VII
The principal concern of music in the twenties was the idea of a national or “typically American” school or style and, eventually, a tradition which would draw to a focus the musical energies of our country which, as Rosenfeld once said to Aaron Copland and the author, would “affirm America.” The concern was not limited to composers, and in fact it was sometimes used as a weapon against individual composers by those whose preconceived ideas of what“American” music should be did not square with the music in question. In spite of the abstract anda priorinature of this concern, it was a natural one in view of the historical circumstances.
Actually the nationalist current in our music dates back to a period considerably earlier than the twenties. Its underlying motives are as curiously varied as are its manifestations. Cultural nationalism has special aspects which, since they derive from our colonial past, may be considered as reflex actions, so to speak, of American history. American musical nationalism, too, is complex. In its earlier phases it developed gradually on the basis of a music culture which came to us from abroad. It consisted, as it were, of a deliberate search for particular picturesque elements derived for the most part from impressions received from ritual chants of the Indians or from characteristicsongs of the colored people in the South; equally, it included efforts, such as MacDowell’s, to evoke impressions of the American landscape. These and similar elements strongly contributed to the renown of this sympathetic figure, and MacDowell’s name for many years was virtually identical with American music.
A different feature was furnished by a Protestant culture which in the beginning came from England, but developed a character all of its own in the English colonies, especially in New England. Against this background grew our “classic” writers and thinkers, and the character found expression in music and painting, though in the latter it is admittedly less important. Next to MacDowell the most significant figure in the American music of that time was undoubtedly Horatio Parker, who, especiallyin certain religious works, displayed not only a mature technique, but also a musical nature and profile which were well defined, even though they were not wholly original.
These men, however, did not represent a genuinely nationalist trend, but rather idioms which, in much more aggressive and consistent form, contributed to a nationalist current that was to become strong in the twenties. The figure and the influence of Paul Rosenfeld again comes to mind, yet the question was not so much that of an individual per se as that of a personality embodying a whole complex of reactions deriving from a new awareness of our national power, of the disillusionment of the post-War period, and of a recrudescent consciousness of Europe and European influence on the United States and the world in general.
We know the political effects of thesereactions and their consequences for the world. As far as the cultural results are concerned, they led to a wave of emigration which took many of our gifted young writers, artists, and musicians to Europe, especially to Paris. It was a revulsion against the cultural situation of the United States of those years. The same reactions also produced a wave of revulsion against Europe, however, as far as music was concerned, against the domination of our music life by European musicians and European ideas, against the mentioned wave of emigration which seemed to have carried away, if but temporarily, so many young talents and therefore so much cultural energy, a revulsion, finally, against the whole complex world of Europe itself. That European world seemed exigent, disturbing. It was a world from which we had freed ourselves a century and a halfearlier, but which for so many years thereafter had constituted an implicit threat to American independence, and which presented itself to American imagination as a mass of quasi-tyrannical involvements from which our ancestors had fled in order to build a new country on unsullied soil. The most pointedly American manifestations were sought for, not always in the most discriminating spirit or with the most penetrating insight as to value; and the effort was made to call forth hidden qualities from sources hitherto regarded with contempt.
The situation indicates an extremely complex movement, partly constructive and based not just on reflex impulses, and has left traces which persist in our culture. As a primary motive, it has long since been left behind; for, though it was an inevitable phase, the time arrived when it no longer satisfied our culturalneeds. One may, in fact, observe the manner in which (more obvious here than in Europe since our country is so vast and the distances so great) such a movement tends to shift, also geographically, and finally to die in the provinces where it had survived for a certain period after losing its force in the cultural centers.
