22
MUSICAL COURIER
THE IRRECONCILABLES
January 12, 1922
and the dying heroine might be expected to sing a waltz song with trills and runs galore.
All an old story now, but its bearing on the present day is still to be considered. Traditions die hard, until people make up their minds to forget them. And that seems to be, to some extent, the intention of this decade. Bolshevism is in the air, and though it is rapidly losing its popularity, that loss seems to be rather one of name than of fact. The fact of freedom and the casting off of shackles is still with us and seems to be in the air, like Wells’ poison gas. The musical modernists have grasped it, some of them with a certain show of common sense, some of them, like some of the painters, as a mere cloak for their nakedness.
Still, one cannot dismiss it with that. There is more modernism than lack of talent. Men like Schonberg, Caseila, Ornstein, Bartók, Scriabin, k ourdrain, Stravinsky and others obviously have talent. They have all definitely proved that in their ^ early work. They have written what we call “real” music before turning to the extremes that entitle them to the label of modernist. Why have they changed? And why have the critics not set themselves up against them as did the irreconcilables of old against nearly every innovation in art?
Strauss and Wagner, and even poor harmless Beethoven, and Liszt, and who knows how many more, were raked over the coals by people of their own generation most unmercifully, yet they were surely mild enough as compared with these wild-eyed, or wild-eared, moderns who have cast out and denied the two very foundational elements of music: harmony and melody. Even rhythm is gone. Nothing is left but color and harmonic planes” whatever they may be. But where are the irreconcilables? Has the world gone mad that they do not rise in their silly might and howl and rant and scream and stamp in their age-long effort to put a brake on evolution?
Or have the critics and the snobs become sane ? Is that possible? Hardly! All the fun would go out of life if the professional scoffers were to weigh things with the light of reason. What would the world be without the Hanslicks and the Beckmes-sers? A dreary place indeed! No. It is safer and more reasonable to believe, as already suggested, that they dp not take the modernists seriously. Or perhaps it is that they take the modernists so seriously that they see the futility of opposition. That has certainly been the case with some critics of art. They have sunk back in despair. One of them wrote not long ago in Paris: “I went to the salon of the Independents, and what did I see? Rows upon rows of pictures that were utterly meaningless to me. They had no. relationship or association with what is known as art or painting. Describe them?
I cannot. ^ Criticise them ? I have no idea where to begin. They are not pictures—they are canvases covered with color. Generally they represent nothing. When they do represent any recognizable object, they are so out of drawing, so barbarous in color and design that they might be mistaken for the first-grade school work of an idiot. Yet we know that many of the painters of them possess a thoroughgoing technic—” and so on, a whole column or more of puzzled depression and pessimistic reflection, the sum total of which is: you cannot criticise what you cannot understand, and you cannot understand what is meaningless.
Yet _ these pictures sell—yet the corresponding phase in music wins adherents and brings fame, or at least, notoriety, to the composers. Will it last ? will Up change? will it gradually crystallize into something all the world can understand? Or will the world gradually learn to understand and enjoy it as it is? All questions that cannot now be an-swered; but more puzzling than these questions is the defection, the mournful silence or sane and sincere effort to appreciation, of the critics and the irre-concilables. But let us pause a moment and see if that is a fact. What would these critics do supposing that these works were eminently successful, acclaimed as works of genius by the mob—what would these critics do then? Supposing the opponents of Wagner and Strauss and other revolutionary artists were alive today, what would they do if Schonberg Ornstem et al. were the pets of the public ? Would they then sit silent and puzzle their brains in an effort to understand and to be perfectly sane and fair and reasonable ?
They would not, and by the same token it is impossible to suppose that the critics and the irrecon-cilables of today would be silent and sane and reasonable, would treat the matter humorously as they now do if these modernists and futurists were car-rymg the world by storm. In other words it is not the musicians and their works that the critics oppose, but the public, the poor deluded pubic, being
tolerance and dispassionate consideration that one wonders if they are of much importance. Certainly, either the world and the critics have changed, or these moderns are too unimportant to bother about. The critics are frankly amused—most of them—and the public partly amused and partly bored. Sometimes there is noise, but it seems only a personal matter between factions.
On the other hand—and this is worth thinking about rag time and jazz are being stormed at more and more both in the land of their birth, America, and in the land of their adoption, the rest of the civilized world.
Rag time and jazz are, however, not subjects for critical consideration from a musical point of view. Like all folks-music, they are mere germs, and critical comment deals with development. Like or dislike of a melody is merely a matter of taste, but it is easy to put one’s finger on poor development. This is not as it should be, but seems to be a fact. One would rather see the critics put their foot (collective) down and state with force that some things are lacking in basic melodic invention. If the critics of the past had judged from that point of view they would never have made the mistakes that they did with regard to Wagner, for even a superficial examination of his works must convince any unbiased observer of the splendor of his invention.
That is what the critics seem to have overlooked. They pounced upon him because he failed to accord respect to traditional rules of arrangement and development, and to have been so blinded by the dress that they were unable to perceive the beauty it covered. They found the dress out of style, just as some of our lady friends might today find a dress out of style, and the woman so clothed would be scorned by them for parading herself in such habiliments, even though she were as lovely as Venus, Hebe and all the Graces. Scorned, be it noted, by the women, her sisters, not by the men, her possible lovers. F or it is only the women who uphold traditions of dress.
