It is quite untrue to say that the music of to-day is predominantly
frivolous. The modern composer might well reply that even for those
who cling to the ideals of the past there are plenty of old-world
frivolities that have triumphed over their contemporary solemnities.
The devotees of Haydn, Mozart and Cimarosa easily forget that all these
three wrote music of deeply serious character and that it was chiefly
their serious music which won the respect of their own audiences.
There is not even anything new in the modern composer’s occasional
habit of making a fool of his critics. But the jokes of the old
composers, like those of Aristophanes, often require the elucidation
of learned commentators, whereas in our own day the newspapers provide
the needful commentary, sometimes before the musician makes his joke.
The “verbal hæmorrhage”――as it has been appropriately called――of
musical journalism is responsible for most of the deliberate silliness
recently perpetrated by composers, who in these days are fully alive
to the value of publicity. Music of this type is as ephemeral as the
criticism which it is designed to provoke. At the same time it is
perfectly reasonable that modern composers should occupy themselves in
an artistic spirit with modern dance-forms. They may well take their
place in musical history just as the waltz, the minuet, the pavan and
the galliard have done.
Weakness of inspiration is more evident in the tendency to play
modern tricks with old forms and old styles. The sham antique suite
of nineteenth-century drawing-room music is one of the products
of the past which are now beneath even ridicule; the contemporary
practice of taking a theme which suggests some commonplace of Bach or
Haydn and treating it to a development which suggests an orchestra
of amateurs reading at sight from badly copied parts may fulfil some
useful function in making the idolatry of the classics ridiculous,
but as contributing to the expression of contemporary thought its
value is purely negative. There is enough criticism of music already
without that which is written in notes. It is natural enough that young
composers should wish to shock the respectable and it is very good for
the respectable to be shocked. Music which is intentionally destructive
may help to clear the ground and sweep away some of the romantic
rubbish that still encumbers the minds of us who listen. But the
composers must be careful not to forget that the listeners will be only
too glad to return to the fleshpots of sentimentality if the prophets
of the new generation can give them nothing but emetics with which to
assuage their hunger.
A characteristic of modern music which often baffles the listener of
an older generation is its abruptness. There are various causes which
contribute to this. Abruptness of expression is characteristic of our
time; it is the mark of our speech as well as of our music. Abruptness
is often deliberately assumed by composers as a protest――perhaps
superfluous――against the ceremonial formalities of the older music.
It is sometimes even a new form of sentimentalism, a cult of the
mysteriously fragmentary, a continuation of the example set once or
twice by Schumann. And in very many cases it is due to the examples
of the painters, who have little scruples about exhibiting sketches
which are studies of particular technical problems. A great deal of
modern music is sketchy for the simple reason that a great many new
technical problems have arisen and it is both interesting and necessary
to make studies of them in isolation. The publication of such studies
may often help other people to understand what the artist is trying to
achieve, whether in paint or in sounds. It is the museum habit and the
astuteness of the picture-dealer which have combined to make the public
attribute to these things an exaggerated value, for financial values
easily become confused with moral ones. In the case of musical studies
of this type it is perhaps more often the composer who attaches the
exaggerated value and the public that is disappointed at not obtaining
it.
The most frequent accusation brought against modern music is that
it is devoid of melody. It is an accusation which has been made for
at least a hundred years. When it is made to-day the modern musician
may point out that many of the most advanced teachers of composition
insist on their pupils practising the composition of real independent
melodies, that is, of melodies which do not depend on an implied
harmony. The ordinary lover of melody is hardly capable of realizing
what this means, and the most gifted pupils generally find it an
unexpectedly severe discipline. What the plain man understands by a
tune is a melody in simple and obvious rhythm; and he is by now so
accustomed to the classical key-system that its conventional stresses
automatically suggest――even if only half consciously――the conventional
harmonic relations, with the result that he is quite willing to accept
as a tune a succession of notes which in reality is often meaningless
when considered as a pure melody. Our popular hymn-books will provide
plenty of examples. The rejection of the classical key-system makes
this type of melody impossible, and one of the chief reasons why the
present age has rejected the classical key-system is because it is
seeking new and more supple rhythms for its melodic line.
Another favourite accusation, expressed in different ways by different
people, and to most people curiously difficult of expression, may
be generally formulated by saying that modern music is devoid of
feeling, or even that it stimulates and appeals to feelings which are
unpleasant or even morally repugnant. My attempt to put this charge
into a few words is unreasonable, I admit, but I think it more or less
represents the attitude of a large number of people whose conduct is
guided more frequently by good feeling than by conscious reasoning.
Such people feel instinctively that music, more than anything else,
is or ought to be a matter of instinctive feeling. As music-lovers,
they are exactly the people who are most completely under the spell of
association. But as I have already attempted to show, it is just this
tyranny of association against which the leaders of new movements most
energetically rebel. In time they or their successors will accumulate
a new store of associations; for the present they are compelled and
indeed anxious to do without them altogether. If the older listeners
persist in attaching unpleasant associations to the new music, it is
the listeners’ own fault; it is they who by force of habit provide
those associations out of their own good feeling.