events in a manner that cannot be
proved by historical facts, (3) I "de–
mand" a specific style from composers,
and, by doing so, am injecting a Stal–
inist note into the musical world.
These points Mr. Herman substan–
tiates with a documentation which is
either born of ignorance or deliberate
misinformation. (In passing, the follow–
ing at least should be established.
Schonberg in his writings, e.g.,
H
ar–
monielehre,
makes very clear where the
responsibility of the modern composer
lies. . . . Sessions never wrote a single
piece of atonal music.... Weber is not
mentioned in my article at all and has
certainly nothing to do with Austria.)
As to point one, my fundamental
point of argument is that each musical
epoch sets specific challenges for every
composer, and he can only write valid
music in meeting those challenges. The
expanse of non-polyphonic music in
the age of Mozart, Haydn, and Bee–
thoven was such a challenge, and that
is why these composers wrote great
music. The attenuation of their styles
through another age is an anachronism
and a regression. Instead of solving an
aesthetic problem, such a drawing-out
only repeats what has become common–
place in spite of its admirable point of
departure.
As to point two, one need not be a
Marxist to realize that man and his
ideas are formed in part by social and
economic movements. The undeniable
existence of one fundamental style in
specific periods- polyphony in the
Baroque, the
style galant
in the Rococo
-points strongly to the influence of
a social basis-whether it is called
economic structure or
Z eitgeist.
This
basis, of course, is not the only factor
in musical composition, which is why
each composer has an idiom of his own.
As to point three, to recognize the
challenge of one's own period is an
important task of the critic. It does
not imply the demand for physical ex–
tinction of the less serious composers.
391
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