Nicolas Slonimsky: Writings on Music: Music of the Modern Era

NICOLAS SLONIMSKY Writings on Music

VOLUME THREE

NICOLAS SLONIMSKY Writings on Music

VOLUME THREE Music of the Modern Era

Edited by Electra Slonimsky Yourke

ROUTLEDGE New York and London

Published in 2005 by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 www.routledge-ny.com Published in Great Britain by Routledge 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN www.routledge.co.uk Copyright © 2005 by Electra Slonimsky Yourke Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Slonimsky, Nicolas, 1894–1995 [Selections. 2003] Nicolas Slonimsky : writings on music. p. cm. Edited by Electra Slonimsky Yourke. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-203-99718-2 Master e-book ISBN

The Schoenberg Idea People talk glibly of the 12-tone system “Take all twelve notes, shake them well, and then list ’em.” But Arnold Schoenberg, the originator, Called it a method: the system came later. Working away from abstruse atonality, Towards progressive artistic reality. He made each individual tone a tonic, And music became do-dec-a-phonic The 12-tone melody, not bound to any key, Strode, in wide intervals, magnificently free. Then, by a deft maneuver of tergiversation, It rolled off in reverse, in true reciprocation. Melodic intervals then pointed in an opposite direction, High notes becoming low, in mirror-like reflection. When this inverted tune performed a backward run, There was still more dodecaphonic fun. In being divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, The twelve-tone counterpoint yielded lots of tricks. Though dissonant, the harmony was magically clear, Its intertwining chords a fillip to the ear. “Excruciatingly cacophonous,” the old-guard critics cried. “Say, this stuff’s hep,” opined the younger side. From (the) Verklarte Nacht to (the) Pierrot Lunaire, The style of Schoenberg bore a supra-tonal air. And finally, the Serenade, in 1924, (Marked opus 24) revealed the 12-tone lore.

(In fact, the opus numbers corresponded to the year Like symbols of the fruitful years in Schoenberg’s rich career.) And soon the 12-tone speech, intuitive and young, Evolved into a vital and organic tongue. Not brain alone, but also heart and soul, In Arnold Schoenberg’s music play a role. From California, where Schoenberg lives, this method spread around, Like some new form of radiant energy transmuted into sound. In Scandinavia, in Italy, in France (frons) It stirred the waves of music: tonal Renaissance. As the new century of tones pursues its course, The global 12-tone movement gathers greater force. And on the musical horizon, not too far, The Schoenberg light shines blazingly, a do-de-cu-ple star! NS 1939

CONTENTS

Preface A Note from the Editor

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PART 1. GENERAL ARTICLES 1. Modern Music: An Airplane View (1926)

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2. Music in Cuba (1933)

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3. Four Modernist Composers [Harris, Varèse, Cowell, Antheil] (1934)

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4. Modern Italian Music (1937– 38)

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5. The Status of the Latin American Composer (1942)

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6. The New World of Dodecaphonic Music (1950)

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7. Introductory Essay (1959)

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8. The Marvelous Season 1912–1913 (1963)

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9. New Music in Greece (1965)

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10. Music for a Twentieth-Century Violinist (1974)

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11. Introduction [to Twentieth Century Music] (1984)

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PART II. INDIVIDUAL COMPOSERS 12. Modern Immortals [Bartok & Schoenberg] (1950)

129

13. Cartula of Cuba [Alejandro Caturla] (1940)

134 vii

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14. Chou Wen-chung (1961)

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15. Henry Cowell (1933)

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16. Howard Hanson: The “American Sibelius” (1944)

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17. Charles Ives 1. Musical Rebel (1953)

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2. Musical Prophet (1954)

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18. Ulysses Kay (date unknown)

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19. Benjamin Lees in Excelsis (1975)

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20. Conlon Nancarrow: Complicated Problem— Drastic Solution (1962)

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21. Walter Piston (1933)

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22. Wallingford Riegger (date unknown)

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23. Roger Sessions (1933)

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24. Géométrie Sonore: Edgar Varèse (1983)

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25. Heitor Villa-Lobos 1. A Visit (1941)

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2. The Flamboyant Chanticleer (1962)

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PART III. MONOGRAPH 26. Roy Harris: Cimarron Composer (1952) 1. His Life

231

2. His Music

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3. Catalogue of Works by Harris

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Index

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PREFACE

You would not expect a person of my father’s cultural heritage—steeped in the Russian musical tradition, trained in its premier conservatory—to be attracted to “modern” music. He had everything to gain from the old musical regime: he was educated in it, he performed it brilliantly, and it was prevalent, offering the opportunity for a successful career. Piano was his instrument, taught by his formidable Aunt Isabelle Vengerova from childhood. His rich education in the theory and practice of music could also have suited him for composing or conducting, a purveyor of the classical tradition at its highest level. But that’s not what happened. He was interested in the modern seemingly from the moment of expulsion from his pre-Revolutionary cultural cocoon and continued to be so for the following 80 years—during which, of course, the definition of modern evolved and twisted and morphed and turned inside out, and even reverted to “classical.” Why did he choose to be a proponent of the modern? Surely it had to do with his intellectual curiosity, impatience with repetition, and rebellious spirit, but further psychologizing is pointless. This volume opens with a short article written in 1926, when he had barely mastered English. He takes on the definition of modern music— by suggesting what it isn’t. In those days, perhaps, definitions seemed necessary but the time had also come to accept the new era in its many manifestations. Acceptance of the unfamiliar was a personal characteristic and a recurrent theme in his writings. While the traditionalists bemoaned deviations from the mandates of history, he applauded innovation—adding new elements, smashing and reassembling the old ones—but only if intellectually valid and esthetically driven. Also, throughout his life, he could not resist an idea if it was fun—dropping a ix

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piano from a helicopter, playing the cello topless (female only), titling a symphony Penis Dimension. In his twenties and thirties, he dedicated a burgeoning conducting career to the works of modern composers. His concerts in Paris, Berlin, and Budapest in 1931–32 brought to Europe for the first time works of the American modern sensibility: Riegger, Ives, Cowell, Ruggles, Weiss, Roldan, Varèse. The concerts created a sensation, provoking vehement criticism and equally vehement support. During the summer of 1933, in a series of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, he conducted these composers’ works and others, but this esthetic was simply not acceptable to the general audience or the sponsors. It was essentially the end of his conducting career. Thereafter, his support for modern music was confined to writing and lecturing, but he continued to be influential even when not participating directly. His personal experience with rejection of the modern found startling resonance as he researched composers’ lives for the dictionaries he was editing. He found that the very titans worshipped by the conservative establishment were themselves often savagely criticized in their own times. Burrowing through contemporary newspapers at the library, he saw that Beethoven’s Second Symphony was “hideously writhing,” Fidelio suffered from “atrocious harmony,” and the Ninth “outrageous clamor.” Brahms’s Second Symphony was termed “ugly and ungenial,” his Serenade, op. 11 contained an excess of “this ultra-modern kind of writing,” and anyone who could swallow his Piano Concerto in B-flat major “enjoys an enviable digestion.” One critic opined that Sibelius was even worse than Debussy. Another observed that Verdi’s opera Macbeth contained melodies “such as a man born deaf would compose.” All this was irresistible. His Lexicon of Musical Invective was brought out in 1953. In his introduction, he gives a name to the phenomenon: Non-Acceptance of the Unfamiliar, and calls it a “psychological inhibition.” There is a prognosis for this condition: “it takes approximately twenty years to make an artistic curiosity out of a modernistic monstrosity; and another twenty to elevate it to a masterpiece.” The Lexicon provides solace to practitioners in all the arts. It has been in print for fifty years, and was reissued recently with an introduction by Peter Schickele, who called it “a festival of dyspepsia.” Much of my father’s time and energy was devoted to researching and updating Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, which he took

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over in the early 50s, and writing other books, notably Music Since 1900. In this work, he followed contemporary creators in detail, diligently updating their progress and products, but he never wrote a book on modern music per se and he only wrote articles when requested. Accordingly, this volume cannot be a complete or consistent series of writings. Nevertheless, the general articles, in conjunction with the articles on individual composers, cover most major “modern” composers, explaining how their disparate concepts and innovations overturned traditional thinking and created the modern era. The history of the monograph on Roy Harris is unknown. He and my father had a warm personal relationship; perhaps there was some project afoot when it was written in 1952–53, but it is one of the very few selections in these volumes that was never published. The remaining items are the most enduring of a large number of pieces created for different outlets, including musical journals, as introductions to others’ works, and in magazines and newspapers. Other articles on music of the modern era—those that were written for the Boston Evening Transcript and those about modern Russian music and composers—are found in the first two volumes of this series. Electra Slonimsky Yourke New York, June 2003

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Every article in these volumes is presented in full without any editing whatever. I have also preserved the orthography and other stylistic elements as they appeared in the original publications or manuscripts. Changes were made only in the rare instance of errors or misprints obvious to me. Accordingly, readers will encounter a wide variety of spellings, especially of Russian names, and the disparate punctuation policies of dozens of different publications. I believe that fidelity to the originals helps highlight the historic nature of these documents, and preservation of the record, warts and all, was of great importance to my father, a lover of language in all its flowerings. —E.S.Y.

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Part I

G E N E R A L A RT I C L E S

1. MODERN MUSIC: A N A I R P L A N E V I EW If there has ever been a subject, widely discussed and learnedly analyzed, with no agreement whatsoever as to its connotations, that subject is undoubtedly Modern Music. In an attempt to seize upon the essentials, what terms have not been used? Modern, contemporary, novel, primitive, brachycephalic, extravagant—the scale of definitions ranges as far as “Bolshevistic” at least for those who are innocent of the problems involved therein. In fact, the definitions given by professional and non-professional critics differ almost as widely as their respective constitutions. But what do the modernists themselves say about their work? Surely those who bear the elusive halo or curse of modernism should be able to let us know precisely what it is all about. But the facts are otherwise. The modernists themselves seem as incapable of agreement as the critics. If we asked of any average musical audience whom they considered the apostle of modern music, ninety out of a hundred would, without the slightest hesitation, confer the honor upon Stravinsky. Yet the composer of Le Sacre du Printemps emphatically refuses the title and states that he is not a modernist. On the other hand another conspicuous Russian, Serge Prokofieff, admitted without any reservations, that he does trade in modern music. But that was all. Prokofieff refrained from giving particulars as to his meaning of the disputed term. Thus we see that the composers themselves do not agree. But the fact is that both Stravinsky and Prokofieff are modernists. And not only they, but also men whose methods of composition are at times diametrically opposite, such as Strauss, Schonberg, Ravel, Honegger and, in more recent days, Hindemith and Copland. These are all undoubtedly modernists. Old, Ch. 1: originally published in The Critic, Boston, March 4, 1926.

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middle-aged, young, from different countries and living under different circumstances, yet modern composers, all of them. What is the explanation of this phenomenon? Looking down, taking an airplane view of the thickly-dotted scores, we can hardly form a clear idea of modern music in general. But at least we shall be enabled to see plainly what modern music is not. Far from the infernal din of orchestral orgies, even the most exasperated minds—with the powerful aid of the rarefied atmosphere—can recover their sound judgment, thus enabling them to dismiss some of the general beliefs which subsist despite their patent absurdity. Modern music is not a Brobdignagian contrivance dedicated to erect a musical tower of Babel. Prokofieff has written a scherzo for four bassoons. This does seem rather arrogant. Yet a peaceful composer of yore—John Ernest Galliard, who died in 1749—composed a piece for four and twenty of these ungodly instruments and seasoned it with four double basses. Neither is the introduction of a new instrument—however clumsy and unbecoming it may appear—an unmistakable sign of modernity. A sarrusophone or even a gramaphone record of a bird’s trilling (as in Respighi’s “Pini di Roma” of recent fame) does not necessarily spread the modern unction upon the composition by virtue of its presence in the score. Cacophony is not inseparable from the spirit of modern music. Neither does the much-discussed polytonality make up a modern score. Let me relate an anecdote which may help to illustrate the point. A philosopher of renown, residing in Paris, was standing on the Place de Beaugrenelle while waiting for a bus. From two opposite points of the square two hand-organs were simultaneously grinding out music in manifestly unrelated keys. The philosopher, being thus placed in the defenseless position of an involuntary listener, delivered himself of the following remark: “Now I understand Darius Milhaud’s music.” Let us grant that the remark was witty, and let us also grant it was much to the point as far as Milhaud is concerned. Yet it is not applicable to the whole generation of moderns. One who plays on the piano with his elbows or performs pizzicato on a baby grand is not always a wild modernist. In his music a demure lamb may be bleating.

Modern Music

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Employment of jazz-tunes does not introduce a stale musical concoction into the hall of modernistic fame or notoriety. The tuning up of the orchestra does not produce the effect of a modern transcription of oriental music, even though it seemed to do so on the Shah of Persia some years ago. If we can agree on these six clauses we have accomplished a necessary cleansing, preparatory to some sort of solution. The airplane view has helped us to eliminate some prejudices. Now we are ready to take a closer view and even to venture on a landing place. After some waddling on the ground we shall have a fair chance to give a plausible answer to the question: what, in the name of all the musical saints, is modern music?

2. MUSIC IN CUBA

The first realization that there is original music in Cuba came to the outside world with the sudden popularity of the Rumba some two years ago. Not only in the States but in Europe as well the Rumba superseded the fading fascination of common jazz. With the Rumba came a demand for Cuban instruments: the maracas, which is a gourd filled with dried seeds; claves, or wooden sticks with a metallic timbre; guiros, or gourd-shells serrated on one side, producing the effect of a cheese-grater when stroked down with a stick; bonges, parchment-covered twin-drums; cencerros, pieces of rough iron. Only very few Cuban ensembles abroad could boast of having rare Afro-Cuban instruments, connected with the nanigo ritual of the Negroes of the Cuban interior—the repicadores, or small Afro-Cuban drums, and the tall drums, llamadores (call-drums) made out of a whole piece of a tree with the core burned out by a special process. And finally, there is the quijada del burro, or simply a jawbone of an ass, lacquered and mounted with bells, shaking its loose molars with a macabre rattling sound! Such is the Cuban orchestra. But even in Cuba, this orchestra is not self-sufficient—a trumpet and a double-bass, and a human voice supply the element of “definite pitch” (the Cuban percussion instruments serving rhythm only). True, the double-bass is often strung with plain rope instead of the catgut, and the player strikes the strings with the palm of his hand. The trumpet player experiments with the pistons and the embouchure, the vocalist hardly bothers with the problems of vocal training—but this lack of conservatory education adds to the primitive charm of Cuban folk music. Like the bourgeois gentleman of Moliere who didn’t realize he Ch. 2: originally published in The Musical Record, August 1933.

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Music in Cuba

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spoke in prose, the creators of the Cuban son do not realize that they contribute to the thesaurus of musical folk-lore. However, it would be a mistake to think that the Cubans, like the inhabitants of another enchanted isle, Bali, have contributed only raw matter of music. Attentive observers of musical evolution have known of the existence of these Cuban instruments long before the Rumba set the world a-dancing. The illuminating fact is that Cuba has produced its own composers that can stand comparison with the best of Europe and America. And it is with great wonder that we find in the music of Cuban composers of today a highly seasoned, individual and mature style. This style elaborates on native rhythms and melodies, not as mere quotation, but as a creative evolution of a certain pattern. This style, moreover is presented in an exquisite modernistic attire. Cuban music was born in the twentieth century, and it assumes the quality of the twentieth century—harmonic freedom, rhythmic independence and richness of orchestral palette. Amadeo Roldan, born on July 12, 1900, has achieved for Cuban music what Stravinsky has done for music of Russia—he has expressed masterfully and imaginatively the soul of his country, he has translated into the modem idiom the themes and moods of the folk song. He has remained a musician, that is, a craftsman of his art, never yielding to the temptation of portraying the musical landscape of this country in a jumble of disorganised sonorous elements. He studied to be a violinist and, graduating from the Real Conservatorio de Musica of Madrid, Spain, he obtained the First Prize and the special “Sarasate Prize” in violin. He appeared in several violin recitals throughout Spain, but soon was won over to the study of musical composition, in Spain, and later Havana. Once settled definitely, he founded in Havana a Society of Chamber Music, presenting over sixty concerts of important works in smaller forms. In 1924, when the Philharmonic Orchestra of Havana was founded, he became its concertmaster, and in 1932 its permanent conductor. He was elected Director of the West Indies Section of the Pan American Association of Composers in 1930, and has been an active member of this organization fostering performances of modern American music in Cuba. All of Roldan’s works have some reference to his Cuban origin—the early Overture on Cuban themes, the Three Short Poems for orchestra, the Afro-Cuban ballet, La Rebambaramba, A Miracle of Anaquille, Negro Dance and a Negro poem, Chango. His exciting Ritimicas for percussion instruments (including jawbone) are probably the first examples of music

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written exclusively for a percussion ensemble. Three Calls for chamber orchestra and Motives of “Son” for voice and nine instruments complete the list of his most important compositions, embracing the period from 1925 to 1931. Of all these, La Rebambaramba is the most perfect expression of the spirit of Afro-Cuban dance, with the maracas, claves, guiros and Cuban drums forming the fascinating background for the orchestral dance, driving on in 6/8-3/4 time, which is Cuban time. At concerts of Pan-American music which I conducted in Paris, Berlin and Budapest, the audiences were so taken by this unfamiliar but bewitching music that, despite the preconceived opposition to all that is transatlantic and modern, a repetition was demanded of one of the movements. The chief thrill was provided by a solo of maracas, flourished in the air like two cocktail-shakers at a wild party. Alejandro Garcia Caturla was born in the town of Remedios, some 200 miles East of Havana, on the Northern shore of Cuba, on March 7, 1906. He studied piano with a local teacher, then went to Havana for instruction in harmony, composition and orchestration with Pedro Sanjuan, then conductor of the Havana Philharmonic. He subsequently went to Paris, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger, the famous “fostermother” of a generation of American composers. Once in Europe, Caturla plunged directly into the atmosphere of ultra-modern music. Curiously enough, he did not make use of the native instruments in his early compositions, but preferred to convey the feeling of Afro-Cuban music through the medium of “civilized” orchestra. Without restraint, and utterly unconcerned about the niceties of harmony or counterpoint, he writes music of the Cuban interior, negroid, contorted, fanatical. While we may be overwhelmed by the avalanche of sharps and flats thrown into the score with a generous disdain of conventional scales, there is no doubt that Caturla’s music is an unadulterated product of native genius. So often do we find “exotic” music emasculated through European influences, that we are almost glad that Caturla’s French schooling did not affect his genuine flair for dissonance. His Bembe, an Afro-Cuban dance, has enjoyed a certain vogue, having been performed here and abroad by several conductors (a rare distinction for a modern composer in search of performers). Overburdened as this Bembe is with accidentals and forbidding as it may sound (the score is written for wind-instruments and the piano), such an outburst of modernity is healthier than many a morbid page of atonal elucubration.

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This authenticity of production was the quality that moved the astute Emile Vuillermoz to write, in connection with presentations of American music in Paris, that there is more sincere modernity in the American neighborhood than in the capitals of Europe. The Three Dances of Caturla are of a more subdued pattern—and by the same token, they are less arresting . . . But even these respectable dances proved too much to the provincial New York critics when Stokowski presented them in Carnegie Hall. Caturla’s latest orchestral work, Yamba-O (so named after a ceremony of initiation of the Negro sect, naniga) employs for the first time the entire galaxy of the Cuban percussion. Again, there are groups of notes that are like blocks thrown bodily into the harmonic scheme, and again there is an irresistible fascination of this extraordinary talent. The First Cuban Suite for a small orchestra is perhaps the better balanced score, and shows more care in design. The blatant, brassy quality of Caturla’s other scores is here subdued, while the native atmosphere fortunately remains vivid and stimulating. Caturla does not limit himself to composition alone. As a member of the Pan American Association of Composers, he has the blood of a propagandist in him. In his Cuban hinterland he has formed an orchestra, which actually gives performances of modern music in towns of not more than a few hundred inhabitants! True, there are no string players in his orchestra, but the saxophones replace them rather advantageously, and with several double-basses (plenty of them in Cuba), a full array of brass and some wood-wind, Caturla presents works by Ravel, Debussy, De Falla, Stravinsky, and even Cowell! The inevitable Rhapsody in Blue of Gershwin is also featured in his concerts. There is something inexpressably admirable in such activity, particularly when we realize how backward American communities are in fostering any music beyond the conventional stuff daily warmed over in the women’s clubs. An account of Cuban music would be incomplete if the contribution to it by temporary residents were not taken into consideration. Pedro Sanjuan was born in Northern Spain, of Basque parents, but he spent enough years in Havana to be included among active forces of Cuban music. For one thing, he taught composition to both Roldan and Caturla, for another he was the first conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra and was responsible for many a brilliant achievement of that organization. Furthermore, he was influenced by Cuban music, and himself wrote

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several compositions of distinctly Cuban character—Afro-Cuban, we should rather say, for all Cuban music, as far as it is distinguished from Spanish music, is derived from the rhythms and melodies (Sons) of Cuban Negroes. As a Spaniard, Sanjuan wrote a number of works worthy of any orchestra’s repertory, among them, the admirable Castilian Motives for the chamber orchestra. Sanjuan left Havana in 1932, leaving the Philharmonic Orchestra to his successor, Roldan. The youthful composer, Jose Ardevol, born in Barcelona on March 13, 1911 has now more or less permanently established himself in Havana. He studied with his father, who is leader of a chamber orchestra in Barcelona. As pianist he has had many notable appearances; as composer he astonishes by his fearless spirit of modernity. His Six Synthetic Poems for chamber orchestra, by the title alone, imply an aversion to all program music, to all music, in fact, which is not music for music’s sake. His scoring is clear, and his command is as firm as could possibly be expected from an out-and-out modernist, i.e., an honest craftsman pursuing his own aims in his own way. Ardevol is not dogmatic enough to follow a definite brand of musical religion, but he leans rather heavily towards atonality. His latest symphonic work, full of strident minor seconds in the brass, is remarkable in its mastery. There is no occasion to discuss whether atonality will “last,” whether it goes against the established verities of music. Music is an art in motion, thank Heavens, and no amount of retrograde suppression will stop it—at least not in parts where musical freedom exists . . . And, then, who knows, New York may yet take valuable tips from the town of Vedado . . . Musical activity in Cuba finds its expression in orchestral and choral organizations. The Philharmonic Orchestra, under the enlightened direction of Dr. Baralt and Mr. Augustin Batista, has for ten years, in monthly concerts, in winter and summer alike, furnished music, ancient and modern, to the music-lovers of Havana. The orchestra, now conducted by Amadeo Roldan, is alive to every important phase of musical activity abroad, and has had presentations of the very latest works, such as Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto and Ravel’s Piano Concerto. The Symphony Orchestra of Havana, under the direction of maestro Roig, has contributed more orchestral music to concert-goers. The Pro Arte Association has sponsored many a famous soloist in recitals and chamber music. Lastly, the Chorale of Havana, numbering seventy singers, under the energetic and intelligent direction of Maria Munoz de Quevedo, is responsible for many

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performances of choral works, a capella, and with the orchestra. Maria de Quevedo—with her husband, Antonio de Quevedo, are publishers and editors of an artistically printed bi-monthly, Musicalia, of which seventeen numbers have appeared to date. The Quevedos are also founders of the Sociedad de Musica Contemporanea, which spreads intelligent information concerning the latest tendencies in contemporary music. The same omnificent Quevedos are Directors of Conservatorio Bach, teaching the young of Cuba the art and science of music.

3. FOUR MODERNIST COMPOSERS

Roy Harris drove me to New York. He had been to town on the occasion of a performance of his Trio at Cambridge. The Trio was written specially for Casella’s Italian group; the performance was given under the auspices of the inexhaustible Mrs. Elisabeth Sprague Coolidge, sponsor of Casella’s American tour. Roy Harris and Hilde, his wife and his musical amanuensis (who copies his music in the magnificent style of medieval manuscripts, only far more legibly) have a dinner appointment in New York at 7:30. We started from Boston at 12:30, but Roy is a self-confident driver, and the new road to Providence is marvelous. I sit with Roy in front, Hilde is semirecumbent in the back seat trying to catch lost sleep. Roy and I are busy conversing about his music, Bach’s Kunst der Fuge, and plurality of plausible tone-progressions—in common language, the possibility of new scales that would make sense—which latter subject is my latest obsession. We discuss Roy’s double fugue of the Trio. We are at musicological loggerheads: the third entry of the first subject comes a fifth above the second, i.e., it is on the supertonic, a most dangerous procedure, doing away as it does with the sacrosanct alternation of the tonic and the dominant. What is worse, it suggests a canon rather than a fugue. Highly perturbing! Roy says it’s perfectly all right, and that he can cite chapter and verse from the Kunst der Fuge to that effect. I say: “No, you cannot!” We shout so loud that poor Hilde begs for mercy: “Stop talking about music, enjoy the scenery.” The New England foliage is really beautiful in its autumnal colors, and the leaves fall so Schumann-like, but my perception of nature is spoiled by a sudden etymological thought—the Ch. 3: originally published in Panorama, November 1934.

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American word, “Fall” for autumn, refers to this fall of leaves. I can see poetry in etymology only. At Hartford we call a halt. Half-an-hour for lunch. We must get the Boston Herald. What does Teddy Chanler, the new composer-critic, write about the Malipiero Symphony? Both Roy and I cheerfully agree that the symphony is not good. Where is the review? We search in vain. There is no review. Chanler must have been fired. Also, we must find Scribner’s for October—where there is Roy’s article about music in general and particular; but the October issue is off the stands, and we don’t want the November issue, little suspecting that there is a three-column review of Varèse’s Ionisation, which I, as conductor of a percussion ensemble, had just recorded for the Columbia Phonograph Company. Roy is at the wheel once more. We are now discussing the first subject of his Fugue from the viewpoint of my theoretical scales. There are nine notes, none repeated—an atonal principle, tonally applied—for the cadence is anything if not a Si mineur. We use French names; Roy is a pupil of Nadia Boulanger, French nurse of many an American composer. Nine notes? But we forgot the Mi! Or was it eight, in the first place? Now I cannot remember at all; I cannot remember things which I have heard, but have not seen. And Roy himself is all balled up. Hilde is asleep in the back seat. 212th Street. Roy steps on the gas, and arrives at his dinner party ten minutes late. How can people live in New York? I should say that its hectic atmosphere makes it impossible to work, if I didn’t know from Fowler that the word hectic is badly misapplied in such contexts. I parted with Roy Harris, and sped to Edgar Varèse, the formidable French-American of Corsican blood, who composes the kind of music that tears asunder the orchestral heavens, to the horror of most, and fanatical exultation of a few. He lives in Greenwich Village, and his work-room is strewn with unrelated objects, in the midst of which stands a steamer trunk. Varèse plays the record of Ionisation, sirens and all, the entire percussion world that was stirred by Varèse with such weird magic. Gongs, bells, Chinese blocks (so sweet and high-pitched, and so rhythmical—no less a person than Carlos Salzedo played the part for our recording!), anvils, drums big and small, maracas, güiros, all came out awfully well. The only disappointment is in the coda: not a sound can be heard of the tone clusters in the piano part— the bells kill everything. We mourn this for just a moment, and then give way to the joy of the achievement, and sing sincere praises to the Columbia

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people who let us record this unique piece of composition. Maybe this will start something. Maybe. After the many years of battle that we waged together against the critics, managers and orchestra musicians in both hemispheres, I feel I ought to know more about Varèse. I demand that he tell me the story of his life, and his studies. “What is this doing here, and why?” I ask, opening the Twenty-Second Volume of Palestrina’s collected works. I wish to provoke him. “What was it that Vincent d’Indy declared that you, as a student of the Paris Schola Cantorum, wrote, or intended to write—a motet for 36 voices, or something equally unfeasible?” Varèse made a sly face. “I answered his attempt to ridicule me in a letter to the editor, which was never published, and in which I stated, ‘I am glad that at least once in his writings d’Indy showed imagination by inventing this whole story.’ ” Louise—Varèse’s alert wife—came in, and together we assailed Varèse. I took notes: 1907. Tended horse Paris Halles, 2 Frs a night Father engineer, locked piano; boy Varèse learned cntrp. from Père Martini’s textbook, purchs, for 3 sous. Wrote 1896–7 opera Martin Paz, Jules Verne’s book, mandoline, violin, trmpt, pno. (when in Italy). Listened to noises in the street trying to arrange them for instr. Had mania for harmony exercises. Age 15–16 interest in chemistry and physics. Wrote song to Tennyson’s Enoch Arden. Was impressed by photo of Zambeze, decided music must flow like Zambeze. His uncle Josef a blacksmith. In Bourgogne until age 5. Oedipus complex. Father, vieux salaud. Love for grandfather, who, although simple peasant, gave him Gédalge’s treatise. 1902 in Paris. 1903, Schola Cantorum. Vincent d’Indy. Trois pièces d’orchestre (1904). Rhapsodie Romaine (1905). 1907, Le choeur de l’Université Populaire. (Choeur d’ouvriers et ouvrières). Rue Descartes, refuge of Russian revolutionaries. Meeting with Lenin. Bourgogne (1907–8), first symphonic poem. Orchestration for music-halls. 1908, Germany. Encouragement from Strauss. Romain-Rolland. Letters from him after the perform. of Bourgogne, addressed: “Mon pauvre garçon” (NOTE. Louise promised to copy these letters for me—very indicative of trends). Gargantua (1909) Mehr Licht (1911–12). Les Cycles du Nord (1914). Oedipus und die Sphynx (incompl.). Other comp. see “Am. Comp.” Published—Offrandes, Hyperprisms, Intégrales, Octandre, Amériques, Arcana, Ionisation. No end of discussion of future plans: U.S.S.R. and . . . Chile. There are definite prospects for concerts of American music in the former, vague but

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exciting hopes for the latter. Who knows? Of course, Varèse has friends in Chile: here are the addresses: Vincente Huidobro, 1511 Alameda, Santiago de Chile; Eduardo Lira Espejo, Farina 4864, Santiago . . . Henry Cowell has an office in the New School for Social Research. I find him engaged in pleasant conversation with Mademoiselle Yakountchikova, a musicologist from Leningrad, now settled in America. When did I see Henry last? In California, or in New York? Certainly, not in Europe. I love the international aspect of Henry Cowell’s morning mail. To impress him, I tell him that I have just received two issues of the Serbian bimonthly publication, Zvuk. He admits he hasn’t seen it yet: “You see,” he adds serenely, “the assassination of King Alexander has upset my plans.” I am puzzled: “What’s the joke?” “There isn’t any joke,” he says, “I was supposed to go to Macedonia to collect native tunes; the Yugoslavian government invited me over and promised to pay my expenses, I received a large parchment in Serbian, but I sent it to California. Now I am afraid that the new government will cancel the invitation.” It develops, during the course of conversation, that the consul of Yugoslavia has made arrangements for Henry Cowell’s trip after his lecture on Yugoslavian folkmusic at the New School. Henry tells me also that his article on American music has appeared in the July issue of Sovietskaya Moosyka, but the translator has apparently edited the article rather heavily, and he would like to know just what was left in and what was taken out. Also, his name was transliterated, Caw-ul. He sent that to California, too—his archives are all in California, where he owns a shack worth 150 dollars, with land. At 3:00 p.m. Cowell must play on Broadway—for the Irish film, Man of Aran. The actors—a man, a woman, a boy—have been imported to New York in person, and they perform a sort of prologue before the picture, while Cowell plays his goosefleshy Banshee on the bare pianostrings. Very impressive. From Broadway I walk towards Central Park. Somebody stops me: George Antheil, minus his 1933 moustache! We go to a place which would be called a café if we were in Paris. Sipping our tea, we indulge in partisan conversation. Antheil is full of fire, a fine comrade-in-arms, not at all the glorified individualist of Ezra Pound’s chaotic treatise on him and harmony. Antheil speaks of the necessity of forming not a mere bohemian group, but a company of “cut-throats”—he repeats the word several times. Yes, that’s what we need. To hell with gentility! Comradely feeling fills me,

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too. I suppose this is the feeling of one Communist meeting another in some unexpected respectable place. There is a feeling of strength and common purpose. We can criticize ourselves all we want, but—against the world of reactionary musicians and critics we must form a united front. Yes, Antheil hit it exactly right. What a fine chap he is, anyway! I go to his place, he shows me his scores—he has a fine Capriccio, although he admits, it isn’t a Capriccio at all—rather an Overture. I look over the score of his opera, Transatlantic. He has also written a Jazz Symphony. What a cheerful talent! The next morning—a telephone call rather early, probably before nine o’clock. It’s Roy. His telephone voice is so well-modulated and gentle. “You are all wrong about my third entry on the supertonic,” are his first words, “It’s in the dominant.” “In the dominant?! But why didn’t you tell me that it wasn’t supertonic at all?!” “Well, I forgot myself. I remember Bach, but I don’t remember my own music so very well.”

4 . M O D E R N I TA L I A N M U S I C

In speaking about modern music, we still naturally revert to the names and reputations established before the war. The latest dictionaries and encyclopedias of modern music rarely mention composers born after 1900. In other words, composers now in their middle thirties, composing in a new modern idiom (which is, by the way, much less modern than the pre-war brand of modern music) are not yet taken cognizance of in the available source books. At the slow rate at which modern compositions are published, it is difficult to make acquaintance with these new forces, even for the student acutely interested in the development of modern music. Specifically, when Italian modern music is discussed, the names of Respighi, Casella, Pizzetti and Malipiero are taken as representative of the new modern school. It is little realized that Casella, Pizzeti, and Malipiero, now in their fifties, and Respighi, who has passed on, are really fathers of the new movement in Italian music, established masters, teachers of a new generation of Italian musicians. Roughly, Respighi and Pizzetti represent the romantic, pictorial school of composition, magnificent in execution, but less potent in musical content because of the literary program and external effects necessitated by that program. Casella and Malipiero represent the neo-classical tendencies in the musical art of new Italy, and their neo-classicism is made musically, and even politically, more significant because it takes root in the national music of the early centuries. Taken in conjunction with the fact that both Casella and Malipiero started as extreme modernists, and have retained the new modernist technique in their works of a later date, the

Ch. 4: originally published in The Christian Science Monitor, September 21 and October 5, 1937, and February 1, 1938.

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new development assumes the significance of a synthesis, a compromise between the imperishable values of the classical past, and the surviving features of the modern present. Thus, while atonality, rampant in post-war modernism, now has fallen into disrepute nearly everywhere, the building of melodic and harmonic patterns by fourths, characteristic of atonality, has been retained as a powerful means of new musical expression. A modified twelve-tone system appears in new Italian music in the form of a method of non-repetition of melodically important notes. Polytonality has been saved in the reduced form of bitonality, and the diatonic system has been expanded into a pandiatonic usage, which freely combines all seven degrees of the diatonic scale, with the bass retaining its determining function, and strong pedal points, emphasizing the tonality. Among young Italians writing in this new idiom, who were born in the first decade of the present century, the following are already fairly well known in Italy, and are beginning to be known throughout Europe by performances of their works at the festivals of modern music: Luigi Dallapiccola, born in Pisino, Istria, on Feb. 3, 1904; Goffredo Petrassi, born in Zagarolo, Rome, on July 16, 1904; Giovanni Salviucci, born in Rome on Oct. 26, 1907; Gianandrea Gavazzeni, born in Bergamo on July 25, 1909; Gianluca Tocchi, born in Perugia on Jan. 10, 1901; Riccardo Nielsen, born in Bologna on March 3, 1908; Adone Zecchi, born in Bologna on July 23, 1904; and Franco Margola, born in Brescia on Oct. 30, 1908. Their younger colleagues are Ennio Porrino, born in Cagliari, on Jan. 20, 1910; Nino Rota, born in Milan, on Dec. 3, 1911, and the youngest, Gino Gorini born in Venice, June 22, 1914. An examination of their orchestral and instrumental works presents great interest to the student of modern music, for here we find the modern idiom tested by a quarter of a century of conscious development, not merely experimental, but also educational—a test conducted by modernists of the older generation who are now educators and masters of new modernists. Among young masters of modern Italian music, the names of Goffredo Petrassi and Luigi Dallapiccola stand high. Born within months of each other in 1904, they are now close to the age which Dante described as the middle of life’s road, the period of ripe maturity and creative felicity.

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Goffredo Petrassi studied at the Royal Conservatory of Santa Cecilia and received his diploma in composition in 1932, and in organ playing in 1933. His Partita for orchestra won the national contest in 1933, and was performed at the Amsterdam Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in the same year. His Introduction and Allegro for violin with orchestra was presented at the Prague Festival in 1935, and his Concerto for orchestra at the Venice Festival in 1936. Even from the titles of these works, it immediately appears that Petrassi has chosen the way of a neo-classicist. His early works are still under the influence of Casella and Hindemith, but soon Petrassi adds an element of characteristic “objective lyricism,” or lyricism without subject matter. Petrassi never felt the urge to hook his musical imagination to a literary subject, or to paint human emotions with a tonal brush. His music is anti–nineteenth-century music, and strongly pro–eighteenth-century. But the two centuries since the period of hallowed classicism have not passed for nothing, Petrassi uses the eighteenth-century scheme of composition as a form for his twentieth-century ideas. Technically speaking, he uses quartal melody and harmony, building in horizontal and vertical fourths. But his quartal constructions are a far cry from the 12-tone brand of atonality, which implies a flight from the keynote by means of a complete cycle of fourths. Petrassi’s melodies may go up two or three fourths, but no farther, and his chords do likewise. His instrumentation is pure and entirely devoid of post-impressionistic fulsomeness, and he conscientiously avoids over-individualized instrumentation, so typical of both the French and the Viennese schools of composition. When he wants an instrument to stand out, he writes “concertando” in the good classical eighteenth-century Concerto manner. Luigi Dallapiccola has had great variety in musical experience. He studied at the Florence Conservatory, being graduated in piano in 1924 and in composition in 1931. Since 1934, he has been professor at his alma mater. In his creative work, he has tried every mode of composition, including the integral 12-tone system, so unpopular now among musicians who lack the genius of Schonberg or Berg to put it to service for musical beauty. Dallapiccola’s excursions into the 12-tone system were singularly successful, and he abandoned it all too early. Dallapiccola’s inspiration goes further into the ages than that of his neo-classical contemporaries. But he likes to write for large vocal ensembles, and he is fascinated by the Palestrinian greatness of the late

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Renaissance. He affects the archaic polyphonic and instrumental technique, and the occasional chromaticism here reflects the modal freedom of the great contrapuntists rather than the atonal refinement of modern innovators. His Kalevala Songs were presented in Florence on June 12, 1931, for the first time; his Partita—a debt paid to fashionable neo-classicism—was given in Florence on Jan. 22, 1933; his Rhapsody for voice and chamber orchestra was given at the Third International Festival at Venice, Sept. 8, 1934; and his Music for Three Pianos was performed for the first time in Geneva on March 30, 1936. With the passage of time Dallapiccola’s music grows more nationally Italian in spirit, and the elements of his early modernism tend to disappear. Dallapiccola has found his way. His music is a Renaissance of Renaissance. Among modernists belonging entirely in the twentieth century, Gian Luca Tocchi is a paradoxical musical phenomenon. Born in Perugia on Jan. 10, 1901, he was sufficiently mature at the time when program music was still fashionable. A pupil of Respighi, he was graduated from Santa Cecilia in 1926, and won a prize in 1931 with his Three Songs in the popular Italian manner. Italian folk music has remained for him the chief source of inspiration. At the same time he went heart and soul into the esthetically opposite movement, and applied his knack for representational music to the mechanized poetry of urbanist machine music with a wouldbe American tinge. To this period belongs the orchestral suite, entitled Record (1933), Concerto for a Jazz Orchestra (1933) and the suite, Film (1936). Lino Liviabella was born in Macerata, on April 7, 1902. A pupil of Respighi, he was graduated from the Academy of Santa Cecilia in 1927. He cultivates the pictorial and lyrico-romantic genre in his chamber music and reserves the grand “imperialist” style for his orchestral works. During the 1936 Olympiad in Berlin, his bombastic work, Il Vincitore carried a prize. Continuing in the order of seniority, we come to Adone Zecchi, born in Bologna on July 23, 1904. He studied under Franco Alfano. A pure neoclassicist, he has written some excellent chamber music. His Violin Sonata in F (1934) exhibits the best features of “tonality plus,” or, as I should like to call it, pan-diatonic harmony. As a performing conductor, he has a sense of practical virtuoso playing, and his music is never “paper music.” Of his published orchestral works, the Two Preludes, subtitled respectively,

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“dramatic,” and “gay,” are very effective, although musically inferior to his chamber music. Riccardo Castagnone was born at Como, on Sept. 10, 1906. He studied at the Verdi Conservatory in Milan, took lessons in conducting from Herman Scherchen, and organized a small orchestra, which he conducted in various cities in Northern Italy. As a composer, he is chiefly known for his unpretentious but always effective orchestral pieces, stylizations and arrangements of old dance tunes. Giulio Cesare Sonzogno was born in Milan Dec. 24, 1906. His music is romantic, emotional, pictorial. His Four Country Melodies for small orchestra (1932) won a prize for best “radiogenic” music—that is, best adapted for radiocasting. His practical sense of musical values makes his music palatable fodder for any symphony audience. Renzo Rosselini was born in Rome, on Feb. 2, 1908. He is one of the few Italian modernists who have attempted what is now the least practicable type of composition—the opera. Between 1928 and 1930 he wrote a four-act opera, Alcassino and Nicoletta, which was never produced nor published. His less ambitious efforts for orchestra, and his chamber music, fared much better. He is a prolific composer, and something of a Wunderkind. His first published work was composed in 1924, when he was only 16. Riccardo Nielsen, born in Bologna on March 3, 1908, managed to get out of his indentures very early in life. His works, molded in a determined neo-classical shape and idiom, have been given at International Music Festivals, and thus attracted attention of the music world at large. In 1932 he won the prize of the Royal Philharmonic Society in Rome with his Violin Concerto, and in 1934 his Capriccio for piano and orchestra was selected in a contest of young Italian composers for presentation at the Second International Festival at Venice. After Petrassi and Dallapiccola, he is one of the most conspicuous composers of modern Italy. Franco Margola was born in Brescia on Oct. 30, 1908. Influenced at first by the rarefied lyricism of Pizzettii, he made a sudden turn toward the neo-Italian modernism of Cassella’s style, with “tonality plus” as the chief medium. Possessing a melodic gift combined with rhythmic invention, he excels most in chamber music. Gianandrea Gavazzeni was born in Bergamo on July 25, 1909. Like Dallapiccola, he started as an out-and-out “internationalist,” explored the utmost recesses of chromaticism, and tried the fragmentary succinctness

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of extreme modernism, à la Viennese. Even more determinedly than Dallapiccola, he threw off the temptation of modernism, and turned to Italianate lyricism in the style of Pizzetti. Soon, however, he found what he himself considers the right way: music, polyphonically constructed, whose melodic inspiration lies in the simple tunes of the Italian countryside. Gavazzeni is an industrious worker, and since 1928 has written 28 compositions in various forms, including a one-act opera, Paul and Virginia, produced in 1935. Besides, he is a gifted litterateur, author of a biography of Donizetti, and music critic and commentator.

5 . T H E S TAT U S O F T H E L AT I N A M E R I C A N C O M P O S E R In relation to society in general, the status of the Latin American composer is superior to that of his North American comrade. This superior position is contingent on the active participation of Latin American governments in music education. In each country there is a Department of Fine Arts, with special appropriations for the propagation of musical culture, publication of musical compositions, and research work, performances of native works, stipends for travel abroad, etc. Furthermore, Latin American governments distribute special prizes for musical compositions, along with similar prizes for literary works, paintings, and sculpture. Such prizes possess the compound significance of a Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a music critics’ award. The composer receives both money and glory. Even if, from the outside, some awards seem futile, in view of the lack of musical culture in the country in question, from the inside the award has considerable specific weight. Let us take the example of Nicaragua, a country that possesses only one real composer, Luis A. Delgadillo. His recent oriental ballet, La cabeza del Rawi, was awarded the Rubén Darío Prize of 500 córdobas. Because of the absence of a European tradition in Nicaragua, this prize could not be more than a gesture of recognition. The monetary value of the prizes is at times considerable. Here, for instance, is the list of prizes distributed by the Comisión Nacional de Cultura in Buenos Aires on October 15, 1941:

Ch. 5: NS’s typewritten manuscript pages, apparently unpublished, dated 1942.

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Pesos 7,000 2,500 4,500 2,500 2,000 1,500

opera ballet or operetta symphonic poem, symphony, suite or overture (minimum duration of ten minutes) quartet or trio or sonata three songs, three piano pieces, or other instrumental pieces suite of six pieces of genuine folklore

The prizes awarded for compositions by Chilean composers on the occasion of the Quadricentenary of the foundation of Santiago in November 1941 were also high, the first prize being 25,000 Chilean pesos. Because of a great number of prizes, virtually every participant received an award. This contest was marked by a very unusual occurrence when the Comisión del Cuarto Centanario voided the first prize awarded to Domingo Santa Cruz for his choral work Madrigales, on the ground that Santa Cruz, as Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Chile, should not have submitted his work. A bitter exchange of arguments followed in the press, during which Domingo Santa Cruz declared that he would ask personal satisfaction from the members of the Committee as “caballeros.” The insinuation that Domingo Santa Cruz had invited personal friends as jury members was belied by the fact that Santa Cruz had never met one of the three judges, the Argentinian Honorio Siccardi, and had to look up one of my articles on South American composers in order to be able to recognize him at the airport. On the other hand, Aaron Copland, a jury member, and a friend of Santa Cruz, voted against awarding the first prize to anybody. The contest was anonymous, but it is possible that the jury members had tentatively identified the composers. Objectively speaking, there was no question that Santa Cruz’s work was superior to others mentioned, both in conception and technique. Often the prize award takes the form of helping the composer to produce his theatrical works. The Brazilian opera Malazarte by Oscar Lorenzo Fernândez was produced at the Opera House in Rio de Janeiro on September 30, 1941, with the money furnished by the Brazilian government. The expenses amounted to $3,000 in American currency. While the amount of money and glory bestowed upon the Latin American composer is considerably larger than in Europe and in North America, the economic status of the Latin American composer in relation

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to the general standard of living in his own country is no higher than in the rest of the world. The Latin American composer earns his living chiefly by teaching, or by serving on executive boards of commercial enterprises. Thus, two Argentinian composers, Floro M. Ugarte and Raúl H. Espoile, are members of the Administrative Council of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Many Latin American composers have permanent jobs. Jaime Ovalle, the Brazilian composer, is a Customs officer. José Castañeda, conductor and writer on music, is the chief of the passport division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala, an appointment which he owes to his uncle, the President of the Republic. He helped me out of an embarrassing situation at the airport of Guatemala City, where I landed without the necessary transit visa. I appreciated Castañeda’s powers of fixing the incident then and there. Afterwards, he wrote some very nasty things about me in his column in El Liberal Progresista, but my gratitude to him remains undiminished. Alfonso Leng, the Chilean composer of romantically inspired symphonic poems and songs, is a prominent dentist of Santiago. I had the occasion to profit by his professional skill, when he put a temporary filling in one of my bad molars. Alejandro García Caturla, the greatest talent in the modern school of Cuban composers, was a judge in the town of Remedios. His life ended tragically when a criminal, whom he had sentenced to prison, shot and killed him on November 12, 1940. Guillermo Uribe Holguín, Colombia’s No. 1 composer, is a rich plantation owner. He grows coffee. Composers who play an instrument usually earn a living by playing in an orchestra. Pablo Moncayo plays percussion in the Orquesta Sinfónica de México. Rodolfo Holzmann, the German composer who settled in Peru, plays the violin in the Orquesta Nacional de Lima, and Rodolfo Barbacci, the musicologist, plays the harp in the same orchestra. Sometimes signal success obtained in the field of creative composition prevents the composer, for reasons of prestige, from playing in cabarets or night clubs, though this may result in grave economic loss. Thus, Jacobo Ficher had to abandon his engagements as a violinist in various Jewish theatrical shows in Buenos Aires after he became known as a composer and a conductor. As in the rest of the world, the publication of serious music brings no appreciable returns to the Latin American composer, if he is lucky enough to find a publisher at all.

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Until recently, Latin American published music was rarely copyrighted. As a consequence, North American publishers are reluctant to distribute Latin American music, feeling that should a piece be commercially successful, any other publisher would be free to reissue it, as is commonly done with Russian music. Music lovers who put in an individual order for a piece by a Latin American composer often have to pay many times the original price. A song by Villa-Lobos, which costs 5 milreis (25 cents) in Rio de Janeiro is priced $1.50 in New York. Even when a copyright is legally taken out, the composer is sometimes robbed of the proceeds. Consider, for instance, the strange case of “Estrellita” by Manuel Ponce, the Mexican composer. Ponce wrote the song in his youth. It was published by the Mexican firm of Wagner & Levien, but the copyright was taken by the printers in Germany. Through some legalistic loophole, possibly a lapse of a few days between the publication and the issuance of the copyright in Washington, it became possible for other publishers to pirate the song without paying royalties to the composer. The song, in numerous arrangements, became enormously popular, but the composer failed to receive any returns from it. Composers of popular songs and dances can easily amass a fortune in Latin America, particularly in large countries, such as Argentina or Brazil. The popular Argentinian composer, Francisco Canaro, though he may be as deficient in musical knowledge as Irving Berlin, is a millionaire. He is now President of the Sociedad Argentina de Autores y Compositores de Música. Incidentally, the list of members of this society includes, as per June 30, 1941, sixty-six pages of names, with an average of 50 composers’ names on a page. Many Latin American composers are engaged professionally as music critics. But while musical journalism in this country leaves out personalities, in Latin America the tempers are hotter, and musical factionalism finds its expression in violent and personal attacks. Even when the musical community is limited to but a few professionals, the internecine strife reaches an extraordinary degree of vehemence. There are only four professional musicians in Ecuador, and the atmospheric pressure in Quito is very low, the capital being situated at an altitude of 9500 feet. Yet musical animosity is tense. Here, for instance, is an excerpt from an otherwise scholarly treatise by Segundo Luis Moreno, “La Música en el Ecuador,” published in the collection, El Ecuador en Cien Años de

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Independencia (1930) in which the author passes judgment on Pedro P. Traversari, former director of the Quito Conservatory: “Señor Traversari, possessed by an itch to appear in public and to pass for a person well versed in the arts, has never feared the ridiculous.” The highest degree of musical violence is reached in the Argentinian magazine La Silurante Musicale, which adopted in 1940 the meaningful subtitle El Torpedero Musical. Invariably, musical criticism is supplemented by an argumentum ad hominem. Thus, in a review of the pieces for children composed by the Argentinian educator, Raúl H. Espoile, the writer, having condemned the music, reminds the reader that Espoile draws, presumably without justification or merit, 800 pesos each month as Music Inspector in Secondary Schools, and 500 pesos as a member of the Council. In the February 1940 issue of El Torpedero Musical, the editor assails Juan Carlos Paz, the Argentinian modernist, for writing an unfavorable review of a book by one Héctor Gallac, Ensayos musicólogicos. Now, the same Gallac had contributed a detailed study of Paz’ music in Vol. I of the Boletín Latinoamericano de Música. Why, then, should Paz be prejudiced against Gallac? El Torpedero Musical explains that (1) the article on Paz was ghost-written by Paz himself, and only signed by Gallac; (2) Paz was disgruntled by the fact that the article in question was not included in Gallac’s book; inde ira. The particular bête noire of the “Musical Torpedo” is the Conservatorio Nacional de Buenos Aires, whose very name is always preceded by the qualifying epithet, llamado. In the August 1938 number of La Silurante Musicale, the Conservatory is lampooned in a story entitled “Sonatina monotonal en 3 tiempos.” It quotes an advertisement in La Prensa, and supplements it with scurrilous parenthetical remarks: “Prof. Cons. Nacional desde 5, solfeo, armonía, contrap. (contrapel si es peluquero, podra enseñarlo . . . ), instrumentación, fuga, compos. (compostura de zapatos?) pistón clarinete, piano, etc. . . .” Quoting a letter from Juan José Castro to the superintendent of the Orquesta Popular Municipal de Arte Folklórico (a letter which in itself is very unusual, for in it Castro urges the dismissal of the then conductor of the said orchestra “por higiene artistíca y por el decoro de la ciudad que representa”) the editor comments, “Pregunto: porqué el Sr. Castro no escribió algo en otra ocasión más grave, o sea cuando fue nombrado director de la Banda Municipal de Buenos Aires un simple violoncelista

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que nada sabía, y, naturalemente, nada sabe tampoco ahora, de banda musical. Contesto: porque ese nombramiento recayó sobre un hermano del Sr. Castro, y cuando la chirola queda en familia, todo está bien. . . .” The magazine has this to say about Juan José Castro himself: “El Sr. Castro que pretende ser compositor y director de orquesta, no es ni lo uno ni lo otro: sus composiciones hacen simplemente dormir.” Unfortunately for its self-righteous attitude, La Silurante Musicale extols members of the editor’s own group in a rather ostentatious manner. Rodolfo Barbacci, himself a master of invective, in the August 20, 1937 issue of his magazine America Musical (since defunct) expresses the suspicion that the editor of La Silurante was motivated in his attacks on other conservatories by the circumstance that the editor’s textbook on harmony was not used in these conservatories. Barbacci adds sarcastically, “Nosotros naturalmente!!! no podemos creer que el honestísimo director de esta publicación utilice su revista como espada de Damocles contra los temerarios que se atreven a preferir otra Teoría a la suya . . .” Some American critics spare no epithets when reviewing concerts of modernistic music. On one occasion, when Olin Downes threw a particularly large bomb on a group of American modernists, the composers fired some shots of their own in a letter to the editor of the New York Times. But even in this rather strong exchange of blows, the gentleman-like tone was always preserved. After the concert of Latin American music at the New York Public Library on March 9, 1942, Francisco Mignone, the Brazilian composer who played the piano in his works, wrote me with some bitterness: “Os criticos nos ‘meteram o pau’ achando a música fraca e inconsistente. Ficaram ‘astonished’ por terem escluido do programa musicas do Villa-Lobos que, dijem, tem muito mais cabeça e hombos de todos os sulamericanos juntos. Averam que nos compomos a manera de vinte anos atraz. A minha ‘Sonata’ para piano foi criticada por ser muito . . . ‘hespanhola’! A de violino e piano do Camargo Guarnieri muito prolixa e . . . antiga. Sera que eles tem razac? O que the disse e a pure titulo informativo.” American critics may be impolite to guests, as the above letter suggests. They may also be impolite to ladies. The late great H. T. Parker did write once, in reference to a society singer who appeared as soloist with Ravel: “It would be informing to know how Monsieur Ravel became saddled with this Mme. . . .” But nowhere does musical journalism reach the thermometer-breaking temperature of Latin America. Passions rage.

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Often a maltreated composer cries that in his person the course of national music has been insulted, while his opponents accuse him of purveying ersatz nationalism and thus doing disservice to his country. The division between the Indigenistas and Universalistas, which exists in literature, has been projected into music. Indigenistas identify themselves as Indianistas because the resources of indigenous music obviously come from the aborigines, i.e., Indians. But many musicians, while claiming for themselves the title of national composers, refuse to be set down as mere stylizers of folklore, and assert that the folkloristic element is incidental in the creation of permanent values. In some Latin American music both the elements of Universalism and Indigenism are present, as, for instance, in Villa-Lobos’ famous Bachianas Brasileiras, which purport to express the spirit of Bach in the terms of Brazil. Thus Villa-Lobos explains a superior pedal in one of his “Bachianas” as the cry of the Brazilian bird, araponga. Carlos Chávez, in reply to a yes-or-no question, has declared positively that he is a Universalist, and that he has never quoted folk tunes in any of his works, but believes that his music is expressive of the spirit of Mexico, and that he is a true Mexicanista. Many composers claim priority in the use of the native folksong element in their music. One morning in Rio, I had successive appointments with four Brazilian composers, each one of whom told me that he had used native melodies and native rhythms for the first time among national composers. Similar claims as pioneers in folklore were presented to me in Lima by several Peruvians, Walter Stubbs, Daniel Alomía Robles, and Roberto Carpio. Conversely, composers working in an international idiom dislike being identified as Brazilian, Mexican, or other national composers. Julián Carrillo, protagonist of microtonal music, feels that the title of a Mexican composer limits his significance. A man of great culture and orthodox academic training (he studied in Germany), in addition to being a practical business man, he is unrealistic enough to call his experiments with quartertones, eighth-tones, sixteenth-tones, etc. a crusade, and even puts the word on his stationery: “Cruzada Pro-Sonido 13.” (The 13th sound is, of course, the sound beyond the familiar twelve of the chromatic scale, and symbolizes the plurality of fractional tones.) In a letter to me dated May 20, 1942, Carrillo suggests that a chamber orchestra should be organized in this country to play the music of the 13th

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sound in various cities of the United States, to demonstrate that “hay en México algo mejor de lo que los mexicanos han presentado por allá.” Concerning the business aspect of the proposition he writes: “Creo que el asunto no será muy difícil, pues hace algún tiempo que estuvo en México una señora de las patrocinadoras de la Sinfónica de Stokowski, y me dijo que si yo hubiera solicitado dinero para mi obra cuando se tocó mi Concertino en la Cacademy of Music, la habría tenido.” Cacademy is a misprint for Academy. An interesting light on the anti-folkloristic attitude of the musical vanguard in Latin America is shed by a collective letter addressed to me in connection with the competition for a violin concerto and signed by the brothers Castro, Honorio Siccardi, and Jacobo Ficher: Enterados por su amable carta que proximamente se anunciará un concurso para un Concierto para Violín y orquesta dedicado a los compositores latinoamericanos bajo el auspicio de un grupo de mecenas de ese país, nos es grato dirigimos a Ud. para rogarle de tener en cuenta la sugestión de modificar dicho llamado en lo que se refiere a su aspecto folklórico. Entendemos que, de mantenerse ese criterio, se restringiría notablemente la concurrencia de los compositores representativos de América, ya que un gran número de ellos no cultivan preferentemente esa tendencia. Estamos convencidos que la modificación propuesta traería como consecuencia inmediata un mayor interés entre los compositores, ya que las posibilidade alcanzarían a la totalidad de ellos.

In the fine art of self-appreciation, Latin American musicians follow the laws and aberrations of human nature. Some are violently self-assertive and would go the whole hog to impress outsiders. Others are exaggeratedly humble. Some few are intelligent and factual in their statements. Julio Mato of Costa Rica states his position as follows: “I must say that I stand among the best composers of my country, also the first cellist of Costa Rica.” But M. L. Aguirre of Peru humbly declines to give his biographical data because he considers himself a mere amateur. The young Brazilian composer, Eleazar de Carvalho, author of an interesting national opera, Tiradentes, stubbornly refused to have his name included, on the ground that he was too young and did not measure up to requirements. Ignacio Villanueva Galeano of Honduras is candid to an embarrassing degree. Writing in the third person, he communicates the following:

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“Como consecuencia de las ejecuciones de instrumentos de viento fue sintiendo decaimiento de fuerzas, más aniquiladas aún por la alcoholomania que estaba haciendo su segura destrucción y consiguiente degeneración; de todo lo cual, felizmente, se ha liberado por su poderosa fuerza de voluntad que domina.” The strangest case of all is that of Carlos Valderrama, who is, incidentally, the only Peruvian composer whose name was included in European dictionaries. In response to my request for biographical data, I received a letter signed by the head of the publishing house Guillermo Brandes & Co. of Lima, and Valderrama himself. He was characterized in the letter as “the most known composer-pianist of his land Peru, also in the United States and Europe.” A photostatic copy of Valderrama’s program given in New York was enclosed, with signatures of Paderewsky, Josef Hofmann, Pablo Casals, Walter Damrosh, and, unexpectedly, Charles E. Hughes. These signatures purported to endorse Valderrama’s art, but Casals wrote only “del gran admirador del Peru,” which could be interpreted as an endorsement only by force of the syllogism: I admire all things Peruvian, Valderrama is a Peruvian, ergo, I admire Valderrama. It developed later that Guillermo Brandes, the supposed signatory of the letter, had been dead for some years, and that the whole self-endorsing letter was composed by Valderrama himself on a piece of purloined stationery. One of my most gratifying experiences was the discovery of Gomes de Araújo. I came across his name in a dictionary, which indicated that he was born in Brazil in 1846. In my desire to complete the entry, I wrote to the Conservatory of São Paulo, where he had been inspector, and inquired of the administration as to the exact date of Araujo’s death. In reply, I received a letter from Araujo himself, in which he said, in his curious brand of English: “In fact, I was born on the 5th of August, 1846, and in spite of this being a long existence, I should say I am still healthy and fit for anything.” When I met him in São Paulo in September 1941, he was a strapping 95-year-old. He was still Inspector of the Conservatory in São Paulo, and visited it regularly and unaccompanied. He never wore glasses, and had all his teeth. But his music showed his age. The little piece which he wrote for me as a souvenir of our meeting was decidedly dated. In my desire to get as much information as possible about Latin American composers, whether good or bad, considering only their professional status as musicians who set down notes on paper and have these notes played by local musical organizations, and who have further

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published their products, I have met with many violent objections on the part of my Latin American friends and enemies. In vain did I argue that I am preoccupied with a sort of geo-music, that the question of evaluation would come later, after I have gathered my materials. There may be no flora or fauna on the Antarctic continent, but if there are some rock lizards the fact has to be stated. The South American Handbook for 1941 describes the desert of Chile in the following words: “The North, from Arica to Copiapó, is a sandy desert, utterly rainless, a land of merciless sunshine and forbidding mountains devoid of vegetation. Living conditions in the mining towns and the ports are artificial. Most of the necessities of existence must be imported from the South or from abroad. Today many settlements have been abandoned. The towns bear an air of tragedy and decay. But a determined struggle is in progress and the work goes on. The desert conceals vast mineral wealth and promises better days.” Mutatis mutandis, this description applies to music conditions in certain Latin American countries. Many of the musical necessities must be imported from abroad, but there is “vast mineral wealth,” which promises better days. In an article, entitled “La pesca panamericanista,” and published in the Guatemala City daily, El Liberal Progresista, of January 17, 1942, on the occasion of my visit in Guatemala, José Castañeda, a brilliant writer excelling in fiery journalism, served me a warning. “Inquieto temperamento, explorador por naturaleza,” he wrote about me, se ha acercado, siempre, a las fuentes de lo inédito musical. Es lógico, por lo misme, que ambule por nuestras tierras en una aventura panamericanista. Slonimsky sabe que no se trata de acumular, ain discriminación, música de todo el continente. Que no se trata de cantidades sino de valores. Es posible que, atacado por la plaga de los compositores con hambre de noteriedad, haya cedido, por cortesía, y lleve consigo una colección demasiado numerosa de obras musicales o que pretenden serlo. El peligro en Slonimsky es su trato amable. Su incapacidad de rechazar, de plano, al impostor que le lleva, sin pudor, obras para que las incluya en sus programas o en el libro que prepara. Pero, esperamos, sea un peligro transitorio. Cuando regrese a Boston, el clima ponderado, en lo cultural, de la docta ciudad norteña, le devolverá todas sus faculdades críticas. Volverá a ser el Slonimsky que conocemos. Crítico de fina sen-

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sibilidad, de juicio alerto, sin contemplaciones para la mediocridad. Porque su libro ha de ser algo más que un catálogo congelado. Algo más que una estadística. Debe representar el juicio sincero, audaz, de quien ha podido contemplarnos de cerca. Debe ser un reflejo, sin sombras, de nuestra realidad, sin concesiones, totalizante.

In Guatemala, as in other Latin American countries on my itinerary, I presented a lecture-recital, in which I included piano pieces by local composers. This recital, broadcast by the government station, La Voz de Guatemala, stirred Castañeda to fury. He reported the occasion in a frontpage article, under the title, “La Flauta de Slonimsky,” in which he likened me to a Hindu fakir, and suggested that I was capable of selling the Brooklyn bridge to the hoi-polloi. As to the poor guatemaltecos, he forbore from mentioning their modest names, and remarked only that they should have buried their faces in their hands in shame when they heard their music performed after that of Villa-Lobos, and others included in my program. He dubbed one of them, whose innocent little Berceuse I played as an encore, “composer of radio schedules,” for indeed the man was the music director of the station. When, a few days later, I conducted the Orquesta Progresista of Guatemala City, featuring a Guatemalan work, Castañeda’s paper carried no review, an eloquent abstention, seeing that it had given me an enormous build-up, with daily news stories, and frontpage pictures. Now that I am back in Boston, enjoying the “temperate clime and the culture of the learned northern city,” and have presumably “recovered my critical faculties,” I still find myself unable to agree with José Castañeda’s fundamental premises. I still believe that as a musical geographer (and Castañeda himself praises me for my spirit of exploration of the musical unknown), I should accumulate quantities of material before charting a table of values. “The Pan American Fishing Trip,” to use Castañeda’s title, cannot be undertaken in the spirit of skeptical discrimination. I was only too glad to take in whatever I found in my net, and to spread the net as far and wide as possible. I had no objection whatever to “the plague of composers hungry for notoriety,” and my welcome to them had nothing to do with my traits of amiability with which Castañeda had endowed me, or my incapacity to reject “the impostor who shamelessly brings his works so that I should include them in my programs or in my book.” My book was to be a musical Baedecker, a tourist guide, and, as such, should by right

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have included, at least in its dictionary section, every one who can charitably be called a Latin American composer. Other critics in Latin America were more kindly disposed towards my intentions. Leopoldo Hurtado, the Argentinian writer, in presenting a preview of my book in Argentina Libre of November 6, 1941, expressed bewilderment as to how I was going to complete my task. “Como puede hacerse un libro orgánico con ese maremagnum, es un secreto profesional suyo,” but wished me good luck. Pablo Garrido, the Chilean musician and writer, in his interview in Las Últimas Noticias of December 11, 1941, was unreservedly appreciative of my desire to include all of his Chilean confrères in my book, and concludes his article on a hopeful note: “Que la palabra de Slonimsky sea voz de aliento para los compositores nacionales que, a pesar de tantas incomprensiones, han logrado colocar la música de su patria a la cabeza de las naciones sudamericanas. Y que Slonimsky, de regreso en su gran tierra de la libertad, declare que no sólo salitre y cobre produce este lejano rincón de América.” My excellent friend, the German-Spanish-Mexican musicologist, Otto Mayer-Serra, had an expressive word for some of the music I collected: “basura,” garbage, and for the lower category, “basura de la basura.” However, only contemporary fresh basura offended his sensitive nostrils. Shopping in the Mexican flea-market, I had chanced upon a pile of manuscripts by a deceased German-Mexican composer, one Hermann Roesler, and had acquired the collection for a few Mexican pesos. The music was grade-A “basura,” but it fascinated my critical friend. It had “historical value.” It was “important.” It proved something or other. . . . Cannot some of the “basura” I have gathered prove as fascinating when it has acquired the smell-killing perspective? Latin American musicians are no more objective in their judgment of values than their colleagues anywhere else in the world. They are affected by considerations of friendship or antagonism, and they are apt to be more critical of their musical neighbors than of strangers. The following formula expresses the appreciation by a musician of another musician, with reference to time, distance, group cohesion, number of musicians per population, style similarity, and extraterritoriality. A=Q

Gc Ss ×

N P

. T a logD + E

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Appreciation (A) is directly proportional to Group Cohesion (Gc), but it is in inverse ratio to Style Similarity (Ss), and to the number of colleagues per population (N per P). It rises slowly in proportion to Distance (D), and to express this slowness, appreciation is shown in the formula as proportional to the logarithm of distance (log D). Thus the appreciation for a compatriot living in a foreign country is generally greater than that of a compatriot living in the same town, but quite a number of kilometers have to be put in to allow the rise of appreciation to a perceptible degree. On the other hand, time elapsed after a colleague’s death quickly obliterates prejudice and is apt to inspire generosity far above the objective value. To show this rapid rise, T for time is elevated to the power a (for annum). Q stands for an individual coefficient. It is high in good-natured composers, low among embittered characters. The late Silvestre Revueltas never spoke badly of his colleagues. If he could not be conscientiously enthusiastic over their music, he would say, “Well, after all, they are ‘buena gente’,” nice people. His Q value was very great. E in the formula, stands for Extraterritoriality, and is a constant to be added to the value of appreciation. Gc is highest in Chile, where virtually all contemporary composers are grouped around the faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Chile, and its dean, Domingo Santa Cruz. Even such musicians as Juan Casanova and Pablo Garrido who write in the semi-classical idiom are in friendly relations with the University of Chile group. That is why, when the Committee for the Quadricentennial of Santiago voided the award of the first prize to Domingo Santa Cruz, his colleagues, who were also his competitors in the contest, protested against the committee’s decision with great sincerity and conviction. The only Chilean musician who stands outside the circle is Enrique Soro, of an older generation, and perhaps the most successful of the Chileans in matters of publications, teaching positions, etc. Group cohesion may be strong enough to bind musicians of diametrically opposite techniques and artistic aims. Thus the Grupo Renovación in Buenos Aires at one time included José María Castro, a musician of neo-classical and neo-romantic tendencies; Juan Carlos Paz, the only South American who writes in a consistent atonal idiom; and Alfredo Pinto, who writes nondescript music in a “Teatro Colón” style, effective in a theatrical way, but musically empty. Alberto Ginastera enjoys a unique position among Argentine composers, in that he is the secretary

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of the conservative Society of Authors and Composers, and yet in his musical tendencies steers close to the vanguard. The case of the three brothers Castro—Juan José, José María, who have already attained great renown, and Washington Castro, the youngest of the three—shows how little Group Cohesion may exist even within the same family. Juan José Castro has never placed on his programs in Argentina or in the United States any works by José María, and the latter resented the exclusion. In this case, Style Similarity, supplemented by confusing similarity of names, may have caused the difficulty in the interfraternal relations of the Castro family. Before leaving Buenos Aires, I intended to take a picture of the three brothers Castro together. Jacobo Ficher, a long-time friend of the Castros, assured me that I would never be able to get the picture taken, and he was right. At first Juan José Castro said he could not get the Teatro Colón photographer, but when I got a photographer on the side, Juan José had already telephoned to José María and Washington that the thing was off. I was unable to countermand the cancellation, because José María had, in the meantime, left his apartment. On the following day I was leaving with Juan José for Santiago by plane, but only Washington Castro came to the airport to see his brother off. Latin American composers are anything but shy in expressing their opinions with complete candor. Before taking the plane from Santiago to Lima, I wrote to Andrés Sas, asking his confidential opinion of Peruvian musicians. He sent me a very compendious list of Peruvian musicians with his comments about each. From this list it appears that the best Peruvian composer is Rodolfo Holzmann, a refugee from Germany, which is indeed a remarkable conclusion. I transcribe this letter in the original French. ROSA MERCEDES AYARZA de MORALES DEL SOLAR: un nom très long pour une personne très courte; type parfait du dandisme criollo prétentieux, de Lima. A eu un instinct musical evident, mais l’a perdu depuis pas mal d’années. ROBERTO CARPIO: compositeur discret, comme musician et comme homme. Ne parle presque pas, mais est très attentif et désireux de savoir. Il donne toujours l’impression de se cacher. CARLOS SÁNCHEZ MÁLAGA: a mon point de vue, musicien sans grande valeur, qui cherche ses melodies et ses accords au piano, pour

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entendre si cela sonne a peu près. Consideré par Carlos Raygada comme un presque genie. Vous verrez cela de près. TEODORO VALCÁRCEL: la fatuité indienne dans toute sa splendeur. La liste de ses oeuvres ferait palir Clementi ou Bach! Demandez a les voir! A eu de l’instinct musical, mais n’a su qu’en faire. Selon lui, les éditeurs se disputeraient ses oeuvres. Cela doit être vrai, mais ils ne sont pas encore decidés a les lui demander. Sa musique d’orchestre a eté orchestrée par R. Holzmann. DANIEL ALOMÍA ROBLES: Jusqu’à present, j’ignore absolument s’il connait vraiment la musique; on pretend que si. Il parait que c’est lui qui a découvert que la musique pentatonique se compose de cinq notes! Sa musique d’orchestre a eté orchestrée par V. Stea et R. Holzmann. PABLO CHÁVEZ AGUILAR: Monseñor. Au fond un très brave homme, comme sa musique qui a eté benie, sans doute, mais que Dieu ne semble pas avoir pris sous son patronage. ERNESTO LÓPEZ MINDREAU: un fou. Appreciation (au moins çelle-là) admise par tout le monde. Aurait peut-être fait quelque chose s’il avait appris a lire et a écrire (la musique). VICENTE STEA: musicien italien, établi ici depuis très longtemps; j’ignore s’il est naturalisé. Connait son metier; on sent de suite qu’il a appris la musique. Gout douteux. RODOLFO HOLZMANN: musicien refugie. Excellent; moderne, cultivé. Quelqu’un avec qui on peut parler, le seul a mon égard. THEO BUCHWALD: A du être un bon éleve. Type dangereux; moralité douteuse. Sa presse, qui au début (en tant que chef d’orchestre) était bonne, bien qu’usurpée, a perdu enormement de consistence. CÉSAR ARRÓSPIDE: critique; prof. d’Histoire de la Musique à l’Académie Nationale, et d’Histoire de l’Art, a l’Université Catholique. Aucune personnalité. Formé sur place, malgré quelques voyages a l’étranger. Très honnête, belle conscience; connait la realité musicale

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du pays, mais sa profonde religiosité l’empêche de combattre et de parler. Laisser faire sur terre; Dieu est maître partout! CARLOS RAYGADA: l’opposé de Arróspide. Vivacité spirituelle intense, au service d’une ignorance militante, formée par des lectures mal digerées, des auditions de concert mal entendues; des expositions de tableaux mal vus. Est cause, en grande partie des malheurs qui affligent les musiciens natifs. Il les a presentés tous, au moins une fois, comme grand talent. Est critique d’art, en general: musique, peinture, sculpture, etc. Affecte le modeste et étouffé d’orgueil. Dangereux, parce que critique à titre du journal le plus important du pays: ‘El Comercio’. Il aurait pu faire quelque chose. RAOUL DE VERNEUIL: (j’aurais du le faire passer avant les critiques). Un autre fou, mais tranquille; il ne mord pas, vit dans la stratosphere. Sa femme est tout l’opposé; intrigante, bavarde, fatigante. Elle voudrait que tout le monde rende justice à son mari, qui, m’a-t-elle confessé, est un genie. Tout cela dénote chez elle de grande qualités domestiques. EN GENERAL: aucun des natifs a etudié, même ceux qui ont veçu en Europe pendant un certain temps. Tous sont assez prétentieux; peu ont écrit quelque chose. Á cote deux, je me sens vraiment un pauvre type, plein de défauts, particulièrement celui d’être gené par un franchise de langage vraiment peu recommendable; J’ai déjà pas mal souffert des avantages d’être pourvu d’un semblable défaut, dont je n’arrive pas à me corriger, malgré les tendances calmantes de ma femme, qui semble devoir être tout l’opposé de Mme. de Verneuil.

Raoul de Verneuil had a higher opinion of himself than Sas. In a letter dated September 10, 1941, he wrote me: “Je dois vous dire en passant, très humblement, que je me considére être le seul compositeur peruvien ayant une preparation serieuse. J’espère que cela ne vous choque pas; it est évident que n’aurais pas dit cela dans un autre pays.” A thorough job of demolishing the Peruvians was made by Rodolfo Barbacci in his letter to me dated October 6, 1940. He writes: “El ambiente musical de un país no se puede conocer a través de libros o artículos o viviendo en él algunas semanas, por eso las noticias que pueda Ud. tomar por viajeros (por ej. Carleton Sprague Smith) son necesariamente en parte

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falsas, porque el que llega ve solamente lo que le hacen ver.” He also has much to tell about the private lives of Peruvian musicians: Sánchez Málaga es íntimo amigo de Carlos Raygada, que es el crítico musical de ‘El Comercio,’ o sea el diario más importante y antiguo de Lima, al cual Raygada no pierde oportunidad de elogiarlo y lo coloca a la cabeza de los músicos peruanos, como a Carpio que también es amigo suyo; muy confidencialmente, le informo que estos señores tienes amistades acusadas de pederastismo, morfinómanos, etc. y Ud. sabe lo que son estas ‘congregaciones’ entre sí, y cómo se defienden y apoyan. Tanto Alomía Robles como Valcárcel se hacen instrumentar sus obras porque ellos no saben, además Alomía Robles no compone ni siquiera la obra para piano, escribe unas páginas de temas lo más sencillamente posible y el instrumentador (Stea o Holzmann) realizan todo el trabajo, desarrollo, armonización, instrumentación, etc. . . .