From such a background of reflex and impulse the facets of American musical nationalism grew. Let us distinguish three, though perhaps they are overdefined. One is the “folklorist” tendency characteristic of a group of composers of differing types, from Charles Wakefield Cadman to Charles Ives. Folklore in the United States is something different from European or Russian folklore. Here it does not involve a popular culture of ancient or legendary origin, which for centuries grew among the people and remained, as it were, anonymous; here itis something recent, less naive, and, let us say, highly specialized. It consists largely of popular songs originally bound to precise historical situations and the popularity of which, in fact, derived from their power to evoke the memory or vision of these situations—the Civil War, the life of the slaves in the South, or that of cowboys or lumberjacks in the now virtually extinct Old West—only nostalgia remained. Though these songs are in no sense lacking in character, they fail to embody a clear style; and it is difficult to see how, with their origins in a relatively sophisticated musical vocabulary, they could conceivably form the basis of a “national” style. Not only a musical, but also a sociological and psychological basis for such a style is missing. Therefore, apart from jazz—which is something else, but equally complex—folklorism in the UnitedStates has remained on a relatively superficial level, not so much for lack of attraction, but for lack of the elements necessary for expansion into a genuine style or at least into a “manner.”
Certain composers such as Henry Gilbert, Douglas Moore, and William Grant Still have made use of folklorism with success. However, even in the music of these composers the element is evocative rather than organic; and the success of their efforts seems commensurable with the degree to which the whole remains on the frankly “popular” level. The extraordinary figure of Charles Ives might be considered an exception. He certainly is one of the significant men in American music, and at the same time one of the most complex and problematical. But among the various elements of which his music consists—music which sometimes reaches almost the level ofgenius, but which, at other times, is banal and amateurish—the folklorist is the most problematic, the least characteristic.
Another aspect of our musical nationalism is just thatevocativetendency. It makes reference to a quasi-literary type in the theater, in texts of songs and other vocal works, or to “programs” in symphonic poems. Many Americans have made use of such reference in a self-conscious manner. However, the term is used here also to refer to an effort to achieve a musical vocabulary or “style” apt, in some manner, to evoke this or that aspect of American landscape or character. Howard Hanson, for instance, in his postromantic and somewhat conventional music, has tried to establish an evocative relationship with the American past as well as with the Nordic past of his Scandinavian ancestors.
More ambitious and possibly more interesting was the effort of Roy Harris to achieve a style that could be called “national” in a less external sense. His point of departure was the evocation of American history or American landscape; but from these beginnings he goes on to technical and aesthetic concepts aimed toward defining the basis of a new American music. It cannot be denied that Harris accomplished some results. For a time during the years just preceding World War II, his music attracted the attention of musicians on both sides of the Atlantic and achieved considerable success. His ideas and concepts, however, must be considered quite by themselves; music and technical concepts belong to different categories: it would be an error to judge either in terms of the other. Harris’s ideas of technique often have little or nothing to do with specificallyAmerican motivation, but to a large extent consist of a strange brew composed of anti-European revulsion, personal prejudice, and the projection of this or that problem, or a solution with which he has become acquainted. What is lacking, as in the entire nationalist movement in our music, is awareness of the fact that genuine national character comes from within and must develop and grow of itself, that it cannot be imposed from without, and that, in the last analysis, it is a by-product, not an aim, of artistic expression.
A third type of American musical nationalism may be dubbed “primitivist,” a term implying something different from the primitivism which for a time was current in European culture. Reference here is not necessarily to an interest in the culture of the Indians, whether the primitive of North America or the morehighly developed of Central and South America. Primitivism of this variety is related to frank rebellion against European culture and is a vague and overstrained yearning for a type of quasi-music that is to be completely new, and in which one could find refuge from the demands, conflicts, and problems of contemporary culture manifesting itself everywhere. It is expressed in superficial experimentalism, not to be confused, in its basic concepts, with experimentalism concerned with the problems of contemporary music and culture. Actually, as happens frequently in matters of contemporary art, the two types of experimentalism are sometimes found in association, in a rather strange admixture. It would require special analysis—one which has no bearing on the present discussion—to dissociate them. One cannot entirely ignore this trend,however, a current always existing in one form or the other, though never achieving importance.
