Modern Music in Retrospect

Author(s): Eric Salzman

Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring - Summer, 1964), pp. 14-20
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/832479
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MODERN MUSIC IN RETROSPECT

(for the fortieth anniversary of its founding)
ERIC SALZMAN

THE MAGAZINE Modern Music first appeared in 1924

of Composers Review; twenty-three years and eighty-nine

production costs outran its financial support and the qu

suspended publication. By that time a remarkable recor
rary musical life had been accumulated in its pages. Mo
never-and is not now-history, but it contains the stuff
ideas and tastes of a quarter-century as seen, heard, an
its creative figures. "What Haydn thought of Mozart

wrote Virgil Thomson in his 1947 New York Herald Tribun

the magazine, "however wrong as opinion is true as mus

From the first issue of February, 1924, to the last (v
1946), Modern Music was edited by Minna Lederman as
let for the ideas and opinions of composers. The princ
tors, writers, and reviewers over the years included A
Roger Sessions, Frederic Jacobi, Lazare Saminsky, Lou
George Antheil, Marc Blitzstein, Virgil Thomson, Colin
Citkowitz, Theodore Chanler, Elliott Carter, Arthur B

Bernstein, Paul Bowles, Charles Mills, Arthur Cohn

Donald Fuller, Irving Fine, and John Cage. Some of
other correspondents were Casella, Kodaly, Rousse

Dallapiccola; the by-lines of Bart6k, Berg, Britten, Cow

Milhaud, Schoenberg, and Shostakovich appear.
There are others. In the early and grand old days, wh
critics and music historians who were interested in and
contemporary developments, non-composers often cont
magazine: Paul Rosenfeld, Pitts Sanborn, Stuckensch
Vuillermoz, de Schloezer, Einstein, Mendel. But it was a
a composer's magazine whose primary concern was to m
awareness of what was going on: informing American

international developments, giving them an idea of what th

were up to, attempting to prod a larger public into som

the creative achievements of American music.

. 14-

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MODERN MUSIC IN RETROSPECT

The publication undertook the rather staggering

verbal channels of communication in just thos

musical channels were clogged or nonexistent. Th

music and new musical ideas was chronicled with
ness; all the great notions, controversies, persona
actualities of the epoch were represented.

It is perhaps characteristic of the period in w

appeared that the most intelligent, serious, and ex

turn up in some of the inany discussions concernin
contemporary music to contemporary society; thes
excellent and telling articles by Sessions to some
watered-down Marxism. As a result, one finds, fo
lems of contemporary music vis-a-vis the perfor
discussed on a number of occasions from a kind of

point of view, but I do not remember a single

specific questions or problems of performance or i

(and the fact is somewhat surprising) the perform
peripherally in the magazine throughout its histor
But although Modern Music was basically a com

was also intended for the listener as a verbal vehicle for musical crea-

tors and their friends to convey information, ideas, values, encourage

ment, standards, opinions, fears, and hopes to an informed but general
ized audience. However, it is difficult to know whom the magazine
actually reached or how great a role it actually played in influencing
American musical life. I suspect it was always most significant as a
mirror that at times seemed to reflect very clearly. Oddly enough,

it would seem that the main lines of twentieth-century music-i

Europe and even in this country-were already well established befor

the magazine came into existence, and were essentially re-formed only
after the publication had passed away. In the very first issue we fin
considerations of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bart6k, and "Les Six." The
ubiquitous Schoenberg-Stravinsky polarity is well defined right from
the start; the position of composers like Hindemith, Prokofieff, Krenek,

Weill, Berg, and Webern is understood, even assumed. Nearly every

important international personality and trend that preceded the devel
opments of recent years is already present and defined in the first
issues-and the definitions, judgments, and controversies are often the
same as those which are most frequently encountered today.

There was nothing parochial about those first issues; they were
dominated by European reports. There is the sense that the initia

impulse for the publication grew out of a need to know what was goin
on; out of an urgent necessity for American musical life to push out o
provincial isolation. Within a few issues, however, the American scene

S15

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PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC

began to emerge, and here, too, much of its mo

aspect is surprisingly well defined: Copland and Se

major figures; Varese, Ruggles, and Cowell formed
(along with Charles Ives and of course George Anth
and music of composers like Virgil Thomson, Wallin
Walter Piston were very early in evidence.

