MUSIC IN AMERICA
MUSIC IN AMERICA
INTRODUCTION
Prophecy, not history, is the most truly important concern of music in America. What a new world, with new processes and new ideals, will do with the tractable and still unformed art of music; what will arise from the contact of this art with our unprecedented democracy—these are the questions of deepest import in our musical life in the United States. The past has consisted chiefly of a tasting of the musical art and traditions of the old world. The present is divided between imitation of the old and searching for the new, both in quality and application. The fruitage of our national musical life is still for the future. Intense as are the activities of the present, they are still merely the preparation of the soil for a future growth the nature and extent of which we can only guess at to-day. The stream of musical evolution in America, in the present transitional period, is rapidly overflowing its wonted banks, and passing the boundaries of the traditional musical world. The many are striving to obtain that which has been the exclusive possession of the few, and in this endeavor are not only extending, but also actually transforming the art. The paramount issues change with the passing of the seasons. One imported European sensation gives way to another. The problem of the true basis of American music dissolves overnight, and gives way to the problemof the specific evaluation of individual composers, whatsoever their tendency. The questions of the narrow concert world dwindle before the greater question of a broad musical administration for the people. We stand, in fact, in a state of chaos with respect of musical activities and ideals, and only the clearest thinkers are able to catch the truer and larger drift of the national evolution, or effectively direct it. Too many persons are ready to suppose that the issues of music in America lie wholly within the scope of purely musical considerations, and that they do not depend, as is actually the case in certain important respects, upon the nature of the national ideals and tendencies. The national need will condition the supply, and the more truly and deeply a national need is fulfilled, the more vital will be the result. For this reason it is important that the general national condition with respect of music be carefully studied, and that misconceptions and theories be relinquished in favor of a knowledge of facts.
If now we set out to glance over the circumstances which have eventually brought about the present condition of music in America, we find that this history, taken in its largest outlines, has a threefold aspect, the features of which may be roughly termed appreciation, creation, and administration. The degree in which the new world has grasped and understood the facts of musical development in the old must constitute a chief factor in any consideration of its musical evolution, and this subject will naturally include a reference to musical culture in America. The second general division of the subject relates to American composers and the creative musical output of the nation. The matter of the appreciation of this output will best be touched upon in connection with this aspect of the subject. With the question of administration we approach a phase of the subject which has of late assumed momentousproportions, touching directly, as it does, the great question of the relation of music to the people—the reaction of democracy to the art of music. The divisions of Appreciation and Administration are, of course, very closely related, and some chapters, such as that on Education, embody both aspects in almost equal degree. Hence the line cannot be very sharply drawn. Our sequence of chapters, while emphasizing the three aspects here set forth, has therefore been arranged with a view to presenting as continuous a story as possible. The chapters reviewing the creative activities of American composers have accordingly been placed together at the end of the volume.
We can not deeply consider the matter of the appreciation of the musical art of the old world by the new, without coming to the realization that it is complete. This, it must be recognized, is a matter which does not ultimately depend upon the numerical extent of the appreciators, but upon the quality of appreciation existing within the nation. Were this not so, we could not affirm the existence of a complete appreciation of its musical art by any nation of the world. In the broad sense in which we must necessarily speak in dealing only with the major facts of civilization and evolution, we may say that German musical art is appreciated by the German nation, even if only here or there someone is found who understands precisely the principles of Beethoven's form, or Wagner's harmony. In the practical progress of the world it is general acceptance and use, together with a sufficient artistic appreciation, technical and otherwise, on the part of certain individuals, which constitutes national appreciation of art. The knowledge and action of such preëminent individuals qualify the appreciative life of the nation. The evolution of the world to-day resides in the evolution of the progressive thought of individuals. Such thought outdistances the slowermental operations of the mass, which is nevertheless drawn along into ever new sets of changing conditions, through the modern development of the means of communication and the corresponding rapidity of both material and spiritual advance.
