"Maximum Clarity" and Other Writings on Music

How to Cook an Albatross

how to cook an albatross 1970 The world of “serious music” stubbornly bases itself on a sterile presumption .Since the “standard repertory,” in no matter what areas of performance, is historical,it creates a museum situation.While there is nothing wrong with having museums,we should not take their contents to be the principal means to satisfy contemporary needs. Perennially we make just this error. The proportion of music of our own times now in the repertory of most concert artists and ensembles is smaller today than at any other period in the history of concert giving. When most performing artists, warned that they are not bringing about a repertory for the future,set about to find new works, they seek imitations of the old works, which they believe they “understand.” In fact,most of them do not understand the art of the past at all.They do not make the effort to imagine what it was in its own time,taking it instead in the context of today.The role they find repertory music playing in today’s society they impose unthinkingly on today’s music. Looking back for all “greatness” has become so reflex an action that it is presumed normal. In fact, it is not normal at all: it is an historical anomaly. As Gilbert Chase writes: In the eighteenth century it was an asset rather than a liability for a composer to be alive. Not only his music but also his living presence were solicited as a privilege for the public . . . The eighteenth century might indulge in idolatry . . . but it was the distinction of the nineteenth century to develop the cult of musical necrolatry . . . The “Great Repertoire” cannot change, because it involves too many vested interests. Far from being an incentive to the American composer, it is a permanent barrier.1 In the United States today a “serious composer” is called “young” up to the age of fifty if he has not been accepted into the musical establishment by then.The composers’ wing of the establishment is a bureaucracy,comprising the few who, after waiting out a protracted “youth,” finally have a moment’s recognition. This privilege they defend for as long as they can, knowing its radical impermanence. Innovators are recognized by the establishment, if at all, only in old age, since independent thinkers are the toughest competition of all. Most performers and conductors advise composers (if they want performances ) to write music (if they must write at all) which does not deviate much from the standard repertory. But a docile composer who wants only to write conventional music for standardized solo, chamber, and orchestra concerts has to struggle for all of his career for more than a few scattered first performances.His work (it is pointed out) is poor competition for the “masterworks .” The following arrogant quotation was recently widely reprinted in the press and popular magazines: “I occasionally play works by contemporary composers, and for two reasons. First, to discourage the composer from writing any more.And second,to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven” (violinist Jascha Heifetz). To cite Gilbert Chase again: The difficulty was that by the end of the nineteenth century admission to the Standard Repertory (the effective vehicle of the Great Tradition) has become increasingly difficult for new composers . . . Not only was the competition keener, but the club was getting crowded. It was approaching the saturation point. Guest memberships were available, but permanent admission was virtually impossible, save for a very select few. To make a place for himself a newcomer had to oust an old member. The Europeans had all the advantages; not only were most of them dead, but those who were living had an inside track on the Great Tradition. No wonder that no American composer has ever really made it.2 Conventional concert and opera audiences, led by performers and by writers about music, usually gravitate toward comfortable, familiar music, even at the cost of boredom. They seem to know little about pertinence. The idea that a piece of music could be apt (or inept) at a given time and place for reasons more important than its vogue seems never to have occurred to most concertgoers. A concert may be pleasant, diverting, and “uplifting,” but the listening experience it provides rarely has any urgency or potency. At the worst it can even induce sleep by its failure to keep attention. The public performance of repertory music has become a variety of genteel entertainment. To...