One phase of music that seems to get the greatest (negative) response from our readers, is the music (or comments relating to it) of today — or yesterday. Lack of sympathy for the present state of music is not new, as the following comments, written almost two hundred years apart indicate:

1791: "...modern composers resort to arbitrary complexities in order to conceal their inability to write a good tune. Sometimes the key is perfectly lost, by wandering so far from it that there is no road to return — but extremes meet at last of themselves... And when discords get so entangled, that it is so past the art of man to untie the knot, something in place of Alexander's sword does the business at once."

1952: "Almost all contemporary composers are producing music which is uninteresting, distressing, or positively repellent to the vast majority of the American public."

Obviously it is impossible to like all the music one hears, just as it is impossible to like everybody one meets. There is, however, a middle road, which is frequently overlooked. We refer to a sense of perspective, of history, if you will. It also helps to have some understanding, however minimal, of the creative process, since the artist, although he is like everyone else in most respects, is always developing as a creative personality.

In this respect the artist is different from the average person; he is never satisfied with things as they are, but is always trying to broaden his intellectual horizon by study, and to enrich his artistic and his emotional life by evolving newer and more satisfactory idioms to work in. It is possible that this is basically what is at the root of most of the criticism of contemporary music. Too frequently it is listened to with ears and mind attuned to the artistic past (or, in another sense, the traditional), and not as it should be, as a living, dynamic force, which may easily be appreciated and understood (with its good and bad respects) if viewed in the correct perspective.

It is generally accepted that the young artists of today are better equipped than their counterparts were forty or so years ago. However, the function of the teacher is to see that his students learn as much as he has to offer, or as much as they can accept. He is not responsible for their inspiration. In other words, although the teacher may equip a student to write equally well for the string quartet as for the modern symphony orchestra, the aspiring composer simply may not have the talent equal to his technique. This is not unique with our age; the ability to express oneself on paper or canvas has always been more prevalent than the ability to create a masterpiece. The important thing is not the quantity of great works which are produced, but the ability oF the artist and layman to express himself creatively. Sean O'Casey summed this up nicely when he wrote that "Only a few great should come of time to live beyond it."

It is easy to criticize the composers of our own time as writing non-music, as agonizing in sounds, etc., but Monteverdi, too, was just as severely criticized for his "modeRN" music as Davidovsky, Powell, Shapey and Wuorinen are today.

Virtually every "serious" composer, that is, those that we of the twentieth century consider "masters", was attacked by the conservative intellectuals, less knowing, and ignorant factionalists, as musical radicals who were "so full of oddities and personal caprice that they completely corrupted the quality of instrumental and vocal music." (So wrote Rossini in 1817 concerning the music of Haydn and Beethoven! The entire quotation will be given later in this essay.)

In the past, musical evolution, like social and political evolution, literally walked; now these influences on our life travel faster than sound. A hundred years ago it was difficult for people to get used to the chromaticism of Wagner and Mahler. Now not only must the ear become used to the sensuous harmonies of Tristan, but in the space of, say, 40 years, we are confronted with several radically different means of musical expression, each purporting to be an expression of our time!

Most of us, I think, listen to one type of music or another. Unfortunately, too many people hear either "only with their feet," as Sousa said, or only what they want to hear. Very few people are willing to put forth the same amount of effort in listening to music (whether Beethoven or Berg) that they do when they read Defoe or Faulkner. The reason for this is, I suspect, partly because music involves listening, feeling and thinking, while reading rarely involves more than thinking.

In general we are not used to regarding the arts as anything but a pleasant adjunct to the basic necessities of life. For example, we are taught to read almost as soon as we enter grade school, but the arts are generally relegated to classes (usually once a week), of "appreciation". In a society where we must take classes in order to "appreciate" even the most conservative and traditional art, it is hardly surprising that today's composers of serious music are frequently regarded as avant garde and experimental. We may not like, "understand" (dare I say "appreciate"?) the music of Hochberg, Kupferman or Cage, because it is "new" (in the sense that it was written within the past few years instead of a hundred and fifty years ago) — yet how many of us like to learn anything new, even if it complements what we already know? It is not always easy, or for that matter, pleasant, to bear in mind that the experiments and innovations of one era have frequently become the fashion if not the commonplace of another. This is as true of music as it is of the other arts, science and industry. Let's not forget that Schoenberg, Webern and Berg were condemned as musical barbarians; it was said that they destroyed all the beauty of harmony and melody in music and made of it an atonal hodge-podge. Today these masters are looked up to by increasing numbers of aspiring young composers because though their music may not be an end itself, it furnishes to many that point at which basically different musical temperaments meet and go their own ways.