The notorious Carlos Valderrama is summed up by Barbacci in these words: “Carlos Valderrama es solamente autor de tangos, otras obritas populares, no se conoce de él nada serio, NO CONOCE MÚSICA, compone de oído y se hace pasar al papel sus producciones; tiene pero mucha fantasía y disposición; es un audaz y hay que cuidarse de él.” No doubt these letters were colored by partisan feelings; but I was glad to get them. In fact I was glad to get any South American mail at all. Latin Americans are extremely bad correspondents, and I had the hardest time in the world trying to secure information needed for my articles. The graphophobia of my Latin American friends was not due to the lack of civility on their part or anything as reprehensible as that. As I had occasion to find out ex post facto, my letters were regarded by some, with the usual generalization common to all men, as marks of appreciation of their works. On one occasion, the questionnaire I sent to a Honduran composer was published in a local paper under the heading “Honor for local composer.” The unfortunate part was that the addressee, after a period of excitement over that honor, did not consider it essential to answer the letter and supply the information required. His emotion was spent, and that was the end, as far as he was concerned. On several exasperating occasions, a long-expected letter would arrive covered with pretty airmail stamps, and full of exuberant protestations of

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friendship and promises that information solicited would come with the next mail. Then nothing. Before I went to South America I was dependent entirely on my powers of epistolary suasion. Fortunately, I was usually able to find a person in each country who was a good correspondent. It is interesting to note that most of these men of good will were of foreign birth. The most prodigious letter writer is undoubtedly Dr. Francisco Curt Lange of Montevideo. He numbers all of his outgoing mail; the last letter I had from him was in the 10,000’s. In Argentina I have been able to carry my correspondence through Jacobo Ficher, a naturalized Russian. In Peru my best correspondent was Andrés Sas, who was born in Paris. I never succeeded in eliciting a reply from a Paraguayan. I must have written half a dozen letters to the only Paraguayan musician whose name and picture I found in Lange’s Boletín Latinoamericano de Música. I wrote to the Paraguayan legation in Washington, but received no reply. Unfortunately I had to omit Paraguay from my itinerary on my South American tour because of the difficulties of getting air transportation; besides, I was not at all sure that I would be able to find any musicians in Paraguay, and could not afford to take a chance of getting stuck in Asunción. I asked so many musicians in different countries to help me in rounding up a few Paraguayans that the subject became a standard joke among my Latin American friends. Chávez told me tauntingly: “I can tell you exactly what kind of music Paraguayan composers write without going to Paraguay. It is gallops and polkas with an accompaniment in the tonic and dominant.” He could not understand why I had to have a Paraguayan on my list. But would not a stamp collector exchange any number of gorgeous pictorial stamps for one drab-looking 1856 British Guiana? Paraguayan harmonies may be full of false relations and other harmonic faults, but, to pursue the philatelic simile, the inverted swan in the famous Western Australia error makes the stamp all the more desirable. To add insult to injury, Gilbert Chase, commenting in “Latin American Music in 1940” on my article on South American composers in the February 1940 issue of Musical America says: “The omission of Paraguay is strange.” The lack of response on the part of Latin American musicians in general is astonishing. My appeals offered them free publicity, the immortalization of their features on the pages of an American magazine,

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the inclusion of their names in a music dictionary. When I went to South America, I had more to offer: to have their orchestral scores copied and preserved in the Fleisher Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia, with the prospect of future performances in the United States. I expected to be mobbed by ambitious musicians, eager to make their products known. In fact this was the picture painted by José Castañeda in his article “La pesca panamericanista.” But nothing of the sort happened. It must have been easier to extract gold from the fabulous El Dorado than to get a questionable masterpiece from an obscure Argentinian. As a rule I had less difficulty with successful and established composers than with poor fourth-raters. For instance, Alberto Williams, who wields enormous influence in the Argentinian musical world, agreed at once to lend his manuscript for copying and even helped me to secure manuscripts by other Argentinian composers. At the banquet of the Society of Argentinian Composers in Buenos Aires, he voiced his appreciation of the offer of the Fleisher Collection. Then I was asked to speak, and I did not mince my Spanish words, as far as they went, in expressing my amazement at the indolence of Argentinian composers. Constantino Gaito, the president of the Society, kept making a curious spanking movement with his hands throughout my talk, to show that the castigation was fully merited. To a certain extent, the composers were justified in their reluctance to part with their only manuscripts. Some of them had had unpleasant experiences with American celebrities. Stokowski took a number of South American orchestral manuscripts, which the composer has never been able to get back. Another offender is Iturbi. Sometimes the manuscripts were not returned because of a misunderstanding. Espoile of Argentina told me that he never received the score of his symphonic poem Frenos, which he said he had sent to the Fleisher Collection. But he did not know, and neither did I at the time, that the score was returned to the Pan American Union. Constantino Gaito made a similar complaint in regard to the score of his El Ombú. I straightened out the situation upon my return to the United States and notified both Espoile and Gaito of the disposition of their manuscripts. Other composers have lost their manuscripts through accidents. An orchestral score by the Chilean composer Próspero Bisquertt was lost when the Transandine train burned up on June 7, 1927. José María Castro sent the score and parts of his Concerto Grosso to Prague in 1936, by the newly established transatlantic airmail. The plane fell into the ocean and

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burned up with the crew and the mail. José María Castro did not recover the $40 he paid for transportation by air. A number of musical manuscripts by the Chilean composer Urrutia Blondel were mislaid and could not be found in the offices of the Guggenheim Fellowship in New York. The manuscript of Escenas Campesinas by Humberto Allende of Chile was lent by the composer to the Chilean ambassador in Washington, and could not be found in the Embassy when Allende wrote for it. Allende had no duplicate of the score, and had to rewrite the work all over again; he recognized, however, that the second version was considerably superior to the first, and so the loss was not without compensation. Francisco Mignone lent the score of his Suite Brasileira to Alfred Cortot, and gave it up for lost after the fall of France. But by a lucky accident, a set of parts of this score was kept in the Brazilian Pavilion at the World’s Fair in New York, and the score was integrated from these parts in the Fleisher Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Mignone discovered this cheerful fact when he visited the library in March 1942. The Argentinian composer Felipe Boero told me insolently that he would not lend his manuscripts to an American institution, unless guaranteed by the American Embassy. He added that the United States should follow the example of Germany in keeping faith with South American musicians. His orchestral manuscripts, which had been performed in Berlin, were returned to him, he said, “in plena guerra” by the German Embassy with great promptness. In several cases the composer refused to lend his manuscripts for copying because he considered them weak or unrepresentative, and honestly did not care to have them preserved permanently in a library where musicians could examine the music. Thus, Juan José Castro was very unwilling to let me have five of his early symphonic works, one of which had been performed at the International Music Festival in London. Only after I wrote him a semi-humorous letter in which I dilated upon the virtues of the compositions (and they were all good), and assured him that the manuscripts would be closed to the public eye until 1995, a hundred years from his birthday, did he relent. But I must thank Mrs. Castro for her part in persuading him to let me have these manuscripts. Composers’ wives were on many occasions my valiant helpers in locating scores and in forcing their husbands to lend them for the Fleisher

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Collection. Where the composers themselves were too indolent or overfastidious about their compositions, their wives were ambitious and appreciative of the purpose. They were also much more dependable than their husbands in arranging and keeping appointments. I doubt whether I would have been able to break down the resistance of several important composers without this domestic fifth-column. It is a curious psychological phenomenon that creative musicians who have enough energy to write a million notes on music paper lack the will power to pack up their music and deliver it at the post office. José María Castro, who has published at his own expense the score and parts of his Concerto Grosso, received a courteous request from the Free Library of Philadelphia to send a copy for the Fleisher Collection. Although he kept the letter on his desk for over a year, he never got around to sending the score. But he was willing to give me as many copies as I cared to take (he had hundreds of them piled up in the back room). Foolishly, I took only three. In extenuation, it must be said that post offices in Latin America are specially designed to discourage parcel-post. In Chile, the postal authorities issued an order which forbade sending more than one piece to any one addressee at one time. But it was perfectly all right to space these shippings through the day, to mail one package to the same addressee in the morning, and another in the afternoon, or simply to place two packages at two different windows in the same post office. In the palatial central post office in Mexico, the weighing had to be done at the “ventanilla” No. 2, the stamps were to be purchased at another “ventanilla,” and the actual mailing was to be done at No. 34, marked “exterior,” for foreign registered mail, at which a long line of people waited with innumerable packages, mostly foodstuffs, hopefully addressed to Spain. The clerks, generally señoritas of varying ages and weights, were utterly unmoved by the spectacle of the waiting populace. When, on my last day in Mexico I came to the post office laden with the collected works of Arnulfo Miramontes, half an hour before the scheduled departure of the bus for the airport, I found the señorita at the ventanilla No. 2 doing the hair of another señorita, and not at all in a hurry to attend to my packages. When I finally got them weighed and franked, I discovered that the foreign registry window was, for no apparent reason, closed. I then decided to ship the packages by ordinary mail, in preference to taking the music with me on the plane and paying excess weight. But it

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was not as simple as I thought. The senorita at ventanilla 2 declared that it was against the postal regulations to mail packages by ordinary mail when they were franked for registry. This was the last straw. I tore off several stamps to reduce the postage, but could not arrive at the right amount, because some of the stamps were of high denomination, and could not be split. I rushed to the stamp window, but there was a line, and the señorita in charge was arithmetically so apathetic that it raised my blood pressure. I summoned the chief of the service, and explained my plight to him, whereupon he accepted the packages. I made my bus, but was put off the plane because my American passport lacked a consular validation stamp, which was a wartime regulation. I finally flew off the next day. There was more trouble with my Mexican packages, when they were all held at Laredo, Texas, for evaluation. The customs authorities could not accept the view that the music was either invaluable or worthless, depending on the esthetic criterion of the examiner. The packages finally got through without duty. Judge, then, my grief, on reading, in the Revista Musical Mexicana of June 7, 1942, these observations by my excellent friend, Otto Mayer-Serra, the one person on whose sympathy I had a right to count, for he witnessed all my trials and tribulations in and around the composers’ homes, and in and around the Mexican Central Post Office: Cuando Nicolas Slonimsky se fue de México, se llevó algo más de un centenar de partituras orquestales (entre ellas no figuraban las obras de Carlos Chávez). Desde su punto de vista lexicográfico y de bibliotecario, tal cantidad constituye un verdadero triunfo. Pero cuando examinamos las obras desde un punto de vista estético, no vacilamos en afirmar que un 40% de ellas puede clasificarse bajo la categoría de ‘trabajos de conservatorio’; otro 40% no ofrece mayor interés por tratarse de obras escritas con suficiente dominio técnico, aunque en forma totalmente convencionales. Un 20—tal vez sólo un 10%—de ellas se debe a compositores auténticos, o sea a músicos que algo tienen que decir.

I will not quarrel with his estimate of esthetic values of my Mexican haul; 20%, or even 10%, of worthwhile music is not a bad proportion for any country. As to the absence of any Chávez orchestral scores among the manuscripts, well, all of his music is available through his American

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publishers. I already had the score of Chávez’ Energía, which I conducted in Paris in 1931, and I did try hard to get the manuscript of his early symphony, but, out of modesty, he would not let me have it. As for the rest of the argument, I stick to my previously expressed position: one must first collect and then discriminate. Were I to give a program of Mexican music, featuring second-raters and leaving out the good 10%, I certainly would be open to censure, but my task was different: I was to get the total output of Mexican orchestral music, and came pretty near to achieving my purpose. Otto Mayer-Serra himself recognized that, from my lexicographic and bibliographic viewpoint, it is a veritable triumph. After all, hardly 10% of all music (or books, for that matter) in the libraries of the world is worth keeping. Is this a reason for purging the dead matter from the library shelves? How many of the amusing, naive, but historically interesting simpletons among composers would perish in such a purge? It is against our moral principles to eliminate the unfit and the hopelessly insane, so why apply euthanasia to composers whose only fault is that they were not born geniuses? A particularly difficult task was to secure manuscripts by dead Latin American composers. Most of these manuscripts remained in the possession of the families, and others were buried in the archives of conservatories and other musical institutions. Often the members of the family were ignorant of the whereabouts or even of the existence of these manuscripts. Mrs. Juan José Castro, daughter of the late Argentinian composer Julián Aguirre, assured me that her father never wrote for the orchestra, but when I confronted her with an old program featuring Aguirre’s orchestral dances, she investigated, and presently sent me the manuscripts which she found in her mother’s house. I obtained the orchestral works of the late Argentinian composer Ernesto Drangosh from his son. I traced the manuscripts of the Italian-Ecuadorian composer, Domingo Brescia to his daughter, who lives in the United States. The daughter of the Brazilian composer, Barroso Neto, who died in September 1941, lent me all of his manuscripts for copying. Suite Brasileira, by the late Brazilian composer Alberto Nepomuceno, turned up unexpectedly in the suitcase of Oscar Lorenzo Fernândez, in Santiago, where he was conducting a program of Brazilian music. Along with the Nepomuceno score, he had two orchestral manuscripts by other nineteenth-century Brazilians, Henrique Oswald and Leopoldo Miguez. The problem was to get the music copied or photographed in a hurry.

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There was only one microfilming apparatus in Santiago, shipped by Brown University to the National Library in Santiago for the purpose of photographing early colonial manuscripts. It would have taken only an hour to microfilm all three manuscripts, but restrictions of use were absolute: the machine and the film could not be lent to anyone. I made a tour of printers and photographers, and found a shop that had a very good German-made machine called “rectograph,” which reproduces the manuscripts by contact. But half-way through the Nepomuceno score, the shop ran out of sensitized paper, and the remaining pages were finished on blueprint sheets, just legible enough to be copied. The orchestral scores of the two most interesting composers of Cuba, Alejandro Caturla and Amadeo Roldán, both of whom have died an untimely death, have been partly published, and there is a reasonable hope that all of them will become available. The circumstances of preservation of the manuscripts of the late Silvestre Revueltas are interesting. It is not true, as Paul Bowles declared in an article in Modern Music, that Revueltas’ manuscripts were mysteriously barred from view. They are all preserved by Revueltas’ sister. One of the orchestral works, the remarkable Homenaje a García Lorca, was published by her in a lithographed edition. This edition will now be issued over the imprint of “New Music” in New York. I was fortunate to obtain a copy of the manuscript of “8 x Radio” (Ocho por Radio, i.e., 8 instruments playing over the radio). The original manuscript was supposed to have been sent to me some years ago by Revueltas himself, but it wasn’t. Perhaps it was confused with Colorines, which I had conducted in New York in 1932. Incidentally, that performance was the first of any of Revueltas’ music in the United States. The manuscript of Revueltas’ ballet, Coronela, was not finished when he died, and the composition was completed by Blas Galindo and orchestrated by Candelario Huízar. Neither of the two knew what had happened to the score. Otto Mayer-Serra, Revueltas’ friend and biographer, pointed an accusing finger at an American dancer who had used some Revueltas music for her productions; others suggested that the former director of the Palacio de Bellas Artes had absconded with the manuscripts when he left the post. But, like the purloined letter of Edgar Allan Poe, the manuscript was in the most logical place, viz: the briefcase of Hernández Moncada, assistant conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de México, who first performed the work. As luck would have it, Moncada had

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turned it over to the administration of the Palacio de Bellas Artes a few days before I had the inspiration to ask him about the score. I addressed an impassioned appeal to the new director, a well-known Mexican poet and a friend of Revueltas, asking him to let me have the music for photostating. He stopped me short and said, “Señor, it is all very well, but we do not have the manuscripts.” “Yes, you do,” I insisted. The manuscript was finally located in the director’s office, but could not be lent to me before I left Mexico. As my education in the art of detection of missing manuscripts progressed, I realized that the only sure way to get the music I wanted was to get it. Solemn promises, personal friendship, self-interest, all that was worth nothing. When an impending performance prevented the immediate dispatching of the manuscript, I used to leave self-addressed manila envelopes of the right size, to be mailed directly after the performance. The device worked only once, when the wife of the Argentinian composer Athos Palma mailed his manuscript to me in the envelope I left on the piano in his studio on the eve of my departure from Buenos Aires. I was fortunate in establishing friendly relations with most Latin American composers, which circumstance enabled me to examine their manuscripts in their own homes. I spent many a fascinating hour going over the manuscripts of Villa-Lobos in his home in Rio de Janeiro, and in his office in one of the modern Rio skyscrapers. I did not quite solve the mystery of the official catalogue of Villa-Lobos’ works, which contained items whose physical existence is not demonstrable. Thus of the fourteen Choros listed in the catalogue, only eleven were completed up to 1942. Choros No. 14 was to be an enormous affair for a huge orchestra with chorus. There was to be a quodlibet in 14 languages, and Villa-Lobos demonstrated to me in vivid accents how the guttural German would sound in counterpoint with hard Russian, sing-song Chinese, and other languages. There were also several items that have been lost. Villa-Lobos told me a moving story about the manuscript of his symphonic poem Centauro do Ouro, which was appropriated by a friend. After the death of that friend his son found the manuscript and told Villa-Lobos about it, but asked to retain the music as a memento. The story sounded fantastic, but some fantastic stories about Villa-Lobos are true. For instance, the report that he has set the New York skyline to music is correct. After the performance

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of this musical skyline on an international radio hook-up on April 7, 1940, a woman sent him the x-ray picture of her heart, asking him to set it to music, too. But Villa-Lobos rejected the invitation because the melodic outline of the lady’s ventricles was not sufficiently varied. The most exasperating experience I went through in Latin America was the inability to purchase published music. The Brazilian government printed a very valuable collection of Brazilian pieces under the general title Musique Bresilienne Moderne, and copies of this collection were distributed gratis at the Brazilian Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. But the collection was not on sale in Rio de Janeiro, and music store proprietors did not even know that such a collection existed. Finally I came across a pile of copies in the office of Antonio Sa Pereira, director of the Escola Nacional de Música. Villa-Lobos told me that he had never seen this collection, although four of his pieces are included in it. Of these, his famous Choros No. 5, Alma Brasileira, begins with a dreadful misprint, the G clef instead of the bass clef in the opening measures of the right hand. A large number of copies of the score and parts of Nepomuceno’s Symphony turned up in the office of Revista Brasileira de Música. But other numbers of the same series were not to be had. Yet, I am convinced that piles of them repose in some dark corner in Rio de Janeiro. I had similar trouble in obtaining musical publications of the Comisión Nacional de Cultura in Buenos Aires. Copies were not on sale, and were not listed in music catalogues. Even Alberto Williams, who edited an anthology of early Argentinian composers, published under the same government auspices, did not know that an Overture by his late pupil, Celestino Piaggio, was available in print. In Peru, it was by sheer accident that I discovered two orchestral scores by the late José María Valle Riestra, published by the Department of Education. It is in order to say a few words about the political complexion of Latin American composers. For years, Berlin and Rome had led an intelligent and well-calculated program of propaganda among South American musicians. They arranged concerts of South American orchestral and chamber music, and broadcast them via short wave to Latin America. On several occasions, the German and Italian Governments invited South American composers to conduct concerts in Berlin and Rome, and paid all their expenses. The Bolivian composer Velasco Maidana was given an opportunity to produce his opera in Berlin, and his name is mentioned in the new Nazified edition of Riemann’s Dictionary. Francisco Mignone

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conducted concerts of Brazilian music in Berlin and in Rome during his tour in 1937. When he returned to Brazil, some of his colleagues accused him of fascist sympathies (Mignone is of Italian origin), but the implication is unfair. In 1937, appeasement, cultural and other, was a policy, not only in South America, and Mignone was merely human in accepting the invitations and enjoying the excellent orchestras he was given to conduct. He told me that he was not exceptionally favored in Berlin, where a spokesman of the Ministry of Propaganda bluntly expressed his misgivings concerning the semitic shape of Mignone’s nose. One might detect neo-fascistic ideas in Villa-Lobos’ little booklet on musical education in the “Vargas State,” but Villa-Lobos was stoutly antifascist when I saw him in September 1941. He said Mussolini in politics is like rubato in music, and he hated both.

6 . T H E N EW WO R L D O F DODECAPHONIC MUSIC Whenever and wherever sophisticated musicians gather, there is likely to be a discussion, pro and con, of twelve-tone music. Even in darkest Hollywood, the uncanny potentialities of this new technique of composition are beginning to be exploited to create an atmosphere of mystery and suspense on the sound track. What is so startling about twelve-tone music? We have had the twelve different notes of the chromatic scale with us for centuries. What is then the difference between old-fashioned chromaticism and new-fangled twelve-tone music? The difference lies in a new organization. In classical music, chromatics are used as passing tones from one diatonic degree to another. In twelve-tone music, all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are equally important. Perhaps it is a good idea to use a special word, Dodecaphonic, for this new music of twelve different notes. Dodeca means twelve in Greek, and dodecaphonic means pertaining to twelve sounds. This term is adopted in France, where it is called Musique Dodecaphonique, and in Italy, Musica Dodecafonica. The creator of dodecaphonic music is Arnold Schoenberg, the great Austrian composer who came to America in 1934, and settled in California. He prefers to call his invention “a method of composing with twelve tones,” and objects to such terms as “the twelve-tone system” or “twelve-tone technique.” The idea of composing music based on twelve different notes occurred to Schoenberg in December 1914. His intention was, as he explains it himself, “to base the structure of my music consciously on a unifying idea, which produces not only the other ideas but regulates also their accompaniment and the chords.” This “unifying idea” is a basic tonerow of twelve different notes, or “twelve-tone series.” Ch. 6: originally published in The Etude, September 1950.

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How many twelve-tone rows is it possible to arrange? The answer is: 479,001,600, obtained by multiplying 12 by 11 by 10 by 9 and so forth. An ambitious dodecaphonist who should attempt to write down all possible combinations of twelve-tone rows, a note every second, day and night, would have to spend fifteen years, two months and nine days to finish his task. The tone-row constitutes the sole foundation of the entire composition. In a dodecaphonic piece of music, this tone-row usually appears in four transformations: (1) original; (2) intervallic melodic inversion; (3) retrograde or reverse motion, also called “crab”—even though real crabs walk sideways and not backwards; (4) melodic inversion of the crab. All these forms can be transposed beginning on any note of the chromatic scale, adding up to forty-eight transformations in all. Schoenberg used a tone-row of twelve different notes for the first time in the Waltz from his Piano Suite, op. 23. But he dates the real beginning of his method from the Serenade, op. 24, for voice, clarinet, bass-clarinet, mandolin, guitar, violin, viola, and violoncello, composed in 1924. “Here I became suddenly conscious of the real meaning of my aim,” he writes: “Unity and regularity, which unconsciously had led me this way.” To illustrate the method of twelve-tone composition, let us take the basic tone-row of Schoenberg’s Quintet for wood-winds, op. 26. Its original form has these twelve notes: E flat, G, A, B, C sharp, C, B flat, D, E, F sharp, A flat, and F. In its melodic inversion, the intervals change their direction. Instead of E flat going down to G, four whole tones down, it moves four whole tones up to B natural. The next step in the original tonerow is a whole tone up; in the inversion it will be one whole tone down, and so on. In the crab, the notes will be F, A flat, F sharp, etc., reading the basic tone-row backwards. In the crab of the inversion, the notes of the inverted tone-row are read backwards. The peculiarity of dodecaphonic music is that harmony as well as melody is derived from the basic tone-row. A twelve-tone series may begin as an unaccompanied melody, horizontally, then continue vertically into harmony, or it may pick up a contrapuntal lead on a diagonal. Twelve being divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, it is very convenient to write dodecaphonic music in two, three, four, or six parts. In orchestral writing, a twelve-tone series may begin in one instrumental part, then skip to another. Or else, two or

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more notes of the series are used together in different instruments. Under such circumstances, a dodecaphonic orchestral piece becomes a veritable cross-note puzzle. Analyzing an intricate twelve-tone piece provides a fascinating pastime to sharpen one’s musical wits. In dodecaphonic notation, there is no difference between enharmonically equal notes—one may write A flat or G sharp according to convenience. Remote sharps and flats, such as B sharp, or C flat, occur very rarely, and double flats or double sharps are never used. For safety’s sake, naturals are written in whether a cancellation of a previous accidental is needed or not. There is, of course, no key signature, because there is no tonality in dodecaphonic music. It is atonal. Atonality was the predecessor of dodecaphonic music, but it does not tell the whole story of twelve-tone composition. Dodecaphony is atonality in an orderly arrangement of the emancipated twelve notes. When the astronomer Huygens first observed the rings of Saturn, he announced his discovery in the form of a Latin anagram to insure priority pending publication of his paper. Something of a similar mystery surrounds the origin of twelve-tone music. Early in 1921, Schoenberg called in one of his pupils, Erwin Stein, and told him about the new “method of composing with twelve tones.” “I then asked him to keep it a secret,” Schoenberg recalls, “and to consider it as my private method.” Schoenberg knew that another Viennese theorist and composer, Josef Matthias Hauer, was working on a method of composition based on sixnote tropes, and making use of all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. “If I were to escape the danger of being his imitator,” Schoenberg writes, “I had to unveil my secret. I called a meeting of friends and pupils, to which I also invited Hauer, and gave a lecture on this new method, illustrating it by examples of some finished compositions of mine. Everybody recognized that my method was quite different from that of others.” Josef Matthias Hauer is a picturesque personality. He spends his whole day in a Vienna cafe near his house, and has a special wooden armchair reserved for him there, with his name carved on its back. He refuses to surrender his priority claim on twelve-tone writing. He even had a rubber stamp made with the inscription: “Josef Matthias Hauer, der geistiger Urhaber und trotz vielen schlechten Nachahmern immer noch der einziger Kenner und Könner der Zwölftonmusik.” (Josef Matthias Hauer, the spiritual protagonist of twelve-tone music, and, despite many bad imitators, still the only one who knows and understands it.)

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Still another Viennese musician, Fritz Klein, was working on the problem of twelve-tone composition at the time. Schoenberg has this to say regarding Klein’s experiments: “Although I saw Klein’s twelve-tone compositions about 1919, 1920, or 1921, I am not an imitator of him. I wrote a melody for a Scherzo, composed of twelve tones, in 1915. In the first edition of my ‘Harmonielehre’ (1911), there is a description of the new harmonies and their application which has probably influenced all these men who now want to become my models.” Of course, the point in dodecaphonic music is not just using twelve different notes for a melody, but unifying a complete composition by means of a single twelve-tone series. A melody of twelve different notes is found in Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, which was written in 1896. It occurs in the section “Of Science.” The notes are C, B, F sharp, D, E flat, G, B flat, A, E, C sharp, F, and A flat. But it certainly is not a tone-row in the Schoenbergian, dodecaphonic sense. Liszt used a theme consisting of twelve different notes in his Faust Symphony, in the form of four consecutive augmented triads, chromatically descending, in broken chords. In the concluding section of L’Après-midi d’un Faune, Debussy used four triads, two major and two minor, adding up to twelve different notes. Needless to say that his procedure, as that of Liszt, was a result of enharmonic progressions, having nothing to do with the dodecaphonic method. In its full development, the twelve-tone method is very elastic and admits many liberties. For instance, a note may be repeated several times without disrupting the essential regularity of the tone-row. The tone-row may be chopped up, and used in a variety of combinations in part writing. The notes of the row may skip freely from one octave to another, a practice that makes a typical dodecaphonic melody rather difficult to sing. There is no discrimination in dodecaphonic music between dissonances and consonances. In fact, dissonances are preferred, if for no other reason, than the fact that common triads and perfect cadences have been used and abused to death in classical and romantic music. This dodecaphonic predilection for dissonances naturally creates consternation whenever Schoenberg’s music is performed. A piece by Schoenberg was described by a critic as combining “the best sound effects of a hen yard at feeding time, a brisk morning in Chinatown, and practice hour at a busy conservatory.” Expressions like “the last word in cacophony and musical anarchy,”“bogey noises,”“avalanche of dissonance,”

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“geometrical music important only on paper,”“the nadir of decadence,” are just a few of the invectives in Schoenberg’s scrap-book. But the same words were once hurled against Wagner and Liszt. Nowadays, Wagner and Liszt are classics. Maybe people will some day get accustomed even to dodecaphonic music. Schoenberg’s disciples developed his method each in a highly personal manner. The most famous of them, Alban Berg (1885–1935) used a type of twelve-tone writing which came close to tonal music. The basic series in his Violin Concerto is built on triads, and is quite easy on the ear. Another great Schoenbergian, Anton von Webern (1881–1945), extends the principle of non-repetition inherent in Schoenberg’s method to the domain of tone colors. Thus, in von Webern’s Sinfonietta, each instrument in the orchestra is allowed to play only one note of the twelvetone series: the next note must be picked up by some other instrument. The effect of this intermittent melodic writing is unique. Among composers in the United States who have adopted the twelvetone method, the most prominent is Vienna-born Ernst Krenek, who settled in America in 1938. He is also the author of the first manual of twelve-tone composition. The young dodecaphonic school in America is represented by George Perle. The foremost American woman dodecaphonist is Dika Newlin. The Englishwoman Elizabeth Lutyens writes successful works in the strict dodecaphonic style. Juan Carlos Paz of Argentina and Claudio Santoro of Brazil are outstanding LatinAmerican dodecaphonists. The leader of the “Ecole de douze tons” in France is Polish-born René Leibowitz, author of several books dealing with the subject. In Italy, the most talented adept is Luigi Dallapiccola. His opera, The Prisoner, produced at the May 1950 Festival in Florence, is written in the dodecaphonic idiom. Yet, it was quite a success with the public, and Dallapiccola received four curtain calls. In Schoenberg’s native Vienna, Hanns Jelinek is the most conspicuous practitioner of the twelve-tone method. Hanns Eisler, a pupil of Schoenberg, who for a time wrote music for Hollywood films, now also lives in Vienna. Egon Wellesz, a Schoenberg disciple and a learned theorist in his own right, now makes his home in England, as does one of Schoenberg’s early adherents, Erwin Stein. The German twelve-tone composer, Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, now lives in Brazil. Vladimir Vogel, Russian-born composer, resident in

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Switzerland, has fashioned a modified dodecaphonic system of his own. Frank Martin, a Swiss composer, uses twelve-tone rows without complete dodecaphonic development. In Norway, Fartein Valen has developed an atonal style in which the twelve-tone method is applied in a free manner. There are no twelve-tone composers in Russia, where Schoenberg’s method is regarded as a product of bourgeois decadence. Let us now analyze Schoenberg’s Klavierstück, for piano, op. 33a. The twelve-tone series in this piece appears in the form of three chords of four notes each. The first chord includes B, C, F and B flat; the second, A, C sharp, D sharp, and F sharp; the third, A flat, D, E, and G. Then the chords are inverted, and these inversions are run in crab motion. The resulting progression of six chords constitutes the kernel of the entire piece. Later on, these six chords appear in a canon, the right hand playing the original progression, and the left hand going in reverse. In chord No. 4 in the left hand two notes change places, a frequent practice in the twelve-tone method. The last chord in the left hand is broken up, which is also common practice in twelve-tone music. In the middle section of Schoenberg’s Klavierstück, the twelve notes of the series are criss-crossed in a variety of ways. The cross-note puzzle becomes labyrinthine when inversions, crab forms, and transpositions are all applied simultaneously. It takes a sharp dodecaphonic ear to detect the original tone-row in the integrated maze of melody, harmony, and counterpoint. The coda of Schoenberg’s Klavierstück contains the principal six chords. Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic cadence is stridently dissonant, the final chord bristling with minor seconds where a classical ending would be a reposeful tonic triad. Dodecaphonic music is a new language. In order to appreciate poetry in an unfamiliar tongue, one must learn its grammar and idiomatic usage. Dodecaphony will cease to be cacophony even to an untutored ear when the listener will take the trouble of learning its laws and customs.

7 . I N T RO D U C TO RY E S S AY

The progress of American music in the twentieth century has been fantastically swift, as if American composers made a massive effort to compensate for the placid lassitude of creative efforts in the past, when America was but a musical colony of Germany. A hundred years ago the American composer George Frederick Bristow proudly proclaimed that his string quartet was adjudged by the French conductor Jullien “a classically constructed work according to the best European model.” The highest ambition of American composers was to imitate foreign masters. Even when American subject matter was used, the indigenous melodies were wrapped in approved Germanic harmonies. In the early years of the twentieth century American composers were still in thrall of German music; abruptly, after World War I, American composers turned to France for their inspiration. But soon, very soon, a truly autonomous American school of composition came into being. Mastery of technique was now taken for granted. Moreover, this mastery was revealed in a variety of styles, from triadic and tonal to atonal and dissonant. Both the quantity and the quality of American musical production increased at an accelerated rate. Statistically, the number of works produced by American composers during the two decades from 1940 to 1960 may well exceed the total of the preceding half century. What was demanded now from American composers was not merely an accomplished technique “according to the best European model,” but a creative force with an unmistakably American drive. The search for an American musical soul began.

Ch. 7: originally published as the introduction to Some Twentieth Century American Composers, A Selective Bibliography, New York Public Library, 1959.

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The necessary attribute of a musical soul is mastery of technique. When technique falters, the soul evaporates for lack of material container. Borrowing up-to-date modern techniques from Europe does not solve the problem of American music; such techniques must be transmuted into a peculiarly American way of composing music. The simultaneous existence and employment of the romantic, classical, empiric, and abstract styles does not mean that American music cannot find its own soul. It must be realized that greatly advanced idioms may be used in the pursuit of seemingly old-fashioned romantic aims, that classical forms do not bind a composer as far as his idiom is concerned. On the other hand, scientific techniques of transforming pitches and timbres into something new and strange do not necessarily go beyond the most rudimentary musical ideas. Esthetic styles, methods of composition, and individual idioms are overlapping categories. The esthetic effect of an intricate dodecaphonic work may be romantic, whereas the impression created by a rudimentary tonal composition may be that of cerebral aloofness. One cannot judge the degree of modernity by compiling statistics of dissonance and consonance. The American composer who combined qualities of nationalism, experimentalism, and romanticism in a distinctly modern style with an ardently burning American soul was Charles Ives. The phenomenon of Ives is unique. He stood apart from the American musical movement, and his prophetic innovations assumed their true significance many years after he stopped writing music. A possible criterion for stylistic classification is traditionalism. Composers who continue an established tradition, even with considerable deviations, enjoy a greater degree of toleration from the large musical masses than those who completely break away from the current. It is ironic that the ultimate in musical modernism has been achieved by a silent piece of music by John Cage, who enjoys the reputation of being the most untraditional composer in America, if not in the whole world. A critic remarked that it was not possible to render one’s opinion of Cage’s silent piece because no one knew what was not being played. The notoriety earned by Cage and his disciples is explained by the fact that the public response to music and performance is more psychological than esthetic. External effects—a triangle in a Liszt concerto, a wind machine in a Strauss symphony, a siren in a piece by Varèse—are

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remembered vividly, while the important structural elements in the work are overlooked. The problem of structure, composition in the literal sense of putting together, gives us a valid criterion of the mastery and importance of the music. Varèse’s Ionization, scored for percussion instruments without definite pitch, is a work that is composed, put together in a definite design, organized in complete detail. On the other hand, many other works written for percussion alone are mere displays of color without organization. Taking as a criterion the varying degrees of traditionalism and the concomitant public toleration of the music, it is possible to classify American composers according to a musical spectrum, from the infra-red to the ultra-violet, or in musical terms, from romanticism through impressionism and neoclassicism towards expressionism and abstraction, finally reaching the invisible—or inaudible—region of aleatory indeterminacy. Contrary to Buffon’s saying, the style is not the man, at least not in music. Examples are many of sharp stylistic changes in twentieth-century music, with concessions made to traditionalism by former revolutionaries, and to modernism (particularly in its dodecaphonic guise) by infra-modernists. Thus George Antheil, once the enfant terrible of American music, towards the end of his life wrote eminently acceptable music, well within the margin of toleration by mass audiences. One of the greatest romantic rhapsodists, Ernest Bloch, used dodecaphonic themes in his last string quartets. The conversion of the neoclassicist Stravinsky to expressionistic dodecaphony is well known. Of course, a composer’s individuality leaves its imprint on the newly adopted style, which undergoes a subtle, and sometimes distinct, change in the new hands. Buffon’s aphorism may be paraphrased to say that the attitude is the man. It is a composer’s attitude towards his materials that determines the significance of the music. As the attitude changes, the stylistic position in the musical spectrum changes with it. Advanced techniques may be used by proponents of an old-fashioned style, and clichés are often employed by the dadaistic avantgarde in order to tickle the bourgeoisie from the wrong end. The most outspoken champion of romanticism in American music is Howard Hanson. His romanticism is both lyrical and dramatic; tempestuous waves of bitonal harmonies rise in his music, and the tidal rhythms break the bounds of traditional symmetry. The romanticism of Samuel Barber is expressed in terms of impassioned rhapsodism. The harmonies are definitely of the twentieth century, but the mood is retrospective and

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nostalgic. Roy Harris and Aaron Copland, William Schuman and Paul Creston cannot be placed within a limited section of the stylistic spectrum because they use selective techniques for selective purposes. Roy Harris proclaims strongly and articulately his faith as an American composer and his intentions of creating music of America in the twentieth-century idiom. But he uses a system of modal melody and modal harmony with neo-Platonic connotations, in classical forms, which serves his Americanism successfully only because of his power of expression. Aaron Copland transmutes the rhythms and the melodies of the American people with such persuasion and descriptive force that his inherent modernism forms no obstacle to mass comprehension. On the other hand, in his instrumental works, he applies a severe style which is the product of almost monastic introspection. The style of William Schuman makes no concessions to tradition in its impetuous rhapsodism; statistically, his music may prove to contain more dissonances per page than that of the most extreme among the ultramoderns. But his writing is so compact and concise that the public acceptance is in his case greater than expected. The stylistic expanse of Paul Creston’s music is such that he is able to produce greatly effective music in a relatively simple idiom, and then reach out to the Ultima Thule of dissonant modernism. Romanticism is a stepping stone to expressionism; both are rhapsodic in form and inspiration; the evolution can be measured by the strength and frequency of dissonant harmonies, and by increasingly impassionate and ultimately atonal melodies. David Diamond is such a rhapsodic expressionist. The romantic roots, the subjective projections are in evidence in his symphonic music. He does not adopt a preconceived method of composition, and his range of techniques is wide. However, he knows how to control his passions when writing for a specific purpose, for the theatre or for the dance. Among American composers, perhaps the greatest range of varied styles is achieved by Wallingford Riegger, whose music spans almost the entire spectrum, from traditional harmony through romantic chromaticism to profound and almost esoteric expressionism. The latter reflects his true creative spirit; but his ability to disengage himself from it to write practical music is an interesting example of American musical utilitarianism. It would be sheer snobbism to deprecate utilitarian music merely because it is written in a traditional style and may have commercial value. If modern music is to succeed in America—or anywhere else—it must

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become utilitarian. There is no implication here of reactionary abandonment of the struggle for a new American idiom; indeed, the entire course of modern music in America indicates the growing toleration of previously unacceptable music. The ultra-modernism of yesterday is the utilitarianism of today. Henry Cowell, the formidable innovator, writes utilitarian music. He makes astute use of folksong materials, of the West as well as of the East, but his stylizations are strikingly novel, equipped with the techniques that he evolved in the quest for his revolutionary style. In the preface to my book Lexicon of Musical Invective, I suggested (not altogether facetiously) that it takes twenty years to make an artistic curiosity out of a modernistic monstrosity, and another twenty to elevate it to a masterpiece. The hostile reception by tradition-bound critics of the early works of Ives, Varèse, Riegger, Copland, and others, and the subsequent acceptance of many of these works in the general repertory, may well be adduced in support of this notion. American composers of a later generation were born into a world of modern music and therefore were not subjected to a critical condemnation. Still, the struggle for the greater toleration must go on if American composers are to achieve recognition and financial equality with modern writers and painters. By and large, contrapuntal writing of the type that appeals so strongly to German composers finds few adherents in American music. Even Roy Harris, whose contrapuntal thinking is of such importance to him, does not concern himself with the academic rules of the fugue and the canon, preferring an individual and free use of such devices. Most American composers write fugues, but these fugues are of a free Beethovenian, rather than a didactic Bachian type. Besides Roy Harris, some American composers who build their instrumental works contrapuntally are Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, Elliott Carter, and Vincent Persichetti. Walter Piston has said time and again that music written in America is ipso facto American music, whether indigenous American materials are used or not. Piston’s mastery of technique enables him to create instrumental works of equilibrated perfection, in an idiom that is basically tonal, but with ramifications reaching far beyond traditional tonality. In an article on Walter Piston, published almost thirty years ago, I described him as the builder of a future academic style in America. The word “Academy” should not necessarily be equated with a didactic establishment,

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codification and self-containment. Enlightened academism that embodies the best elements of the past but responds to the needs of the present, is a natural phase in the evolutionary process, when a temporary halt is made, and when it becomes necessary to consolidate the innovations. Walter Piston’s music represents this type of enlightened academism, and marks an important stylistic achievement. Roger Sessions is, like Piston, a composer of music an und für sich, without programmatic allusions. For many years his works stood like an unscalable rock, imposing to the sight but difficult to approach. Yet his music is, in a higher sense, quite utilitarian, for it possesses classical cohesion of design and logic of cumulative development. Elliott Carter is also a contrapuntist par excellence. The rhythmic patterns in his music are determined by preconceived numerical progressions in the component parts, resulting in intense polyrhythmic polyphony. The texture of his instrumental works is extremely dissonant, but the mobility of musical action makes the constantly dissolving dissonances acceptable even to an untutored ear. The contrapuntal technique of Vincent Persichetti makes use of contrasting tone-colors that lend to the music an impressionistic glow. In his adroit use of varied resources, he creates a distinctive personal style of modern composition. Among twentieth-century Americans, polyphonic neoclassicism leads to the formation of a modern musical constructivism. It may assume impressionistic shapes when tone-color is emphasized, or expressionistic moods when atonal and dodecaphonic structures are employed. The idiom remains abstract, or absolute, as long as there are no literary or visual allusions in the music. Constructivist composers are naturally drawn to instrumental writing in extensive forms. It is indeed remarkable that so many eminent American composers have never written songs. This anti-vocalism is in direct contrast to American composers of the preceding generations, who usually began their careers by writing songs and piano works, then essayed chamber music, and only much later came to the symphony. Twentiethcentury American composers are apt to begin with symphonies, then turn to chamber music, and finally to solo piano works and (rarely) songs. Opera has never been a strong American genre. The only American examples of grand opera in the European manner are by Deems Taylor, Howard Hanson, and Samuel Barber. Walter Piston and Roy Harris shied

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away from opera as a genre; others have developed an indigenous form of chamber opera, usually of satiric or whimsical content. American subjects are favored. It is interesting to note that late in his creative life Douglas Moore, a composer of instrumental music par excellence, produced a successful folk opera on an American subject, Ballad of Baby Doe, which became the best known of his works. A surrealistic type of American opera is exemplified by Virgil Thomson’s whimsical production, Four Saints in Three Acts, in which there are more than three acts and far more than four saints. The idiom is deliberately rudimentary, but the attitude is that of high sophistication, so that the illogic of the text gibes intriguingly with the elementary harmonies of the music. Randall Thompson is the most successful composer of choral works in America. Extreme modern styles do not lend themselves to choral writing. It suffices to examine choral compositions by ultramodernists to find that the complexity of the idiom notable in their instrumental works is greatly reduced in choral writing. Randall Thompson is not an ultramodernist, and therefore he does not have to compromise with his natural form of expression. Norman Dello Joio writes operas, vocal works of various descriptions, chamber music, and instrumental solos, but he has yet to compose a grand symphony. This abstention is interesting because it corresponds, on the other side of the American musical scene, to the abstention from operatic composition by so many American composers. It may also be argued, and perhaps supported by statistical analysis, that composers who select vocal music and particularly opera and oratorio, have less interest in polyphony as an end in itself than non-operatic American composers have. At any rate, Norman Dello Joio has created a number of distinctive works in the vocal and instrumental fields, which have the precious quality of communicativeness, without surrendering the modernity of his neoclassical idiom. In the 1930s, world conditions precipitated the development of a peculiar type of short opera, the opera of social consciousness. It first appeared in Germany and soon crossed the ocean to America. Marc Blitzstein is the most energetic proponent of this genre. While dissonance and asymmetric rhythms are natural ingredients of Blitzstein’s theatre works, he is a utilitarian composer, for an opera of social consciousness can hardly afford to be unperformably difficult.

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Short satirical operas with social overtones are on the borderline of topical musical comedy. That the two genres, satirical music drama and Americanistic musical comedy, should have such an intimate contact is remarkable. Satire is a product of social frustration, and its appeal is limited to the dissatisfied segment of urban population. Musical comedy thrives on mass communication, and appeals to the universal sentiment of hedonism mixed with amorous nostalgia. By an extraordinary paradox, Kurt Weill, a German refugee in the United States, managed to transplant satirical melodrama onto the American soil with enormous success. Coming from the world of jazz, George Gershwin produced a truly grand opera in the modern manner, Porgy and Bess. Several musical comedies written by Americans whose skills lie in popular music, approach the form and even the dimensions of opera. Perhaps it is this genre of modern musical comedy that is America’s chief contribution to the stage. The most successful American operas are the creations of an Italianborn composer, Gian Carlo Menotti. Although he writes his own librettos in English, his music is Italian in its sources of inspiration. Menotti’s successful operatic formula is beginning to influence some American composers for the stage. Among foreign-born composers, Lukas Foss has gained an important position. His modernism is of a classical brand, which lies exactly on the main line of American stylistic pursuits. He also writes small operas, in a whimsical mid-century style, designed to entertain and to stimulate the imagination rather than to reach the depth of musical expression. His choral works, often of a religious content, represent a more profound creative impulse. Then there is Leonard Bernstein. He is so fantastically successful in so many fields, as performer and conductor, that his place as an American composer is difficult to estimate. He unquestionably belongs to the avantgarde; his modernism is nurtured both by European sources and by American popular rhythms. There is an element of popular music in his operatic works, and there is a definite modern aura in his highly successful musical comedies. But his fame as conductor puts his achievements in composition in a penumbra. The number of European composers who have settled in America would fill a sizable catalogue: Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Krenek, Hindemith, Toch. And there are also several from other continents. Peggy GlanvilleHicks is an Australian, but she has for a long time been active on the

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American scene. Her music is a blend of many styles, neoclassical, folkloric, neo-archaic. Her predilection for vocal forms in a broad melodic outline is characteristic. Chou Wen-Chung of China has developed a unique idiom by applying advanced techniques to images of Chinese poetry. Active American composers whose names are justly known and whose works have frequent or occasional performances, range in age, at 1960, from the middle twenties to the middle seventies. Carl Ruggles, who abandoned composition in favor of painting, holds the seniority; he is over 80. John Becker, who wrote challenging music in the 1920s, is still a force, and his music is as vigorous and as unyielding as ever. Wallingford Riegger, after years of neglect and lack of appreciation, emerges as a respected master modernist at the age of seventy-five. From the ranks of youth, the name of Easley Blackwood asserts itself powerfully. A symphonic composer of considerable merit, he writes in a neoromantic manner, tensely dynamic and freely dissonant. The diversity of styles among American composers is great, and barely definable in its main currents. Neoclassical composers are the keepers of a new tradition, the builders of a new academy. The emerging style of neoromanticism grows out of American neoclassicism as original romanticism grew out of the ottocento. Pure impressionism no longer attracts creative talents, but it has a viable successor, a style which may be defined, by analogy with painting, as abstract impressionism, emphasizing coloristic elements without the stigma of obvious pictorialism. Abstract musical expressionism is the modern form of romanticism, with morbid anxiety, frustration and dejection providing points of inspiration. Expressionistic effects are achieved by means of tense and spasmodic dodecaphony, while the abstract quality is secured by a careful avoidance of emotional phraseology. The intangibility of expressiveness and the abstraction from associative images are the formative qualities of this style. A few brief characterizations may be offered to define the styles of some American composers whose names are increasingly imposing on the American scene: Harold Shapero, a composer of enormously compact economical neoclassical music, mostly for instrumental combinations and for the orchestra; Quincy Porter, a prolific writer of symphonic and chamber music in a rich polyphonic vein; Louise Talma, whose neo-baroque music is stirred by the controlled emotional strain; Alexei Haieff, a classicist in a neo-Stravinskian manner who does not scorn the American rhythmic ver-

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nacular; Ingolf Dahl, the composer of formally organized music with finely calculated modern polyphony; Arthur Berger, the builder of well-balanced and astutely designed neoclassical structures with asymmetrical details; William Bergsma, the modern contrapuntist who never abandons the standard of practicality; Andrew Imbrie, who adopts an expressionistic style within the framework of classical forms of an almost Italian lucidity; Peter Mennin, who revives the spirit of the rococo period, with an elegant design of formal eloquence; Burrill Phillips, who employs a basically classical idiom to write expressive music with hedonistic overtones; Ernst Bacon, composer of works in all genres designed for practical use, in a fine modernistic vein; Theodore Chanler, who excels in sophisticated but melodious vocal writing; Irving Fine, who applies modern idioms, including dodecaphony, with a romantic effect; Ulysses Kay, whose evocative vocal and instrumental music is suffused with modern Americanism; Leon Kirchner, whose bold expressionistic tone-painting is adroitly combined with formal classical methods of composition; Gunther Schuller, an experimentalist who has brought abstract expressionism to a pointillistic acuity; George Rochberg, who writes symphonic and other music of romantic intensity in the dodecaphonic technique; Henry Brant, an empiricist exploring the outermost regions of music in massed sonorities directionally applied; and, at the end of the line, the inscrutable John Cage and his disciples. Between the extremes of neoclassicism and neo-nihilism, the teleological essence of American music is perceived intuitively as well as through esthetic analysis. The importance of an autonomous American school of composition in all its multiple forms of expression is no longer in question.

8 . T H E M A RV E LO U S S E A S O N 1912 –1913 In Clarens, Switzerland, a Russian composer wrote down on a page of music, in euphoric Cyrillic script: “Today, on Sunday, 4/17 November 1912, suffering from an intolerable toothache, I completed the music of Le Sacre. I. Stravinsky.” This was certainly the most fruitful toothache of modern music. The fateful words were written on a multistaved piano score, which carried the music of Le Sacre to the final Danse Sacrale. The outline of the arrangement was very much like the four-hand piano edition of Le Sacre which was eventually published by the Editions Russes de Musique. In his extraordinary Memories and Commentaries, published in the form of Platonic dialogues with his Boswellian associate, Robert Craft, Stravinsky declared: “The richest musical years in this century do now seem to have been those immediately before the 1914 war, and specifically, 1912, for to that date belong Pierrot Lunaire, Jeux, the Altenberg Lieder, and Le Sacre du Printemps.” No one would quarrel with the inclusion of Le Sacre and Pierrot Lunaire among the earthshaking works of the century, but was Debussy’s Jeux that seismic? Furthermore, how many readers of the Stravinsky-Craft volume could identify the Altenberg Lieder without some clue, for instance, that the author was the second syllable of the composer of Pierrot Lunaire? One wonders whether Schönberg, who had a mystique of numbers was conscious of the numerical correspondence of the opus number of Pierrot Lunaire (21), the number of songs in it (21), and the year of composition (’12, Krebsgang of 21). Fortunately for historians, Schönberg Ch. 8: originally published in The Juilliard Review Annual, 1962–1963.

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marked the exact day of the inception and completion of each one of these 21 melodramas, in which the Sprechstimme was used for the first time as an integrated technique of vocalization. Humperdinck, of all people, must be credited with the absolute priority of inflected rhythmic speech, the Sprechnoten, as he called it, which he applied in a score of incidental music for a play produced in Munich in 1897. Of course, it was not the Sprechstimme alone that made Pierrot Lunaire an epoch-making work, but the novel treatment of the instruments, the extraordinary impressionistic sound with expressionistic connotations, the enhancement of dynamic values and the elevation of rhythmic patterns to thematic significance. The tremors were far-reaching. More civilized critics spoke of “metamathematical” music at its first performance in Berlin on October 16, 1912; correspondents of American music journals used cruder language describing the Schönberg masterpiece as “the most ear-splitting combinations of tones that ever desecrated the walls of a Berlin music hall.” The performance of Pierrot Lunaire in New York in 1923 evoked the predictable invectives from Henry T. Finck (“tomfoolery . . . an unutterably silly thing . . . emitting strange noises . . . ”), from Richard Aldrich (“a variedly rhythmical and dynamic succession of disagreeable noises”) and from H. E. Krehbiel (“a wearisome and futile experiment . . . striving to bring on the millennium in which cacophony shall reign . . .”). On the third of September 1912 Schönberg’s formidable Five Orchestral Pieces were performed for the first time anywhere in London under the direction of Henry Wood. This Farbenmusik must have come as a shock to insular British music lovers peacefully assembled in Queens Hall at a Tuesday Promenade Concert. Ernest Newman constituted the minority of one among English critics, when he suggested that Schönberg “is not the mere fool or madman that he is generally supposed to be,” and so vindicated his chosen patronymic (his real name was William Roberts; he selected the pseudonym Ernest Newman to emphasize the importance of being Earnest New Man among the troglodytes). According to the Slonimsky Law, promulgated in the prefatory essay, Non-Acceptance of the Unfamiliar, in my Lexicon of Musical Invective, it takes twenty years to make an artistic curiosity out of a modernistic monstrosity, and another twenty to elevate it to a masterpiece. The Five Orchestral Pieces were still a monstrosity to Richard Aldrich of The New York Times at their first New York performance in November 1921, when

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he said that they were even “worse than the reputation that preceded them.” He then put himself on record that “there is not the slightest reason to believe that their squeaks, groans and caterwaulings represent in any way the musical idiom of today or tomorrow or of any other future time.” The Altenberg Lieder of Alban Berg, which Stravinsky classified as one of the four great works composed in 1912, were performed in Vienna under the auspices of the Academic League for Literature and Music, on March 31, 1913, in a program that included Six Orchestral Pieces by Anton von Webern, Schönberg’s already old Chamber Symphony (August Spanuth, in the Berlin Signale, suggested that it should be more properly entitled Chamber-of-Horrors Symphony), and some songs by Schönberg’s old teacher, Alexander Zemlinsky. Peter Altenberg was a Viennese character, a Socrates of the coffeehouse, whose real name was Richard Englander. Altenberg enjoyed bourgeois-baiting. He wrote risque verses to picture postcards, and Alban Berg selected some of them for texts of his songs with orchestra. The unusual assortment of instruments and the novel vocal effects such as singing with compressed lips and with the mouth half open, created a disturbance in the hall. The Vienna correspondent of the Musical Courier reported that the composers and performers engaged in a scuffle with the more vocal members of the audience, and the police were called to disengage them. The closing event of the 1912–13 season, perhaps the most significant in the history of modern music, was the production by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe in Paris of Le Sacre du Printemps. The date was May 29, 1913, the place the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the conductor was Pierre Monteux, and the chief dancer, Nijinsky. So many accounts of this famous occasion have been published by eye witnesses, including those by Stravinsky himself, and so many discrepancies are found in these reports, that it is no longer possible to establish the true sequence of events. Was there a physical battle between the modernists and the passeistes, as anti-modernists were called in France? Did a titled French lady rise from her plush-covered fauteuil, muttering: “It is the first time in sixty years that anyone has dared to make a fool of me?” Is it true the venerable Saint-Saëns upon hearing the introductory bassoon solo left the theater saying “if this is a bassoon, then I am a baboon,” or words to that effect? All these are parts of a legend, and legends are not amenable to historic research. After its initial production, Le Sacre began a long career as a symphonic composition. It is remarkable how few ballet performances of

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Le Sacre were given in later years. War was in the air in the spring of 1914, when Le Ménestrel suggested a change of title of Stravinsky’s masterpiece from Le Sacre to Massacre du Printemps. After the war America heard the piece for the first time, with Monteux conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. An outraged Boston music lover sent a poem to the Boston Herald, which still preserves its pristine charm: Who wrote this fiendish Rite of Spring, What right had he to write the thing, Against our helpless ears to fling Its crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing? And then to call it Rite of Spring, The season when on joyous wing The birds melodious carols sing And harmony’s in everything! He who could write the Rite of Spring, If I be right, by right should swing!

Fifty years have elapsed since the emergence of Le Sacre, and now its cataclysmic eruptions reverberate harmlessly on the soundtrack of the Hollywood films and television spectaculars, garbled and electronically mutilated, whenever there is need to portray an unnatural phenomenon such as an atomic explosion. While Stravinsky and Schönberg were remaking the musical world, Erik Satie was busy in his sub-Parisian retreat mocking classicism, romanticism and impressionism all at once, and writing short piano pieces with long nonsensical titles, During the season 1912–13 he composed a series of Véritables préludes flasques, with a subtitle pour un chien. The adjective flasque, i.e., flaccid, was apparently a jab at the mollified impressionists, but why “for a dog?” In another piano suite, Desiccated Embryos, composed in 1913, Satie inserted gratuitous instructions to the player, of which “like a nightingale who has a toothache” is an example. The wit of such remarks stales after fifty years. John Cage’s annotations to the catalog of his works are infinitely more hilarious. The priceless description of his silent piece for 4’33” as being “tacet, any instrument or combination of instruments” deserves some kind of Stupefaction Prize. The unsung pioneers of the period immediately preceding World War I, were the Italian Futurists. Their animating passion was anarchistic destruction of the old in order to build the new, as if in obedience to

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Bakunin’s 1848 dictum “Die Lust der Zerstörung ist eine schaffende Lust.” The musical leader of the Futurist movement was Balilla Pratella who launched a campaign against everything and everybody in his twin manifestoes as early as 1910 and 1911. He urged young musicians to keep away from “commercial and academic circles” and to lead “a modest life unencumbered by lucrative profits for which art is sold.” As far as specific technique of composition is concerned, Pratella preached the adoption of the integral enharmony as a “magnificent conquest of Futurism.” He proclaimed the absolute necessity for opera composers to write their own libretti. All this sounded suspiciously like Wagner’s Zukunftsmusik. As for Pratella’s own music, it was appallingly close to the Verismo of Pietro Mascagni, for whom Pratella had words of extravagant praise in his Manifesto dei Musicisti Futuristi. In the same document, Pratella blandly admitted that Mascagni was the chairman of the jury which awarded him a prize for his opera, in which the most futuristic feature was an occasional employment of the whole-tone scale. Real Futurism, prophetically directed towards the emancipation of noises, was generated in the mind of Luigi Russolo, an Italian painter and musician. His paintings, the geometric Interpenetration of Houses Plus Light Plus Sky, the palimpsestic Solidity of Fog, the cinematic Plastic Synthesis of the Actions of a Woman, belong to the same years 1912–13 when he began to experiment with his tonal noise-makers, the Intonarumori. On March 11, 1913, Russolo issued his Futurist Manifesto in which he expounded his theory of the Arte dei rumori, the art of noises. He gave the first demonstration of a noise instrument, a scoppiatore, which produced noises characteristic of an internal combustion engine, in Modena, on June 2, 1913. Soon a whole orchestra of noises proliferated— crepitatori, ronzatori, stropicciatori, ululatori, gorgogliatori, sibilatori, producing, respectively, roars, buzzes, scraping noises, ululations, gurgling sounds and hissing. They were amplified by old-fashioned megaphones. For his Intonarumori, Russolo composed three pieces mostly concerned with urban civilization and the new machines: The Awakening of a City, A Dinner on a Hotel Terrace, and Convention of Automobiles and Aeroplanes. The scores were written in diagrams, much as electronic pieces are notated nowadays. The meter was indicated; dynamic signs were used in the traditional manner. Some of the instruments of the same group were of different pitches; thus there was a tenor Ululator and a bass Ululator.

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The sight of Russolo’s megaphones, and his own countenance, with a pointed beard and burning black eyes, half-saint, half-madman, inevitably roused untutored audiences to fury. When the uncouth sounds began to emanate from the megaphones, there was real trouble. In his booklet, L’Arte dei rumori, published in Milan in 1916, now a collector’s item, of which I possess an inscribed copy, Russolo relates with objective detachment some of the battles he fought. When he conducted in Milan the world premiere of his Convention of Automobiles and Aeroplanes, a group of conservatory professors shouted insults, but the foes were resolutely met by the “formidable and unfailing” fists of Russolo’s friends, the poet Marinetti and the painter Boccioni. Eleven persons required medical treatment in the ensuing melee. Soon the real war came, in which Boccioni lost his life. All these thunders of the future were but minor nuisances to the comfortable world of 1912–13. Puccini was the most modern composer in the opera houses. The Metropolitan Opera of New York produced only one new work, Cyrano de Bergerac by Walter Damrosch, which passed instantly into limbo. American orchestral music was faithfully Germanic. The Boston Symphony Orchestra presented on January 25, 1913, two symphonic poems, Narcissus and Echo, by Gustav Strube, as parting homage before his leaving the violin desk in the orchestra. Nobody in the music world was aware that Charles E. Ives, an insurance man doing successful business in New York, was writing the greatest American music of the century. During the season 1912–13 Ives completed the “Emerson” movement of the Concord Sonata, and was working on his fantastically complex Fourth Symphony, which still defies performance. Coloristic music with impressionistic and neoarchaic overtones was the modern fashion in Paris, in 1912. Diaghilev produced Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé; two suites were drawn from the music, of which the second became a concert favorite. Ravel’s precision of workmanship, his infinitesimally accurate weighing of submicrophonic sonorities, his care in the distribution of instrumental colors, his ability to handle asymmetric rhythms with perfect balance, all these qualities make his music viable even in our times when programmatic impressionism is no longer fashionable. Another fine French ballet produced during the 1912–13 season was Le Festin de l’Araignée by Albert Roussel. There is in this spider’s feast

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more than mere onomatopeia (Roussel was inspired in writing this score by Fabre’s famous popularizations of insect life). There is a sense of tragedy as the butterfly is enmeshed in the arachnidan web, a primitivistic vitality in the hatching of the ephemerida. Roussel’s melodic and harmonic idiom is derived from prickly tritones and bleak quartal progressions; his bitonalities were also related by tritones. What philosophical deductions can be drawn from these semicentennial musings? Only that strong music, original music, iconoclastic music that is consistent with itself and is supported by a personal faith in one’s own art, can and must survive. Charles Ives did not seek recognition—he was content to compose for himself and for those few who understood his music. But he fought back fiercely in private correspondence, most of it still unpublishable because of its spitting invectives. (Spitting was an important function in his life. When I saw Ives for the last time shortly before his death and asked him about his health, he said: “Bad, I can’t even spit from here into the fireplace.”) After my Paris concerts of American music in 1931, which included works by Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, Varèse, Weiss, and others, Philip Hale published an editorial in the Boston Herald in which he said that I was doing a disservice to American music by presenting to Parisians compositions of “wild-eyed anarchists,” American imitators of European composers of extreme tendencies. Ives reacted to this editorial in a characteristic philosophical manner. He wrote to me: “It’s funny how many men, when they see another man put the ‘breechin’ under a horse’s tail, wrong or right, think that he must be influenced by someone in Siberia or Neurasthenia. No one man invented the barber’s itch.” The vindication of Schönberg’s music should be a good subject for socio-historical study. It is particularly striking because of his firm conviction, openly proclaimed, that his music is imperishable, and because of his ironic reflections on his own destiny to be recognized only after his death. “Erst nach dem Tode anerkannt werden . . .” he wrote in a letter addressed to those who greeted him on his seventy-fifth birthday in 1949. Recently, a dealer’s catalogue listed for sale a two-page letter from Schönberg, at $200. It was sold within a few days. Schönberg would have been pleased by this commercial evaluation of his writings, but he would not have been surprised. He had faith in himself.

9 . N EW M U S I C I N G R E E C E

In modern Greece Orpheus tunes his lyre atonally. This scordatura was initiated by Nikos Skalkottas, a Greek disciple of Schoenberg, who died in 1949, at the age of forty-five. He left a large number of manuscripts, and a special Skalkottas Committee was organized in Athens to prepare his music for publication. Skalkottas makes use of Schoenberg’s method in an almost rhapsodic manner. His little piece for cello and piano, written shortly before his death and published under the title Tender Melody, is instructive in this respect. The cello part consists of fourteen consecutive statements of a songful theme of twelve different notes: F#, E, D, C#, C, B, G#, A, F, G, Eb, and Bb. The rhythm varies radically, and the register shifts freely from one octave to another. Individual notes of the basic series, and even sizable thematic fragments, are repeated, but the denominations of the tone-row never change. There is no transposition, no inversion, no retrograde motion. The piano accompaniment traces a twelve-tone row of three mutually exclusive diminished seventh chords formed by symmetrically diverging and converging minor thirds. An incidental tonerow in the piano accompaniment is represented by three arpeggiated four-note figurations, and its elements enter an explicit tonal coda with a double pedalpoint on the tonic and dominant. Tender Melody is an example of a dodecaphonic way of writing a Romantic piece of music. On its pages Schumann seems to meet Grieg in a fine mist of chromatic vapors. But Schoenberg himself never demanded orthodoxy from his students, and he spoke warmly of Skalkottas as one of his most gifted students. Ch. 9: originally published in The Musical Quarterly, January 1965.

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The image of Schoenberg is much more clearly visible in another score of Skalkottas, his Little Suite for strings, written in 1942. In it he applies the method of composition with twelve tones to melodic formations that suggest modern Greek melorhythms, with their serpentine melismas and angular intervallic structures. Time and again, in the midst of this folksong atmosphere, there suddenly rises a Schoenbergian outcry, an eighth note paired with a quarter note of the same pitch, and followed by a despairing sigh escaping to a high note in decrescendo. It is only natural that dodecaphony, being a Greek word and a Greek numerical concept, should have special fascination for modern Greek composers. Yet one of the most remarkable composers of modern Greece, Jani Christou, is not a follower of Schoenbergian precepts. He describes his Metatropes for orchestra (its English title is Patterns and Permutations) as written in a “meta-serial” idiom. “The music expresses the endless formation of patterns through various levels of experience,” Christou writes, “while at the same time it reveals the urge to break up this merciless process.” Christou submitted Metatropes to the National Radio of Athens for a competition in 1962. It was selected for the finals, and after eleven rehearsals was recorded on tape. But the work was disqualified when the rumor spread that it had already been performed in America, thus breaking the jus primae noctis for the competition. The rumor was false. There was no American performance, but Christou’s name was inadvertently (or maliciously, as Christou claims) disclosed, and since anonymity was essential, the score had to be withdrawn. Patterns and Permutations finally was performed in Athens on March 11, 1963, and created a riot, a rare phenomenon in the annals of musical events in modern Greece. The reasons for displeasure on the part of the audience and some critics were familiar: the harshness of the music and the annoying abundance of percussive rhythms. Quite different from Patterns and Permutations is Christou’s set of six songs to poems of T. S. Eliot, composed for voice and piano in 1955, and arranged for mezzo-soprano and orchestra in 1957. This is a haunting score, partaking of cosmopolitan Romanticism and Viennese Expressionism, somewhere on the geodesic line between Mahler and Berg. Christou’s earlier work, a symphony, was first performed in London on April 29, 1951 under the direction of Alec Sherman, while the rest of the

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program was taken up by Tchaikovsky. One newspaper review was headlined: “New Greek Work—a Protest against everything Tchaikovsky stands for.” A still earlier work, Phoenix Music for orchestra, should be mentioned. It had a performance in London in 1950, one at the Maggio Fiorentino in 1951 conducted by Willy Ferrero, and several performances in Athens. The music is programmatic and “freely atonal,” but lacks discipline. Christou is “no longer fond of it,” and regards it as a “souvenir” of his early moods. Among Christou’s current interests is theater music. His score for the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus was performed at the Epidaurus Festival in the spring of 1963. In the same year he wrote background music for a television program sponsored by Esso Petroleum Co. and shown internationally on the home screen, with the poet Robert Graves as narrator. The television scenes were filmed at Delphi, and for its music Christou went back, as he puts it, to his “ancestral memories.” Some of this music is almost operatic in style, for Christou believes that “music and dancing were quite as important as the spoken parts” in ancient Greek tragedy. But, he carefully adds, he “did not attempt to imitate what might have been valid 2,500 years ago.” Jani Christou was born in Heliopolis, Egypt, on January 9, 1926. His father was a Greek businessman, who did a lot of traveling with his family. Christou attended a British school in Alexandria. In 1945 he entered King’s College in Cambridge, where he studied philosophy. At the same time he took private music lessons with Hans Redlich in Letchworth. He obtained his M.A. Cantabriensis in philosophy (known in Cambridge as Moral Sciences). He is convinced that philosophical disciplines, especially logic (not Aristotelean logic, but symbolic logic of Bertrand Russell and linguistic logic of Ludwig Wittgenstein) helped him form his own musical style. In order to be “validly non-logical” he had to master the techniques of logic. For a brief period Christou studied orchestration with Lavagnino in Italy; he also spent some time in Zurich, where he became interested in the psychological theories of Dr. Jung, mainly through his brother, a brilliant student of Jung, whose book The Logos of the Soul was published posthumously, after he was killed in an automobile accident. Like Ulysses, Christou eventually returned to Greece, married, and settled on his father’s estate on the island of Chios. It was in Chios,

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Christou says, that he found himself in music, working in his own creative laboratory “like some medieval alchemist.” He continued to maintain a studio in Athens, and frequently traveled to Italy and Switzerland. “I have never held an official position in my life,” Christou writes, “and I never attended a conservatory. I have no degrees in music, never had any orthodox musical training, and I consider myself mainly self-taught. I did try to attend music classes in Cambridge, but I could not stand the academic method of instruction.” Christou’s personal idiom is unlike any other composer’s even though it is not absolutely original. The rhythmic canons, the ingenious displacement of natural accent, the subtle hammering on repeated notes, the fusion of incompatible instrumental colors, the complex but widely dispersed harmonies, the curiously meandering melodies gliding along an imaginary tangent, the sudden eruption of fanfare-like proclamations, all these traits of Christou’s music look and sound familiar, but their ensemble is unique. Perhaps his “medieval alchemy” led him inadvertently to the philosopher’s stone that transmutes the base metals of common devices into musical gold. The name of Yorgo Sicilianos is known to American audiences through a performance of his First Symphony by Dimitri Mitropoulos with the New York Philharmonic on March 1, 1958. He was born in Athens on August 29, 1922 and studied music at the Athens Conservatory, graduating in 1951. He subsequently entered the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome, where he was a student of Pizzetti. In 1955 he received a Fulbright Scholarship, which enabled him to study composition with Walter Piston at Harvard University, with Boris Blacher in Tanglewood, and with Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. He then returned to Athens, where he became active at the Hellenic Broadcasting Institute. There are parallel developments between his early music and that of Jani Christou; both experienced the spell of expansive rhapsodic forms. But Sicilianos adopted a more severe neo-Classical idiom than Christou, and made a transition to more orthodox serial techniques. Chamber music is a natural form of expression for Sicilianos, but not for Christou. If Christou is the Greek Ives, then Sicilianos is the Greek Bartók. Sicilianos writes music of solid substance and polyphonic lucidity. His predilection for works of limited sonorities with an autonomous percussion section is a Bartókian trait. In this respect, his ballet Tanagra, for two pianos and percussion, is characteristic. After a performance in 1958, he arranged it

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for full orchestra, a version that was first performed in Athens on February 5, 1962. This was followed by an extensive work in the same general style, Synthesis, scored for double string orchestra and percussion. It was successfully performed in Athens on November 26, 1962. The list of works composed by Sicilianos during the fifteen years of his creative maturity is impressive. His first significant work, The Revelation of the Fifth Seal, a symphonic poem in a grand rhetorical, oratorical manner, was brought out in Athens on May 11, 1952. A performance of his Concerto for Orchestra took place in Athens in 1954. His three string quartets demonstrate his ability in modern polyphonic writing. Sicilianos writes this about himself, using third person singular: “Sicilianos belongs to that group of musicians who believe in a renovation of Greek music and who, having freed themselves from the narrow folkloric tradition created by the former generation of Greek composers, are following contemporary musical trends with the conviction that the music of our time, as an artistic manifestation, has abandoned the framework of the so-called national school, and has acquired a more universal and more human character.” The “former generation of Greek composers,” to which Sicilianos alludes, was bound to the Italian tradition. Its most outspoken representative was Manolis Kalomiris, the grand old man of Greek music, who wrote operas and symphonies in a fine Italian style. He died in 1962, and with him died the Greek dependence on Italian operatic models. If the oldest generation of Greek composers gravitated towards Italy, their immediate successors turned their sights on Paris. Georges Poniridis, who was born in Constantinople in 1892, went to Paris to study with Vincent d’Indy, became completely Parisianized, and even published a collection of erotic poems in French. His music presents a fusion of Greek modalities with Impressionistic harmonies. Particularly interesting are his works of the latest period, in which he makes use of dodecaphonic structures in a tonal or bitonal context. Petro Petridis, born in Asia Minor in 1892, had a brief moment of modified glory in the 1920s when some of his symphonic pieces had scattered performances in Europe. He studied with Albert Roussel in Paris and adopted a neo-Classical style of strong polyphonic texture. After he returned to Greece, he wrote a powerful oratorio and pieces in Greek folk modes. A man of cosmopolitan culture, a linguist (he can recite Homer in

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the original for hours), Petridis finds himself unjustly suspended between two musical worlds, that of traditional Classicism and obsolescent modernism. But with a favorable shift in world esthetics, his music may yet enjoy a revival. It is good music, and there is no reason why it should not become more widely known. Dimitri Levidis (1886–1951) lived most of his life in Paris, and was naturalized as a French citizen, esthetically as well as legally, for his music assimilated the technique of French Impressionism to the full. Also French-oriented was Emil Riadis (1890–1935), who had some lessons with Ravel, and wrote a number of pieces reflecting Ravel’s influence. Greek composers of the middle generation, chronologically encompassed within the 20th century, should be mentioned. Antiochos Evanghelatos, born in 1904, is a distinguished pedagogue, as well as composer of a number of effective works in various genres. Theodore Karyotakis, born in 1903, was a student of Mitropoulos; he wrote music for the theater, some symphonic pieces, and choral works. Finally, the name of Dimitri Mitropoulos himself ought to be included among modern Greek composers, for he wrote a fine Debussyan opera and many sensitive songs. With Skalkottas, the needle of the Hellenic musical compass shifted to the north, to Vienna. Several Greek composers of his generation experienced a similar change of orientation, starting out with stylized Greek dances and later adopting, integrally or partially, the dodecaphonic credo. Such was the case of Yiannis Papaioannou. He was born in Kavala on January 5, 1910. He studied at the Conservatory of Athens, and subsequently took lessons with Honegger in Paris. His early programmatic symphonic works—Poem of the Forest (1942), Pygmalion (1951), Hellas (1956)—followed the golden mean of acceptable modern music, but in his Fourth Symphony, composed in 1962, and in his Quartet for flute, clarinet, guitar, and cello, written in the same year, he asserts himself as a serial composer. In this music the intervallic scheme becomes angular, tonal connotations disappear, rhythmic figures branch out in asymmetrical patterns, and the instrumentation assumes a spastic character. Indeed, orthodox dodecaphony is here superseded by serialism rooted in the music of Webern. A very active group of Greek composers born in the 1930s, to whom dodecaphony is pre-natal, and even obsolescent, is represented by the names of Yannis Ioannidis, Theodor Antoniou, and Stephanos Gazouleas.

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Yannis Ioannidis was born in Athens on June 8, 1930. He studied organ and composition in Vienna. His early works—Piano Sonata (1959), String Quartet (1961), Triptych for orchestra (1962)—adhere to a greater or lesser extent to Schoenberg’s practices. But his Duo for violin and piano, written in 1962, veers away from strict dodecaphony to free atonality, thus reversing the historical course of modern music. He explains this retreat by his conviction that “atonality, as a system of absolute equality and independence of all twelve tones, insuring an unlimited number of harmonic combinations, is self-sufficient.” Theodor Antoniou was born in Athens in 1935. He studied violin and composition there; in 1961 he went to Munich, where he continued his study at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik. His music is serial but not necessarily atonal. In this respect, his Concertino for piano, strings, marimba, vibraphone, kettledrums, and other percussion instruments, is most unusual. It starts out with a supremely tonal interplay of the tonic, supertonic, and dominant in unison, in the plainest G major. The basic tone-row grows out of this figure by a simple additive process. The rhythm is organized serially at a different rate of distribution of stresses from that of the cumulative tone-row, so that each individual note of the theme is stressed as the tone-row is gradually integrated. There are three movements; in the second movement the process of serialization is intervallic, and in the third movement the rhythmic parameter is the prime thematic impulse. In his orchestral Antitheses, Antoniou applies a different technique to each of its three movements, and their titles suggest these contrasting styles: Pedal-Melos, Lines-Spaces, Planes-Points. His Epilogue, written in 1963, is serially organized in most of its elements, and the score contains an aleatory episode in which the conductor gives only entrance cues, and the players improvise along prescribed notes, with the rhythms and octave positions free. The piece, to a text from The Odyssey, is scored for mezzo-soprano, speaker, oboe, horn, guitar, piano, double bass, and percussion. Stephanos Gazouleas, born in Larissa in 1931, studied with Hanns Jelinek in Vienna, and acquired from him a thorough technique of twelvetone composition. Esthetically, his main influence is the music of Anton Webern. His Six Lyric Pieces for flute and piano, written in 1962, are congenial imitations of Webern’s poetic miniatures. His other works reflect an affinity with Skalkottas; of these, his 11 Aphorisms for piano are modern evocations of Romantic moods.

