CORRESPONDENC E
DISAGREEMENT Wit H KURT LIST
Sirs:
The Music Chronicle in your Jan–
uary issue is a remarkable performance
of drum-beating. In this exposition by
Kurt List, the drums are pounded tire–
lessly for atonal polyphonic music.
"Polyphony," we are informed, "is a
higher musical art form." The grand
climax is: "But if music is to exist
as an artistic expression of modern
America, atonal polyphony is really the
only valid guide." It is as simple as all
that, really?
No one can object to any music
lover's or composer's predilection for
atonal polyphony. At least that is true
in this country, for in Soviet Russia,
such a preference would bode
ill
for
any composer.. : . In this country it is
not forbidden. As your music chron–
icler points out, the musical audience,
of its own free will and accord, de–
based by the effects of modern indus–
trialism and a combination of Mozart,
Schubert, Wagner, and Beethoven, stays
away from performances of atonal mu–
sic in droves. There is little purpose
served in disputing over musical tastes.
I know someone who was firmly of the
opinion that no great music had been
written except prior to the year 1800.
I have given up arguing the question
with him for quite some while, after
having been successful in pushing for–
ward the date of music's demise by
only a few years. I couldn't see how
pushing forward the date another
twenty years was worth all that effort.
By contrast, I have another friend, who
has been a student of music for the
past twenty years and has played the
piano very well since an early age,
and who is also an ardent admirer of
Arnold Schonberg's atonal polyphonic
389
music. My friend has even written his
Opus 1, No. 1, for the piano in atonal
polyphonic style. Being unwilling to
permit this creative work to languish
unheard, I suggested that he arrange
to play it for me. To my astonishment
he said: "Play it for you? It is en–
tirely too difficult for me to play. But
I think I know someone who might
be able to get through it." I have
been waiting for two months. . ..
In the case of your music chron–
icler, therefore, I have no desire to
enter into any dispute as to his parti–
cular fondness for atonal polyphony.
But to contend that it is the "only
valid guide" to artistic expression in
music today is carrying fondness into
the realm of prejudice, and from there
to doctrinairism. Not even Arnold
Schonberg, in his writings on music
and composition, carries things that far.
But in the case of the doctrinaire, all
composers who refuse to comply are
condemned out of hand. All composers,
present and future, who refuse to see
the true atonal polyphonic path, face
the threat of the critical whip. And
all the great composers of the past
who failed to have the foresight to
comply in advance are heaped with
scorn. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven,
deprived of this all-essential guide to
musical creation, we are informed, de–
clined into "cliche effects." Schumann
and Mendelssohn were often "quite
vulgar." "Cliche" is a term used re–
peatedly by your critic for music not
written according to the atonal guide–
book. Such American composers as
Thomson, Copland, and Barber are
viewed with disfavor primarily from the
point of view of their rejection of the
atonal doctrine. Even composers who
do write atonally, such as Sessions and
Ives, are criticized because they have
the temerity to deviate from the true
path. I doubt whether anyone could
find a critical approach so narrow and
rigid in the history of musical criticism.