One might possibly add one more brand of nationalism to the folklorist, evocative, and primitivist—the attempt to base a national style on jazz. Such classification is of course artificial and of purely practical value. While folklorism, the evocation of American images, and the type of primitivism we have been discussing, are related exclusively to American backgrounds, jazz, on the other hand, though it originated in this country and is considered a product of our culture, has had an influence on music outside the United States. It has taken root inEurope and developed European modes on European soil, not as an exotic product, but as a phenomenon which is modern rather than exclusively American.
This author will never forget an occasion at a little restaurant in Assisi, in the shadow of the church ofSt.Francis, when he had to ask that the radio, blaring forth genuine jazz, be lowered so he might talk quietly with his colleague Dallapiccola; or another occasion in an Austrian village hotel, where jazz—also genuine though not of the highest quality—was constantly heard, either from a local dance band or on the radio: it was craved more by the young German, Dutch or Danish guests than by the Americans there. Jazz—unless one insists on an esoteric definition—has become, or is about to become, an international phenomenon like othermass-produced goods which, originally manufactured in the United States, lose their association with it and are assimilated elsewhere.
This is not to minimize the fact that jazz developed via American popular music, and that it contains a strong primitive ingredient from this source. However, other elements were added, as it were, by accretion, elements which derive from a predominantly rhythmic vitality and are supposedly inherited from the African past of the negroes. Long before the name jazz was given to this type of music, its rhythmical and colorist, and to a degree its melodic elements had attracted the attention of European musicians. Beginning as early as Debussy’sGolliwogg’s Cake Walk, one remembers a series of works by Stravinsky, Casella, Milhaud, Weill, and others. The influence remained active fora short time, and by the end of the thirties it had virtually disappeared.
Similar things happened in the United States, yet with far-reaching implications. Certain composers had hoped to find in jazz the basis for an “American” style and their efforts may be considered the most serious of all ever made to create an American music with “popular style” as its foundation (even though jazz can really not be called folk music in the accepted sense of the word). These composers in jazz saw characteristic elements which they believed rich enough to allow development into a musical vocabulary, one of definite character, though limited to certain emotive characteristics in turn believed to be typically American. Aaron Copland in hisMusic for the Theatreand his Piano Concerto (written in 1926) showed his audience novel points of departure such as hadbeen suggested by Europeans; other Americans felt capable of carrying these beginnings still farther and discovered idiomatic features not only in the musical vocabulary, but in the American personality as well.
Copland, of these composers, undoubtedly was the most successful. However, he dropped the experiment after two or three works of this type, which can be counted among his best, in order to write, over a period of several years, music of a different kind, characterized by certain lean and harsh dissonances, angular, sharp, and at moments melancholy and which no longer had a connection with jazz. There is much more to say about this composer, whose music has passed also through other phases. It may be asked, however, why he decided to abandon the idiom chosen at the outset of his career, one based on jazz.Probably he saw the limitations of nationalist ideas as such and, like the European composers mentioned, came to the realization that by its very nature jazz is limited not only as material, but emotionally as well. Jazz may be considered agenreor a type, yet one discovers quickly that, passing beyond certain formulas, certain stereotyped emotive gestures, one enters the sphere of other music, and the concept of jazz no longer seems sensible. The character of jazz is inseparably bound to certain harmonic and rhythmic formulas—not only to that of syncopation but, if incessant syncopation is to make its full effect, to the squarest kind of phrase structure, and to a harmony based on most primitive tonal scheme. While immobility of these bases makes a play of rhythmic detail and of melodic figuration possible, this always is a question of lively detail ratherthan of extended organic development. The result is exactly what might have been expected: for the last twenty years, leaving aside occasional instances where jazz was frankly and bodily “taken over” for special purposes, it has ceased to exert a strong influence on contemporary music. On the contrary, it has borrowed incessantly from “serious” music, generally after a certain interval of time.