Such conditions of appreciation exist in a signal manner in the America of to-day. It is the simplest and most obvious of facts that there is a general acceptance and use of European musical art, old and new, throughout the 'musical world' of America. The relation of that 'musical world' to the whole population will be considered later. It is equally obvious to the qualified observer that no point of European musical art is without its thorough-going students and appreciators, and ardent conservators, in America. From Bach and Haydn, nay, from the Gregorian chant, the Greek enharmonic, the Oriental scale, down through every intermediate period and personality to the present day of Stravinsky and Schönberg, every phase of musical history and life has its students and its champions in the new world. America has, in truth, summed up the musical life of the ages and reflects it daily in the multitudinous activities of her musical world. The quality of American appreciation has one advantage of the greatest significance over that of any other land, in that it is without national or racial prejudice. Being without history or unity, with respect of race, the American people are without a racial folk-song, and hence are bound by no ancient racial sympathy or habit to a particular fundamental conception of the character of music. German music, French, Russian, Bohemian, Scandinavian, Italian—all are accepted with equal eagerness and sympathy. In America the world's music falls on fresh ears, with the result that a catholicity of taste prevails such as is to be found in no other land, and with the further result that a unique and broadly inclusive national impression of musicalcharacter in general has been gained. This in turn is leading to a national creative musical output which, if it has not converged upon any one distinctive national character, is, on the other hand, wholly free from dependence upon the traditional character of the music of any other nation, and could have been produced by no other nation.
The upshot of the status of American appreciation of musical art is that, although the work of more extensively familiarizing the population with the world's music must continue, the evolution, broadly, of America as an appreciative nation has been fulfilled, and it can from now on find no true musical progress except as a creative nation. Not only has it studied, at home and abroad, all that the outside world has produced, but it has now thoroughly studied the various phases of aboriginal music which exist upon its own soil. The national life has passed beyond its school days and entered the period where it has no alternative but to face judgment as a musically productive nation with legitimate pretensions to maturity.
In view of the intense musical interest and eagerness of the American people, of the vigorous and very rapidly expanding development of musical life in the United States since the Civil War, and the enormous sums which the nation spends annually for musical education, both at home and abroad, it would be irrational to expect anything less than the results above indicated. Musical education, which has played so vast a part in this development, shares, nevertheless, the general chaotic condition of American musical life. The absence of a National Academy of Music leaves the country still without any official standard of musical education, although high ideals and thorough courses are maintained in the music departments of the larger universities. There are several independent musical academies and conservatories of high standing,with a sufficiently broad and well ordered curriculum, and an unnumbered mass of nondescript music schools innocent of all normal standards. The same scale, from the highest excellence to downright charlatanism, is to be found in the field of private instruction, and one of the greatest educational problems which the nation faces is to bring some element of standardization into this field. This is a matter for state action, and in several states a movement is well under way for the licensing of music teachers. The development of music in the public schools, well grounded in the early part of the last century, has of late years been pushed with vigor and intelligence, and has led to unprecedented studies in the adaptation of music to the child, as well as to the composition of a great quantity of new and appropriate children's songs of excellent quality. The chief difficulty with national musical progress through the public schools lies in the fact that such a minute proportion of public school scholars go to high school and college, most of them losing all contact with musical education before reaching an age when their interest in it can be firmly established. This circumstance is now happily being continually more widely met from extra-educational quarters, in the present movement for music for the people through various channels to be referred to later. Professional educators are inclined to lay too much stress on school education as a means of developing appreciation in the mass, forgetting that the time must come when the chief musical training of the people, with respect of their ultimate enjoyment of music, must consist in a general public hearing of music of the highest order.
In centres of highly refined musical culture, America, from East to West, is not lacking. An aristocracy of musical appreciation has followed upon the establishment of symphonic and chamber music organizations in a number of cities. This culture is, however, almostexclusively devoted to the maintenance of traditional European standards, and is inclined to take slight cognizance of the native and democratic developments in which the true national progress of the present lies. The presence of such a culture in America is therefore not altogether an unmixed blessing; in fact it may lead to certain results of positive evil. The presence of retrospective hyper-refinement in a nation at a time when rugged creative strength, even if crude in its artistic results, should be manifested, may be harmful in its effect upon normal creative progress, especially when, with the backing of wealth, the press, and the academy, it arrogates to itself the possession of the true vision of artistic standards.
If, then, the tide of musical appreciation in America has reached a normal level, in accordance with the general civilization of the world of to-day, if the appreciative era, purely as such, is past, the creative epoch has only fairly begun. America, in musical composition, already reckons a historical sequence approaching to a classical, a romantic and an ultra-modern period, exhibiting the strange spectacle of most of the founders of the first period living to see the flowering of the last, during their active lifetime. In fact, some of the pioneers have actively engaged in fostering the issues of all three epochs. The truth of this curious condition is that this triple-aspected development of the past fifty years can not in reality be said to represent even the beginning of the actual creative epoch of the nation. As the child is said to pass through phases corresponding to the entire ancient history of the race, so this chapter in American music represents the rapid passage of the youthful America through the previous history of the art; it has represented the desire to catch up with the world at large. Even if some works of lasting value have been produced, as is undoubtedly the case, this period has inactuality represented a mere reflex of European musical civilization, a surface agitation, to be followed by an authentic and original national productivity along the lines of its own needs and ideals.