In some ways, the European and American mu

twenties was closer to that of the fifties and sixties than to that of the

decades in between. What was noted as important in Modern Music

during its early years would still be recognized as essential. But to
many of Modern Music's contributors in the thirties and forties, the
musical developments of the first part of the century seemed dated and
without further vitality or validity. What, in fact, Modern Music stood
witness to was the rise and fall of musical populism, the great retreat into

social usefulness and tonal comprehensibility, the search for a national

musical identity, and the brave attempt to reintegrate the creative artist

into his society. As one thumbs the pages of this chronicle and watches
the excitements and grand gestures of the twenties give way to the purposefulness and utilitarianism of the thirties, the essential relationship of

a whole series of events in recent musical history suddenly becomes

clear-the isolation of Schoenberg and the wild adulation of Shostakovich, the almost total neglect of Varise and the phenomenon of Kurt
Weill, the stylistic shift in Copland's music and Hindemith's retrenchment and codification of ideas, the development of the great American
School (once so widely hailed, now so much neglected), the definition of
a political and social role for music, the long eclipse of Roger Sessions,
even the curiously hostile reaction to Stravinsky's work at a time when
his influence was actually at its apogee.
The primary concern in the twenties was the assimilation of new
ideas. The musical community was fascinated by the aesthetic puzzles of
Stravinsky's music and equally involved in the rhythmic and formal
problems suggested. Even more attention was focused on the Viennese
-on the conquest of the total chromatic and the emerging twelve-tone
idea. The strong musical voices in this country were recognizably those
dealing most directly with new materials and new ways of organizing
sound-Varise, Cowell, Ruggles, Antheil, Ives. The works of Riegger,
Ornstein, Adolph Weiss, Ruth Crawford represent other aspects of this.
Copland's music of the period is certainly touched by the avant-garde
ideas, and it is odd to think that the position of Sessions was quite a bit
toward the right side of the American modernist movement of the day.
Articles on new techniques ranged over such ideas as tone clusters, new
scalar and rhythmic formations, new notations, new instruments and,
especially, new mechanical techniques. The character and use ofmechan16

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MODERN MUSIC IN RETROSPECT

ical reproduction attracted a great deal of attention,

of the journal was turned over to discussions of records

other media and means. The whole idea of musique c

Noises-Tomorrow's Instrumentation") and certain as
music ("electrical musical instruments" or "eminos
anticipated.
Important, established, and more conservative fig
Carpenter, Jacobi-do, of course, receive respectfal a
interesting to note that a composer like Jacobi was, as

open and perceptive. Indeed, amid the general stamp

in the thirties, his was one of the few voices raised
The major themes of the twenties also include thos
"The Indifference of the Public and the Musicians;" "The Lack of
Recognition of American Music;" "The Lack of Identity of American
Music." But one notes with surprise and pleasure the number of critics
who wrote sympathetically and even perceptively about contemporary
developments-notably Pitts Sanborn, a working, daily critic. It is also
striking that significant new works arrived here quickly from Europe and

that important American music was played and recognized abroad.

Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, Varise, Copland, Sessions, Riegger, and others
were performed in England, France, Germany, and Austria in the late
twenties, and early thirties, and the music was noted with interest and
praise. At one such concert in Vienna, for example, the music of Ruggles,

Ives, Copland, Caturla, Cowell, Riegger, Chavez, and Weiss was

conducted by Webern.
The characteristic climate of the thirties was, of course, crisis-world
economic crisis, political crisis, European and Western cultural crisis,
contemporary-music crisis. In 1933 Sessions actually wrote an article
entitled "Music in Crisis;" the same year, Eric Blom wrote another on
what he called "a slump" in contemporary music. The sounds of despair

were everywhere; one I.S.C.M. report after another was filled with
lamentations. Indifference reigned; new ideas seemed to have been in
short supply, new talents were nowhere to be found. It is certainly
striking that, between the appearance of Shostakovich in the late twenties and the postwar generation, scarcely a single figure of international
stature appeared on the scene. At best, the names of composers like
Messiaen, Dallapiccola, and Elliott Carter turn up in the late thirties,
but their real significance was established only after the war. The heroes

of the day, the sensational new creative talents hailed by the critics were

Igor Markevitch, Jerzy Fitelberg, and a fistful of forgotten Russians.

I.S.C.M. festivals and League Composers concerts, once filled with

important composers and works, seem to have been exclusively taken up

with minor musical matter.