Though different from Copland, the equally gifted George Gershwin travelled in the opposite direction; from popular music he came to the extended forms of “serious” music. He remained a composer of “popular” and “light” music, nevertheless, for they were native to him. If his jazz is always successful and unproblematical even in his large works, like theRhapsody in Blueand the operaPorgy and Bess, it is because in its original and popular sense jazz is hisnatural idiom, and Gershwin never felt the need for overstepping its limits, musical or emotive. True, he wanted to write works of large design, but herein he never succeeded. He never understood the problem and the requirements of extended form, and remained, so to speak, innocent of them. But since his music was frankly popular in character and conception, it developed without constraint within the limits of jazz; and since he was enormously gifted, it could achieve a quality transcending the limits of jazz convention.
In other words, Gershwin’s music is in the first place music, and secondarily jazz. Those who may be considered his successors in the relationship to “serious” or, let us say, ambitious music, set out from premises no longer derived from nationalism. There is no longer the question of, in Rosenfeld’s words, “affirmingAmerica,” but of gaining and holding the favor of the public. This was the concern of American composers during the thirties. Perhaps above all, American composers for the first time had won the attention of an American public; and it is natural that they wished to win and to enjoy the response of this public, and that some felt a challenge in the situation not altogether banal. For the American composer any vital relationship with a public was a new experience, one which seemed to open new perspectives. He felt for the first time the sensation of being supported by a strong propaganda for native music—something quite new in American music, though not without unexpected effects. Since the propaganda was in behalf of American composers as such, since it was always stated in terms of these composers, since their right to be heardand their problems rather than the satisfactions which the public would derive from them were stressed, or the participation which that public would gain from listening to American music, the effect soon was that of giving nationality as such a value in and for itself. Quality and intention of the music soon seemed nonexistent; performers satisfied the demands of Americanism, presenting whatever music they found most convenient, and often whatever was shortest or made the least demand on performer and listener. It seems as if our music was obliged to pay in terms of loss of dignity for what it gained in terms of, at least, theoretical acceptance.
Many composers during those years were attracted by ideas derived from the quasi-Marxist concept of mass appeal. Their ideas of a cultural democracy drovethem toward a type of music which consciously aimed at pleasure for the greatest number. Such ideas suited the aims of the music business, which, with the help of business ideologies, encouraged these endeavors.
The music produced, however, bore no longer a specific relationship to jazz, which latter continued to develop along the lines normal to any product that has become an article of mass consumption, a variable product excluding neither imagination nor musical talent, but always remaining agenreand, by reason of its inherent restriction, never becoming a style. The features which once attracted attention by now had been absorbed into the contemporary musical vocabulary to which jazz could make no further contributions. Jazz, on the other hand, takes the materials of contemporary music, adopts those of its technicalmethods it can absorb and transforms them for its own uses. Infinitely more than even in the case of “serious” music, the composition and performance of popular music are controlled by commercial interests representing millions of dollars; in the economy of music business this fact constitutes a chapter in itself.
The “serious” composers during the thirties were attracted by the two tendencies which years before had dominated the European musical scene: theneoclassictendency, and that which is roughly summarized asGebrauchsmusik, literallyutility music. In Europe, these tendencies were closely allied since one term implies an aesthetic, the other a practical purpose, and since they have the impulse toward new simplicity and a new relationship with the public as a common basis. As a result,neoclassicism, aiming at a clear and accessible profileand derived from more or less self-conscious evocations of music of the past, efficiently served as an idiomatic medium appropriate to the purposes of utility music. In the United States, explicit “returns” to this or that style or composer were few, and the neoclassic tendency was by no means always connected with a drive toward better relations with the public. Widely adopted, however, was a radicaldiatonicism, in the last analysis derived from theneoclassicphase of Stravinsky and adapted to utilitarian ends (as in music for film or ballet by Aaron Copland or Virgil Thomson), to fantastic and parodistic purposes (as in the operaFour Saints in Three Actsof Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein), or to “absolute” music as in certain sonatas and symphonies of Aaron Copland.