So irregular and tumultuous have been the conditions of musical development in America, that early influences have been of relatively small qualitative importance in determining the ultimate issues of American music. There are but two such early influences of importance to record, and one of these has become wholly negligible with relation to our independent art of music, finding its only resultant effect in the church music of America. This, attributable in the first instance to the Netherland school of the Renaissance, appeared as the early English contrapuntal school of Purcell, becoming associated with the music of the Protestant Church in England, and finally becoming diluted to the productions of the school of Billings and Hopkinson in America. American hymnology undoubtedly owes its character to this evolutionary sequence, although in the end American church music has become inundated with the German influence in its more sentimental aspects, and presents in general a profound degeneration too momentous for discussion in the present brief review. The one great original influence acknowledged by the nation, in its musically creative life, is the mighty German tradition of the epoch of Beethoven. It is significant and fortuitous that America was colonized, musically, at the time when the influence of that tradition was paramount in the world. It was the emigrating German music teacher, in every city and town of the United States, who implanted the fundamental conception of musical art in American civilization. Accepted and consulted everywhere, he determined the character of music in America in the period of reconstruction and educational expansion after the Civil War. His influencewas solidified by the character of symphonic and choral enterprise, and by that of the performances of German musical artists touring in America. The Italian was the accredited opera singer and nothing more; the German was the teacher.
In the subsequent course of developments, two matters have militated against the ultimate domination of the German influence in American composition. One is the extensive change which has since occurred in the racial nature of the population. Continued immigration from all lands has eventually produced a population too diverse to accept and perpetuate, as its dominant musical character, the tradition of any one nation, however musically great. The other is the amazing musical awakening of all Europe since the epoch of Beethoven, and especially since Wagner, and the consequent deluge of modern music from various nations which has poured in upon American musical life. In view of the infinity of newly revealed possibilities, the American composer has been unwilling to continue to reflect merely the one tradition with which his nation was formerly acquainted, in howsoever high honor that tradition was held. It is to be said, however, that the substantial character of German formal musical construction has exerted, as it should, a permanent influence upon the American attitude toward composition, and one which is certain to operate beneficially upon the creative musical life of the nation. The American point of departure has been one not so much of technical system and ideals generally, as of temperament.
A third matter qualifying this emancipation of American music is the unearthing of the mass of aboriginal folk music peculiar to America, particularly that of the Indian and the negro. This has had a far more significant and widespread influence upon composers in America than critics in general have been willingto admit, and many of the strongest works now appearing in this country acknowledge an influence from these sources.
The 'American folk-song' discussion arose after what has been termed the classical period of American music, of which J. K. Paine may be considered the founder, and during the period in which the romantic influence, culminating in the work of MacDowell, was beginning to yield to the influence of the ultra-moderns. The factors which broke the exclusive German domination in America were, on one hand, the following up on this side of the water of the musical individuality gained by other European nations, and, on the other hand, the movement for the development of aboriginal folk-song in America. To these causes, some may add a spontaneous climatic influence, but of this there has as yet been no material demonstration.
The gist of the folk-song discussion was the question as to whether the basis of a characteristic national American musical art was to be found in the music of the negroes or Indians. This discussion arose after Antonin Dvořák's proclamation of such a possibility during his sojourn in America in the years 1892-95, and rose to its height several years after the foundation in 1901, by the writer, of The Wa-Wan Press, a movement for the attainment of a greater freedom in American music along both modern European and American aboriginal lines. As in all such matters, the question was answered by the degree and quality of creativeness in the works brought forward in exemplification of the principle. Good works on Indian or negro themes have lived, and bad ones have died. It soon became plainly evident that there was no popular prejudice against music drawing upon the characteristics of these native aboriginal sources; on the contrary, much interest was evinced, as has frequently been shown by the attitude of audiences listening tosuch works and by the popularity which certain of them have attained. The subject has also been made one for special study by numerous musical clubs throughout the country. What was asked was merely that the result should be good music. The influence of Indian and negro music upon American composition has thus spontaneously come to be recognized as a national and acceptable one, and the reflection of it by American composers to-day arouses scarcely a murmur of comment. That only a certain proportion of composers in America would respond to these influences was soon perceived, and with the readiness of the people to accept this kind of work, it became merely a question of the proportion of American musical art which should exhibit these tendencies. There appears to be no diminution of the tendency of many composers to draw upon these apparently inexhaustible aboriginal sources, and with the constant advance of creative musical art in America, and with its eagerness to press to a conclusion every available phase of music susceptible of development, there is every reason to believe that this influence, now generally recognized, will lead to a very considerable mass of achievement of a high character. America is too diverse in its sympathies and ideals to acknowledge any one national or racial influence as paramount in its musical art, but absolute creative freedom is essential to its national character.