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PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC

Economic, political, and musical crises were follo

persistent preoccupations: the relationship of the co

cal community, to the public, and to society. M

music, worker's music, songs for the masses, the use o

and film as a means of reaching a mass audience, th

European contemporary operatic life, the phenome
Weill, the new interest in national, popular, and fol
a profound effect on this side of the Atlantic. Iro
moment when this country had to assume most of
national contemporary musical life, its composers w

and backward and trying to find a peculiarly American

Even when Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Bart6k arri

composers were busy exploring American popular and

as the media which transmit them. Regular column

Modern Music for the purpose of reviewing not only n

scores but film music, music on radio, musical theat

pally musical comedies), and jazz, folk, and pop

music debate-particularity and localism vs. univer

an atmosphere of some heat. Sevieral outright M

economic analyses appeared; complexity tended mo

regarded as old-fashioned or outdated, and there w
a music within the listening grasp and performanc
musically unwashed. Closely related was the attem
popular musical theatre, which is evident from Mar
of Kurt Weill. After attacking Weill on a numb
composer of trivial music, Blitzstein did an abrupt
a public recantation. Blitzstein's own Weillian music
shortly thereafter.

It was, in fact, a moment when it really did seem

American musical theatre was about to be born-Bl
Virgil Thomson, the quickly Americanized Kurt W
others were scoring real theatrical successes. Coplan
berg, and Bowles were writing movie music. Ther

network orchestras busy playing new works, picking u

premieres from all over and even commissioning n

Music quickly dispatched its critics to cover these imp

came to nothing in the sequel, of course, but no one

Parallel with the more popular and dramatic e

growth of a broad, serious symphonic style, highly

ditional patterns, derived from the music of Hindemit

the Soviets-but definably American. The best-know

style were Harris, Schuman, Diamond, and Coplan

America's Choral Symphony-the Roy Harris Fol

"18 "
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MODERN MUSIC IN RETROSPECT

was symptomatic; everyone was trying to writ

Symphony."
These essentially idealistic developments were motivated not by musical mugwumpery and anti-intellectualism alone. Know-Nothingismin the form of innumerable "Hoedowns," "Hayrides," "Square Dances"
and the like-did have its day, and like its political forerunner of the
same name, it was at least partly directed against the influx of foreigners.
But the pages of Modern Music are not without opposition to the Know-

Nothing interpretation of individuality and nationalism. There is a

notable piece on the subject by Sessions and a series of eloquent pleas by
Einstein, who goes so far in denying the populist, nationalist, and Marxist

cliches as to argue that the great national styles have been determined
by the character of the creative imaginations of composers rather than
the other way round.

Among the European composers, Kurt Weill and Hindemith were the
best received here. Stravinsky was perhaps a little too raffine, although
his music was certainly often performed. Schoenberg, Krenek, and
others found shelter in the university, which was still a rather isolated
place for a composer, but where it was possible to avoid the intensely
practical turn taken elsewhere.
Even before his arrival, Schoenberg's presence also helped to stir up
the American avant-garde. Schoenbergian chromaticism was crossed
with all kinds of curious orientalisms to produce a special and mild

avant-gardism, an odd and precious phenomenon of the American

forties. The new American avant-garde tended to turn away not only
from Europe but even completely away from Western tradition. Most
significant were the attempts to use non-Western materials ranging in
origin from Bali to Armenia. The California percussion movement also
suggested a link with the American twenties through Varese and Cowell.
Since Cowell, Lou Harrison, Colin McPhee, and John Cage were regular contributors, the magazine was involved in these movements to a
certain extent.

Modern Music will not take us much further. Its last years were much

taken up with war problems and the rehabilitation of musicians and

musical life afterwards. There was a symposium on what should be
done with musicians who had been collaborators; Milhaud took the view
that traitors should be shot no matter who they were, Schoenberg
argued that most composers were children and fools and should be
treated as such, while Krenek pointed out that the biggest "collaborator"
of all was Shostakovich because he let his creative work be controlled
by political directives.
These last years are also musically confused. By this time, the magazine was covering all the major musical centers and mass media as well.

* 19"

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PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC

Reports poured in from all over: new works were t

trivial and soon forgotten. The war was ending-the
had already been fought and the new ones not yet
Just at the end, there were a few signs and porten
neglected works; reports on the deaths of Webern
articles on their lives and work; a discussion by Jo
influences" in the music of Schoenberg, Varese an

Messiaen; and the first important appearances

Boulez.

The strength of Modern Music lay in its honest and unprejudiced

attempt to solve the difficult problem of writing about music. To be sure,

there were few contributors who could write significantly about music
within the stylistic framework of verbal clarity and simplicity established

by the magazine to broaden its base of communication. But successful

music is also difficult to achieve, and it is fascinating to note that the
style solution adopted by many of the composers for their contributions

to Modern Music was of the same essential nature as the musical solutions

developed in their compositions.

S20

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