The name Copland is always present when one speaks of the differingtendencies within the development of the past forty years. A large share of the various phases through which our music has passed during these decades is summed up in his work. He not only passed through them himself, but guided many young composers as friend and mentor. Notwithstanding his manifold transformations—and it is altogether possible that there are more to come—he has remained a strong and well-defined personality, easily recognizable in the differing profiles his music has assumed.
This final section, while of necessity dealing with the author of this book, will not engage in a polemic against the ideas outlined on the preceding pages. The bases and motives of these ideas haveconstituted part also of this author’s experience, and he has tested them, as the Germans say,am eigenen Leib, and has tried to present them in such a manner as to demonstrate that they were inevitable phases of American culture.
But there is more. If we nourish the hope of surmounting the dangerous crisis through which western culture is presently passing, we must make clear distinctions, and if we wish to surmount the particular, so to speak, accessory crisis of American musical maturity, we must not lose sight of the difference between ideas of an aesthetic or sociological nature on the one hand, and, on the other, the individual works of art which supposedly embody them. The valid works and personalities are infinitely more complex than the ideas which constitute merely one of many components.
At the same time, ideas influence notonly the conscious efforts of composers, not only the criteria and the judgments of critics, but they influence, in the United States far more than in Europe, education and the general tenor of music life. Repeated mention has been made of a predilection, in the American mode of thought, for abstraction. This tendency derives from the necessity of building, fast, a foundation where a strong, complex influence of ancient tradition is lacking. Other peoples are inclined toward abstraction, too, but in comparison at least with Europe, here the ascendancy of certain concepts, ideas, and personalities is, at least on the surface, nearly uncontested. Equally striking is the finality, at times not as real as it may seem, with which the same concept, idea or personality can be superseded.
These processes may be observed in many aspects of American life; and theconcern with which they are viewed by those following the currents of opinion, is well known. However, countercurrents exist, frequently lost from view even when they are strongest. With the full glare of publicity concentrated on whatever is momentarily in the ascendance, countercurrents easily grow in quasi-silence and emerge at the appointed moment with a strength disconcerting to those not acquainted with the processes of American life (which often seems to run from one extreme to the other): therefore it is good to remain aware of the strength, real or potential, of opposition.
What we term countercurrents to the manifold tendencies heretofore discussed, may already in part have superseded former attitudes, and in part may become dominant at the present time. Countercurrents continually attract a large number of gifted and intelligent youngmusicians who regard cultural nationalism with irony, as a formula too facile to constitute a definitive solution of our musical problems. They look with irony at the quest for audience appeal, which to them lacks musical conviction, even though occasionally it may be motivated by certain social beliefs. They are restive under the older attitudes aimed at helping the American composer as a matter of principle. They feel that such aims do not imply necessity, real desire, respect for, or interest in, the music Americans are writing, and to which they give all the resources they possess.
This segment of our young people has observed that musical nationalism, whatever its special orientation, by this time has lost the freshness of a new approach and has acquired the character of a provincial manifestation. This segment sees quite clearly that jazz remains aparticulargenreadmirably suited to its own aims, but in no sense capable of becoming a style, since style, if it is to be real, must cover all visible musical possibilities and be responsive to all vital, musical, and expressive impulses. These young musicians are wholly able to enjoy jazz and even to become adepts, without pretensions and illusions. They are conscious, however, of the manner in which certain composers, who within their memories were once considered “esoteric,” have achieved almost classic status, are regularly if not frequently performed, and often harvest great success. Bártòk, and to some extent Alban Berg, come to their minds, and they have noticed the manner in which these composers have achieved what practically no one expected.
The influence of European musicians who found refuge here during the thirtiesand the early years of World War II, the most distinguished as well as the most modest, can scarcely be overestimated. It is unnecessary to speak of the important role they have played, since that is well known; looking back at the situation as it presented itself at the time, one can be impressed both by the cordiality with which they were nearly always received and by the spirit in which, with few exceptions, they embraced the entirely new conditions history had thrust upon them. These facts are in the best American tradition, as is the immense contribution they have made, partly through their activities as musicians, partly through the successes achieved through their understanding of a unique cultural situation.
