ARTHUR BERGER
573
regard to consider Mozart's confession (in one of his letters) that he
put certain effects in his music to please his patrons and he
expected approval of these effects to be manifested in a way, more–
over, that would currently be considered barbaric anywhere but at
the ballet-namely, by applause during the music as each effect is
heard, just as we now applaud a pirouette.
Copland was in Hollywood working on the score
to
the movie
North
Star
when the article appeared so I was surprised
to
receive a prompt
response from him in a letter dated April
10, 1943 .
"Dear Arthur," it
began, "The other night while walking down Hollywood Blvd., I hap–
pened on a copy of the
Partisan Review.
Imagine my surprise when I
came across your piece on the Piano Sonata. I wonder what made you
not tell me about it-just neglect? Or was it 'fright' at my reaction?" As
the letter continued he confronted me with his main reservations:
When I call for a "style that satisfies both us and them," I am
mostly trying to goad composers on toward what I think is a
healthy direction.. .
.I
think also that for the sake of drawing sharp
distinctions you rather overdo the dichotomy between my "severe"
and "simple" styles. The inference is that only the severe style is
really serious. I don't believe that. What I was trying for in the sim–
pler works was only partly a larger audience; they also gave me a
chance to try for a home-spun musical idiom, similar to what I was
trying for in a more hectic fashion in the earlier jazz works.
In
other
words, it was not only musical functionalism that was in question,
but also musical language.
I have never been able to share the view that there was no sharp
dichotomy between the two approaches, and Copland, notwithstanding
the warm friendship that developed between us and that diminished
only late in his life when he was afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, was
to
persist in the belief that I was one of the commentators responsible
for his being cast forever in the role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I have
come
to
appreciate the fine qualities of his ballet and movie scores and
to
recognize that these qualities go well beyond what is required
to
ful–
fill their function. But works that lean heavily, for example, on compiled
folk music-even those of Stravinsky and Bartok-are liable
to
give up
their secret too easily. This music can have its appeal to a discriminat–
ing listener, but some of us also want music that is tougher and more
challenging. Henry James put it so well in his preface to
The Wings of
the Dove,
in a parenthetical comment quite in passing:
