MODERN MUSIC: 'FRESH AND DIFFERENT'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000400010018-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 26, 2000
• Sequence Number: 18
• Content Type: NSPR

SYMPF4ONY C 'The composer of our century has addeJ eew dimehion to musical art. Because of him music behaves differently. Whatever else it may be, it is the voice of our age.-
n Music: esh and Different'
Consige qry
exprn a.4 basic -human - emotions. Such an art form will always
ants, j Pritf . The Times.
Magane Mr. Pleas
ants to sritf'i up the argu-
ment of his book and asked
Aaron Copland, a contem-
porary composer, to present
the case for the defense.
Here are the results.
By AARON COPLAND
M USICAL composition during the
first half of our century was
vigorously alive partly because
of the amount of controversy it was
able to arouse. As the century ad-
vanced the noise of battle receded un-
til by now we had reluctantly come to
assume that the good fight for the
acceptance of modern music was over.
It was welcome news, therefore, to
hear that a rear-guard attack was
about to be launched from what used
to be a main source of opposition: the
professional music critic. It looked as
if we were in for some old-fashioned
isticuffs; but the nature of the attack
ured our expectations. The trouble
mu*ic, says a composer, ilores new realms and yet
f
Henry Pleas ants is pummeling nothing
but a'carcass.
;:-He contends that so-called classical
music 'Is- bankrupt in our age-the old
forms of syprtpsttd concerto and
opera are exhausted: olir. vaunted
innovations are old hat andtfie serious
composer is obsolete. The present-day
writer of serious music is held up to
view as a sort of musical parvenu, in-
capable of earning a living through
musical composition, skulking the con-
cert halls for musical crumbs, sought
after by none, desperately trying to
convince himself that he is rightful
heir to the heritage of the masters,
and deluding public and critics alike
into conferring upon him a spurious
respectability for "culture's" sake. The
clear implication is that the best we
can do is to lie down and die.
BUT if all is lost for us, the serious
composers, music itself goes on, Mr.
Pleasants tells us. It is vox populi, as
expressed at the box office, that shows
the way. Fearlessly and logically pur-
suing his argument to its absurd con-
clusion, he asserts that the stream of
Western musical culture continues tri-
umphantly in the music of our popular
composers. "Jazz is modern music--
and nothing else is." So ends the most
confused book on music ever issued in
America,
remains
endure.
The question arises as to whether it
serves any purpose to attempt a de-
fense of serious contemporary music.
I hold to the simple proposition that
the only way to comprehend a "diffi-
cult" piece of abstract sculpture is to
keep looking at it, and the only way
to understand "difficult" modern mu-
sic is to keep listening to it. (Not all
of it is difficult listening, by the way.)
For that reason it seems basically use-
less to explain the accomplishments of
present-day music to people who are
incapable of getting any excitement
out of it.
If you hear this music and fail to
realize that it has added a new dimen-
sion to Western musical art, that it has
a power and tension and expressiveness
typically twentieth-century in quality,
that it has overcome the rhythmic
inhibitions of the nineteenth century
and added complexes of chordal pro-
gressions never before conceived, that
it has invented subtle or brash combi-
nations of hitherto unheard timbres,
that it offers new structural principles
that open up vistas for the future--I
say, if your pulse remains steady at
the contemplation of all this and if
listening to it does not add up to a
fresh and different musical experience
for you, then any defense of mine, or
of anybody else, can be of no use what-
soever.
the
The plain fact is that the composer
of our century has earned the right to
be considered a master of new sono-
rous images. Because of him music
behaves differently, its textures are
different-more crowded or more spa-
cious, it sings differently, it rears itself
more suddenly and plunges more pre-
cipitously. It even stops differently.
But it shares with older music the ex-
pression of basic human emotions, even
though at times it may seem more
painful, more nostalgic, more obscure,
more hectic, more sarcastic. Whatever
else it may be, it is the voice of our
own age and in that sense it needs no
apology.
THIS is the music that we are told
nobody likes. But let's take a closer
look at "nobody." There is general
agreement that new multitudes have
come to serious music listening in the
past two or three decades. Now we
are faced with a situation long familiar
in the literary world; namely, the need
to differentiate clearly among the vari-
ous publics available to the writer. No
publisher of an author-philosopher like
Whitehead would expect him to reach
the enormous public of a novelist like
Hemingway. Ought we then to say
"nobody" reads Whitehead?
Ire-nttl~ic, we 6
Approved For Release 2000/05/24: CIA-RDP75-00001 R000400010018-4
 forum he and his
ws pres-"`r`~~"~"""
derstood by thinking of the be sure, more of a communal
eat a united frglnt the non nineteenth-century epoch as a proposition. In this respect it
profe
ift mubical world and ,main,
to decide
at is music and valley-into a swamp. Modern
music may then be under-
stood as the effort of an en-
HE history of music in any feebled current to escape
civilization, including our own, stagnation.
is the history of music that Continuing the metaphor,
people like. Its history is de- jazz may be thought of as a
termined not by composers current that bubbled forth
and critics but by lay listen- from a spring in the slums of
ers. True, it, is the composer, New Orleans to become the
not the listeneed~'', who produces, main stream of the twentieth
new ideas. Tl-is is why great century. In less than fifty
innovators among the com years It has flooded the
posers, Such as_ Beethoven, United States and most of the.