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An interesting attempt to organize ancient Greek melos according to modern serial ideas is made by Arghyris Kounadis in his orchestral work Chorikon. Kounadis was born of Greek parents in Constantinople on February 14, 1924. Having completed his primary musical education in Athens, he received a fellowship from the Greek government to continue his studies in Germany, where he became a student of Wolfgang Fortner. It was Fortner who conducted the first performance of Chorikon, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, on May 15, 1962. The work is in four movements, with characteristic titles: Melos, Strophe, Antistrophe, and Epilogue. The thematic elements of the score are derived from a dodecaphonic series, which is articulated into two quasi-symmetrical tropes, covering, in its original form, the range of an augmented octave. The inner notes of each trope are permutated, generating two subsidiary tone-rows. The series appears in inversion and retrograde motion, and is integrated into the harmonic structure. In contrapuntal development Kounadis applies the principles of heterophony, which, according to his observation, underlies the melodic formations of modern Greek folksongs. Furthermore, he distinguishes three types of heterophony: canonic, i.e., diagonal; monophonic, i.e., linear; and harmonic, i.e., vertical. Kounadis is a versatile composer. He writes theater music for performances of ancient Greek tragedies, using archaic modes, and instrumental works in an ultra-modern idiom. Of the latter, his Triptychon for flute and chamber orchestra (1964) is of importance. He also experiments in Webern-like instrumental sonorities, as exemplified by a trio for flute, viola, and guitar composed in 1958. Among Greek modernists, the curious figure of Manos Hadzidakis stands apart. Curious, because he started out as a composer of witty modernistic piano pieces, but achieved fame as the author of the theme song for the Greek film, The Children of Pireus, released in France under the title Jamais le dimanche, and in America as Never on Sunday. Hadzidakis was born in Xanthi, Macedonia, on October 23, 1925, received academic education in Greece, and published, as his op. 1, a piano suite, under the title For a Little White Seashell. The second movement of this suite is named Conversation with Serge Prokofiev, and it catches the spirit of Prokofiev’s polymodality very nicely. It was inevitable that Greek music should have taken an Icarus-like flight into the ultimate dimension of space-time, proceeding on a stochastic course. Stochastic is the key word in the hyper-sophisticated

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circles of musical innovators of the second half of the century. It denotes a variable function determined by random phenomena in time. In other words, stochastic music is aleatory. The prime apostle and protagonist of stochastic composition is Ianis Xenakis. He was born, of Greek parentage, in Braila, Rumania, on May 22, 1922, and studied engineering in Athens. Upon graduation, he joined the studio of Le Corbusier in Paris, and worked with him on architectural projects for twelve years. It was not until Xenakis was nearly thirty years old that he undertook serious musical studies. He enrolled in the class of Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory, and also took lessons with Honegger and Milhaud. Bypassing Schoenbergian dodecaphony and Webernian serialism, Xenakis began writing music according to the mathematical theories of sets and calculus of probability. The titles of his works indicate his preoccupation with scientific concepts. Thus, Pithoprakta for orchestra connotes the idea of “probable realization” (the first half of the word means probable in modern Greek, and the second half is obviously cognate with the word practical). Pithoprakta was first performed in Munich on March 8, 1957, and had an American performance at one of Leonard Bernstein’s avant-garde programs with the New York Philharmonic. The title of another work by Xenakis, Achorripsis, scored for twenty-one instruments, is derived from the word for sound in modern Greek and the plural of the word for jet. The music is then, according to Xenakis, a spray of sounds, a sonorous radiation, a stream of musical electrons. In 1962 Xenakis wrote two pieces for the IBM 7090 electronic computer. He programmed the music specifying duration and density of “sound events,” leaving the parameters of pitch, velocity, and dynamics to the computer. The first piece is entitled Morsima-Amorsima, with an affix ST/4–1, 030762, which is deciphered as Stochastic Music for 4 Performers, No. 1, completed on the 3rd day of the 7th month of the year No. 62 in the present century. Its duration is calculated to be in the vicinity of ten minutes, but it can be stochastically expanded or contracted. The second piece is Amorsima-Morsima, and its affix is ST/10–2, 080262, which signifies Stochastic Music for 10 Performers, No. 2. According to the symbol, it was completed on the 8th day of the 2nd month of 1962, that is, earlier than No. 1. Both pieces were played for the first time at a rather memorable concert given at the Technological Institute of Athens on December 16, 1962, sponsored and financed by, of all people, Manos Hadzidakis, the composer of Never on Sunday. And it was conducted by

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Lukas Foss, no mean aleatorist himself. For future archivists it should be noted that the official Greek program carries the wrong date, December 16, 1961, on its title page. Since the program states that the concert took place on the Day of the Lord (kyriaki) and since December 16, 1962 was a Sunday, and since many of the works played at this concert were composed in 1962, the error of the date of this computerized concert is patent. For the 1963 Festival of Contemporary Music in Venice, Xenakis contributed a piece for two orchestras and two conductors, entitled Stratégie. The strategy consists in antiphonal wrestling. The conductors are given “parameters” of duration and intensity; strategic meetings are held at cadential fermatas, at the end of each of the nineteen divisions of the piece. The audience decides by acclamation which conductor and which orchestra overwhelmed which. The degree of vociferation of individual members of the audience enters as a stochastic factor. At its first performance on April 23, 1963, Bruno Maderna was an easy winner against his less known rival. Stochastic music requires special symbolic notation, in which curves of probability point to the occurrence or non-occurrence of a sound event, and the thickness of terraced lines corresponds to the optimum loudness. This type of “optical notation” is now employed by probabilistic composers all over the world. Several composers of the Greek avant-garde have settled, more or less permanently, in Germany. Of these, the name of Nikos Mamangakis is beginning to be known. He was born in Rethymnon, Crete, on March 3, 1929, and studied with Carl Orff and Harald Genzmer. In his music he adopts numerical sets as thematic complexes which determine the parameters of the entire composition. Because an arithmetical series can be infinitely varied, one such composition is unlike any other that has a different numerical matrix. Monologue for unaccompanied cello, which Mamangakis wrote in 1962, is based on the set of numbers 7, 5, 8, 9, 2, which determines the principal parameters, making the music unique. George Tsouyopoulos was born in Athens on October 11, 1930. He studied with Hindemith in Zurich. In 1957 he settled in Munich, and joined the cosmopolitan avant-garde there. He strives to achieve a total organization of serializable elements, but he is circumspect about free improvisation. His Music for Percussion, composed in 1959, is serialized according to seven parameters: 1) spatial placement of sound, that is, pitch;

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2) time structure of sound, that is, rhythm; 3) instrumental timbre; 4) dynamics in three levels, corresponding to forte, mezzo-forte, and piano; 5) sound density; 6) duration of pauses; 7) dodecaphonic linearity. The serial rows of these factors are not synchronous, so that multiple interpenetrations result. Tsouyopoulos emphasizes that the unfolding of each row may continue ad infinitum, and that there is therefore no concrete end of the work; nor, he adds as an afterthought, can there be any beginning, for the whole composition represents an event placed between two asymptotes. Music for Percussion contains 95 measures in all, but Tsouyopoulos puts the word “end” in quotation marks over measure 95, thus suggesting an open end and an indefinite continuation. Music for Percussion represents the latest stage in the development of Tsouyopoulos. His earlier works are still safely neo-Classical, according to the tenets of Hindemith. In this style he wrote two string quartets, a Sinfonietta for eight instruments, and some vocal music. His Sérenata for voice, flute, viola, and guitar (1957) discloses Webernian traits. Anestis Logothetis came to music through painting. He was born in Burgas, Bulgaria, of Greek parents, on October 27, 1921. He studied art in Greece and in Vienna, exhibited a series of “polymorphic graphs” in art galleries, and then used these drawings as symbolic musical notation. He states: “As a result of research, I came to the conclusion that appropriate graphic representations of sound can be used as psychological associations between the visual impression and its rendering in sound. Such graphs then become catalysts that release multiple transformations and combinations of actual sounds, providing a stimulus to performers to produce music.” He points out that, given such latitude of interpretation of his polymorphic graphs, there exists an infinity of possible integrations of the differential points and curves in “graphic music.” The titles of his graphs are significant: Cycloid, Culmination, Coordination, Expansion-Contraction, Impulse (quantitative), Impulse (qualitative), Interpolation, Catalyzation, Parallax, Texture-Structure, Concatenation, Centrifugal. George Leotsakos, born in Athens in 1935, studied oriental languages, and became interested in expressing the poetic brevity of Japanese Haiku verses in atonal music. His cycle of songs to the texts of Haiku poems, each of which has three lines and 17 syllables, is written in dissonant counterpoint, but the melorhythmic outline is as precise as the Japanese form itself.

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The parallelism between the trends of new Greek music and modernistic developments elsewhere in the world is obvious, and parallel lines do meet in global geometry. But Greek composers strive to relate the abstract concepts of modern music to the modalities and the ethos of ancient Hellas. It is to be hoped that their stochastic asymptotes will lead them towards a fruitful synthesis of the new and the old, of the national and the cosmopolitan.

10. MUSIC FOR A T W E N T I E T H - C E N T U RY V I O L I N I S T

My favorite quotation concerning American music as observed from the foreign shores is the one published in Paris in Le Guide du Concert in 1948: “America is no longer an un-musical nation; she numbers some 50 composers of talent.” Well, by now the number must be multiplied a hundredfold, and it is rather difficult to compile a florilegium of contemporary composers representing all the most important genera of the modern idiom, from the neo-Baroque to the far-out. The present collection ranges in age categories from those born in 1885 to those born in 1938. Whatever idiom each of these composers employs, whether tonal, atonal, polytonal, diatonic, pandiatonic or dodecaphonic, the music has in each case its own physiognomy. Let us examine and analyze the fourteen American composers in the order they appear in this album. Ralph Shapey is a Philadelphian, born on March 12, 1921. His principal teacher in composition was Stefan Wolpe who instructed him in the art of modern counterpoint. But Shapey did not become an ivorytower composer; he is also active as conductor and teacher. His present positions include the prestigious post as professor of music at the University of Chicago and Music Director of the Contemporary Chamber Players, also in Chicago. Shapey’s list of works includes a variety of categories, from solo pieces to full symphony orchestra. His Evocation for violin with percussion and piano was composed in 1959, and first performed in New York City on March 26, 1960. It is a fantastically

Ch. 10: originally published as liner notes for Music for a Twentieth-Century Violinist, An Anthology of Three Decades of American Music, 1940–1950–1960, issued by CMS Records, New York, 1974.

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involved piece, and the percussion section is treated with the ultraBartókian subtlety; it includes a low gong, three tom-toms, bass drum, high and low cymbals, high woodblock, medium gamelan and a snaredrum. The notation used in his work is ultra-modern, but the traditional pentagram, the five-line staff, is retained in the violin and piano parts. The idiom is dodecaphonic without a rigid adherence to the Schoenbergian doctrine. The dodecaphonogenic intervals of the minor second (or minor ninth) and the major seventh form the structural skeleton of the violin solo. A clear thematic statement, mostly in double-stops in the violin solo, takes in all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, and the mood indication is marked “with intense majesty.” The violin is intermittently accompanied by drums and cymbals, gongs and tom-toms, to which are added the “white noises” in the tone-clusters in the extreme registers of the piano. The violin thus appears as the cybernetic leader, operating within the dodecaphonic environment, while the percussion and the piano supply the fluctuating dynamic elements. The second section of Shapey’s Evocation is an animated piece of music, marked “with humor.” It is a scherzo, with the lambent violin providing a series of scintillating figurations across the fingerboard. The thematic intervals, so acutely dissonant on the previous pages, here are broken into a series of atonal passages. The attentive listening ear can even perceive a tonal center on G. The piano maintains a toccata-like movement in sixteenth-notes as a constant stencil for the rhythmically ambulating violin. The third section begins in an elegiac mood, marked explicitly “with tenderness.” The violin is instructed to put on a mute and play “poco vibrato.” The melodic line in the violin continues to cultivate the acute atonal intervals, but there are no double-stops, and the impression is that of tranquillity. The work concludes with a coda, returning to the opening mood, “with intense majesty.” The violin is left alone to play a cadenza ending on a double stop on the interval of a quarter-tone, the only time a fractional interval is used in this work. Shapey has this to say about the philosophical and technical antecedents of his Evocation: “In my music, the initial space-time image generates through expansions of itself all textures and a structural totality. Through permutations of this image I continue, rather than destroy, its state of being. . . . Within a work the initial image will explode into its own various states of being, juxtaposed against itself in ever new focuses. These new states become the new proportions. By extending, contracting,

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verticalizing, inverting, redeploying, refocusing of the material, the same state of being and its varied phases can move on diverse time and space differentials.” Wallingford Riegger commands attention and respect in American music, not only as a composer, but as a man of courage, a pioneer of the American intellect. He was born in Albany, Georgia, on April 29, 1885. His mother was a semi-professional pianist; his father played the violin. Riegger studied composition with that formidable pedant Percy Goetschius in New York, and took up cello with Alwin Schroeder. During Riegger’s young years, aspiring American musicians gravitated towards the fountainhead of musical culture, imperial Germany. Riegger went to Berlin, where he studied at the renowned Hochschule für Musik; he also did some opera conducting in Germany during the early years of World War I. When America entered the war, Riegger returned to the United States, and became active as an orchestra cellist and teacher. His musical mind was, to use the title of one of his remarkable compositions, a dichotomy. He was equally capable of writing didactic pieces for beginners, and at the same time composing works of profound musical significance. So prolific was he in his lesser epiphany that he had to devise a number of pseudonyms to keep his publishers busy (among them William Richards, Walter Scotson, Gerald Wilfring Gore, John H. McCurdy, George Northrup, Robert Sedgwick, Leonard Gregg, Edwin Farell, Edgar Long). When the Russian inventor Leon Theremin came to America to demonstrate his electronic instrument, Wallingford Riegger joined him in experimental work, and learned to play an electronic cello. He became closely associated with lves, Varèse, Cowell and Ruggles who were building the new American music of the time. Not as intransigent as lves and Varèse in his musical style, Wallingford Riegger had a number of performances of his symphonic works with respectable orchestras whose conductors did not have to apologize to the critics for playing cacophonous music. Then a dark cloud descended on Riegger. The United States House Committee on Un-American Activities summoned Riegger into its presence to answer charges of having been a recruiting officer for the Communist Party in the district of Manhattan between 45th and 65th streets. He refused to answer the questions, invoking not the defensive Fifth Amendment, but the first, guaranteeing the freedom of beliefs. He challenged the right of the Committee to question his Americanism, recalling that his ancestors came to Kansas to work on the soil and made

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an allusion to the fact that most of his questioners bore distinctly unAmerican names, mostly of middle European extraction. The Committee expressed shock at Riegger’s lack of proper deference, but decided not to send him to jail. Riegger was physically safe, but the Regents of Boston University rescinded an honorary degree that was to be conferred on him, citing the “embarrassment” created by his stand. The circumstances of Riegger’s death were most extraordinary. Taking a walk in New York he became tangled up in the leashes of two dogs taken out by their owners, fell down and sustained a brain concussion. With the aid of his daughter, he managed to make his way to the hospital, but for some reason had to wait several hours for emergency treatment. When he was finally examined and treated it was too late. He fell into a coma and died on April 2, 1961 in New York. Riegger’s Sonatina, op. 39, was written in 1947 for the League of Composers in New York. It is a work of modest dimensions, couched in a contrapuntal style, idiomatically lying on the borderline between tonality and atonality. The thematic emphasis is on major seventh and tritones, those cornerstones of atonal writing, but the form is classical. There are two contrasting movements, and the ending is tranquil. It is difficult to imagine that John Cage is an old bearded man of sixtytwo, but enfants terribles never age, and no more terrible an enfant has been known to épater les bourgeois than Cage. He was born in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles (later abbreviated to the prosaic appellation Los Angeles) on September 5, 1912. He studied traditional piano, but was obviously dissatisfied with just tickling the ivories. Under the powerful influence of Henry Cowell he began systematic experimentation in transmogrifying the defenseless pianoforte, culminating in the inauguration of what he called “Prepared Piano.” The “preparation” consisted in placing on the strings of the grand piano such unpianistic objects as screws, coins, and paperclips. The result of these superimpositions was a change in the timbre of the piano. Piano teachers and music critics were horrified at this outrage, but Cage’s technique was insidious enough to prevail. Even the “Sachteil” of Riemann’s Musik Lexikon, that dignified repository of musicological data devotes an impressively long paragraph to “Prepared Piano.” Among Cage’s more sensational contributions is a piece of disembodied music, entitled 4´33,” in which the pianist sits down and plays nothing. But Cage is not a musical jester; if anything, he sins on the side of solemnity. No matter how we

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examine the Cage phenomenon, he exercises mesmeric influence in the world of music. He rates a column (with a picture) in the Micropaedia section of the 15th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, with seven cross-references to relevant mentions in the Macropaedia, and is described therein as “composer whose work and revolutionary ideas profoundly influenced mid-20th century music.” Cage’s Nocturne for violin and piano was written in 1947. He explains: “In Nocturne an attempt is made to dissolve the difference between string and piano sounds though the convention of melody and accompaniment is maintained. The character of the piece is atmospheric and depends for its performance on a constant rubato and the sustaining of resonances.” The rise of George Crumb has been meteoric, but unlike ordinary meteors, his star is a brilliant nova, which bids fair to remain a permanent fixture in the musical firmament. Crumb was born in Charleston, West Virginia, on October 24, 1929. He went through the regular routines of academic studies, and became a professor of music at the University of Pennsylvania. But his music is anything but traditional. He mobilizes in his works all possible (and quite a few impossible) resources of ultra-modern techniques. The scores of his Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death and Ancient Voices of Children are a veritable encyclopedia of modern sonorities. It seems to proclaim with apocalyptic power: “I am Alpha and Omega.” The visual aspect of his scores is forbidding to timid souls, but modern performers approach it fearlessly. Crumb supplies the following information for his Four Nocturnes for Violin and Piano (Night Music II): Four Nocturnes (Night Music II) was composed in 1964, while I was living in Boulder, Colorado. The work was first performed on February 3, 1965 in Buffalo, by Paul Zukofsky. On this occasion I was the pianist. Four Nocturnes is a further essay in the quiet nocturnal mood of my Night Music I for soprano, keyboard, and percussion (composed in 1963); hence the subtitle “Night Music II.” The four pieces constituting the work are prefaced with the following indications: Notturno I: Notturno II: Notturno III: Notturno IV:

Serenamente Scorrevole; allegro possible Contemplativo Con un sentimento di nostalgia

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The music is of the utmost delicacy and the prevailing sense of “suspension in time” is only briefly interrupted by the animated and rhythmically more forceful second piece. The sustained lyric idea presented at the beginning of the work, the nervous tremolo effects, and the stylized bird songs are all recurrent elements. In composing the Four Nocturnes I had attempted a modification of the traditional treatment of the violin-piano combination by exploiting various timbral resources of the instruments. Thus a certain integration in sound is achieved by requiring both instruments to produce harmonics, pizzicato effects, rapping sounds (on the wood of the violin; on the metal beams of the piano). The gentle rustling sounds which conclude the work are produced by the application of a percussionist’s wire brush to the strings of the piano.

The music of Peter Mennin is made out of solid rock, hewn into modern shapes without losing its Baroque consistency. He was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, on May 17, 1923, of Italian parents. His real name was Mennini; his older brother, Louis Mennini, who kept the final vowel of his original name, is also a composer. The untroubled progress of Peter Mennin in the world of music makes a Horatio Alger type of story. His musical talent for composition was nurtured by the excellent teachers Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, where he received his Ph.D. The Guggenheim Fellowship beckoned him. He established himself as an excellent teacher. He holds the prestigious post of President of the Juilliard School of Music in New York. Despite the abundance of teaching and administrative work, Mennin continues to compose music prolifically. By 1974 he was the author of eight symphonies and numerous works of chamber music. Mennin’s Sonata Concertante for violin and piano is a cheerful work. The first movement opens with a meditative Sostenuto, before plunging into an Allegro con brio. The action is maintained in pulsating sixteenthnotes, and the ending is in fortissimo. The second movement is Adagio semplice. After a stately beginning, the rhythmic pulse becomes more agitated, and the dynamic level rises to fortissimo in high treble before subsiding to gentle piano. The third and last movement is Allegro con fuoco. It has the character of a syncopated toccata. The “fuoco” continues burning to the end on unison C. Throughout the Sonata Concertante the harmonic idiom maintains an acrid flair of bitonality, but the idiom is never opaque, and the fundamental tonal foundation is seldom compromised.

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Morton Feldman is an established avant-gardist, if such a description is not a contradiction in terms. But how else can one characterize a composer who creates his own establishment out of irreconcilable disestablishmentarianism? Anyway, Feldman’s brand of Avant-gardism is clearly distinguishable from that of others. Feldman derives his inspiration from the abstract expressionism of modern art. In his works he practices the paradoxical art of pre-determined indeterminacies—now you see it, now you don’t. His music leaves considerable choice to the performer’s fancy, but it is not grimly aleatory. At least he indicates a fair approximation of the notes he wants to be played, in high, medium or low ranges and further specifies the number of notes in a basic time unit. He uses either traditional or graphic notation as the spirit moves him. Feldman was born in New York on January 12, 1926. He studied piano with the Russian pianist Vera Press whom he venerated. He dedicated a work to her memory in 1970, entitled simply Mme. Press Died Last Week At Ninety. His teachers in composition were Wallingford Riegger and Stefan Wolpe. The titles of many of Feldman’s compositions reflect his dedication to the ideals of constructivism and abstract expressionism: Durations, Extensions, Projections, Intermissions, Structures. When in doubt, he resorts to statement of identity: Eleven Instruments, scored for 11 instruments; Two Instruments, scored for 2 instruments; or Numbers, scored for several instruments. While modern music of the bygone era was set to overwhelm the audience with deafening sound, Morton Feldman incapacitates his listeners by making music on the threshold of audibility. In his Vertical Thoughts 2 for violin and piano, Feldman prescribes “dynamics very low throughout.” He also specifies that each instrument should enter when the preceding sound begins to fade. “Dolce far niente” is the mood of the piece. Michael Sahl is an amphibious composer. He works with as much enthusiasm in serious forms as in popular music, and in all shades in between. He was born in Boston, on September 2, 1934. His family moved to New York when he was a child. He studied piano and took lessons in composition with Israel Citkowitz and Roger Sessions. He soon realized that to get performances required a combination of luck, public relations, and pure nerve, the categories in which Michael Sahl found himself deficient. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, he decided to record his compositions on tape. He also discovered that chamber music, and particularly string quartets, were being used extensively for “sweetening”

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on pop albums. This made him less self-conscious about writing a string quartet, the type of composition that seemed to him too sacrosanct to be treated lightly. He finally decided that two violins, viola and cello in condominium were just instruments, and you could use them any way you liked. Sahl admits that his sudden awareness of this freedom of musical action made his String Quartet which he wrote in 1969 sound oldfashioned in spots. He also makes a declaration of enlightened eclecticism: “I am very attached to the music of Copland, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Vaughan Williams, Sibelius, Bartók, as well as to the music of Ives, Stravinsky and Schoenberg.” To this mixed bag he adds: “I have been much inspired and encouraged by the music of Gershwin and Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter as well as by Appalachian folk music and the jazz of the fifties.” To an observer outside of the Sahl orbit, his Quartet reveals few of these alleged multifaceted influences. In fact, it looks and sounds like an original work. The feature that attracts attention in the score is a cornucopia of drones, upon which are deployed thematic variants of the principal diatonic subject. And there is an intriguing transformation of a six-note violin figure by gradual microtone alteration, until, after some 20 variants, it is reduced to another figure without changing its descending design. Curious. Of all modern composers who populated the area of Manhattan during the flamboyant 1930’s, there was no spirit more blithe than Henry Brant, who existed in a constant state of seething. He was born in Montreal on September 15, 1913 and received the rudiments of musical theory and practice from his father. He moved to New York as a youth and took lessons in composition with Wallingford Riegger and Copland. In time he corralled in a couple of Guggenheim Fellowships. From his earliest essays in composition he tried to expand the dimensional continuum of the art of music. Accordingly, Brant made a move into the world of musical stereometry where the position of performers in space is of thematic importance. He expounds his ideas in this regard in an article “Space as an Essential Aspect of Musical Composition,” published in the 1967 collection, Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music. He acknowledges his debt to The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives, in which the strings, the flutes and the trumpet solo are placed in three different sections of the hall and stage and pursue their own independent tempi. Brant’s brand of space is also peculiarly American; the titles of some of his works are indicative of this topical aspect: Whoopee in D

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Major, Downtown Suite, The Marx Brothers, 5 & 10c Store Music, County Fair, Grand Universal Circus, and a number of pieces of jazz inspiration. In the score of his Kitchen Music he includes bottles and tincans. On the other side of the ledger, Brant picks up scientific subjects, as in his Encephalograms 2, Galaxy, and Ice Age. Brant’s Quombex for viola d’amore and music boxes, written in 1960, was inspired by Margaret Stark’s sculpture “Bird with Passenger,” a work which is part of Brant’s own art collection. The avian character of the piece is graphically expressed by soaring passages in alternating tritones and perfect fourths, making for a nice atonal design, interrupted here and there by disparate chirps on a stationary note. In fact the dynamic and rhythmic elements in Quombex suggest Schumann’s Der Vogel als Prophet. But what is Quombex? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Superbrant. Stefan Wolpe belongs in the pantheon of tragic German-American philosophers of music. His life contains the elements of titanic struggle against the world of darkness, an escape from the Nazi monster, a refuge in America, and a peaceful existence among his friends and loyal disciples. But even in America, tragedy pursued him when his house with his manuscripts and a cherished art collection burned down. He was left without funds, and once again, had to call on friends for help. Wolpe was born in Berlin on August 25, 1902. He studied with the renowned composer Franz Schreker. When the Nazi goosesteps began making their abominable music, Wolpe fled Germany, went to Palestine, and eventually settled in America. He died in New York on April 4, 1972. Wolpe’s works had a hard time finding sympathetic performers, perhaps because of the uncompromising structuralism of his music. In his essay “Thinking Twice,” published in the collection Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, he expounds with considerable persuasive force his tenets in musical composition. He speaks of a “multi-dimensional musical space,” invokes the necessity of attaining a maximum amount of combinatorial flexibility in a series, concluding that “the crystallizing and interconnecting of everfreshly-conceived, generated, released aspects is precisely what keeps it from being stagnant and dropping dead. Or, to put it differently. . . .” But why put it differently? The statement is profound enough for thinking not just twice, but thrice. Not all of Wolpe’s music sounds as forbidding as his words. His Second Piece for Violin Alone is quite amiable. Its thematic orbit traverses the chromatic tones of the lowest tetrachord available on the G-string of the

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violin before expanding into the outer spaces of major sevenths. The contrast between these intervallic groupings imparts a musico-philosophical meaning to the music, while its rhythmic variety provides a certain vitality of motion. In an article which I contributed to Henry Cowell’s collection American Composers on American Music published in 1933, I said, seeking a summarizing phrase, that Walter Piston is the builder of the modern academic idiom in American music. This glib definition has been quoted through the years in various reference works and program notes, much to my embarrassment and to Piston’s annoyance. But is academism wrong per se? Not necessarily. If we accept this characterization of Piston as a working hypothesis, it may even be helpful. For what other American composer of great envergure, to use a convenient French word, can qualify for the position of a master-builder of symphonic and chamber music? Piston was born in Rockland, Maine, on January 20, 1894; his grandfather was an Italian named Pistone. Piston studied art and violin. He then took courses in composition at Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude. Later he made a ritual pilgrimage to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, the nourrice of so many American composers of Piston’s generation. Returning to America, Piston became professor of music at Harvard University, a post he retained until 1960. Piston’s idiom of composition may be broadly described as neo-classical, but beginning about 1965, he evinced an unexpected interest in the 12-tone method of composition. The thematic exposition of Piston’s Eighth Symphony is definitely dodecaphonic. Piston wrote his Sonatina for violin and harpsichord or piano in 1945. It is in three movements, Allegro leggiero, Adagio espressivo, and Allegro vivo. In this work Piston follows the characteristic formula of the Baroque period. Although he had long abandoned explicit key signatures, the tonality here is clearly outlined, the outer movements gravitating towards B flat major, and the inner slow movement to A minor. The texture is contrapuntal and transparent; there are some fine canonic passages. Since the keyboard part is designed for the harpsichord of the Baroque era, the range is kept rigorously within the limits of classical usage. Roger Sessions enjoys tremendous respect among American musicians as a man of great knowledge and culture. Among other accomplishments, he is a linguist, fluent not only in German, French and Italian, but also in

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Russian. But universal respect attached to his name does not, unfortunately, guarantee frequent performances of his music. Indeed, it is a rare occasion when one of his eight symphonies or other major works figures on a concert program. Partial explanation of this deficiency is that his music is tremendously difficult to play. His remarkable Violin Concerto had to wait years before it was finally brought to performance, and even then there were murmurs of discontent among symphony subscribers who hardly relished the angularities of its idiom. Roger Sessions was born in Brooklyn on December 28, 1896. He studied at Harvard and Yale, and took lessons in composition with Ernest Bloch in Cleveland. As a recipient of various grants he spent several years in Italy and Germany. Returning to America, he became a teacher highly regarded in the institutions of musical learning, from Princeton to Berkeley. In the meantime he composed industriously, each consecutive work being a thesis in musical styles and techniques. He found it useful to apply the method of composition with 12 tones in order to secure a firm organization of his music. But he never relinquished the tonal foundation, and was not even averse to using key signatures when tonality appeared dominant. His Duo for violin and piano, composed in 1942, is set in one continuous movement. The opening Andante moderato, tranquillo ed espressivo is a prelude to an explosive Allegro impetuoso. The initial Andante returns for a brief reminiscence, and after a moment of hesitant expectancy, the music rushes into fiery Allegro vivace e con fuoco. The texture throughout the work is robust and dissonant, tonal but constantly in flux. Each principal section maintains a strong rhythmic pulse, mostly in passages of eighthnotes and in eighth-note triplets, until the finale in which rapid motion in sixteenth-notes is prevalent. Considering the uncompromisingly dissonant idiom of the music, it is interesting that Sessions chooses to use definite key signatures, four flats, followed by five sharps and returning to four flats again, even though he is compelled to cancel the prescribed flats and sharps time and again as the musical current departs from the set tonality. The finale bears the key signature of one sharp, and the ending on the descending fifth in the bass of the piano part seems indeed to suggest the key of G major. In fact, the interval of a perfect fifth in downward motion is of thematic importance in this Duo. Some Ph.D. aspirant ought to write a thesis entitled, “The role of the descending perfect fifth in the tonal structure of the music of Roger Sessions.”

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Milton Babbitt was born in Philadelphia, on May 10, 1916. He studied concurrently mathematics and music. He is the grand prêtre of integral serialism. In fact, it can be chronologically demonstrated that he was the first to “organize” serially all parameters of musical composition, including pitches, note values, intervals, rhythms, instrumental timbres and dynamics. Being a mathematician, he tackled the problem of serialism using the theory of sets. He adopted Schoenberg’s method of composition with 12tones as part of the set theory. The development of the electronic synthesizer at the Princeton Research Center gave Babbitt an opportunity to connect the procedures of musical composition with mathematical sets. He was appointed consultant in the building of a new advanced synthesizer and finally became a member of the committee in charge of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In his theoretical writings he has elaborated a special terminology needed for analysis of contemporary works. Apart from compositions for traditional media, Babbitt has programmed a number of special works on tape to be performed on the synthesizer. Babbitt composed Sextets for violin and piano in 1966. The title, in plural, may appear paradoxical, but it refers to the sextuple parameters of the work. In Babbitt’s own words: “The polyphonic structures are represented instrumentally, timbrally (as different modes of tone color within the instrumental source), registrally, articulatively, dynamically or by any combination of these means.” Babbitt adds: “The deliberately alphabetical order of the instruments in the title should suggest that the various distributions of the ‘voices’ within the constant ‘sextet’ create changes in the relative, quantitative dominance between the two instruments.” (The alphabetical order here refers to the listing of the piece as being for piano and violin, rather than for violin and piano.) The texture of the music indicates the total emancipation of dissonance, with the familiar dodecaphonic birthmark of the major seventh being the generating interval. Even a mere glance at the score reveals a serialism of multiple dimensions, indicated by the use of differentiated dynamic degrees of pianissimo, pianississimo, pianissississimo and pianississississimo, as well as fortissimo, fortississimo, fortissississimo and fortississississimo. (What superviolinist, what hyper-pianist can make an audible difference between ppp and pppp?) But let us return to Babbitt’s original exegesis: “The five ‘parallel’ sections or areas into which this onemovement work essentially divides from the standpoint of coextensive

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progressions through pitch-aggregate formations probably are initially most easily recognized and differentiated through such redistributions; thus the first section is ‘dominated’ by the piano, the second is still piano dominant but less so, the third is instrumentally ‘equal’ while the fourth is dominated by the violin, as is the fifth, but less so, reflecting in these ‘background’ terms an exact interchange of the roles of the instruments in the initial section. Within each section there are similar redispositions of ‘voice’ representation by alterations in the mode of sound production or articulation by the individual instruments. It should be apparent that the ‘parallel’ sections are in no complete sense, or even in a single musical dimension, total repetitions; rather they may be heard as variations of familiarly transformed consecutions of similarly deployed set-segments and harmonic collections (of which the segments are components) compositionally interpreted and reinterpreted by—among others—the modes previously mentioned.” Amen. Arthur Berger was born in New York on May 15, 1912. His principal study was with Walter Piston at Harvard University. Then he made a journey to Paris for study with Nadia Boulanger, who sternly repressed his incipient Schoenbergian proclivities and inculcated him in the pandiatonic doctrine of Stravinsky’s neo-classical period. Upon his return to America, Berger was active as a teacher, music critic, and, of course, composer. Gradually, he shed the Stravinskyan mold and returned to his first Schoenbergian love. His Duo No. 2 for violin and piano, written in 1950 belongs to the neo-classical period. It is in two sections, marked Semplice and Moderato Grazioso. The generative rhythm of the opening is in tranquil eighth-notes in 4/4 time. The mood is pastoral, and the writing is in diatonically pure white notes. The music becomes agitated towards the middle, with rapid figures flying across from the violin to the piano part, and back. Then the initial mood returns, and there is a brief formal coda. The second section is in alla breve, with the eighth-notes still being the formative elements. The character is dance-like, suggesting a ballerina in search of a Russian ballet company, meanwhile showing off her expertise in pointes and pirouettes. The cadence is gentle, undisturbed by the dissonant fourth inserted in the tonic of F major. Harvey Sollberger was born in Cedar Rapids, lowa, on May 11, 1938. He studied flute in his home town and later took courses in composition with Jack Beeson and Otto Luening at Columbia University. In his own works he takes his point of departure from the established Schoenbergian

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precepts developing in the direction of integral serialism à la Milton Babbitt, with note values, registers, instrumental timbres and dynamics all ordained according to their proper serial differentiation. With Charles Wuorinen and other kindred spirits, Sollberger organized concerts of avant-garde music in New York and elsewhere, officiating as conductor and flute player. His expertise on the flute is of the highest order; his facility in the modern idiom and felicity of interpretation are hors concours. No wonder that so many young composers are tempted to write special works for Sollberger. Sollberger composed his Solos in 1962; the work is scored for violin, flute, clarinet, horn, double-bass and piano. Sollberger describes his work as follows: “I think of Solos as a large single-movement work which divides quite clearly into three main sections. The two outer sections, which together might be heard to form a continuous piece but for the ‘interruption’ of the scherzo-like middle section, constitute the bulk of the work. The relation of the violin to the other instruments is fluid and constantly changing, ranging from 1) the violin’s assimilation into the ensemble to 2) its participation in little chamber music interludes (such as the ‘violin and piano sonata’ early in the first section) to 3) traditional solo-tutti confrontations. The work as a whole is bound together by periodic restatements of refrain material which first occurs in the opening measures.”

1 1 . I N T RO D U C T I O N [ TO T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y M U S I C ] The 20th century marked a revolution in the style and technique of musical composition greater than in any century before. This revolution can be summarized in three main points: emancipation of dissonance, departure from tonality and development of asymmetrical meters and rhythms. Until the very end of the 19th century, the unbreakable rule of composition was that each separate, individual section, each movement and certainly the complete work itself had to terminate on a perfect triad—a major triad in most cases, a minor triad in certain cases. Major triads were in the majority and minor triads in the minority. In classical music, if this term is applied to all music before 1900, the terminal point had to be on the tonic of the original key or on the tonic of a relative key. So firm was this unspoken rule that Richard Strauss made a joke of it in one of his songs, which ended in a tonality other the initial key. He provided an alternate ending to the piece in the initial key, with a sly footnote: “This ending is to be used for all performances given before 1900.” Instances could be found in old music when a composition would end on the dominant seventh chord, a marked dissonance that could not be tolerated in its naked state. But in such cases there was always a sequel, which provided a proper resolution into the tonic triad. A bold Russian innovator, Vladimir Rebikov, defied the musical establishment by ending his little opera The Christmas Tree on the augmented triad, technically a discord, although it consists of two concords—to wit, major thirds. Then on the threshold of the 20th century, the musical ground began to shift.

Ch. 11: originally published as the introduction to Twentieth Century Music by Richard Burbank, Facts on File Publications, New York, 1984.

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First these shifts appeared in spontaneously generated popular music; ragtime players would add a major sixth to the obligatory major triad for a concluding concord. Acousticians philosophized that this major sixth above the concluding major triad, usually occurring in the treble, was not a dissonance at all but actually a 27th overtone of the fundamental tonic. This explanation begs the question. Our tuning does not follow the pure series of overtones, and the extra high note would be off the overtone series by a substantial microtonal interval. Another few years elapsed, and the instinctive, untutored and unprejudiced pianists of the ragtime era began adding the major seventh to the final chord, invariably in the major mode. Now, a major seventh is a striking dissonance, so what is it doing masquerading as a member of the concluding harmony? Well, the major seventh, when sufficiently distanced from the fundamental tone, is its 15th overtone! Since it is theoretically a part of the overtone series, it is as good a consonance as any. Later a major ninth was added, always in the high treble, to the terminal major triad; it forms an even closer member of the overtone series than the added sixth or the seventh: It is the ninth overtone of the fundamental tone! The natural corollary was to add both the 9th overtone and the 27th overtone and arrange them in a euphonious chord formation. Counting for convenience’s sake from the fundamental low C (C, G, E, A, D), this typical terminal chord was used by ragtime players and by their successors, jazz and rock musicians. Among so-called classical composers who knew what they were doing, such terminal dissonances came into vogue simultaneously with the instinctual and academically untutored jazz players. The pioneer in this revolution was Claude Debussy. He was apt to write these taunting and provocative formations on the white keys of the piano keyboard. He also began adding notes to the common dominant seventh chords. Then came Alexander Scriabin. He knew little of Debussy and even less of American ragtime music. He was not interested in acoustics or in the science of overtones. Rather, he was fascinated by expanding the realm of chords built on perfect and augmented fourths as some sort of ethereal suspensions over the major dominant chord. These enhanced dominant seventh chords could be traced to Richard Wagner’s chromatic harmonies, but Scriabin liked to attribute a mystical origin to them. In his poetic piano piece entitled Desir, he uses a chord combining an augmented fourth with two perfect fourths (C, F-sharp, B, E). From there it is only a small step

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to his “mystic chord,” which he set as a sort of extraterrestrial basic chord for his “Poem of Fire,” Prometheus. Scriabin’s mystic chord is (starting on C) C, F-sharp, B-flat, E, A, D. To make this chord understandable, it suffices to lead the F-sharp up a semitone to G and the A up a semitone to B-flat, thus forming an old familiar dominant seventh chord, very Wagnerian-sounding indeed. But what is that F-sharp doing in Scriabin’s mystic chord in the first place? Why it is the 45th overtone of the bass note C, brought down from its ethereal heights to the middle of the piano keyboard. Interestingly enough, jazz players are also apt to add an F-sharp high in the treble, over the deep fundamental tone on C, a fascinating development proving that art (Debussy, Scriabin) follows life (ragtime, jazz). Yet the perfect fourth never appears in the treble of any of these dissonant chords that offended the delicate ears of music critics and academic musicians at the turn of the century. No F ever, no matter how high in the stratospheric treble over the fundamental C! Not in Debussy, not in any of his followers, not in any written or unwritten ragtime or jazz pieces. In 1937, I proposed the term pandiatonicism to describe such enhanced diatonic harmonies and their constituent melodies. The term took root and is now duly enshrined in all music dictionaries and even in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This type of harmony is found in the works of Debussy, Igor Stravinsky and many other composers. Pandiatonic chords are built on perfect fifths, augmented fourths, perfect fourths, sevenths, and also major and minor thirds. A typical pandiatonic chord, containing all seven notes of the scale (usually the major scale) is C, G, D, F, B, E, A. The presence of F lends the chord a feeling of the dominant seventh on the organ point of C. Polytonality (or more strictly, bitonality, for it is rare that more than two different tonalities appear in a harmonic complex) is a natural development in the process of emancipation of dissonance. Fantastic paradoxes and fascinating musical oxymorons result from the most common bitonal combination, that of two major triads placed at a distance of an augmented fourth. The priority of such a combined bitonal form, C major versus F-sharp major, is usually credited to Igor Stravinsky and is in fact often called the “Petroushka chord,” because Stravinsky used it, vertically and horizontally, in the music of his famous ballet. But approximation and eventual coalescence of these two opposed tonalities were a fact of musical life long before Stravinsky. C major and F-sharp

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major lie on the opposite points of the circle of scales, and they are also mutually exclusive in their initial hexachords. The close approximation and the tangential encounter of these two tonalities are found in a number of works by Franz Liszt, Wagner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Modest Mussorgsky. But it was Stravinsky who resolutely put them together, both harmonically and melodically, and in so doing asserted the resulting bitonality. In medieval universities music was a part of the faculty of sciences, and early musicians were concerned primarily with the mathematical foundation of intervals, melodies and chords. The reading of medieval theoretical manuscripts, in their vulgar Latin (vulgar not in the sense of baseness, but in the sense of academic language), provides a lot of innocent merriment. Why is the octave a perfect interval? Because Abraham was circumcised on the eighth (octavo) day. Why is triple time the best of time, as it was regarded in the Middle Ages? Because of the Trinity. Why was the tritone banished from use? Because it was diabolus in musica, the work of Satan. In Bach’s time a student would be punished by a painful strike with a rattan stick across the knuckles for writing a tritone. In free composition the tritone served to depict all kinds of deviltry. When the malevolent giant Fafner in Wagner’s Ring becomes a dragon, he does so with the aid of a diabolical tritone in the bassoon. The irony of fate: The tritone became the cornerstone of polytonality and atonality, accepting the function of a dominant in classical harmony. The inevitable product of chromatic harmony as practiced by Wagner and Liszt was the decay of governing tonality. Attempts had been made by many composers to salvage the modulatory principles of tonality (RimskyKorsakov once used a triple sharp in order to justify the spelling rules of tonal transition), but in vain. The first symptom of this decay was the disappearance of the key signature, that guardian of classical music. No more Symphony in D or Prelude in E-flat! The music staff was denuded of the familiar ladders of sharps and flats. The absence of these accidentals did not mean, of course, that everybody began writing music in C major, but it was a sign that it was no longer necessary to indicate a key if tonalities were to switch in every bar. I propose a designation of euphonious dissonances for tonal combinations that exclude major sevenths, minor ninths and minor seconds—the intervals that have a high degree of tonal interference. By this definition chords formed of whole tones employing tritones, minor

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sevenths, major thirds and major ninths are euphonious dissonances, while chords containing major sevenths, minor ninths and minor seconds are noneuphonious dissonances. The major dominant seventh chords (e.g., C, G, E, B-flat, D) so beloved by Wagner and, after Wagner, by Debussy are euphonious dissonances. The great advantage of euphonious dissonances is that they can be moved in parallel motion, ignoring the resulting consecutive fifths. Noneuphonious dissonances—such as minor seconds, major sevenths and minor ninths—are usable in pandiatonic structures, but they are inexorably confined to a single tonal matrix and cannot be used in parallel motion. In Le Sacre du printemps, Stravinsky makes use of noneuphonious dissonances in scale passages set at a distance of minor ninths, pitting a C major scale against C-sharp major. The name of Stravinsky is often associated with that of Picasso, who abolished the ideal of prettiness, symmetry and optical perspective in his paintings. He would be apt to add an extra eye to a human face just as Stravinsky would add a jarring, noneuphoniously dissonant note to an otherwise peaceful tonal passage. There is a parallel to these artistic events in social life. Crinolines (strict triads) disappeared after Queen Victoria died; corsets (diminished seventh chords) fell into desuetude with the outbreak of World War I; the bra (whole-tone scales) in women and necktie in men followed into oblivion in the wake of World War II. According to Isaac Newton’s third law, every action is followed by an equal and opposite reaction. When musical action reached its greatest accumulation of tonal masses, producing a maximum of decibels, so that the human ear seemed to have reached its limit of tolerance, the wave reversed itself. Composers voluntarily reduced their symphonic and operatic apparatus to a workable minimum. No more super-Wagnerian masses of instruments. No more five-act operas. No more horses on the stage, and no more huge mixed choruses. The new economy took the form of neoclassicism. Suddenly composers discovered new values in old music, especially baroque music. Suddenly the much-used and abused triads acquired a new charm. And even such shopworn devices as the consecutive runs of diminished-seventh chords (they were known in operatic parlance as accorde di stupefazione—the chords of stupefaction—for they were habitually employed in highly dramatic operatic episodes) acquired a new dignity. With the restoration to fashion of baroque music came the revival of the classical art of counterpoint. The last great contrapuntist of the 20th

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century was Max Reger. (He was quite a humorist, quipping that his name was a musical palindrome, for it read the same backwards.) Reger’s revered teacher Hugo Riemann told him in a moment of effusive confidence: “Max, if you want, you can be a second Bach!” Reger did not become a Bach, but he continues to be venerated in Germany. Only Paul Hindemith, among modem composers, admired Reger unequivocally. And perhaps Hindemith was the last great neoclassicist among 20th-century composers, even though he did not shrink from using harsh dissonances. When Richard Strauss heard Hindemith’s earlier chamber music at one of those modern music festivals that sprouted all over Europe after the end of the First World War, he asked him, almost compassionately: “Why do you do this? After all, you have talent.” The emancipation of dissonance in vertical harmony was inexorably followed by the emancipation of tonality in melodic progressions. Why be a slave to the tonic-dominant complex? Why be confined to the corridors of major or minor scales? Eureka! Let us throw off the chains of the major tetrachord and its minor relative under which we languished for a thousand years since Guido from the little Italian town of Arezzo began teaching his famous singing method. And so in the early decades of the present century a declaration of liberty, fraternity and equality of all chromatic notes was made; it took its practical form in a system that its originator, Arnold Schoenberg, described as a method of composition with 12 tones related only to one another. Schoenberg was not alone in formulating this principle of composition. He had several precursors, competitors and claimants of priority. Schoenberg’s method, which became known as dodecaphony (from the Greek dodeca, 12, and phone, sound), was presaged early in the century by, among others, the Italian theorist Domenico Alaleona, who published an article in 1911 in which he used the term dodecafonia. The Russian composer Nicolas Obouhov, a mystic who called himself “Nicolas l’illumine,” and who marked rehearsal numbers in his score Le livre de vie with his own blood, demonstrated his system of 12 different notes without duplication as early as 1916. Then there was the Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who declared himself “the spiritual begetter and despite numerous bad imitators, still forever, the only one who knows how to use the music of 12 tones.” When the astronomer Christian Huygens discovered the rings of Saturn with his primitive telescope, he was careful to put this discovery in

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the form of a Latin anagram so that he could prove his priority in case someone else observed the rings. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and Isaac Newton contested the invention of differential calculus. Schoenberg took the precaution of handing a note to one of his students at a seminar in Berlin, specifically mentioning the inception of the method of composition with 12 tones. Schoenberg denied his role as a musical revolutionary. “What I did was neither revolution nor anarchy,” he wrote in a letter addressed to me, in English, dated June 3, 1937. “1 possessed, from my very first start, a thoroughly developed sense of form and a strong aversion [to] . . . exaggeration. There is no falling into order, because there was never disorder. There is no falling at all, but on the contrary, there is an ascending to higher and better order.” Schoenberg’s sensibility in asserting his priority in the discovery of his method led to an extraordinary exchange of letters with Thomas Mann. It all started with the publication of Mann’s novel Doktor Faustus, centering on a mythical German composer of 12-tone music named Adrian Leverkühn. After he read the book, Schoenberg exploded in wrath, writing a letter to the editor of the Saturday Review of Literature: In his novel Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann has taken advantage of my literary property. He has produced a fictitious composer as the hero of his book; and he made him the creator of what one erroneously calls my system of 12 tones, which I call method of composing with 12 tones. He did this without my permission and even without my knowledge. In other words, he borrowed it in the absence of the proprietor. . . . Leverkühn is depicted from beginning to end as a lunatic. I am 74 and I am not insane, and I have never acquired the disease from which this insanity stems. I consider this an insult.

Schoenberg was persuaded to make peace with Mann on the promise that the next edition of Mann’s novel would carry a note giving him credit for his method. Schoenberg wrote: I was satisfied by this promise because I wanted to be noble to a man who was awarded the Nobel Prize. But Mr. Mann was not as generous as I, who had given him good chance to free himself from the ugly aspect of a pirate. He gave an explanation in a few lines which he hid at the end of the book on a page where no one ever would see it. Besides,

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he added a new crime to his first. In the attempt to belittle me, he calls me a (!) contemporary composer and theoretician. In two or three decades, one will know which of the two was the other’s contemporary.

Thomas Mann answered Schoenberg’s letter in a philosophical mode, reiterating his belief in Schoenberg’s greatness but adding: It is a sad spectacle to see a man of great worth whose all-too-understandable hypersensitivity grows out of a life suspended between glorification and neglect, almost willfully yield to delusion of persecution and of being robbed, and involve himself in rancorous bickering.

Like many great men, Schoenberg was subject to superstitious fears. He had triskaidekaphobia, the fear of number 13. In order to exorcise it, he cut out the second letter in the name Aaron in the title of his work Moses und Aron when he noticed that it otherwise would number 13 letters. When a friend remarked on Schoenberg’s 76th birthday that the digits of his age added up to 13, Schoenberg seemed genuinely upset. He died on July 13, 1951, reportedly 13 minutes before midnight, at the age of 76. What establishes Schoenberg as the true creator of the dodecaphonic method is his adoption of the time-honored contrapuntal devices of inversion, retrograde and retrograde inversion. Just using 12 different notes in a melody is no great task, but to invert a subject that would be fertile when turned melodically upside down or played backward or played backward upside down requires great power of imagination. There are 479,001,600 possible combinations of arranging 12 different tones (or tone rows, as they are usually described), and it requires the highest degree of perspicacity to select one that would lend itself to fruitful transformations. When I sent a copy of my Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns to Schoenberg, he paid me a left-handed compliment. “You have in all probability organized every possible succession of tones,” he wrote. “This is an admirable feat of mental gymnastics. But as a composer, I must believe in inspiration rather [than] in mechanics.” Schoenberg’s emphasis on inspiration is revealing, since he was constantly accused of being a cerebral composer. What distinguishes Schoenberg’s method from similar dodecaphonic theories is its comprehensive extension into the field of counterpoint and

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harmony, so that the entire musical structure becomes a multiple function of the original series. The basic tone row and its three transformations— inversion, retrograde and retrograde inversion—become the ingredients of the contrapuntal and harmonic structure of a dodecaphonic piece of music. Thus, a 12-tone series can be represented contrapuntally, or harmonically, by six units of 2 notes each, four units of 3 notes each, three units of 4 notes each, two units of 6 notes each or a single unit of 12 notes. (Luckily for Schoenberg and his disciples, 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6.) In his practice Schoenberg excludes the major triad and its inversions, as well as minor triads in their fundamental positions, allowing occasional inversions, especially the second inversion of a minor triad in passing. Why this exclusion? Schoenberg could say, and actually did say, that major triads have been overworked and ought to be given a rest. Of course, thematic octaves are inadmissible in a truly dodecaphonic composition. I was horror-struck when I discovered, while rehearsing Schoenberg’s symphonic piece entitled Accompaniment to a Motion Picture Scene (needless to say, it was never used in an actual movie), that two trumpets in the score were both playing C at an octave’s distance. I approached Schoenberg to ask him what was wrong. “Oh,“ he said, “das ist falsch!” But what was the intended interval that was not “falsch?” I asked. “That I cannot remember,” Schoenberg replied. I summoned Roger Sessions, a profound theorist as well as a remarkable composer, to help me solve the puzzle, and after an hour or so at my piano, we traced back the basic tone row and determined that the shocking interval of a perfect octave should have been a diminished octave, C over C-sharp. Problem solved, dodecaphonic syllogism resolved. Schoenberg is described in most music courses and books as the founder of the second Viennese school, a successor to the old romantic school of Viennese composers. He and his star pupils Alban Berg and Anton von Webern, great composers in their own right, have been irreverently referred to as God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Ghost. Since the son of God was human, Alban Berg allowed himself to taste forbidden fruits, such as triads. And since the Holy Ghost is the least tangible of the Trinity, Anton von Webern evolved the most profoundly abstruse system of dodecaphonic application. Strangely enough, it was Webern who eventually exercised the most profound influence on composers around the world. Let the theologians figure out how a ghost, however holy, could have become so powerful.

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It was not long after Schoenberg’s death that his method of composing with 12 tones became a dominant tool of modern composers. His greatest posthumous victory was the conversion to dodecaphony of its principal opponent, Igor Stravinsky himself! Stravinsky even expressed his willingness to forgive Schoenberg his mocking choral canon in which Stravinsky was ridiculed as Mr. Modernsky, who put on a wig so as to look just like Papa Bach. It was a very fine contrapuntal piece, Stravinsky opined and said he was proud of having inspired its composition. Only the Russians were adamant in their refusal to accept Schoenberg and his handiwork. Nikita Khrushchev made a pun: “You call it dodecaphony, but we call it plain cacophony” (the two words rhyme in Russian). And suddenly the dam broke. Dmitri Shostakovich himself began using occasional dodecaphonic passages in his later symphonies; and after him many other Soviet composers began to use dodecaphonic melodies. An inevitable reaction set up against Schoenberg’s dodecaphony; it suddenly became old-fashioned. Pierre Boulez, the standard-bearer of all that is modern under the sun, published an essay brutally entitled “Schoenberg Is Dead.” With dissonances safely emancipated and the chromatic tones of the scale democratically rendered equal, the modern techniques seemed to reach an impasse. What next? Why, split the semitones into quarter tones and even smaller fractions. This was the task of an enterprising Czech composer and teacher, Alois Haba, who was the first to publish a textbook on fractional tones. The Mexican composer Julian Carrillo was another pioneer; he published a magazine entitled Sonido 13, symbolically indicating divisions beyond the available 12 chromatic notes, and he constructed instruments that were supposed to produce such fractional tones. Still another composer of quartertone music was Ivan Wyschnergradsky, a Russian living in Paris, who constructed pianos tuned a quarter tone apart. A surprising adherent to the technique of composition in quarter tones was a grandson of Rimsky-Korsakov, Georgi, who published a book on the subject. The American Harry Partch built instruments that were supposed to produce 43 equal intervals to an octave. However, all these fractional intervals were approximations of the true tuning; only with the advent of electronic instruments did an exact division of an octave into fractional intervals become possible. Ernst Krenek, a composer of extraordinary power of invention who belonged to the Schoenberg school of

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composition, contributed pieces in such true divisions of an octave using electronic instruments. There are in mathematics some formulas that connect seemingly unrelated symbols in a rather elegant equation; such is the Euler formula, which brings together the imaginary number, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter and the base of natural logarithms. There are similar surprises in music theory. For instance, the diminishing arithmetic progression with a semitone as the difference between two adjacent members, beginning with 9 and ending with 3, forms a bitonal chord—e.g., (from bass up), C-sharp, A-sharp, F-sharp, C-sharp, G, C, E, G. Dodecaphony opposes triadic forms, but it is possible to split a chromatic scale into four mutually exclusive triads—e.g., C major, F-sharp major, D minor and G-sharp minor. Furthermore, it is possible to construct a chord including four triads connected by thirds, modeled after familiar seventh or ninth chords—e.g., F-sharp major triad, E major triad, D minor triad and C minor triad. (This is, incidentally, the only possible chord of this nature, verified by a computer, which after hours of electronic labor confirmed that there is no other combination satisfying these requirements.) Natura non facit saltum, says the ancient adage enunciated long before Darwin. Nature does not make a leap in the arts either. The tolerance of dissonances came gradually; polytonality and atonality crept into music little by little. But there are exceptions both in the theory of evolution and in the arts, manifested by a sudden emergence of a new phenomenon unrelated to existing species. In music such a phenomenon was Charles Ives. Nothing in his early life presaged Ives’ eventual rise as a great American composer. He played the organ in village churches near his home in Connecticut; he entered Yale and graduated in musical composition in the class of Horatio Parker. But music was not a career for an American boy early in the century. Accordingly Ives went into the insurance business and made a success of it. During his leisure time he composed. Then suddenly he suffered a massive heart attack, which was complicated by a chronic case of diabetes. His wife, providentially named Harmony, took care of him, but he had to stop composing. He decided to publish, at his own expense, 104 of his songs as well as his Concord Sonata, in four movements, each named after a writer in Concord, Massachusetts: Emerson,

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Hawthorne, the Alcotts and Thoreau. Both the volume of songs and the Concord Sonata were obtainable gratis from the composer; Ives did not intend to make money from his music, even if he had to go to considerable lengths to avoid doing so. Because of his illness, he became practically a recluse, dividing his time between his summer home in Connecticut and a brownstone he owned in New York. Some sympathetic friends, to whom he played his pieces on his rickety upright piano, asked him why he had to compose music that is so hard on the ear. “I hear it this way,” he invariably replied. When an overzealous copyist tried to change a particularly dissonant note in his manuscript, Ives wrote in the margin: “Please do not correct! The wrong notes are right!” Virtually all of Ives’ works are instilled with American themes; he quotes American church hymn tunes, popular ballads and military marches, but he invests them with highly dissonant harmonies and often changes them melodically. As a boy he arranged the American national anthem in strikingly discordant harmonies. Long before polytonality, asymmetrical rhythms, atonality and polyrhythms became accepted terms, Ives employed such devices in his compositions. It may be said that his harmonies followed the increasingly complex social movements of American life; that may be the reason why the music of Ives, written years ago, sounds contemporary to late 20th-century ears. American music in the 19th century was but a faint reflection of German music. Edward MacDowell, regarded as the first American composer of stature, received his musical training in Germany; his harmonies follow the Germanic mold. It was only after the First World War that the German influence on American music began to wane, and this was due to a large extent to the fact that German conductors, performers and teachers, who had dominated the American musical horizon, suddenly found themselves enemy aliens, and several of them were forcibly dismissed from their posts; among them was the great conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Karl Muck, who was arrested and interned as a spy for the kaiser. But even when such ridiculous episodes were relegated to the shameful past, German music had irretrievably lost its influence in America. Young composers and performers flocked to Paris for their instruction and enlightenment. Nadia Boulanger became the wet nurse of a generation of American composers; among her students were Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Elliott Carter, Elie

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Siegmeister and many others. Of these, Aaron Copland became the most famous. His career was extraordinary. Fresh from Paris, he played a piano concerto of his own composition with the Boston Symphony, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. It was dubbed a jazz concerto, because it had a lot of syncopation, and it shocked the prim, grim Boston audiences, who expressed their dismay openly. But Copland was not to be frightened away by such a show of horror and continued to compose in a modern American manner. He emphasized distinctly American subjects in such works as Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Lincoln Portrait and Rodeo. His Fanfare for the Common Man for brass and percussion became famous. A different type of American is reflected in the works of Roy Harris. He believed it was providential that he was born on Lincoln’s birthday in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. He gave ostentatiously American titles to his symphonies and other works: Folksong Symphony, Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln Symphony, American Creed. He was also preoccupied with creating a genuine type of American modality based on old church modes but arranged rhythmically and melodically in an American manner. Walter Piston resolutely declined to write stereotypically American music. He felt that any music written by an American was ipso facto American and remarked somewhat sarcastically that one does not have to chase buffalo on the prairie to qualify as an American; reading books in the Boston Athenaeum was as American a pastime as any activity in the wild west. He wrote a number of remarkable symphonies, concertos and chamber music, but his most popular piece remains a ballet score entitled The Incredible Flutist. During a recording of this work, a dog barked, and Piston was persuaded to include the bark in the score. Samuel Barber never studied with Nadia Boulanger, but he achieved fame by following his natural flair for lyric melody. He studied voice as well as composition and even gave a vocal recital as a young man. His music possesses a quality of natural birth; whatever he wrote—symphony, concerto, piano sonata or symphonic sketch—seems flawless in its technical brilliance. His most famous piece was an adagio from his early String Quartet; arranged for string orchestra, it was played by Arturo Toscanini and immediately became popular. Barber was not averse to exploring jazz; some of his pieces are cunningly peppered with jazzy syncopation. The most versatile and the most celebrated American composer is, beyond any cavil or doubt, Leonard Bernstein. His success has no precedent in the annals of American music. He is known to the world as a

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charismatic conductor and is beloved by the masses for his musicals, such as West Side Story, which contains some of the most fetching American tunes after Gershwin. But Bernstein has also composed symphonic works, among them the remarkable score for The Age of Anxiety. It must be added that Bernstein is a successful lecturer and a television personality who knows how to communicate musically and verbally with the young. No American musician has ever collected such a grand garland of popular achievement. Experimentation was the soul of American music in the new modern century. George Antheil, an American who spent much of his youth in Paris, where he became associated with James Joyce and other leaders of new art, set for himself the task of reflecting the age of the machine in music. The most celebrated product of this endeavor was his Ballet mecanique, scored for a variety of percussion instruments, 16 pianos and airplane propellers ad libitum. A succes de scandale was a natural consequence of this assault on the tender ears of peaceful concert goers. The Ballet mecanique was a futuristic event; indeed its attempt to glorify the mechanical world was close to the “art of noises” of the Italian futurist composers, who shocked the world with their exhibitions before the murderous noise of the First World War. But all the futurists could work with were drums and old-fashioned phonograph horns and megaphones; there was simply no technique available to deafen the audience with sound. Still the Italian futurists aroused their public sufficiently to start a number of fistfights; in a communique they claimed victory over the audience. The true apostle of modern music was Henry Cowell, who challenged the listening world with things like tone clusters, which he invented as a teen-ager in San Francisco. Tone clusters are produced by playing on the piano keyboard with fists, elbows and whole lengths of forearm, either on white or black keys. His pioneer composition with tone clusters was entitled Amiable Conversation. Amazingly enough, it was published in Germany by the most dignified publishing house of Breitkopf & Hartel. Cowell also enhanced the sound production of the piano by playing glissando directly on the strings under the lid of an open grand piano. He also plucked on the strings, or else he placed things like paper clips, darning eggs and coins on the strings to alter the tone color. I risked my own reputation (such as it was) when I engaged Cowell in 1928 to be soloist in his own work, replete with tone clusters and such, with my

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Chamber Orchestra of Boston. This event produced Cowell’s favorite headline in the Boston Post: “USES EGG TO SHOW OFF PIANO.” But tone clusters eventually became a legitimate means of tone production, and the term was included in most music encyclopedias. Cowell had to pay out of his own pocket for the publication of his book New Musical Resources, in which he offered all kinds of novel suggestions, such as splitting the binary or ternary meters into sections, generating new rhythmic divisions. This book has now become a standard work for modern musicians. Cowell’s most faithful and most inventive follower was John Cage. Starting off with Cowell’s metapianistic techniques, he inaugurated a prepared piano, which altered the piano sonorities far beyond Cowell’s modest efforts. With Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gyorgy Ligeti, Mauricio Kagel and others, John Cage became the begetter of aleatory techniques. The word itself comes from the Latin alea, meaning by lot. For his aleatory compositions John Cage used both dice and an old Chinese book of games that gave a table of all possible combinations of numbers. At about the same time, the idea of total serialism was developed by Milton Babbitt and his followers and associates. To the “classical” serialization of 12 different notes was added the serial distribution of 12 different intervals. A new commandment was added to the dodecaphonic manual: Thou shalt not use an interval twice in succession. This meant good-bye to consecutive melodic fourths, so beloved by early practitioners of atonality. The palm of invention of intervallic serialism should be tendered to Fritz Heinrich Klein, an Austrian composer who used the nom de plume Heautontimorumenos, a Greek word that means self-tormentor. His musical self-flagellation paid off. He constructed a chord containing all different intervals and all different notes, a tonal matrix that he appropriately entitled Mutterakkord. (I went him one better by constructing a Grossmutterakkord, which not only contained all 12 different notes and all 11 different intervals but was also integrally invertible. This gimmick was not infertile; it was used as a foundation of an interplanetary opera, Aniara, by the Swedish composer Karl-Birger Blomdahl.) Marching on toward total serialism, Milton Babbitt serialized tone colors and dynamics, note values and rest values. This simply meant that no self-respecting serialist should use the same tone color, or instrument, twice in succession or the same degree of dynamics, whether forte, piano

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or their gradations. The serialization of note values required that no two notes of equal value should be used until all other rhythmic subdivisions have been exhausted. The same rule of exclusion applied to the duration of each individual rest. Outcries, sighs or even death rattles have been stock in trade for operatic composers for centuries. Schoenberg initiated a new form of vocalization, the Sprechstimme—half-spoken, half-sung sounds—and he applied it magisterially in his Pierrot lunaire. Obouhov added cries, groans, moans, shouts and other human and inhuman sounds to his vocabulary of vocal expression. Hans Werner Henze made use of clicks, screams, bellowing and snorting in some of his scores. One of the most successful composers of enhanced vocal music is George Crumb, who makes effective use of explosive shrieks, hissing and whispering in fractional intervals. He also orders the pianist to shout at certain points of a piano piece. Wonders never cease. Paul Wittgenstein declared in one of his cryptic utterances: “Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.” John Cage followed Wittgenstein’s dictum literally in composing his celebrated composition entitled 4 Minutes 33 Seconds. It is scored for one piano or several pianos, or any other group of instruments, and is in three movements. The printed edition, retailing at 50 cents, contains two blank pages. The piece was first unplayed (though not necessarily unheard, since there were incidental noises) by Cage’s faithful assistant David Tudor in Woodstock, New York on August 29, 1952. Closely related to aleatory composition is the graphic notation of music, in which geometric figures suggest a variety of possible sounds to be freely interpreted by the performer. One of the earliest proponents of graphic notation was the American composer Earle Brown, who generated the concept of “open-end” composition; as early as 1952 he outlined a theory of musical space relative to conceptual mobility and transformation of events in arbitrary, unstable time. By and large, modern music remains identifiable by written musical notes and markings indicating meter, rhythm and dynamics. In old music the number of beats in a bar was indicated by the time signature, and it was usually set in binary or ternary bars, with some simple combinations thereof. There were march meters, polka meters, waltz meters, jig meters and occasional syncopated meters in which the stress did not coincide with the strong beat of the bar. When Tchaikovsky dared to write a scherzo in

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his Symphonie pathetique in 5/4, he was taken to task by the famous Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick for making the piece unplayable. All he had to do, Hanslick urged, was to add a beat and convert the movement into a rolling barcarolle. But Tchaikovsky was dead by the time Hanslick happened to hear his symphony. Rimsky-Korsakov went Tchaikovsky one better by writing a chorus in his opera Sadko in 11/4 time. To master this meter, the choristers sang it to the words, “Rimsky-Korsakov is altogether mad,” which has 11 syllables in both the Russian original and the present English translation. In the finale of Le Sacre du printemps, Stravinsky really made conductors sweat it out, for its metrical plan constitutes a succession of such time signatures as 5/16, 2/8, 3/16 and even 1/16. Meters in prime numbers, such as quintuple time signatures, are not the product of modern invention. They are found in natural folk rhythms of many lands. Two bars of 3/8 and a bar of 2/8, aggregating to a sum of three and five beats to a bar, are common in southeastern Europe. The great Hungarian composer Bela Bartok spent many years collecting folk songs in his native Transylvania and adjacent regions, a task in which he was aided by another great Hungarian Zoltan Kodaly. Bartok, and to a lesser extent Kodaly, made use of these natural melodies and rhythms in their own works. But being a product of the 20th century, Bartok also made use of consistent noneuphonious counterpoint, freely employing major sevenths and minor ninths in his works. Kodaly, who was an educator by nature, refrained from such extreme modernities, but he also made a significant contribution to modern meters and rhythms. In folk music and in modern works based on folk melodies, different rhythms combined freely, giving the rise to polymeters and polyrhythms. The great explorer of complex rhythms and meters combined with a totally liberated spirit of dissonance, Edgar Varese dispensed with the term composition in his works. He called his music “organized sound.” It is completely removed from the world of sounds observable in nature. Even in a score that bears the seemingly descriptive title Ameriques, Varese tends to represent the conceptual Americas as the birthplace of new science, new technology and new sound. His other works bear such scientific titles as Integrals and Hyperprism (a projection of a prism into higher dimensions). His unique score entitled Ionisation is arranged for pitchless percussion instruments and two sirens. The title refers to the disintegration of atomic nuclei.

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Schoenberg, Varese and, before them, Scriabin, regarded folk songs as raw material of no value to musical science. For Scriabin music was a union with eternity; for Schoenberg it was a logical continuation of previous historic achievements. It is significant that even in works in which he renounced tonality, Schoenberg adhered to classical forms, including an old-fashioned reprise; Alban Berg and Anton von Webern followed this formality of design. Varese, on the other hand, pursued the ideal of total abstraction, arranging his themes by successive agglutination. Folklore and abstraction are not necessarily irreconcilable. If folklore represents an irreversible past and abstraction a conjectural vista of an idealized future, there is a way of reconciling these sources. A modern poet, painter or composer in search of a future simplicity and clarity can dip into the remote past for unadorned primitives. It is not for nothing that Stravinsky’s ultramodern score Le Sacre du printemps was subtitled Scenes of Pagan Russia. This reference allowed him to use crude chunks of primordial material, stumps of tetrachords without elaboration and without subjection to rules of harmony or counterpoint. Popular songs of the remote past may serve handily in lieu of folk songs. Carl Orff delved into a collection of medieval student songs in the German monastery of Benedictbeuren and concocted an effective scenic oratorio Carmina Burana (i.e., songs of Benedictbeuren), which enjoyed tremendous success despite the fact that the words, in Latin and early romance languages, cannot be understood without an interlinear translation. Other composers followed this example by arranging old sacred and secular music in a form that became known as “realizations.” There is more than one way to cook a goose. When the great Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos was asked, “What is folklore?” he answered, “I am folklore!” Indeed, Villa-Lobos rarely, if ever, used actual folk tunes in his works but rather approximated the Brazilian rhythms and melodic patterns in his own inventive fashion. Carlos Chavez, the towering figure in Mexican music, made use of a few Mexican tunes in some of his Mexican-flavored scores, but most of his music was self-made. George Gershwin, like his predecessor Stephen Foster, did not have to borrow tunes from American life; he created the music of modern America out of his own American imagination. And with all that, his music is authentically modern. His dissonances are mostly of the euphonious kind; he made ample use of the blue notes, a lowered seventh and a lowered

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third. The lowered seventh can be explained in terms of the overtones series as an approximation of the seventh overtone occurring below the octave. Gershwin’s rhythmic sense was very precise. His song “I Got Rhythm,” which is all too frequently mongrelized by the big bands as a mere syncopation, is an example of Gershwin’s inventiveness. Cast in the framework of common time, it represents the following succession of rhythmic values: an eighth-note rest, followed by four dotted eighth notes and again an eighth-note rest, adding up to 16/16—i.e., 4/4. In his song “Fascinating Rhythm,” Gershwin performs an acrobatic stunt by intercalating a three-beat thematic passage within a bar of 4/4 time. And in his “Rhapsody in Blue,” Gershwin made, as one critic remarked, an honest woman out of jazz. Jazz and its healthy predecessor, ragtime, formed the art of urban folklore, alive with its syncopated rhythms, added sixths and sevenths, and its general air of aggressive vitality. Soon jazz spread all over the world, penetrating even Russia, which resisted its incursion for years. Ernst Krenek wrote an opera entitled Jonny spielt auf, which portrayed a black American jazz player who conquers Europe, seducing European maidens and riding roughshod over the world. In the finale he sits atop a huge globe, symbolizing his conquest. The idea of a black man doing such things made it necessary for the Metropolitan Opera House to delegate the part of the conquering jazz hero to a blackface musician. Then came rock ’n’ roll. Lamentably, it lost the virility, the fertility and the felicity of jazz and became a monstrously aggrandized and enhanced beat. It made up in loudness what it lost in syncopated vitality. Rock music impaired the hearing of the performers themselves; as protection against the assault of its deafening decibels, the frequenters of rock concerts are sometimes provided with cotton earplugs. But the most pitiful loss of all was the abandonment of the syncopated jazzy beat and a gradual reduction of the music to a uniform blast in 4/4 time. This is not to say that all rock musicians are brutal savages. Most of them yearn for musical education and even try to read the hefty volumes of Joseph Schillinger’s System of Musical Composition, although they can hardly fathom Schillinger’s algebraic formulas, which are unnecessarily strewn across the pages of this learned treatise. Schillinger, it must be recalled, was the musical guru of the jazz age; even Gershwin went to him for help. Schillinger’s great idea was to reduce melodies to diagrams and charts; thus, he drew on graph paper the musical counterpart of the 1929 stock market crash.

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With the renunciation of folklore as raw material of sophisticated composition, a surrogate had to be found. It was provided in the form of technological music, which originated in Paris under the name musique concrete; it was the creation of a French radio engineer, and it postulated that any noise, intentional or unintentional, produced in the studio could be used as materia musica. This material could then be transmogrified by electronics and arranged as a “composition.” After all, the word composition means simply putting together, and it does not necessarily connote rational organization. Accordingly, it was possible for the American composer Richard Maxfield to collect assorted sounds recorded during a modern dance recital and arrange them in a work entitled Cough Music. (Poor Maxfield! He committed self-defenestration from a Los Angeles hotel room.) Another way of providing raw material is the method of objets trouves. This allows a composer to pick up musical quotations from established works and insert them into his own production. Luciano Berio did that in his Sinfonia, putting in snatches from Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy and others. In one of his piano pieces, George Crumb helped himself to the middle section of Chopin’s Fantaisie impromptu, commonly known among the hoi polloi by the tune of the popular song “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” Of course, composers of all times have made surreptitious use of other people’s tunes in their own works, and musicologists are still trying to discover who stole what from whom among great composers. (Handel was quite adept at that variety of petty larceny.) The originator of the method of objets trouves, along with much other nonsense, was that great clown of modern French music, Erik Satie. He was sadly aware of his lack of theoretical knowledge of music, which he tried to remedy by going to school to learn counterpoint at the age of 40, but he compensated for it by proclaiming that art must provide entertainment. He amused himself by deliberately hoodwinking the public through such shenanigans as inserting a learned footnote declaring that a certain passage was a funeral march by Franz Schubert when it was nothing of the sort. In one such moment of playful distraction, he created the concept of “furniture music.” Music should be treated like furniture, Satie declared, demonstrating this conceit by placing several groups of musicians in different rooms of an art gallery, instructing them to play anything they wanted without paying attention to each other. Satie was not modest in proclaiming his own greatness. He instructed that the curtain at one of his

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stage productions should bear the legend: “Anyone who does not believe that Erik Satie is the greatest composer living is asked to leave the hall without delay.” Satie surrounded himself with talented young composers who shared his belief that music ought to be fun. These composers, five young men and one young woman, became known as Les Six. Three of them became famous: Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger and Francis Poulenc. Less famous was Georges Auric; even less famous was Germaine Tailleferre; and quite obscure was Louis Durey. The French Six tried to simplify music, but their styles were quite different. Milhaud composed works of huge dimensions awash with polytonal complexities; Honegger glorified the American locomotive in his symphonic poem Pacific 231; Poulenc wrote charming pieces, free from modernistic gargoyles, quite tonal in harmony and symmetric in form. Years passed; another war was fought; and a new wave of modern composers appeared on the musical horizon. New resources had to be found in unexplored lands. The American composer Steve Reich went to Ghana to study African drumming; he demonstrated that music can produce a deep impression by sheer repetition. Reich became known as a minimalist. Another American composer, Philip Glass, espoused a homophony of an even starker type. His surrealist score entitled Einstein on the Beach became a huge success in Europe as well as in America. Curiouser and curiouser. La Monte Young, of the same generation as Reich and Glass, made irrationality the cornerstone of his method of composition. Sometimes he dispensed with musical notes altogether and limited himself to verbal instructions, such as “Push the piano to the wall; push it through the wall; keep pushing.” He sought to achieve immortality simply by claiming it. He supplied this bit of information for one of his compositions: “This piece of music may play without stopping for thousands of years.” One seems to perceive the eerie ghost of Satie in the ectoplasm of such proclamations. The begetter of new simplicity, as it was termed in Paris in the 1920s, was the brilliant American Virgil Thomson, grandmaster of sophisticated bedazzlement and befuddlement. In Paris he became associated with the French modern composers of the time; he could indeed be called the seventh member of the French Six. Like his Paris contemporaries, he preached hedonism—that is, an art for art’s pleasure. He became an intimate of Gertrude Stein, but in his compositions he reversed Gertrude’s

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famous equation of identity “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” making it “Rose is not a rose is not a rose is not a rose.” Thus, in his famous opera Four Saints in Three Acts, there are at least a dozen saints among the dramatis personae, and there are four acts in the opera, not three. As to the harmonic content of the score, Thomson seems to be saying, “Major triad is a major triad is a major triad is a major triad.” The prolixity of naked triads in Virgil Thomson’s music is indeed astounding, and it also serves to deflect invidious criticism. If a Schoenbergian were to use a triad by inadvertence, he would be hurled into the Gehenna of disgrace, but then Thomson was never a Schoenbergian; when he used dodecaphonic constructions at all, they were apt to appear in a series of four mutually exclusive triads. (“Nicolas, did you hear your little triads in my piece?” he asked me after the performance of one of his symphonic works; indeed, he borrowed his mutually exclusive triads from my Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns.) The animating spirit of modern composers is frugality. The staging is often reduced to a few symbolic trees, benches and occasional ladders. Gian-Carlo Menotti in America and Benjamin Britten in England reduced the orchestras in their operas to a minimal number, usually 13, and they practically eliminated the chorus. If comment was required in dramatic situations, it was usually entrusted to a single voice, much in the manner of Greek drama or, for that matter, the Prologue in Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. Michael Tippett of England is also apt to reduce his orchestral and choral equipment to a minimum. The ultimate of this musical anorexia is reached in The Four-Note Opera, by the American composer Tom Johnson. This is not a spoof a la Virgil Thomson; Johnson actually uses only four notes in his opera. All that is left of old-fashioned grand opera is the Gran’ Ol’ Opry of Nashville, Tennessee. If hedonists and minimalists represent the infrared of the musical spectrum, then computerized music can be placed in the ultraviolet portion of it. The sudden availability of an infinite variety of serial sequences in computer technology naturally excited many composers, who ceased to trust their own inspiration. The trouble with computer music is that it has to be programmed by humans, so that many allegedly computerized compositions reflect the limited imagination of the technicians who programmed the music. To be sure, though, technicians and composers can program a computer to compose a certain number of dissonances, followed by a certain number of consonances, and they can even specify what kind of dissonant or consonant chords are to be used.