And it is often enough only the critics who uphold the traditions of musical dress—they seem to be blind to musical content apart from the dress. It is certainly, at least, a fact that Wagner was accepted by the people long before the critics acknowledged his claim to greatness. It is certainly a fact that his works became the chief support of the German opera houses long before even the musicians and managers could persuade themselves to withdraw their opposition to him. And this line of consideration brings us directly to the observation that the world of music lovers might be segregated into various groups according to their lights. One might name three or four, and there may be a dozen or more. One, certainly, includes the critics, though it must be doubted if they have any claim to be called music lovers ; then there is the aristocracy to whom opera and concert is a social affair—sensation lovers, people who want to be in the swim, people who pride themselves upon being up to date, and the like—they form a good sized group—and then, finally, and most important of all, there is the mass of common people who love things just because they love them, and know not why, but love them all the more passionately for that.
Two of these groups, it will be seen, are “anti,” two of them are “pro.” The critics and the society people are almost sure to be “anti,” for the reason that the former find the whole basis of their lives in jeopardy, while the latter might suffer a loss of social prestige. A curious instance of this was observed not long ago at the Paris opera when a quarrel arose as to whether the Wagner operas should be given in a dark house. Naturally, if box parties are the only thought, operas all brightness and lightness will be most sought after. As one matron put it, “you don’t invite your friends to a funeral.” There was also bitter opposition on the part of habituées of the Paris opera when the Russian ballet endangered the undisputed sway of the old fashioned ballet costume—stockinet tights and a tarlatan flounce (known as the “tutu”). It was reported at the time that some subscribers to the opera who had held their seats for many years threatened to withdraw if the ballet wore character costumes. Whether they did actually carry out this threat is a matter of no moment. The interesting part of it is the fact that people could so vigorously uphold their traditions, especially when their traditions were based on anything so stupid. Stupid, indeed, when we consider that, no matter what thé characters portrayed, the costumes were almost invariably the same. This was not unlike the old style opera wherein the music rarely suited the action,
We are living in a great age. Whether or not it is an age that will be recognized as great in days to come, like the age of Beethoven or the age of Wagner, we have no means of knowing, but we cannot doubt that it is great, though it may be overshadowed in days to come, as it appears to be by days past and gone, by epoch-making geniuses whose brilliancy causes other lights to grow dim and weak by comparison.
It is a day of experimentation and discovery. Not only in music and the other arts, but in the sciences, in social forms and laws, in politics, in every line of human endeavor, it is a day of rapid change, a day of rapid advance. For, however bitter may be the carping of the irreconcilables, change is always advance where it is brought about by human will-force. There are times, indeed, when we seem to be going backward. But that is only in the seeming. It is only, in reality, the breaking down of rules the observance of which has become so fixed a habit that our mind-muscles have become stiff, afflicted with a sort of chronic mental anchylosis.
And all of us know how painful it is to loosen up stiff joints! Most of us would rather let them be stiff, and continue to limp around with a lame mind, rather than put up with the painful inconvenience of jerking them loose and getting a new lease of life. This state of mind is bad enough in the ordinary practical things of life; it is far worse in music, because music is the most habit-forming of human activities. Music is a thing which gains with familiarity. Most people like the old music best. Most people, in fact, get very little pleasure out of series music until they have heard it often enough to become familiar with it. When everything else of a long past era has disappeared from our daily life and consciousness, it is not uncommon to find that its music alone still lives. How little else, for instance, has come down to us from the days of Bach, Handel, Haydn and Mozart!
Perhaps this quality has something to do with our attitude toward experiments in music. New forms and styles are offered us in the other arts and we merely laugh. The “new” literature and poetry, the pictures of the “cubists” and other experimenters, new dramatic ideas—we find them merely amusing. As for getting excited about them, it never occurs to us. But place music of a similar nature before a concert or opera audience and they receive it with such violent evidences of opposition that it seems at times as if it would be necessary to call in the police.
Why there should be such a marked difference in the attitude of a theater audience and a concert audience it is impossible to explain even by the theory of familiarity advanced above. Nor does the explanation that concert audiences must hiss pieces they do not like so as to get the sort they do like, appeal as entirely covering the ground. It is easier to believe that music has an influence on the nervous system that arouses us to a violence that we would never think of in connection with a play or a book or a picture unless they offended our religion, our politics or some other of our pet ideals.
In other words, in the realm of thought the intellect may say to itself that there may be some ti;uth in new ideas, but the nervous system that is attacked by unpleasant sounds revolts without pausing to think it over, and we scratch as instinctively as does the cat whose fur is stroked the wrong way. Then, if the thing is repeated, the nerves find themselves less sensitive to this cause of irritation, and we are either simply bored or we begin to get a little pleasure from it, a pleasure which finally, in some cases at least, grows to an adoration that makes us wonder at our earlier attitude toward it.
But there are certain individuals, especially among the critics, who are, to say the least of it, hard to convince. In every age of progress there have been critics who have stood up in bitter opposition to the work of musicians who have been, ultimately, acknowledged to be great by all the world. And the interesting feature of this is the fact that this opposition has almost invariably been to great artists, hardly ever to unimportant men. The little men seem generally either to have been left alone or praised—the great men continually hounded with bitterest invective. So that, if we would discover how great a man is, we have but to note how many people are opposed to him.
Who, then, are the great ones of today ? No single name occurs to one. The Wagner scandal has long since died down; the Strauss question has ceased to be a question over which anyone can get excited; Debussy is universally accepted; Puccini is only
criticised in France; and as for the moderns------!
They are so generally received with good humored