Berlioz and Wagner, are rest of the world.
thought of Ias influencing and To put it briefly, the most
even determining the course of important phenomenon of
musical., -history. But this musical evolution occurred: a
overloo} the fact that their style was born.
new ideas are valid only in so
far as trey are acceptable to
the listen pg public. Thus, in A STRONG style, like a
numbers & Ideas it finds ? sorption. In music today the
I "A
to its tastes. Tact is manifest. Jazz can
It is odd that modern com k ,,absorb any rof the technical
posers have not understood deiricesof modern music with-
this because -the traditions odt seeming to instate. Mod-
they seek to perpetuate were ern music can absorb none of
-all shaped in their own time the musical characteristics of
by demand,. And 'the com- jazz without immediately
posers know it. The same men sounding like an imitation of
who prdpagate the legend Jazz~
that conteinpoiry music is This is difficult for the
never appreciated in its own composer, the historian and
time Insist -upon upbraiding the critic to understand. For
conteihporary audiences for all of them evolution implies
not having the thirst for new continuity, and in relating
music that audiences,Y,,.had in jazz to the evolution of West-
the time of Bach,aydn, and ern music the continuity is
Mozart. . , not immediately apparent.
This habit of criticizing au- Even to the musicologist the
diences instead, of music has superficial contrasts ire so
made the contempifrary com- vivid that they tend to blot
poser what he "it "today:, a out the more important fun-
pathetic figure `jeeking to damental similarities.
shape the music' _ot his gen- The elements of continuity,
eration while all around him however, are conclusive. The
the music of his generation is musical materials are the
spontaneously and Irresistibly same, although differently
taking place. employed. The scales are the
same, and the mariner In
FOR the past fifty years which melodies are derived
music has been experiencing from the scales is the same,
the most profound and funds- whatever superficial differ-
mental evolutionary upheaval ences there may be in the ac-
since 1600. It is not the tual character and mood of
change from a tonal to an the melodies.
atonal language, nor the re-
turn
to old ' models and old IF one looks back beyond
concepts represented by neo-
classicism. nineteenth century, the
.
It is-rather the change from position of jazz within the
framework of Western musi-
a music based on theme and cal evolution becomes clear
harmony to a music based on enough. Even as late as
melody and rhythm. It has B
th
ee
oven, improvisation was
taken place, not in serious
fashionable among composers
Bach, a Buxtehude, a Mozart,
a CZementi, or_a Beethoven as
the eighteenth century con-
certo grosso.
In a real jam session the
alternation of solos, small solo
groups,- and full band occur at
the whim of the players. In an
arrangement it occurs accord-
ing to a plan, inspired, likely
as not, by previous improvisa-
tion, and worked out with the
men who do the playing. If
the concerto grosso did not
originate in precisely this
manner, its character and
purpose were the same. As
with the jam session, the
players rather than the com-
poser or arranger were re-
garded as the heroes of the
piece, and the purpose was to
give good players something
new and good to play.
A similar parallel exists
with respect to liberties. The
serious musician who takes
liberties with the score is con-
sidered an infidel. The jazz
musician who does not is con-
sidered a dolt. This was true,
generally, of European music
as late as the first quarter of
the nineteenth century. Most
composition in the seven-
teenth aid eighteenth cen-
turies left a good deal to the
performer's imagination and
discretion.
THUS the jazz accomplish-
ment is simply defined, It has
taken music away from the
composers and given it back
to musicians and their public.
The simplicity sought by seri-
ous composers through intel-
lectual and technical experi-
mentation has been achieved
by practicing musicians
guided by popular taste. Be-
cause of popular guidance
their product is culturally
aiuaaa;, uu~ ua popu -us c. arid was one of the standard valid. Because of the absence
And it has taken n place, not features of their appearances of popular guidance, the ac-
because some composer or as soloists. Certainly many of complishment of the serious
group of composers decided it their compositions should be composers is not.
ought to take place, but be- thought of as the . written
cause society willed that it
should take oved For Relg~?? plB JJ~~'I 1MP75-00001 R000400010018-4
The evolutionary status of thought.
f sense, it is the pub- 'strong current, absorbs every
etermines the course "inferior stream that crosses
cin, of render ft its its path. LL The proofs of
1 P7 199Yf4 R6b04 0 PP 0144
l virtunan imnrnvicatlnna of a
This is obviously something
the serious composer cannot
admit, even to himself. He is
fated to go on writing sona-
tas, symphonies, and operas'
as long as society as a whole
continues to believe that these
old forms and the symphony-
orchestra have a monopoly on
respectability and cultural su-
periority. But hq may be seen
late at night making his way
from Carnegie Hall to the
livelier blandishments of a
jam session.
For down deep in his heart
he knows that jazz is modern
music--and that nothing else
is!