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Another development of specialized serialism is music in space. In this category of composition, each instrument is assigned its place on the podium or in a room. Its justification is vectorial sound, so that the listeners hear each instrument from its assigned direction. My nephew, the Soviet composer Sergei Slonimsky, wrote a sort of ambulatory string quartet in which the instrumentalists are placed in the audience and advance toward the stage one after another, playing their assigned parts until they are all assembled together. Well, Haydn composed ambulatory music some 200 years before my nephew in his Farewell Symphony, in which musicians extinguished their candles (this was the 18th century, remember) and left the stage, one by one, until only the silent conductor was left with his purposeless baton to bid farewell to the audience. Then there is serialism by appointment, whereby each player is assigned a certain interval and is not allowed to deviate from it throughout the duration of the music. A cello, say, would be confined to perfect fourths, a viola to tritones, a violin to semitones, etc. Vectorial sound projection will help to sort out the serial intervals. But even this assignment of specific intervals to selected instruments is not new. A string quartet ascribed to Benjamin Franklin (he never wrote it, but that is beside the point) was scored for open strings only, so that any amateur group can perform it with perfect ease; besides, the instruments are each tuned differently from one another in fifths or fourths, so that surprising dissonances result. Another example of instrumental serialism by special assignment was the peasant orchestras maintained by rich landowners in Russia in the first half of the 19th century. The musicians were recruited from among the serfs; each was assigned a single note to play, so that no one had to learn to read music. Such serfs were known by the notes they played; when two of them escaped, their owner advertised: “Escaped Eflat and F-sharp from the owner’s orchestra. Reward.” Intervallic specialization in modern compositions signaled new and original possibilities in contrapuntal writing just in time to save fugal counterpoint from extinction. The great master of this sort of spatial and intervallic techniques is Elliott Carter. His concertos and other works are not mere jeux d’esprit but works of great musical interest. Stravinsky, who rarely found merit in American music, declared one of Carter’s concertos to be the first American masterpiece. The ultimate in spatial music is environmental music, in which objects surrounding the composer’s workroom are declared by creative fiat to be parts in the score. This concept has enabled one composer from San

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Francisco to write a work scored for skyscrapers, airplanes, helicopters and automobiles. The Italian futurists of the time before the First World War would have hailed this method of composition with loud cries of delight. Can a musical style be legislated? Certainly the Catholic Church gave strict prescriptions for proper ecclesiastical part writing; the norms of Gregorian chant were strictly defined by the church. But even the most pious composers were free to write different types of secular music. In modern times an attempt was made by Soviet authorities to establish an obligatory type of composition defined by Russian theorists as socialist realism, a method of composition based on the concrete representation of Soviet reality. But what Soviet reality? In the early years of the Russian Revolution, composers tried to imitate actual sounds of the streets, factories and weapons. They put factory whistles and steel sheets in their scores but still failed to achieve the desired reflection of the life of the masses. A militant group called Proletarian Organization of Musicians made an earnest attempt to define music according to dialectical materialism. March time was good; waltz time was suspect as bourgeois in essence. Major keys were good for the masses; minor keys tended to weaken spiritual energy. Still, doubts emerged. Why should the proletarian masses like the music of Tchaikovsky? Simple: In his symphonies and operas, Tchaikovsky celebrated the funeral of his class, and the proletarians could not help enjoying such a burial of class enemies. Serge Rachmaninoff was out as a poet of decadence and a sworn enemy of the Soviet Union; he left Russia, never to return, on the day of the October Revolution and settled in the United States, the archfoe of the Bolsheviks. Beethoven was all right; he was a revolutionary at heart, even though he did write the opening movement of his Heroic symphony in 3/4 time. Mikhail Glinka, the father of Russian music, was all right, too, even though he did compose an opera entitled A Life for the Tsar. That little predicament was easily corrected, however, by changing the title to Ivan Susanin, a patriotic peasant who misled the Polish commando raiders intent upon killing, not the Tsar, of course, but the leader of the Russian people named Minin. Other operas were similarly revised. Tosca was now a member of the Paris Commune who killed General Galliffet, who suppressed the commune in 1871 (never mind the historical fact that Galliffet died peacefully in bed in 1909; this is mere pedantic bourgeois detail). Finally, the Soviet authorities became sick and tired of this proletarian nonsense and disbanded the Proletarian Organization of

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Musicians. One Soviet composer exclaimed: “Now I can write music in 3/4 time!” Russian music split in two: Many Russian composers joined the emigration, most of them to Paris and America. Rachmaninoff ’s departure was followed by the emigration of Alexander Glazunov, Alexander Gretchaninoff, Nicolas and Alexander Tcherepnin (father and son), and Sergei Prokofiev. However, Prokofiev had second thoughts and soon returned to Russia, where he was welcomed as a prodigal son, with honors and praise. After a musical honeymoon he was attacked by extreme radicals for his alleged addiction to Western ways of making music. After the infamous decree of 1948, Prokofiev found himself in a camp of “formalists,” a code word applied to those who strayed from the proper path of Russian traditionalism. Prokofiev tried to ingratiate himself with Joseph Stalin by writing an overture for the Soviet ruler’s sixtieth birthday, but somehow it lacked true Stalinist spirit and was never performed. Then he wrote an opera to a libretto depicting the heroic deed of a Soviet pilot who lost both legs in combat but, after having artificial legs made, reenlisted in the Soviet air force and scored several victories. But the opera never went beyond a preliminary performance; it was declared formalist in its style and idiom and unworthy of its heroic subject. Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin, March 5, 1953. When he was safely dead, Stalin was disgraced as a tyrannical madman, while Prokofiev was posthumously glorified. The tenth anniversary of Prokofiev’s and Stalin’s death was celebrated with ample tribute to Prokofiev in the Soviet press, while Stalin was all but ignored. A close contemporary of both Stravinsky and Prokofiev was Nikolai Miaskovsky, who remained in Russia. He wrote 27 symphonies, all of which were published, recorded and performed in Russia, but he remained virtually unknown outside his native land. While Stravinsky left Russia before the revolution and Prokofiev spent half his life abroad, a true Soviet composer was Dmitri Shostakovich, who was never tempted to leave his country and labored valiantly to effect a decent compromise between his original rebellious nature and the requirements of the official Soviet line. He was damned for his opera Lady Macbeth of the District of Mtinsk, which was denounced by an anonymous writer in Pravda as being both cacophonous and obscene (there were suggestive trombone glissandi in an orchestral interlude). Shostakovich then wrote a ballet on the subject of a collective farm—it was dismissed

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as an unworthy attempt to depict Soviet workers. Shostakovich was rehabilitated with his symphonies; his Seventh Symphony in particular, dedicated to the heroes of the Leningrad siege, became a display piece of Soviet patriotism. But his Thirteenth Symphony was criticized for his having used a poem mourning the Jews massacred at Babi Yar. The critics pointed out the poem’s inequity, in that it only commemorated Jews, whereas there were also Ukrainians and Russians among the victims. Shostakovich agreed to fix the text; it did not help. Still, Shostakovich was given honors and distinctions, including the Order of Hero of Socialist Labor. A man of frail physique, he traveled little, but in 1973 he did make a trip to America to accept an honorary degree of doctor of fine arts from Northwestern University; a more compelling reason for this visit was to consult an American cancer specialist. But his illness was beyond remedy, and he died in 1975. A postage stamp was issued in his memory bearing a quotation from his Seventh Symphony and his typically bespectacled visage. It would be most instructive to trace influences of modern techniques on composers whose style was fully formed in the 19th century. Gustav Mahler wrote music that departed widely from his immediate forerunners, but still he never went beyond harmonies that were traditionally justified—not until his unfinished Tenth Symphony, which employed dissonances that appeared quite unheralded by his previous music. Ralph Vaughan Williams accepted the previously illegal parallel triadic progressions; Frederick Delius, who always affected lyrical moods with traditional modalities, made use of whole-tone groups that deviated from tonality; even Jean Sibelius made a perilous leap into the unknown in his Fourth Symphony, using whole-tone passages and their related augmented triads. Ernest Bloch accepted and brilliantly used an implied bitonality of triads at a tritone’s distance; in his last string quartet he even experimented with 12-tone melodies, although he never developed them in a Schoenbergian way. And of course, Richard Strauss never hesitated to project the sharpest dissonances when he needed them for purposes of illustration. The 20th century has been the most turbulent period in all musical history. The variety of musical compositions produced in every country in the world has been more ample than in any previous century. What kind of music will emerge in the future as a result of all these conflicting tendencies? Being a man of the present, I cannot predict.

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In my first published book, Music Since 1900, I attempted to draw a panorama of modern music. I took into consideration the intrinsic importance of each musical event in my chronology, as well as its impact on the contemporary audience. Whenever suitable, I quoted critical reviews in contemporary newspapers. Inevitably I selected adverse criticism to point out the irony of nonrecognition of works that subsequently proved to be masterpieces. The same penchant toward rejection of music that was startlingly new on the contemporary scene was revealed in the numerous reviews I collected for my Lexicon of Musical Invective. La mer of Debussy was dubbed Le mal de mer by a critic who intended to be witty, and Le Sacre du printemps was described as Le Massacre du printemps. In an index of these invectives, I tried to prove my thesis of “non-acceptance of the unfamiliar” in music as in other arts. Someday I hope to bring up to date the events tabulated in Music Since 1900. In the meantime Richard Burbank has assembled a compendium of events in music and related arts that is immensely larger and more comprehensive in scope. And his quotations from the contemporary press, both in praise of the events and otherwise, provide a panorama of extraordinary effect of an art in flux, an evolution of new forms, an emergence of new ideas. It is invaluable for scholars and fascinating for music lovers. As an early worker in the field of creative chronology of music, I salute the author and the publisher for the completion and publication of this truly remarkable accomplishment.

Part II

INDIVIDUAL COMPOSERS

1 2 . M O D E R N I M M O R TA L S

“To be recognized only after death. . . .” These are the opening words of Schönberg’s letter addressed to those who greeted him on his seventy-fifth birthday in September 1949. In the same letter he recalls his prediction made in 1912: “The second half of this century will spoil, by overestimation, all the good of me that the first half, by underestimation, has left intact.” When Schönberg was asked long ago whether he was really “that composer,” he replied: “Someone had to be Schönberg, but nobody wanted to be; so I had to volunteer.” Schönberg has now less reason for such bitterness: he is beginning to be appreciated by many, as well as worshipped by a few. The second half of the century is sure to make up for the neglect and the rebukes he suffered in the first. Bartók was not so fortunate. He did not live to witness the universal acceptance of his music. His grave was still unmarked when his name became a household word, and when the frequency of performance of his music made him one of the most popular composers of today. The appearance, almost simultaneous, of long playing recordings of all six string quartets of Bartók and the four Schönberg quartets is symbolic of the acceptance by the people of these two masters of contemporary music. The cliché of “being born before one’s time” here comes true. In the light of repeated history the cliché may be simply the formulation of the obvious truth that men of genius, whether in music or in science, anticipate the development of future tastes and future concepts. In the case of Bartók the acceptance has already come 100 per cent; in the case of Schönberg the opposition still lingers, but the intransigence of his Ch. 12: originally published in The Saturday Review, September 30, 1950.

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antagonists becomes less effective with each passing year while the army of his ardent supporters grows by leaps and bounds. The most remarkable development in Schönberg’s influence is the emergence of a powerful school of Schönbergians in the Latin countries, notably France and Italy, which have for many years been impervious to the penetration of abstract musical ideas, particularly those originating from Central Europe. Add to this the fact that the French Ecole Dodécaphonique and the Italian Musica Dodecafonica were cultivated during the war and German occupation, when such music was verboten, and we can gauge the measure of the potency of Schönberg’s method of composition. Russia is today the only country where twelve-tone music is taboo, but its attraction was admitted by several Russian composers who were called upon to “atone for atonality.” One of them, Gabriel Popov, was sternly reminded of the fact that he had admitted his admiration for Schönberg by dedicating to him his first opus. If the Schönbergian sin is worth official censure, it must be a delectable sin. But to return to the quartets. Listening to the first Schönberg quartet and to the first of Bartók one is struck by the generic similarity of their idiom. The Viennese line, from Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, is clearly traceable in Schönberg’s melodic and rhythmic inflections, and there are superimposed Wagnerian and Straussian strains. There is more of the Beethoven of the last quartets in Bartók’s first quartet than of Wagnerian procedures. In both the Schönberg and the Bartók there is that anguished chromatic lyricism that is the common trait of early twentieth-century music. The two quartets were written about the same time; both are, by coincidence, marked op. 7. The modern musical resources in both the Schönberg and the Bartók first quartets are exemplified by the introduction of the whole-tone scale; but this element remains an extraneous one, not integrated into the texture. The building of climaxes by tenacious reiteration of thematic fragments is characteristic of early Schönberg as well as of early Bartók. The creative methods of Bartók and Schönberg diverged after these early works. Bartók intensified the rhythmic elements of his music, emphasizing the asymmetrical patterns, and coming closer to the folk songs of his native Transylvania, where Hungarian, Slavic, and gypsy influences create an intricate melodic and rhythmic mixture. Schönberg, on the contrary, attenuated the tonal ingredients until tonality was dropped altogether and the key-signature disappeared. Schönberg was interested

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in developing a new musical language suitable to express infinitesimally varied moods, and eventually formulated his “method of composing with twelve tones” (not the twelve-tone system, a term commonly used, but repeatedly rejected by Schönberg). Bartók, on the other hand, freely applied numerous techniques (including occasional series of twelve different tones) with the purpose of extending his musical vocabulary. If Bartók is the poet of subjective folk consciousness, Schönberg is a philosopher and a logician as well as a psychologist of music. Bartók goes into the world outside for his inspiration; Schönberg seeks clarification of his musical philosophy within himself. Both Bartók and Schönberg achieve unity in variety. From his first quartet to his sixth Bartók progresses towards monothematism, with the main theme of an earthy folklike nature; Schönberg has found his unity in establishing the basic twelve-tone series that underlies an entire composition. The four Schönberg quartets and the six of Bartók are musical biographies of their creators. Following the gradual formation of their idioms one wonders how the accusation of “cerebral” composition could ever be leveled at either of these great men of music. One feels rather that here are souls in anguish; the discomfort that the musical language of Schönberg causes the untutored ear comes from this suffering in public; or, in Bartók, from the boisterous joy in his more rustic moods, which has the frankness and even the vulgarity of a village fiddler. Bartók’s first quartet was written in 1907, when he was twenty-six years old. His second followed ten years later. Both quartets are in A minor; the indication of key is dropped in later quartets, though tonality is never completely abandoned. There is an atmosphere of bitter cheerfulness in the second quartet of Bartók; the insistently repeated rhythmic phrases have an almost animal quality: “and the cock crew.” Strident chromatics in acrid harmonies enhance the impression of musical anxiety; but the folklike melodies bring appeasement. The third quartet of Bartók is dramatically conceived, and its lyricism is strained and harsh. The Bartókian whooping-cough eruptions are here at its spasmodic high. The instrumental effects include snapping pizzicatos, and there are glissandos that suggest choleric outbursts of temper. Bartók wrote his third quartet in 1927; his fourth followed in 1928. It is naturally related in style to its immediate neighbor. There are the now familiar glissandos, the rhythmic stamping, the canonic build-up for climaxes. But there is a human quality in the long singing melody in solo

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passages. The outcries of anguish interrupt the more peaceful moods. Then there is a barbaric dance, with savage snapping of the strings, rebounding from the fingerboard. Bartók’s fifth and sixth quartets are dated 1934 and 1939. In both of these the general tone is milder than in the earlier works. An unexpectedly idyllic movement in the fifth quartet takes us back to “Lohengrin”; and there is a brief interlude of an organgrinder’s tune. Of interest from the structural standpoint are the bitonal scales that Bartók applies consistently in the fifth quartet, as he does in several other works of the period. But it is in the sixth quartet that Bartók appears in a resigned mood. The unity of plan is achieved simply through prefacing each movement with a melodic theme, unaccompanied and in various contrapuntal combinations. Scale passages milling around and gypsylike dancing tunes are present here, too. The progress of Schönberg’s string-quartet writing reflects a gradual realization of the unifying method of twelve-tone composition. The first and the second quartets are well in the tonal tradition; there are also some private jokes—the waltz rhythms with a wink at Johann Strauss in the first quartet; the sudden intrusion of “Ach, du lieber Augustin,” in the second. In the second quartet there is an innovation: a contralto solo that sings dolorous verses in the third and fourth movements. Schönberg’s third quartet was written in 1927, when the principles of twelve-tone music were firmly established. In this dodecaphonic sense, the third quartet is monothematic, for the generating motto is the basic twelve-tone series. But the application of the principle is free, so that the uninitiated cannot hope to be able to murmur contentedly while listening to the music: “Here comes the inverted crab of twelve-tone series!” To nondodecaphonic ears the quartet will sound atonal, devoid of familiar key. Schönberg wrote his fourth quartet in America in 1936. It uses the technique of twelve tones more strictly than in the third quartet but not as patently as to recount its procedures in a fairy-tale fashion. But, Schönberg will always say, there is no need to know a thing about the procedures. If the lyricism—and the anxiety—of the music find their way to the heart, his purpose will be achieved without an intellectual appeal to the analyst. The recordings of the Schönberg quartets were made in 1937 by the Kolisch String Quartet and are now issued for the first time on long playing

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records. One cannot expect these recordings to be as good as those made today, and acoustical and mechanical defects are inevitable. As to the Bartók quartets, they were done by the Juilliard String Quartet that made music history last year by presenting the entire cycle on a national tour. They were recorded by Columbia with a perfection vouchsafed by the revolutionary microgroove technique.

1 3 . C AT U R L A O F C U B A

When a package of music arrives, covered with picturesque stamps showing exotic scenes, we justly expect to discover fascinatingly fresh melodic treasures. On examination, the music generally disillusions us— it is too often the product of a mediocre European conservatory. Why do so many musicians from exotic lands emulate Europe instead of exploiting their native melodic resources? In a world where everybody speaks English, the second-generation immigrant child is ashamed of his mother tongue. So, too, most composers of countries that are musical minorities appear reluctant to use their native modes and rhythms, and take particular pride in learning to write “like everybody.” In every town there is of course some hack instructor with an antique Conservatory education who monopolizes the music market and successfully stifles individuality in talented students. At least fifty per cent of all non-European musical production is ruined by such schooling. Luckier students, whose families have means, go to Europe to acquire a technic of composition; the more conservative to Berlin, the more advanced to Paris. From Berlin they come home armed with polyphony a la Reger; from Paris decked out in impressionistic finery. After that, they go on composing German music or French music. In rare cases they apply their knowledge to the shaping of native melos; the exceptional ones modify their technic and fuse it with the rhythmic and melodic forms of folksongs in their own countries. Alejandro Garcia Caturla of Cuba, has gone through all that is necessary to qualify him as a modern composer. He has studied with Nadia Boulanger; several scores have been published by Senart in Paris, his works or fragments of works, have been performed by Stokowski, and he Ch. 13: originally published in Modern Music, January–February 1940.

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has received the usual humorously benevolent write-up from Olin Downes. Articles about him have appeared in special magazines with limited circulation, and he has finally broken into some up-to-date American dictionaries. Once in a while, performances of his more ambitious works are announced and hurriedly shelved. But whenever the music of Cuba, or even of Latin America, is mentioned, his name comes up. Most important of all, he goes on composing and is perhaps unaware that in a world of commercial success his music has a serious drawback: it is non-conformist. He has only one typical trait—he follows the rhythmic and melodic modes of the Cuban Son, which is neither a song nor a dance but a composite form of national folk music. One might analyze his melos as essentially pentatonic without distinguishing his music from any other which is based or modelled on native Indian motives. Caturla’s polyrhythms are also common to most Spanish Latin-American countries (triple time against duple time). As to harmony, any attempt to analyze this structure as a system, whether quartal or tertian, collapses before Caturla’s use of constructions by third or fourths, tritones or semitones, according to his needs. When pressed for self-analysis, he will say that his favorite composers are Debussy, Stravinsky and Ravel but that he does not believe their influence shows in his music. For the rest, he insists that in his works, particularly the most recent, he has tried to be his own free self—without scholastic or other prejudices, to express only the melos of the Cuban people. By Cuban people he means of course, the Afro-Cubans. Caturla is of pure Spanish blood, but his selective affiliations with the Afro-Cubans are intimate. In Cuba, native music is the creation chiefly of Cuban Negroes. The native dances and legends bear African names. Among Caturla’s works, Bembi and Yamba-0 and Three Cuban Dances are based on Negro folklore. The story of Yamba-0 is interesting. Eleven years ago in Paris, Caturla’s friend, the Cuban poet Alejo Carpentier, gave him a poem, entitled Liturgia. Caturla undertook to write to this text a work for eight voices and a soloist. As he proceeded, it became clear that the music was unperformable; the conflicting lines of declamatory song would inevitably be confused while the Afro-Cuban rhythms doubled the difficulties of execution. Caturla abandoned the choral project and transferred the themes to a symphonic poem. Instead of picturing the initiation dance Naniga, which is the main subject of Carpentier’s poem (Yamba-0 is a ritualistic howl recurring in every stanza), Caturla decided to give an “impression” of the

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dance, thus acquiring more freedom for the composition’s design. Yamba0 is, indeed, an extraordinary palimpsest of motives, rhythms, and block harmonies, possibly the freest orchestral work ever to be performed. (It was given by the Havana Philharmonic on October 25, 1931.) It is quite possible, of course, to “analyze” the melodic line of Yamba-O, as derived from the pentatonic, but it is more difficult to find a formula for its rhythmic diversity, and it is virtually impossible to account for its harmonic system. The only refuge for annotators is to go literary and speak of “jungle sounds,” “animal voices,” etc. Yet the meaning of Yamba-0 is clear, the rhythms are potent, the harmonies fitting, though crude. Perhaps Caturla does know what he is talking about when he says that he is trying to liberate himself from all scholastic prejudices (all is emphatic and includes all the scholasticism of modern trends) and express himself in terms of Cuban song in the freest possible manner. The decousu quality which performers seem to find in Caturla’s music is responsible for the infrequency of its performance outside of Havana. One can understand the dismay of a conductor trying to figure out the counterpoint and the chords, even in the more innocent works of Caturla, such as his Cuban Dances, for there is no counterpoint and the harmonies are not recognizable, even to a musician versed in the chords of the eleventh and the thirteenth. As for the members of the orchestra they find it hard to follow the unsymmetric rhythmic line, where syncopation is itself syncopated and the sixteenth-note rests are hazards. Your orchestra musician is a man of law and order; he can stand a large dose of dissonance but be balks at unperiodic rhythms which upset the physiological oom-pah pulse. Whether this lack of organization is really a fault in Caturla’s music, is debatable. His splashy rhythms and lump harmonies may well be perturbing to the players but the players must advance to a freer use of their faculties. Cuban orchestras have no difficulty in playing Caturla right. I have had my share of experience in dealing with the practical problems of Caturla’s music, having conducted his orchestral works in various cities of the old world and the new. They are easiest to play with Latin American musicians, who at least do not raise fundamental objections. There is no shaking of heads, no look of insulted submission. To a Cuban orchestra player the uncomfortable syncopation and mixed rhythms are merely written signs for a familiar dance. When played freely, Caturla’s music sounds enticing; when played note by note it may appear turgid. Hence, the difference of effect.

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Caturla is now thirty-three years old. He was born on March 7, 1906, in Remedios, where be lives today, discharging the office of a judge. This brings him security: musicians in Cuba, like those elsewhere, cannot live by composing orchestral music. At one time Caturla organized an orchestra in the town of Caibarien and in the seasons of 1932–33 presented programs of modern music: Ravel, Falla, Stravinsky, Gershwin; there was classical music, too, but contemporary composers predominated. It is characteristic of Caturla that he has never changed his faith, never experimented in eclecticism, and studiously shunned all fads and current musical infatuations. He is apparently little concerned with selfpromotion, and it takes a great deal of effort to interest him in arranging a performance of his work. But he is full of devotion to a cause, and his cause is glorifying Cuban music. For those to whom Cuban music begins and ends with rhumba, Caturla wrote (in 1933–34) a magnificent one, with enough Cuban percussion to satisfy the most exacting. But this rhumba is not the cut-and-dried syncopated affair familiar to enthusiasts. It is rhumba a la Caturla, with a lilt and an accent all its own, and the rhythms are not shaved down to uniformity. Perhaps his most playable piece, it may even become his Bolero.

14. CHOU WEN-CHUNG

The problem of finding proper harmonic and contrapuntal setting for the essentially monodic line of folk music presents the greatest challenge for national composers of all lands. Traditional arrangements of European folksongs, in academic four-part harmony, are intrinsically incompatible with the modal nature of folk music. When pentatonic melodies of the Orient are harmonized in this conventional manner, the incompatibility between the melody and the harmonic setting is such that the very essence of oriental melos is destroyed. Even more difficult is the representation of microtonal intervals peculiar to some countries of the Orient. Strangely enough, modern harmony, supposedly much more artificial than triadic tonality and farther removed from the spontaneous generation of folk tunes, lends itself more easily to the intervallic progressions of oriental songs. Modern counterpoint, tending towards economy and allowing free use of dissonance, corresponds more intimately to the nonharmonic essence of oriental melos. The oriental ear is peculiarly sensitive to undifferentiated sounds without definite pitch, particularly sounds produced by metal. Such percussive bell-like effects are often perceived as frictional acoustical complexes, the minor second or the minor ninth. Chou Wen-chung is possibly the first Chinese composer who has attempted to translate authentic oriental melorhythms into the terms of modern Western music. He describes his esthetic purpose as a recapture of the color, mood, and emotion of Chinese traditional music “by means of its own transmutation, without adding whatever is not already suggested in itself.” He poses the problem of conciliation between Ch. 14: originally published in American Composers Alliance Bulletin, 1961.

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melodic pentatonicism and dissonance in the following unambiguous statement: “The characteristic successions of transparent intervals used in Chinese music are freely embroidered with opulent dissonances serving as the palette from which the composer paints in orchestral sonority, timbre, texture and dynamics. The changing mood and the emotional content are thus projected by means of a tonal brushwork extending over the entire orchestral spectrum.” And he asserts his national heritage by concluding: “In my works I am influenced by the philosophy that governs every Chinese artist, whether he is a poet or a painter, namely, affinity to nature in conception, allusiveness in expression, and terseness in realization.” Chou Wen-chung is fully endowed for the projection of his task, for he possesses an innate feeling for Chinese art and a thorough training in music, particularly modern music. And yet music was not his earliest vocation. He was born in Chefoo, on July 28, 1923. The Japanese invasion of China forced him to go to Shanghai. When the Japanese occupied that city, he fled to the interior of China. He entered the Kwangsi University in Kweilin, where he studied civil engineering; as the Japanese advanced, he proceeded to Chungking where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. After the war, Chou obtained a scholarship in architecture from Yale University, and in the fall of 1946 arrived in the United States. He decided, however, to abandon architectural studies for musical composition. His natural aptitude was sufficiently impressive to enable him to enter the New England Conservatory of Music on a Carr Scholarship. While pursuing regular academic studies, he also took a course with the writer of this article. It was immediately evident that the complexity of contemporary theories presented no difficulties to him. Perhaps his training in exact sciences helped him in this respect. But above all, he knew what he wanted to do in musical composition. I encouraged him to cultivate his knowledge of traditional Chinese music because I felt that he had the unique chance of creating an oriental style in a twentieth-century idiom. Chou reminded me of this in his letter of July 16, 1960, in response to my request for a self-analytical declaration. (He calls his analysis “a rationalization of the technical aspects of my works,” and adds “I do hope you will not quote from it directly, as it is written only for your reference.” But his analysis is so illuminating that I feel free not to comply with his disclaimer.)

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Here are the most interesting paragraphs from Chou’s letter: “Like Chinese calligraphers and painters, I have always regarded my technique as a spontaneous manifestation of my gradually crystallizing esthetic concepts. This is perhaps in agreement with the Confucian concept, ‘Music is born of emotion; tones are the substance of music; melody and rhythm are the appearance of tones. The greatness of music lies not in perfection of artistry but in attainment of the spiritual power inherent in nature.’ I was mainly stimulated by your suggestions when I began in 1949 to make a serious study of classical Chinese music, and subsequently other Eastern music as well. In the meantime, I tried to integrate the result of these studies with the most advanced contemporary musical techniques. I believe the foundation of my musical thinking was formed beginning with Landscapes written in 1949, and culminating with the composition of And the Fallen Petals.” After a season or so in Boston, Chou went to New York where he had the good fortune of working with Edgard Varèse. He also continued his academic studies in music with Otto Luening at Columbia University, receiving a Master’s Degree in 1954. Guided by instinct and technique, Chou Wen-chung composed a series of works, mostly for orchestra, which possesses a personal stamp and that most precious of all endowments, the power of communication to the listener. It is extraordinary that Chou had no period of groping in search of a style, no works discarded because of technical failures. And still more remarkably, he did not have to fight for recognition, which came to him, so to say, on a silver platter. Leopold Stokowski, with his discriminating taste for the unusual and the exotic, performed Chou’s Landscapes in 1953. On a commission for the Louisville Orchestra, Chou wrote his “triolet for orchestra,” And the Fallen Petals. Performances followed in the major music centers of America, Europe, and Asia. Chou received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957, and a second one in 1959. He also held a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to conduct a research program on classical Chinese music and drama at Columbia University from 1955 to 1957. In 1958 Chou was appointed to the faculty of the University of Illinois. Sophisticated music critics, not easily swayed by mere prettiness of tonal colors and the exotic nature of musical materials, began to use superlatives in reviewing Chou’s works. A tangible sign of success was the acceptance of Chou’s works for publication by the renowned Edition Peters and the issuance of recordings.

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Chou’s distinctive style is determined as much by his self-imposed limitations as by his sensitivity to the fine nuances of tone, color, and rhythm. He writes: “While it is obvious that I have evolved a very personal technique, I do not seem to be aware of its grammar. Instead of following the rules of any system or method—even if it happens to be of my own devising—I have always preferred to rely on my instincts as a composer and a sense of logic as conditioned by my esthetic convictions.” The musical imagery in Chou’s works is dominated by Chinese impressions and Chinese states of mind. His muse does not require large canvases. He writes for the standard classical-size orchestra, with an amplified percussion section, but without exotic oriental instruments. The duration of his orchestral pieces varies from four to eleven minutes each. Slow movements predominate. The opening phrases are invariably subdued and soft, and so are most of the endings. There is no formal development in Chou’s music; variations are suggested by changes of instrumental color and of rhythmic patterns, rather than by cumulative elaborations. The themes themselves are eloquent in their brevity. The music appears to be in a state of constant motion; recurrent dashes of wavy scales and tremulous trills supply pleasing decorative touches. If formal elements are not of the essence in Chou’s music, the melorhythmic nuances are cultivated with fine precision. Pentatonic melodies constitute the main thematic source; vertical and horizontal minor seconds and minor ninths assume thematic importance in Chou’s works; the consistency of these usages suggests a serial concept in composition. The use of percussion is correspondingly subtle. Chou indicates in specific detail the manner of striking a drum; sometimes he instructs the player to lay a tambourine or a bass drum flat in order to disperse and dampen the sound. The deep Chinese gong is included in all of Chou’s orchestral scores. The visual aspect of Chou’s scores (and one should not underestimate this element in modern composition) is interesting. The pages are spacious, and unencumbered with too many notes. With some imagination, one can conjure up on these pages a pattern of classical Chinese ideograms in black ink executed with calligraphic penmanship. The titles of Chou’s works relate to images of nature from old Chinese poetry. So reverently does Chou approach the intimate meaning of the poem that the music itself becomes a natural reflection of the words. The notes are spaced like syllables in flexible prosody; musical phrases suggest

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lines of verse; changes of mood are portrayed in changes of instrumental color. Sometimes there is a direct correspondence between the words in the title and the melorhythmic construction of the theme. Thus the meaning of the line “And the fallen petals” is conveyed by a series of falling fourths in the pentatonic melody. Chou’s own ideas on melody, tonality, harmony, rhythm, tempo, form and expression, are summarized in the following extracts: Linear Movement Motives in linear movement are built in either pentatonic or heptatonic modes, often freely embroidered with upper or lower embellishing tones—generally a minor second if a flowing melodic line is intended (e.g., Soliloquy of a Bhiksuni), or a perfect fourth if a richer sonority is desired (e.g., And the Fallen Petals); sometimes a preceding embellishing tone is repeated, resulting in such intervals as a diminished fifth (e.g., The Willows Are New).

Tonality In spite of the consistent use of and the prominence given to the nonscale tones in linear movement and vertical amplification, a feeling of tonal center practically always exists. A change in tonal plane is generally effected by: (1) using common tones as links between the tonal planes, (2) emphasizing or sustaining a neighbor tone or a chordal tone (unrelated to the scale tones) at the end of a running passage or after a fermata to usher in a new tonal plane. The application of Chinese scalarmodal concepts in my music is principally a means for ordered construction of the basic tonal material. An exceptional example is the Seven Poems of Ta’ng Dynasty, in which the tonal center oscillates rapidly so as to appear ambiguous. This is because the linear motives constantly ascend or descend on a ladder of minor seconds, i.e., the scale tones are displaced by their upper or lower neighbor tones.

Vertical Amplification Chordal combinations are generally the result of vertical amplification of the linear movement. They are of two basic types: (1) the vertical formation is made up of the same tones as the linear motive it supports, with or without their minor ninths or seconds. This type of chord is used almost exclusively in Soliloquy of a Bhiksuni and The Willows Are New.

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Such chords are like magnified reflections of the linear movement. (2) The vertical formation is made up of perfect fourths or fifths, with or without their minor ninths or seconds. Such chords are like shifting cloud-formations and, when combined with orchestral texture-interweaving, can be easily molded by the composer according to his fancy— as if he were the wind that writes with endless eloquence in drifts of clouds.

Rhythm Rhythm is conceived according to its value to expressiveness and textural interweaving. The general rhythmic idea is additive rather than metric. In other words, the desired duration of tones in the linear movement conditions the rhythmic design, although divisive rhythmic patterns emerge as a result of textural interweaving. In extensive solo passages the rhythmic meter often changes with every bar, as in the middle movement of Landscapes, and also The Willows Are New. The bar-lines and rhythmic groupings are used to facilitate performance. For example, in the 2/8 sections towards the end of All in the Spring Wind the groupings are actually 7–2–2–3–2–3–9 and 5–2–2–2–3–4–2–11.

Tempo The problem of tempo is integrated into my rhythmic concept. The forward motion ebbs and flows—like the stream in a winding course— according to the intensity of expression and the complexity of texture. In All in the Spring Wind, the tempo slackens and tightens according to the formal scheme of the music.

Form Form is generally organized simultaneously with the conception of linear movement and vertical amplification so as to achieve an integrated and balanced framework for an ordered interplay of motion, tension, texture and timbre. As a result, it has a tendency to be symmetrical in design—not only in the complete work as a whole but in the component sections as well—as exemplified by All in the Spring Wind, And the Fallen Petals, Soliloquy of a Bhiksuni, and The Willows Are New.

Characteristically, Chou Wen-chung disclaims the importance of technical aspects of his music. “To paraphrase a fundamental Buddhist

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concept,” he writes, “the material is immaterial, the immaterial material. Technique is merely the vehicle for the ultimate purpose of expression, the catalyst for the crystallization of emotion. Line (linear movement), mass (vertical amplification), and their inter-relationship (form), together with such elements as rhythm, texture, timbre and dynamics, serve only as the means for achieving expressiveness and conveying emotion through the controlled flow of sound—the organized complexity and ordered interplay of all the properties of sound at the immediate disposal of present-day instruments and orchestral resources.” Let us now consider Chou’s individual works. His first important score was Landscapes, which he wrote at the age of twenty-five. It is inspired by three poems by Cheng Hsieh (1693–1765), Ting P’eng (c. 1661), and Liu Chi (1311–1375). The guiding lines of the poems mark the sections of the work. They are “Under the cliff, in the bay,” “The sorrow of parting,” and “One streak of dying light.” The first section is a series of condensations and rarefactions, in dynamics and in tempo; the main melody is pentatonic; the secondary intervallic scheme is quartal. “The Sorrow of Parting” is a dialogue between the English horn and the oboe; its antiphonal character is brought out by the use of mutual intervallic inversions. The pentatonic structure is translucent; a cadential passing note does not affect its classical purity. The concluding section has more mobility; in the composer’s words, “The changing mood is projected by means of a tonal brushwork extending over the entire orchestral spectrum.” The music concludes on a pulsating progression of luminous points of sound, very softly, very slowly. The score of All in the Spring Wind bears the subtitle “A Rondelet for Orchestra.” The epigraph is from a poem by Li Yü, last emperor of the Southern T’ang Dynasty. The orchestra here is larger than in Landscapes, with a percussion group augmented by the celesta, xylophone, and glockenspiel. A measured beat of the timpani establishes the mood of the opening; minor seconds and minor ninths determine the intervallic scheme, and are used both vertically and horizontally. The dynamic plan is outlined by recurrent intensifications of sonority in brief explosive figures. The instrumental coloring is chiaroscuro, in light and shadows. Trills, glissandi, rapid tremolos create an illusion of static brilliance, but cumulative dynamic condensation leads to an agitated movement, unusual for the composer. Equally unusual is the ending in fortissimo in the entire orchestra in unison. The piece is a tour de force of coloristic brushwork,

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entirely athematic in structure. The only pentatonic references are in the fleeting gamelan-like passages. And the Fallen Petals, a triolet for orchestra, takes its title from a poem by Meng Hao-jan (689–740). It is the most formally organized work of Chou; its cyclic structure is emphasized by the use of an identical figure in the Prologue and the Epilogue. This basic figure is set in the pentatonic mode, composed of a succession of falling fourths that illustrate the falling petals of the title. The changing moods of the music are indicated by descriptive headings marking the principal sections in the score: Lontano e misterioso, Gioioso in distanza, Vigoroso quasi barbaro, Inquieto and Tragico in distanza. The images that inspire the work are these: a quiet landscape, with budding blossoms dancing in praise of life in the spring wind, and a storm that drives the petals far and wide. The original image returns, as the fallen petals are swept away and fresh blossoms on the branches dance again in the spring wind. The Willows Are New, for piano solo, composed in 1957, is in some respects the most typical work of Chou Wen-chung. It embodies his favorite techniques in an immediately perceptible manner; furthermore, this piece can be played without difficulty by anyone who can read music. Vertical structures and melodic embellishments are based exclusively on the frictional intervals of minor second and minor ninth, with the tritone occupying a focal position in some patterns. The somber low register predominates, while the high treble is used for bell effects. In a work as exiguous and fragile as this, expressive nuances assume major importance, as they do in similarly evocative pieces by Scriabin or Anton Webern. Chou explains that its effectiveness depends on a calculated rubato, a constant expansion and contraction on the temporal scale of the recurrent thematic motives. The changing meters indicate the approximate fluctuations of thematic occurrences; the general instruction is Lento ma non troppo, with intense but restrained feeling. It is interesting to note that condensations and rarefactions of speed and dynamic intensity are concomitant; acceleration is accompanied by crescendo; a slower tempo by diminuendo, down to the point of extinction (estinto). As usual, Chou Wenchung is ready with a poetic and yet technically meaningful program note: “In The Willows Are New, mutations of the original material are woven over the entire range of the piano and embroidered with sonorities that are the magnified reflexes of brushstroke-like movements . . . projected by

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means of the same principle that marks the art of Chinese calligraphy, wherein the controlled flow of ink—through the inter-action of rhythm and density, the modulation of line and texture—creates a continuum of motion and tension in spatial equilibrium.” The title, The Willows Are New, is taken from a poem by Wang Wei, the Chinese poet, painter and musician who flourished in the eighth century. Sprigs of willow, used in farewell ceremonies, are regarded as a symbol of parting. In 1958 Chou Wen-chung composed Soliloquy of a Bhiksuni, inspired by a scene in a sixteenth-century Chinese drama representing a Bhiksuni (Buddhist nun) worshipping before the image of Buddha. Chou’s rendition of the inner state of the worshipper is poetic and eloquent: I am only sixteen In the early spring of Life Yet I am thrust through The Gate of Emptiness Hearing only the sound of Temple bells and ritual pipes Striking stone chimes Endlessly endlessly Ringing bells Blowing the shell trumpet Beating drums Trying vainly to communicate With the Land of the Dead

The Soliloquy is scored for a muted trumpet solo, four horns (also muted most of the time), three trombones, tuba, drums, triangle, tambourine, suspended cymbal, and gong. The pentatonic scale of the melody is often embellished by chromatically lowered auxiliary notes. The harmonic formation is in fourths, in minor seconds and in minor ninths. Once more, Chou asserts in his explanatory note the kinship with the art of Chinese calligraphy, its linear and textural vitality. In all these works Chou conveys the meaning of Chinese poetry by purely instrumental sonorities. In his Seven Poems of Ta’ng Dynasty, composed in 1952, he lets the singer intone the words. This work reveals clearly the powerful influence of Varèse, in its intervallic scheme with wide

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melodic leaps, in the use of instrumental sonorities, in its subtle dynamics. But there are some individual traits, and the songs retain their attraction and their effectiveness. Chou’s music lends itself perfectly to choreographic interpretation. In his projects for future works, choreography is mentioned time and again. Classical Chinese art remains invariably the source of his inspiration. He explains the reasons for his dedication in the following lines: “I am attracted to these classics of the East that have come to be fairly well-known in the West, not only because of the dramatic impact of their multicolored content and the universal appeal of their humanistic message at a time like ours, but also because of their polygenetic and polymorphous history. It is my belief that these qualities will afford me opportunities to carry out some of my own ideals—musical or otherwise. The wonderful Tunhuang cave paintings come to mind: their power of communication, freedom of expression and freshness of conception, achieved through an audacious fusion of styles inherited from the actively crisscrossing cultures of that era, between the fifth and the eleventh centuries.”

15. HENRY COWELL

It is rare to find a crusader in a big cause whose intellect is as strong as his battle-ax. Not all crusaders are more interested in their cause than in themselves. Few are creators of original work in a field of art. Henry Cowell is the exceptional type who possesses all of these qualities. In Pushkin’s fantastic tale of Mozart and Salieri, there are these amazing lines: And I dissected music as a corpse, By algebra I tested harmony of sounds. . . .

This scientific procedure Henry Cowell unashamedly resumes. If there is one rule in his creative work, it consists in taking nothing for granted. Harmony, rhythm, tonecolor—Henry Cowell submits them to a test as if they were mere human beliefs, not divine laws. Henry Cowell’s life-story includes many adventurous chapters—born in California, of intellectual parents, he lived in the freedom of the hospitable country, without benefit of an estate or even as much property as would insure safe transition from infancy into adulthood. Having had no compulsory education, he conjectured and speculated by himself, unaided and unhindered. Musical sounds around him fascinated him as suitable material for synthetical experiments. When he first got hold of a decrepit upright piano, he discovered new possibilities on it. Considerably later, when he revealed to astonished audiences gathered in New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, and Moscow what could be

Ch. 15: originally published in 1933 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University; republished in 1962 by Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, Inc.

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done with the grand piano, he was merely developing his first-hand knowledge derived from these earlier experiences. At some intervening date he thought up a convenient terminology. He was scientific as well as pictorial when he named a group of keys struck with the forearm a “tonecluster”; a compound fairly threatening to break into the sacrosanct pages of Grove’s Dictionary of Music, for the lack of another descriptive name and from the necessity of designating a musical phenomenon which, however unpalatable to purists, is forcing itself irrepressibly into musical existence. Cowell had many years of conventional study, but only after he had already created, developed, and scientifically systematized an individual style of his own. When the first shock resulting from the exterior appearance of his piano-playing passed, intelligent people found that there is sound harmonic sense in the use of complete blocks of sounds, diatonically or chromatically arranged, treated as indivisible units. Our musical generation saw the use of triads in parallel construction, as if they were unisons or octaves; and, in polytonal writing, still bulkier entities were liberally handled. Apart from the question of using one’s antebrachia for the production of “tone-clusters,” there is nothing unacceptable in the idea to the seasoned musician; on the other hand, it is a logical development of modern harmonic resources. Thus, from innocent experimenting with the acoustical possibilities latent in an ordinary piano, Cowell came to conclusions of harmonic order. Experimenting with the soundboard of the grand piano led him to discoveries in the field of tone-color. Everyone who has heard his weird glissandos, interpretive of the ghost of his Irish ancestors, “The Banshee,” rendered directly on the piano strings, will admit that as a new orchestral color it is an undeniable acquisition. Pizzicato on the piano strings, as well as the entire gamut of percussion, conjured up from the pianistic entrails, make the piano a richer instrument without impinging on its historical dignity. As an orchestral instrument, Cowell’s string and percussion piano (that is, the ordinary piano enriched by extraordinary applications) ought to be used whenever a masculine harp tone is required, and for new battery sounds not obtainable on drums or cymbals. Henry Cowell, as a composer, made an early start. Before he was twenty, in the midst of distracting activities in rural and pastoral life around the paternal shack in which he was born and which is still his only sedentary home-sweet-home, he had composed music of all descriptions, including a symphony and an opera. At the same vigesimal calendas he

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delved for the first time into the problems of notation. This latter, not having been taught him as an established religion, he examined without fear—and dissented from its inadequacies. The duple system of rhythmical designations, giving adequate representation of only halves, quarters, eighths, etc., was the particular beam in the eye which Henry Cowell endeavored to extricate. He proposed a special notation for other fractions, so as to avoid the annoying and unscientific methods of setting down triplets, quintuplets, etc. This lore, nurtured by Cowell at Stanford University, where he worked as a free lance, was later embodied in a book, New Musical Resources, published in 1930 by Knopf. In 1931 Cowell, annoyed by the wistful realization that, no matter what notation we may decree, human players will still be human—that is, inaccurate, physiologically limited, rhythmically crippled, and unwilling to reform— hit upon the idea of an instrument which would faithfully produce all kinds of rhythms and cross-rhythms, as the tempered piano faithfully produces a given intonation for which a player on a string-instrument has to fumble by ear. He spoke to Professor Leon Theremin, builder of acoustical instruments, expounded his ideas, and secured the inventor’s valued collaboration. As a result, a new musical wonder, provisionally christened “rhythmicon,” was presented to the world for the first time on January 19, 1932, at the New School for Social Research, where Cowell is in charge of musical activities. The rhythmicon can play triplets against quintuplets, or any other combinations up to sixteen notes in a group. The metrical index is associated, in accordance with Henry Cowell’s scheme as expounded in New Musical Resources, with the corresponding frequence of vibrations. In other words, quintuplets are of necessity sounded on the fifth harmonic, nonuplets on the ninth harmonic, and so forth. A complete chord of sixteen notes presents sixteen rhythmical figures in sixteen harmonics within the range of four octaves. All sixteen notes coincide, with the beginning of each period, thus producing a synthetic harmonic series of tones. Henry Cowell composed, in 1931, a suite in four movements, for orchestra, entitled Rhythmicana, in which he treats the new instrument as a sort of rhythmical organ; in one of the movements he amusingly imitates the rhythmicon’s effects by building a harmonic scale in wood wind. Henry Cowell’s choices of titles for his compositions are indicative of a scientific spirit which animates him whenever he sets about to solve a musical equation. Synchrony (published by Edition Adler in Germany) is

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a tone-poem for music and dance; its rhythms are quite simple, yet Cowell manages to maintain an air of innovation by such devices as a sudden duplication of the metrical design and by a most ingenious orchestration. In his Sinfonietta for Chamber Orchestra he is almost academic, except for the “frictional” use of the interval of a minor second and some unearthly passages for the French horn scaling its harmonic series with little solicitude for the embouchure. In this and similar passages from his other works Cowell is expressive, and it is strange to observe how the two spirits—that of strict science and that of musical expressiveness—achieve a happy symbiosis in Cowell’s productions. Polyphonica, for twelve instruments, is for science, but the suite (“The Banshee,” “The Leprechaun,” and “The Fairy Bells”) for string and percussion piano and chamber orchestra, is all for expressiveness, for dynamic and color effects. The first is absolute music, product of a mind that takes nothing for granted; the second is applied music, often with a programmatic title which, however, is always added after the music is completed! When Cowell is intent on one particular problem, say that of dissonant counterpoint, he deliberately dismisses the wealth of his new musical resources and, by so doing, achieves an unencumbered presentation of the main problem. In the Piano Concerto (published by Edition Senart of Paris) his problem is sonority, and he uses a full-fledged technique of toneclusters to the fullest advantage in solo part and orchestra alike. It is easily understood that a tone-cluster in the orchestra is built by simple addition of instruments, and that fifteen instruments, producing single notes, are required to build a two-octave diatonic tone-cluster. Cowell’s titles are usually taken from Celtic lore. The harmonic scheme in these works (many of them published by Breitkopf and Haertel; we will mention The Tides of Manaunaun, Exultation, The Harp of Life) is surprisingly mild. Indeed, the idiom is so “audaciously conservative” that it is disarming. Cowell was not attempting to revise tonal harmony in these pieces. But in this very unpretentiousness lies their appeal; for, in their primitive directness they draw immediate response from audiences willing to accept the exterior peculiarities of tone-production. The sensational element in Cowell’s appearances in both hemispheres does not cancel the fact that, harmonically speaking, many of Cowell’s piano pieces are of crystalline simplicity. On the other hand, the sonorous richnesses of cluster music have aroused admiration which Cowell’s “scientific” self never seemed to command. Professors of great universities have written

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exorbitant characterizations of these tone-pictures; and abroad—in England, France, Germany, Poland, and Russia—Cowell’s name has become identified with Brobdingnagian sonorities. Cowell went to Russia in 1929; there he was received as a personification of industrial America, with machines governing the tide of life: “And I saw clearly the electric floodlights of Broadway filling the room, and the New York skyline hovering above the mist,” wrote a Russian intellectual after a demonstration at the Leningrad Institution of Arts and Sciences. Henry Cowell edits a unique quarterly publishing ultramodern music, under the title, New Music. As publisher, he demands no preconceived qualifications from his composers, and anyone with anything new to say engages his interest. He bars no one except himself—not a note of Cowell’s music has been published in Cowell’s edition. He specializes on American composers of the non-conformist type, but welcomes occasional Europeans. He publishes piano pieces, chamber music, and even full scores when finances permit. New Music has distribution all over the habitable globe, from Japan over both Americas to all of Europe. Henry Cowell, in managing various non-lucrative enterprises, is as much of an innovator as he is in composing his own and administering other contemporaries’ music. As director of the North American section of the Pan-American Association of Composers, he has organized every activity which this organization has had, including concerts in New York, San Francisco, Havana, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and other places. He works with determination unlessened by the realization that the world, even that part of the world that goes by the name of musical, is little flexible. But Henry Cowell would not be himself if he did not follow the path of most resistance.

1 6 . H O WA R D H A N S O N : THE “AMERICAN SIBELIUS” On the automobile road to Wahoo, Nebraska, the sign reads: “Wahoo, Birthplace of Howard Hanson.” Thus the Chamber of Commerce of Hanson’s home town acknowledged the honor he brought to Wahoo. In American musical geography Howard Hanson is the first important American musician to come out of the Middle West. He is also the foremost Scandinavian-American among composers. Throughout Hanson’s cosmopolitan career that has taken him across the breadth of the continent and to Europe, Hanson has kept the ties that connected him, an Americanborn musician, with the land of his ancestors. On the tercentenary of the first Swedish settlement in America in 1638, Hanson wrote a symphony, his third, to express the composer’s reverence “for the spiritual contribution that has been made to America by that sturdy race of northern pioneers who were in later centuries also to constitute such a mighty force in the conquering of the West.” Hanson’s early symphonic poem, North and West, is also dedicated to the same theme, as is his Hymn for the Pioneers, beginning “Spirit of the Northland, strengthen us ever.” It was from his mother that Hanson received his early musical instruction. Later, he took lessons at Luther College at Wahoo. Although he studied piano, he never aspired to become a concert player. His interest, even in boyhood, was concentrated on composition, which he studied diligently under several teachers in Lincoln, Nebraska, and New York City. The popular conception of a musical composer is that of a tousledhaired Bohemian, spending his time at the coffeehouse, and jotting down fleeting inspirations on the back of the menu. There is nothing in Howard Ch. 16: originally published in The Christian Science Monitor, October 14, 1944.

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Hanson’s biography that would substantiate such a picture. Hanson has always been orderly and tidy in his musical habits. Even his earliest compositions disclose a competence, free from groping uncertainty of musical means and intended effects. At the age of 19, he accumulated an impressive enough stock of scholarship to be engaged as an instructor in composition at the College of the Pacific in California. And two years later, at 21, he was named Dean of that school! In California, he wrote the music for the Forest Play, and conducted it in the open-air festival under the giant redwood trees. This score, and a symphonic composition entitled Before the Dawn, Hanson submitted to the jury of the American Academy of Rome, an institution created in 1920 to enable young American musicians to receive the benefit of professional training in Europe. Hanson won the fellowship easily and went to Rome for a three-year stay. He spent long hours listening to the magnificent choirs of St. Peter’s and other Roman churches and making a thorough study of Gregorian chant and medieval counterpoint. The outcome of these studies was the symphonic poem, Lux Aeturna, which Hanson conducted with the Augusteo Orchestra in Rome. Also in Rome he wrote his first Symphony, subtitled The Nordic Symphony, a reflection of the Northland, Swedish and American. Upon his return to America, Hanson gave a performance of the Nordic Symphony in Rochester, New York. There he met George Eastman, famous inventor of the Kodak camera, and donor of several million dollars for a conservatory of music, named the Eastman School of Music. Beyond compare, the Eastman School is the best-equipped musical institute in this country. It occupies a specially erected building, on the intersection of two busy streets. It has 200 pianos in its practice rooms, an auditorium seating 500 people, and a music library. Adjoined to the Eastman School is the great Eastman Theater, where concerts of visiting symphony orchestras and operas are given. Howard Hanson was 28 years old at the time he met Eastman. Yet so impressed was the latter with the young man’s eagerness of purpose and executive ability that he intrusted to him the directorship of the Eastman School of Music, a post that Hanson has held uninterruptedly for 20 years. In addition to his academic duties, Hanson has established a series of concerts of American symphonic music, performed by the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra. During the 19 years of these concerts, 798

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compositions by 336 composers have been presented, of which 272 orchestral works were by 161 students of the Eastman School of Music. Among Eastman School students whose music has been presented by Howard Hanson, are several who have already made a mark for themselves outside the walls of their Alma Mater: William Bergsma, who writes effective music in an optimistic neo-classical manner; David Diamond, composer of symphonic and vocal works charged with emotion, and highly personal in expression, even when enveloped in a tangle of acoustical discords; Herbert Inch, composer of neo-archaic but romantically colored instrumental pieces; Gail Kubik, who interprets American themes in terms of absolute music, in clearly delineated forms; Goddard Lieberson, whose inspiration ranges from symphonic rumbas to modernistic neo-romantic pieces, always with a touch of irony in melodic inflection; Robert Palmer, whose masterly technique is a foil to an imaginative nature, with a strong personal voice; Burrill Phillips, writer of lively and cleverly turned-out overtures and ballets; Gardner Read, the musician of earnest and deeply felt moods, whose neo-romantic style of composition is enough of the twentieth century to make it new and interesting; and many others who, in the tomorrow of American music, will be recognized as representative of the age. Inasmuch as Howard Hanson has been the mentor of American musicians, it is interesting to quote his views on what modern music is and should be. He wrote in the preface of his Second Symphony, pointedly surnamed Romantic Symphony: “I recognize, of course, that romanticism is at the present time the poor stepchild, without the social standing of her elder sister, neo-classicism. Nevertheless, I embrace her all the more fervently, believing, as I do, that romanticism will find in this country rich soil for a new, young, and vigorous growth, an escape from the bitter type of modern musical realism.” In his own words, Hanson shows that romanticism does not mean adherence to the outmoded systems of harmony. He is no stranger to modernism; his harmonies, often compressed in space, challenge the ear. When Hanson conducted the first rehearsal of his Fourth Symphony, a viola player asked him if it was not by error that he had B flat in his part, while the trumpet was playing B natural. It was not, and in addition there was in the same chord also a discordant B, and the astringent effect was further intensified by the basic harmony of F minor in the trombones.

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Because of the modal flavor of his melodies, the austerity of his instrumental writing, and the evocation of Scandinavian moods, Hanson has been called the American Sibelius. There are undoubtedly points of affinity, and of modern composers, Sibelius has influenced Hanson’s style of musical thinking probably more than any other. But points of divergence are also many, and Hanson’s music is more than Sibelius transplanted to the new continent. Howard Hanson is one of the few American musicians who have had an opera performed on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. It was Merry Mount, produced on Feb. 10, 1934, with Lawrence Tibbett singing the principal part. The opera, freely adapted after Hawthorne’s tale, “The Maypole of Merry Mount,” depicts Puritan Massachusetts of 1625. Howard Hanson has been a guest conductor, performing his own symphonies, with virtually all major orchestras in this country. Boston has been particularly receptive to Hanson’s music. All his four symphonies have been performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Whatever the ultimate evaluation of the intrinsic quality of Hanson’s music, it remains intensely, emotionally, personally, his music.

17. CHARLES IVES

1. MUSICAL REBEL As a dedication for his Essays Before a Sonata Charles Ives wrote: “These prefatory essays were written by the composer for those who can’t stand his music—and the music for those who can’t stand his essays; to those who can’t stand either, the whole is respectfully dedicated.” This sonata, with which Ives challenged the musical public, is subtitled Concord, Massachusetts, 1840–60. Its four movements bear the names of U.S. writers of the Concord group: Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau. The music is as difficult to play as it is unconventional in technique. In the Hawthorne movement the pianist is instructed to use a strip of wood to sound two octaves of notes in one chord. The style varies from simple hymnlike tunes to complex combinations of sounds that cannot be classified by any system of modern harmony. The Alcotts movement is inspired by the “fate motive” of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which the Alcott sisters liked so much. Ives remarks about the Emerson movement: “A metronome cannot measure Emerson’s mind and oversoul, any more than the old Concord Steeple Bell could.” In this observation lies the essence of every piece of music Ives wrote. To him music is a transcendental expression of the universal soul, not to be measured in materialistic terms of notes and tempo. But since Ives is an American, he looks at the universe from America. The subject of his works is American; their source of inspiration belongs to all mankind. In his orchestral set Three Places in New England, Ives draws a vast panorama of this universal Americanism. The first movement bears the name of Boston Common, with a particular reference to the St. Gaudens Ch. 17: Part 1 originally published in Américas, Vol. 5, No. 9, September 1953.

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monument to Colonel Shaw and his colored regiment. The second movement portrays Putnam’s Camp in Redding, Connecticut, with its Revolutionary memories. The third is “The Housatonic River at Stockbridge,” in which once again the Beethoven “fate motive” is the dominant theme. Here, as in the Concord Sonata, American tunes in simple harmonies are placed in juxtaposition with the most extraordinary outbursts of sound, with conflicting tonalities thrown together and rhythms torn to shreds. If this be chaos, it is the chaos of American life, which cannot be represented by nicely ordered harmonies. Indeed, the word “nice” is the ultimate term of opprobrium in the vocabulary of Charles Ives. When he wants to express his distaste for some composer, he says that he composes like “a nice old lady.” The technical devices applied by Ives in Three Places in New England, in Concord Sonata, and in works like Lincoln, the Great Commoner, The Fourth of July, The Masses, Washington’s Birthday, and An Election are those of polytonality, atonality, and polyrhythmy. Such procedures are now accepted idioms of modern music, but they did not even have a name when Ives wrote these works in the early years of this century. Historically speaking, he is a pioneer of modern music, an individual discoverer of effective harmonic applications that gradually found their way into general use. Ives stopped writing music about 1930 when his illness—diabetes— made it impossible for him to handle the pen. And after that it took some years before the spirit of the times caught up with his prophetic innovations. Ives is the son of George Ives, the band leader who played for Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln asked General Grant what he thought of the band, Grant made the famous reply: “I know only two tunes: one is Yankee Doodle, and the other isn’t.” The elder Ives was an extraordinary person. Never satisfied with things as they were, he was a born experimenter in music. Once he broke his band into several sections and placed them in a church steeple, on the village green, and on the roof of a building on Main Street in Danbury, the Connecticut town where Charles Ives was born in 1874. He let them play variations of traditional hymns such as Greenland’s Icy Mountains or Jerusalem the Golden, with little thought of euphony. The memory of this exhilarating music-making lingered in Ives’ mind, and he brought it out in the second movement of Three Places in New England. There he had two orchestral sections play a march tune at two different speeds, so that three bars of one section equaled four bars of the other. In order to conduct this

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musical episode properly, the leader has to beat different measures with each hand, four bars with the right hand against three bars with the left. No wonder orchestral conductors were slow at tackling the Ives scores in public performance. Father Ives was fascinated by the natural sounds of the countryside. He tried to catch the true pitch of the village church bells. He found that the ordinary scale was not good enough, and proceeded to work out a machine that could produce quarter tones. He attached twenty-four violin strings tuned in quarter tones to a wooden frame, but it did not seem to give the true pitch heard in church bells, and he soon abandoned the attempt. Charles Ives, too, investigated the possibilities of quarter tones and wrote three pieces in this manner. Ives learned the rudiments of music from his father, and played the drums in the band as a boy. He also studied the organ, and at the age of twelve gave a recital in the Danbury church. Later he received thorough academic training at the Yale University School of Music under the guidance of Horatio Parker. He wrote a symphony that is entirely conventional in idiom but demonstrates a complete mastery of technique. Those critics who believe that the harmonic wildness of Ives’ later scores shows ignorance of musical laws can be reassured by an examination of this early symphony. Great innovating forces spring not from ignorance but from a higher knowledge. After completing his formal education, Ives did not settle down as a professional composer. He got a job as an insurance clerk, and found this supposedly unpoetic occupation fascinating because he had to deal with people. He made rapid progress and soon established a copartnership— the Mutual Life Insurance Company. He prospered moderately, and from the proceeds of the business set aside enough money to publish some of his compositions. No price and no copyright registry are listed in his first volume, 114 Songs by Charles E. Ives. The earliest of these songs is dated 1889, when Ives was fifteen. A note in the collection stated simply: “This book is privately printed and is not to be sold or put on the market. Complimentary copies will be sent to anyone as long as the supply lasts. As far as the music is concerned, anyone (if he be so inclined) is free to use it, copy it, transpose or arrange it for other instruments.” Publication of the Concord Sonata followed, and copies were again distributed gratis. Subsequent works of Charles Ives were published by the New Music Quarterly, a noncommercial venture dedicated to the publica-

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tion of ultra-modern works. It was only after 1940, when his music became comprehensible to musicians and Ives was hailed as a genius by hardheaded critics, that commercial publishers woke up to the opportunity and began publishing his compositions on a business basis. Soon music by Ives began to be performed in concert halls. John Kirkpatrick, a devoted young pianist, spent two years learning the epic Concord Sonata and played it, from memory, in New York on January 20, 1939. Lawrence Gilman wrote in the Herald Tribune: “This Sonata is exceptionally great music—it is, indeed, the greatest music composed by an American, and the most deeply and essentially American in impulse and implication.” The Concord Sonata was recorded by Kirkpatrick for Columbia. A still earlier piano sonata was soon published and recorded. Ives became much more than a name and a legend. Eagerly, the sophisticated musical public bought the available Ives music and recordings. Indeed, Ives, the most uncommercial of all composers, became a source of comfortable profit to music publishers and phonograph companies. This consummation is not only a tantalizing paradox, but a demonstration of the truth that really great music is inevitably destined to become popular. In 1947, Ives received the Pulitzer Prize for his Third Symphony, written thirty-six years earlier. It was not easy, however, to foist worldly honors on Charles E. Ives. He met delegates of the Pulitzer Prize Commission with the comment: “Prizes are only for kids. I am grown up.” Ives lives far from the madding crowd. Partly because of his illness, but mostly because of his individual way of life, he shies away from personal contact with the official world. Only once did he attend a performance of his works. He has no radio in his home in New York City or in his country house in West Redding, Connecticut. For more than twenty years he has not heard any public concerts. He is blissfully unaware of what is going on in the musical world. He has no interest in following the developments of new schools of composition, except for the work of a very few American composers of his generation whose music is as unfamiliar to the public as his own once was. In his home he keeps only Beethoven scores and other classics. Ives is equally aloof from the everyday happenings in the world at large. He does not read daily newspapers, and his only source of information is the London Spectator, to which he subscribes. When he went to

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Europe in the autumn of 1932, he cut off even this contact with the news. He learned about Roosevelt’s election accidentally from a French innkeeper. His wife, Harmony Twichell-Ives, protects him from the excitements of the world. She administers the daily shots of insulin without which he could not live, and takes care of his mail. On rare occasions, they entertain visiting friends, a highly selected group, for Ives does not acclimatize himself easily to strangers. He has an abhorrence of photography. Only two snapshots of him are known to exist. It was not until 1949, on his seventy-fifth birthday, that he allowed a Life photographer to enter his home to take an “official” picture. Like his favorite author, Thoreau, Ives is a political rebel. He believes in drastic measures to remedy world ills. When the ideals of President Wilson were defeated in the election of 1920, he wrote an angry song entitled November 2, 1920. To a wry, dissonant accompaniment, he set the words: “Too many readers go by the headlines, party men would muddle up the facts, so a good many citizens voted as grandpa always did, or thought a change for the sake of change seemed natural enough. It’s raining, let’s throw out the weather man—Kick him out!—Kick him out! Kick him!” Ives published this song with a footnote: “The assumption, in the text, that the result of our national election in 1920 was a definite indication that the country (at least, the majority mind) turned its back on a high purpose, is not conclusive. Unfortunately, election returns coming through the present party system prove nothing conclusively. The voice of the people sounding through the mouth of the parties, becomes somewhat emasculated. It is not inconceivable that practical ways may be found for more accurately registering and expressing popular thought—at least in relation to the larger primary problems, which concern us all. A suggestion to this end in the form of a constitutional amendment, together with an article discussing the plan in some detail and from various aspects, will be gladly sent by the writer to anyone who is interested enough to write for it.” The proposed amendment was nothing less than the establishment of federal legislation by the people without the intermediation of political parties. Ives circulated the text of the amendment among senators and other politicians, but met with no response. He was no more bitter about this failure than he was about the failure of his music to find a willing audience.

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In 1938, Ives submitted a memorandum to President Franklin Roosevelt advocating the abolition of war. He wrote: “War between nations is the one perfectly stupid thing that still hangs over the world. It settles nothing and never will settle anything except the bottom of the graveyard.” This proposal, too, was futile. Ives has seen two world wars go by in his lifetime. But to him the failure of effort is no reason for abstaining from all effort. In this respect Ives is a true follower of his spiritual ancestors, Emerson and Thoreau. In his music, too, Ives speaks to the people. He intersperses his manuscripts with characteristic remarks, which are sometimes incorporated even in the published editions. In the sketches for his Three-Page Sonata he inserts a reminder: “Back to first theme—all nice sonatas must have first theme.” Further along, there is an inscription: “March time—but not a march, Rollo!” In one of his songs Ives indicates a “blue note” and adds in parentheses: “Use Saturday night.” In his string quartet, in three movements marked “Discussion,” “Arguments,” and “Call of the Mountains,” Ives adds this comment: “String quartet for four men who converse, discuss, argue (politics), fight, shake hands, shut up, then walk up the mountainside to view the firmament.” One passage is marked “Andante Emasculato”; another passage, “con scratchy.” He advises the player: “Too hard to play—so it just can’t be good music, Rollo.” And then again: “Join in, Professor, all in the key of C. You can do that nice and pretty.” And finally, Ives compliments himself: “Pretty tune, ladies.” The music of Ives presents a singular mixture of precision and freedom of interpretation. He aims to represent village-band playing or barn-dance fiddling, in which improvisation and a spirit of fun in musicmaking are paramount considerations. On that unique occasion when he went to a concert to hear his music played, the orchestra gave a rather scrambling performance. But he commended the conductor in these words: “This was just like a town meeting—everyone for himself. Wonderful how it came out!” In his symphonic poem The Fourth of July a violin is given a drone part in a completely independent rhythm, which has to be maintained regardless of what goes on in the rest of the orchestra. Even more astounding is the metric and rhythmic scheme in the last movement of Three Places in New England. The rhythms are so complex that there are triplets within quadruplets, with additional inward groups of rhythmic

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Manuscript of Three-Page Sonata. Ives’ scrawled comment at repeat sign: “Back to first theme—all nice sonatas must have first theme.” (Copyright Mercury Music, Inc. Photograph from the Charles Ives Papers, Irving Gilmore Music Library of Yale University. Used by permission of the publisher.)

Printed version of Three-Page Sonata. Editor’s note says it “pokes fun at conventional sonata form, yet is a genuine sonata movement.” (Copyright Mercury Music, Inc. Photograph from the Charles Ives Papers, Irving Gilmore Music Library of Yale University. Used by permission of the publisher.)

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units that present a difficult problem to figure out even on paper. In one passage a seemingly insurmountable compound rhythm resolves itself into a simple succession of strong beats. Thus Ives is having fun with the players and conductors. The second movement of his Fourth Symphony opens with different time signatures marked for various instruments: 6/8, 5/8, 7/4, 2/4, and 4/4. The barlines do not coincide until the conclusion of three bars in 4/4, which equal six bars of 5/8 and two bars of 7/4, all moving at different speeds. It is characteristic of Ives that the instrumentation of his works is extremely flexible. A highly complex orchestral score can be performed by either a small group of players or a huge orchestra. Some instrumental parts are ad libitum, held together by the piano, which is present in almost all his compositions. On the other hand, Ives may suddenly inject a bit of song into a violin sonata, or a flute part into a piano sonata, as in the Thoreau movement of the Concord Sonata. He explains: “A flute may play throughout this page. If no flute, then piano alone—but Thoreau much prefers to hear the flute over Walden.” One of his songs contains a parenthetical indication: “From pieces for basset horn, flute, three violins, piano and drum”; another song is marked: “Originally for English horn with violins, flute and piano.” Similarly, sectional repeats and possible cuts are indicated in many of his works. In Hallowe’en, for strings and piano, the musicians are instructed to play the music four times, with slight variations, with this injunction: “In any case the playing gets faster and louder each time, keeping up with the bonfire.” Ives then adds: “It has been observed by friends that three times around is quite enough, while others stood for the four—but as this piece was written for a Hallowe’en party and not for a nice concert, the decision must be made by the players regardless of the feelings of the audience.” His manuscripts, with their numerous suggestions of alternate instrumentation and ad libitum parts, are a source of both delight and despair to admirers determined to prepare the music for publication. Added to this is an almost illegible handwriting, so shaky that the visual impression is that of a chaotic jumble of notes. But once the manuscript is deciphered and copied, the logic of its melodic, contrapuntal, and harmonic texture becomes clear. In case of doubt, Ives himself can be relied upon to clear the point. There is never any hesitancy on his part as

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to which note is the right one and which sharp or flat is in its proper place, even though some of his unpublished manuscripts date fifty years back. Occasionally, he even sits down at a ramshackle old piano and plays some passages to show how the music should go. Charles Ives, the creator of the most complex music in existence, in comparison with which the wildest scores by other twentieth-century composers are mere child’s play, remains, at nearly seventy-nine, an unreformed idealist. He keeps his faith in the progress of man and in the progress of art. Designed on a plan of gigantic dimensions, his unfinished Universe Symphony, in which several orchestras are to play simultaneously in a transcendental harmony of disharmonies, is a declaration of this faith: that one must dare beyond the immediately feasible in order to make practical what once was regarded as impossible.

2. MUSICAL PROPHET The above signed belongs to a select group of people who may claim the distinction of being the earliest friends of the music of Ives. It was twentyfive years ago that I met Ives. I will never forget the gradual revelation of his music that came to me when I studied the score of his orchestral set Three Places in New England. The poetic invocation of old America, the turbulence of rhythms and massive harmonies, the stirring motion of waves of musical matter supporting the melodies in a unique contrapuntal design, all this was absorbing to me. The music was unlike any “modern” music of the day. It could not be fitted into any category. It was a transcendental dream, but a dream filled with concrete images that assumed an objective reality. There was a challenge: could this music be communicated to an audience, even though it was so personal, so difficult to perform, so improvisatory in character? The rhythmic problems alone were staggering. The second movement, a musical souvenir of Putnam’s Camp in Redding, Connecticut, with Part 2 originally published in Musical America, February 15, 1954.

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its Revolutionary memories, contained an episode in which two village bands marching towards the meeting place from two different directions, played tunes at different speeds, so that three bars of one metrical period corresponded to four bars of the other. I met this “polymetrical” problem by beating three bars in 4/4 time with my right hand against four bars in 2/2 time with my left. The left hand had to move 33 1/3% faster than the right. Downbeats of both hands coincided at the end of a period of three bars in the right hand and a period of four bars in the left hand. Visually, it must have been amusing, but the orchestra seemed to have no difficulty in following my twofold beat. I conducted Three Places in New England in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Havana and Paris. The reaction varied from spellbound enthusiasm to speculation as to what the chambers of commerce in New England would say of this dissonant portrayal of its natural attractions. But the most significant reaction came nearly twenty years after my first presentation of the score, from a New York critic who reviewed a second performance of the work given by the Boston Symphony. The critic quoted his own newspaper at the time of the premiere and expressed amazement that a work so intense, so effective and so direct could have been then judged as discordant, confused and noisy. This candid avowal was an apt illustration of something that we, the early Ivesites, knew long ago: namely, that Ives was many years ahead of his time, and that the times would finally catch up with his prophetic visions. The paradox of Ives’s genius (this word has been used without qualification by several otherwise sober critics when writing about Ives) is that his music is at once fantastically complex and appealingly simple. His subject matter is American with hardly an exception; the titles alone show the national source of his inspiration: The Fourth of July; Lincoln, the Great Commoner; Washington’s Birthday. His enormously difficult Concord Sonata for piano is in four movements named after the great American writers of the Concord group: Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau. To describe Hawthorne’s “celestial railroad,” Ives instructs the pianist to use a strip of wood to produce two full octaves of white or black keys. There are passages of great rhythmic intricacy; but then, as Ives says, “a metronome cannot measure Emerson’s mind and oversoul, any more than the old Concord Steeple Bell could.” No matter how complicated the rhythmic and contrapuntal patterns, the fundamental musical thought in the Concord Sonata is melodically

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simple, evocative of hymn-like American tunes and nostalgic ballads, in a native—one might say a Currier and Ives—manner. When one listens to the music of Ives without prejudice, as a layman would, the impression received is that of a bright American landscape, grandly designed and touched with sweeping brush strokes that suddenly illumine the scene. When one examines this musical panorama with regard to the special devices used, as a professional musician would, the analysis uncovers an astonishing abundance of technical virtuosity in writing. When one considers Ives’s achievement in the context of the period during which he wrote most of his music, as a historian would, the conclusion is inescapable that Ives has anticipated every known musical innovation of the twentieth century. A mere tabulation of new technical devices applied by Ives, long before other composers began to experiment with modernistic structures, reveals the extraordinary scope of his music: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Polytonality Atonality Dissonant Counterpoint Tone-Clusters Polymeters Polyrhythms Quarter-tones

In addition, Ives employs a method of free counterpoint that may be described as “controlled improvisation.” The essence of this technique consists in giving a rhythmic phrase to an instrument, or a group of instruments, with instructions to keep playing it at varying speeds and varying dynamics for a certain number of bars. These revolutionary advances in composition were made by Ives before 1920. He has written little music since then on account of a diabetic condition which makes it difficult for him to handle a pen. But his fighting spirit remains undiminished. His fierce loyalty to friends is as remarkable as his intransigence towards those whom he blames for social and musical ills. When he talks, he assumes a fighting stance, his right hand raised and a finger of scorn pointed at the imaginary antagonist. In music, and in life, Ives is fired by passionate convictions. He does not compromise. His

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beliefs in the goodness of the good and his abhorrence of the badness of the bad are absolute. Charles Ives inherited his musical Americanism from his father, George Ives, a remarkable personality of his time. George Ives was a band leader. During the Civil War, he played for Abraham Lincoln. After a concert, Lincoln asked General Grant whether he enjoyed the music. Grant then made his celebrated reply. “I can’t tell,” he said. “I know but two tunes; one is Yankee Doodle, and the other isn’t. Which one did the band play?” Father Ives was something more than just a band leader. He was agitated by new musical ideas. Why should music he made of twelve notes to the octave? he wondered. Why should a tune be confined to a single tonality? Nature knows no such limitations. So Father Ives experimented with musical sounds much as Benjamin Franklin experimented with kites to catch the unknown force from the skies. Father Ives intended to capture the true pitch of church bells, and this led him to an attempt to construct a quarter-tone machine. He tied 24 violin strings to a wooden box, and tuned these strings in quarter-tones. He failed to reproduce the church bell sound by this method, but he influenced his son to experiment further with quarter-tones. These experiments were the first in America, and as such they made unwritten history. Father Ives believed in musical freedom. Once he told the members of his band to disperse into several sections, placed several musicians on the village green, sent another group to the church steeple, and put still another group on the roof of a house on Main Street in Danbury, Connecticut, the birthplace of Charles Ives. Then Father Ives let them play traditional hymns with variations, and listened to the curious harmonies and rhythms that resulted from this free enterprise. Thus, polytonality, microtones, polyrhythmics and other formidable techniques of modern music were unwittingly anticipated by George Ives, and deliberately worked out by his son Charles. An interesting page from the history of American ingenuity! Charles Ives received academic schooling at Yale University, where his teacher was the venerable Horatio Parker. After graduation, Ives went into a business that seemed poles away from music—life insurance. He was successful, and soon founded a copartnership, the Mutual Life Insurance Company. But business left him enough time for music. He wrote pages and pages of it, in all styles, for all possible combinations of instruments.

