PARTISAN REVIEW
element that goes to make up a "new" work is left as it was in the past.
All climatic excitement must be furnished by the audience. The listener
should know what is expected of him: here, he is to imagine the Middle
Ages; there, Kentucky; at that point, the social revolution. No one,
indeed, who really "listens" to music can take any of this seriously, since
whatever may be the appeal of this music, it is not directed toward
aesthetic sensibility. The composer, of course, justifies himself by pointing
to examples in other countries, in other times. Ravel's and Stravinsky's
neo-classicism excuse his own; the primitivistic elements of Moussorgsky
explain away the hillbilly song; the orchestral palette of Debussy gives
authority to today's incantational magic. But the composer forgets that
in each instance he involves the sanction of men who never tried to
solve the central problems of music, men whose great skill and experi–
ence, and the fact that they lived at a time when temporary detours
were more feasible, have lent their works more weight than they would
otherwise have.
The only exceptions, among American composers, to this sort of
practice are Rogers Sessions and Charles E. I ves. Sessions approaches the
problem of modernity with a compromise. In essence
h~
accepts the
polyphonic concept of Schoenberg. But by trying to force it into the
mold of chromatic Wagnerian tonality-or rather polytonality in which
several tones serve as simultaneous tonal centers-he destroys much of
its essence, namely, the unification of harmonic and polyphonic sound.
Though his approach is more musical than programmatic, he, too,
skirts the issue by granting a necessary dichotomy between harmonic and
contrapuntal relations. Ives, though less skilled, is more advanced.
He accepts total atonality-in many cases he preceded Schoenberg.
But he has yet to escape the temptations of an easy nationalistic attitude.
He infuses his atonal style with folk melodies conceived within the frame
of simple tonality. The two styles clash inevitably. The simple harmonic
style of the folk tune sounds out of place in his complicated polyphonic
texture, and the polyphony looses its unifying value through the illogical
reference to alien elements.
Still, this is the best that American music has to offer. The composer
will finally have to shoulder the burden of the less popular, aesthetically
more honest, style of atonal polyphony. He may, or may not, arrive at
a solution. But if music is to exist as an artistic expression of modern
America, atonal polyphony is really the only valid guide.
Kurt List
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