Upon the original German influence, which has been rapidly modified in America by the work of Wagner and Strauss, there has followed chiefly the influence of modern France. Many American composers have lent themselves with avidity to the assimilation of the new technical resources revealed by Debussy and his colleagues, with excellent results so long as they considered these merely as accretions to their previous resource, but in general with equal failure where they have thought to create in the spirit of the French idiom.The directness of Russian musical expression has made its appeal to American composers, though its influence upon the color of American music has been inconsiderable in comparison with the French. The one cumulative effect of the many influences, from within and without, which have qualified the nature of American music, especially during the last two decades, has been to wrench it free from the uninspiring and nationally inappropriate character which it had acquired as the result of its original exclusive early German influence, without, it is to be noted, leading it into imitative subservience to the particular character of the musical art of any other nation. In other words, America has gained its creative musical freedom, even if still too new to that condition to manifest its ultimate results. With this widened horizon, the true creative epoch of American music has only now begun. The handful of American composers of serious ideals and noteworthy ability who could be named a few years ago has increased to scores, and new names appear in such rapid succession that the fairly definite knowledge which America had of its chief composers of the 'classical' and 'romantic' epochs can give only the feeblest conception of the present condition of composition in America. The best of the newer work shows a loftiness of ideals, a breadth of outlook, a definiteness of purpose, a freshness of color, a sense of the beautiful and anespritwhich argue strongly for the future honor of American music. The chief danger which threatens the American composer is the tendency to accept and conform to the standards of the centres of conventional and fashionable musical culture, especially in unsubstantial modern aspects, and to fail to study out the real nature and musical needs of the American people. Such a tendency naturally lingers with the lingering domination of Europe over the standards and the machinery of American musical life. Conformity means representationand a certain sort of acclaim for the composer; nonconformity means severance from the usual and conventional centres and institutions of musical culture. Critical approbation does not mean the response of the people; the composers most highly acclaimed by the critics can by no means be said to have come closest to touching the national heart. The attitude of the world of musical 'culture' in America is still cold toward the native producer; this narrow American 'culture' world pays for the maintenance of fashionable foreign standards, and resents any interference with this course. Concert singers are seldom heard in American songs worthy of their artistry, and orchestral conductors seldom give, on their own initiative, successful native orchestral works, an isolated performance of which has been arduously procured elsewhere.
With the people generally, however, the matter is quite otherwise. The people of the nation have never shown a disposition to receive otherwise than cordially the work of their own composers. From Stephen Foster, through the ranks of popular music composers, to MacDowell, to many song composers of the present, and latterly to the composers of music for popular festivals and pageants—wherever the composer has gone directly to the people and served their needs, whether in the sphere of lesser or greater ideals, he has found a ready welcome and a hearty response. The pathway of true creativity, of healthy growth and achievement for the composer in America to-day, lies in abandoning the competition with European sensationalists and ultra-modernists in the narrow arena of the concert halls of 'culture', and turning to the fulfilment of national needs in the broadest and deepest sense.
The accomplishment of this matter is linked with the third and last general division of our main subject,the question of administration. As a natural consequence of events in American musical history, dating from the earliest days, there has arisen the so-called 'musical world' of America to-day, the well-defined national system of concert, recital and operatic life. This system arose normally to supply the new world with the products of the highly developed musical art of the old, and in such a capacity it has admirably served its purpose. In the course of time, however, and with the increasing wealth and musical culture of America, the harvest to be reaped by the commercial exploitation of foreign artists has not remained unperceived by a country not naturally backward in the perception of commercial advantage. It is quite natural that those who took into their hands the management of these affairs should seek the greatest profit which they could be made to yield. This, it will readily be seen, was not to come from the broad development of a given locality, which would involve education and a departure from the centres of wealth, but from the exploitation of the narrow circle of wealth and culture which existed in every community of importance. Thus a great circuit was established throughout the country, by which a process of skimming the cream from as many communities as possible was set in operation, in the presentation of famous foreign artists to what has been allowed to pass as the American public. Thus a system established originally as a service to the people has finally degenerated to the condition of a commercial enterprise which is utterly without regard to the broader interests of the people. The true condition of affairs is made evident to-day by the fact that when a resident of any moderate-sized prosperous American city starts to inaugurate some local musical enterprise for the benefit of the whole community, and calling for the entire community's support, he learns that the concert and recital life of his city, its 'musicalworld,' reaches and is supported by but from three to five per cent. of the entire population. The other ninety-five to ninety-seven per cent. find the regular musical events beyond their means, as well as beyond the facts of their culture, though in the latter respect America is now rapidly learning that the enjoyment of the best music is far less dependent upon special education than has commonly been supposed.