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The music world got its first glimpse into the Ives universe in 1922 when he published a collection of his 114 songs. The announcement of the publication said simply: “Complimentary copies will be sent to anyone as long as the supply lasts.” The volume is now a collector’s item. Characteristically, the 114 songs are printed in reverse chronological order, beginning with the song entitled Majority, dated 1921, in which the piano part contains (for the first time in print) a number of “tone-clusters,” and ending with his earliest song, Slow March, dated 1888, when Ives was fourteen years old. The subject matter of these songs is as varied as their musical idioms. One finds here a cowboy ballad, Charlie Rutlage, written in a syncopated ragtime manner; romantic songs to French and German texts; and an angry proclamation under the meaningful title, Nov. 2, 1920. The words to this song, written under the impression of an American election that distressed Ives, are his own: “Prejudice and politics! The stand-patters came in strong and yelled: Slide back! To HELL with ideals! All the old women, male and female, had their day today.” An avalanche of chromatics in minor seconds accompanies this outburst. Smug normalcy and social self-complacency always arouse the fighter in Ives. The words “nice” and “pretty” have become invectives in his vocabulary. He knows that timidity and conformity are enemies of action and progress. And he invokes the spirit of his American ancestors to assist him in his fighting task. He writes in the introduction to his set of pieces, Tone Roads: “Over the rough and rocky roads our old forefathers strode on their way to the steepled village church or to the farmers’ harvest fair, or to the town meetings where they got up and said what they thought regardless of consequences.” Ives himself got up and said what he thought—regardless of what others said or did. And he won. He now enjoys a large popular following. His recognition includes a Pulitzer Prize and other tokens of worldly esteem. The story of Charles Ives teaches the timid of heart that even in terms of success with the public, it pays to proclaim one’s ideas and serve one’s ideals fearlessly, boldly, with the unswerving determination of a fighter for the right cause.

1 8 . U LY S S E S K AY

Ulysses Kay is a composer who refuses to carry a label—technical, racial, stylistic. He writes music that corresponds to his artistic emotions, within a framework of harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration that provides him with the broadest range of expression. He is not automatically satisfied with every piece he writes, simply because it is his. Some of his music causes him acute embarrassment for no more specific reason than his detachment from that particular phase of his work. Some of the material he rejects is of excellent quality and it would be a pity if he would physically destroy the manuscripts. He has not been driven to that yet but he keeps such compositions unpublished and does not offer them for publication. The musical language of Ulysses Kay is that of enlightened modernism. This is the only “ism” that he accepts, and even that only as a matter of chronological placement. Dissonant, expressive, if occasionally acrid, harmony is part of the inevitable modernistic material; Ulysses Kay is not self-conscious about its use. On the other hand he does not feel constrained to employ dissonance; there are passages in his work that are classically moderate. What about the most challenging technique of modern music—the dodecaphonic system of composition? Ulysses Kay does not apply it in his works, but neither does he oppose it on ideological grounds (as Hindemith does). If at any future time he finds that for greater expressiveness and greater coherence of musical material he needs the thematic unity and melodic diversity provided by the 12-tone series, he will surely turn it to his personal use. In view of these considerations, it is awkward and misleading to classify Kay’s music as that of an American composer of Negro extraction, a product of the Eastman School of Music and the seminars of Columbia University, 170

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Tanglewood and Yale; the work of a Prix de Rome winner, a Fulbright Fellow to Italy, a denizen of the American Academy in Rome—even though all these are facts of his life. Ulysses Kay writes: My musical memories date back to early childhood in Tucson, Arizona, where I was born on January 7, 1917 . . . memories of my father (who had been a cowboy and a jockey in Texas, but was then a barber) singing and beating out rhythms to pacify or entertain me . . . memories of my mother (who was from Louisiana) singing in church and at work around home. My life seemed always to have been involved in music. An older sister studied the piano, playing classical sonatas, much of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, salon pieces and popular songs of the day. But my favorites were the gay and energetic marches that she pounded out as I, aged three or four, cavorted about with a broomstick. My brother played violin and later saxophone, though he had left home before I was in focus musically. However, at age ten or so, I was given his violin and my sister gave me a saxophone when I was about twelve. My mother also played the piano and apparently was concerned about me and music. During one of our frequent visits to Chicago (when I was about five or six), she asked my Uncle Joe—yes, the famous King Oliver— if he would teach me to play the trumpet. To which he replied, “No, Lizzie. Give that boy piano lessons so’s he can learn the rudiments. And then he’ll find what he wants to do in music.” A most acute comment from a real musician whose work, style, playing and tunes, even then, were being literally taken “on the cuff ” by members of the confraternity who sat out front night after night while he played. Of course, all this was unknown to me then, and for years I remembered only the big, quiet, dark man with the bad eye, who always got up late in the afternoon and drank quart cups of sweetened water with his first huge meal of the day. Shy questions from me about Uncle Joe’s band and his trumpet playing invariably broke his quiet mood and started him teasing me. Yet his work and life in music seemed magical and his phonograph records held no end of fascination for me. Musical life back in Tucson consisted of piano lessons—later, violin and saxophone lessons; glee club, marching band, high school dance orchestra, and, finally, one year of the liberal arts course at the University. An A.B. degree seemed desirable, but, missing music terribly, I changed

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to the music school and majored in Public School Music. Piano study with Julia Rebeil introduced me to the works of Béla Bartók and other contemporaries; music theory with John L. Lowell gave me a completely new world to conjure with. Through his encouragement I won a scholarship to the Eastman School, where I studied with Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson. There, at Eastman, I heard my first orchestral works performed publicly—an invaluable experience. A Tanglewood scholarship enabled me to study with Paul Hindemith during the summer of 1941, and Hindemith helped me get a scholarship to study with him at Yale during 1941–42. Shortly thereafter I enlisted in the Navy, auditioning on my long since neglected alto saxophone, and was assigned to a band stationed at Quonset Point, Rhode Island. In the Navy band I learned flute and piccolo, played piano in the dance orchestra, did much arranging and some composing. After the war I came to New York, enrolled at Columbia, attended Otto Luening’s seminar sporadically, and composed as much as possible. A unique experience at this time was writing and conducting music for “The Quiet One.” This sensitive film, written and produced by people with a true concern for music, was a fine opportunity for me as a composer. There followed prizes, performances, a two and a half year sojurn at the American Academy in Rome, return to America—and I’m still composing.

Kay’s first work, which he acknowledges at all, was a set of ten piano pieces for children, written when he was 22 years old, an age regarded as “old” for an opus 1. These pieces are charming miniatures along modal lines, redolent of European folksongs and incongruously close to Liadov’s harmonizations of Russian songs. This set was followed by his first important orchestral work, a Sinfonietta; in this work a pastoral mood prevailed, with hardly a ripple of hidden excitement. In his Oboe Concerto, composed when he was 23, and in Five Mosaics for chamber orchestra of the same period, Ulysses Kay is still a lyric composer, evoking well-proportioned landscapes of sound, and amply succeeding in this modest undertaking. In his early works Kay tried out his technical strength; very soon contrapuntal thinking of an increasingly complex character evolved. He began to write for chamber music combinations demanding variety and polyphonic wisdom—a violin sonatina, a duo for flute and oboe, and a quintet for flute and strings. He began to receive recognition from his fellow musicians and from the various executive and legislative musical bodies. His name appeared on the programs of contemporary music festivals in the United

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States; Leonard Bernstein played the piano part in his Sonatina for Violin and Piano at a New York concert of the League of Composers; and in 1944 the New York Philharmonic, under the direction of Thor Johnson, performed at the Lewisohn Stadium his first important work for large orchestra, the overture Of New Horizons. In 1946 this score received the American Broadcasting Company prize. Ten years later, Ulysses Kay conducted this work in Tucson: the local boy made good. Little by little, Ulysses Kay entered the charmed circle of young (and, as time passed, not so young) American composers whose biographies were curiously similar: prizes (not too rich, but flattering); sojourns at the American Academy in Rome (on grants of millions—not of dollars, but of Italian lire); pictures on the music page of the Sunday Times; publication of full orchestral scores (not engraved, but autographed by another, not so fortunate composer, working in a publisher’s office); commissions to write for films (the documentary variety, for a limited public, on a low budget); membership in a composers’ association (paying actual royalties plus additional bonuses); and finally, a serene state of artistic security (but with a gnawing feeling of inadequacy of reward, and even of inadequacy of one’s own music). The list of Kay’s works is an impressive one; in a dictionary entry he might bear the adjective “prolific,” but without the stigma, we hope, of utter uselessness that hounds so many “prolific” composers. Kay is anything but a dictionary composer; he is eminently alive, and the multiude of his works does not smother the truly inspired pages of his best compositions. Perhaps he is right in discarding some of his scores; not because they are inferior, but because other scores are superior. He might as well exhibit his best. If a selection were to be made among his compositions for such a window display, then the following should be chosen: the cantata, Song of Jeremiah (1947); Piano Quintet (1949); Three Pieces after Blake (1952); Serenade for Orchestra (1954); the Second String Quartet (1956). It should be noted that two movements from the string quartet are instrumental rearrangements of Three Pieces after Blake (an act of self-borrowing about which the composer is somewhat shy, even when reminded that Beethoven used the same minuet in his piano sonata No. 20 and in his Septet). All these works possess the salient characteristics of Kay’s mature style: a melodic line full of intervallic tension; rich polyphony, almost “Netherlandish” in its clarity in complexity; vibrant harmonic progressions strongly supported by an imaginatively outlined bass; sonorous instrumentation, with dynamic rises and falls in artful alternation; an energetically pulsating rhythm.

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The melodic line is one of the most individual traits of Kay’s works. Every segment has a certain tonal center, explicit or implicit; the melody converges upon such a tonal center by convolution, in spirals. A large interval, usually with dissonant harmonic implications (a major seventh, a minor ninth) may open such a spiral melody; a smaller interval would follow it, moving in the opposite direction; a still smaller one would reverse the direction once more, until the central tone is either reached or approached. Conversely, a small interval (as likely as not, a minor second) may expand spirally from the central position to the peripheral one.

Three pieces after Blake for dramatic soprano and orchestra.

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The rhythmic diversity and intervallic variations offer a multitude of possibilities for a melodic development that is tangentially atonal, and yet, symmetrical and even singable.

“The Children’s Hour.” (Copyright 1954 by Peer International Corporation. Reproduced by permission.)

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In his polyphonic writing, Ulysses Kay rarely follows the strict procedures of fugal imitation; rather he emulates Beethoven’s “imitation through deviation” which gives freedom without a loss of contrapuntal cohesion.

String Quartet no. 2; first movement.

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In his harmonies, Kay applies a spiral method virtually identical with his melodic practice, inflating or deflating his chords chromatically.

Serenade for Orchestra. (Copyright 1955 by Associated Music Publishers, Inc. [BMI] International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.)

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His instrumentation is always limited to essentials, without neglecting tonal color; he does not affect an inordinately large orchestra, or the economically reduced skeleton ensembles so much in vogue among neoclassicists. His rhythm shows a natural impulse rather than an artificial striving for unenforceable complexities.

Serenade for Orchestra. (Copyright 1955 by Associated Music Publishers, Inc. [BMI] International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.)

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When he needs an acceleration of pace, he merely adds a unit to a sub-division progressing from two to a beat, to three, four, or (rarely) five—an ancient device, but how effective! The majority of Kay’s works are set in absolute forms wherein the progress of musical thought is the only driving force. But he is also singularly gifted for dramatic expression. His short opera to Chekhov’s humorous sketch The Boor reveals a Mussorgskyan flair for a speech-like melorhythmic line; without resorting to obvious effects he manages to portray the preposterous characters in the play and their fantastic behavior in a direct and forceful manner. The work was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress. With all the opera workshops in this country eagerly looking for short effective stage pieces, why is it that this work still remains unperformed?

19. BENJAMIN LEES IN EXCELSIS

American composers are at the crossroads—at an intersection of three roads, the serial, the neo-baroque and that of the intransigent avant-garde. The serial road, in the Schoenbergian direction, is rapidly growing over with cryptochromatic weeds. The neo-baroque road has been polluted beyond recovery by Stravinsky’s acolytes. As to the third road, it has become an Escher print, in which giant ants are twisted on a Möbius strip, with the vistas literally “far-out.” Intersections of three roads are trivia in Latin; the word trivial comes directly from it. Benjamin Lees is not trivial in his music. He must have found a new, untraveled road, or at least not traffic-congested, for his musical peregrinations. The fourth road of Benjamin Lees has features that are common to the landscape of musical history, ranging from straightforward triadic constructions to acrid chromaticism. He eschews experimentation for experiment’s sake. Even his notation is “normal,” and he refuses to resort to the fashionable graphics à la moderne. Time was, not so long ago, that the basic requirement for “important” music was its unpleasantness. Art had to be ugly to be interesting. It must be quite a shock to a contemporary composer to read the banner headline of an article by the esteemed Washington music critic Irving Lowens, “Five Beautiful Etudes from Lees,” reviewing a work for piano and orchestra, completed by Benjamin Lees in his demesne at Great Neck, New York, on 28 September 1974, and first performed by the Houston Symphony a month later. The score employs a large orchestra with a flurry of rhythmic percussion. The opening measures are given to two muted trumpets, an Ch. 19: originally published in Tempo, June 1975.

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oboe and a couple of flutes a-flutter, accompanied by a snare-drum. The harmony, built on minor seconds and major sevenths, is sharply dissonant. The basic rhythmic progression is in rapid 16th-notes; the meter is in multiples of 3/8, occasionally stumbling into 5/8. If we are to believe the musical therapists that music is beneficial when it naturally corresponds to the systolic and diastolic alternation of heartbeats, then the first of the five “beautiful Etudes” by Benjamin Lees can be used for cardiac stimulation, allowing for an occasional syncope. Music lives by contrasts. The second Etude abandons the acrid intervallic scheme of the first in favour of spacious triadic structures. The third Etude is an exercise in parallel triads, chromatically linked, giving the impression of amplified unisons. It opens “briskly, with authority,” and progresses steadily in rhythm and dynamics, with melodic notes adorned by trills and grace-notes. The ending is polytonal, with two minor triads, on A and on F, capped by a high B. The fourth Etude presents another contrast. It is a Scherzo, with Chinese blocks, glockenspiel, celesta and later the castanets setting the pace, while the piano projects a series of consecutive minor sixths. The bass drum provides an epitaph. The fifth Etude retains the thematic intervallic structures of minor seconds and major sevenths, but they are mitigated by harmonic couplings in minor thirds. The lolling meter is in multiples of quarter-notes; there is even a soupçon of a waltz. The concluding chord spans the thematic major sevenths. Perusing the scores of Benjamin Lees, one is beginning to notice certain idiosyncrasies. Each of his Etudes for orchestra begins either with an instrumental solo, or with the presentation of a “concertino” for several instruments. Our curiosity is aroused. Do these consistently used solo introductions serve as declarations of intentions, statements of aims which epitomize the content of the music as a prologue does in Shakespeare drama? We find such a prologue in the flute solo that inaugurates The Trumpet of the Swan for narrator and orchestra, the score of which Lees completed on 15 March 1972. It opens with a clearly triadic statement for solo flute, ending with a minimally chromaticized cadence.

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The cantata Medea in Corinth, written in 1970, and scored for four voices and instruments, begins with a horn solo. The Concerto for Chamber Orchestra, completed on 15 August 1966, opens with a unique combination of bass clarinet and bass drum. In the Third Symphony, three interludes and a postlude, as well as the opening, are written for solo tenor saxophone. There are exceptions, of course. Thus the orchestral Spectrum, completed on 29 April 1964, enters in medias res, with a statement for several instruments in unison. The Trumpet of the Swan is a symphonic narrative based on the book of the same title by E. B. White. Scientists have largely destroyed the beautiful legend that swans have voices that correspond in perfection to their shape; their natural cries of joy or of distress are but croaks and grunts, similar to those of frogs in the swamp. And the song of the dying swan, fabled in mythology and choreography, is a death rattle. But would it be proper for a composer to mimic the ornithological swan? Of course not. E. B. White’s tale is poetic and gently humorous. It tells the story of sorrow when the father swan discovers that his firstborn cygnet is mute. Because of that the baby swan nearly falls a victim of a red fox; fortunately the predator is chased away by an intrepid farm boy. The old swan is determined to remedy the cygnet’s defect. He flies to the city, locates a music store, and dives into the window in search of a trumpet for his cygnet. (Here Lees introduces a pane of glass in the percussion section which is shattered to produce a realistic effect.) The father swan spots a shiny trumpet on the shelf and carries it back to his nest. He hangs the trumpet around the cygnet’s neck and teaches him to blow. The cygnet is delighted with the trumpet and plays a merry gigue on it.

Now that he can sing, he feels the onset of cygnet love. He splashes down on a lake in the Philadelphia Zoo, and there he finds a long-necked lady swan whose name is Serena. She sings her own response to the cygnet’s excited love song on the English horn.

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But danger lurks. An intruder tries to catch Serena with a net. Swiftly the cygnet flies to her defense, drives his sharp bill into the seat of the man’s trousers and puts him to flight. The cygnet then takes Serena to his paternal lake, to raise a family of his own. In the meantime his fame as a trumpet player has spread all over Philadelphia, and he is actually engaged as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the first swan to be so honoured. Naturally, the work itself received its first performance with that great orchestra, on 13 May 1972. Benjamin Lees could not very well model his trumpeter swan after the mellifluous cello swan of Saint-Saëns, or on the romantically magical swans of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. After all, his swan’s trumpet was purloined from a thoroughly realistic music store and so had to be realistically set to music. But doesn’t E. B. White’s tale remind us of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf? It certainly does; there is a brave boy who keeps away the predators, and there is a perfect happy ending. But Lees keeps away from the temptations of emulating Prokofiev’s animal naturalism. His music tells the swans’ story on his own terms in his own personal idiom. By natural inclination, Benjamin Lees is a symphonist. His instrumental and chamber music has symphonic dimensions. Among American composers only Walter Piston is so consistently symphonic in his productions. True, Benjamin Lees has written stage works and choral scores: a music drama, The Oracle, composed in 1955, a comic opera, The Gilded Cage (1971), a dramatic cantata to texts by Walt Whitman, Visions of Poets (1961) and Medea in Corinth (1970) for voices, wind quintet and timpani. Faithful to the classical ideal of symmetric construction, he prefers the tripartite form. Almost all of his symphonic works are in three movements. His Second Symphony, composed in 1958, is tripartite. Its finale is an Adagio, while the middle movement, a Scherzo, constitutes a substantive statement that elevates it to the stature of a symphonic section all by itself.

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Benjamin Lees completed his Third Symphony in 1968; it was first performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on 17 January 1969, under the direction of Sixten Ehrling. It is a most extraordinary work, laced with interludes for tenor saxophone. The third interlude is a diptych, one panel of which is a triadic invocation with a clearly outlined tonality of G minor; the second panel, hinged to it by a brief rhythmic decoration of percussive Chinese blocks, is acutely chromatic, with each phrase contained within the major seventh, or rather, as Lees spells it enharmonically, a diminished octave.

In the third movement of the Symphony, Lees inserts a bold progression of a descending chromatic scale, doubled in major seconds in clarinets against a similarly enriched ascending chromatic scale in the bassoons.

Benjamin Lees has written two piano concertos, a violin concerto, a concerto for orchestra, a concerto for chamber orchestra, an oboe concerto and a concerto for string quartet and orchestra. All these concertos are symphonic in their structure. Let us examine the Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra. Lees completed the score on 6 December 1964; it was first performed on 19 January 1965 by the Paganini Quartet with

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the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Hans Schwieger. The introductory violin solo to the second movement is a locus classicus of Lees’s style. The initial phrase moves from an empty fifth on C to its empty dominant on G. The second part of the phrase shifts to an empty fifth at the distance of a tritone, coming to rest on an empty fifth on F sharp. By an anamorphic change, the melody is extended to a C minor triad in open harmony, followed by an F sharp minor triad in open harmony. There ensues an interplay of minor seconds (or their extension, the minor ninth) coming to rest, through a series of diminished octaves.

These progressions are symptomatic of the modulatory schemes of several works of Benjamin Lees: triads, usually explicitly or implicitly minor triads, in close harmony; interplay of intervals of the diminished octave, and minor triads in open harmony; cadential conclusions with shifting tonics at the distance of a minor second, major seventh or minor ninth, wherein a minor ninth appears as the summation of two tritones hinged by a minor second. As in most compositions in a symphonic form, Benjamin Lees has cast his Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra as a triptych, with the two outer panels symmetrically enclosing the more spacious central part. Both the first and last movements are set in Allegro, the first con brio, the other energico. The inner slow movement is Andante cantando. This slow movement itself is tripartite, beginning with a graceful canon formed by the second violin, viola and cello of the “concertino.” This canon recurs twice before fading out. The concluding harmony of this slow movement is typical of bitonal usages which Lees applies in several of his works, namely a superimposition of two major triads having a single tone in common, in this case C major and E major. In his addiction to tripartite symmetry, Benjamin Lees continues the historic line of such composers

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as Chopin and Brahms, but he avoids the overt use of literal da capo. Now that graphic notation is so much in fashion, it would be interesting to make a geometric diagram of a typical Lees structure, dividing it into three triangles, each component triangle into three smaller triangles, and so on with the numbers of resultant sections being powers of 3: 9, 27, 81, 243, etc. Benjamin Lees completed one of his most significant works, the Concerto for Chamber Orchestra, on 15 August 1966. This work is primarily an essay in rhythmic antiphony. Characteristically, it opens with an instrumental solo, presented by the bass clarinet accompanied by the bass drum, a unique essay in low sonorities, marked Adagio, misterioso. Its generating motive is a wave rising up a minor ninth, and immediately receding to the initial tone.

After several deliberate false starts, the main tempo, Allegro, is struck. A series of trills in the upper strings aggregates to a dissonant bitonal chord, with high woodwind and muted trumpets throwing off chromatic sparks which are quickly extinguished in a downward cascade. Once more the trilled strings build up to a dissonant chord, giving rise to a prolonged thematic statement. There is a shrill solo of the muted trumpet in high register and the rhythmical flow is fractioned in brusque display in which a 16th-note is the minimal rhythmic unit. A rapid fire of antiphonal explosions forms a sparkling, crackling scherzo section; it gradually burns out, and in the glowing embers there is heard once again the bass clarinet solo accompanied by the bass drum. This is allowed to slow down to a natural coda. The second movement, Adagio, is born out of a languid progression of slow major seconds. In contrast to the first movement, the thematic elements in this Adagio are composed of large intervallic progressions, initiated by a solo flute. The call of the muted trumpets signalize a gradually accelerated pace with ever increasing rhythmic frequencies, from even half-notes to quarter-notes, to eighth-notes, until a grand climax is reached in fortissimo. Once more the movement recedes to a languid

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procession before coming to an end, with the trumpets, now unmuted, paired in major seconds. The third and final movement is marked Spiritoso, and the flow of music justifies this description. In constantly changing meters, with the 16th-note as a basic unit, the musical current pursues its relentless rush. The characteristic paired major seconds determine the harmonic foundation of the initial section. The intervallic span is then allowed to expand to a minor third, until all intervallic elements converge to the resounding chord on D. This completes the tonal cycle of the entire work. The structure of the Concerto for Chamber Orchestra demonstrates the strong feeling that Benjamin Lees has for what may be called cyclic stereometry, in which the cyclic element is asserted by the recurrence of thematic figures and a frequent return to the tonic in unison, while the stereometric element is represented by a crystallic symmetry of antiphonal counterpoint. Spectrum for orchestra, which Benjamin Lees completed on 29 April 1964, seems to suggest by its very title the intention to explore the entire sonorous range of the orchestra. Set in a single movement, it approximates the genre of a tone poem. It opens Andantino tranquillo, without the introductory instrumental solo which we have come to expect in a work by Benjamin Lees. Here the projection is chordal, with characteristic chromatic étincelles given out by the strings. The muted trumpets give a pervasive sound in a coloristic gamut; the shimmering bitonal figurations in the high treble of the piano provide the background for the rhythmic signals of the woodwinds. The sonorous spectrum is amplified as the trumpets enter unmuted; sparks fly off misterioso in the woodwinds and in the muted strings in figurations reminiscent of the introduction to the Concerto for Chamber Orchestra. The climax is reached in triple forte, as all colours of the spectrum are flashed in a brilliant rainbow. What is beguiling in this work is the persistence of the intervallic figure of an ascending major second and a descending minor second, which gradually elevates the pitch of the melodic line. At times this ascent is made more decisive by an upward leap of a tritone. So personal, so distinct, so assertive are the stylistic and idiomatic usages in the works of Benjamin Lees that an immediately recognizable Gestalt is formed from an attentive perusal of his scores. His most recent work, the Second Violin Sonata, completed on 27 February 1973, may well serve as an exhibit. It opens characteristically with a long violin solo,

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intervallically built of perfect fifths, perfect fourths, and tritones. By the process of simple addition, these melodic intervals form double stops: a minor seventh (made up of two perfect fourths), a major seventh (formed by the addition of a tritone to a perfect fourth), and of course, an octave (a classical summation of a perfect fifth and a perfect fourth).

The main subject of the first movement of the Violin Sonata, Allegro, is contained within the interval of the major seventh, which is divisible into the tritone and a perfect fourth. The remarkable fidelity which Lees observes in treating thematic intervals suggests serial procedures. But Lees is no serialist. In none of his works does he set up any semblance of an explicit tone-row, and rarely if ever makes use of the orthodox serial devices of inversion and retrograde motion. Although he dispenses with key signatures in his works, the aura of tonality is unmistakable. Furthermore, he does not hesitate to make use of sequences, generally abhorred by modern composers; nor is he averse to using the baroque type of harmonic and melodic figurations, another device commonly scorned by the musical élite. The second movement is an Adagio, introduced in the piano by an alternation of dissonant chords of bitonal derivation, marked “sad, distant.” The entire development of this movement is spent in gradual crescendo and diminuendo, with the music dying away towards a bitonal ending. The third movement is Allegro. It has the character of a toccata and progresses briskly towards a brilliant assertive conclusion, ending on a chord thematically built of major sevenths. As a professional pianist, Benjamin Lees has a natural way with the modern keyboard. His Fourth Piano Sonata, which he wrote in 1963, is as good a specimen as any of his lean and rational pianistic style. Typically, it is cast in three movements. The very first note of the opening is a forceful C. One turns hopefully towards the end of the piece, expecting to find a forceful C, and one’s expectations are not disappointed. The first movement of the Fourth Piano Sonata is in crisp toccata manner, Allegro

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energico. Time signatures change frequently, with the minimal rhythmic unit remaining a 16th-note. Relaxation of tempo is achieved by the simple device of setting the eighth-note as a unit; and when further relaxation is desired, a quarter-note. The second movement is an Adagio. Its form suggests a free fantasia; the tempo varies all the time, reaching prestissimo at one point before subsiding into a tranquil coda. The intervallic matrix is a diminished octave, enharmonically equivalent to the composer’s favorite major seventh. The last movement is Allegro deciso. The form is that of a Rondo-Toccata. The thematic interval is again a diminished octave, but the ending is clear, a triumphant quadruple union on C in the low register. Benjamin Lees marked his half century last year under the most favorable signs of the musical zodiac. At a time when so many otherwise valiant composers are star-crossed and complain of malign neglect, Benjamin Lees rises in excelsis on the musical firmament. He encounters benign conjunctions among conductors and instrumentalists, who are willing and often eager to perform his music. His orchestral works have been conducted by such podium luminaries as Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, William Steinberg, Erich Leinsdorf, Dorati, Mehta, Thomas Schippers, Max Rudolf, Sixten Ehrling, Jean Martinon, Hans Schwieger and Milton Katims. For his piano music, Lees is fortunate in having a faithful and brilliant performer in Gary Graffman. He is also fortunate in mundane rewards. He has held two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Copley Foundation Award and the UNESCO Award. He visited Russia under the auspicies of the Office for Cultural Exchange of the State Department. And his ASCAP ratings, reflecting the frequency of performances of his works, are at their allowed maximum. Altogether, an encouraging spectacle of a U.S. composer recognized in his own land.

20. CONLON NANCARROW: C O M P L I C AT E D P R O B L E M — DRASTIC SOLUTION The problem of performing complicated music has received novel and drastic solution at the hands of an American in Mexico whose name is Conlon Nancarrow. The name may be faintly familiar to attentive followers of modern music, for in 1938 the New Music Quarterly published some of Nancarrow’s piano pieces, complicated in rhythmic design, and arresting in musical content. A biographical notice accompanying the publication reads: Born October 17, 1912, in Texarkana, Arkansas. Studied two years at Cincinnati Conservatory. Played trumpet in several jazz orchestras. Employed on Boston WPA for about two years. Went to Spain to help fight Fascism in May, 1937.

After his Spanish adventure, during which Nancarrow received a slight shrapnel wound, he went to Mexico, where he became a naturalized Mexican citizen. But he did not detach himself from the musical world at large. He followed the developments of modern music with assiduous interest, and collected an extensive library on musical subjects, ranging from acoustics to the latest developments of 12-tone music. In Mexico, Nancarrow continued to compose, mostly for piano. The rhythmic complexity of his music was such that he had to change the time signature practically in every bar. The difficulties of performance by a human pianist accordingly became enormous. Realizing that only a mechanical instrument could guarantee perfection of his rhythmic and dynamic ideas, he conceived a plan as Ch. 20: originally published in The Christian Science Monitor, November 10, 1962.

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revolutionary as it was simple. He decided to put his music directly on the roll of a player piano. He thereupon drew a chart of correspondence between the 88 keys of the piano and the perforations on the piano roll; he calculated carefully the geometric coordination between the required duration of each note in a complex rhythmic design and the length of the vertical lines on paper; and he proceeded to punch holes on paper rolls to make his music performable. To give some notion of the amount of work involved in this process, a single sustained note requires punching a vertical line of holes several feet long. Then each interval skip requires an individual shift in the horizontal direction, and a shift in the vertical, according to note values. Obviously, this hole-punching method of composition could not be done by hand. So he invented a machine to make the process more speedy, much like a huge typewriter, with horizontal and vertical tabulators. Still, the setting of a single piano piece, lasting only three minutes, required vast and extended labor. Not since medieval times, probably, has a composer worked so industriously and so determinedly on the problem of adequate representation of his thought. He writes music on manuscript paper first, and afterwards “copies” it on his punch-hole machine, following the chromatic scale, as a typist follows numbers on the margin indicator on the typewriter. When the “copy” is finished, it can be played on an ordinary, old-fashioned playerpiano. There are advantages in the method. A note can be sustained indefinitely like a pedal point on an organ. There is no limit to velocity in passage work; no technical difficulties exist for melodic skips that are awkward or unperformable by a pianist’s hands. Above all, polyrhythmic lines can be maintained in different registers of the piano, or crisscrossed at will. In order to control the dynamics, he has rigged up a pressure gauge, looking very much like the radiator of a central heating system. To make the articulation of piano keys more precise, he has tightened the mechanism of the hammers. The piano pedals are superfluous in his scheme, for the harmony can be sustained by punching so many more holes in the piano roll. The direct method of composition on piano rolls is only the first step in Nancarrow’s ambitious scheme of creating a perfect performing

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machine. He has already started on the construction of mechanical drums, with hammers hitting different parts of the drumhead, thus securing a variety of timbres, like those employed by Stravinsky (in his History of a Soldier); Bartók (in his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta); and particularly Varèse (in his all-percussion work, Ionization). Later, there will follow similar applications for string and wind instruments. When, many years hence, Nancarrow completes his project—and he is fully determined to see it through—he will have at his service an orchestra of rhythmic and dynamic precision and technical perfection that would justify the wildest dreams of musical alchemists. His musical laboratory is in itself fantastic to behold. It is covered with overhanging mats to deaden unwanted reverberations and echoes. The punching machine, the two player pianos, the various drums, the pressure gauge, and the numerous other wooden and metallic gadgets seem out of this world. The laboratory is housed in a modernistic villa designed by the Mexican artist, Juan O’Gorman, and decorated with stone mosaics. A system of multi-colored lights in the rooms and in the laboratory has for him some symbolic significance. The question arises whether Nancarrow’s music is good enough, as music, to justify all these elaborate contraptions; and, for believers in musical innovation, it may be answered in the affirmative. Nancarrow has original melodic invention. His gift for rhythmic counterpoint is remarkable. His harmony is compact and resonant. In common with modern trends that oppose murky chromaticism, he writes along diatonic lines, in a style that is described by the term pandiatonic, in which all seven notes of the scale are freely mingled together, forming pleasantly spiced dissonances. His form is clear and symmetrical in relation to the central melodic idea. Many of his shorter pieces give the impression of a slowly rising curve toward a middle climax, followed by a gradual decline toward a gentle coda. He glories in rhythm. His Boogie-Woogie Suites invest popular American rhythms with luxuriant variety of moods, from the nostalgic to the riotous. These rhythmic pieces, abounding in sparkling scales and dashing figurations, produce an exhilarating effect on the listener, an effect due, in good measure, to the unlimited resources of the technique of composition by hole-punching.

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Without intrinsic talent, however, all the mechanical tricks in the world would amount to nothing. The important thing is that Nancarrow’s method gives full expression to what he has to say in purely musical terms. And what he has to say, nobody, we may be certain, has ever said before.

2 1 . WA LT E R P I S T O N

Walter Piston owes his patronymic to his grandfather, Pistone, an Italian by birth. The final “e” fell off when Pistone came to America; he married an American woman, and his son, Walter Piston’s father, married an American. Piston was born in Rockland, Maine, on January 20, 1894. His childhood and early youth were spent without indication that he was to become a musician. Other interests occupied his time; he went to an art school in Boston, and after graduation entered upon the career of an artist. He studied violin and piano mostly as a sideline. He did not go to college to study music but became interested in it from an intellectual point of view. For himself and by himself he tried to establish the fundamental musical laws. He played the violin in the Pierian Sodality, which is the University Orchestra of Harvard. Later he became its conductor, and studied instruments and the technique of orchestral scoring. At that time he was already proficient in theory and practice of composition. He attacked the large forms at once, and wrote for the orchestra. Following in the footsteps of many an American composer, he went to the Conservatory of Fontainebleau to study with Nadia Boulanger; and upon his return he was well qualified to join the Harvard Music Faculty when the opportunity came. He has written a scholarly volume on harmony, shortly to be published. Perhaps the most significant work of Piston is his orchestral Suite, performed by Stokowski at the all-American broadcast in the spring of

Ch. 21: originally published in 1933 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University; republished in 1962 by Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, Inc.

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1932. The composer appears in it a full-fledged modernist. The old system of tonality all but breaks down in this score; Piston desperately fights the tonic-dominant complex; and to avoid fifths and octaves suggestive of tonality, he builds his themes on the augmented fourth and the major seventh, these two banners of the dodecuple system. He acknowledges the fascination which the formula holds for him; but he does not join out-and-out atonalists in cultivating the rigid schemes of the Vienna school; rather his atonality is an escape from the musical past. The fugue of the third movement of the Suite is built on a motive of three notes, with interval-indices, the major seventh, the augmented fourth, and the perfect fourth (which latter is the difference between the first two). It is instructive to observe that the perfect fourth is treated by Piston as a tetrachord, always tonally. The Suite is an American work, and Piston is nothing loth to incorporate a “blues” interlude in the score. “Snaredrum with wire brush” marks the four-four time, and the crooning melody is woven against it in the best manner of symphonic Broadway. Walter Piston is one of the most frugal composers, even in New England; Sessions is only second to him. But what little Piston writes invariably finds its way to public performance. His is not a hedonistic music, yet it is human and playable. The Sonata for Flute and Piano enjoys particular favor among the sponsors of advanced chamber music; then there is the charming Triphony for Flute, Clarinet, and Bassoon. The Suite for Oboe and Piano, in five divisions, commands easy attention in view of the paucity of material for this combination. The Sonata for Pianoforte and the rather obsolescent Symphonic Piece (a sort of absolute music with a vengeance) complete the catalogue of Piston’s acknowledgeable works. Among American composers, Walter Piston appears as a builder of a future academic style, taking this definition without any derogatory implications. There are composers who draw on folklore, and there are composers who seek new colors, new rhythms, and new harmonies. Walter Piston codifies rather than invents. His imagination supplies him with excellent ideas, and out of this material he builds his music, without words, descriptive titles, and literature. He is an American composer speaking the international idiom of absolute music.

2 2 . WA L L I N G F O R D R I E G G E R

Probity, fortitude, dignity, humanity—all these abstract virtues are rarely combined in a single individual. Still more rarely, are they joined by knowledge, art and practical performance. In the field of music, Wallingford Riegger—Wally, as he was known to friends—was one of those who possessed such noble qualities. I met him in 1928 when I was starting on my career—later aborted because of circumstances—of a professional conductor. I met Charles Ives, Edgar Varèse and Henry Cowell, and through them became associated with the cause of modern music, music so new that it seemed to be extraterrestrial in its sound and its techniques. I also began to be interested in the new technology of musical sound, “organized sound,” as Varèse called such structures. I worked with Joseph Schillinger, the Russian inventor of “mathematical” music and with Leon Theremin who came to the United States to demonstrate his electronic instrument that bore his name, the Thereminovox. And then I met Wallingford Riegger. In his cast of countenance he was a typical scholar, a philosopher, always wearing glasses, always quiet, never given to exuberant utterances. He studied music in Germany and was interested in the problems of musical education. He wrote a number of didactic pieces under so many pseudonyms that music historians and biographers are driven to desperation in trying to account for them all. Wallingford Riegger was William Richards and Walter Scotson and Gerald Wilfrid Gore and John H. McCurdy and George Northrup and Robert Sedgwick and Leonard Gregg and Edwin Farell and Edgar Long. These Doppelgänger wrote music for use, Gebrauchsmusik. Riegger played several instruments well, and he learned to manipulate the Theremin cello connected with a rheostat which controlled the flow of the electric current and allowed the player to change dynamics and timbre 196

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of the sound. As Wallingford Riegger, he wrote works of remarkable strength, in a modern idiom that was a logical extension of the classical Baroque. His pieces were admirably coordinated without pedantry and unfailingly productive of the intended structural purpose. His Study in Sonority for ten violins still remains a unique achievement in multiple counterpoint of sounds. I had the privilege of having given the first performance of his masterpiece Dichotomy, scored for chamber orchestra, which I conducted at one of my concerts in Berlin in 1932. The work gave a chance to the critic of Allgemeine Musikzeitung to produce a verbal surrealist landscape which in its desire to damn the music achieved the opposite effect of enhancing its visionary essence. A translation would not give the review its proper flavor; here is the text in German: “Es klang, als wenn eine Herde Ratten langsam zu Tode gepeinigt würde und dazwischen von Zeit zu Zeit eine sterbende Kuh stöhnte.” A pack of rats being slowly (what a beautiful modifier!) tortured to death against the background of a dying cow groaning now and then! Wally loved this review. He refused to be upset by ignorant opinions, and he appreciated opponents who had the power of expressing themselves effectively. He was a modern Socrates who accepted the necessity of condemnation for his teaching without withdrawing any of his precepts. But there was one occasion when Wally spoke up from the wounded heart, vehemently, intransigently defending his rights. It was when he was summoned by the infamous House Committee on Un-American Activities to answer charges of subversion. Specifically, he was accused of having acted as a recruiting officer for the Communist party in the district of Manhattan between 45th and 65th streets. His rebuke to the miserable inquisitors would merit a place in the history of the long fight for liberty against oppressors who would tarnish the name of the United States of America. Riegger did not invoke the defensive Fifth Amendment, but the First Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the freedom of expression and creed. He inveighed against the effrontery of the Committee to question him; his ancestors came to Kansas to work on the soil, he said, long before the members of the Committee (and he recited some of their names betraying their Central European heritage), or their parents, established themselves in the United States. It was not for them, he declared, to teach him the value and privilege of being an American. After a recess, the Committee came to the conclusion that it would serve no purpose to send Riegger to jail for contempt.

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Riegger was physically safe, but he was to suffer the consequences of his courage in his own career as a musician. To their everlasting shame, the regents of Boston University rescinded Riegger’s honorary degree that was to be bestowed upon him, citing the “embarrassment” caused by his stand. But the Boston University Orchestra did perform a work of Riegger as scheduled concurrently to his honorary degree. Also several columnists published articles saluting him for his action. But Riegger himself did not indulge in unnecessary rhetoric on the occasion. He came to see me in Boston during the whole shameful episode, and he commented on it in a detached, almost scholarly, manner, without anger and certainly without assuming a heroic posture. A few years passed, and his accusers were driven back into the dark recesses of their dingy souls.

23. ROGER SESSIONS

Composers of “absolute music” seldom like to have their personalities obtrude on the music. Roger Sessions writes a music as independent of extra-musical considerations as could be wished. Yet, paradoxically, his music gains in appreciation when it is given a label in space and time— music by an American, written in our time of well-controlled ardors. Roger Huntington Sessions, though born in Brooklyn, is a New Englander by heritage, temporal residence, and cast of mind. One could go back to Buckle and theorize with him about the influence of the climate on man and his creative propensities. For the “icy flame” of a New Englander seems to have been bestowed upon Roger Sessions at birth. His family history is very instructive; from generation to generation it has been the spirit of secession that animated the Sessionses during the three centuries of their residence on colonial soil. From father to son they have been in the clergy. An irrepressible protestantism, understood in its original sense, must have influenced the progressive sons to secede from the particular denomination of the father, and fall into some interdenominational heresy, down to the present end of the line, Roger Huntington Sessions, a protestant against all denominations and, very likely, against all established religion. The civic spirit in Roger Sessions must have been behind his zero-per-cent Americanism (which, it may be cogently argued, is the true hundred-per-cent Americanism, understood in the progressive sense). He was one of the very few Americans abroad who compromised themselves in the eyes of right-minded people by sending a “protestant” cable to Governor Fuller of Massachusetts in the days of Sacco and Vanzetti. On a previous occasion, when a more personal Ch. 23: originally published in 1933 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University; republished in 1962 by Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, Inc.

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question was involved, he sacrificed a paying position for the sake of loyalty to a teacher-friend. Of this more anon. The characteristic circumstance is the fact that Sessions preserves intact the now obsolete sense of personal and civic justice. This, in addition to an innate cosmopolitanism, made him select his residences and friends in a world wider than the one he was born into. He took residence abroad as soon as the opportune Guggenheim Fellowship afforded him a chance. He studied languages with astonishing fervor for a non-professional philologist. Thus he acquired a perfect command of Italian, French, and German. As if this were not enough, he undertook the study of Russian, prompted by the circumstance that several Russian writers and musicians were housed with him at Rome. In this labor of love he achieved extraordinary progress. His letters, in Russian, to this writer are not only grammatical but idiomatic as well, and occasional lapses in the field of Russian conjugations are the only signs of the correspondent’s non-Russian birth. A brief biography of Roger Huntington Sessions follows. Born December 28, 1896. Graduated from Kent School, Kent, Connecticut, in 1911; graduated from Harvard in 1915. The next two years he spent in New Haven studying under Horatio Parker in the Yale School of Music. From 1917 to 1921 he taught composition at Smith College. Sessions met Ernest Bloch in New York, and showed him some of his earliest efforts, among them a symphony. Bloch saw his talent and determination, took him under his guidance, and very soon engaged him as assistant at the Cleveland Institute of Music, of which Bloch was appointed director. In Cleveland, Sessions composed incidental music to the stage play by Leonid Andreev, The Black Maskers. The early symphony was definitely relegated to the limbo of perishable juvenilia, but the Black Maskers music survived in the form of an orchestral suite, revised and corrected according to the restrained musical philosophy of the later Sessions. For this incidental music to a Russian symbolical play was composed in an emotional, expansive style directly derived from the exalted orchestral imagery of Bloch. In 1925 Sessions resigned from the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music, under circumstances which may be called dramatic. Ernest Bloch was not politic as a chief executive. Enthusiastic in everything that related to his work, he was critically minded in his observations of the matters of management. In a country where arts and sciences are

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dependent on the good will and munificence of various women’s committees and wives of influential husbands, he dared to speak his mind when called upon to make a valedictorian speech, at a function, concerning the policies of the school. As a consequence, he had to resign his position. Roger Sessions did not have to go with him, but resigned in protest against Bloch’s dismissal. There followed his years abroad. In Florence he wrote three chorales for organ, compositions of remarkable austerity, without a trace of the emotional spirit that animated the score of the Black Maskers. But what a fine example of saying much with few notes these three chorales are! With this, Sessions begins his search for immanent perfection in correspondence with the particular design of each particular work. He states his profession of faith in these few sentences (1927): I reject any kind of dogma or platform. I am not trying to write “modern,” “American,” or “neo-classic” music. I am seeking always and only the coherent and living expression of my musical ideas. . . . The Flemish and Italian composers of the late XV, XVI and XVII centuries, Bach, the Mozart of “Die Zauberflöte” and the “Requiem” represent to my mind the highest perfection that music has yet reached. . . . I dislike rhetoric, overemphasis, vulgarity, but at the same time believe that perfection in art consists in a sort of equilibrium which can be neither defined nor counterfeited.

And then: I have no sympathy with consciously sought originality. I accept my musical ideas without theorizing as to their source or their other than musical meaning.

Sessions’ greatest interest lies in the achievement of perfect form. He is almost Aristotelian in his insistence on the importance of the musical “genus.” Hence the impression of austerity that the compositions of his mature period produce at first sight. Again, there is that “icy flame” that may be construed as ideal romanticism. Sessions’ recognition as a composer resides in these few works written by him while abroad: the Symphony (1926–1927), the Sonata (1930), and the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1932). These works, analyzed from the point of view of (1)

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melody, (2) harmony, and (3) rhythm, reveal the following general design. Melody with Sessions is paramount. In the opening bars of the Sonata, the cantilena, stripped of almost all detail that is not necessary, rules all supreme. Although he has not written a single composition for the human voice, Sessions derives his art of melody from the idea of a singing voice. This may be the reason why he is so eminently successful in writing slow movements—by far the most difficult art in composition. To give the melody a living shape, he resorts to fractional repetitions of the melodic line, incorporated in the greater melodic design. By this the following is meant: in order to secure a perfect form, the composer employs brief identical figures usually at the end of a period, as a sort of reminiscent quotation, long enough to be recognizable, but sufficiently short not to suggest a recapitulation. It is a device similar to that of terza rima in poetry (as in Dante’s Inferno), where rhymes follow each other in uninterrupted concatenation. From the point of view of harmony, Sessions’ compositions do not offer any startling revelations. Suffice it to say that he does not pursue the formula vaguely described as “polytonality,” but he is unafraid to become harmonically involved if the logical development of separate parts necessitates such a complication of design. “Warum einfach sein wenn man kann kompliziert sein?” This ironical query is inapplicable to complications arising from the interweaving of contrapuntal parts in Sessions’ works. His counterpoint is neither deliberately simple, nor unintentionally entangled. A remarkable feature is the wise distribution of chromatic material in the main themes. A tonal composer par excellence, Sessions is very liberal in using chromatic deviations in single melody (such as the opening theme of the Sonata), but when a fugal development is foreseen (as in the second theme of the Sonata and the opening phrase of the trumpet in the Symphony), the melodic ingredients are carefully spaced, usually at thirds (Sonata), or fifths and sevenths (Symphony), leaving room for future imitations at a second, a fourth, etc. When augmented or diminished intervals are used at the entrance of new voices, the harmony may reach a pretty high degree of saturation, filling the complete series of the diatonic scale, with (if the imitation is done at an altered interval) several chromatic tones into the bargain. The climax, in the form of a tonal impasse, is often presented as an integral tabulation of all elements (a very interesting case of such a climax is exemplified in measures 223–235 of the Sonata, where—Sessions could not have been

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unaware of this—even the visual impression betrays climactic tension: there are six staff-lines, of which two are for the sustaining and the loud pedal, respectively). From the point of view of rhythm, Sessions is as free from extravert complication as he is from apostatic simplification. Again, his choice is governed by the necessity and sufficiency of each particular device. His feeling for form necessitates a general symmetry of the metrical plan. The requirements of phrasing, grouping (if only for the eye), make the time signatures change rather often (particularly in the Symphony). When several rhythms are crossed by the bar-line, the accents and special groupings mark heterogeneous rhythms. Very often prime rhythms, such as 5–8 or 7–8, are but composite measures of three and two units each (which division is always indicated in the score). Among polyrhythmic combinations the favorite with Sessions is the superposition of 2–4 and 3–8 time. If the general time-signature is 2–4, then the 3–8 time is indicated by overlapping groupings. There are several interesting examples (in the Symphony) of interpositions of prime (non-composite) 5–8, against 2–4. Usually such parallel rhythms are sustained for a very short period (as three bars of 2–4 against four bars of 3–8). The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra is Sessions’ latest composition. It embodies the familiar features of his musical system in a degree which suggests perfection. The slow opening movement, mostly for woodwinds (among them the Mozartean F clarinets, now manufactured by Professor Redfield in New York) is remarkable in its sustained song. The scherzo, on the other hand, offers an extremely adroit display of instrumental flashes in quick succession. The solo instrument has the classical cadenza, but outside of this revival there is little ostentatious virtuosity. Sessions is an ardent student of old music, fonder of Mozart and Verdi than of Beethoven and Wagner. In his music is reflected the direct lightness of the first two rather than the introspective depth of the great dramatizers of music. Stravinsky is moving in the same direction; and, in spite of Sessions’ acknowledgment of Stravinsky’s influence, it is difficult to discover such an influence beyond a few more or less general rhythmical reminiscences (notably, in the Symphony). Sessions has undoubtedly a right to his own place among twentieth-century composers; and the wide recognition of his works, despite their difficulty of idiom and performance, testifies to his worth.

24. GÉOMÉTRIE SONORE: E D G A R VA R È S E In my program notes for concerts of American music I conducted in Paris in June, 1931, I described Intégrales by Varèse as “géométrie sonore.” Varèse approved of this rounded description of his music; perhaps he originated it and I merely quoted him. Whatever the origin of this definition, it seems still, after more than half a century, a fitting one. Varèse studied engineering; he believed that music, like architecture, must have symmetrical and stable structure, that a composer’s inspiration must be similar to that of a mathematician, that one must first think of numbers and then integrate them in a musical composition. Indeed, numbers was the medieval term for music in general; it even occurs in Shakespeare. And numbers may be beautiful. There is nothing in sonorous geometry that negates an aesthetic ideal. Inspiration must be supported by knowledge, and knowledge can be derived only from exact sciences and precise thinking. A composer must know of available possibilities of musical combinations; egocentric musicians who assert that their music came from divine powers and therefore must possess absolute beauty are sadly mistaken. A composer guided exclusively by inspiration, convinced that a ray of divine light struck when a particular melody was created, is apt to produce poor music. A composer fully equipped with musical knowledge in all possible styles and idioms has a very good mathematical chance to produce excellent music. I remember how pleased Varèse was when I compared him with Perotin, known as Perotinus Magnus, the medieval composer of organa in several parts. To medieval students music was a part of mathematics in the faculties of universities; old theorists even applied moral principles to musical intervals. Particularly forbidden was the tritone which was called diabolus in musica. It is not surprising that this interval has become the 204

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foundation stone of modern music in its multiple varieties, emphasized particularly in the method of composition as promulgated by Schoenberg. But while Schoenberg postulated nonrepetition of thematic tones, Varèse cultivated persistent repetition of single tones and short melodic themes. I remember how astounded, and in some ways disappointed, I was when I showed Varèse my latest structural discovery, the Grandmother Chord, which contained all 12 different notes and all 11 different intervals, and which could also be inverted or spread melodically along the horizontal lines. I did not have to explain to Varèse what it was. He searched through his pencil sketches which he made 20 or 30 years before and showed me my Grandmother Chord all written out, with the only difference between his early discovery and my late product being in the choice of accidentals, whether sharps or flats notated enharmonically, so that the magnitude of each individual interval remained the same in both forms. He was surprised that I spent so much time searching for the solution of the problem. “All you have to do is to take the first note of the chromatic scale, then the last note, a major 7th up, then take the second note of the chromatic scale and the note before last, C, B, C-sharp (or D-flat), B-flat (or A-sharp), D, A, etc. following an inward spiral and ending up on Fsharp, which is, naturally, a tritone from either end of the octave that encompasses the scale.” Varèse’s whole life had an element of a logical theatrical play. As a young man in Paris he composed songs and piano pieces in the manner of Massenet; several of them were published, but he disowned them as puerile. But as soon as he found himself in works of considerable complexity he was confronted with the monster of reactionary press. He went to Germany, which early in the century was a country of new ideas receptive to young talents. He met Richard Strauss who was impressed by his talents and arranged for him a performance in Berlin of his early work Bourgogne, which reflected the country in central France where Varèse grew up. His music was received with faint praise and some outright dismissal. He wrote to Debussy, whom he had known in Paris, to share his feelings. Debussy replied in a letter dated February 12, 1911: “You are perfectly justified,” Debussy wrote, “in not being alarmed by the hostility of the public. The day will come when you will be the best of friends in the world, but you had better give up your belief that our critics are more perspicacious than those in Germany. Also, do not forget that a critic seldom likes what he has to describe. Sometimes he makes a special effort

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not to know what he is talking about!” This early encounter with the critics was but a mild premonition of what was to come in future years as he produced his tremendous works that defied every academic rule and scorched the ears of musical pedestrians with a thunder of dissonant harmonies, angular melodies and asymmetrical rhythms that filled the scores of Hyperprism, Arcana, Ionization and Integrales. Hyperprism bore on the cover of its published edition the projection of a four-dimensional prism into the world of three dimensions. The epigraph of Arcana was a quotation of Paracelsus, Varèse’s favorite alchemist, which bespoke the arcane mysteries of music. I was surprised to find in the coda of the work, a C-major chord. I asked Varèse why he inserted this common chord in a network of harmonies bristling with tritones. “I wished to create an impression of tremendous dissonance,” was Varèse’s reply. Varèse defied the world of music much more than Stravinsky and Schoenberg ever did before him. His blows at common tastes were answered with equal savagery. When I conducted Arcana in Berlin in 1932 a group in the audience which counted among them a sizable contingent of the nascent Nazi movement (Hitler was to mount the throne a few months after my concert) staged a concert of their own, blowing into the big German housekeys. “With Housekeys Against Sounding Geometry” was a banner headline in a German newspaper. A reactionary German critic wrote: “The boldest imagination cannot conjure up what Edgar Varèse has done. The last vestige of music must be wrested out from one’s brain to accept this roaring, groaning tonal assault. An insanely raging zoo, noise of battle, cries of the wounded, a mass of men thrown into the crater of an erupting volcano in a hideous slaughter—one necessarily imagines something like that. This is the maddest thing that has been heard in Berlin during the last decade, an abortion of sounding folly which physiologically was so unendurable to many of the listeners, that they fled.” Another critic struck a glancing blow at Schoenberg in his demolition of Varèse: “In conclusion, there was an agglomeration of senseless tonal obscenities by Edgar Varèse. This monster was entitled Arcana; devoid of spiritual discipline and artistic imagination, it belabors the listeners with horsewhips and transforms peaceable concertgoers into hyenas. Great Arnold Schoenberg, you are with your famous Five Orchestral Pieces brilliantly vindicated! They are utterances of modern classicism beside this barbarous insanity.”

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Reviewing Hyperprism at its first performance in New York in 1924, the dean of American music critics, Olin Downes, summarized in his account in The New York Times his impression of the music in a single sentence: “Varèse’s Hyperprism reminded us of election night, a menagerie or two and a catastrophe in a boiler factory.” W. J. Henderson of The New York Herald verbally thrashed Varèse’s innocuous Octandre: “An Octandre is a flower having eight stamens. Varèse’s Octandre was no flower. It cannot be described. It ought not to be. Such music must be heard to be appreciated. It shrieked, it grunted, it chortled, it mewed, it barked—and it turned all the eight instruments into contortionists. It was not in any key, not even in no key. It was just a ribald outbreak of noise. Some people laughed because they could find no other outlet for their feelings. The thing was not even funny.” Varèse lived through it all. A lesser man would have abandoned his fight, but Varèse had a prophet’s faith in his cause. He wrote me from Paris on November 21, 1931: I know where I am going and I know what will follow. We have a common cause and I am happy about it. Have faith in my experience and do not mind my insistence on my plan. Its development is logical; its results are assured. You, Cowell, Salzedo, Ruggles, Riegger, Ives—we must all group together in a bloc. There is no question of personal vanity. You know me well enough to realize that prima donna posturing is the least of my characteristics. So try to do everything possible, and also the impossible. You are my “mechanic.” Needless to say, you are free to quote all I have said to you. My opinions are not divided according to categories, and my admiration for you is expressed in public as well as in private.

Varèse faltered but once, about 1945 or 1946 when he had few if any performances in the United States, and when Europe was devastated by the war. He showed me a statement from his publishers for the year; his royalties were exactly 37 cents, which were forwarded to him in postage stamps because the amount was so small that it did not justify making out a check. His loyal wife Louise asked me to circulate a “round robin” to conductors urging them to play Varèse. At one of his press conferences, Mitropoulos spoke very warmly of Varèse and reiterated his belief in the greatness of his music, but he never put a Varèse work on any of his programs with the New York Philharmonic. Varèse spoke with seeming

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determination of resuming his work on electrical engineering, which he had studied in France as a young man. There was also a problem of money. Varèse had a few pupils, but they were also indigent, and repaid for their instruction in trade by copying Varèse’s music and performing other necessary tasks. The main source of income for Varèse and Louise was renting the two upper floors in their brownstone building at 188 Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village, which Louise inherited from her family. Louise was also an excellent translator from French, and her translation brought in some needed income. At some rare moment Varèse would explode in righteous rage about conditions in the musical world. He was never envious of the success of other composers, but once when we talked about frequent performances of a colleague, he erupted in a scornful apostrophe: “Il écrit de la merde qu’il transforme en l’or, et moi j’écris de l’or transformé en merde devant le public.” We always spoke French when we were tête-à-tête. Varèse’s favorite notion was that he was simply in advance of the century, and that the time would come when the world would catch up with his ideas and that he would be recognized as the great composer that he is. And, altruistically, he would add the names of others still unrecognized, in the first place Ives, and that we would all be marching hand in hand towards a more enlightened future. Such talk seemed like the hallucinations of a man possessed, so unrealistic was the idea that Varèse and Ives would some day enter the pantheon of musical gods. The supreme historic irony of such utterances was that Varèse was simply predicting things to come. The apotheosis of Ives came fortunately before his death in 1954, but Ives took it as an historic turn of the road, not so much for him personally, as for the verities of his musical transcendentalism. Unlike Varèse, Ives was never a fighter on the public tribune, and never issued manifestoes pro domo sua. Varèse seemed to accept his apotheosis when it came (for it was never less than that) as a natural phenomenon that had to happen, for had he not predicted it when he wrote me, “Nous marchons ensemble, vous et moi . . .” to give me courage in fighting the apathy of the public? And did he not predict that the world would catch up with his ideas? The world did literally that at a concert of Varèse’s work in Town Hall in New York in the 1950’s, which was practically sold out. People actually paid good money to hear Varèse’s music! He did not have to paper the house giving away free tickets to fill the hall. And the success was genuine, unaffected, not partisan, but general. The top international publisher

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Ricordi offered him a favorable contract for taking over his entire catalogue from his former publishers, with a guaranteed minimum of royalties, many-ciphered multiple of the insulting sum of 37 cents he had received before. Suddenly it was no longer necessary to beg conductors to play his works. I was no longer his sole “mechanic.” There were other mechanics available aplenty who could read and execute Varèse’s scores within the smallest quasihemisemidemiquaver. By the time Ives and Varèse rose to their rightful place among world composers, I had long ceased my own career as a symphonic conductor. As Henry Cowell put it vividly in his biography of Ives, I became a martyr of the cause. But the strong radiance of Ives and Varèse, and also of Cowell himself, whose works I played consistently, reflected also on my own image. In his posthumous diaries and memos, Ives spoke in the highest terms of me as a conductor. Varèse, too, remained loyal to me. He asked me to contribute an analysis to the new edition of his score of his Ionisation, and the score bore a dedication to me. In my own copy of the score he added the wonderful words: “au premier Ionisateur, Nicolas Slonimsky de son ami Edgard Varèse.” I was indeed le premier Ionisateur, for I conducted the first performance of Ionisation, a signal event by all counts. And I was the first to record it, which also was the first recording of any work by Varèse. And I was also the first to record an Ives work, a short piece, but still historic because of its phonographic primogeniture. If Cowell’s statement that I was a martyr of the cause is true, then my martyrdom paid off well. The story of the first performance of Ionisation deserves to be told. It took place in New York on March 6, 1933. The score calls for 41 percussion instruments without definite pitch, thus excluding the timpani, with a coda introducing tone clusters on the piano and tubular chimes. There were also two sirens which provided running scales with a tremendous crescendo. Varèse stipulated that the sirens should be the regular New York City fire sirens, manipulated by hand. We could not persuade the fire department of New York City to let us borrow their sirens, and we had to replace them by mouth sirens. Varèse was in Paris and I had to be in charge without Varèse’s monitoring supervision. We hired percussion players from the New York Philharmonic, with some extras from other New York ensembles. Then disaster struck. At the very first rehearsal, I discovered, to my utter disbelief, that the New York musicians could not reproduce the tricky groups of quintuplets in rapid

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tempo, particularly when one of the five notes was replaced by a rest. Even worse was the problem of effectuating the proper ensemble of quintuplets with the final 1/16th-note replaced by two 32nd-notes. There seemed to be a general tendency to transform a quintuplet with an intercalatory rest into a symmetrical group of six beats with a rest in the middle. It was quite impossible to obtain a uniform rhythm under such circumstances. The percussionists were getting nervous and some of them said the music was crazy and could not be performed the way the composer wanted it done. In desperation I turned to several composers who were following my rehearsals and asked them to substitute for the defectors. These composers never played drums and other percussion instruments, but they certainly could count asymmetrical groupings. And so it came about that the great harpist Carlos Salzedo took the responsible part of the Chinese blocks, Paul Creston striking the gongs, Wallingford Riegger pounding the anvil, Henry Cowell playing the tone-clusters on the piano and young William Schuman pulling the cord of the exotic instrument known as the lion’s roar. Thirty-odd years later, William Schuman reminisced of the occasion at his lecture at UCLA, where I was a member of the faculty. He declared that I was responsible for launching him on his career as a musician when I hired him to play the lion’s roar, but apparently, he said, his performance was not adequate for I never hired him again. Our attempt to put Ionisation on the radio met with an unexpected obstacle; no sirens were allowed to be broadcast except in case of fire. A year after the public performance we managed to persuade the music director of Columbia Phonograph Company to record the piece. Varèse was back in New York and assumed charge of the production. And he achieved the impossible: he actually got the right kind of sirens from the New York Fire Department, and he manipulated them himself for the recording. We had indeed stellar personnel, with Cowell again at the piano, Salzedo on the Chinese blocks and Paul Creston, Wallingford Riegger and William Schuman at their posts. This was the first recording of any Varèse piece, and as such had a historic value; the original release is a collector’s item. Varèse applied for a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation seven times during the 1930s and 1940s, and was rejected each time, despite the extraordinary array of sponsors for his application, including André Malraux, Minister of Cultural Affairs in the government of Charles de Gaulle. About the same time, Schoenberg applied for a grant; he too, was turned down.

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Stravinsky commented wryly in regard to the Schoenberg rejection that just a few bars of Schoenberg’s unfinished cantata, Moses und Aron, which he had intended to complete on the Guggenheim money, would be worth all the music composed by all recipients of the grant since its inception. Varèse discovered the power of electronic sound early in the 1930s when he met the Russian creator of the first electronic musical instrument, Leon Theremin, who was working on his instrument in New York. In 1934 he wrote his first work that had the Theremin in its orchestration, Ecuatorial, scored for a bass singer, the Theremin and an instrumental ensemble. Varèse had a grand idea of engaging Chaliapin as soloist, but it was a chimera. Even if Chaliapin, now aging, could be persuaded to accept this fantastic invitation, he would have never been able to learn the typical Varèsian serpentine melodic part. We engaged a professional bass-baritone who had some experience as an opera singer, but he almost disintegrated when confronted with the sound of the Theremin performed by one of the few experts in the art, a Russian woman of considerable musical abilities, Clara Rosen. After another rehearsal it became plain we would never be able to give even a passable performance. Varèse, who was a helpless witness to my futile efforts to establish some kind of workable result, suddenly stood up and shouted, “Je ne permettrai pas de massacrer l’oeuvre!” We persuaded the musicians to arrange another rehearsal two hours before the concert. That there was no major disaster at the actual performance was due to the fact that the music was new and that neither the public, nor most of the musicians had any idea what it was all about. I conducted the world premiere of Ecuatorial on April 15, 1934, in New York. My last unofficial participation in a Varèse function was in his Déserts, scored for electronic instruments and percussion. Varèse asked me to rehearse the percussion section, which was then taped; it was in 1954, just a few years after the technique of recording on magnetic tape was developed. In 1957, Varèse received an engagement which must have been the first lucrative appointment in his whole life. It was Poème électronique, which was commissioned by the rich electric company of Philips for the World Exposition in Brussels in the summer of 1958. Varèse went there to supervise the production. The broadcasting equipment was installed in the Pavillon Le Corbusier-Xénakis. For once, Varèse was in his element. Both Le Corbusier and Xénakis were Varèse’s friends and associates. Varèse admired the bold spatial designs of Corbusier’s architecture. What united

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Varèse with Xénakis was their mutual belief that music could be returned to its medieval antecedents in the scientific quadrivium. Here finally, Varèse’s sonorous geometry found its practical application. The Poemè électronique filled the air at the Brussels Exposition with its mighty vibrations; some of the public fled from the almost physical impact of acoustical waves. But Varèse was happy. And he did not have to worry about money; the Philips Company paid him generously for his participation. This was the birth of what Varèse called “organized sound,” a term that he used to define the style, method and technique of his compositions: he took the inchoate element of pervasive sound and organized it into an integrated, self-sufficient entity. Intégrales, Hyperprism, Ionisation and the allembracing Arcana were each in its own way, the edifice of an organized sound. Sounding geometry was the totality of organized sounds. It was only logical that after all these monumental beginnings, Varèse would undertake the ultimate integration of organized sound in a work called Espace, which was to achieve a union of sounding geometries in dimensions transgressing the mundane extensions of mathematical space. Varèse never completed Espace, but a preliminary study of this concept achieved performance. On July 30, 1931, at the Mairie of the 16th arrondissment in Paris, I was married to Dorothy Adlow, a young American art critic. Varèse was my best man. He brought flowers, and stood at attention when the Maire pronounced me and Dorothy man and wife. Almost immediately he passed a plate, intoning, “Pour les pauvres de l’arrondissment.” Varèse put in a 50franc note; in 1931 it was a considerable sum of money. Then the Maire gave me a booklet which contained the specifics of our marriage and 16 pages for names and dates of birth of 16 children. But we had only one child, Electra, born shortly after midnight on August 16, 1933. The physical appearance of Varèse was that of a stocky peasant. And he talked like a peasant. There was no artificial intellectuality about him; it would be very difficult to identify him in a crowd as a musical genius— he could have been taken for a manual worker, a miner or an electrician. He had large hands, and his cast of countenance was rough, with eyebrows hanging heavily on his eyes. He spent his childhood in Italy, where his father had a job; there Varèse learned to speak Italian. He spent his youth in Bourgogne, and received his musical education in Paris; he met Romain Rolland, who advised him to go to Berlin, where he spent several years. His memories of Berlin were happy. He associated with young artists and painters and he had an easy way with women. “Ce que j’ai eu comme

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poule!” he reminisced many years later. Varèse was given to rough language, particularly when speaking French. “Merde” was a familiar expletive for him. He could describe people for whom he had little regard in pungent epithets, usually borrowed from genito-urinal vocabulary. “Elle est une pipi crystalisée,” he once remarked with reference to a woman composer who wrote pieces of would-be modern music and who gave courses in music history. The Paris scene in the early 20th century was dominated by Debussy, Ravel, Satie, and on the theatrical side by Stravinsky and Diaghilev. Stravinsky was the cock of the walk. He was careful in selecting his friends and he preferred the company of devoted admirers; however he deferred to the rich and to the socially important people. Varèse was outside of Stravinsky’s orbit and there were few if any contacts between the two in Paris. Even in America, Stravinsky kept his distance from Varèse. But soon Stravinsky began to show interest in the kind of music produced by people on the opposite pole of the artistic globe. He absorbed the doctrine of Schoenberg and Webern and Berg when they were all safely dead. And then he made a pilgrimage to Varèse in his Greenwich Village home. Toutes proportions gardées, this was an historical visit. Stravinsky expressed his admiration for Varèse’s making a collection of New York noises, a strange observation since Varèse never was interested in picking up actual raw sounds in the manner of musique concrète. Then their conversation veered to their common reminiscences of the Paris scene. Stravinsky quoted Varèse’s low opinion of Vincent d’Indy and Albert Roussel, whom Varèse described not only as “cons” (the French word for the female organ of generation), but “générals de cons,” generals of the “cons.” When an account of this visit was published in Musical America, Varèse denied ever using scatological language about his elders, but the expressions certainly sounded very much like Varèse. In the same account, Stravinsky somewhat immodestly said about Amériques that Le Sacre du Printemps was written all over the score. Indeed, the use of solo wind instruments at the beginning of Amériques suggests the introductory bassoon solo in Stravinsky’s famous work, but the thematic and rhythmic procedures are quite different from Stravinsky. Varèse himself told me that he was more influenced by Schoenberg than by Stravinsky. The plural in the title of Amériques signified Varèse’s intention to embrace the entire Western hemisphere and reflect in the music the popular as well as the industrial motives. The influence of Varèse on composers of the young generation increased with every passing year. It is interesting to note that while Varèse

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was still living the programs of international festivals of modern music rarely if ever elected to put on any of his works. But after his death, in 1965, his name became sine qua non in Darmstadt, in Amsterdam, in Warsaw, in Stockholm, and New York. Student percussion groups played Ionisation as if it were an exercise in solfeggio. Varèse received the ultimate imprimatur from the most progressive and influential modern composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who arranged special Varèse programs in his afternoon series with the New York Philharmonic. Boulez also became a prime propagandist of Varèse’s music when he assumed the directorship of the music division of the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Posthumously, Varèse’s music became a public attraction instead of a repellent. Zubin Mehta actually opened one of his seasons as conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Arcana, and he asked me to come to the rehearsal as a consultant. During an intermission, a percussion player approached me with the score in hand and said, “Mr. Varèse, how did you want to play this figure, all on the same dynamic level?” “I am not Varèse,” I replied. “Varèse died several years ago.” “Oh, I did not realize that. I thought you were Varèse because Mr. Mehta kept asking you questions during the rehearsals.” In sad remembrance I recalled my playing Ionisation at the Hollywood Bowl some 40 years earlier, when I was nearly booted off the podium for daring to inflict such noise on the genteel audience. Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. Perhaps the most extraordinary instance of Varèse’s pervasive influence was his winning over of the celebrated rock-and-roll musician, Frank Zappa. He arranged a concert of Varèse’s music in New York and gave an introductory speech about Varèse’s significance in music history. When Zappa announces a concert, tickets sell out within a matter of hours. It was no different with his Varèse program. But his audience was a young and a rowdy crowd expressing their approbation with loud noises and whistles. Zappa had to remind his followers that Louise Varèse was present and that she was over 90 years old and had to be given some respect. Returning to Los Angeles, Zappa called me up to share his experiences, and he showed me some of his own symphonic scores, which bore the unmistakable signs of Varèse’s rhythm and melodic figurations. I asked Zappa where he went to school and how he learned the intricacies of ultra-modern notation. I was surprised to find out that Zappa learned music by reading scores and playing the instruments without instruction. His scores were fantastically complex, and almost as difficult to conduct as Varèse’s music. He submitted his scores

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to Mehta and other conductors but none of them expressed any interest. Then he tried to arrange performances in Europe, and in fact had a contract to produce one of them at Albert Hall in London. He undertook to meet all the expenses, but the project fell through when he sent the choral parts to the management in London. The title of the work was Penis Dimension; the tenor soloist confided his worry about the dimension of his organ. A chorus of adolescent girls tried to console him, complimenting him on his anatomical excellence. No British chorus would sing such a text, the contract was cancelled, Zappa instituted a lawsuit against the Queen of England as head of the British government, but lost. A thorough analysis of Varèse’s method of composition would require a dissertation. Suffice it to say that he did not follow any established modern techniques. His emphasis on melodic intervals of the tritone, major 7th, and minor 9th is similar to that of atonal music, but Varèse never espoused Schoenberg’s method of composition with 12 tones related only to one another; he never extended his thematic statements into precise inversions or reversions, and he never tried to integrate the melodic elements into a vertical harmonic structure. Varèse rejected the idea of a classical development of given subjects; indeed, he never connected melodic fragments into a sequential chain. Rather, each melorhythmic thematic statement stood alone in splendid independence; yet a Varèse line was not a non sequitur. Some analysts attempted to describe Varèse’s melodic progressions by the word agglutination; although the glue was invisible, the impression of continuity was observed. Perhaps the purest illustration of Varèse’s melodic structure is found in his unique work Densité 21.5, which he wrote in 1936 for the French flutist Georges Barrère. Barrère used a platinum flute and the density of platinum in the periodical table of chemical elements is 21.5. Like most scientifically minded artists, Varèse insisted on the precise rendition of rhythmic values in his music. In the score of Intégrales, there is a spot in which one of the two trumpets ends the bar with a 32nd rest, and the other trumpet picks up the theme on the first beat of the next bar. Inevitably, the first trumpet would prolong the note so that for a brief moment both trumpets would sound together, which was not what Varèse intended. I tried to persuade him to give the part to a single trumpet so as to avoid the unwanted doubling, but he refused. And he would not make similar adjustments in some brass parts in Arcana. The score includes a part for a double-bass trombone, which requires tremendous lung power

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on the part of the performer. When I conducted Arcana with the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris on February 25, 1932, a catastrophe threatened: on the same evening at the Paris Opéra there was scheduled a performance of Elektra by Richard Strauss, which also required the double-bass trombone, and there was only one double-bass trombone player in all Paris who could blow through that long tube without fainting. Varèse was running around from the Salle Pleyel where I conducted to the Opéra and back like one possessed, checking on exact schedules of performance. Elektra was a short opera and, luckily, the schedule allowed the double-bass trombonist to arrive at the Salle Pleyel in time for Arcana, which was the last number on my program. Would anyone have noticed the absence of that instrument? Varèse would, and that was the all important consideration for him, for me, and for all those who believe that a musical work must be performed in its integrity without any alteration or omission. Varèse believed that he was born in 1885, and I had that year in the program notes I wrote for my Paris concerts. He was actually born on December 22, 1883, in Paris. His first name was spelled with a final d in his birth certificate, and later in life he used to sign his name Edgard Varèse. But most of his compositions were published with the first name Edgar, and this is the spelling I adopted in most of my own reference works. The centennial of Varèse’s birth is to be marked by “manifestations Varèse” at a special festival in Strasbourg, at a concert in Washington and in Los Angeles. Varèse would not have been surprised by this homage. The world has finally caught up with him. Varèse died in New York on November 6, 1965, of a combination of cardio-vascular and pulmonary ailments. He whispered to Louise as he was dying, “Jai peur!” This was the first time Varèse had fear.*

*An interpretation of these last words is supplied by Chou Wen-chung, who was present in Varèse’s hospital room. Chou had called out, hoping that Varèse would recognize him, but there was no response. He was hallucinating, agitated, making strange sounds, then he said “j’ai peur.” Chou left the room and Louise was waiting outside. He told her of the words, realizing that this was the last line of The Astronomer, a major operatic work that Varèse never completed. The plot concerns an astronomer who deciphers a communication from Sirius. But other astronomers (read, musicians) think he is a crank. In the final scene, a shaft of light from Sirius reaches out for the hero. It is a deliverance. The stage goes dark and only a voice is heard: “j’ai peur.”—E.S.Y.

25. HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS

1. A VISIT The first impression of Rio de Janeiro is that it is a city that functions in an organized manner. Everything functions, elevators, buses, telephones, café waiters. The buildings in the center of the town are small-scale Radio Cities, slick and modern. Skyscrapers are erected on new land secured by the simple process of erasing a small mountain. Some real estate is being reclaimed from the bay. Music functions, too, and most vigorously, both kinds of music, the Carmen Miranda kind, and the Villa-Lobos kind. Incidentally, Carmen Miranda is much criticized for her ostentatious Americanization. In her picture, That Night in Rio, the Brazilians say she uses a kind of double talk in Portuguese, to give an exaggerated idea of the explosiveness of Brazilian speech and temperament. Even temperamental Brazilian ladies do not talk like that, they say. As to Villa-Lobos, he is well worth a trip to Rio to see. In fact, he is becoming a sort of national monument, visited by every newcomer. Walt Disney, during his South American journey, looked up Villa-Lobos for some music for his second Fantasia. He listened to records of Villa-Lobos, and picked up a Bachiana Brasileira, one of the five suites Villa-Lobos wrote to express the spirit of Bach through the medium of Brazilian folk song. Disney thought the music would be very good for an animated adventure of a choo-choo train. There is nothing peculiarly Brazilian, savage or jungle-like, in VillaLobos’s appearance and behavior. In fact, he looks and acts very much like a professional musician, and speaks French with a characteristic Parisian Ch. 25: Part 1 originally published in Musical America, October 10, 1941.

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cadence. In his office, in a brand-new skyscraper near the Opera House, the door is always open, and people drop in without ceremony. Villa-Lobos presides at his desk, cluttered up with manuscripts, notebooks, photographs and miscellaneous objects. At another desk, his faithful secretary copies his music and answers telephones. At a third desk, a huge office typewriter rattles along. Villa-Lobos is not disturbed by noises, whether jungle noises, or the noises of civilization. He can compose in the midst of a pandemonium. He proved it to me by composing right then and there an enigma canon, with large squares in place of notes, signifying, so he explained, the immoderate ambitions of the aggressor nations. VillaLobos is intensely conscious of the universality of politics, with a strong anti-fascist slant. “A perfect example of rubato is Mussolini,” he said, and this expressed his contempt for all bombast whether musical or political. His artistic credo is paradoxical: “I am a sentimentalist by nature,” he says, “and at times my music is downright sugary, but I never work by intuition. My processes of composition are determined by cool reasoning. Everything is calculated, constructed.” Whereupon, he produced a curious exhibit, a sheet of graph paper, with the chromatic tones marked in the vertical, and the rhythm values, a sixteenth-note to each square, in the horizontal line. “This is how I compose,” he said. He does not have to wait upon inspiration. Any outline, any graph can serve him for a melody. Thus, he traced the outline of the Serra da Piedade, a mountain range near Bello Horizonte, transferred it on graph paper, harmonized it and signed “Milimetrada e harmonizada por H. V. L.” He has also “millimetred and harmonized” the New York Sky Line, arranged it for orchestra, and had it performed at the broadcast on the occasion of the reopening of the New York World’s Fair on April 7, 1940. Villa-Lobos is very fond of charts, formulas, neologisms. He has made a chart to indicate the position of Brazilian music in the world of art. Each country is designated by a sort of zodiac sign, and arrows lead from one country to another, with Brazil in a whirlwind center of musical influences, but strong in its own primeval independence. Villa-Lobos is nationalistic. He says he places civic duties as a Brazilian musician even before the international fellowship of all artists. Villa-Lobos has received an excellent opportunity to try his newfangled ideas in practice. Eight years ago he was appointed the head of music education in the district of Rio de Janeiro. He took up the task with enthusiasm. He has organized choruses of school children, and each year, on Brazil’s Independence Day, Sept. 7, he conducts an “orpheonic con-

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centration,” as he, with his love for neologisms calls it, a chorus of some twenty thousand boys and girls of school age. He directs from a specially erected platform in the center of the largest stadium in Rio. He gives instructions through the microphone, and signals entrances by means of flags representing the national colors of Brazil. He teaches children not only to sing, but also to vocalize on given vowels or liquid consonants, without definite pitch. He calls such vocalization “orpheonic effects.” When twenty thousand children vocalize on the letter R, the impression is that of an approaching earth tremor, and the hissing S sounds like a rushing wind. While vocalizing, the children sway to and fro, one row to the right, the next to the left, which results in a fine undulating effect. As an introduction, Villa-Lobos makes the children sing a chord in thirds, one note after another, to the following words, meaning respectively, Bounty, Reality, Amity, Sincerity, Equality, and Loyalty: Bondade Realidade Amizade Sinceridade Igualidade Lealdade.

The initial letters of these words spell BRASIL. The catalogue of Villa-Lobos’s works is immense. It is hard to calculate, however, just how many different compositions Villa-Lobos has actually written, for the same music is used in several works under varying titles. Some items in the typewritten catalogue do not exist at all. For instance, six symphonies are listed in the catalogue, but Villa-Lobos says he wrote only five. A clue to this symphonic spontaneous generation may be found in the manuscript copy of one of his symphonies, originally marked No. 4, but carefully changed to No. 3. Villa-Lobos says No. 4 is the copyist’s error. He also denies that he ever wrote something called Philophonia. He says people just invent things about him. But he admits that the collection of simple songs, choruses and arrangements, now known as Guia Pratico de Musica (Practical Guide of Music) originally bore a more poetic title, Alma Brasileira (Brazilian Soul), which appears in his catalogue. Some of Villa-Lobos’s titles that look like misprints are not misprints. Villa-Lobos likes to telescope words. For instance, his piece for piano and

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orchestra Momoprecoce is a fusion of two words, Momo, a child carnival king, and Precoce, precious. Incidentally the musical material of this piece is taken from his Suite Carnival of Brazilian Children, written ten years before. His formidable Rudepoema which, Villa-Lobos says, is the most difficult piece ever written for piano, means simply a Rude Poem. I asked Villa-Lobos why he does this, and he replied: “Why should I use two words? One word is shorter.” Most of Villa-Lobos’s orchestral scores, including the Choros, were published in Paris, but they are utterly out of print. But myriads of his piano pieces are published by the local house Arthur Napoleão, and are available, to use a mixed metaphor, for a song. When I inquired why VillaLobos does not do something to move these piano pieces to the music stores in the United States, so as to make it possible for American pianists to get them without a pilgrimage to Rio, he replied characteristically: “Je ne veux pas ça. J’ai peur d’être le meilleur du monde.” (“I don’t want to. I’m afraid of being the best in the world.”) Villa-Lobos does not care where his manuscripts go, once he is finished with his work. He says people just carry them away. Gone is the piano version of the New York Sky Line Melody, uncopied, and apparently lost for good. The orchestral score of the Melody is still on Villa-Lobos’s desk, buried in its geological layers. His violin concerto, subtitled Fantasy of Mixed Movements, was recently performed in Rio de Janeiro. After the performance, the original score mysteriously disappeared. Villa-Lobos says it was stolen. But by whom? And for what purpose? One cannot very well pawn a Villa-Lobos manuscript, and only a singularly masochistic violinist would steal the Fantasy of Mixed Movements. On one occasion a Villa-Lobos manuscript was stolen for sentimental reasons. There is an item in Villa-Lobos’s catalogue, entitled Centauro do Ouro, a Golden Centaur, composed in 1916. The score vanished long ago. Then many years later, an officer of the Brazilian Army called on Villa-Lobos, and said he had found the score of Centauro do Ouro among the papers of his father, recently deceased. He asked Villa-Lobos for permission to retain the manuscript, which was very dear to his father’s heart, and said he would have it copied. Villa-Lobos, deeply moved, agreed. He has not received the promised copy, but is convinced he will receive it some day. “Anyway,” he adds in a conciliatory spirit, “the work is based on the pentatonic scale, and I do not favor the pentatonic scale now.”

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Among things Villa-Lobos does not know about himself is the year of his birth. Friends of his family say, and are willing to swear to it, that he was born in 1881, but Villa-Lobos prefers 1888. He is also experimenting with the years 1886, 1887 and 1890. There is no chance of finding documentary evidence of Villa-Lobos’s age, for the registries of birth were not established in Rio de Janeiro until the ’nineties of the last century. The archives of the Church of São José, where Villa-Lobos is supposed to have been baptized, have no record of him between the years 1880 and 1890. The musical lexicographer had better consult a numerologist. Villa-Lobos has no children of his own, but he likes children and understands them. He has retained a capacity for childish excitement over spectacular things. When in 1936 he was invited to take part in the Congress for Musical Education in Prague, he flew the ocean in the Zeppelin, and at the Congress could hardly speak of anything except the wonders of transoceanic travel by air. He enjoys practical jokes. He carries around with him a jumping coin, which he puts on a companion’s plate at dinner, and laughs heartily when the coin jumps unexpectedly into his friend’s face. Villa-Lobos possesses an incredible store of physical energy. He can carry on for hours, talking, playing, conducting, without showing signs of fatigue. One afternoon, after a full day’s work at the office, he got out the huge score of his as yet unperformed Choros number eleven, for piano and orchestra, and read it through, standing at his desk, gesticulating, imitating the instruments, barking out the rhythms. That evening, Villa-Lobos was not too tired to play, rather unpianistically, his pieces for the benefit of his friends and visitors, at his home. Villa-Lobos also plays billiards, quite professionally, beating all amateurs hands down. 2 . T H E F L A M B O YA N T C H A N T I C L E E R “I am Folklore!” Heitor Villa-Lobos once declared during a discussion of Brazilian folk music. “My tunes are as authentic as any created by my people.” Now that Villa-Lobos has joined the immortals of music, his defiant assertion must be taken seriously. This flamboyant chanticleer of Brasilidade—Brazilianism—was indeed a part of national folklore, a Part 2 originally published in Show Magazine, November 1962.

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legend in his own lifetime. He was a gregarious and convivial person whose sharp mentality combined with candid sentimentality. He had many friends. Yet the hard facts of his life eluded even his most devoted admirers. It is doubtful whether Villa-Lobos himself was sure of his biography, for his power of imagination was richer than his memory. He did not even know in what year he was born. When I was in Brazil 20 years ago on a mission to find out who’s who and what’s what in Latin-American music, I examined the baptismal registries in a Rio de Janeiro church where, according to Villa-Lobos, he was christened, but failed to find his name. I asked his aged mother when he was born, but she only shook her head. No general registries of birth existed in 19th century Brazil. When I returned to the United States, I thought of one more resource. Villa-Lobos went to Colegio Pedro II in Sao Paulo as a child, and I addressed an inquiry to the registrar of students of that school. To my delight, I received a prompt reply: Villa-Lobos was admitted in Colegio Pedro II on the third of April 1901 at the age of 13, and he was born in Rio de Janeiro on the fifth of March 1887. When I met Villa-Lobos again, in Paris, in 1949, 1 told him when he was born. He seemed delighted to learn the true date of his birth, and, in a sympathetic gesture, pulled slightly at my nose, complimenting me on my flair for tracking down unavailable information. Even the catalogue of his works is an elastic uncertainty. There is in it a symphonic poem entitled The Golden Centaur. The piece aroused my curiosity, and I asked Villa-Lobos where I could find the music. He shrugged his shoulders. “I never know what happens to my manuscripts. People just come in, pick them up and disappear.” And he told me the melancholy tale of a friend who was so enamored of this particular score that he persuaded Villa-Lobos to lend the manuscript to him. Years passed, and a young Brazilian army officer called on Villa-Lobos, introducing himself as a son of the friend who had borrowed the score: could he keep the score as a memento of his father, who had since died, the young man asked. Villa-Lobos was touched, and let him keep the music. “I have no regrets,” Villa-Lobos added. “The Golden Centaur is written in the pentatonic scale, and I no longer care for such literal representation of Indian music.” And he began to tell me, in his slightly tropical French, about his newest work—a symphonic poem with a choral finale in the form of a polyglot quodlibet. “Strict polyphony in 14 languages!” he exclaimed. “Hebrew,

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Greek, Latin—then the modern languages—guttural German—Bach, Buch, Gesund, Ersatz—rolling Italian syllables—mamma mia!—elegant French—Madame la Comtesse, je vous adore—classical Spanish—a sus ordenes—and Portuguese, of course, Brazilian Portuguese—saudades, saudades!—and English, British English—weekend, Milord—and Russian—otchy tchornya ...” I was fascinated by this precise account, and concentrated on memorizing the details. A medieval polyphonic medley, for that is the meaning of quodlibet in music, to the words in several languages in colloquial modern speech—at the hands of Villa-Lobos it could be a masterpiece! I could hardly wait to see the music. “The music?” VillaLobos said as though awakening from a dream. “My publisher Ricordi in Sao Paulo has all my music.” Sao Paulo was on my itinerary, and my first visit there was to Ricordi’s office. The director met me cordially, and pulled out a long card file with the name Villa-Lobos on it. It seemed very complete. I rapidly looked up various items. There was even a card for The Golden Centaur! I spotted a symphonic poem with a choral finale, which must have been the quodlibet in 14 languages, and asked to see the scores. “The scores?” the man asked in astonishment, “The Maestro has the scores. We keep only the card catalogue!” I reported this episode to Camargo Guarnieri, a Brazilian composer of remarkable talent who made his home in Sao Paulo, when I went to visit him. Mario de Andrade, one of Brazil’s most eminent modern poets, was also there: their reaction to my story was unexpected. They burst out into Homeric laughter. “You believed the Villa-Lobos catalogue!” Camargo Guarnieri cried, slapping my back in the Latin-American gesture of friendly sympathy. But even discounting the disembodied musical phantoms, the productivity of Villa-Lobos was fantastic. His published music alone would make a pile taller than he was in life—compositions in every genre, symphonic poems, string quartets, violin pieces, cello pieces, piano pieces, songs, choruses . . . “But will this kind of music live?” ask the skeptics, using the familiar cliche of music appreciation. The answer is provided in a resounding affirmative by the continued performances and increased recordings of the music by Villa-Lobos since his death three years ago. Another critical cliche states that a national art when expressed with great force of originality will obtain a universal acceptance. The music of Villa-Lobos wins according to this criterion as well. His Brasilidade is uniquely

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expressive. He created for his purposes two novel and compelling forms: the Choros and the Bachianas Brasileiras. The Choros is a band of street musicians, or, by extension, the dance music performed by such a band. Villa-Lobos adopted this native word as the title of 15 of his works, for different ensembles ranging from a guitar solo to a huge orchestra with chorus. As for Bachianas Brasileiras, they express the spirit of Brazilian music in terms of Bach’s contrapuntal and fugal technique. Villa-Lobos attached a mystical significance to the identity of the initial letters in Bach and Brazil. Brazilianism and Bachianism are neatly combined in the Chorale from the fourth suite of Bachianas Brasileiras for piano solo. It is a brilliant piece, beautifully designed, dissonant but not too dissonant, abounding in polyphonic inventions, with some enchanting bits of bird sounds in the high treble. Villa-Lobos explained to me that the persistent drone on a Bflat in the piece is the reproduction of the cry of the Brazilian jungle bird arapunga. There must have been an expression of incredulity on my face, for Villa-Lobos called in one of his assistants (the discussion took place in his office in the Ministry of Education in Rio de Janeiro) and asked him: “What is the note that the arapunga sings?” “Si bemol!” the other replied, without a moment’s hesitation. Villa-Lobos gave me a triumphant glance, but summoned another young man, who was equally sure that the note was indeed a si bemol. Villa-Lobos always insisted that he was a “child of nature.” When a degree of Doctor of Music was conferred on him by Occidental College in Los Angeles on November 21, 1944, he declared through a translator (despite his many tours as conductor in the United States he never learned to speak even rudimentary English): “I learned music from a bird in the jungles of Brazil, not from academies.” “What kind of bird?” inquired a student. “Let us say, it was a bird. Any kind,” Villa-Lobos said. The poet Mario de Andrade wrote passionately of this music of nature: “Compared with Villa-Lobos, the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony of Beethoven and the forest scene in Wagner’s ‘Siegfried’ are educational pieces for window display, nature which is commercialized, laundered and dressed up to meet the demands of civilization.” As a child of nature, Villa-Lobos scorned the musical society of celebrities. His translator had to soften his remarks or censor them entirely at a women’s club meeting in the private home of a California society

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leader. “Please tell the Maestro that Toscanini and Rachmaninoff were guests of honor in this club,” the hostess asked the translator. “I am not interested,” Villa-Lobos replied with a smile. “He says it is most flattering,” the interpreter said. “Tell him that we like to hear his voice even though he cannot speak English.” “I am not a parrot or a circus clown,” the Maestro shot back. “He is delighted to oblige,” the interpreter countered. Villa-Lobos was asked to play something of his own. He sat down at the piano. “Tell the hostess that her piano is dreadfully out of tune—a real tin pan!” he said. Everybody smiled. This display of rudeness was partly a natural repugnance against social conventions, partly a mask to cover his sentimental regard for people of all classes and conditions, even for members of women’s clubs. But it is significant that one of his most formidable and impressive works for piano, dedicated to Artur Rubinstein, to whom he was greatly devoted, he called Rudepoema! What little academic training in music Villa-Lobos had he received from his father, a college professor, a librarian and a gifted amateur musician. He taught Villa-Lobos to play the clarinet and the cello, but he died when the boy was only 12 years old. Left to his own devices, VillaLobos joined the street Choros that became the chief source of inspiration in his own composition. He learned to play the Brazilian guitar and entered thoroughly into the spirit of popular music; he earned a little money by playing at weddings, baptisms and carnival shows. For a while he worked at a match factory. But soon the call of the jungle possessed him. He sold his father’s library and went into the interior of Brazil, along the mighty basin of the Amazon River. Traveling in a primitive canoe, he and his companions in the adventure suffered many shipwrecks in the rapids, but he saved his musical instruments by roping them to his body. He filled himself with quinine against the sweeping malaria. He listened to the songs of tropical birds and to the drums of the Indians. When he came back to Rio de Janeiro, he was greeted as a ghost, for he had been given up for dead, and solemn mass for his soul had been said in church. But Villa-Lobos was very much alive, and he resumed his life in civilization with added zest. Even before going into the jungle, he became engaged eight times to eight different Brazilian girls. Then, suddenly, he took off for Trinidad with a British gentlewoman who was a singer of sorts, and appeared with her as an entertainer in nightclubs there. But he was

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married only twice, the first time to a professional pianist and teacher, the second time, much later, to his secretary. In Rio de Janeiro, Villa-Lobos could not make a living, and subsisted for many years on subsidies of his friends. Francisco Braga, an influential Brazilian composer and conductor, who believed in the greatness of VillaLobos, decided to appeal to the patriotic feeling of the government for financial help. On December 5, 1920, he circulated the following statement: “Heitor Villa-Lobos possesses an enormous musical talent. Amazingly productive, he has written works of merit, many of them of the most original quality. He is not only a promise, but an affirmation. I believe that the Nation will be proud some day of such a son.” This testimonial precipitated a debate in the Chamber of Deputies and on July 22, 1922, a sum of 40,000 cruzeiros was voted to enable Villa-Lobos to present concerts of his music. Alas, the response was discouraging, and the attendance was poor. “All this effort was fruitless,” a sympathetic reviewer wrote, “simply because Villa-Lobos was not born on the banks of the Volga, and his name is not Villov-Lobov.” But there were also signs of a better fortune. In 1922, Villa-Lobos conducted his Third and Fourth Symphonies, respectively entitled War and Victory, on the occasion of a visit in Brazil of the King of the Belgians, and was awarded the Croix de St. Leopold, the patron saint of the King. The patriotic sentiments were flattered, and a sum of money was raised by eight Brazilian well-wishers to finance a trip to France for Villa-Lobos. And so Villa-Lobos arrived in Paris, carrying with him his scores. Characteristically, he said in a public statement: “I am not here to study, I am here to demonstrate my own achievements.” For once, Villa-Lobos was defeated at his own flamboyant game of aphoristic pronouncements and imaginative tales of adventure. A French poetess with whom he became friendly borrowed from him a curious volume he was reading, Veritable Histoire et Description d’un pays habite par des hommes sauvages, nus, feroces et anthropophages, situe dans le nouveau monde nomme Amerique. It was a French translation of a lurid account by Hans Staden, a German who made a voyage to Brazil in the middle of the 16th century, was captured by the Amazon Indians and nearly eaten by them. The Latin edition published in Germany in 1592 was profusely illustrated by woodcuts representing these “savage, nude, ferocious and anthropophagous” aborigines in the process of carving and

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cooking parts of human bodies. Luscious nude women, with long blonde tresses braided in the German style, chewed on human arms and legs while the bearded Christian prisoner, himself a candidate for a similar repast, expostulated with them by wringing his hands and imploring them to desist. Shortly before his first Paris concert, the evening paper L’Intransigeant published an interview with Villa-Lobos signed by his poetess friend, and retailing in purple prose the story of his capture by cannibals in the jungles of Brazil, his attempts to assuage their appetites with music, his narrow escapes and his miraculous rescue. The details followed closely the experiences of Hans Staden. The article produced a sensation, and the sale of tickets for the concert picked up considerably. But many Brazilians in Paris were outraged by what appeared to be a shameless piece of self-advertising at the expense of the good name of their country. Villa-Lobos wanted to repudiate the interview at once, but his manager persuaded him to wait a few days so as to cash in on the publicity. There was a reception for Villa-Lobos after the concert, and a French demoiselle asked him whether he had ever eaten human flesh himself during his captivity. Why, yes, he said, and particularly relished the flesh of French girls, very tender when well done. In Paris Villa-Lobos made his mark. Parisians of the 1920s were highly receptive to exotic art, even when practiced by composers and artists who never traveled beyond Montmartre. Villa-Lobos was “un vrai,” a genuine “exotique” from the tropics. Even the titles of his works stimulated the imagination: Uirapuru, a symphonic poem made into a ballet by Serge Lifar, picturing a multihued, multi-plumed tropical bird shot down with an arrow aimed at its heart by an Indian maiden, and transformed into a handsome youth falling at her feet; the dances of the mysterious Macumba ritual; the musical panorama of Amazonas, populated by monsters which crash into an abyss in quadruple fortissimo; and the lyrical Saudades, an untranslatable word which approximates the idea of nostalgic memory of things past but ever dear. Regardless of his determination not to follow Parisian musical fashions but to lead them, Villa-Lobos picked up enough impressionistic savoirfaire to compose delightfully Ravelesque piano pieces and songs. It was during his Paris period that he wrote his most poetic Choros, the Alma Brasileira (Soul of Brazil), now a perennial favorite of modern pianists.

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Villa-Lobos regarded himself as a composer of nature, but he was irresistibly drawn to “scientific” music. “I may be a sentimentalist,” he told me in Rio de Janeiro, “but my processes of composition are determined by cool reasoning, by calculation.” It is this spirit of scientific application that led him to develop the method of melodic “Millimetrization.” He drew a curve on graph paper, assigned a millimeter or two from the graph to each semitone on the vertical scale and an eighth-note on the horizontal line, and thus obtained a rhythmed melody. In this manner he “composed” for the New York World’s Fair his dedicatory piece entitled The New York Sky Line. He harmonized the melody, orchestrated it, and it was broadcasted from the Brazilian Pavilion on April 7, 1940. But what would prevent Villa-Lobos from adjusting the graph so as to satisfy his melodic and rhythmic sense, I wondered. Villa-Lobos assured me that he never cheated in his “millimetrization.” Would he write the melody of my family at the breakfast table? He would. I gave him a group photograph of myself, my wife and our then small daughter. It was past the closing hour in his office at the Ministry of Education, but he sat down at his desk, traced the outline of the photograph on a piece of transparent paper, transferred this outline onto a strip of graph paper, carefully measured the distances in millimeters, and notated the result on the stave of music paper. He worked on my family photograph more than an hour. And the result? The melody was hardly inspiring, but Villa-Lobos could not be blamed. Twenty years ago, my family was not photogenic.

Part III

MONOGRAPH

26. ROY HARRIS: CIMARRON COMPOSER To Roy Harris— without whose infectious enthusiasm for the subject this book could never have been written 1. HIS LIFE Lincoln Day, 1898

“When, at high noon, a gun released the rough homesteaders of the Cimarron Rush, two determined men knew precisely where to go and how to get there fast. They were ‘Pony Express’ Broddle and his brawny sonin-law Elmer Ellsworth Harris. They staked out territory halfway between what is now Stillwater and Chandler, in Lincoln County, they cut down trees and built a log cabin, and sent for the young wife, Laura Broddle Harris. In that log cabin, a twelve-pound baby boy was born at four o’clock in the morning on Lincoln Day, February 12, 1898. The frontier baby was christened Leroy Ellsworth Harris.” Thus the family chronicle describes the advent on the American scene of Roy (né Leroy) Harris, American composer. Family legends tell of the excitement attending the arrival in this world of a boy so uncommonly hefty. Old Irish women walked two miles in the Oklahoma winter, looked at the huge baby, and murmured: “Sure and somethin’ good will come of ’im; he’s born under a lucky star.” Ten years later Harris Sr. commented on Leroy’s luck: “You know that feller—if he’d fall in a creek, he wouldn’t get wet—he’d come out with a pocket full-a-fish!” Leroy’s paternal great-grandfather came from Ireland; his grandfather, “old man Harris,” came from Kentucky; he married a Scotch woman named Cameron from Ohio. After the Civil War he became a “circuit 231

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rider,” preaching salvation. He had a fine singing voice and a commanding presence. He stood six feet three in his stocking feet and weighed 240 pounds. At the age of sixty-three, he won a rail-splitting contest. A man of great virility, he procreated thirteen children. All the Harrises were powerful men. Elmer Ellsworth Harris weighed 242 pounds in his prime. Leroy’s nine paternal uncles were all over six feet tall, and his three paternal aunts weighed over 175 pounds apiece. Maternal grandfather and grandmother left Wales when Laura was a year old. By racial stock, then, Leroy Ellsworth Harris is half Welsh, quarter Scotch, and quarter Irish. But, he feels, the Irish predominates in his character. Little Leroy with his initial start at twelve pounds seemed to be well in the sturdy line of the Harris family tree. But he caught typhoid fever at the age of five, and his growth was stunted. Father used to look at him and mumble: “Is it possible that I sired a shrimp like him?” The struggle for survival was hard in the Harris family, and those who were physically unfit perished. Leroy had three brothers who died in infancy; Carl (1896–97), Stanley (1901–03), and Glenn (1907–10). His sister Irene, who was born in 1905, is the only other surviving child. She settled in Hollywood, where she married Julian Kahn, a cellist. At the turn of the century the Cherokee Indians were bold. The nearest white family was a mile and a half away. There was little protection. The Indians would come in and demand chickens, turkeys, and other food. Mother Harris would shrewdly tell them to take as many guinea hens— notoriously elusive fowl—as they could catch. After a couple of hours of grunting and ki-yi-ing, the Indians would ride off without the guinea hens. The Harrises lived by barter rather than by monetary exchange. Mother would take a tin bathtub full of eggs to the town of Chandler and bring back a bolt of gingham dress goods. Pioneer hospitality was a family trait. One night, during a violent storm, there was a mighty knock at the door. “I wouldn’t turn away a black man on a night like this,” Father Harris said. In walked a big black man. The Harrises put him up in the cotton bin, in the barn. The Negro was friendly. When the storm was over, he stayed on. It was months before he took to the road again. This hospitality remained in the life of Roy Harris. A typical Harris household, whether in California, Princeton, New York, Ithaca, Colorado Springs, Nashville, or Sewanee, includes a number of transients. There

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was, for instance, a young married man who wanted to study composition, but had no money. His wife was a good cook, so Roy Harris suggested that he would house them both in exchange for her services as a cook. It was agreed; and when the couple arrived in Ithaca, where Harris was teaching at Cornell University, they had with them a friend of the young man’s wife, a girl poet. She remained there for a season; she could type a little, and became a temporary secretary. When the Harrises lived in New York, one of his former pupils dropped in unexpectedly. He was hungry and unshaven, after hitchhiking from the West. “My wife has left me,” he declared, “and I came to stay with you.” He remained in the Harris household for over a year. Andrew Rice, the founder of Black Mountain College, was taken into the Harris household to write a novel for the Harper Prize. He stayed for a year, helped in the kitchen, washed dishes, and philosophized. He wrote his novel and got the Harper Prize with I Belong to the Eighteenth Century.

Leroy to Roy

The Oklahoma days came to an end in dramatic fashion. In 1903, Mother Harris contracted malaria and was confined to bed. Pioneer families depended for their very survival on the hard work of their womenfolk, fetching wood and water, baking, brewing, sewing, and mending. In despair, Elmer Harris did something he had never done before. He took his savings to town and tried his luck in a gambling house in Chandler. At the end of the game, he was $500 to the good. Afraid to walk home with all this money in his wallet, he stayed the rest of the night in the saloon. When he returned home in the morning, he decided to move away. He auctioned off the homestead, prepared a huge basket of fried chicken and sandwiches, and took his sick wife and the boy to California on the Santa Fe coach. When he arrived in California, he had $2,000, with which he bought a small piece of land which had been sheep grazing land of “Lucky” Baldwin, the notorious gambler who inherited the famous Spanish Grant of San Gabriel Valley. One of the last remnants of the Old Pioneer West, “Lucky” Baldwin lived like a feudal lord in the town of Arcadia, “the town of saloons,” now the home of the Santa Anita race track.

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Harris Sr. wanted his boy to be manly. When neighborhood children picked on Leroy, who was shy and undersized, Father Harris urged him: “Defend yourself! Bite, kick and scratch! Put up a fight!” Leroy did. At ten, Harris Sr. gave Leroy an acre of land and seed for a vegetable patch. He gave him a placid horse and a wagon to deliver the products of the farm to nearby communities. When the boy was older, father and son worked together in the fields from seven o’clock in the morning. They took an hour for eating, and then worked until six at night. Father Harris used to whistle American tunes, and his favorite was “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” When Harris became a composer, he made use of this tune in four of his symphonic works: The Overture from the Gayety and the Sadness of the American Scene; When Johnny Comes Marching Home; a movement of American Portraits: 1929; and the Folksong Symphony.* Father Harris would start whistling “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” at a brisk tempo at the beginning of his morning’s work. By sundown, the tempo was twice as slow, reflecting the exhaustion of the day’s work. In Roy Harris’s overture, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, the tune appears at march tempo in the opening and is treated in a slower tempo in the development section. This augmentation was the learned counterpart of the slackening of rhythmic pace in Father’s whistling tempo after a day’s work. The Harrises led a rather isolated existence, as did all farmers in those days. They talked little and were suspicious of people who talked fast and easy. Working hard in the fields, they had little time for reading. Leroy Harris did not learn the alphabet until he was seven. He read laboriously by the yellow light of the coal-oil lamp. His first book was about a horse, Black Beauty; his second, Robinson Crusoe. Then he discovered Horatio Alger and read his success stories voraciously. He instinctively identified himself with the boy heroes of Alger’s American classics, determined to emulate their shrewdness and their wise ways with the world. At the age of forty, looking back, Harris reminisced: During childhood and youth, need seems to have been my bosom companion. I lived with the daily need to understand my invalid *Roy Harris was not the first American composer to utilize this song in a major composition. When Johnny Comes Marching Home, “military spectacular comic opera” by one Julian Edwards, was produced in Detroit on October 6, 1902.

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mother—to absorb the inapproachable silence of my father at the end of a long summer’s day of work; need to understand the moods of the great mountains in sunrise flush, in hot naked noonday silence—in evening’s purple tints; need to know why the sounds of spring were so much lighter and gayer than the sounds of summer, why the stars of clear wintry nights were so remote; need to express the impersonal patience in the beautiful eyes of dumb animals; above all, the need to understand this unpredictable tyrant who ruled me from within—whom I could not escape day or night, summer or winter, in country, mountains, desert, city, by the sea, alone, or with others.

At the age of fourteen, Leroy Harris enrolled in high school in Covina, California. He recalls those days in his autobiography, in third person singular: “The teachers were always wanting him to do something he did not want to do; things that didn’t make sense to him. And then there was trouble. Fighting every day—sometimes he was sent home from school.” In his home life, the greatest sensation was the acquisition of a piano: It created a great stir. All the neighbors came in to see the piano—but only his mother could play it. When she pressed certain keys, it sounded wonderful, as when he was alone under the sky. But when the boy played it, everything seemed to quarrel—like all the kids at school. The piano was a problem in his life. He was captivated with learning which keys to press—and then when he learned the right keys he could play a piece after he learned the Time. So his mother taught him. Later a teacher came in her buggy every week—and he had to play at the church at Christmas time and for graduation exercises. He used to love to go into the parlor after supper and play his pieces in the pitch dark with his eyes closed. It was like telling a secret to some one inside of himself . . . The kids looked at him in a strange, distant manner when he played the piano. They made him feel as though he were a traitor—or some one who had the measles or the mumps.

Leroy proved his manhood conclusively when he broke his nose and his left arm in football. He also jammed the fourth finger of his right hand so badly that he had to abandon his piano playing. Another sissified attribute had to be dropped. The embarrassingly pretty name of Leroy was changed to plain Roy. No longer was he The King, but just King.

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In First Gear

In Covina, Roy and some high school friends organized the “Bachelors’ Club.” The guiding spirit was a church organist, Alec Anderson, who doubled as accountant for the Fruit Growers Association. The Bachelors’ Club met on Sunday evenings at Anderson’s home. They discussed with great earnestness the problems of Free Will, Predestination, and Ultimate Truth. They also listened to music. From Anderson’s large library of phonograph records, they played recordings of Paderewski, Caruso, and Kreisler. At one of their meetings, Roy heard Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony for the first time. One day, Anderson took the boys to a symphony concert in Los Angeles. Roy was no hide-bound intellectual. He excelled in athletics. He was a local tennis champion in Covina and held the highest batting average in his high school baseball league. He was a left-end in football, and rather good at it. Meanwhile, the Harris family had continued to prosper. In 1912 they bought their first car, an Abbott-Detroit. Roy learned to drive at fourteen. He became a typical American boy—dances, girls, cars. But no drinking. At the driver’s wheel, Roy was always a speed demon. Once, pursued by a motorcycle policeman on an Ohio highway, he stepped on the gas and outraced the law at 100 m.p.h. At the age of forty, reminiscing about himself (as usual, in third person singular), Harris wrote: There came a Saturday when he drove his horse up to the High School to get his baseball suit and shoes and tennis racket. He was very sad. He wept. He had graduated, and he knew that was the end of fun. He was eighteen years old. A man! Strong! He could plow the fields and load baled hay. His father had bought him ten acres of land. He owned horses and tools. He had a bank account. He would get some of the stock of his bank. He would become the Mayor of his town and sit on the School Board.*

Then came the War. Harris enlisted in heavy artillery; he was still in training camp on Armistice Day. Out of uniform, he had to earn a living. *Parts of Harris’s autobiography were published, in a bowdlerized and watered-down form, in American Magazine of Art, November 1939.

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His farm was sold and the money spent. He took a job as a truck driver for a dairy company. His daily load to deliver was three hundred pounds of butter and three hundred dozen eggs. His work began at the first gleam of dawn. This habit of early rising has remained with him throughout his life. His best hours for composition are still between five and seven o’clock in the morning. Harris drove the milk company truck, off and on, for four years, and his experience has become part of the Harris legend. A Boston dowager reading the program notes at a concert featuring a Harris work, was heard to say: “I don’t believe I want to hear this. How can an ex–truck driver write symphonies?” When the BBC Symphony Orchestra broadcast Harris’s Third Symphony, an irate listener wrote to the London Radio Times: “Roy Harris should have stuck to truck-driving instead of insulting music-lovers with his senseless noise.” In 1919, Harris entered the University of California at Berkeley as a special student and took courses in philosophy, sociology, and economics. He also attended music courses. “Each new harmony—each new melody—each composer discovered—milestones all!” he recalled. “But a shadow darkened those years. Our young composer couldn’t seem to get anywhere in life. His boyhood schoolmates were all acquiring wives, homes and respectable occupations—as farmers, doctors, lawyers, dentists, automobile dealers. It was getting so that he dreaded to go home. What was he doing?—OH!!” Haunted by musical ideas which he was unable to express, Harris went to Charles Demarest, a capable organist and composer, who taught him the rudiments of harmony and modulation. Later he took lessons from another organist, Ernest Douglas. Soon he was able to write simple music, and he succeeded in putting together a nocturne for piano, in feeble imitation of Chopin. In Los Angeles, he studied with Hennie Charles Dillon, who was especially interested in bird songs. Another teacher to whom Harris went for elementary instruction was Henry Schoenfeld, a good musician who wrote good German-type music, mostly in the key of B flat major. Having acquired the rudiments of music, Harris felt he needed a teacher-friend who could inspire him and give him formative advice. He found such a man in Arthur Farwell. Harris was tremendously impressed by Farwell’s Eusebius-like enthusiasm for new ideas. Farwell was equally impressed with Harris’s

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determination to scale musical heights. In the Musical Quarterly of January 1932, Farwell summed up his impression of young Harris in these words: “I was convinced that he would one day challenge the world.” Under Farwell’s friendly tutelage, Harris wrote a set of variations on a southwestern Spanish-American folksong, Pueña Hueca, for chorus, violin, violoncello, and piano, and Farwell himself conducted it in 1920 with the Pasadena Community Chorus. There were other teachers and advisers. Modest Altschuler, the Russian conductor then living in Los Angeles, gave Harris lessons in orchestration. Harris also took some lessons with the British composer, Arthur Bliss, who was at the time residing in Santa Barbara. Harris was initiated by him into the mysteries of modern dissonant harmony. Having absorbed the best California had to offer, Harris decided to go east. He had no funds, but he had faith in his lucky star—“If he’d fall in a creek, he wouldn’t get wet—he’d come out with a pocket full-a-fish!” as his father used to say. At forty, musing upon his youthful faith, he gave the quality of luck a more philosophical definition as “the composite of circumstances and strong intuitions supported by emotional convictions.”* Bumming rides in trucks and freight cars, Harris reached New York with a $5 bill in his pocket. In the big city, he eked out a meager livelihood doing settlement work, teaching, and organizing school concerts. After a year of struggle, he quit and went back to California, where he could at least be sure of roofed shelter and basic food.

$2,500 Tea Party

In California, the financial problems of Roy Harris continued to be acute. Farwell, always eager to help, made an outspoken announcement: “I know of nothing that is likely to bring greater honor and achievement to American music through the work of an individual than to support Roy Harris in every possible way.” He did his part by getting Harris a job as music critic with the Illustrated Daily News of Los Angeles and a position as harmony teacher at the Hollywood Conservatory. He introduced Harris into the influential milieu of music patrons and patronesses in Los Angeles, among them Artis Mason Carter, the lady through whose efforts *“At fifty-three, I believe that luck is the circumstance of being at the right place at the right time with what people want.” R.H.

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the Hollywood Bowl was built. Harris also met Mrs. Carrie Jacobs Bond, who advised him to write successful songs, and Elly Hey, the GermanAmerican pianist, who asked him to write a “real American piano concerto” for her. Alfred Hertz, then conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, looked at his scores and offered encouragement. Harris Sr. watched Roy’s progress with misgivings. “If you get to be one of those musical fellers,” he grumbled, “you will have to hang around tea parties with a mess of women.” “Dad, I won’t be that kind of a musician,” replied the son. Harris was forging ahead in his composition. He wrote a suite for string quartet, Impressions of a Rainy Day: “Rain,” a set of impressionistic tone pictures in four movements; “Lull Before the Rain”; “Evening Song”; and “From Over the Hill.” The work was performed in Los Angeles on March 15, 1926, by the Zoellner String Quartet, which subsequently took it on a nation-wide tour. Encouraged by this public presentation of his music, Harris embarked on the composition of a full-fledged symphony, under the title Our Heritage. Of this projected symphony, only the slow movement, Andante, survived. Harris sent it to Howard Hanson, director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester; he accepted it on the spot and performed it at a festival of unpublished American music, at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, on April 23, 1926. Harris borrowed money and sped to Rochester to attend the performance. This time he traveled by train as a bona fide paying passenger—his bumming days were over. Metropolitan critics were on hand for the Rochester festival. Olin Downes, of the New York Times, singled out the Andante as the best work of the program. “The greatest promise of the concert appeared to be inherent in Mr. Harris’s score,” he wrote. “Its essential quality is uncommon today—a quality of serene nature, a mood that is lofty and not sensuous, a music that has a deep breath.” Another performance of the Andante followed the Rochester success, when Villem Von Hoogstraten conducted the score at Lewisohn Stadium in New York in July 1926. He also played it at the Hollywood Bowl on August 6, 1926. The Angelenos took pride in the successes of their adopted citizen. The Los Angeles Evening Herald announced: HARRIS’ ANDANTE PROVES L.A. COMPOSER OF STRONG TALENT AND

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SPIRITUAL DEPTH. Another Los Angeles paper proclaimed: FAME FORESEEN FOR ROY HARRIS. In the summer of 1926, Roy Harris went to the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, that unique settlement where musicians, artists, and writers sojourned for work and relaxation. There he met the cream of the crop of American talents and was stimulated to greater creative effort. Back in New York, Harris received an invitation to tea from Alma Wertheim, patroness of music, a sister of Henry Morgenthau. The dire warning of Elmer Harris Sr. that Roy’s fate as a musician would be to hang around tea parties “with a mess of women” came alarmingly close to reality. As Harris recalls the events of the tea party, Alma Wertheim offered him a trip to Europe for extended study, with all expenses paid. And she gave him $300 in cash to buy clothes. In Europe, Harris was to receive $2,500 annually, for a period of four years. His destination was Paris, and his musical beacon was Nadia Boulanger. Her name, as a great teacher, was suggested to Harris by Aaron Copland, who studied with her himself.

A Concerto in Paris

For his first lesson, Nadia Boulanger asked Harris to write twenty melodies. He brought in 107. Then she told him to write counterpoint on a given cantus firmus. He brought her a book of 128 exercises. Nadia Boulanger was impressed. “At this rate, you will be through with counterpoint in two months,” she said. “But I do not intend to go on studying counterpoint,” parried Harris. “There is no problem at all in writing these exercises. It takes no talent whatsoever—any fool can write this sort of thing. I want to write music, not lessons.” Nadia Boulanger let him select his own independent work. He decided on a clarinet concerto, because he was thoroughly familiar with the technique of the instrument from his school days, when he played in a band. In three months, between October and December, 1926, the Concerto for Clarinet, Piano and String quartet was completed. The working schedule in France was hard for Harris. He lived in the little village of Juziers in Normandy, in a cottage owned by an old peasant woman whose face was the spitting image of . . . Beethoven! Every Friday, he took the noon train to Paris, for his weekly lesson with Nadia Boulanger,

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and went back to the country Sunday at noon. There he was working ten, twelve, even fourteen hours a day, studying Bach and Beethoven, and improvising chords on a ramshackle upright piano. In Paris he went to concerts. He heard for the first time the music of Fauré, Roussel, Honegger, Milhaud. He absorbed Debussy and Ravel. He heard the first performance of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. But, he recalls, he was always “an unpopular minority of one among the students of Boulanger in regard to Stravinsky.” Among the Russians, only Mussorgsky impressed him as a creative mind. He thought Rimsky-Korsakov was superficial; in Tchaikovsky, he admired the writing for wind instruments. The Clarinet Concerto was presented to the Paris public in a gala spring concert of the Société Musicale Indépendante, on May 8, 1927, in Paris. Nadia Boulanger herself played the piano part, with the Roth Quartet and Cahuzac, the famous French clarinetist. In anticipation of the event, Harris had outlined the necessary tactics of dealing with musicians at rehearsals. He notated on the back cover of the manuscript of the Clarinet Concerto: “PRACTICAL PROBLEMS: Reading from manuscript—lack of authority of the printed page. Changing any part in presence of performer makes him less meticulous—leads him to belief that if parts can be changed, the music is arbitrary.” Like all composers of intractable music, Harris had his troubles with performers. “The last movement of the Concerto was so unorthodox rhythmically that Cahuzac could not play it.” Harris recalls. “As a result, he became so upset that he did not appear at all for the last rehearsal. We called up his apartment, and his wife said that he had left early that morning and had not come back. It was too late to engage another clarinet player, so we simply waited and hoped that Cahuzac would show up at the concert. He did, but it was obvious that he had been drinking. However, he played his part without a single mistake—it was the most magnificent performance a composer could possibly desire.” There was another Paris performance of the Concerto, with a different group of players. The musicians could not get the rhythms, and Harris was worried. Virgil Thomson, who lived in Paris at the time, said to him: “Well, if you insist on writing masterpieces, you will always have trouble.” But after the concert, he beamed: “You should never hesitate to venture to do anything you want because the most daring things always come out best.” As Harris came up to join a group of people, Thomson observed: “Here comes Roy Harris, who is going to be the great American composer and

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for whom they will put up statues for the dogs to sniff at!” According to Harris, Thomson used an earthier word. Looking back to his Paris days, at the age of forty, Roy Harris reminisced, always in third person singular: The first year in France was torture to our composer. He was worried and disappointed. He disagreed violently with his great teacher. He came to get knowledge and discipline. She preached both. But her knowledge was a detailed cataloguing of what had already been done; her discipline, a Royalist-Catholic negation of spontaneity. She taught the doctrine of conservation—the tailor-made article designed from any material to meet the needs of the time and place. He was in search of the machinery with which to release and harness the wild horses within him. He subscribed to a series of all the Beethoven string quartets. He bought the scores and studied them in minute detail before and after each concert. Beethoven became his wise, confiding, copiously illustrative teacher. He saturated his days and nights with Beethoven’s dynamic forms—studied his idiom by planning out a form of his own with a Beethoven theme and then comparing his ideas of form. He turned to Bach’s rich contrapuntal textures and long, direct forms. He learned about the passion and discipline of uninterrupted eloquence. He became a profound believer in discipline, form, organic and autogenetic.

New York Interlude

In November 1927 Roy Harris went back to New York for a brief stay. There a pleasant surprise awaited him. He was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation stipend, $2,500 a year to study and work abroad. Also the League of Composers put the Clarinet Concerto on its program for February 12, 1928, his thirtieth birthday. But on that day he was on his way back to Europe, to fullfill the conditions of the Guggenheim grant. The Clarinet Concerto (programmed as a Sextet) had a mixed reception in New York. The reviews were tepid, and some of them openly hostile. W. J. Henderson wrote in the New York Sun: “Of thematic invention and rhythmic definition, the composition has only about enough to nurse it through half an hour. This Sextet, we fear, will not have many repetitions.”

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Henderson was wrong. The Concerto continued to prosper. The score was published in 1932 by the Cos Cob Press. In 1933, the Concerto was recorded by Columbia Phonograph Company. It was broadcast over the Columbia network on June 14, 1933, with an introductory speech by the composer. The sturdiness of the Clarinet Concerto was attested by Virgil Thomson who wrote in the New York Herald-Tribune of January 25, 1949: “Roy Harris’s Concerto for string quartet, clarinet and piano, is still, twenty years later, real chamber music, perfectly real chamber music, with no more faults than are to be found in Brahms, and with all the virtues.” Paul Rosenfeld, “the happy voyager in the arts,” had become Harris’s warm friend and staunch champion. He wrote to Harris in Paris his impressions of the Clarinet Concerto: I liked best the Scherzo and the Finale: they seemed more you yourself, more original and musically alive than the other two movements; but the entire work was virile and necessary, and helped fill the great spaces of this country with another live, independent spirit. I think you show symphonic breadth in your ideas, and a good balance between popularity and elevation. I think the two inseparable in you; I have the conviction that the more slangy you become in music, the more sturdy and elevated you will become. You belong in the Whitman school; and it is as the first real Whitmanite (in the sense of Lindsay, Sandburg, Frost, Anderson) in American music that I salute you, old R. H.

Harris stayed in Paris but a few months, and in the fall of 1928 made a return trip to America. He was now working on a Piano Sonata, but found himself ill at ease writing for piano, because of his habit of thinking in terms of counterpoint. He could not very well adopt the conventional harmonic texture of pianistic technique, and he compromised by using what he called “chordal counterpoint.” In the early spring of 1929, the Sonata was completed. Although it followed the Clarinet Concerto chronologically, Harris designated the Sonata as op. 1, and the Concerto, op. 2, on account of revisions made in the Concerto at a later date. After op. 2, Harris stopped counting opus numbers—at least until fifteen years later, when his Fifth Symphony suddenly emerged as op. 55.

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The Sonata was published in 1931 by Cos Cob Press. Harris dedicated it to Elly Ney, the pianist who had urged Harris to write a concerto for her. But when Harris sent the Sonata to her, and asked her to learn and play it in public, she replied evasively that the style of the music was unsuitable for her purpose. Harris gave the Sonata to Harry Cumpson, a modern-minded pianist, who gave its first performance in New York on March 3, 1929. There were some cheers in the press, and also some boos. The Sonata received more appreciation when Cumpson played it again on December 18, 1930. Marc Blitzstein wrote enthusiastically in Modern Music of January 1931, describing it as “a work teeming with vitality and spirit, large in dimension, and deep in meaning . . . muscular music, full of superb long-breathedness with flashing chords descending in irregular metric intervals to the same bass chord.” The Musical Courier found in the Sonata “great force, vigor and vitality, robust poetry and scorn for outworn traditions.” Only Musical America was definitely antagonistic: “This Sonata might have come out of Moscow,” said the review.

Three Broken Vertebrae

Had Harris consulted a crystal gazer before going back to France, he would never have returned to the cottage in Juziers. In the peaceful rural house presided over by the Frenchwoman with the Beethoven face, dark dangers lurked. Coming down the stairway on an August morning, Harris slipped and fell and broke his spine. He was rushed to the American hospital in Paris, where he spent two weeks. He was discharged, but the pain continued. He went to the Rothschild Hospital. There he was put in a plaster cast, from the waist to the neck, and in this confined shape, was shipped back to Juziers. A flea of a vicious French variety got under the cast the very first day and made his home on his belly, aggravating his misery. “From now on,” Roy wisecracked, “any smartaleck critic can call me a flea-bitten composer.” Lying on his back in his room at Juziers, Harris refused to stay idle. A desk was placed on his chest, and on it, somewhat in the position of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he wrote a string quartet—a manuscript of eighty-five pages. This work took him three months, from October to December 1929. His recovery was slow. Harris became worried and then desperate. He sent a dramatic cable to Henry Allan Moe, secretary of the Guggenheim

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Foundation: “Advised my fractured spine will never properly heal. Wish to return to my native land.” The reply came at once, also by cable. The Guggenheim Foundation offered to pay for the passage home and all medical expenses. There was no ambulance in the little town of Juziers, and Harris was conveyed to Paris in a funeral hearse. His faithful landlady, the “Beethoven face,” brought out a bottle of old wine to take along. Drinking wine, while lying on one’s back, in a hearse, was a difficult process, but Harris managed only too well, and arrived in Paris slightly intoxicated. As he was taken out of the hearse and into the Hôtel de la Gare St. Lazare, the pious French lined up on each side, bared and bowed their heads, and crossed themselves. Nadia Boulanger and her pupils came to see Harris in his hotel room and wept copiously over him. In December 1929, still in his plaster cast, Harris was carried aboard the White Star liner Olympic and placed in the ship’s hospital. In New York, at the Polyclinic Hospital, a piece of the shinbone from his right leg was grafted into the spine, to replace the broken fragments of three vertebrae. The expenses, nearly $6,000, were generously taken care of by the Guggenheim Foundation. In keeping with his optimistic philosophy, Roy Harris thought that his misfortune was not without benefits. He wrote: “A fractured spine, and six months in a plaster-of-paris cast yielded a complete independence of the piano. Release! The return home to an America, shrill with the clamor of plenty! The heartache for the sanity of a small French village, where respect was shown for the composer who had American money to spend. But always his lucky star led him through narrow passages to the next trail with food and lodging and equipment there waiting, regenerating his enthusiasms, confidence and energies.” In 1931, Harris went back to California, to the family ranch near Glendora. His health fully regained, he took long walks in the countryside, armed with an enormous notebook which was his faithful companion in France, New York, and California. In this notebook he jotted down his melodies, and then “put them away to mellow.” On the cover he wrote: “Roy Harris—Thematic Material—Please Return—See addresses inside—Reward.” To make doubly sure, Harris wrote on the inside page: “Anybody finding this book will do me the greatest kindness to return it. The material which it contains represents the germs for years and years in composition. Because of the sketchy manner in which these ideas are recorded they cannot possibly be available to anybody else than the author.

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To him they are invaluable because they can awaken associations of mood in him which recall the mood (and ideas surrounding that mood) with which the sketch was made.”

The Stolen Symphony

In February 1931, Artur Rodzinski, then conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, announced in the press his intention to perform a symphonic work by Roy Harris, American Portraits: 1929. There was a flurry of excitement among Harris’s friends. But soon Rodzinski realized that the score was too tough to handle without an unlimited number of rehearsals and quietly shelved it. He asked Harris to write something easier. Harris set to work, and in four days completed an Andantino for strings, clarinet, and flute—twenty-six pages of manuscript score, all told. The parts were copied with equal speed, and the piece was successfully performed by Rodzinski with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, on March 22, 1931. Harris tried to salvage some of the material from American Portraits and rearranged the first movement, under the non-committal title, Concert Piece. Like its parent work, it never got performed. The only distinctive technical device in this Concert Piece worth noting is a series of glissandos in strings, an effect which Harris has not used in any of his works since. Rodzinski then asked Harris to write a larger work for the 1932–33 season. Highly pleased, he wrote a Toccata, 139 pages in length. But, after much discussion and negotiation, this work, too, was dropped. Harris attempted to make the material of the Toccata into a piano concerto, but abandoned the project on page 22 of the manuscript. Harris returned to New York from California in September 1931. This time he was able to drive in his own car, purchased with funds from the Creative Fellowship of the Pasadena Music and Arts Association, granted him for two successive seasons 1930–31 and 1931–32. In New York, Harris unexpectedly hit the spotlight of front-page publicity—not for his music, but because somebody broke into his parked car and stole two brief cases containing scores and parts of American Portraits and Toccata. The World-Telegram of September 28, 1931, recounted: “‘Somebody has stolen my symphony,’ said Roy Harris. ‘Your what?’ asked the police sergeant. ‘My symphony,’ repeated the composer. ‘Also a Toccata I had just finished.’ The sergeant called the captain, and the captain called several

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detectives . . . They said they didn’t see much hope. I asked why, and they said whoever had stolen my property would probably throw it down the sewer.’ ” The police guessed right—or almost right. Two days after the theft of the music, the unwelcome loot was found by two hotel bellboys in an open telephone booth in the West 103rd Street subway station, where the disappointed thieves had left it. But the parts of the Toccata were still missing and had to be recopied. There was a hopeful sequel to the episode of the stolen music. Leopold Stokowski, then conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, read about it and expressed interest. Harris went to see him, and Stokowski agreed to try out the score of American Portraits with the orchestra. Harris attended the rehearsal and was shocked by the deficiencies in the scoring. Returning to New York, he decided not to have the work performed. He wrote to Stokowski: “Naturally, performances mean very much to me in these early years of my creative life—but only if my music is so clearly conceived and formulated that it becomes an unequivocal entity when it is faithfully executed. I do not want a performance unless my music is formulated with mastery. It is only then that the orchestra can interpret a work with precision of form end beauty of living tone. It is only then that the combined efforts of the composer and conductor can convey new vital experience to the audience. If I cannot give you vital music today, I will do so tomorrow.” In 1932, Harris wrote an Overture from the Gayety and Sadness of the American Scene, designed to portray the two-fold nature of the nation. He offered the score to a conducting friend whose specialty was modern American music. “How are things with you?” he wrote him. “Are you going to conduct in Europe again? I have a fine Overture, ten minutes, for full orchestra. Would love to have you introduce it.” The Overture never got a performance in Europe. It was first heard in California, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, on December 29, 1932. The Angelenos did not take too kindly to this moody and, to sunkissed ears, discordant music, “To Harris’s Overture, the audience paid the tribute of strong partisanship,” wrote a reporter. “Hisses battled against cheers, with a flattering absence of lethargy.” The Overture was played again, at the Hollywood Bowl, in the summer of 1933. It was its last performance in the original version. Later it was reincarnated in a new overture, entitled When Johnny Comes Marching Home, after its song theme. Trimmed down and disencumbered

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of strident layers of chordal counterpoint, it proved to be one of Harris’s most successful works and brought his name before a large audience. This new version was written on commission from the Victor Company—the first American work commissioned by a recording company. It was first performed in public by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Eugene Ormandy, on January 13, 1935. The success of Johnny brought another piece of luck to Harris. He got a publisher. “Schirmer’s has at last decided to take me on as a steady contributor,” he wrote to a friend. “They bought three compositions and paid me money—real money. Can you believe that?”

Genius with a Hat On

At thirty-five, mezzo cammin della nostra vita, Harris was convinced that he would triumph over the difficulties of the road of fame. “I hope to become a really great composer,” he wrote to a friend in 1933. There were others who shared Harris’s hope. Paul Rosenfeld was one of the earliest champions. Arthur Mendel joined the growing company of confirmed Harrisites. He confessed his partiality, when he wrote in the Nation of January 6, 1932: “It would be less than honest not to admit that the force of Harris’s personality, his entirely convincing sincerity, almost fanaticism, and my friendship for him may have something to do with my respect for his music.” None was more intemperately vocal in support of Roy Harris than his old teacher, Arthur Farwell. In the January 1932, issue of the Musical Quarterly, he delivered a ringing paean to Harris and his Muse. “Gentlemen, a genius—but keep your hats on,” he announced. Although Harris’s Toccata had died at birth, Farwell hailed it as a “titanic work . . . one of the greatest emotional and intellectual achievements of modern times.” He described Harris as “a sort of polytonal Pythagoras, who has brought clear mathematical logic and purpose into this highly valid latter-day concept. . . . He had discovered a new harmonic ocean. . . . If there is such a thing as fourth-dimensional music, this is it.” In conclusion, Farwell ventured a prophecy: “This insatiable composer has simultaneously reconstituted the scheme of all the physical elements of music with firm intellectual power and purpose and in the same breath has redirected the spiritual intent of music. . . . I predict for him no mere vogue, but a wide, dynamic and enduring influence upon the art of music.”

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There were also voices of cautious dissension. In an article published in Modern Music of January 1934, Walter Piston offered ironic congratulations: “Roy Harris must, first of all, be applauded and encouraged for surviving the trying experience of having been hailed as a genius.” He paid tribute to Harris’s powers of persuasion: “To be shown a score by Harris himself is a real experience. His personality is contagiously enthusiastic, and his honest appreciation of the beauties of his own work is refreshing. His playing and singing both have that kind of sketchy inaccuracy one expects in composers, but one is somehow left with the impression that a great work has been revealed.” Eagerly absorbing praise, and brushing aside captious criticism, Harris stepped up his musical production. The year 1932 brought out a Fantasy for piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn, which was first performed at the Coleman Chamber Concerts in Pasadena, on April 10, 1932. The same program in Pasadena included Roy Harris’s arrangements for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn of four pieces by Couperin and the Largo from the First Flute Sonata by Bach. Harris’s String Sextet, also composed in 1932, is a far more ambitious work than the Fantasy. Subdivided into three sections, Prelude, Chorale, and Finale, it takes twenty-two minutes in performance time. (The Fantasy is a nine-minute work.) The Sextet was played at the Yaddo Festival in September 1933 and was performed again at a concert of the League of Composers in New York in the spring of 1934. The work proved an important milestone in the professional career of Roy Harris, for it marked the beginning of his friendly association with that great patroness of modern music, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, to whom the score was dedicated. When in April 1933, Mrs. Coolidge went to Europe for the summer, she let Harris use her apartment in Washington. In 1933, Roy Harris wrote his Second String Quartet subtitled Three Variations on a Theme. Taking a cue from the alphabetical whimsies of Schumann, Roy Harris built the theme on the letters in the name of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge: ES (for E flat), C, E, E, and again C. The Second Quartet was played for the first time in Chicago, on October 22, 1933, by the Pro Arte String Quartet of Brussels, at the Century of Progress Fair in Chicago. It was recorded by the Victor Company in 1934.

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Gloomy Grandeur

When Roy Harris appeared on the musical scene, young American music was in the throes of a radical fever. It was all skyscrapers, airplanes, locomotives, flivvers, robots, and jazz. George Antheil had just shaken the rafters of Carnegie Hall with his “mechanical ballet”; the formidable Edgar Varèse was making scientific music, pre-empting the quality of fourth-dimensional music (that Farwell had claimed for Harris) in such works as Hyperprism, that is, a prism projected into a space of four dimensions. Henry Cowell was banging tone-clusters with fist and arm; Carl Ruggles impassionately scaled atonal heights, plumbed chromatic depths, and proclaimed polychordal millennia. Chavez of Mexico was on hand with a ballet, HP, glorifying the horsepower of the modern machine. Aaron Copland had shocked Boston and New York with his “jazz concerto.” George Gershwin honked the horn of a Paris taxi cab in An American in Paris and was contemplating the composition of a Rhapsody of the Rivets. Charles Ives had just been discovered, and his music that had anticipated all kinds of modern techniques had a few belated performances. The Russian scientist Leon Theremin and the Russian theorist Josef Schillinger were seeking the musical philosopher’s stone with which to create scientifically perfect melodies, rhythms, harmonies, and tone-colors. Some American musicians, Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, and others, sought modernity in neo-classicism. Howard Hanson asserted his faith in ageless romanticism. Still others produced a fine blend of sophistication and simplicity, as in Virgil Thomson’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts, to the words of Gertrude Stein, complete with the famous line, “Pigeons on the grass—alas!” In the midst of this world of sophistication and ultramodernism, Roy Harris, swimming against the tide, persevered in his assertion of musical Americanism. He wrote in Scribner’s Magazine for October 1934: “The good biological stuff in our blood and bone assures us that we will reconstitute our world with broader, more representative human values. In that reconstitution, music will probably play an important role, because it can most completely liberate and express those powerful, intangible, subtle feelings which motivate human impulses.” This kind of talk annoyed his less high-flown contemporaries. In an article in Modern Music for November 1935, Marc Blitzstein voiced his alarm: “The breath, the long-flowingness, the ‘go’ of his music—and Harris

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still has them somewhere, in proportions unpossessed by any other American I can think of—have got clogged by misled and didactic ratiocination. Can Harris do nothing about it? And can he do nothing about the insistent mood of ‘Olympian’ ostentation which has crept in? How often, when a real contour and ‘face’ begins to appear in a movement, it becomes dimmed and blotted out by vague rhetorical repetitiousness and posturing, gloomy-grand, or American-sinewy, or what-not!” Virgil Thomson was goaded by Harris’s grandiloquent proclamations into a volcanic outburst of temper. Commenting on a Harris work with a fightingly assertive American title, he wrote: “One would think to read his prefaces, that Harris had been awarded by God, or at least by popular vote, a monopolistic privilege of expressing our nation’s deepest ideals and highest aspirations. . . . He knows that musical material, even folklore material, is as international as musical form and syntax, that localism is no more than one man’s colorful accent. He knows this so well that he avoids, as though it were of the devil, any colorful accent whatsoever. He puts his musical effort on serious problems of material and of form. He does not always get anywhere in his music; but it is serious music, much more serious music than his blurbs would lead one to believe.”* Roy Harris reacts to such rebukes with a vigorous Bronx cheer and consecutive fifths to the nose. But when a particularly vicious attack appeared in a weekly magazine describing Harris as of a “musical mentality with but a slight capacity for extended thinking,” he took pen in hand and wrote to a friend: “The enclosed is unjust. You know it perhaps as well as any. You examined my score with technical care to detail. You have heard it both on records and in concert. I call upon you to answer this onslaught with your characteristic insight, both of technical detail and historical perspective (ancient and modern).”

Big Symphony from the West

In the spring of 1933, Roy Harris met Serge Koussevitzky. He was introduced to the Russian conductor by Aaron Copland at a concert of the Coolidge Festival in the Library of Congress. Koussevitzky said: “You must write something for me.” *“Well—the Boys always did bring their longest poles beneath the trees with the best apples.” R.H.

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“I would love to. What do you want?” said Harris. “I vant a big symphony from the Vest,” said Koussevitzky. Harris got to work at once. He wrote the score in Washington and in California, where he was engaged for a course of eighteen lectures on “melodic idioms” at Mills College, through June and July. By November 1933, the symphony was ready. It was entitled simply Symphony: 1933, and Roy Harris set it down as his first, disregarding the abortive American Portraits: 1929. Koussevitzky looked at the score and hailed it as an American masterpiece. Nonetheless he made a considerable cut—fifteen pages—in the first movement of the Symphony. Harris felt unhappy about it, but bowed to necessity. The great day came, when on January 26, 1934, Koussevitzky unveiled Roy Harris to the Boston multitudes at Symphony Hall. Harris made a journey to Boston to attend the rehearsals and hear the performance. The Friday afternoon audience, the Cabots and the Lowells and the dowagers, still recalcitrant after nine seasons of Koussevitzky’s modern drive, received the new symphony with polite forbearance. There was, however, sufficient applause to bring Harris to the podium twice. The next morning, the Boston Herald commented: “A Friday afternoon audience gave the Harris symphony a Friday afternoon reception.” The Boston Post carried the headlines: “SIBELIUS SYMPHONY HIGH SPOT—Harris New Work Receives Cordial Applause.” To the critic of the Boston Globe, Harris’s music recalled . . . Dvorak’s New World Symphony! It was H. T. Parker, the gnome-like critic of the Boston Evening Transcript, who divined a new force in Harris. “MANIFOLD, ABUNDANT, INDIVIDUAL,” proclaimed his headlines. “The Symphony of Roy Harris is Absorbing, Impressive, American Work.” In the space of two columns, written in Parker’s unique quasi-eighteenth-century idiom, H. T. P., as he always signed his articles (initials variously interpreted by Bostonians as standing for Hard To Please, or Hell To Pay), he welcomed Harris. “There were those present who believe themselves ear-witnesses to an event in the course of American music,” he wrote. Mr. Harris’s symphony is unmistakably American—American of the Far West that nourishes itself rather than of the East that naturally and inevitably draws from Europe a part of its esthetic sustenance. . . . Mr. Harris writes clearly, concisely, even when he is busy with no inconsiderable webs of counterpoint. Nowhere, again, has he smoothed and

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varnished tonal textures and surfaces. He does not exhaust himself in artful, recondite, sophisticated play with harmonies and timbres. . . . His melody, in turn, partakes of this irregularity, this unevenness. Next to never does it proceed in measured sequences. From a germ his themes broaden and lengthen in a fashion strange to the short-breathed musical hour. From the themes develops melody long-lined, plastic, outspringing, upswinging, down-turning, unpredictable in its variety. It keeps amplitude, direction, a manifold diversity and insistence. Those that like to define a composer by his environment will discover Western origins ad libitum.

On and on flowed H. T. P.’s prose. “Mr. Harris is not only an American, but a notably individual composer, which is better, since music-making— thank God!—must remain personal, and not mass, accomplishment. . . . A music of dissonance rather than of concord he inevitably writes. Who in these days does anything else?” H. T. P. concluded his long essay by posing two rhetorical questions, to which he gave reasoned answers: “Has Mr. Harris discovered and released a new and rugged and American beauty? There are detectable signs of it. Has he found the complementary power? He seems on the way to it.”

Skepticism in New York

Koussevitzky carried the Symphony: 1933 to Carnegie Hall, that American Colosseum, where the arbiters of metropolitan taste turn thumbs up or down on veterans and newcomers alike. Harris faced this fastidious forum on February 2, 1934. He was called twice to the podium to acknowledge applause—the same respectable number of bows as in Boston, but the reviews were tepid. In the New York Herald-Tribune, Francis D. Perkins said that the Symphony “did not always live up to the composer’s evidently lofty intentions, and did not set a landmark in modern American music.” In the New York Sun, W. J. Henderson, no friend of modern music, American or otherwise, proffered dry comments: “The symphony, being atonal, has no key signature, nor has it a title, except the date 1933. . . . There is vigor in all of this score. Resolution and energy are found everywhere, manifestations of a young and independent talent.”

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Olin Downes in the New York Times turned thumbs down. “Much has been written in recent years about Mr. Harris,” wrote Downes. There are not lacking those who see in him a present white hope of American music. . . . It would be a pleasure to say that in vitality, color and expressive power this music betokened such a new figure among us; and some have said this. The structure of the piece, its map on paper, and some of its motives, have the creative seed and offer good opportunities for symphonic development. For this writer, the promise of the symphony stops there. Its technical formulae are creditable enough, but the music is labored and the thematic material very sparse. . . . There is little genuine organic development in this symphony. It sometimes repeats, but seldom progresses.

The most unkindest cut of all came at the end. With a side-kick at Stravinsky in the Grecian mantle of Apollon Musagète, and an appreciative bow in the direction of Brahms, Olin Downes concluded his review with these words: “The performance of the Brahms symphony brought substantial relief from a program which had begun with a European futility and ended with an American ineptitude.” Roy Harris was enraged. So were many of his friends. “The people in New York are furious,” he wrote to a Boston friend. That earnest effort, his first symphonic child to see the light of day—“an American ineptitude!” And this from Olin Downes who was the first to hail his modest Andante seven years back! Harris and his friends decided to answer Olin Downes by an appeal to the Vox Populi. They had his review reproduced side by side with the prose poem of H. T. P., under the caption “Two Opinions of a New American Symphony,” and had a thousand copies sent out to libraries, editors, and musicians, so that the people could decide. Echoes and repercussions of the controversy continued long after the concluding tonic seventh chord of the Symphony had sounded off in Carnegie Hall. In a letter to the editor of the New York Times of February 11, 1934, Arthur Mendel hit back at Downes, branding his lack of faith in new American music as the “merest inversion of chauvinism,” in itself “a too familiar American ineptitude.” In an editorial rebuttal, Downes pointed out that five-sixths of his review was given to Roy Harris, whereas Stravinsky got three lines, and Brahms, five. His opinion, he asserted, was based on a preliminary study of the work, which he had an opportunity to

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do with Harris himself, who explained “with admirable clarity and comprehensiveness his aims and methods in the symphony.” The Harris Symphony sent ripples far and wide. In some ways, it exercised a decisive influence on younger American talents, particularly when the Columbia Phonograph Company made available a recording taken during the Carnegie Hall performance and distributed it commercially in its Masterworks Series. It was the first recording of an American symphony by a major phonograph company, a milestone in American music history. Roy Harris wrote enthusiastically: “The Symphony: 1933 was recorded, and we believe it will be a knockout. The head engineer said he had never officiated over a clearer score—and that the balance was very even. We shall see. . . . I am busy writing a four-minute piece for string quartet and flute to finish out the eighth side of the records.” This extra piece was an effective work in a lyrical vein, which Harris entitled simply Four Minutes and Twenty Seconds. In an accompanying leaflet for the recording album, Roy Harris commented that “modern thoughts and feelings are becoming increasingly conditioned by exact time concepts.” The appearance of the recording on the market gave the signal for further exchange of salvos and hoots in the press. In an article in The American Mercury, of April 1935, entitled “The American Composer Gets a Break,” Aaron Copland wrote: “Harris has had great success with the recording companies; much of his work is already on the ‘immortalizing disc.’ This means that it is no hothouse music, but manifestly alive, full flowing; for not only do the companies record it, the public buys it . . . There is something impressive in the progress of this former backwoodsman. What he writes, in general, is music for the ‘big public’; it has sweep, power, emotional breadth.” Paul Rosenfeld wrote perfervidly in The New Republic of November 21, 1934: “Three times within a year the young American composer has presented us with new, authentic and notable pieces of music, and the latest of them completely rekindles the enthusiasm aroused by its predecessors, the Concerto and the Sextet. The Symphony: 1933 is probably the most momentous of them all.” The boos came from Irving Kolodin, who published an article in the January 16, 1935, issue of The New Republic, under the caption, “Wanted—An American Composer.” Discussing “the case of Roy Harris, who was hailed with the cry of ‘genius’ when he had composed scarcely

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any music,” Kolodin declared: “One still finds his a musical mentality with but a slight capacity for extended thinking, displayed in a work whose material is of the thinnest, almost pathologically repetitious, possessing no roots in the orchestra, and, additionally, ineptly scored.” Instantly, the Harrisites sprang into action. Two letters of protest against Kolodin’s article were published in The New Republic for February 13, 1935 After this exchange of partisan sentiments, the turmoil subsided. Harris, by now exploring new fields, was content to let his symphonic dogs lie.

Harris Comes Marching Home

Harris craved an opportunity to teach, to lecture, to address audiences, to instruct young musicians. His first public lecture series, given in 1932 at the Public Library of Los Angeles, was devoted to melodic writing before Bach. In 1934 he lectured on medieval music at the progressive New School for Social Research in New York. In the same year, he got a job at the Westminster Choir School in Princeton. “Crazy about my School,” he wrote. “Have most interested vital group—they are like wolves—to devour knowledge. Typical Americans—interested in empirical knowledge—something they can use.” At Westminster School, Roy Harris became interested in choral writing, thanks to the presence there of the Westminster Choir, one of the nation’s most notable vocal groups. Harris had written some choral music in his early days. There was Pueña Hueca for trio and chorus, a Song Without Words for mixed chorus and orchestra, and the Whitman Suite for women’s chorus and two pianos. Having heard the Westminster Choir, under John Finley Williamson, Harris was filled with a new enthusiasm for choral sonorities and dynamics. He wrote an eight-part a cappella fantasy on The Story of Noah and a Folksong which he notated from the singing of John Jacob Niles, the ballad songster. Then in swift succession came a number of a cappella works, “Sanctus, Hymn” (early American melody), “Johnny Comes Marching Home” (Harris’s theme song), scores of reharmonized Protestant hymns, and later, “He’s Gone Away,” “Old Black Joe,” “If I Had a Ribbon Bow,” “Way-farin’ Stranger,” “Little Boy Named David,” “Birds’ Courting Song,” “The Shufflin’ Chant,” and the Whitman Triptych for women’s chorus written especially for the Sarah Lawrence chorus, conducted by William Schuman. Many of Harris’s choral works

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were inspired by Walt Whitman, whose keen sense of irregular syllabization corresponded to Harris’s predilection for asymmetrical rhythmic periods. Meanwhile, Harris was transcribing and editing a series of sixteenthcentury choral music, published by G. Schirmer, and a series of choral music, Singing Through The Ages (compiled in collaboration with Harris’s pupil, Jacob Evanson), published by the American Book Company. This series was divided into three sections, dealing respectively with melody, harmony, and counterpoint. By a special arrangement between the League of Composers of New York and the Westminster Chorus, Roy Harris was commissioned to write a vocal composition for a Russian tour that the Westminster Choir planned to make during the summer of 1934. It was a time of great friendship between the United States and the Soviet Union. American tourists were solicited by Soviet agencies to visit “the land of the future,” and American artists were invited to Russia to give concerts. With his eye and ear on Russia, Harris selected for his text “A Song for Occupations” by Walt Whitman. He dedicated the score “to the workers of the world.” The work was completed in May 1934, in time for the sailing of the Westminster Choir. Its setting was in the form of a cantata for eightpart chorus of mixed voices. The Russian tour of the Westminster Choir was very successful; the Harris work was greatly appreciated by Russian musicians. Upon return from Russia, the Westminster Choir presented A Song for Occupations in a program given in New York on November 27, 1934. Roy Harris followed A Song for Occupations with another choral work on poems of Walt Whitman, a Symphony for Voices, to passages extracted from Leaves of Grass. Like a symphony, it was in four movements: “I Hear America Singing”; “Song for All Seas, All Ships”; “Tears”; and Inscription (“The Modern Man I Sing”). The movements were written nonconsecutively; “Tears” was written first (it was completed on June 14, 1935) and “I Hear America Singing” last (completed December 15, 1935). The Symphony for Voices was performed by the Westminster Choir, on May 20, 1936, and was later recorded by the Victor Company. The tone of the reviews of Symphony for Voices, in a number of cities where the work was performed, ranged from good to enthusiastic to ecstatic. Adolfo Salazar, the Spanish musicologist, declared in his book Music of Our Time, that “Tears” “holds first place at the moment in

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American music.” The superlative reached its zenith in a review in the Washington Herald of November 12, 1936, which said: “Like all supremely great things, Harris defies classification. All that can be said is that in the Symphony for Voices he strikes that vein of lofty tragedy which we find in Aeschylus, the Book of Job and King Lear.” In 1934, Harris was commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation to write a work for the Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music. He contributed a piano trio in three movements. He was not particularly enthusiastic about the form. He wrote in a personal letter: “It’s a shame to waste such material on a Trio, mongrel of all forms—even worse than a violin sonata.” The Trio was performed for the first time at the Berkshire Festival, on September 20, 1934, with no less a man at the piano than Alfredo Casella, the violin and the cello being played respectively by the maestri Poltronieri and Bonucci. They later recorded the work for Columbia, adding one more item to the rapidly growing list of Harris’s recorded works. Casella took the manuscript of the Trio with him to Italy and gave several performances of it in Rome and other Italian cities. He made a public statement about Harris that “in producing a composer such as this young master, America has placed herself in the front rank amongst those nations who are building a music for the future.” The Trio was published in the April 1936 issue of New Music, a quarterly of modern compositions founded by Henry Cowell. The inclusion of a Harris work among New Music publications was significant: after some doubts among American musical left-wingers, Roy Harris was finally admitted into their inner sanctum. In 1937 Harris met Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Norton, owners of the Norton Company in New York, and became their advisor on the publishing of books on music. Mrs. M. D. Herter Norton, a lady of many gifts, suggested to Harris the idea of arranging Bach’s Art of the Fugue for string quartet. Together they set to work, and within a few months, the transcription was ready. It was published by G. Schirmer, and recorded for Columbia by the Roth String Quartet. Meanwhile, When Johnny Comes Marching Home was making the rounds of symphony orchestras from coast to coast. Otto Klemperer conducted it with the New York Philharmonic in the fall of 1935. This performance caused Lawrence Gilman to write an article “When Harris

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Comes Marching Home,” published in his Sunday column of the New York Herald-Tribune of November 3, 1935. “Mr. Harris would qualify as the hero of an American Success Story,” he wrote. “Yet Harris’s Success Story differs from many others because it has been achieved without any sacrifice of the ideals and standards of a singularly high-minded, sincere, and uncompromising artist. So far as I am aware, Mr. Harris has never written music in any way other than he felt like writing it . . . The melodies, the harmonies, the rhythms, the counterpoint, have lived their own way with an independence and a power that bespoke the presence of that rarest thing in art, a genuinely individual voice.”