There is, of course, much more which can be said regarding contemporary music of their own time, just as we discuss ours today:

1600 (G. M. Artusi) "Instead of enriching, augmenting, and ennobling harmony by various means, as so many noble spirits have done, they (Monteverdi, Rore, Gesualdo, etc., the composers of the new, 'modern' music) bring it to such a state that the beautiful style is indistinguishable from the barbaric..."

1651 (Samuel Scheldt) "I am astonished at the foolish music written in these times. It is false and wrong and no longer does any one pay attention to what our beloved old masters wrote about composition... I hope this worthless modern coinage will fall into disuse and that new coins will be forged according to the fine old stamp and standard."

1737 (J. A. Scheibe) "This great man (Bach) would be admired of the whole nation, had he more agreeableness and did not keep naturalness away from his compositions by employing bombastic and intricate devices and darkening beauty with over-elaborate art."

1787 (anonymous) "...it is a pity that in his (Mozart's) ingenious and really beautiful compositions he goes too far in has attempt to be new, so that feeling and sentiment are little cared for. His new quartets, dedicated to Haydn, are too strongly spiced and what palate can stand that for long?"

1793 (anonymous) "Mozart was a great genius, but he had no real taste, and little or perhaps no cultivated taste. He missed, of course, any effect in his original operas."

1810 (C. M. von Weber) "The fiery, nay, almost incredible, inventive faculty that inspires him (Beethoven) is attended by so many complications in the arrangement of his ideas that it is only his earlier compositions that interest me: the later ones, on the contrary, appear to me only a confused chaos, an unintelligible struggle after novelty, from which occasional heavenly flashes of genius dart forth, showing how great he might be if he chose to control his luxuriant fancy."

1817 (Gioacchino Rossini) "Formerly Haydn began to corrupt purity of taste by introducing into his works (for cembalo) strange chords, artificial passages, and daring innovations. He still preserved so much sublimity and ancient beauty, however, that his errors could be forgiven. Then came Cramer and Beethoven with their compositions so lacking in unity and naturalness and so full of oddities and personal caprice that they completely corrupted the quality of instrumental music."

1853 (Louis Spohr) "Yesterday they gave Tannhauser for the third time and we had a full house again... Last night there was a lady in the loge next to my wife who kept telling her neighbors what she had read in the paper, (the new Leipzig Musikzeitung) and she remarked that in this work Richard Wagner had created a completely new catastrophe in music. Others said; 'This is no music at all,' and left after the second act." (A little farther in the same letter Spohr wrote that he "felt somewhat reconciled to the far-fetched and unnatural modulations. It is astonishing what the human ear can gradually get used to.")

1883 (Eduard Hanslick) "Thus the over all impression of the work (Tristan), despite its outstanding individual beauties, remains one of oppressive fatigue resulting from too much unhealthy overstimulation — a condition unchanged by the fact that it has been occasioned by a great genius."

Although some of us may never enjoy listening to the serious music of our contemporaries, we do owe it to ourselves to try to understand it, if only because it is as important to our way of life as the automobile, television, and the Concorde. Music is a part of our culture, but we must remember that it is difficult to understand something we experience once a week — usually on a Sunday or Saturday afternoon. Art, along with economic and governmental functions is one of the patterns found in almost all cultures, and until we regard it with the latter two, as an essential part of our everyday life, we can scarcely hope to appreciate, understand and evaluate accurately that which is developing around us.

Reprinted with permission from the July 24 issue of Musical Heritage Review, (Contact Details)