Meanwhile, by phonograph and player-piano, by newspaper and magazine, by high-class municipal concerts and occasional chance glimpses into the world of greater musical possibilities, the mass of the people have begun to become awakened to the existence of the larger musical world which they do not see and the larger musical life which they do not share, and to crave participation in it. Finally, therefore, we have the spectacle of an American 'musical world' which is no longer true to American conditions and which does not serve the people. In short, we have finally come face to face with the problem of the reaction of musical art and democracy.
With this question the nation has of late begun to deal in no half-hearted or uncertain manner. In fact, the national response to this situation involves the greatest American musical movement of the day. In its earlier phase the question asked was: Will the people, under democracy, rise to the accepted standards of musical culture? A negative answer to this question has been generally entertained, and among cultured people it has been commonly supposed that democracy would drag down the standards of musical culture. That a wholly new and multifold phase of musical life would arise to meet the requirements of a civilization such as that of America seems to have been earlier suspected or foreseen only by a few thinking students of conditions, who recognized the fact that the exact meeting of the mass, as it became more enlightened, withthe conditions of traditional musical culture was not the solution which was to be expected or even desired. The plain fact was that the people at large were not enjoying the benefits, the pleasure, recreation, or inspiration, as the case might be, of all that the world prizes as music in any of its forms above that of popular songs and dances. Neither the educational system, on the one hand, nor the cultural system, on the other, provided them with it. One merely gave a little elementary training of the most primitive sort, and for a short time, to children, and the other did not reach beyond the extremely restricted sphere of culture and wealth. A movement was needed which should bring music in all of its forms directly to the masses of the people, and in the nation-wide campaign for what may be termed 'music for the people' such a movement has arisen. Experiments on every hand have shown that the people have needed only to be brought in contact with the higher forms of music, under advantageous conditions, to rise spontaneously to the enjoyment of it. The movement, in its activities, has assumed no particular form, but has taken a variety of forms according to the possibilities of local conditions. The 'Forest Festival,' or 'Midsummer High Jinks,' of the Bohemian Club in San Francisco, while not open to the general public, has nevertheless shown the potent appeal of outdoor musical dramatic festivals to a large number of persons not commonly in touch with musical life. Municipal concerts on a scale not hitherto attempted, such as those in Central Park, New York, presenting not band, but orchestral concerts of the world's greatest music, have met with an astonishing and enthusiastic response on the part of the masses who have hitherto had no opportunity of hearing anything above the popular music of the streets, the dance halls, and the 'movies.' The musical phase of the social centre movement has assumed vast and nationalproportions, making use of the public school halls for concerts and recitals for thousands of persons who were previously without musical opportunities. Certain towns, such as Bethlehem, Pa., Lindsburg, Kans., and the towns of the 'Litchfield County Choral Union,' Conn., have established choral enterprises which include in the choruses practically the entire population. In two years the custom of Christmas trees with music, free to the people, has become almost a national movement. The 'community chorus,' such as that established in Rochester, N. Y., with a membership of nearly one thousand drawn from the people at large, and singing in the public parks and school halls, should prove a desirable form of people's musical enterprise in many places. Standard symphony orchestras in various cities are branching out extensively in the direction of giving concerts involving the highest order of music to the people at popular prices, and in some cities the organization of symphony orchestras for popular price concerts is threatening the existence of the regular orchestra. And well-nigh surpassing in significance most other phases of the general movement, and certainly in their popular inclusiveness, are the pageants or 'community dramas' with music, which are now constituting a feature of community life throughout the country.
If, then, the appreciative epoch along the older lines, is concluded in America, it may be said that the nation is coming to a new appreciation of music, as a whole, in its relation to humanity. The new movement will call forth new and larger efforts on the part of American composers, who, with their present thorough assimilation of the various musical influences of the world, will lead the nation into a new and mature creative epoch.
Arthur Farwell.
August, 1914.