We are dealing, in other words, with a concept of American music differing sharply from that heretofore discussed:one which views the United States basically as a new embodiment of the occidental spirit, finding in that spirit not only the premises but the basic directives which have given our national development its authentic character. Such a view assumes the cultural independence of the United States both as a fact and as a natural goal; this matter requires no discussion, even though unfortunately it is still necessary, on occasion, to insist on it. The same view also recognizes that real independence is an intimate and inherent quality which is acquired through maturity, and not a device with which one can emblazon one’s self by adopting slogans or programs of action. “American character” in music, therefore, is bound to come only from within, a quality to be discovered inanygenuine and mature music written by an American, is a by-product of such music,to be recognized, no doubt,afterthe fact, but not to be sought out beforehand and on the basis of preconceived ideas. Only when the ideas are no longer preconceived, when, in other words, a large body of music of all kinds will have brought a secure tradition into being, then the American musical profile will emerge and the question of American style or character assume meaning.
In the meantime, it is necessary to maintain an independent attitude toward “foreign influences” without being afraid of them. Furthermore, it will be better to remember how traditions, in the history of culture, invariably have crossed frontiers and served to nourish new thoughts, the new impulses toward new forms and new styles: just as Dutch music nourished Italian in the sixteenth century, Italian music nourished German some hundred and fifty years later. Thereal task of the American composer is basically simple: it is that of winning for himself the means of bringing to life the music to which he listens within himself. This is identical with the task that has confronted all composers at all times, and in our age it involves, everywhere and in like manner, facing in our own way the problems of American music with single-mindedness and genuine dedication. Naturally, it obligates us to absorb the music culture not just of this or that country, but to seek large horizons and to explore indefatigably from a point of vantage.
In order to arrive at an American music, we must, above all, aim at a genuine music. Similarly, we cannot hope to achieve a valid relationship with the public by means of shortcuts—neither by flattering the listener through concessions (however well concealed) to thetaste of the majority, nor by seeking to limit the musical vocabulary to what is easily understood. Agreed: we live in a difficult, a transitional and hence a dangerous period, in which the individual frequently finds himself in an isolated position, in which society seems to become increasingly uncohesive, more unwieldy, and therefore prone to seek common ground on the most facile and oversimplified level. The fact remains that what the public really wants from music, in the last analysis, is neither the mirrored image of itself nor fare chosen for easy digestibility, but vital and relevant experience. The composer can furnish such experience by writing from the plenitude of complete conviction, and without constraint. One cannot hope ever to convince anyone unless one has convinced one’s self; and this is the composer’s sole means of contact withany public whatever. He has no choice other than to be completely himself: the only alternative for an artist is not to be one.
This opinion is no offer of an alternative solution to the American musical problem: it does not exclude musical nationalism or any other movement of that type; it does not exclude any kind of music whatever. It establishes premises which allow the free development of any music composers feel impelled to furnish. Music life today is infinitely varied, and there are all kinds of music, for every purpose and every occasion. This variety has developed as a natural consequence of modern life, and in fact is a part of it. An exclusive, dogmatic concept which would aim to limit this variety, or which would deny the validity of this or that type of music, is ridiculous. However, we must insist on distinctions and onthe criteria that go with distinctions. It is not to the music or the concept of music—folklorist, evocative, popular, choose an adjective at will—that one should object, but to the exclusivity of a system of values which pretends to furnish criteria relevant to the development of music. Certainly the adjectives have meaning, but in a different sphere.