Trials without Triumphs

In 1934, Harris decided to embark on a second symphony. He completed the score in Princeton in 1935 and hopefully dedicated it to Koussevitzky, “with admiration, respect and warm affection.” Koussevitzky accepted the dedication, but did not conduct the Symphony. He delegated the task to the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, the admirable and musicianly Richard Burgin. While from a musician’s standpoint, Burgin’s performance at the pair of concerts, February 28 and 29, 1936, could not be excelled in precision and accuracy, the impression spread abroad that Koussevitzky had in effect rejected the work. The destiny of the Second Symphony was inevitably affected by this impression. When Harris’s First Symphony was announced for performance, he wrote to a friend: “Koussevitzky told me that he would not program my work until the parts are in his hands. I am determined to have everything ready, so I can send him a telegram with a flourish. I want him to feel confidence in my integrity.” The parts were excellent on that occasion— only two mistakes. But the parts of the Second Symphony, made by WPA copyists, had over seven hundred mistakes. Burgin had to schedule an extra rehearsal to weed out this counterpoint of errors, and the musicians grumbled and quietly cursed Harris for his negligence. Fortunately for Harris, he was away from Boston, attending the performance of his Prelude and Fugue, which Werner Janssen was conducting that week with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was on hand, however, for the Saturday night performance of his Second Symphony on

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Leap Year Day, 1936, arriving in Boston just in time to catch the early editions of the morning papers and to read the sour reviews in the Boston Herald, Boston Post, and Boston Globe. The unique figure of H. T. P., the man who had greeted Harris with an expansive two-column salutation at the premiere of the First Symphony, had vanished from the Boston scene. He had died in the interval between the two Harris symphonies and joined kindred spirits in the Elysian Fields. His successor as music critic of the Boston Transcript was Moses Smith, a progressive musician who was almost prejudiced in favor of modern music. He described Harris as “a talent amounting almost to genius,” but found his symphony “intellectualized music.” The Second Symphony had a modest New York hearing with a makeshift orchestra in 1939, and then slipped into limbo. The score was neither published nor recorded. Despite poor reviews, the music of Harris was continually in demand. Only a month after the Philadelphia performance of the Prelude and Fugue, the same orchestra presented another new work by Harris, when the Mexican conductor, Carlos Chavez, conducted his symphonic elegy, Farewell to Pioneers, composed in the fall of 1935. The reviews were quite nasty. In 1935, Harris became interested in the development of the Federal Music Project in New York City, which was a part of the Federal Works Project Administration. With Ashley Pettis, assistant director of WPA, Harris formed a Composers’ Forum-Laboratory, with a view of giving an outlet to composers and performers in programs of contemporary music. The first presentation of the Composers’ Forum-Laboratory took place on October 30, 1935, in an all-Harris program. Two years later, the same organization presented a concert of Harris’s orchestral music, comprising Prelude and Fugue, Symphony: 1933, and three movements of Time Suite. Time Suite was the logical development of Harris’s philosophy of musical time, as illustrated in his earlier score, Four Minutes and Twenty Seconds. He had elaborated an objective system of tempo semantics. The normal speed for humans, he reasons, is that of the heart-beat, seventytwo to eighty beats a minute. If the musical motion is set at the metronome mark of more than eighty, the music will excite: if the tempo is below seventy-two, the music lowers the emotional drive. For pastoral moods, the metronome mark of the heart-beat is indicated—it is easybreathing, neutral, normal, and natural.

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Time Suite was commissioned by the Columbia Broadcasting System and was first performed on the Columbia radio network at three o’clock in the afternoon on August 8, 1937. The announcement from Columbia said: “Time, the essence of all things in general and of radio in particular, has been set to music by Roy Harris.” By an intentional whim of programmaking, the companion number on the broadcast was another timepiece, the Clock Symphony of Haydn. The six movements of Time Suite, entitled “Broadway,” “Religion,” “Youth,” “Communication and Transportation,” “Philosophy,” and “Labor,” were composed according to exact time measurement; the first movement lasted one minute, the second two minutes, the third three minutes, the fourth four minutes, the fifth five minutes, and the sixth, again four minutes. Was Harris yielding to the mechanistic drive of modern times? Anticipating this suspicion, he wrote: “To the accusation that the work is cerebral and tailor-made, I have the following reply: every master wrote some of his best pages to fit an exact form. That is part of the mastery of the art of composition, parallel to the accepting of given dimensional spaces into which the mural artist must pour his creative poetry, the portrait painter his, the architect building functionally to serve the needs of society. Why shouldn’t contemporary composers try to accommodate their music to a precise Time in Space?”

Multiples of Five

Roy Harris has a lucky number—five. Ten being a multiple of five is also lucky for him. Ditto number one, being ten minus the cipher. So he was told by a learned numerologist. One minute after midnight on January 1, 1913, a tiny (4 lb.) baby girl, named Beula Duffey, was born in Ottawa, Canada. The numbers of the year 1913 add up to 14; the digits of 14 add up to 5. Beula Duffey was graduated in piano from the Canadian Conservatory at Ottawa at the age of 10 (twice 5). At the age of 15 (thrice 5), she was teaching secondary piano at the Juilliard School in New York. One minute after midnight, on the tenth day of the tenth month of 1936 (1 + 9 + 3 + 6 = 19; 1 + 9 = 10), in the town of Union (a symbolic word containing five letters), Union County, Oregon, Roy Harris and Beula Duffey were married. They had driven to Union from the Harris family ranch in California.

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Even though the name Beula contained five letters, it proved inauspicious for subtler numerological reasons. Harris changed it to Johana (or, more intimately, Lady Jo) in honor of Johann Sebastian Bach. Johana was given only one n also for numerological reasons, which, Harris says, a layman can penetrate as little as the most complex workings of invertible counterpoint.* What more natural than that the first work of Harris on his honeymoon should have been a piano quintet, scored for the lucky number of instruments, and with a nice piano part for Johana? Johana’s agile technique, her ability to draw from the piano all the eighteen shades of dynamics that the instrument is supposed to be capable of producing, inspired Harris to write the piano part in a bravura style new to him. Johana played the premiere of the Quintet with the Roth String Quartet in New York on February 12, 1937, on Harris’s thirty-ninth birthday. The work was recorded by Johana Harris and the Coolidge String Quartet by the Victor Company. “At last, my terrible life is beginning to be organized before I am too old,” wrote Harris from Princeton. “Am going to have a family and stay here, and make a great social life within a modern Chapelle Royale.” Still, even in Princeton, Harris retained his backwoodsman’s way and manners. “No matter how much money you spend on clothes, hay will still be growing out of your ears,” Johana used to tell him. And he was constantly forgetting things. Once he sent a special delivery letter containing nothing but four blank sheets of paper. He habitually used his manuscripts to jot down addresses or telephone numbers. Several of his early works have been irretrievably lost; other manuscripts have been saved by anxious friends. They tell about the French musician-statesman Edouard Herriot that, upon his arrival in Lyons, he wired his secretary in Paris, “Why am I here?” Roy Harris went Herriot one better, when he made an appearance before the Garden Club of Nashville and lectured for an hour on medieval music. When he finished, one of the ladies asked: “Will you now tell us something

*Bach, like Harris, was something of a numerologist. His number was 14, which represents the sum of the letters in his name in the order of the alphabet; the letters of J. S. Bach (in which J = I = 9) add up to 41, transposition of 14. In his portrait of 1748, there are 14 silver buttons on his coat. Bach waited for admission to the Society of Musical Sciences until he could be the fourteenth member.

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about flower arrangements?” It developed that Harris had gone to the wrong club on the wrong day. Johana bears such contretemps with philosophic equanimity. “Most people think of my husband as a good-natured easy-going Westerner,” she wrote. “And so he is. But he is many other people as well. To me he is a child—always eager—always ready to believe in everyone, always expecting miracles to happen, always being hurt and enraged by the social and economic injustices. And yet, he is an unquenchable optimist who loves beauty in every phase of living.”

The Lucky Third

It is not infrequent that a musical work conceived for one medium, and then recast and revised for another, attains a success beyond the fondest expectation of the composer himself. Such was the destiny of Harris’s Third Symphony, which came as the second thought of his first Violin Concerto. This is how it happened. Jascha Heifetz was in search of a modern violin concerto. The Hungarian pianist, Arpad Sandor, then serving as Heifetz’s accompanist, spoke to him about Harris and, as a result, Heifetz commissioned Harris to write a violin concerto. Harris agreed. He worked rapidly and with gusto; in a few months, the piano score of the Concerto was ready. With Johana as a pianist, he took the Concerto to Heifetz in his Connecticut country home. As Heifetz played over the violin part, with Johana at the piano, he kept saying: “Put a little sugar on it—my public is accustomed to Mendelssohn!” Heifetz liked the melodies of the Concerto but not the harmonies. He also wanted more purely technical passage work. Harris felt he could not satisfy these demands and abandoned the composition. The materials of the score were too good to be discarded, Heifetz or no Heifetz. Harris decided to incorporate the violin music in a symphony. The songful subject of the second section, the flowing cantilena of the lyric third section of the new Symphony were shaped out of the material of the violin solo in the concerto. In six weeks the score of a new Symphony, his Third, was completed. It was originally intended for the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, but Harris was doubtful whether that relatively young organization could cope with the difficulties of the score. Other orchestras, adequately equipped, showed little interest. Harris was

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enraged. On New Year’s Day, he published in the New York Times an article which was sure to antagonize the greatest number of managers and conductors, music critics, and symphony patrons. He inveighed against the concert business, “a vast and intricate organization,” based on the premise that “there are no American artists and certainly no American music.” He derided public taste: “The melody must either be of the minor-major simpler folk materials (German, Italian, Slavic), or the symmetrical, sequential art type. The harmony must be either the diatonic, dominanttonic type of triad harmony used by the Mozart-Haydn-Beethoven school, or the chromatic altered chords of the dominant family—Wagner-WolfFranck. The form should be slow-moving and repetitious—so the theme or motive is easily detected. The orchestration should be very colorful, or heavy and lush.” Harris attacked the orchestras, the policies of their conductors, and the attitude of symphony audiences. “After our music has grown somehow, some way, into lusty maturity, they will graft it on to the roots of the past with the calm assumption of responsibility fulfilled.” Koussevitzky read the article and was furious: “I will never play one note of your music again,” he told Harris. When he noticed that Harris had a large brief-case under his arm, he asked him: “What have you there?”“My Third Symphony,” replied Harris. “I want to see,” said Koussevitzky. They went to a piano, and Harris played the Symphony as best he could. “Are the parts ready?” asked Koussevitzky. “Yes!” “Good! I will play it next month.” And he did. Once more, Boston was the scene of trials and triumphs for Roy Harris; and again it was the month of February when Koussevitzky conducted a Harris work. He was in his best form, directing the music with voluptuous warmth at the pair of concerts, February 24 and 25, 1939. The orchestra men were delighted with the perfect legibility of parts and gave the new work an excellent performance. The Boston critics were friendly. “A fine work,” “undeniably impressive,” “actually charming,” said the Herald. “By no means unagreeable,” conceded the Post. Koussevitzky took the Third Symphony to New York, and conducted it in Carnegie Hall on March 11, 1939. Jascha Heifetz was in the audience. “Why doesn’t Harris write a violin concerto as good as this Symphony?” he asked a friend.

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The New York critics were in an appreciative mood. Olin Downes was late for the opening; but he liked the last three-quarters of the Symphony that he heard. William Schuman, who studied with Harris at the time, wrote in a letter to the New York Times: “This symphony seems to me an extraordinary work. Its melodic material reveals once again Harris’s remarkable gift. The contrapuntal writing is explicit, the orchestration is original and colorful. The harmonic texture is decidedly on the consonant side, although the combinations are largely polytonal. These materials are successfully wrought into a form, autogenetic in character, wherein each idea is brought to its logical conclusion. Beyond these considerations, the Symphony has dramatic fire and a definite sense of direction which gives it great power.” Leonard Bernstein said in the March 1939 issue of Modern Music: “The Harris Third Symphony . . . is mature in every sense, beautifully proportioned, eloquent, restrained, and affecting. . . . It greatly excited me.” Koussevitzky took the Third Symphony on a tour and recorded it for the Victor Company. Other American symphony orchestras, one after another, played it. The climax of this crescendo of success was reached when, on March 17, 1940, Toscanini broadcast the work with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Harris had always regarded Toscanini as a great European musician incapable of understanding original modern music. When Schirmer sent the Third Symphony to Toscanini in Italy, Harris wryly observed that they had wasted a score. Great was his surprise when, in the fall of 1939, the NBC had announced that Toscanini had included his Third Symphony in the programs of the forthcoming season. Harris had dreaded the rehearsals; Toscanini’s volcanic temper was well known. But he proved a gentle, patient, understanding musician; he asked Harris’s advice in the matter of tempi and balance. Harris was enchanted. He and Johana were present in the studio at the Toscanini broadcast. Next to them sat a prosperous looking middle-aged business man accompanied by his solid spouse. At the rousing sound of the Fugue, the man remarked with a grin. “That was somep’n.” After the broadcast Harris received a letter from the owner of the National League Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team in which he said: “If I had pitchers who could pitch as strongly as you do in your Symphony, my worries would be over.”

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In the first decade after its auspicious start on the road to popular success, the Symphony had had over seventy performances. There were numerous hearings abroad; Leonard Bernstein conducted it in Germany and in Israel; it was broadcast by the Paris radio and by BBC in London; Belgian and Scandinavian orchestras played it; Eugene Goossens conducted it in Australia and Scotland. When the recordings of the symphony arrived in Russia, Soviet composers devoted a special session to a detailed discussion of the work. During the London blitz, a letter in an English magazine suggested that a set of one hundred records of the best music of all times should be immured in a safe place for posterity in case the world should go down in flames. The Third Symphony of Harris was included in this list. When Koussevitzky presented an all-American program at his New York concert with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, on January 16, 1949, he played the “Lucky Third.” Harris could celebrate a moral victory. Olin Downes, always skeptical about his stature as a composer (he once said to a mutual friend: “Will you, please, prove to me that Harris is a genius?”), wrote that the Third Symphony “towered highest” over the other works in the program by the “spaciousness and idealism of its concept, its separateness from the passing scene, and its architectural purpose.” Virgil Thomson, in the New York Herald-Tribune, characterized the Symphony as “America’s most successful work in that form. . . . It is earnest, clumsy, pretentious, imaginative, and terribly sincere.” Taking stock of the progress of “The Lucky Third,” Roy Harris declares: Look! Let’s not kid ourselves. The Third Symphony happened to come along when it was needed. The first season it was greeted with the same boos and bravos as have been all my works. Then because Koussevitzky was completely sold on it, he took it on his Western tour where it was much more warmly received by the public. So it was recorded. Then within a few weeks it was featured by the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Symphony, and broadcast by Toscanini over N.B.C. In the same week Victor released the Koussevitzky recordings and Time magazine hailed the work as the most important American symphony. From then on, the Third Symphony was in.

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Moods in Modes

Harris has always emphasized that he is a Man of Nature. His melodic inspiration comes to him from communion with nature, during his solitary walks, “listening to bird songs, looking at the blue sky through the thick green foliage of summer trees.” In this he is entirely a romantic, with this difference, that he translates his immediate moods into a rational and selfconsistent language of rhythms and modes. In Harris’s musical semantics, optimistic moods are expressed in modes with large open intervals at the tonic; the moods of sadness are translated into a narrow gauge of intervals. It is the old “ethos” of the Greeks in a new psychological—and logical— form. This peculiar correspondence between states of mind and intervallic tension is traceable in most of Harris’s music. He expressed it explicitly in his Third String Quartet, a series of preludes and fugues in different modes, suggesting different moods. It was composed in 1937, performed for the first time by the Roth String Quartet, and subsequently recorded by Columbia. Harris himself regards the Third Quartet as one of his most important scores. An amusing episode occurred when the Committee for a Music Festival, to whom the publishers had submitted the Third String Quartet, found it monotonous if played in its entirety—the modes looked on paper too uniform to an unpracticed eye. The Committee wrote to Harris asking permission to perform only one movement. Harris’s reply was brief. He wired two words: “Skip it.” Other moods, in other modes, occupied Harris’s attention in the late 1930s. As clouds gathered on the international scene, Harris felt the urge to reassert his American birthright. Folk songs had always been a part of Harris’s arsenal of melody, but now he thought of writing a choral symphony based entirely on American melodies. It was to be a work whose specific purpose was in Harris’s words, “to bring about a cultural cooperation and understanding between the high school, college, and community choruses of our cities with their symphony orchestras.” For authentic sources Harris made use of the collections of American songs by John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, and American Ballads and Folksongs and The American Songbag by Carl Sandburg. Harris’s original title of the new symphony was Folksong Jamboree, but Carl Engel, musical director of the

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G. Schirmer Company, to whom Harris took the score, thought it sounded a bit too self-consciously folksy and suggested changing the title to Folksong Symphony. Harris agreed. The Folksong Symphony became his Symphony No. 4. The Folksong Symphony had a fragmentary world premiere at the American Spring Festival in Rochester, April 25, 1940, when Howard Hanson conducted its four choral movements. The first complete performance of the Folksong Symphony, which included two orchestral interludes written by Harris to give the chorus a chance to rest, was given during the Convention of the Music Teachers’ National Association by the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, Rudolph Ringwall conducting, on December 26, 1940. Koussevitzky was slightly ruffled by the fact that the world premiere of the Folksong Symphony was given piecemeal by others, but had the magnanimity to play it too. He presented it at the pair of Boston Symphony Concerts, February 21–22, 1941. The New York Philharmonic, under the direction of Dimitri Mitropoulos, performed the symphony on December 31, 1942, with a chorus of several hundred youngsters selected from New York City high schools. This performance was recorded, and the recording broadcast “to the shores of Tripoli” as the American Army entered that town during the African campaign. In 1940, the Folksong Symphony was awarded First Honors and a prize of $500 by the National Music Appreciation Committee as an outstanding contribution to symphonic literature. It also received in 1940 the Award of Merit of the National Association of Composers and Conductors as the outstanding contribution to American music of the year. In August 1940, Harris made an excursion into yet another field of musical activity. “I did a moving picture this summer,” he wrote to a friend. “Had to get up at four in the morning and have enough written by nine to keep four copyists going. We got the score and parts out in ten days and recorded it in seven hours. I made some money out of that, and enjoyed it.” The moving picture was One Tenth of a Nation, a documentary film on the rural Negro in the South, produced by the Rockefeller Foundation. It is not in the nature of Harris’s talent to provide background; in his score, there was too much independent music. There were no siren calls from Hollywood: One Tenth of a Nation was Harris’s first, and probably last, film score. In the darkest days of World War II, Harris wrote a work for bass solo chorus and orchestra, characteristically entitled, Challenge: 1940, to the

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text from the Preamble to the Constitution, with Harris’s own dramatic interpolations: We, the people of the United States— We are the people. In order to form a more perfect union— We must plan and work together.

Challenge: 1940 was written in four days and completed as Paris fell. On June 25, 1940, it was performed by Rodzinski with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and chorus, at a rally for democracy held at the Lewisohn Stadium and attended by thirteen thousand people. Another work of a similar nature was American Creed, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for its Golden Jubilee season and performed by that organization with Frederick Stock conducting on October 31, 1940. Roy Harris wrote as a motto for this work “Free to dream and free to build; free to hope, imagine, plan vast new conditions for our citizens and free to shape our civilization into a land of splendid opportunity and magnificent equipment for each according to his capacities—this is the American Creed!” Still another work bound up with Harris’s ideals and beliefs, Ode To Truth, was written on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Stanford University and was performed at Stanford on March 9, 1941, by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, directed by Pierre Monteux. The score was dedicated “to scholars in search of Truth.” During World War II, Harris wrote a series of choral works, Songs for Democracy, after Walt Whitman; he also set to music the ringing words of Archibald MacLeish’s Freedom’s Land: Stand, stand—against the rising night O freedom’s land, O Freedom’s air. Stand steep and keep the fading light That eastward darkens ev’rywhere.

The setting of Freedom’s Land caused Harris great difficulties: “I worked harder on it than I would have on a sonata,” he wrote. “The patriotic composition is a difficult one because it has to be simple, stirring and vigorous, all at the same time.”

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Of patriotic inspiration was also a chorus, Sammy’s Fighting Sons, to Harris’s own text: We believe that we will see the day When all can live as free men may On land and sea and air All free men ev’rywhere Oh, Sun and Moon and Stars Shine for that day!

On commission from the Second Army Air Force, Harris arranged Sammy’s Fighting Sons for military band, and changed the title to Take The Sun And Keep The Stars, the Sun bearing reference to the Imperial flag of Japan, and the Stars to the American banner. Harris conducted the piece himself on the national radio hook-up from Denver on January 30, 1944. Harris became more and more interested in writing for military bands, in which the violins give way to trumpets. He declared in an interview in the New York World Telegram of October 15, 1941: “The trumpet is becoming a lyric instrument instead of a cavalry charge. We are actually developing a brass tradition that is directly challenging the use of strings.” His first work for band was a symphonic overture. Cimarron, written in the spring of 1941, on commission for the Tri-State Band Festival at Enid, Oklahoma. The score, dedicated to the State of Oklahoma, includes a ten-gauge shotgun to start the Cimarron Rush. Harris conducted the first performance himself and was greeted uproariously by the public; the Oklahoma press played up his visit as that of a favorite son. About the same time Harris wrote a Prelude for four trumpets with string accompaniment, in a characteristic polyphony of unisons and octaves, with a high trumpet note on every beat. During World War II, practically every American composer regarded it as his duty to write a symphonic war march. Harris’s own contribution, March in Time of War, was performed by the New York Philharmonic, Rodzinski conducting, on December 20, 1943. After five years of fruitful comradeship, Harris and his publishers, Carl Engel and the Schirmer Company, parted company. When a Broadway publisher who nurtured secret ambitions to sponsor “highbrow” music, Mills Music, Inc., dangled high-denomination bills before his eyes, Harris made his decision: “Sold!” To assuage his scruples, he explained that the new publishers were closer to the “masses.” But certainly Harris’s music

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was not their meat. When Morton Gould took one of the owners of Mills Music, Inc. to Carnegie Hall to hear Harris’s Fifth Symphony, he listened with baffled attentiveness to the flow of Harris’s harmonies and then turned to Gould and whispered: “Is this the stuff we are publishing?”

Counterpoint at Forty

“His face is narrow, homespun and unremarkable under thinning sandy hair, except for a smile that’s contagious and a pair of brilliant greenish blue eyes filled with remembered wisdom and laughter. His figure is on the gangling side, and he is a confirmed sprawler, never sitting up straight if he can help it. He loves to huddle by the hour in the corner of a couch, spouting philosophy and his theories on life; his legs spread out at an angle. A network of puckered lines transforms him suddenly into a wizened old man.” This word portrait of Roy Harris at forty was penned by a reporter, at the time when Harris was teaching at Cornell University, where he had moved from New York. His official title there was composer-in-residence, which implied informality in teaching methods and in the teaching schedule. As usual, Harris’s students invaded his home as helpers, errand boys, and copyists, in return for which services they had the run of the place and free access to food. It was a typical Harris congregation that Paul Rosenfeld had affectionately described as a “Gay Guild.” Harris was the guiding spirit of the Guild, a Hans Sachs without a beard. Without false modesty, Harris regarded himself as a master. “Can you name a single composer since Bach who could write such counterpoint?” he would ask with a beguiling smile. He was all the more outraged and chagrined when some critics described him as a home-grown talent without much technique. Fortunately, there were scholars, high in the profession, who vigorously asserted that Harris was indeed an unexcelled master of modern polyphony. Among them was Knud Jeppesen, the Danish musicologist who visited America shortly before the outbreak of World War II, and expressed a desire to meet Harris. The two spent many hours together in friendly and scholarly intercourse, during which Jeppesen reiterated his considered opinion that Harris was a master of modern polyphony. Jeppesen and Harris found themselves in accord on many musical matters. Both held Victoria as a master of great significance, placing him above Palestrina; both regarded the Northern Flemish school of sixteenth-century contrapuntists as superior to the better known

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masters of their day. Harris felt that in Jeppesen he found a friend of both his own work and his beliefs. Among important chamber music works written by Harris during the period immediately preceding World War II was Soliloquy and Dance, for viola and piano, composed for a recording by the master violist, William Primrose. Another work with an important viola part was a Quintet for two violins, two violas, and violoncello, performed by William Primrose and the Coolidge String Quartet on April 14, 1940, at the Ninth Festival of Chamber Music, under the auspices of the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation at the Library of Congress. Two works for violin belong at an earlier period: a Poem for violin and piano, written in 1935, and the Violin Sonata. The Poem, a work of lyric nature, was recorded by Albert Spalding for the Victor Company. A review in The New Yorker said: “It sounds as if it might be the slow movement of a sonata, and it has the odd charm of all of Mr. Harris’s gentler music.” The guess was shrewd; Harris made use of the melodic material of the Poem in the slow movement of his Violin Sonata. This Sonata was originally published in separate movements under the titles, “Fantasy,” “Dance Of Spring,”“Melody”; the last, a Toccata, remaining in manuscript. A recording of the Violin Sonata was made for Columbia by Josef Gingold and Johana Harris. The first performance of the Sonata was given at the Library of Congress, on October 30, 1942, by William Kroll and Johana Harris. The work was awarded the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal for distinguished service to chamber music. In a fifty-two page score entitled Work, Harris set himself a task of writing counterpoint of rhythms. It is related in spirit to the movement “Labor” from Time Suite. Work was never performed; the score remains among the half a dozen stillborn compositions in Harris’s creative catalogue. A more successful solution of the problem of contrapuntal rhythm was Acceleration, “an orchestral study in guided motion in 4/4 time.” It was first performed by the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, under the direction of Hans Kindler, on November 2, 1941. The score was subsequently revised, and the new version performed on January 8, 1942, by the Indianapolis Symphony, conducted by Koussevitzky’s nephew, Fabien Sevitzky. On August 26, 1940, Roy Harris wrote to a friend: “You will be interested to know that I am doing a piano concerto for Johana for one of

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the most famous concert bands in this country. You can imagine how excited I am when you know that the personnel of the band is somewhat as follows: eight flutes, oboe, two English horns, E flat clarinet, sixteen B flat clarinets, two bass clarinets, two altos, four bassoons, eight horns, four Flugel horns, four drums, twelve B flat cornets, two euphoniums, eight trombones, two bass tubas, percussion, and four double-basses. The work is to be in two movements—a prelude and fugue—about sixteen minutes in length.” The “famous concert band” for which Harris wrote the concerto was that of the University of Michigan. The premiere took place at Ann Arbor, on April 14, 1942. Roy Harris, who by this time had acquired a modicum of efficiency in wielding the baton, conducted the performance. The success of the band concert made Harris even more enthusiastic regarding band music. “I am now writing a piano concerto with military band,” he wrote. “I think it is going to be a nice work, a sort of fantasy about sixteen minutes in length, in one movement.” The score was finished rapidly, and performed by the Harris team at the Fine Arts Conference in Colorado Springs on August 15, 1943. In the summer of 1941, Harris gave a course at Colorado College, situated at the foot of Pike’s Peak. He liked to be back in the West. In 1942, he left Cornell and moved to Colorado Springs as composer-in-residence at Colorado College. Soon Harris became himself a landmark of the landscape. When Life published a pictorial story of the state of Colorado with pictures of the Garden of the Gods, Ghost Town, Indian Monument, it also featured a full-page portrait of Roy Harris at work at an immense table. The caption read, simply: COMPOSER.

Salute to the Soviet

In 1942, the Soviet Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries cabled to Roy Harris, asking him for a message of greetings to the Russian people fighting their last stand at Stalingrad. Harris was moved: the cause of Russia was then the cause of democracy. He was in the process of completing his Fifth Symphony, commissioned by Koussevitzky, and decided to dedicate the work to the Russian people. He telephoned Koussevitzky and told him about it. There was a moment of silence at the Boston end of the wire, and then Koussevitzky replied: “Roy, you are courageux. I vill also.”

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The Fifth Symphony was finished on Christmas morning of 1942. The score was marked op. 55. Harris had not used opus numbers since op. 2, and his designation of the Fifth Symphony as op. 55 was prompted more by numerological reasons than by counting up the exact number of works in the interim. There was a trinity of fives in this Fifth Symphony, op. 55, and five was Harris’s lucky number. The premiere of the Fifth Symphony took place at the pair of Boston Symphony concerts, on Friday and Saturday, February 26 and 27, 1943, with Koussevitzky at the helm. The Saturday performance was broadcast by short wave all over the world, including Russia. In response to this offering, nine Russian composers, Gliere, Shostakovitch, Prokofieff, Miaskovsky, Khachaturian, Kabalevsky, Muradeli, Khrennikov, and Bely sent this message: “Greetings to Roy Harris from the composers of the USSR. We greet in your person young music of American people. Across seas and oceans we extend to you our hand in sincere fraternal handshake. Long live our victory!” The Boston critics gave fairly favorable accounts of Harris’s Soviet Symphony. Koussevitzky took it to New York and conducted the work at Carnegie Hall, on March 11, 1943. It failed to strike fire with either the public or the critics. Time, conscious of the socio-political import of the Fifth Symphony, gave a feature story to the “twangy,”“rangy,”“lean,”“sandy,” “sober-sided” composer from Oklahoma. Gleefully, it picked up, from a Boston review, the sarcastic reference to some who would smell in Harris’s music “the open prairies, the towering peaks, and the more intimate details of American agriculture,” and published a droop-jawed, loose-necktied picture of Harris, under the caption: “In Boston, they smelt something.” The Fifth Symphony reached Moscow in the spring of 1944 and was performed there, with great acclaim, by the State Symphony Orchestra, on May 21, 1944. Gregory Schneerson, a foremost Russian musicologist, wrote in Literature and Art, May 27, 1944: “This is strong music, acutely dynamic, emotionally profound. In it are heard the echoes of American rhythms; in it breathes healthy popular speech.” As a sort of postscript to the Fifth Symphony, Roy Harris wrote an Ode To Friendship, a symphonic overture “dedicated to sympathetic understanding, trust and friendship between the peoples of the United States and the Soviet Union.” He conducted it himself at the rally for Soviet-American friendship held at Madison Square Garden in New York, on November 16, 1944.

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Puzzled and chagrined by the little success of the Fifth Symphony, and the absence of performances after the premiere, Harris thought that, perhaps, the heavy and demanding orchestration had something to do with the reluctance of conductors to give it another try. He rescored the Symphony down to the average orchestration. Still there were no takers. Why? Harris offers an explanation in the following statement made in August 1950: If we are realistic we must admit that chance circumstances and commercial manipulation play a much greater part in the development of our success than does the quality or quantity of our output. For instance, Koussevitzky, who knows my output well, my own wife Johana, a most astute musician, many of my musical friends, and all of my most gifted pupils are agreed that my Fifth Symphony is more important in scope, materials and realization than my Third. But the Fifth is ten minutes longer, requires more rehearsing, and in consequence has not been published or recorded. So it remains unknown—is practically nonexistent to Americans. Such circumstances attend the slow death of much of America’s best music. It is buried with the sanctimonious apologia of the music merchants: “IT DON’T PAY.” Fifty-seven varieties Of Tin Can Improprieties Mister—Sister—I love you— Sometimes hot and sometimes blue!

Of, By, and For

In the spring of 1943, Harris received a commission to compose a symphony for the Blue Network. The president of the network deemed the occasion of sufficient moment to issue a special statement on the importance of being Roy Harris: “As one of the millions of music lovers in this country, I feel that Roy Harris and his works have helped to create the pattern of the American scene. That there is an undeniable need for his music today has been proved by the praise and appreciation received from service men all over the world, our fighting men and those of our allies.” Harris set to work. “The Sixth Symphony is taking shape in my mind,” he wrote from Colorado Springs on July 27, 1943. “I have outlined the slow

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movement and think I could write it in one week if I didn’t have any interruptions. I think it is going to be my best work up to date.” At first the symphony had no program. Then came the enlightenment. The circumstance that Harris was born on Lincoln’s birthday, in Lincoln County, exercised a profound influence on his state of mind. “The shadow of Abe Lincoln has hovered over my life from childhood,” he wrote. “This was, I suppose, inevitable, for the simple reason that my birthday fell on the national holiday honoring Lincoln’s birth, which meant that, on that day, school was dismissed.” In a flash, he decided to make his Sixth Symphony a Lincoln Symphony, the Gettysburg Address Symphony. “One morning I woke up at 3:00 a.m.,” he relates, “and I saw the Gettysburg Address divided into four logical parts, four movements of a symphony. They seemed exactly right. I heard bell-like harmonies suggesting the shout: Let Freedom Ring!” By a remarkable coincidence, the Symphony was completed on Lincoln Day, February 12, 1944, which was Harris’s forty-sixth birthday. The four movements of the Gettysburg Symphony are designated “Awakening,”“Conflict,”“Dedication,” and “Affirmation,” a plan reminiscent of American Portraits and a still earlier symphony, Our Heritage, sketched out during his truck-driving days. The score is marked op. 60 and was dedicated “with respect, to the Armed Forces of our Nation.” Harris gave the symphony to Koussevitzky, who duly performed it with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on April 14, 1944. On the next day, which was the seventy-ninth anniversary of Lincoln’s death, the Gettysburg Symphony was broadcast to the nation. When an orchestra musician was asked how long a current Harris symphony was, he replied: “Quite long. Almost as long as his program notes for it.” Harris lived up to his reputation and supplied a lengthy sociohistoric commentary on the Sixth Symphony for the program book. The Boston critics grumbled. They were willing to swallow Harris’s harmonies, but they balked at Harris’s philosophy. Typical of this attitude was the comment of Rudolph Elie in the Boston Herald. “As one who can be led to the Harris fountain, but cannot swallow the waters thereof, I must confess I was unmoved by Mr. Harris’s latest determined go at creating the Great American Symphony,” Elie declared. “What really sticks in the craw is that the composer believes he can force music of an abstract nature to express intellectual or ideological concepts if he tries hard enough. . . . He

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would be well advised, I think, to confide his titles and his program notes to his intimates.” The success with the Boston audience, both on Friday and Saturday, was fair, but Koussevitzky decided not to take the Sixth Symphony to New York. There were no further performances elsewhere; the score remained unpublished. Undaunted by the lack of appreciation for his important large-scale works, Harris reasserts his faith in the people, including symphony audiences. He summarizes his view of himself in the following statement: “The best receptions of my work have been in California (where people are both enthusiastic and progressive about everything) and in the South (where people are generous and predisposed to native culture). Certainly I owe the East every possible gratitude for performances, recordings, and publications, including this biography. Nor in justice must I be less than genuinely pleased for all the fine performances accorded me in the big industrial centers of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and the festivals in Midwestern Universities and Colleges. So, with characteristic optimism, I’d better conclude with ‘My works are enjoyed everywhere.’ ”

Greener Pastures

Free to dream and free to build in the wide open spaces of the West, Harris lived on contentedly as composer-in-residence at Colorado College. Students of former days trekked after him to Holiday House, as he called his Colorado Springs homestead. Once more, the Harris household became “a gay guild.” Marshall Sprague, a convivial spirit dwelling in Colorado Springs, painted a lush picture of Holiday House: “If you visit the Harris house on its bluff facing Pike’s Peak, you can see that Mr. Harris has been paid well for his six symphonies, three string quartets, two piano concertos, three ballets, and dozens of cantatas, sonatas, motets and masses he has written since 1933. The sedan in the drive is new, swank and expensive. The rambling house is full of Navajo rugs, sun decks and plush furniture. A fire of pinon wood—at $30 a ton—blazes in one of the three downstairs fireplaces. Connected to the house by an arcade is the composer’s pinepaneled studio, complete with kitchen and upstairs bedrooms.” Sprague

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jotted down an impertinent sketch of Harris, the man: “Having declared himself a member of the homespun contingent, Roy plays the part to the hilt. His voice has the nasal timbre of one who has called many a hog in his day. His suits of odd greens and blues fit haphazardly and their construction suggests the mail order job. At local parties he is the last man in the room you’d pick for a celebrity. What he likes is to hide in a corner with a group around him listening to his famous sotto voce stories, told with an ingenuous wide-eyed air.” “His manner in conversation is that of any cracker-barrel philosopher in any country store, and his technique as a promoter of his own wares is marked by a thoroughness that would do credit to the homespun sales traditions of William Wrigley or the Smith Brothers. To ask how much of this homespun stuff is genuine and how much contrived seems academic.” Harris was not satisfied to “get behind himself and push.” He pushed a lot of other people along and embarked on ambitious undertakings not directly related to his business as a composer. In Colorado Springs, he raised funds to engage four top-notch players from the East to form a string quartet. He inaugurated a series of concerts. And he induced a national radio network to broadcast these programs. His productivity was not confined to music. Three children were born to Roy and Johana Harris in Colorado Springs, all March children, a timing calculated not to interfere with Johana’s participation in the summer music festivals. Patricia Duffey Harris was born March 28, 1944; Shaun Duffey Harris on March 2, 1946; and Daniel Duffey Harris on March 19, 1947. Their Irish names and the coincidence of their birthdays near St. Patrick’s Day underscore the Harrises’ pride in their Irish blood. The blessed events failed to disrupt Johana’s professional activities. The sole exception was her concert with William Primrose which was scheduled for the day Patricia was born, and so had to be canceled. “Fecundity, I should say, is the determining factor of our lives,” wrote Roy Harris from Colorado Springs. “Our big garden is full of flowers. My contract with Fischer calls for four hundred printed pages per year. I have already more than seventy opus numbers and, as you know, I didn’t get started studying until I was thirty years old.” The reference to Fischer signalized another change of publishers. Harris had parted company with Mills Company and had gone over to Carl Fischer. The publishers were well content with the acquisition of such elegant property and prefaced their advertisements of Harris’s music

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in the trade magazines with the words: “We are proud to announce . . .” The Fischer contract expired in 1950, when Harris signed up, on very advantageous terms, with the Ricordi Co. of Milan and New York. The Holiday House idyll was briefly interrupted in 1945, when Harris went to New York to serve as chief of the music section of the Office of War Information, supervising music for short wave radio broadcasts to liberated Europe and distributing recordings to American agencies abroad. He set down a policy of musical sugar and spice, fifty per cent jazz, twenty-five per cent folk music, and twenty-five per cent serious music. Just as his program began to unfold, the Office of War Information closed down, and Harris returned to Colorado Springs. “It is natural for me to write music, and lots of it, and quickly,” Harris wrote from Colorado Springs. “In other words, I am not a phoney who has to go through unnatural experiences in his living, and torturous effort in his writing, to produce music.” Taking advantage of the presence in Colorado Springs of Hanya Holm, celebrated modern dancer who conducted a dance group every summer at Colorado College, Roy Harris each year wrote a ballet for her. The libretti were his, too. He also conducted the performances, with a makeshift orchestra of students reinforced by professionals. The first ballet, From This Earth (1941), was the story of a miner. The second ballet, What So Proudly We Hail (1942), was a series of unrelated episodes of the American scene. The third ballet, Namesake (1943), had something to do with the recurrence of Christian names. Scored for violin and piano, the musical material of Namesake was later published in a suite labelled Charming Pieces. The fourth ballet, To Thee, Old Cause (1944) for chorus, was reworked from Harris’s Songs of Democracy. In the fall of 1945 Harris wrote a fanciful composition entitled Memories of a Child’s Sunday, in three tiny movements: “Bells,”“Dreams,” and “Play.” The score was dedicated “to little Richard Rodzinski, aged one and a bit.” Harris conducted it himself on February 21, 1946, with the New York Philharmonic, whose musical director at the time was the dedicatee’s father. “Who can, does; who cannot, teaches,” said George Bernard Shaw. The organized teachers who had been chary of Harris’s music gradually reconciled themselves to the fact that Harris was himself a teacher, even though he could compose music. They began to invite him to enliven their somnolent functions by peppy addresses, and they commissioned him to

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write music for their staid meetings. One of such pieces d’occasion was Blow the Man Down, a fantasy for chorus, symphonic band, and a string orchestra, which Harris composed for the national convention of the Music Educators’ National Association held in Cleveland in 1946. He conducted it there on April 22, 1946. Harris had long since learned to bridle his musical passions and to shear his technical writing to the utilitarian necessities of an imperfect musical world. When the Rochester radio station WHAM commissioned him to write a work for piano and small orchestra with the stipulation that it should not require too much rehearsal time, Harris complied. He wrote the score in one week, between February 17 and 24, 1946, and called it simply Radio Piece. Harris himself conducted it, with very little rehearsing, over the WHAM station, on May 18, 1946. One of the most important works in Harris’s creative catalogue is a Concerto for two pianos and orchestra, commissioned by the Denver Symphony Orchestra. It was written intermittently in the fall of 1946, on trains, planes, and hotel rooms while filling engagements in Boston, Detroit, and Chicago. Johana Harris and Max Lanner gave its premiere in Denver, on January 21, 1947, with Saul Caston conducting the Denver Symphony. Although a blizzard raged that night, the audience reception was warm, and Denver music critics were most kind and appreciative.* Harris’s energetic imagination can move mountains, grow palm trees in the desert, and conjure up lakes. His self-made oasis is often a mirage, but a mirage that miraculously quenches the thirst. When others fail to see the imaginary vegetation amid cooling streams, Harris pities them: “Can’t you see? It’s there!” Such an oasis was Logan, Utah, a frontier post in the Mormon country where Harris went in 1948 as composer-in-residence at the State Agricultural College. Logan was no music center. But Harris succeeded in raising sufficient funds for a high-grade summer music session. As in Colorado Springs, he invited a top-notch string quartet and organized a series of network broadcasts. After a season of this Harris-in-Mormonland existence, the nourishing flow of funds from the State of Utah was cut off by an economizing governor. The oasis vanished. *“The Concerto went over big last night,” Harris reported to a friend, “six curtain calls and lots of shouting.”

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The Harrises found greener pastures in Nashville, Tennessee, where they joined the faculty of George Peabody College for Teachers. They also took time off to give weekly courses at the State College in Bowling Green, Kentucky. In the summer of 1950, Harris instituted the Cumberland Forest Festival at Sewanee, Tennessee, with programs of classical and modern music presented there during the summer months, as well as on the campus green at Peabody College, in Nashville. Again he had his visiting string quartet, a student ensemble, which he conducted, and a series of nation-wide broadcasts of chamber music. Another change of scene came in September 1951 when Harris moved to Pittsburgh, as composer-in-residence at the Pennsylvania College for Women, and Johana Harris as Resident Pianist. The press announcement said: “Mr. Harris will compose, develop educational textbooks and assist in the development of major cultural projects in Pittsburgh. In the field of textbooks, Mr. Harris will complete a theory manual for the United States Navy and begin research on a five-volume history of musical materials.” A fund of $25,000 a year for this project was granted by the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust. The contract with Harris is for five years, until 1956.

High Pitch

The most unusual composition in Harris’s entire catalogue is a Concerto for accordion and orchestra, which he conducted in a broadcast on June 2, 1947, with Andy Rizzo as accordionist. Rizzo supplied his own utterly un-Harrisian cadenza. Harris was at first a bit apprehensive at this venture into the realm of the low-brow, but gradually warmed up to the instrument, and publicly declared that high-brow recognition should be “accorded the accordion.” In August 1947, two of Harris’s pupils were married in Colorado Springs. For this blessed occasion Harris wrote a Wedding Song, scored for bass solo, violin, viola, cello, and organ. The violin symbolized the lyrical bride; the cello, the wooing groom; and the viola, droning in an unvarying pattern, the earnest preacher. The finale leads to a close stretto between the bride and the groom. In 1948, Harris received a request from a Texas widow to write an orchestral elegy in memory of her husband. Harris complied. The viola

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solo material was extracted from an earlier work, Lamentation, highlighted in a somber harmonic and orchestral setting. To this was added a second section, Paean. The work was performed by the Houston Symphony Orchestra, Efrem Kurtz conducting, on December 13, 1948. In this score Harris introduced a special effect in the piano part, by having a microphone suspended over the strings of a grand piano and the tone controlled by an electrical amplifier. The resulting tone color was that of deep gongs in the Elegy and sonorous chimes in the Paean. In 1948, Harris undertook the composition of a violin concerto, his second try for the instrument. He wrote it for Josef Gingold, concertmaster of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. The score was completed in Colorado Springs in July 1948, but Harris was not satisfied with the results and revised it considerably during the summer of 1949, in Logan, Utah. Harris has written music for several religious denominations. There was Israel, a cantata for tenor solo, mixed chorus, and organ, written in 1947 for Temple Emanuel in New York and subsequently published in a collection of Jewish religious music. Harris also wrote an Easter motet for mixed chorus, organ, and brasses for Grace Episcopal Church in Colorado Springs, where all three Harris children were baptized. In 1947, Harris received an assignment to write a Catholic Mass, a task which unexpectedly got him into an appalling controversy. In the guise of an interview with Harris, Marshall Sprague published an article in the New York Times of February 15, 1948, captioned “Composing for Cash,” which purported to reflect Harris’s determination never to write any music without being paid for it. Among paying commissions received by Harris, the story listed an Easter Mass for St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. This elicited an instant protest from the moderator of St. Patrick’s Choir who stated that the implication was “not only untrue but most distasteful,” adding that “at no time in the future will the Mass of Roy Harris be performed in St. Patrick’s.” The story behind the story of the Mass was this. While it is true that Harris expected to be remunerated for his work on the Mass, the money was to come not in cash from St. Patrick’s, but from royalties for a projected recording. Harris had made a thorough study of religious folk songs of the Southwest, especially New Mexico, to be used as basic materials for the Mass. The music director of St. Patrick’s suggested some changes to conform to ecclesiastical usage. The changes were made, the

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score revised, the parts extracted. All seemed to be in order for an Easter performance at St. Patrick’s when the Times article appeared. Harris was profoundly distressed, but could not with decorum recount the involved circumstances of the case. He turned the Mass over for performance at the Columbia University Festival, and it was presented by the Princeton Chapel Choir at St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, on May 13, 1948. In 1948, the state of California staged celebrations of the centenary of the Gold Rush. Roy Harris was affectionately regarded by many Californians as a native son, for his childhood was spent in California, and his mother, after the death of his father in 1936, had retained the family ranch and was still cultivating their orange grove. When the student body of the University of California asked Harris to write a band piece for their string festival, Harris was pleased and responded with a richly scored panorama of descriptive music, Fruit of Gold, with a finale based on the hymn of the University of California, “All Hail the Blue And Gold.” Harris himself conducted the premiere at the University of California on May 10, 1949. Another musical bouquet tendered by Harris to a state of the Union, was Kentucky Spring, commissioned by the Louisville Symphony Orchestra. Because Harris’s grandfather came from Kentucky, he felt a certain intimacy with Kentuckians. The score is perhaps the gayest Harris has ever written, with musical birds in the woodwinds and spring breeze in the strings. Harris jotted down the materials for Kentucky Spring while flying from Chicago to Salt Lake City, in February 1949; the score was completed barely in time for the premiere which Harris conducted with the Louisville Symphony on April 5, 1949. The Louisville Courier-Journal gave Kentucky Spring a hearty welcome: “It is delightful and frankly enjoyable music, full of beautiful sounds. It captures the warmth and fragrance of a spring night. It won such instantaneous and decided approval that it was repeated.” After twenty-five years as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Koussevitzky had departed from the scene. The new director of the Boston Symphony, Charles Munch, was advised by Walter Piston that Roy Harris was a great American composer. Munch wrote to Harris and asked him for a new work. Harris had nothing new to offer for the moment, but suggested that he might come to Boston to conduct Kentucky Spring.

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On April 16, 1950, Harris made his Boston debut as guest-conductor. He received a cordial reception from the audiences and the critics, all except one, who remarked archly that Harris’s spring was a bit cold and closer to Boston spring weather than that of Kentucky. Harris never forgot the kindness of men who had helped him professionally and personally in his early career. When a symphonic celebration of Howard Hanson’s fiftieth birthday was planned by Koussevitzky, Harris wrote a set of variations on the timpani theme from Hanson’s Third Symphony and named it Celebration. It was performed by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra on October 25 and 26, 1946, a few days before Hanson’s birthday. In the concluding part of Celebration. Harris used the well-known tune, “Happy Birthday to You,” harmonized, of course, in an unorthodox Harrisian manner. No one realized that the song, written by a New York schoolmarm about the time Hanson and Harris were born, was copyrighted. As a result, a stern remonstration came from the publishers. It was unnecessary; the festive occasion having passed, there were no further performances of the birthday piece.

Optimi Ingenii Vir

Roy Harris is a common name. There are six Roy Harrises in Chicago, six in Denver, and six in St. Louis; five in Kansas City and five in Los Angeles; four in Cincinnati and four in Dallas; three in Washington and three in Nashville; two each in Cleveland, Baltimore, Houston, Detroit, San Francisco, Detroit, New York, and Boston; one each in Brooklyn, Rochester, Seattle, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, and Atlanta. But when people talk about Roy Harris, they mean one particular Roy Harris. —Nice dinner. —Wasn’t it? —This, uh, this Roy Harris they were talking about—do you know his music? —Just a little. —Uh— —I’ve just heard some of it played.

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Such a conversation is reported as taking place in the synthetic town of Grand Republic, Minnesota, in Sinclair Lewis’s novel, Cass Timberlane. This ought to justify the claim that Roy Harris has become a household word. Roy Harris is one of the American composers listed in the poem “Muse Americana,” by Irwin Edman, published in The New Yorker of July 22, 1944: At other times we’ll gladly hear The strains of foreigner Beethoven. On Independence Day, it’s clear, We’re pledged to Gershwin and DeKoven, To Piston, Copland (very good), Deems Taylor, Barber and Roy Harris Today what native he-man would Have ears for genius born in Paris?

Consecutive fifths to the nose to anyone who will say that Harris got into the poem because his name rhymes with Paris! Among American musicians, Harris had for long been accorded a special niche. In his book, Bad Boy of Music, George Antheil quotes Aaron Copland as saying that one can open any page of Harris’s music, and say: “Here is Roy Harris. His music is always written in his own style, nobody else’s.” Harris was recruiting new admirers at an ever increasing clip, while the ardor of the faithful group of original Harrisites never cooled. One rash musicologist went so far as to publish an article on Roy Harris in a newspaper of international circulation, unambiguously entitled “America’s Composer No. 1.” Academic recognition came to Harris. In 1941, Rutgers University conferred on him an honorary degree of Doctor of Music. Harris could not read the florid Latin of the citation in which he was proclaimed optimi ingenii vir, but the vellum diploma looked impressive, framed and hung on the wall of Harris’s studio. Leroy Ellsworth Harris, the Cimarron frontiersman, was now Dr. Roy Harris. In 1946, the University of Rochester awarded another honorary Doctor’s degree to him.

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On Harris’s fiftieth birthday, a flattering gesture came from the state of Colorado, when the following declaration was issued: In recognition of distinguished service in the art of music, I, Lee Knous, governor of the state of Colorado, do hereby bestow upon Roy Harris this citation for distinguished citizenship, for As a citizen of Colorado, you have brought honor to our state and international recognition to our nation; As a composer, you have given our schools, churches and concert halls American music which characterizes our people and our time; As a teacher, you have spoken to the teachers and students throughout America of the worth and dignity of American culture, and you have, by your example, given encouragement to them to create and play the vital new music of this free and democratic land. Given under my hand and seal this twelfth day of February, A.D., 1948, upon the occasion of your fiftieth anniversary. Lee Knous, Governor

The musical world at large was becoming aware of Roy Harris. When, after V-E day, an Allied Victory Concert was staged in London, Harris’s Folksong Symphony was chosen to represent American music on a program with Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. Tokyo Rose paid Harris the dubious tribute of featuring Johnny Comes Marching Home at one of her propaganda broadcasts. “Stand for democracy as Roy Harris does in his music,” she coaxed. “Go marching home!” What Roy Harris thinks of Roy Harris is for him to tell. But here is a story: Harris was having lunch with Virgil Thomson. He looked tired and dejected. “I am fifty years old,” said Harris, “and I don’t think I’ll make it.” “Make what?” “Beethoven.”

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2. HIS MUSIC A jocular story is circulated among musicians that Harris was offered a huge sum of money to write a work without a passacaglia or a fugue in it, and that he turned down the offer. It is indeed remarkable that a composer who has been proclaiming his musical Americanism so insistently for so long should be so deeply attached to classical forms that even his programmatic works of American inspiration invariably tend towards contrapuntal forms of the past centuries. For Harris is convinced that old contrapuntal forms are the most suitable containers for American music. He has apparently succeeded in effecting this synthesis, for his music, built along classical lines, sounds unmistakably American, even to outsiders. Musical Opinion of London had this to say: “Roy Harris is a discovery. There may be other geniuses in America, but he is of stock deeply rooted in the soil.” The Musical Times of London comments on the expressiveness of Harris’s music: “His language is an essential part of something definite that he has to say. It may be severe, inelegant, rough-tongued, aggressive, caustic and half-a-dozen other uncourtly things, but its manners, if not engaging, are part of a character that arrests and holds the attention.” Gregory Schneerson, a Soviet musicologist, wrote in 1944: “On his road to fame, Harris never made any concession to the prevalent fashion and the tastes of the large public. His music is closely bound with the spiritual ideals of his nation, but it remains austere and somewhat uncouth, making it sometimes difficult to understand.” The Americanism of Harris, passacaglias and fugues to the contrary notwithstanding, is immediately perceptible to his fellow composers. Aaron Copland wrote of Harris: “His music comes nearest to a distinctively American melos of anything yet done in the more ambitious forms. . . . Harris begins with this natural wealth of melody (he says he has enough in his notebooks to last him ten years), and then it becomes his problem to combine, juxtapose, develop, elongate them—in short, to rework them into significant forms.” Harris himself has never doubted his destiny as a major force in American music. As early as 1932, he wrote to a friend: “I hope to become a really great composer.” Thanks to the fact that he had not undertaken formal study until relatively late in life, he was able to develop a personal idiom without the danger of succumbing to the powerful impact of modern European music. “I was not influenced by any modern composer,” he says in retrospect, “not even by Debussy. I have always felt a close

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kinship with Mussorgsky. On the other hand, Rimsky-Korsakov is quite alien to me. I have been influenced in my string writing by Beethoven, and in brass and woodwind writing by Tchaikovsky and American popular jazz bands. In form, I have been influenced by Bach and Beethoven. My technique was cumulative.”

Allergies and Idiosyncracies

The stubborn individuality of Harris’s musical language is the result of his deliberate rejection of a number of sanctified musical usages. If an author were to exclude familiar words from his vocabulary, and rule out common syntactical turns of the phrase, his style would inevitably assume a distinctive air. Similarly, when an artist compounds his pictures of straight lines, to the exclusion of all curved surfaces, his drawings gain in direct effectiveness. Of course, the mere act of jettisoning common materials does not automatically result in the formation of original art forms. Something else is needed—a skill and a talent in using the voluntarily limited vocabulary.* Among time-honored musical usages rejected by Harris are the following: Melodic sequences Appoggiaturas Passing notes Chromatic progressions Whole-tone scales Diminished-seventh chords Augmented triads Dominant-seventh chords Key signatures

Harris explains his rejection of sequences: “Many melodies of the old masters are built on literal sequences, a technical device of academic

*Some years ago, a full-length novel was published in America in which the most common letter in the English alphabet, the letter “e,” was never used in the whole book. This created havoc with grammar and style, but the author of the novel failed to establish an individual literary style by this ascetic renunciation, and the book remained a mere curiosity.

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industrialism. I found the literal sequence uncreative. Such a sequence stops the inventive continuity of the music.”* Appoggiaturas are to Harris spurious devices, a mere ornament of no creative value. In the Harris scheme of melody, every note must be selfsufficient. Similarly, he rejects passing notes qua passing notes. Auxiliary notes, when they are used in the melodies of Harris, appear in a sort of Brownian motion, in which every musical molecule has its individual place and purpose. Chromatic lines are found here and there in Harris’s music (notably in his Third Symphony), but with not more than three successive semitones in the same voice. Whole-tone scales are rejected by Harris as a melodic device because of their uniformity of steps, impairing the force of melodic progress. Other progressions by equal steps, as for instance arpeggiated diminished-seventh chords or augmented triads, are shunned by Harris for similar reasons. But he does use melodies in perfect fourths and perfect fifths. Such intervallic series are divergent, which satisfy Harris’s feeling for melodic spaciousness. The Harrisian ban on melodic progressions by equal intervals automatically excludes all Wagnerian and Debussyan patterns of melody. In the domain of harmony, Harris excludes chords built of equal intervals, such as the diminished-seventh chord and the augmented triad, for the same reasons that he rejects consecutive equal steps in melody. Of course, individual cases of augmented triads (and, rarely, diminished seventh chords) occasionally occur in Harris’s music, in the process of contrapuntal development, but not as independent chords. Still more remarkable is the avoidance by Harris of dominant-seventh chords, the foundation stone of orthodox harmony. Harris regards the dominant-seventh chords as “a bastard harmony of a major triad mated with a diminished triad.” He describes the formation of his harmonic sense: The classical use of consonances and progressions of chords did not satisfy me. They did not match up with the harmonies as yet unexpressed which I heard within me. The dominant seventh in particular offended me. I could not accept a chord like G, D, B, D, F, B, D. But when I superimposed a B flat major chord in its second inversion, resulting in *Harris came nearest to using literal sequence in the trumpet-trombone duologue of the fugato section in the Third Symphony; but the sequence is there the product of a canonic development.

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the formation G, D, B natural, D, F, B flat, D, the Diabolus in Musica, the tritone that is inherent in the dominant-seventh chord, was covered up and neutralized. I got two straight harmonies, G major and B flat major.

“Bastard” harmony vs. legitimate harmony.

The exclusion of familiar chords from the Harrisian harmony does not imply that he is hell-bent on dissonance. Quite the contrary is true: in his harmonic technique Harris leans heavily on triads and their inversions. Harris himself laughingly reports that advanced music students of the University of California used to chant after listening to a recording of his music: “If at first you don’t succeed, tri-ad, triad again!” The Harrisian tonality being in a constant state of flux, a key signature is superfluous. Indeed, Harris has never used one. The only exception is the key signature of six flats in one of the American Ballads. But these flats were put in by the publisher, over the composer’s strenuous objections. When another publisher attempted to put a key signature into the proofs of the song Fog, Harris demanded that the edition be re-engraved, with the key signature taken out. The publishers complied. As a result of dispensing with the key signature, Harris’s notation in scale passages is enharmonic; there are no double sharps or double flats. Thus, in the entire score of Concerto for Orchestra (1954), there is only one double sharp ever used, to lend uniformity to the upper tetrachord of F sharp major, and no double flats at all. On the positive side the style of Harris reveals the following typical usages: Melody

1. Autogenetic formations of the melodic curve, subjectively related to the shape of a Gothic arch, with the melodic apex in

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the middle, and subordinate melodic phrases generating subsidiary climaxes. Inherent tonality of the melodic outline, with shifting tonal centers. Melodic phrases based on alternating major and minor thirds resulting in a constant oscillation between homonymous major and minor tonalities. Similar oscillations of major and minor seconds, with a preliminary return to the tonal center. Thematic validation of chromatic notes regarded as essential parts of the melody, with not more than three consecutive semitones in melodic progressions. Melodic passages of consecutive ascending or descending fourths or fifths, with not more than five such intervals in succession. A sui generis twelve-tone melodic construction, with frequent returns to the central tone, eventually taking in all twelve chromatic notes in the melodic exposition. Application of a special system of modal semantics, establishing varying moods according to the magnitude of intervals from the tonic.

Rhythm

1. Asymmetrical rhythms, often embanked within simple metrical units. 2. Rhythmic constructions in large note values overlapping the barlines, with rhythmic and phrasal units indicated by slurs. 3. Melorhythmic phrases of two notes in explosive crescendo, ending in a sforzando, and followed by a rest. Counterpoint

1. A system of couplings and linkings, wherein a contrapuntal structure in two parts annexes a third contrapuntal line, consonant to at least one of the voices; independent groups of two or three voices each are treated as units and freely combine with similarly formed contrapuntal compounds, resulting in complex polyphonic designs. 2. Extensive use of modern organum (progressions in fourths and

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fifths) and modern fauxbourdon (progressions in thirds and sixths). 3. Contrapuntal treatment of unions, octaves, and double octaves in a visual and aural pattern of rhythmic counterpoint. 4. Elaborate canonic developments of thematic phrases. 5. Fugal developments in three categories: (a) true fugue with real answers in the dominant or subdominant; (b) fugato; (c) free fugal imitation. Harmony

1. Tonal harmonization in freely interrelated triads and inversions. 2. Treatment of seventh chords and ninth chords as overlapping major and minor triads. 3. Pandiatonicism, that is, free simultaneous use of any or all seven degrees of the diatonic scale in harmonic structures, usually with a tonic-dominant fifth in the bass. 4. Bitonal harmonies built by the superposition, in proper spacing, of triads and their inversions in two different keys, with the tonics of the participating tonalities distanced by a minor or a major third, so that a common tone exists between two triads thus combined. 5. Chordal combinations of perfect fourths, not exceeding five-part constructions; more rarely, similar formations of perfect fifths. 6. Harmonies involving more than two distinct tonalities, usually through the retention of a common tone. 7. Marked preference for plagal cadences. 8. Endings in unison, or in triadic chords, or tonic seventh chords (always in major), or bitonal combinations of two triads with tonics distanced by a major or a minor third; or pandiatonic endings of five, six, or seven different notes. Form

Classical formal constructions: preludes, chorales, fugues, passacaglias, toccatas, sonatas, and symphonies in cyclic constructions, with free recurrences of thematic material, avoiding literal recapitulation.

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Orchestration

1. Initial statement of a theme in unison or in octaves, introduced by homogeneous instrumental groups. 2. Antiphonal treatment of instrumental groups in the development, each group appearing as a self-sufficient contrapuntal or harmonic unit. 3. Treatment of brass, particularly trumpets, as melody carriers, on a par with strings. 4. Incorporation of each instrument into the harmonic or contrapuntal scheme of the music, avoiding purely coloristic effects. Vocal writing

Contrapuntal treatment of vocal ensembles a capella, with homophonic structures reserved for chorale-like progressions. The Gothic Arch

From his earliest attempt at composition, melody was paramount to Harris. This melody was “autogenetic,” the term implying a natural formation and organic development of the melodic curve. He associated such an autogenetic melody with a visual image of a slowly curving arch, a Gothic arch. Within this melodic arch, he conceived of several subordinate curves, with melodic climaxes and subclimaxes along the curve. The rhythmic articulation of the melody was part of the melody itself; the musical curve became an indivisible melorhythmic unit. Musical form is to Harris such a Gothic arch of autogenetically expanding melody, with melorhythmic arcades forming its superstructure and its substructure. Underneath these melorhythmic arcades teems the biological stuff of Harris’s music, the contrapuntal commotion, the harmonic clashes, the rhythmic counterplay. The task of organizing this self-breeding mass of music in the raw into an architectonically cohesive form was the main preoccupation of Harris on his road to musical mastery. He described this struggle of musical forces within him in the following words: “The moods which seem particularly American to me are the noisy ribaldry, the sadness, a groping earnestness which amounts to suppliance towards those deepest spiritual yearnings within ourselves; there is little grace or mellowness in our midst; that will probably come after we have passed the high noon of our growth as a people.”

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To express these spontaneous American moods, Harris sought new asymmetric rhythms. He wrote in the Symposium, American Composers on American Music: Our rhythmic impulses are fundamentally different from the rhythmic impulses of Europeans; and from this unique rhythmic sense are generated different melodic and form values. Our sense of rhythm is less symmetrical than the European rhythmic sense. European musicians are trained to think of rhythm in its largest common denominator, while we are born with a feeling for its smallest units. That is why the jazz boys, chained to an unimaginative commercial routine which serves only crystallized symmetrical dance rhythms, are continually breaking out into superimposed rhythmic variations. This asymmetrical balancing of rhythmic phrases is in our blood. We do not employ unconventional rhythms as a sophisticated gesture; we cannot avoid them. The rhythms come to us first as musical phraseology, and then we struggle to define them on paper. Our struggle is not to invent new rhythms and melodies and forms; our problem is to put down into translatable symbols and rhythms and consequent melodies and form those that assert themselves within us.

These changeable American rhythms are translated in Harris’s musical notation into changeable meters. In the Andante of his Piano Sonata, Harris uses time-signatures such as 13/4, 14/4, and 16/4, to keep pace with his rhythm. In the first movement of the Second Symphony, he embanks the melo-rhythmic phrase in an expanding and contracting metrical series, 4/2, 5/ , 7/ , 5/ , 4/ , with long slurs marking the thematic sections. 2 2 2 2 Occasionally, Harris’s phrases fall naturally into metric divisions. Thus the fugal section of the Trio is in 10/8 time, which is also the dominating melorhythmic pattern of the theme. In other instances, Harris divides a measure in 4/4 time into asymmetric sections in eighth-notes, 3/8 + 2/8 + 3/8 = 8/8; or into asymmetric groupings of sixteenth-notes, as 3/16 + 3/16 + 4/16 + 3/16 + 3/16 = 16/16. In the First String Quartet, there are these asymmetrical divisions of time signatures: 7/4 = 5/8 + 4/8 + 5/8 and 12/8 = 3/8 + 4/8 + 5/8.

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Asymmetrical rhythms (3 + 3 + 4 + 3 + 3 = 16).

Asymmetrical rhythms (3 + 3 + 4 = 10 and 2 + 2 + 3 + 3 = 10).

To express Harris’s long-drawn themes in commensurate metric divisions, time signatures of enormous length would be required. In the Fifth Symphony, the theme of the first movement stretches out for 118 measures in 4/4 time, which, if written out without interruption by barlines, would aggregate to the monstrous fraction 472/4. The “Gothic arch” of this protracted theme is shaped by a dynamic and rhythmic rise during the initial fifty-five measures, culminating in a climactic period of nine measures, followed by the declination of the curve for fifty-four measures. The architectural plan of this theme is illustrated by Harris in the following diagram. 9 measures 54

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ure

ndo f sce o 55 cre bing do clim n a r t ele vel tan acc cons h - le h pitc t i w as me

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Dominant Pedal inverted

In the Finale of his String Sextet, Harris attempted to solve the problem of adequate meter by abolishing the time signature altogether. Instead, he posted on the staff a sign looking like a huge natural, which

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was to indicate a rhythmic pulse not confined to definite metric length. He kept the barlines for phrase groups, and he used dotted lines to delimit rhythmic groups. In addition, there were brackets to mark the extension of thematic material. However, the plethora of lines and signs only confused the players, and Harris dropped the whole idea. Intervals and Tonality

Harris speaks of the smallest common denominator in American rhythms. In his melodic writing, he applies the least common denominator of tonality. His melodic resources are basically tonal, but the melodic tonality shifts quickly in modulations of asymmetrical periods. Often full triads are melodically outlined at the beginning and at the end of a thematic section, with a Brownian motion of oscillating tonal elements in between. As likely as not, a Harris phrase would begin in a major key configuration and tail off in minor, a sort of Picardy third in reverse. The theme of the slow movement of the First Symphony is an illustration of such melodic construction. The component phrases begin in major and end in minor. When Harris does not intend to commit himself tonally, he uses alternating major and minor thirds from the central tone, a melodic teaser calculated to establish a sense of unstable equilibrium. Such alternating thirds appear in Harris’s op. 1, the Piano Sonata, in the opening measures. The procedure has been adopted by Harris in many melodic situations, so that it has become the distinguishing mark of his melodic technique, and has already found emulators and imitators among young American composers. Sometimes Harris refuses to commit himself tonally even to the extent of using alternating thirds. Instead, his “pitch design,” to use his own term for the intervallic melody plan, zigzags in alternating major and minor seconds from the central tone, and builds up slowly to a recognizable tonal contour (an example occurs in “Speed”, the third movement of American Portraits: 1929). This type of musical tease leads to atonality. Indeed, in the early works of Harris, there are melodies that have a definitely atonal flavor. Such is the theme of “Collective Force,” the fourth movement of American Portraits: 1929. Out of the seventeen notes that go into the making of this theme, eleven are different. Significantly, the missing note is the dominant of the G that opens and closes the theme. The exclusion of the dominant is a characteristic procedure of orthodox atonalists and, whether consciously or not, Harris was here following

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atonal practice. In his later works he made use of all twelve different notes intentionally, but he was careful to emphasize the tonal element, and the dominant was always conspicuous by its presence.

The theme of “Collective Force” (fourth movement of American Portraits containing eleven different notes).

The Harrisian technique of composing in twelve tones differs from Schoenberg’s method in that repetitions of essential notes are freely used by Harris. Thus the Passacaglia theme in the Piano Quintet comprises all twelve notes, but the last note of the series, C flat, is not reached until the forty-first note of the theme. This C flat is also highest in pitch in the melody, which is calculated to create a melodic climax. Harris often resorts to intervallic progressions of fourths and fifths in melodic structure, but he rarely uses more than four such intervals consecutively. The subject of the fugue in the Trio begins with two consecutive fourths. The thematic material of the finale in the first Violin Concerto is built entirely on progressions in fourths and fifths. A very interesting example of tritone progressions is provided in the first movement of Harris’s Clarinet Concerto, where he stages a seven-part tritone-and-octave canonic stretto, which takes in every note of the chromatic scale. Melodic thinking by interval building rather than by consideration of key is evident in some of Harris’s choral works, in which musical intervals illustrate the words, a practice sanctified by Harris’s supreme musical deity, Johann Sebastian Bach. In his unaccompanied chorus, Red Bird in a Green Tree, Harris illustrates the words “on the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me two silver hens” by the interval of a second; when the gift is that of three white cows, the interval is a third; for the presentation of four purple swans, there is a fourth, and so on until the eleventh day of Christmas when “my true love” makes her appearance in the company of “eleven lads a-laughing.” Another instance of literal correspondence between the words and melodic intervals is the Harrisian treatment of Tennyson’s poem in Evening Song, in which the singing line goes a semitone lower to illustrate “Sweet and low.”

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Opening measures of Evening Song.

At the time of the composition of the Third String Quartet, Harris developed an elaborate and self-consistent system of intervallic symbolism. He proceeded on the assumption that wide intervals are “bright” and small intervals are “dark,” or, in psychological terms, optimistic and pessimistic. He then designed a spectrum of modes of varying brightness, according to the intervals from the tonic. Thus the Lydian mode is the most luminous because the intervals from the tonic are in this mode the largest possible in any mode (major second, major third, augmented fourth, perfect fifth, major sixth, major seventh). The Locrian mode is the darkest because the intervals from the tonic are in this mode the smallest possible in any mode (minor second, minor third, perfect fourth, diminished fifth, minor sixth, minor seventh). The spectrum of modes, from infra-dark to ultra-bright appears as follows in the Harrisian scheme: Locrian, Phrygian, Aeolian, Dorian, Mixolydian, Ionian, and Lydian. On a psychological scale, this mode spectrum progresses from the most subjective mode (darkest, Locrian) to the most objective (brightest, Lydian). The Dorian mode is neutral, intervallically and psychologically, because it is equidistant from the darkest and the brightest modes. The Dorian mode is also the only invertible mode, its intervals being the same in ascending and descending. Modes equidistant from the Dorian are mutually invertible: Locrian and Lydian; Phrygian and Ionian; Aeolian and Mixolydian. This system of modes connects rather unexpectedly with the twelvetone structure as practiced by Harris. The brightest and the darkest modes centered on the same keynote aggregate to fourteen notes, which include the twelve notes of the chromatic scale plus two supernumerary notes. Reckoning from C, the Lydian mode is C, D, E, F sharp, G, A, B. The Locrian mode is C, D flat, E flat, F, G flat, A flat, and B flat. All twelve notes are present in this double mode, and there are two notes in duplicate, C and F sharp (G flat). In his Third String Quartet, a suite of four movements each composed of a prelude and a fugue, Harris uses the following modes. In the first

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movement, the prelude is in the Dorian mode; the fugue in Dorian and Aeolian modes. In the second movement, the prelude is in Lydian mode; fugue in Lydian and Ionian modes. In the third movement, the prelude is in Locrian mode; fugue in Locrian and Phrygian modes. In the fourth movement, the prelude is in Ionian mode; the fugue, in the Mixolydian mode. Despite the seemingly calculating nature of the modal semantics underlying the thematic contents of the Third String Quartet, it has gained considerable popularity with audiences. Reviewing a performance of the work, The New Yorker of July 12, 1941, commented breezily: “The music is all lyrical, except for the lively last movement, and you will find it agreeable listening even if you don’t care whether or not there are fugues and modes present.” Harris instinctively connects a given mode with a desired mode in many other works. The music of his Little Suite for piano, which Harris wrote on Christmas morning of 1938 for a young girl piano student, translates psychological states suggested by the titles of separate movements into corresponding modes. The first movement, “Bells” (based on the melodic outlines of the traditional church tune “Joy to the World”), is cast in the brightest colors of the modal spectrum, in the Lydian mode; the second, “Sad News,” is set in the melancholy Locrian mode (incidentally, its melody is identical with the prelude of the third movement of the Third String Quartet). The third movement of the Little Suite, “Children at Play”, is alternately in the brightest Lydian mode and in the next bright Ionian mode; the last movement, “Slumber,” is in the Ionian mode.

The Sphere of Harmonies

The Harrisian system of harmony has its own semantics, a blend of acoustics and psychology. Harris derives his basic concepts of harmony from the series of natural tones. He points out that fifths become more consonant at a wider range because they coincide with the third, sixth, twelfth, and twenty-fourth partial tones; on the other hand, fourths become more dissonant when removed from the bass, because of the interference with the major third, which is the fifth partial of the fundamental tone. For similar reasons, major thirds are more consonant when they are spread widely from the fundamental tone and blend with the fifth, tenth, and twentieth partials, whereas minor thirds grow more dissonant

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with distance because of the interference of the fifth partial in the overtone series. Major sixths are more euphonious at a distance, while minor sixths are more euphonious at close range. Harris balances his consonances and dissonances—and consequently his psychological moods—according to these acoustical concepts. He extends these concepts also to complete chords. Thus the first inversion of a minor triad in open harmony is in the Harrisian sphere of harmonies much richer than the first inversion of a major triad, because the bass note in a minor sixth-chord generates a fifth partial that is part of the chord, while in a major sixth-chord, the middle note is not in the overtone series. The major six-four chord in open harmony is more consonant than the minor six-four chord, because the major sixth present in the major six-four chord is more consonant than the minor sixth. Changes in spacing affect the degree of consonance of all chords, triads and their inversions, as well as of compound harmonies. In the Harrisian system of modulation, a single common tone is sufficient to establish a link between tonalities. Thus, the C major triad is related through a common tone to A flat major, F major, F minor (common tone, C); E major, A major, C sharp minor (common tone E); G major, E flat major, G minor (common tone G). It is linked by two common tones with C minor, A minor, and E minor. The tonic, the subdominant, and the dominant triads of a given key can be linked in this fashion with every major and minor key except one lying at the interval of an augmented fourth from the tonic. This is the medieval Diabolus in musica, which is also the devil in the Harrisian sphere of harmonies. In non-triadic harmony, Harris asserts, a single common tone will sustain the continuity of harmonic progressions however dissonant. In explaining the discords used in the ending of the Piano Sonata, Harris told Arthur Farwell that the common tone E holds the whole thing together. This binding power of common tones is the basic consideration in Harris’s harmonic writing. In the Harrisian system, triads related by a common tone enter naturally into bitonal compounds. Major triads combine euphoniously with any triad, major or minor, lying at the distance of a major or a minor third from the keynote. Triads related by a common tone to the dominant or the subdominant of a given key, from discords of varying degrees of sharpness when superimposed on tonic triads. Harris establishes several categories of harmonic concordance of such bitonal chords. According to his tonal semantics, a major triad in close

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harmony superimposed on another major triad in the keynote relationship of a minor third (e.g., B major on top of D major) is “dark luminous”; an incomplete chord of A flat major (minus a third) on top of a D flat major chord in open harmony is “bright luminous.” The G major triad without a third, superimposed on F minor in open harmony, is “dark”; G major on C major is “bright.”

Chordal semantics.

