From: Chad Wozniak, USA
With all due respect to Mr Hinton, I offer the
following reply to his rejoinder to my comments. I
trust Mr Hinton will notice that I refrain from
personal deprecations (of him, that is) in my reply
to him.
Some clarifications are in order: first of all, I
certainly agree that there have continued to be
composers resisting abandoning tonality, all through
the dark night of the serial-aleatory dictatorship in
academia, the publishing houses and criticism. I am
one such composer myself, and there are others:
Rodrigo, Ward, Schickele, just to name three of the
better known (far better known than myself, needless
to say). Even the tightest totalitarian regime leaks
a little bit. But the dictatorship has unquestionably
stultified and even ruined careers, discouraged broad
musical education, prevented much new music of worth
from receiving attention, and above all -- has largely
alienated the listening public, not least because of
the sort of contempt for that public that is implicit
(and sometimes rather more than implicit, as the
examples I cited in my previous message indicate) in
serial and aleatory 'composition.'
Second, with regard to the onus and blame I place upon
Schoenberg and Cage for the loss of public interest in
art music, this is merely the distillation of my
observation of the non-specialist but usually well
educated sort of people who, as I referred to in my
previous posting, have historically constituted the
core audience for serious music. I have personally
observed these people's reactions to serial and
aleatory (and minimalist -- again part of why I include
minimalism in the category of failed modernisms)
material. I have heard them say they avoid premieres
of or symphony programs featuring new music, lest
their ears be assailed. And if one should think this
is mere philistinism, I have heard these same people
identify tone rows and distinguish aleatory from
serial in pieces even I, with a reasonably
well-trained ear, had difficulty with in making this
distinction. I have also seen these same people
having no difficulty with Bartók, Ravel, (pre-serial)
Stravinsky, Janácek, even Ives. They mind not their
ears being stretched, as Ives would put it, but they
do not want them attacked with intent to give offense.
In short, serialism and aleatory have directly,
observably alienated people who otherwise would be
attending classical music concerts. It has certainly
reduced, if not killed entirely, their interest in new
serious music -- and the death of that interest in new
music must surely lead to a loss of interest in all
serious music. Classical music is just as dependent
upon a continuing fresh supply of new and appealing
material as pop or any other form of entertainment, on
any level from the lowest to the highest, from the
most inane to the most loftily intellectually
demanding.
And again, who were the prophets of this
interest-killing material? Schoenberg and Cage.
Hauer is all but unknown, and yes, Busoni and Ives
both looked at the fundamental ideas behind serialism
and found them wanting, years ahead of Schoenberg (one
recalls Ives's comment about 'composing with a
ruler'). As for Cage, I attended a 'lecture' of his
during my undergraduate days, and even as a college
freshman I was able to see the utter flippancy and
infantilism of the man and of what he was producing
acoustically (I can't say 'musically,' as that would
be a falsehood). What could possibly be a better
example of the naked emperor than that piece of
unplayed non-music called 4'33"? I will always marvel
at the gullibility of anyone who could actually
believe that this bit of theater of the absurd is
'music.'
So yes, I blame these two primarily. They started
serious music on its road to ruin. They have not been
alone, to be sure; they have had many willing
helpers, as did Hitler in effecting the holocaust.
But they were the leaders, albeit it defies
explanation that they should have had so many eager
followers -- but again, that a supposedly civilized and
advanced nation like Germany should have provided so
many willing executioners (to borrow Daniel
Goldhagen's phrase) to serve a subhuman monster like
Hitler is hardly more inexplicable.
As for Schoenberg's making his reputation in lieu of
making music -- his comment about his system's
maintaining the superiority of German music for the
next century is sufficient proof of that, I should
think. By all accounts, the man was possessed of an
incredibly inflated ego -- certainly reminiscent of, if
not actually overtopping, Wagner's. And I might add
that his sometime excursions back to tonality would
seem to offer further evidence that he knew his system
was a sham. Therefore -- I stand by my conclusion as
stated.
As for Ives being the greatest composer of the 20th
century -- again I think his music speaks for itself,
its incredible eclecticism and unification of diverse
styles, but above all its grounding in appealing
melody, compelling harmonic progression (certainly
unconventional at times, but always in evidence even
his most astringent material) and clear organic form.
As for Berg -- he suffered first of all from the
weakness of allowing himself to be led by such a
poseur as Schoenberg -- and his Violin Concerto, so
often cited as a piece of 'accessible' serialism --
reveals an unnecessary marring of what might have been
a worthy piece by its needless submission to and
conformity with the failed idea.
With all due respect, Mr Hinton, I beg to disagree on
the foregoing points.
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