The “great line of western tradition” provides the most fertile source of nourishment also for American music. This is now being recognized almost universally throughout the United States: and the recognition appears as the premise for our music education, criticism, and, in fact, for the responsible agencies of our entire music life. Today one hears very little of musical nationalism. It has been relegated to the provinces. The eternal quarrel between what is “esoteric” and what “popular”has evolved into a quite urbane, almost friendly argument betweendiatonicismandchromaticism, thetonalistsand theatonalists, or with overtones resounding from a very recent past, betweenneoclassicismand thetwelve-tonemusic. We are probably in a period of calm before new storms, and such periods are not always the happiest either for artists or for art. Those sensitive to shifting currents will have an idea of the nature of the next big argument.
Before giving some hint as to thepossible natureof this argument, as a concluding gesture, it seems relevant to comment on two more points (unrelated though they are to one another) by no means unimportant in our general picture. First: though the study of the classics is all but universal in the United States, and is often on a level equal to anything found elsewhere, traditionalismin the European sense simply does not exist here, and we understand why this is so. In the absence of an indigenous tradition expressing itself in our criticism, our music education, and our practice of music, there is no group of composers which would or could identify itself with a conservative traditionalism, nor is there a means of opposition to new music on that level. Opposition is abundant, as has been indicated in the preceding pages; but, generally speaking, it is based on different grounds, and at most there are remnants of this or that European tradition: German, Italian French, Viennese, and sometimes even British. However, the word “tradition” here assumes the most dynamic of its senses: that which impliescontinuityrather than that which fosters domination by the past.
Second—and one may regard thispoint as controversial: the influence Arnold Schönberg exerted during his lifetime in the United States, that is, for nearly twenty years, is most noteworthy. Like many refugees from Europe, he became a passionately enthusiastic citizen of our country and here composed some of his most important works, possibly the most important: the Fourth Quartet, the Violin Concerto, the String Trio, and others. Though his career as such may not be relevant to our present discussion, it is appropriate to stress the influence of this great personality on American music life—an influence which has been deeper than is generally assumed. It has always been in the direction of intensified awareness of that “great line” to which reference was made, and in the sense of that great line. From his pupils in this country, as from those he had had previously in Europe,he demanded, first and above all, striving toward such awareness. Though he discovered thetwelve-tonemethod, he was far greater than this or any other method, and he tried to inculcate upon his students and disciples an awareness of the primacy of music itself: thus he refused to teach the method to his students, insisting that they must come to it naturally and as a result of their own creative requirements, or not at all.
Thetwelve-tonemusic has flourished here as elsewhere, and is no longer problematical. This author, often identified with thetwelve-toneordodecaphonictendency, recently read an article, as yet unpublished, on his music in which it was pointed out that several of his colleagues, Walter Piston, Virgil Thomson, and Aaron Copland, actually experimented with the method before he himself used it in any literal sense, andthis in spite of the fact that these colleagues are considered as belonging to a different camp.
The fact is one more proof that the “system” no longer is an issue. The issue, rather, is one of the resources of a composer, while the system is available for use by any individual and in any way he sees fit. The arguments which loom ahead and already have begun to resound in Europe, are most likely those between composers who commit themselves to the “system” as conceived by them, the “system” as a value in itself, and those who regard it as a tool to be used in the forging of music valid on quite different and perennially vital grounds. The attitude of Schönberg, and for that matter and in equal measure of his followers Alban Berg and Anton Webern, is appropriately summarized in a sentence Schönberg once quoted in a letter to thisauthor, and which is drawn from one of his early lectures. “A Chinese philosopher,” Schönberg wrote, “speaks Chinese, of course; but the important thing is: what does he say?”
Let us conclude with this beautiful word from one of the truly great figures of our time. With a slight change of emphasis we can take it as a challenge to American music, and to any music from any source. American musical maturity, or if one prefers, the drive toward that cultural maturity, coincides with one of the most formidable crises through which human imagination has passed, and one which demands maturity, urgently, from every possible source. We have reason to hope that we American musicians may learn to meet the challenge implied in Schönberg’s words, the eternal challenge of art itself, in a worthy manner which does full justice to the situation.