered an obstacle to feeling and intuition; he even refused to speak of music in concrete terms. If he made casual reference to facts, as occasionally happened, he often was in error; in speaking of the instrumentation of theSinfonia Domesticaof Strauss, for example, he referred to the use of theviola d’amoreinstead of the oboe—likewised’amore, but hardly to be confused with the viola! His relation to music remained that of a litterateur to whom music furnished a stimulus for ideas, sentiments, and attitudes, and, in consequence, for words.
In spite of his association with mature musicians such as Bloch, Rosenfeld never learned to regard music as something other than a means of evocation, an art completely self-sufficient as a mode of expression, completely developed, an artwhich demands of its devotees all their resources of craft and personality. He was therefore not in a position to help young composers as a connoisseur, to give them a sense of the demands of their craft or of the essence of musical expression. He did succeed, to be sure, in giving them something much needed at that time: a lively sense of belonging to the whole cultural movement of the period. Other critics gave them not even that feeling. Confined to the limits of their profession and the premises discussed, they reported, more or less competently, events and thefaits diversof the daily music life. They concerned themselves little, and only incidentally, with contemporary music. The composers were growing and developing independently; and when, as toward the end of the decade, they found performers like Koussevitzky who took an interest in their music, the critics wereneither conspicuously hostile nor conspicuously friendly, but remained indifferent to the prospects of a development of music in the United States. They were also reluctant seriously to consider either the issues involved or the influences which would have favored such a development. The critics contented themselves by “going along,” at least tentatively, with Koussevitzky and others of established reputation showing interest in this music.
We state these facts without malicious intent. We can understand why in such a situation the critics, confronted with something new, failed. The appearance on the music scene of an entire group of young American composers who, so to speak, thought for themselves and were searching for their individual attitudes and modes of musical speech, forced the critics of the time to face a series ofunaccustomed challenges. It demanded, for the first time in the United States, that they come to terms, repeatedly, with music of serious intent, music which had arrived fresh and free of previous critical judgments. At the same time, the development of a number of these native composers may well have been a threat to thestatus quoand vested interests, which included the supremacy of the critic in all that concerned the formation of public taste. There is no evidence, as far as we know, that any critic actually thought in such terms, and it is not a question of accusation. Such considerations seem natural at least as subconscious forces and would adequately explain the reserve which the music journalists of twenty-five years ago displayed, not toward this or that young composer, but toward American composers as such; their reluctance to admit American music tothe category of things to be discussed seriously, either for its own sake or for its significance in relation to the music culture of the country as a whole, was apparent. Certainly they were aware of the names of some of these creators and had thought about them, possibly in a stereotyped concept of their musical physiognomies, and certainly they did not ignore them when their music appeared on important programs, yet clearly they made no effort to study such music closely, to seek out and discover young or unknown personalities, or to interest themselves in events which took place off the beaten path. In short, what they lacked was genuine sympathy for what was happening.
Such sympathy, actually, was reserved for another generation of critics, which arose toward the end of the thirties. No doubt, the most influential of recent yearshave been Virgil Thomson, who retired two years ago from theNew York Herald-Tribune, and Alfred Frankenstein, still of theSan Francisco Chronicle. Both served modest apprenticeships before arriving at positions of power. Above all, both are notable for their close relationship to contemporary, and especially American music, as well as for their experience and knowledge of the life and the repertory of concert and opera. Thomson is known also as a composer; as a critic, he is a lively and often brilliant observer of the contemporary music scene. He makes his readers constantly aware of his own predilections (he has every right to do so as a composer) and his predilections are for the French music of the twenties. One must give him credit also for the efforts made to understand music of other types. Above all, one must admire his consistent and tirelessemphasis on the work of younger composers, and the energy with which he reported on interesting and vital events, however distant they might have been from Fifty-seventh Street or Times Square.
Frankenstein, for at least twenty-five years, has battled for the cause of music in the United States. He gave careful attention to the state of music here, and there is probably no one more qualified to speak of it authoritatively. He became personally acquainted with the principal composers who live in our country, but, better still, he familiarized himself with their music. Possessing an unusual degree of knowledge of music history, he combines it with an equally rich knowledge of, and carefully considered judgment on, the problems of contemporary music. Like Thomson, he brings to his task a deep sense of responsibility foreverything in our music life. One need not always agree with Thomson and Frankenstein, but it is difficult not to recognize their sincerity.
It is evident that our discussion of music criticism in the United States has dealt primarily with its relation to the general subject of our musical development. The music itself and the composers and their ideas remain to be discussed.