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A bitonal major chord, e.g., D flat major, placed on top of A major, is “savage bright.” A bitonal minor chord, with the tonics in the relation of a semitone, such as A minor superimposed on B flat minor, is “savage dark.” It is important to note that the underlying harmony in such bitonal compounds is invariably spread out in open position, representing, in a major key, the second, third, and fifth partial tones. Because the triad lying at the distance of a tritone from the keynote cannot be brought into a common-tone relationship with the three principal triads, the bitonal combination of the type C major plus F sharp major is never used by Harris. This is precisely the combination popularized by Stravinsky in Petrouchka, the “Parisian chord” that has attracted a legion of modernists by its luscious sonority. The rejection of this chord emphasizes the utterly un-Parisian and austere sonority of Harris’s bitonal harmonies. Harris regards seventh-chords as bitonal combinations: “Whenever a seventh-chord or a ninth-chord occurs in my harmony,” he explains, “it is the product of the overlapping of two triads, a major and a minor triad. By an extension of this principle, a ninth-chord in my harmony is never a dominant ninth, but a sum of two major or two minor triads, never a major plus a minor, or a minor plus a major. That does away with all augmented or diminished intervals. A final chord for full resonance may be, for instance, A major on top of D major, at a sufficient distance to justify the extra notes as high overtones of the chord. F sharp generating C sharp, and A generating E and supporting C sharp.” It is interesting to note that Harris’s early works often ended on nominal dissonances, which are concords in the Harrisian sense. The ending of the Piano Sonata is the most polytonal of Harris’s cadences. The final chord combines E minor and A minor with a high B flat, the harmonic complex reposing on the pedal point on C. The ending of the first movement of the First Symphony is the superposition of D major over E flat minor. The final chord of the last movement of the First Symphony is a tonic major seventh. The subsequent symphonies had triad endings. The Second Symphony ends in pure B flat major. The Third Symphony ends on G minor. There are also several endings in unison. In his later works Harris favors enhanced major triads, that is, major triads with the addition of a major sixth and a major ninth, and less frequently a major seventh. Thus his orchestral work, Melody, ends on G major plus A. In the Evening Song, the last chord is a major tonic seventh. The song Fog concludes on a major triad with an added sixth and a ninth.

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The movement “Slumber” from the Little Suite for piano has an ending which includes all seven diatonic degrees of the Lydian mode on B flat. This is a type of pandiatonic technique that Harris has used increasingly in musical situations in which an orthodox composer would use simple triads.

Pandiatonic ending of “Slumber.”

Simple major chords are to Harris only “calm” or “peaceful.” Harris is apt to use fairly long progressions of major chords, in root positions, to express the feeling of quiet determination. In such progressions, contrary motion between the melody and the bass is employed. To lessen the feeling of peace and calm, Harris may use major chords in the first or second inversion, or alternate major chords with minor chords. There are few instances in Harris’s music of consecutive use of several minor chords. The second inversion of the triad is often used by Harris where an orthodox composer would employ a root position. It should be emphasized, however, that Harris’s six-four chords never imply the cadential quality of a tonic six-four chord as a gateway to the dominant.

The Modern Classicism

Harmony is to Harris a natural medium for the expression of moods. But the innermost core of his music is contrapuntal. Contrapuntal lines are to Harris living voices that do not lose their individuality when they combine with other voices. Overlapping is frequent in Harris’s counterpoint; voices converge to a strong central position, or diverge widely according to the strength and direction of the vital forces that bring them together or drive them apart. A chosen pair of voices directs the motion; subsequent contrapuntal development proceeds by a method of coupling and linking. The original pair of voices annexes a third, or else two independent contrapuntal couples unite to form a more complex design. Such contrapuntal units of two, three, or four voices may then enter into a partnership with another group. The first pair of voices is usually set in consonant

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intervals, but as the process continues, the resulting design may become extremely dissonant. Canonic progressions, fugati and stretti, are autogenetic with Harris. Such canons are perhaps psychological substitutes for sequences in the same voice, which Harris rejects. One of the most remarkable illustrations of Harris’s canonic writing is the interlocking canon in eight parts in the opening measures of the Prelude for String Orchestra, which forms a chain of descending triads. In the Third Symphony free canonic imitation in the woodwind presents a fanciful appearance to the eye:

Woodwinds from the Third Symphony.

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So natural to Harris is the contrapuntal method of writing music that he sometimes treats even unisons as contrapuntal progressions. An illustration of such “counterpoint in unisons” is found in Harris’s First String Quartet. The entrance of new voices in unisons and octaves and double octaves creates the visual illusion of complex polyphony; aurally, too, the alternate strengthening and weakening of the homophonic structure contributes sonorous variety of a contrapuntal nature. It is interesting to note that a similar procedure was used independently from Harris by Jaime Pahissa, a Spanish composer who wrote in 1926 an orchestral work significantly entitled Monodia, in which only unisons, octaves, double octaves, and triple octaves are used. This coincidence of method demonstrates once more that novel aesthetic ideas may occur simultaneously to creative musicians of different backgrounds working in different countries. The counterpoint of Harris is of an absolute type which can suit all instrumental media. This universality of application occasionally results in unidiomatic writing for some instruments, such as the piano. In unaccompanied choral works, the demands that Harris makes on the voices are considerable. Equally demanding is Harris’s writing for orchestral instruments. Yet this supposedly unidiomatic writing for instruments also makes Harris’s style extremely personal, and therefore unmistakably identifiable as an individual manner. In this respect, Harris is akin to Mussorgsky, whose idiomatic crudities had to be smoothed down by Rimsky-Korsakov. Times have changed, and nobody in his right senses would suggest that the idiosyncrasies of Harris’s technique should be smoothed down by an American Rimsky-Korsakov. The shrewd observation of Walter Piston, who said that the very awkwardness of Harris’s idiom constitutes his strength, is very much to the point. In his contrapuntal and harmonic technique, Harris is conscious of the links between creative methods of the 20th century and the formal devices of the old contrapuntists. In his self-analytical program notes, he often describes progressions in consecutive fourths or fifths as organum, and consecutive thirds and sixths as fauxbourdon. The examination of Harris’s scores from the historical viewpoint is rewarding. There is an aura of the Ars Antiqua in the austere progressions of choral masses in a typical polyphonic work of Harris, such as the Symphony for Voices, to Walt Whitman’s words. As the title clearly indicates, the voices are treated as contrapuntal lines. The first movement

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opens, characteristically, in unison constructions, with voices picking up the thread one after another, and then receding into silence, in the fashion of the counterpoint of unisons and rests used by Harris in the First String Quartet. After the mood is established, the voices begin to link in pairs of consecutive fourths, and combine with new couples in consecutive fifths, and then proceed in contrary motion. A quartet of solo voices is contrasted antiphonally to the rest of the ensemble, suggesting a concertino group in a concerto grosso. There is a rhythmic intensification, with melodic phrases overlapping the metric time of 4/4. The ending is plagal, and the final chord is a major triad. The second movement of the Symphony of Voices is a chanty. Once more, the opening is in unisons, evolving contrapuntally by coupling and linking with new voices. A pedal point of the tonic and the dominant supports the shifting upper structures based on thirds. Soon the pedal point itself begins to shift, first a semitone higher, then a fourth up. There follows a chorale in divergent major triads. The music halts. The rhythm is altered. A bass figure appears in an ostinato pattern, and a contrapuntal web is woven upon it. There is a stretto, and the movement concludes in unison. The third movement of the Symphony for Voices, entitled “Tears,” is remarkable in its polyphony. A triadic figure is formed by three voice groups singing in open vowels in a canon by thirds, producing a shimmering fluctuation of major and minor keys. On this wordless background, the sopranos embroider a melody built on converging figures of narrowing intervals, while the tenors and the basses whisper pitchlessly: Tears! Tears! Tears! The triads glide and slide into one another; non-simultaneous entries create a strong illusion of polyphony. A rhythmic stretto leads to a chorale-like conclusion in major harmonies, followed by the inexorable whispers: Tears!

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Symphony for Voices.

The fourth and last movement of the Symphony for Voices, titled “Inscription,” is fugal. There are three distinct subjects, which appear consecutively in three distinct sections. Towards the end, the three subjects coalesce in an artful polyphonic interplay. The final cadence is cast in the characteristically Harrisian progression of major chords arrayed in contrary motion.

Inscription from Symphony for Voices.

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The four movements of the Symphony for Voices follow a true symphonic design: an Allegro, a Scherzo, a slow movement, and a fugal rondo. Canonic devices and fugal developments are ever-present in the chamber music of Harris. His thematic materials unfold “autogenetically” by imitation, variation, ornamentation, diminution, augmentation, and inversion—in brief by all rhythmic and intervallic means except the crab canon, which Harris rejects because of its inorganic nature, and also because Bach never used it. Beethoven used it, almost half-heartedly, only once. The better to unfold his thematic elements. Harris likes to state the subject in the “white” notation of whole-notes and half-notes, at a moderate tempo. About midway in his composing career, Harris switched over from this white notation to black notation in double metronome time. For instance, he originally notated the Passacaglia of the Piano Quintet in 3/ time, with the metronome mark set at 66 for a half-note, but changed 2 the notation for the published edition to 3/4 time, with note-values halved, and the metronome set at 66 for a quarter-note.* Possibly, the constant criticism and derision of the anti-Harris elements in New York City, who expressed annoyance at the visual monotony of his scores (“It would seem that these fellows listen with their eyes,” Harris remarks), have played a role in this notational concession. However that may be, there is a curious parallel in the Harris case with the historic evolution of notation from the medieval hollow notes to the later type of filled-out notes. During a period of some two decades, Harris retraced individually the course that the scribes of the past traversed collectively in a period of some two centuries. The historic instrumental forms, the passacaglia, the fugue, the toccata, undergo special treatment at Harris’s hands. Obviously, Harris is not concerned with such fascinating conventions as the tonal answer in the fugue, the necessary resolution of discords, or the careful voice leading in scale passages and the cautious observance of the relationship of keys. The comes in a Harris fugue is always a real transposition, not a tonal answer to the dux. Harris does place his fugal answers in the key of the dominant or the subdominant, and in this he follows the classical usage. *The “white” version of the Passacaglia is reproduced in the article on Roy Harris in the Musical Quarterly, January 1947.

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His stretti are fairly precise. But beyond this polite bow to the ancient orthodoxy, he refuses to budge. The element of free fantasia intrudes boldly into the sacred precincts. The fugal materials are humanized and Beethovenized. There is, in Harris’s instrumental writing, no demarcation line between a passacaglia and a fugue, a toccata and a fantasia. These forms are classical only in a Harrisian sense. Thus, the Passacaglia subject of the Piano Quintet develops as a triple fugue in a sui generis twelve-tone technique, with contrapuntal flashbacks to the severe organum and fauxbourdon. The aural effect is impressive as pure sound. Paul Rosenfeld described this Passacaglia as “a sort of flowing granite,” not a bad simile for a solid classical form in a modern setting. When Harris writes a toccata, he does not build its themes as a perpetual motion in percussive style, which the classical toccata is supposed to represent. To Harris, a toccata is merely a symbol of fluent continuity, with a Gothic symmetry of form, and asymmetric rhythmic proliferation of rapidly generated melodies and countermelodies. His early orchestral Toccata is overlaid with stratified counterpoint: it is a complex piece of writing utterly at variance with the simple homophonic progress of the classical model. The Piano Toccata, which Harris wrote twenty years later, comes closer to the classical prototype, but in it, too, the music bristles with polyphonically conceived countermelodies. Harris is fond of variations. Once again, his variations are not mechanically contrived figurations, but neo-Beethovenian organic developments, in which the theme is the point of departure, not the stamping ground. Variations, passacaglias, toccatas, and fugues, all these are freely combined in the Harris scores, and it is not always possible to classify them in welldefined categories. This, of course, is as it should be. If music is thawed-out architecture, then in the process of melting, the classical lines must perforce become ductile, malleable, and elastic. In less polyphonic works. Harris concentrates on the problem of melorhythmic animation. An illustration of such rhythmic homophony is Soliloquy and Dance for viola and piano. As the title suggests, Soliloquy is a melodic monologue. Its melody is interesting in that it begins with the outline of the G minor triad and ends with a G flat major triad in the second inversion, in a downward melodic unfoldment. Usually, Harris’s triadic melodies begin with a major triad and end in minor. The relation of the keys of the initial and final triads is also noteworthy: G minor and G flat major are remotely related, but in the Harris scheme of tonal relationship

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these triads are intimately linked by the common tone, B flat. The Dance is a jig in 6/8 time, alternately compressed into 5/8 and extended into 7/8. The companion work to Soliloquy and Dance is the so-called Viola Quintet, scored for two violins, two violas, and a cello. The first viola plays the role of the soloist, accompanied by the string quartet. It is in four movements: Prelude, Melody, Interlude, and Grand Fugue. The Grand Fugue is a triple one. In his Poem for violin and piano, Harris continues his search for an effective melorhythmic line. The reviewer of The New Yorker said that the Poem sounds “as if it might be the slow movement of a sonata.” The guess was a shrewd one, for Harris used the melodic materials of the Poem in the slow movement of his Violin Sonata. This Sonata was published in separate movements with sentimental titles, suggested by the publisher in the hope of attracting a wider group of customers: “Fantasy,” “Dance of Spring,” “Melody.” There was still a fourth movement, a Toccata, but it was not published. Concertos for a solo instrument with orchestras had not claimed the attention of Harris until a relatively late stage of his career. The Clarinet Concerto, op. 2, although titled as such, was a piece of chamber music for six instruments, which afforded Harris an early opportunity to try his skill in counterpoint. His first true essay in this form was a Concerto for Piano and Band written in 1940. It is cast characteristically, in two movements, a Prelude and a Fugue. Another Piano Concerto, with military band, followed. It was in one movement in the form of a fantasy. Later Harris wrote still another Piano Concerto, for a radio orchestra which included jazz instruments. Then there was a Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, in three movements, Toccata, Variations on a chorale theme, and Dance. The Toccata displays a considerable virtuosity for the two pianos. The second movement is a set of seven variations on a theme, with the two solo instruments used in antiphonal sonorities. The Dance is a double fugue, with a long introduction by the orchestra. Even in his Accordion Concerto, Harris clings to classical forms. The Concerto is in two sections, Passacaglia and Dance. The accordion is treated like a woodwind instrument in melodic passages, and like the organ in the tutti. The problem of the Violin Concerto preoccupied Harris for a long time. After the failure of his first attempt to write a display piece for Heifetz, he wrote another Violin Concerto in 1948. It is conceived in one

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movement with two clearly outlined sections, Elegy and Paean. The Concerto opens with an animated orchestral introduction, leading to the entrance of the solo violin, which announces a passacaglia-like subject comprising seven sections of uneven length. The seven-fold subject appears in five variations. A transition period in 5/8 leads to a dance movement in fugal style. There is an interlude in a jig-like variation in harmonics for solo violin, suggesting a whistling tune. The dance is then launched without preliminaries. There is an accompanied cadenza of the solo violin, while the passacaglia of the first section appears in the orchestra. Then follows an unaccompanied cadenza ad libitum, to be improvised by the player in such a manner as to lead with a proper melodic transition to the coda, in which the soloist is joined by all the violins. In the coda, the seven-fold passacaglia subject is restated with contrapuntal ornamentations in the high register of the violins. The Symphonies

It is in his symphonies that Harris achieves the fullest synthesis of his musical Americanism and formal classicism. His first real symphony was one entitled American Portraits: 1929, but he discarded it after repeated disappointments in trying to arrange performances. He dropped the adjective “American” in his next symphony and gave it the matter-of-fact title Symphony: 1933. Later on, the date was dropped from the title, and the work was listed in the Harris catalogue simply as First Symphony. In his program notes, Harris explains the subjective sources of the music: “In the first movement I have tried to capture the mood of adventure and physical exuberance; in the second, of the pathos which seems to underlie all human existence; in the third, the mood of a positive will to power and action.” The first movement of the First Symphony is an Allegro. It opens in the wood-winds with a rhythmic pattern in quarter-notes in triplets and a group of four eighth-notes. As subsequent pattern in the strings is a characteristic rhythmic trademark of Harris: a series of explosive groups of two notes each, the first of which is held, and the second cut off abruptly, with a forceful crescendo. These two patterns form the rhythmic material of the introduction. Then the principal theme appears in the violins. It is lyric in nature, and tonal in its outline, keeping well within the limits of D minor. The music grows in intensity, concluding on a powerful bitonal chord of D major on top of E flat minor.

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Ending of the first movement of the First Symphony.

The second movement, an Andante, opens with a pensive subject stated by the violas. The end of the first melodic phrase is in minor; the initial notes of the second phrase form the second inversion of D major; the end of this second phrase is again in a minor key. Such phrasal beginning in major and phrasal endings in minor are the creative cliches of Harris’s melodies: psychologically, this procedure symbolizes the spirit of action and the spirit of resignation when action is completed. The third and last movement of the First Symphony, Maestoso, is a set of spirited variations on a jig-like theme, derived from consecutive triads of G minor, A minor, B flat major, and F major. The variations develop in canon and imitation, extending into what Harris terms an “autogenetic melodic design of varying lengths and contours.” The Second Symphony follows the formal outlines of the First. There are three movements marked Con bravura, Molto cantabile, and Maestoso. The first movement begins with an insistent rhythmic figure repeated eight times, developing into a broad diatonic melody within the key of B flat major. Harris explains the melodic plan of the first movement as similar to that of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the melodic idea being a development of the first four notes. This four-note phrase occurs four times, once in canon and once in free imitation.

Second Symphony, first movement.

The second movement of the Second Symphony is of a meditative nature. The main theme is built on shifting minor triads, with interpolated notes creating a quasi chromatic design. This theme is developed in

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canonic imitation. There is a dirge-like episode characteristic of much of Harris’s music. It leads to a close in A flat minor. The third and last movement is built on a vigorous theme, in the framework of B flat major, with a typical intervallic spiral formed by diminishing intervals converging on the mediant of the key. There is a rhythmic diminution of thematic materials. The original theme is in dotted half-notes; presently the rhythmic pulse is quickened to form a progression in half-notes, in quarter-notes, and finally in eighth-notes. There is a dirge with dark, dry drum-beats accompanying the astringent strings in hard harmony. The tenseness of the music is increased by sustained fortissimo in slow tempo, passing through a typical rhythmic episode in alternating minor and major thirds in a homonymous tonality of D.

Second Symphony, third movement.

Second Symphony, third movement.

It was the Third Symphony of Harris that proved the most durable. Virgil Thomson called it “America’s most successful work in that form . . . earnest, clumsy, pretentious, imaginative, and terribly sincere.” Roy Harris comments: “Let’s not kid ourselves. The Third Symphony happened to come along when it was needed. The first season it was greeted with the same boos and bravos as have been all my works. That’s the way things happen in America, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.” Harris’s own symphonic favorite is his Fifth Symphony, which he feels has been unjustly neglected. The Third Symphony, which is in one continuous movement, creates an impression of organic unity in a variety of moods. Yet, of all of Harris’s symphonies, it is the least “autogenetic.” The first section is taken almost note for note from the unhatched violin concerto that Harris wrote for Heifetz. The final section, the dirge-like incantation, was added after the first performance, for the New York showing. The rollicking D major

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theme of the fugato, which comes closer to a whistleable and hummable tune than any that Harris ever wrote, is struck in medias res, unprepared. The very suddenness of tonal assault contributes to its tremendous effectiveness. Harris is not unaware of the mass appeal of this tune. He says with confidence: “I have heard this fugal subject whistled and sung and shouted at all hours of the day and night, from coast to coast, by students, taxi drivers, on streets, at football games, and in the subways. I suppose that one of these days we will be hearing it blasted from the jukeboxes.”

Third Symphony.

Of the subjective meaning of the tune. Harris has this to say: The fugal development in D major was a statement of democratic America in answer to the insults hurled by the Hitler regime that we were an effete society fearful of the future. I wanted the subject to be optimistic, gay, and with rhythmic drive. I chose the fugal form, because I thought it was the form which has the strongest continuity. I wanted it to be within an octave so that all the instruments could play it with the greatest of ease. I wanted this subject to be strongly tonal, so I built it around the tonic, the dominant and the subdominant. The smaller rhythmic denominations accumulate as the subject progresses, which gives the effect of funneling the rhythmic force towards greater concentration. Actually the subject combines the energy of dramatic intervals (disjunct) plus dance rhythms in concentrated denominations. All the materials of the fugal section are generated from the subject itself so that it is a fugal form in stretto style.

Harris gave this general outline of the Third Symphony for the Boston Symphony program book: Section I. Tragic—low string sonorities Section II. Lyric—strings, horns, wood-winds Section III. Pastoral—emphasizing wood-wind color

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Section IV. Fugue—dramatic A. Brass—percussion predominating B. Canonic development of Section II material constituting background for further development of Fugue C. Brass climax. Rhythmic motive derived from Fugue subject Section V. Dramatic—Tragic. Restatement of Violin Theme Section I. Tutti strings in canon with tutti wood-winds. Brass and percussion develops rhythmic motive from climax of Section IV. Materials: 1. Melodic Contours—Diatonic—Polytonal 2. Harmonic Textures—Consonance—Polytonal

Later, Harris supplemented this outline by a more detailed analysis of the music: The introduction of the Third Symphony is an autogenetic statement in the cellos, joined by the violas, in an organum counterpoint. In contrast, the cadence is in consonant fauxbourdon harmony, in major sixth-chords, in close position (Measure 42). Later, the doublebasses, supported by the bassoons and colored by bass clarinet, continue the organum harmony, leading to the statement of the first important subject in the violins (Measure 60). Still, the harmonies beneath the violins continue the organum progressions. The violins complete the overtone harmonies proceeding from the organum underneath, which constitutes an organum color unit. The result is a two-part counterpoint of colors, the lower voices being organum color in three parts, in octaves, fifths and fourths, and the upper voice a monody. Comments are here given by brasses in dramatic import (Measures 63–96). This leads to the second, lyric, section (Measure 97), which is part transition, part development. The subject just stated by violins is restated in the woodwinds (Measures 97–137). Against this, the violins develop the last two measures of the main subject (Measures 95 and 96). This lyric section is a transmutation of the disjunct pitch design motive of the first movement of Beethoven’s Third Symphony. This being my Third Symphony, I wished to make a gesture of respect to Beethoven’s Third, which I regard as his most important symphony. The very first time I heard Beethoven’s Third Symphony, I felt that the disjunct motive might have been developed differently. In fact, I had heard in my inner ear

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literally hundreds of transmutations of this disjunct motive. The materials of this section are direct fruits of this long gestation period. The statement of these disjunct themes begins in Measure 152; the contrapuntal development (in eleven parts) begins in Measure 169 in wood-winds and strings, and continues to 194. There follows a melodic bridge (Measures 194–209), in first violins, with ornamentation in flutes and clarinets. These ornamentations constitute an introduction to the mood of the next section, which I consider a pastoral section (Measures 209–416). It has for a background two sets of double inverted canons, in eight voices, in the strings, producing a web of closely-knit harmonic textures (Measures 209–387). Then the wood-winds take over, in independent free-running voices. This section is a study in the rhythmic and dynamic growth, from the barely audible pianissimo of a soft pastoral mood to the dramatic forte which opens the following fugal section (Measures 416–554).

The Third Symphony is the only work of Harris which he connects in any way with a personal experience, quite in an old-fashioned romantic vein: “My conception for this pastoral scene,” he writes, commenting on the section preceding the final fugue, “is the remembrance of the experience I had in the MacDowell Colony in the summer of 1926, during a tremendous storm of lightning, wind, rain, and hail, which began from an ominous calm, and grew in intensity to the greatest storm I ever witnessed. Many wood-winds playing loudly in all kinds of contrapuntal designs have always represented to me the savagery of pantheistic nature, while loud brasses and percussion expressed the savagery of human nature, proceeding from the military world.” Then comes the “jukebox” fugato. Harris continues his story of the last section of the Third Symphony: After the fugal section there is a bridge, which is a further development in brasses and timpani of the rhythmic characteristics of the first measure of the subject, against the restatement of the first subject of the first section of the symphony (Measures from 555 to 634). This brings us to the coda (Measures from 635 to 708), over a timpani pedal on D, which is a tragic summation of the melodic materials of the whole symphony. It ends in G minor on the melody note D, which the symphony began on. The minor harmony was chosen as a symbol of the dark future that seemed imminent. I had formerly ended the work on a

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tutti concentration on a single note D, an octave higher than the note on which the symphony began. Koussevitzky felt that this was not dramatic enough, and insisted on a harmonic ending. This necessitated the rewriting of the whole coda. This new coda began with the timpani solo (Measures 635 to the end). The symphony was scheduled for the New York premiere eleven days after the Boston performance. I had to write the coda and copy all the parts in five days in order to have a rehearsal. I should say that the second coda is probably more effective, but less simple in content and form.

The Fourth Symphony, based on American folk songs, departs from purely symphonic forms and is to be classified with Harris’s works of explicit folk song derivation. The Fifth Symphony returns to pure symphonic design. The circumstance that it is dedicated to the people of Russia is adventitious, for there is nothing in its melodic content that would connect it with Russia, or with Russian music. In fact, the dedication was written in when the music was already well under way. The Fifth Symphony is in three movements, Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue. Harris describes the character of the movements in his selfanalytical program notes: The first movement is very martial in character, and according to its form moves always forward without development sections. The second movement is in singing choral style, yet it is not rhapsodic. After opening with a dark savage introduction which leads to the first long melody (bassoons, English horns), the violins take up the melody and carry it upward to their highest registers, where they stay above a three-voiced chorale in brass and wood-winds. The violas and cellos sing through this chorale from their low to their high registers, where they join the violins. This marks the climax of the movement, from where all the strings come slowly downward against brass and wood-wind harmonies to a long chorale which opens antiphonally between fortissimo muted strings and sonorous brass and wood-wind passages. The whole orchestra gradually melds together to close the chorales of hope and peace.* *This is the chorale in which Harris has written his “Gothic Arch” melody of 118 measures.

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The last movement is structural in materials and form. This movement is a triple fugue in three sections, A, B and C. At the same time it combines the rondo principle in that the opening motive is used for strettos of the first section of the fugue, the subject of which is announced after an introduction of motive 1. The second section is in itself a double fugue, the two subjects of which are generated from the opening motive. The last section further states and develops the materials of section A and B, culminating in a broad climax.

The Sixth Symphony is the Lincoln Symphony. However, its reference to the Gettysburg Address is no more germane to the music than the dedication to the Soviet Union is to the Fifth Symphony. The first movement of the Sixth Symphony, “Awakening,” is in the nature of a prelude; the second movement, “Conflict,” is a symphonic march, alive with strident rhythms and clashing harmonies. The third movement, “Dedication,” is a long chorale, almost entirely homophonic in structure. The fourth movement, “Affirmation,” is fugal. There is a Seventh Symphony, still in the making as of 1951. In it Harris summarizes the cumulative melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic ideas which are expressed in varying manners in the six symphonies now in being.

America Singing

The commanding impulse of Harris’s music is his subjective Americanism, his conviction that he is called upon by destiny, duty, and decision to write American music, in classical forms, and in a subjective manner which, by virtue of his penetrative power, becomes objectively American music. In some of his works, Harris openly quotes American folk tunes. One American tune that he has used time and again is “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” Strictly speaking, it is not a folk song; its paternity can definitely be claimed for Patrick Gilmore, the bandmaster who first published it under the pseudonym of Louis Lambert. After many tentative attempts—in American Portraits, in the Overture of the Gayety and Sadness of the American Scene—Harris finally succeeded in writing a work based on Gilmore’s tune, that was eminently successful. It was the symphonic overture bearing the title of the song itself, When Johnny Comes Marching Home. In a letter to a friend, written at the time of the

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composition of the Overture, Harris described its structure diagrammatically: “It is eight minutes in length, presenting a marvelous architectural problem—how to divide the music into fast-slow-fast sections. It resolved itself as follows: 4 minutes A (2' 15"); B (1' 45")

4 minutes C (1' 45"); D (2' 15")

This is the form of the “Gothic Arch” so beloved by Harris, with its perfect symmetry of climaxes and sub-climaxes, and asymmetrical rhythms underneath the melodic arcades. Harris wrote this description for the published score of When Johnny Comes Marching Home: The first half of the work expresses openly and directly the ribald quality of the theme itself and its transformation into a slow, sad mood. The second half opens with a rhythmic pattern parallel to the opening of the first half and then goes directly with the mood of suppliance. For this section the traditional treatment of the contrapuntal chorale is used in which the theme in slower tempo becomes the bass. This resolves into the last section which treats the mood of struggle for power and ends in an unresolved continuance of that struggle. All the material, throughout, is either a direct statement of the theme, or characteristic fragments of the theme, or variations of the theme, so that the work is abstract from the musicians’ point of view; i.e., it does not depend on programmatic ideas for its form or its content. . . . In the treatment of the texture and the orchestration I have tried to keep the work rough-hewn, sinewy and directly outspoken as are our people and our civilization.

In the Folksong Symphony, his Fourth, Harris once more returned to Johnny in the first movement fittingly subtitled “Welcome Party.” The second movement, “Western Cowboy,” makes use of two folk ballads, “Lone Prairie” and “Streets of Laredo.” The third tune in the Folksong Symphony is the mountaineer’s love song, “I’m Goin’ Away.” The fourth song is “De Trumpet Sounds It Within My Soul.” The finale of the Symphony includes melodic allusions to the song “The Gal I Left Behind Me.” The treatment of these songs is, of course, emphatically Harrisian. The major thirds of the original melodies are metamorphosed into minor thirds and vice versa. Tonalities undergo a sudden sea-change; the harmonization shifts into alien keys. Yet the skewing melodic intervals do

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not offend; the Harrisian tunes roll on as easily as if they are strummed on a cowboy’s guitar. Harris made use of western and southwestern folk songs in his piano suite American Ballads, in which the movements bear the titles of the original songs: “Streets of Laredo,” “Wayfaring Stranger,” “The Bird” (complete title is “The Bird’s Courtin’ Song”), “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,” and “Cod Liver Ile.” The harmonization of “Streets of Laredo” is peculiarly Harrisian. For the plain G major of the song, Harris uses several keys: D major (with the added sixth and seventh), F major (with the added seventh and ninth), G major (with the added seventh and ninth), E major (with the added sixth), and B flat major. The third is flatted in the G major melody to accommodate the key of B flat major. In several of Harris’s works of regional references there are suggestions of folk tunes in the melodic material. In Kentucky Spring, the outline of Stephen Foster’s song, “My Old Kentucky Home,” appears in the beginning and at the very end of the score. The Negro song, “De Trumpet Sounds It Within My Soul,” which underlies the thematic material in the “Negro Fantasy” of the Folksong Symphony, forms the background of Dark Devotion, a piece for band written in 1950. In the score written for the Centennial of the California Gold Rush of 1848, Fruit of Gold, Harris makes use of the hymn of the University of California, “All Hail the Blue and Gold.” Another sample of Harris’s employment of popular tunes is the use he made of “Happy Birthday to You” (in Harrisian harmonization of course) in the orchestral piece Celebration written for Howard Hanson’s fiftieth birthday. In the symphonic overture, Cimarron, thematic melodies are suggestive of cowboy chants and barn dances, but they are all of Harris’s own manufacture. Traditional religious songs have been used by Harris when the nature of the composition called for them. Such is his Rock of Ages, a free fantasy for chorus and orchestra on that old hymn tune; the Harrisian treatment alters the contours of the melody but preserves its melorhythmic inflection. For the composition of his Catholic Mass, Harris made a profound study of religious songs of the Southwest, principally New Mexico. Owing to all sorts of misadventures, the Mass was not performed at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, as originally planned, but Harris has reiterated since that the work had been written “for the Catholic people of America.”

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For the disagreeable details, see TIME Magazine, May 24, 1948. Self-quotations and self-borrowing are frequent in the music of Harris. In several instances he has transplanted whole sections of music from one work into another, with such modifications as are necessary in order to enable the plant to acclimatize in new instrumental conditions. The reincarnation of the Violin Concerto in the Third Symphony is a remarkable instance because of the dissimilarity of purpose of the two forms, and further because of the irony that the Third Symphony should become so successful, while the Concerto did not get anywhere. In fact, the principal theme of the violins in the Third Symphony (measure 60) is a third inoculation, for it originally served as the slow movement of the First String Quartet. It is interesting to compare the rhythmic versions of the first incarnation of the melody in the String Quartet and its final form in the Third Symphony. The rhythmic line has been simplified and smoothed down, but the pitch design remained unaltered. In the lyric section of the Third Symphony, the melody was taken without changes from the corresponding part of the Violin Concerto, but the static harmonies of the Concerto gave way to a diatonically descending bass in the Symphony. The subject of the slow movement of the First Symphony is taken bodily from the Fantasy for piano and woodwind instruments. The slow movement of the Second Symphony is transplanted from the Piano Trio. The Poem for violin became the slow movement of the Violin Sonata. The theme of the third prelude of the Third String Quartet is identical with the melody of “Sad News” from the Little Suite. The theme based on the initials of Carl Engel and G. Schirmer (C-E; G-E flat), which Harris used in his Viola Quintet as a gesture of appreciation for his first regular publishers, went into the making of the double fugue in the last movement of the Fifth Symphony. The viola solo part of the Elegy and Paean is extracted from an earlier work, “Lamentation.” Harris defends this practice of adjusting old materials for new needs by referring to the example of the great masters of the past. Then he wrote Time Suite, in which every movement is trimmed to exact duration, and was accused of being a cerebral composer. Harris published a communication to the Boston Transcript of August 7, 1937, in which he said: “Every great master wrote some of his greatest pages to fit an exact form, such as ecclesiastical, dance, or occasions of state. That is part of the mastery of the art of composition, parallel to the accepting of given dimensional spaces into which the mural artist must

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pour his creative poetry, or the architect building functionally to serve the needs of society.” Mutatis mutandis, Harris can justify his self-borrowing by similar reasoning. And after all, why should a fertile musical idea be used only once, in only one form? Harris treats orchestral sonorities with the same functional regard as the instrumentation of his chamber works. His orchestra is never colorful for the sake of color, or brilliant for the sake of brilliancy. The iridescent displays of the impressionistic palette and the luxuriant sonorities of the Russian orchestra are to Harris mere musical chromos. Yet Harris is not insensitive to effects of sheer sound. The tonal shimmering of the pastoral section in the Third Symphony comes close to impressionistic interplay; instrumental birds are fairly bursting into song in the score of Kentucky Spring; many passages of the Harrisian brass betray a pleasurable infatuation with the power of the fanfares. Harris even experiments in novel effects, such as the electrical amplification of the grand piano by means of a microphone suspended over the strings, which he uses in Elegy and Paean and Fruit of Gold, the band piece that Harris wrote for the centennial of the California Gold Rush. There is percussion aplenty in Harris’s band pieces, including such opulent timbres as the vibraphone. In the score of Cimarron, he even includes a ten-gauge shotgun to start off the musical squatters. On the other hand, Harris treats his harps not as celestial arpeggiators but as prosaic purveyors of glorified pizzicati. He favors pizzicato strings for their capacity of dry precision. Harris prefers the austere quality of chaste violas to the more songful expressiveness of the romantic cello. He fuses sonorities freely, doubling the cellos with the violas, or the violins with the woodwinds. He also resorts to frequent divisi in the strings, thus sparing the musicians the necessity of playing double stops. As far as the general plan of symphonic continuity is concerned, Harris likes to open a symphonic work in unisons and octaves and build up sonorities by contrapuntal addition. The middle sections of his scores contain dynamic ascents and descents in alternation; his endings are homophonic, in rich triadic harmonies. According to the computation made for Columbia University by Philip Gordon, Harris heads the list of American-born composers in the number of symphonic works, number of publications, and number of recordings. According to this survey, made in 1950, Harris has forty-five published

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works of orchestral and chamber music, and twenty-seven vocal and instrumental solos. His total output is ninety works, including six symphonies, six concertos, twenty-five various orchestral works, from five to twenty minutes long, a mass, three cantatas, three ballets, and much chamber and choral music. These statistics can be revised, upwards or downwards, according to the method of listing of single movements from instrumental works, published as separate items. Titles undergo a sea-change from manuscript to performance, from performance to publication. Thus, the Variations on an Irish Tune became the second movement, “Contemplation,” of Harris’s Piano Suite; “Recreation” in the same suite was orchestrated and performed under the title “Children’s Hour.” In the Little Suite for piano, the movement published under the title “Children at Play” was captioned “Happy Children” in the manuscript; the movement, “Sad News,” was originally titled “Sad Children.” It must be said that these original titles are much more expressive, and it is regrettable that they were not retained in the published edition. Three Pieces for Orchestra are made up of two orchestral interludes from the Folksong Symphony and a specially written movement, “Evening Piece,” which later was published separately. The assorted Whitman songs have served in many capacities, as parts of choral suites and ballets. Whatever the validity of the claims made for Harris as America’s Composer Number 1, in productivity and/or quality, there is no doubt whatsoever that his music, boldly individual and unmistakably American, has exercised profound influence on young American composers. This influence is geographically spotty. New York City is not a Harris stronghold; neither is Boston despite the fact that five of Harris’s symphonies were premiered there. But groups of young composers in Rochester, Chicago, San Francisco, and the states where Harris lived as composer in residence, Colorado, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, are apt to produce works redolent of Harris’s triadic harmonies, to mention the most easily assimilated characteristic of Harris’s musical language. In many instances, budding composers who have studied with Harris have become apostles of Harris’s musical gospel, and carry it in turn to their pupils. In the meantime, Harris drives unrelentingly on in his determination to create subjective music of twentieth-century America. Harris had no doubts in 1932 that he would one day become a great composer, and by 1952, many musicians who have come in close contact with his onrushing personality are inclined to agree with him that the promise has been fulfilled.

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3 . C ATA L O G U E O F W O R K S B Y H A R R I S Compositions

PUEÑA HUECA for mixed chorus, violin, cello, and piano. A set of variations on a southwestern Spanish-American folk song. Composed in 1920. First performance, Pasadena Community Chorus, Arthur Farwell conducting, 1920. Unpublished. SONG WITHOUT WORDS for mixed chorus and two pianos. Composed in 1922. Not performed. Unpublished. IMPRESSIONS OF A RAINY DAY, suite for string quartet in four movements: “Lull Before the Rain”; “Rain”; “Evening Song”; “From Over the Hill.” Composed in 1925. First performance, Zoellner String Quartet, Los Angeles, March 15, 1926. MS. ANDANTE for orchestra (from an unfinished symphony, Our Heritage). Composed in 1925. First performance, Rochester, New York, Howard Hanson conducting, April 23, 1926. Unpublished. CONCERTO for clarinet, piano, and string quartet, op. 2 (also known as Sextet). Composed between October and December 1926. First performance, Nadia Boulanger, Cahuzac, Roth String Quartet, Paris, May 8, 1927. Published by Cos Cob Press. WHITMAN TRIPTYCH for women’s voices and piano. Composed in 1927. First performance, Women’s University Glee Club, New York. Published by Schirmer. PIANO SONATA, op. 1, in four movements: Prelude; Andante ostinato; Scherzo; Postlude. Composed in 1928–29. First performance, Harry Cumpson, New York, March 3, 1929. Published by Cos Cob Press. AMERICAN PORTRAITS: 1929 for orchestra in four movements: “Initiative,” “Expectation,” “Speed,” “Collective Force.” Composed in 1929. Not performed. Unpublished. MS in the Fleisher Collection. CONCERT PIECE for orchestra. Extracted from first movement of American Portraits: 1929. Not performed. Unpublished. FIRST STRING QUARTET. Composed in 1929. First performance, New World String Quartet, New York, April 14, 1930. MS. TOCCATA for orchestra. Composed in 1931. Not performed. Unpublished. MS in the Fleisher Collection.

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PIANO CONCERTO. Unfinished. Composed in 1931 on materials extracted from Toccata. MS. ANDANTINO for strings, clarinet, and flute. Composed in February 1931. First performance, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Rodzinski conducting, March 22, 1931. MS. FANTASY for piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn. Composed in 1932. First performance, Pasadena, April 10, 1932. OVERTURE FROM THE GAYETY AND SADNESS OF THE AMERICAN SCENE. Composed in 1932. First performance, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Nicolas Slonimsky conducting, December 29, 1932. THE STORY OF NORAH for mixed chorus, a cappella. Composed in 1933. Published by Schirmer. SEXTET for strings in three movements: Prelude, Chorale, Finale. Composed in 1932. First performance, Yaddo Festival, September 1933. Complete score in the Fleisher Collection. CHORALE FOR STRINGS, op. 3. Second movement of the String Sextet. Composed in 1932. First performance, members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Rodzinski conducting, February 22, 1933. Published by Harold Flammer. Recorded by Victor Company. THREE VARIATIONS ON A THEME (Second String Quartet). Composed in 1933. First performance, Pro Arte String Quartet, Chicago, October 22, 1933. Recorded by Victor Company. FIRST SYMPHONY (SYMPHONY: 1933) in three movements: Allegro, Andante, Maestoso. Composed in 1933. First performance, Boston Symphony, Koussevitzky conducting, January 26, 1934. MS. Score in the Fleisher Collection in Philadelphia. Recorded by Columbia. FOUR MINUTES AND TWENTY SECONDS for flute and string quartet. Composed in February 1934 for Columbia Phonograph Company. First public performance, New York, Nicolas Slonimsky conducting, April 15, 1934. Published by Mills. TRIO for piano, violin, and cello in three movements: Allegro con bravura, Andante religioso, Grave. Composed in 1933. First performance, Berkshire Festival, the Casella trio, September 20, 1934. Published by New Music. Recorded by Columbia.

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A SONG FOR OCCUPATIONS, a capella chorus, after Walt Whitman. Composed in 1934. First performance, Westminster Choir, Moscow, summer 1934; first American performance, New York, November 27, 1934. Published by Schirmer. Recorded by Columbia. WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME, symphonic overture for orchestra. Composed in 1934. First performance, Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, Ormandy conducting, January 13, 1935. Published by Schirmer. Recorded by Victor Company. SANCTUS for mixed chorus. Composed in 1935. Published by Schirmer. POEM for violin and piano. Composed in 1935. Published by Schirmer. Recorded by Albert Spalding for Victor Company. PRELUDE AND FUGUE for string orchestra. Composed in 1935. First performance, Philadelphia Orchestra, Werner Janssen conducting, February 28, 1936. Published by Schirmer. FAREWELL TO PIONEERS, symphonic elegy for orchestra. Composed in September 1935. First performance, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chavez conducting, March 27, 1936. Published by Schirmer. SECOND SYMPHONY in three movements. Composed in 1935. First performance, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Richard Burgin conducting, February 28, 1936. MS. Score in the Fleisher Collection. SYMPHONY FOR VOICES in four movements, a cappella, after Walt Whitman. Composed in 1935. First performance, Westminster Choir, John Finley Williamson conducting, Princeton, May 20, 1936. Published by Schirmer. Recorded by Victor Company. QUINTET for piano and string quartet. Completed December 31, 1936. First performance, Johana Harris and Coolidge String Quartet, New York, February 12, 1937. Recorded by Victor Company (Johana Harris and Roth String Quartet). THIRD STRING QUARTET, a suite of four preludes and fugues. Composed in 1937–38. First performance, Roth String Quartet, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., September 11, 1939. TIME SUITE for orchestra in six movements: “Broadway,” “Religion,” “Youth,” “Communication and Transportation,” “Philosophy,” “Labor.” Composed in 1937. First performance, Columbia network, August 8, 1937.

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Included in the Fleisher Collection. Three movements published by Schirmer as Three Symphonic Essays. SOLILOQUY AND DANCE for viola and piano. Composed in 1938. First performance, William Primrose and Johana Harris, 1938. Published by Schirmer. Recorded by Victor Company. VARIATIONS ON AN IRISH THEME for piano. Composed in 1938. Published by Mills as “Contemplation” from Piano Suite. OLD BLACK JOE for chorus, a free paraphrase. Composed in 1938. RAILROAD MAN’S BALLAD for chorus and orchestra. Composed in 1938. First performance, Brooklyn, February 21, 1941. LITTLE SUITE for piano in four movements: “Bells,” “Sad News,” “Children at Play,”“Slumber.” Composed in December 1938. Published by Schirmer. VIOLIN CONCERTO. Composed in 1938. Not completed. Part of the material is used in the Third Symphony. MS in piano score. THIRD SYMPHONY in one movement. Composed in 1938. First performance, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Koussevitzky conducting, February 24, 1939. Published by Schirmer. Recorded by Victor Company. MOOD for orchestra. Composed in 1938. First performance, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, 1939. SONGS OF DEMOCRACY for mixed choir, a cappella, after Walt Whitman: “Freedom”; “Toleration”; “Year That Trembled”; “To Thee, Old Cause”; “Freedom’s Land” (to the words of Archibald MacLeish). Composed in 1940. Published by Mills. ROCK OF AGES for chorus and orchestra. Composed in 1940. First performance, Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra and Chorus, 1940. Not published. WAITIN’ for voice and piano. Composed in 1940. (Words by Harris.) Published by Mills. A RED BIRD IN A GREEN TREE for chorus, a cappella. Composed in 1940. First performance, Western Kentucky State Teachers College, John Vincent conducting, December 15, 1940. Published by Mills.

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ONE-TENTH OF A NATION, music for a film. Composed in 1940. Unpublished. Score in the Fleisher Collection. QUINTET for two violins, two violas, and cello (also known as Viola Quintet) in four movements: Prelude, Melody, Interlude, Grand Fugue. Composed in 1939. First performance, Coolidge Quartet and William Primrose, Coolidge Festival, Washington, D.C., April 14, 1940. Published by Schirmer. CHALLENGE: 1940 for chorus and orchestra. Composed in June 1940. First performance, Lewisohn Stadium, New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Rodzinski conducting, June 25, 1940. MS. WESTERN LANDSCAPE, ballet. Composed in 1940. First performance, Colorado Springs, August 1940. EVENING SONG for voice and piano. (Poem by Tennyson.) Composed in 1940. Published by Mills. LULLABY for voice and piano. Composed in 1940. AMERICAN CREED for orchestra and chorus. Composed between June 1 and August 11, 1940. First performance, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Stock conducting, October 31, 1940. Unpublished. FOURTH SYMPHONY (Folksong Symphony) for chorus and orchestra in seven movements. Composed in 1939. First complete performance, Cleveland Orchestra, Ringwall conducting, December 26, 1940. Published by Schirmer. ODE TO TRUTH for orchestra. Composed in 1941. First performance, Stanford University, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Monteux conducting, March 9, 1941. MS. CIMARRON, symphonic overture for band. Composed in 1941. First performance, Phillips University Band, Tri-State Festival, Enid, Oklahoma, Harris conducting, April 18, 1941. FROM THIS EARTH, ballet in eight movements: “Dawn,” “Work,” “Dusk,” “The Treadmill and Exhaustion,” “Retrospection,” “Marriage,” “Festival,” “Children at Play.” Composed in 1941. First performance, Hanya Holm Group, Colorado Springs, Harris conducting, August 7, 1941, MS.

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FOLK RHYTHMS FOR TODAY for band in three movements: Foxtrot, Blues, Rumba. Composed in 1940. Tune Rhythms in 1941. First public performance, Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, Mitropoulos conducting, January 29, 1943. MS. Score in the Fleisher Collection. Performed under the title Fantasy on Folktune Rhythms by Stokowski with NBC Symphony, December 19, 1943. MS. THREE PIECES FOR ORCHESTRA (two of which are taken from the Folksong Symphony, and a new movement, “Evening Piece,” added). Composed in 1940. First performance, New York Philharmonic, Barbirolli conducting, March 9, 1941. MS. EVENING PIECE for orchestra (a separate movement from Three Pieces for Orchestra). Composed in 1941. First performance, New York Philharmonic, Barbirolli conducting, March 9, 1941. Published by Mills. SPRING-TIME for voice and piano. Composed in 1942. FREEDOM’S LAND for chorus and orchestra. Composed in 1941. Words by Archibald MacLeish. First performance broadcast over the Columbia network, composer conducting, November 11, 1941. Also arranged for chorus a cappella and as a song for voice and piano. AMERICAN BALLADS for piano: “Laredo,” “Wayfaring Stranger,” “The Bird,” “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” “Cod Liver Ile.” Composed in 1942. Published by Carl Fischer. CHILDREN AT PLAY for piano. Composed in 1942. Published by Mills as “Recreation” in Piano Suite. ACCELERATION. Composed in July 1941. First performance, National Symphony Orchestra, Washington, D.C., Kindler conducting, November 2, 1941; revised version, Indianapolis Symphony, Sevitzky conducting, January 8, 1942. Published by Mills. CONCERTO for piano and band. Composed in 1942. First performance, Johana Harris and University of Michigan Band, Ann Arbor, April 14, 1942. MS. VIOLIN SONATA. Composed in 1942 in four movements: “Fantasy,” “Dance of Spring,” “Melody,” “Toccata.” First performance, William Kroll and Johana Harris, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., October 30,

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1942, Recorded for Columbia by Josef Gingold and Johana Harris. Three movements, “Fantasy,” “Dance of Spring,” and “Melody,” were published separately by Mills. FANFARE for orchestra. Composed in 1942. FOUR CHARMING LITTLE PIECES for violin and piano: “Mood”; “Afternoon Slumber Song”; “Summer Fields”; “There’s a Charm About You.” Composed in 1942. Published by Mills. WHAT SO PROUDLY WE HAIL, ballet in five movements: “What So Proudly We Hail,” “Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Western Cowboy,” “Rock of Ages,” “I’ll be True to My Love.” Composed in 1942. First performance, Hanya Holm Group, Colorado Springs, Harris conducting, August 9, 1942. MS. NAMESAKES, ballet. Composed in 1942. First performance, Hanya Holm Group, Colorado Springs, Harris conducting, August 9, 1942. FANTASY for piano and band. Composed in 1943. First performance, Johana Harris and Fort Logan Band, 1943. LI’L BOY NAMED DAVID for mixed chorus, a cappella. Composed in 1943. Published by Mills. FIFTH SYMPHONY in three movements: Prelude, Chorale, Fugue. Composition completed on December 25, 1942. First performance, Boston Symphony, February 26, 1943. Unpublished. CHORALE AND TOCCATA for organ and brasses. Composed in 1943. First performance, Columbia broadcast, E. Power Biggs at the organ, Harris conducting, September 24, 1944. Chorale had been performed at Columbia broadcast, E. Power Biggs at the organ, Fiedler conducting, September 26, 1943. MARCH IN TIME OF WAR for orchestra. Composed in 1943. First performance, New York Philharmonic, Rodzinski conducting, December 20, 1943. MS. THE BIRDS’ COURTING SONG for mixed chorus, a cappella. Composed in 1944. Published by Mills. WORK SONG for mixed chorus, a cappella. Composed in 1943. Published by Mills.

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PIANO SUITE in three movements: “Occupation,” “Contemplation,” “Recreation.” Composed in 1944. Published by Mills. DRUM TAPS for chorus. Composed in 1944. WALT WHITMAN SUITE for chorus, string orchestra, and pianos. Composed in 1944. First performance, Radio Station KOA, Denver, 1944. Also as ballet, produced by Hanya Holm Group, Colorado Springs, August 18, 1945. TO THEE, OLD CAUSE. Composed in 1944. First Performance, Hanya Holm Group, Colorado Springs, summer 1944. SIXTH SYMPHONY in four movements: “Awakening,” “Conflict,” “Dedication,” “Affirmation.” (Also known as the Gettysburg Address Symphony.) Completed on February 12, 1944. First performance, Boston Symphony Orchestra, April 14, 1944. MS. TAKE THE SUN AND KEEP THE STARS for band. Composed in 1944. Performed on NBC broadcast from Denver, composer conducting, July 15, 1944. Originally scored for chorus and orchestra under the title Sammy’s Fighting Sons. MS. CHORALE for brasses and strings. Commissioned by Sir Henry Wood. First performance, Promenade Concerts, London, 1944. LAMENTATION for voice (vocalizing without words), viola, and piano. Composed in 1944. First performance, Colorado Springs, August 18, 1944. ODE TO FRIENDSHIP for orchestra. Composed in 1944. First performance, Madison Square Garden, New York, composer conducting, November 16, 1944. Published by Mills. HALLELUJAH for chorus, brasses, and organ. Composed in 1945. MS. VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY EUGENE GOOSSENS (Fanfare for orchestra; one variation only by Roy Harris) for orchestra. Composed in 1945. First performance, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Goossens conducting, March 23, 1945. MS. MIRAGE for orchestra. Composed in 1945. First performance, broadcast by members of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Efrem Kurtz conducting, June 19, 1945.

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CHILDREN AT PLAY for orchestra. Composed in 1946. First performance San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, 1946. RADIO PIECE for orchestra. Composed February 17–24, 1946. Commissioned by Radio Station WHAM of Rochester, New York. First performance, Little Symphony Orchestra at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, composer conducting, April 14, 1946. Published by Carl Fischer. FOG for voice and piano. Composed in 1946. Words by Carl Sandburg. Published by Carl Fischer. CONCERTO for piano and orchestra. Composed in 1944. First performance, Johana Harris soloist, radio broadcast, Roy Harris conducting, June 1944. First public performance, Janssen Orchestra, Hollywood, Janssen conducting, Johana Harris soloist, January 20, 1946. MEMORIES OF A CHILD’S SUNDAY, suite for orchestra in three movements: “Bells,”“Dreams,”“Play Hours.” Composed in 1946. First performance, New York Philharmonic, composer conducting, February 21, 1946. MS. BLOW THE MAN DOWN for chorus, band, and strings. Composed in 1945. First performance, Cleveland Heights High School Chorus, Harris conducting, April 22, 1946. MS. MELODY for orchestra. Composed in 1946. Performed by High School of Music and Art orchestra, Richter conducting, May 12, 1946. Published by Carl Fischer. CELEBRATION for orchestra. Composed in 1946 for the fiftieth birthday of Howard Hanson. First performance, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Koussevitzky conducting, October 25, 1946. MS. CONCERTO for two pianos and orchestra in three movements: Toccata, Variations on a Chorale, Dance. Composed in 1946. First performance, Denver Symphony Orchestra, Saul Caston conducting, Johana Harris and Max Lanner pianists, January 21, 1947. MS. CONCERTO for accordion and orchestra. Composed in 1947. First performance, NBC Symphony Orchestra, composer conducting, June 2, 1947. Unpublished.

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MADRIGAL for chorus. Words by Harris. Composed in 1947. MS. EASTER MOTET for mixed chorus, organ, and brasses. Composed in 1947. First performance, Grace Episcopal Church, Colorado Springs, 1947. ISRAEL, motet for tenor solo, mixed chorus, and organ. Composed in 1947. First performance, Temple Emanuel, New York, 1947. Published in a collection of Jewish music. WEDDING SONG for bass voice, violin, viola, cello, and organ. Composed in August 1947 for the wedding of a student. Unpublished. QUEST for orchestra. Composed in 1947. First performance, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, composer conducting, January 29, 1948. MS. MASS for men’s voices and organ. Composed in 1948. First performance, Columbia University Festival, New York, May 13, 1948. Published by Carl Fischer. ELEGY AND PAEAN for viola and orchestra. Composed in 1948. First performance, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Efrem Kurtz conducting, Primrose soloist, December 13, 1948. MS. CONCERTO for violin and orchestra. Composed in 1948–49. Not performed. Unpublished. TOCCATA for piano. Composed in 1949. Published by Carl Fischer. KENTUCKY SPRING. Composed in 1949. First performance, Louisville Symphony Orchestra, Harris conducting, April 5, 1949. FRUIT OF GOLD for band. Composed in 1949. First performance University of California Band, composer conducting, May 10, 1949. DARK DEVOTION for band. First performance, Louisville, April 12, 1950. CUMBERLAND CONCERTO for orchestra. Composed in 1951. First performance, Cincinnati Symphony, Thor Johnson conducting, October 19, 1951. SEVENTH SYMPHONY. Composed in 1951. First performance, Chicago Symphony, Rafael Kubelik conducting, November 20, 1952.

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Nicolas Slonimsky

Arrangements

BACH’S ART OF THE FUGUE for string quartet (in collaboration with M. D. Herter Norton, 1934; published by Schirmer). Recorded by the Roth String Quartet for Columbia. FIVE ORGAN PRELUDES OF BACH transcribed for piano (in collaboration with Johana Harris). SINGING THROUGH THE AGES two volumes of choral music, edited by Roy Harris and J. Evanson, 1940. THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER arranged for string quartet. First performance, Budapest String Quartet, Washington, D.C., April 8, 1941.

INDEX

a cappella works, 256 Achorripsis, 81 Alaleona, Domenico, 104 All in the Spring Wind, 144–145 Altenberg Lieder, 68 Altenberg, Peter, 68 American Ballads, 320 American music, 56–65; constructivist composers, 61; Elliott Carter, 61; George Gershwin, 63; Gian Carlo Menotti, 63; John Cage, 57–58; Leonard Bernstein, 63; Lukas Foss, 63; Marc Blitzstein, 62; neoclassicism, 64–65; Norman Dello Joio, 62; operas, 61–63; Peggy Glanville-Hicks, 63–64; progress of American music, 56–57; Randall Thompson, 62; Roger Sessions, 61; romanticism, 59; short satirical operas, 62–63; utilitarian music, 59–60; Vincent Persichetti, 61; Walter Piston, 60–61 American Portraits: 1929, 246 Amériques, 213 Amiable Conversation, 112 And the Fallen Petals, 140, 145 Antheil, George, 15–16, 58, 112 Antoniou, Theodor, 79 Araújo, Gomes de, 31 Arcana, 206, 216 Ardevol, Jose, 10 Arte dei rumori, 70 atonality, 158

Babbitt, Milton, 95–96, 96–97, 113–114 Bachianas Brasileiras, 29, 224 Ballet mecanique, 112 Banshee, The, 149 Barbacci, Rodolfo, 28, 38–39 Barber, Samuel, 58, 111 Bartok, Bela, 115, 129–133 Bembe, 8 Berg, Alban, 54, 68 Berger, Arthur, 97 Berio, Luciano, 118 Bernstein, Leonard, 63, 111–112 Black Maskers, The, 200 Blackwood, Easley, 64 Blitzstein, Marc, 62, 250–251 Bloch, Ernest, 200–201 Blow the Man Down, 280 Boero, Felipe, 42 Boogie-Woogie Suites, 192 Boor, The, 179 Boulanger, Nadia, 110–111, 240 Brant, Henry, 92–93 Brown, Earle, 114 Burbank, Richard, 125 Cage, John, 57–58, 88–89, 113, 114 Canaro, Francisco, 26 Carrillo, Julián, 29–30 Carter, Elliott, 61 Casella, Alfredo, 17–18 Castagnone, Riccardo, 21 Castañeda, José, 25, 32–33 Castro, José María, 43 335

336 Castro, Juan José, 42 Caturla, Alejandro García, 8–9, 25, 134–137 Celebration, 284 Centauro do Ouro, 220 Challenge: 1940, 268–269 Chanler, Teddy, 13 Children of Pireus, The, 80 Chilean composers, 24, 25 Chorikon, 80 Choros, 224 Chou, Wen-chung, 138–147; And the Fallen Petals, 140, 145; form of work, 143; Landscapes, 140, 144–145; linear movement motives in, 142; rhythm in work, 143; Seven Poems of Ta’ng Dynasty, 146–147; Soliloquy of a Bhiksuni, 146; tempo in work, 143; tonality in work, 142; vertical amplification, 142–143; The Willows Are New, 145–146 Christmas Tree, The, 99 Christou, Jani, 74–77 Cimarron, 270 Concord Sonata, 110, 166–167 constructivist composers, 61 Copland, Aaron, 59, 111 Coronela, 46 Cowell, Henry, 15, 60, 112–113, 148–152; New Music, 152; Polyphonica, 151; Rhythmicana, 150; Synchrony, 150–151 Craft, Robert, 66 Creston, Paul, 59 Crumb, George, 89–90, 114 Cuban instruments, 6 Cuban music, 6–11; Alejandro García Caturla, 8–9, 25, 134–137; Amadeo Roldan, 7–8; Jose Ardevol, 10; Maria Munoz de Quevedo, 10–11; orchestra, 6; Pedro Sanjuan, 9–10; Philharmonic Orchestra, 10; Rumba, 6 Dallapiccola, Luigi, 18–20, 54 Daphnis et Chloé, 71

Index Debussy, Claude, 100 Delgadillo, Luis A., 23 Della Joio, Norman, 62 Déserts, 211 Desiccated Embryos, 69 Desir, 100 Diamond, David, 59 Dichotomy, 197 Disney, Walt, 217 Dodecaphonic music, 50–55; Alban Berg, 54; Anton von Webern, 54; Arnold Schoenberg, creator of, 50–54; arranging twelve tone rows, 51–52; disciples of Arnold Schoenberg, 54–55; dissonances and consonances, 53; Ernst Krenek, 54; Fartein Valen, 55; Franz Liszt, 53; Fritz Klein, 53; Josef Matthias Hauer, 52; Klavierstück for piano, 55; Luigi Dallapiccola, 54; twelvetone composition method, 51–52 dodecaphonic system of composition, 170 Dorian mode, 298 Duffey, Beula (Johana Harris), 261–263 Ecuatorial, 211 Edman, Irwin, 285 Elektra, 216 environmental music, 121–122 Espace, 212 euphonious dissonances, 102–103 Evocation, 85–86 Farwell, Arthur, 237–238 Feldman, Morton, 91 Festin de l’Araignée, Le, 71–72 Five Orchestral Pieces, 67 folklore, 116, 118 folk songs, 116 Folksong Symphony, 267–268, 319 Forest Play, 154 Fortner, Wolfgang, 80 Foss, Lukas, 63 Four Nocturnes for Violin and Piano (Night Music II), 89–90

Index Four Saints in Three Acts, 62 Fourth of July, The, 162 Freedom’s Land, 269 Fruit of Gold, 283 “furniture music,” 118 Futurist movement, 70–71 Galeano, Ignacio Villanueva, 30–31 Galliard, John Ernest, 4 Gavazzeni, Gianandrea, 21–22 Gazouleas, Stephanos, 79 Gershwin, George, 63, 116, 116–117 Gettysburg Address symphony, 276 Glanville-Hicks, Peggy, 63–64 Glass, Philip, 119 Glinka, Mikhail, 122 Golden Centaur, The (Centauro do Ouro), 47, 220, 222 graphic notation, 114 Greek music, 73–84; Anestis Logothetis, 83; Arghyris Kounadis, 80; Arnold Schoenberg, 73–74; Dimitri Levidis, 78; George Leotsakos, 83; Georges Poniridis, 77; George Tsouyopoulos, 82–83; Ianis Xenakis, 81–82; Jani Christou, 74–77; Manos Hadzidakis, 80; Metatropes, 74; Nikos Mamangakis, 82; Nikos Skalkottas, 73–74; Patterns and Permutations, 74; Petro Petridis, 77–78; Stephanos Gazouleas, 79; Stochastic music, 82; Theodor Antoniou, 79; Yannis Ioannidis, 79; Yiannis Papaioannou, 78; Yorgo Sicilianos, 76–77 Hadzidakis, Manos, 80 Hale, Philip, 72 Hanson, Howard, 58, 153–156 Harris, Johana, 261–263 Harris, Roy, 12–13, 59, 111, 231–334; $2,500 tea party, 238–240; America singing, 318–334; broken vertebrae, 244–246; Colorado Springs homestead, 277–281; comes home, 256–259; concerto in Paris, 240–242; counterpoint, 291; form,

337 292; genius of, 248–249; gloomy grandeur of, 250–251; harmony, 292; high pitch in work, 281–284; intervals and tonality, 293–296, 296–299; and Leroy Harris, 233–235; Lincoln Day 1898, 231–233; lucky number five, 261–263; melodic inspiration and moods of, 267–271; melody, 290–291; modern classicism, 303–311; New York interlude, 242–244; Optimi Ingenii Vir, 284–286; orchestration, 293; rhythm, 291; salute to Soviet Society, 273–275; skepticism in New York, 253–256; sphere of harmonies, 299–303; stolen symphony of, 246–248; symphonies, 251–253, 311–318; symphony for Blue Network, 275–277; trials, 259–261; vocal writing, 293; work for Jascha Heifetz, 263–266 Hauer, Josef Matthias, 52, 104 Hindemith, Paul, 104 Hyperprism, 206, 207 I Got Rhythm, 117 imagery, musical, 141 Impressions of a Rainy Day, 239 Intégrales, 215 intervallic specialization, 121 Intonarumori, 70 Ioannidis, Yannis, 79 Ionisation, 13, 115, 209–210 Italian futurists, 69–70, 112 Italian music, modern, 17–22; Adone Zecchi, 20–21; Alfredo Casella, 17–18; Franco Margola, 21; Gianandrea Gavazzeni, 21–22; Gian Francesco Malipiero, 17–18; Gian Luca Tocchi, 18–20; Giulio Cesare Sonzogno, 21; Goffredo Petrassi, 18–19; Ildebrando Pizzetti, 17; Lino Liviabella, 20; Luigi Dallapiccola, 18–20; Ottorino Respighi, 17; Renzo

338 Rosselini, 21; Riccardo Castagnone, 21; Riccardo Nielsen, 21 Ives, Charles, 57, 71, 72, 109–110, 157–169; as musical prophet, 165–169; as musical rebel, 157–165 jazz, 100, 117 Jeppesen, Knud, 271–272 Johnson, Tom, 120 Jonny spielt auf, 117 Kalomiris, Manolis, 77 Kay, Ulysses, 170–179; best works of, 173; dramatic expression of, 179; first works of, 172–173; harmonies in music, 177; modernism of, 170; musical memories of, 171–172; polyphonic writing, 176; use of instrumentation, 178; use of melodic line, 174–175 Kentucky Spring, 283 Klein, Fritz Heinrich, 53, 113 Kounadis, Arghyris, 80 Koussevitzky, Serge, 251–252, 264, 273–274 Krenek, Ernst, 54 Lady Macbeth of the District of Mtinsk, 123 Landscapes, 140, 144–145 La Rebambaramba, 8 Latin American composers, 23–49; Alejandro García Caturla, 8–9, 25, 134–137; Alfonso Leng, 25; and American critics, 28–29; Andres Sas, opinions of, 36–38; Chilean composers, 24, 25; copyrighting of music from, 26; corresponding with, 39–40; in Ecuador, 26–27; Francisco Canaro, 26; in Guatemala, 33; Guillermo Uribe Holguin, 25; how earn living, 24–25; José Castañeda, 25, 32–33; judgment of values of, 34–35; Julián Carrillo, 29–30; Luis A. Delgadillo, 23; musical violence in Argentina,

Index 27–28; obtaining manuscripts from, 40–48; political complexion of, 48–49; prizes awarded, 23–24; purchasing published music of, 48; Raoul de Verneuil, 38; Rodolfo Barbacci, 38–39; self-appreciation of, 30–31; Universalism and Indigenism present in music from, 29 Lees, Benjamin, 180–189; Adagio movement, 186–187, 188, 189; Allegro movement, 186, 188–189; Concerto for Chamber Orchestra, 186; concertos by, 184–185; contrasts in music, 181; Fourth Piano Sonata, 188–189; Gestalt, 187–188; Medea in Corinth cantata, 182; rhythmic percussion in work of, 180–181; Spectrum for orchestra, 187; Spiritoso movement, 187; symphonist, 183; Third Symphony of, 184; tripartite symmetry, 185–186; The Trumpet of the Swan symphony, 182–183 Leng, Alfonso, 25 Leotsakos, George, 83 Levidis, Dimitri, 78 Liszt, Franz, 53 Little Suite, 299 Liviabella, Lino, 20 Locrian mode, 298 Logothetis, Anestis, 83 Lux Aeturna, 154 Lydian mode, 298 MacDowell, Edward, 109–110 Mahler, Gustav, 124 Malipiero, Gian Francesco, 13, 17–18 Mamangakis, Nikos, 82 Mann, Thomas, 105 Man of Aran, 15 Margola, Franco, 21 Mayer-Serra, Otto, 44 Medea in Corinth, 182 Memories and Commentaries, 66 Mennin, Peter, 90

Index Menotti, Gian Carlo, 63 Merry Mount, 156 metamathematical music, 67 Metatropes, 74 Miaskovsky, Nikolai, 123 Micropaedia, 89 Mignone, Francisco, 28, 48–49 modernist composers, 12–16; Edgar Varèse, 13–15; George Antheil, 15–16; Henry Cowell, 15; Roy Harris, 12–13 modern music, overview, 3–5 Monologue, 82 Morsima-Amorsima, 81 Munch, Charles, 283 Munoz de Quevedo, Maria, 10–11 musical imagery, 141 Music for Percussion, 82–83 Music Since 1900, 125 musique concrete, 118 Nancarrow, Conlon, 190–193 neoclassicism, 64–65 Newman, Ernest, 67 New Music, 152 New Musical Resources, 113 Nielsen, Riccardo, 21 Nocturne, 89 Obouhov, Nicolas, 104 Octandre, 207 Ode To Friendship, 274 Ode To Truth, 269 One Tenth of a Nation, 268 open-end composition, 114 operas, American, 61–63 Orff, Carl, 116 Overture from the Gayety and Sadness of the American Scene, 247 pandiatonicism, 101 Papaioannou, Yiannis, 78 Parisian chord, 302 Parker, H.T., 252–253 Patterns and Permutations, 74 Penis Dimension, 215

339 Persichetti, Vincent, 61 Petrassi, Goffredo, 18–19 Petridis, Petro, 77–78 Petroushka chord, 101 Phoenix Music, 75 Pierrot Lunaire, 66–67 Piston, Walter, 60–61, 94, 111, 194–195 Pithoprakta, 81 Pizzetti, Ildebrando, 17 player piano, 191 Poème électronique, 211–212 Polyphonica, 151 polyphonic writing, 176 polyrhythmy, 158 polytonality, 18, 101, 158 Ponce, Manuel, 26 Poniridis, Georges, 77 Porgy and Bess, 63 Pratella, Balilla, 70 Prokofiev, Sergei, 3, 123 Proletarian Organization of Musicians, 122 Prometheus Bound, 75 Quombex, 93 Ravel, Maurice, 71 rectograph, 46 Reger, Max, 104 Reich, Steve, 119 Respighi, Ottorino, 17 Revelation of the Fifth Seal, The, 77 Revueltas, Silvestre, 46 rhumba, 6, 137 Rhythmicana, 150 rhythmicon, 150 Riegger, Wallingford, 59, 87–88, 196–198 Rimsky-Korsakov, 115 rock music, 117 Rodzinski, Artur, 246 Roldan, Amadeo, 7–8 romanticism in American music, 58, 59 Romantic Symphony, 155 Rosenfeld, Paul, 243 Rosselini, Renzo, 21 Roussel, Albert, 71–72

340 Rumba, 6 Russolo, Luigi, 70–71 Sacre du Printemps, Le, 66, 68–69 Sadko, 115 Sahl, Michael, 91–92 Sammy’s Fighting Sons, 270 Sanjuan, Pedro, 9–10 Sas, Andres, 36–38 Satie, Erik, 69, 118–119 satirical operas, 62–63 Schillinger, Joseph, 117 Schönberg, Arnold, 50–55, 66–67, 72, 73–74, 104–108, 129–133 Schuman, William, 59 Scriabin, Alexander, 100–101 Second Piece for Violin Alone, 93–94 Serenade for Orchestra, 177, 178 Sessions, Roger, 61, 94–95, 107, 199–203; biography of, 200–202; Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, 203; use of rhythm, 203 Seven Poems of Ta’ng Dynasty, 146–147 Shapey, Ralph, 85–87 Shostakovich, Dmitri, 123–124 Sicilianos, Yorgo, 76–77 Six Synthetic Poems, 10 Skalkottas, Nikos, 73–74 Slonimsky, Sergei, 121 Soliloquy and Dance, 272 Soliloquy of a Bhiksuni, 146 Sollberger, Harvey, 97–98 Solos, 98 Sonata Concertante, 90 Sonatina, 88 Sonzogno, Giulio Cesare, 21 Spectrum, 187 Spiritoso, 187 Sprechstimme, 67, 114 Stratégie, 82 Strauss, Richard, 53 Stravinsky, Igor, 3, 65, 67–68, 101–102, 103, 108 Streets of Laredo, 320 Symphonie pathetique, 115

Index Symphony for Voices, 257–258, 305–308 Synchrony, 150–151 Tanagra, 76–77 Tender Melody, 73 Theremin, Leon, 211 Thompson, Randall, 62 Thomson, Virgil, 119–120, 251 Three-Page Sonata, 163 Three Places in New England, 158, 162, 165 Time Suite, 260–261 Tocchi, Gian Luca, 18–20 tone clusters, 112, 149 Tone Roads, 169 Toscanini, Arturo, 265 total serialism, 113 tritone, 102, 204 Trumpet of the Swan, The, 182–183 Tsouyopoulos, George, 82–83 twelve-tone music, see Dodecaphonic music twentieth century music, 99–125; Aaron Copland, 111; Alexander Scriabin, 100–101; Arnold Schoenberg, 104–108; Bela Bartok, 115; Carl Orff, 116; Charles Ives, 109–110; Claude Debussy, 100; computerized music, 120; Dmitri Shostakovich, 123–124; Edgar Varèse, 115; Edward MacDowell, 109–110; environmental music, 121–122; Erik Satie, 118–119; euphonious dissonances, 102–103; folklore, 116, 118; folk songs, 116; French Six (Les Six), 119; Fritz Heinrich Klein, 113; George Antheil, 112; George Gershwin, 116–117; Heitor Villa-Lobos, 116; Henry Cowell, 112–113; Igor Stravinsky, 101–102, 103; intervallic specialization, 121; jazz, 100, 117; John Cage, 113, 114; Josef Matthias Hauer, 104; Joseph Schillinger, 117; La Monte Young, 119; legislating

Index musical style, 122–123; Leonard Bernstein, 111–112; Luciano Berio, 118; Max Reger, 104; medieval universities music, 102; Milton Babbitt, 113–114; music in space, 121; Nadia Boulanger, 110–111; Nicolas Obouhov, 104; Nikolai Miaskovsky, 123; Nikolai RimskyKorsakov, 115; noneuphonious dissonances, 103; objets trouves method, 118; pandiatonicism, 101; Paul Hindemith, 104; Philip Glass, 119; polytonality, 101; ragtime, 100, 117; Richard Burbank, 125; rock music, 117; Roy Harris, 111; Samuel Barber, 111; Sergei Prokofiev, 123; Sergei Slonimsky, 121; serialism by appointment, 121; Sprechstimme, 114; Steve Reich, 119; Virgil Thomson, 119–120; Walter Piston, 111 Uribe Holguin, Guillermo, 25 utilitarian music, 59–60 Valderrama, Carlos, 39 Valen, Fartein, 55 Varèse, Edgar, 13–15, 115, 204–216; Amériques, 213; applying for grants, 210; compared to Perotinus Magnus, 204; criticism of Arcana, 206; death of, 216; faith in himself, 207; Hyperprism, 206; income of, 208; influence after death of, 213–214; influence on Frank Zappa, 214–215; Ionisation performance, 209–210; methods of, 215; Octandre, 207; and Philips Company, 211–212; physical appearance of, 212–213; Poème électronique, 211–212; rendition of rhythmic values in music, 215–216; review of Hyperprism, 207; success in 1950’s, 208–209; use of electronic sound, 211

341 Verneuil, Raoul de, 38 Villa-Lobos, Heitor, 116, 217–228; Bachianas Brasileiras, 224; birthdate, 221; Centauro do Ouro manuscript, 220; and children, 221; Choros, 224; on folklore, 116; head of education in Rio de Janeiro, 218–219; history of, 225–227; manuscripts of, 220; medieval polyphonic medley in music of, 223–224; and nature, 224–225; physical energy of, 221; scientific music of, 228; telescoped words, use of when writing, 219–220 violinists, music for, 85–98; Arthur Berger, 97; George Crumb, 89–90; Harvey Sollberger, 97–98; Henry Brant, 92–93; John Cage, 88–89; Michael Sahl, 91–92; Milton Babbitt, 95–96; Morton Feldman, 91; Peter Mennin, 90; Ralph Shapey, 85–87; Roger Sessions, 94–95; Stefan Wolpe, 93–94; Wallingford Riegger, 87–88; Walter Piston, 94 von Webern, Anton, 54 Wedding Song, 281 Wertheim, Alma, 240 When Johnny Comes Marching Home, 234, 247–248, 318–319 Willows Are New, The, 145–146 Wolpe, Stefan, 93–94 Work, 272 Xenakis, Ianis, 81–82 Yamba-O, 9, 135–136 Young, La Monte, 119 Zappa, Frank, 214 Zecchi, Adone, 20–21

“Millimetration” by Villa-Lobos of a photograph of the Slonimsky family at breakfast, 1941.

NS in Havana, Cuba, 1933.

With John Cage, March, 1982. (Copyright Betty Freeman.)

l to r: Virgil Thomson, Anita Ellis, NS in New York on June 8, 1987.

NS with Roy Harris in Nashville, Tennessee, 1951.

1932 program flyer from Paris, marked by NS “A memorable program.”

Another 1932 concert in Paris.

Bloch and Frost sign NS’s guest book.

Virgil Thomson’s entry in guest book.

Entry from Aaron Copland.

Entry from Leonard Bernstein.

Entry from Henry Cowell.

Entry from Lukas Foss.

Entries from Edgar Varèse and Morton Gould.

Entry from Roy Harris.