A composer viewing this century's music. [UCSD Lecture III]

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In the early 1920s, shortly after I entered the profession as a diploma-carrying composer, general preoccupation with sociological problems started among the practitioners of any sector of the musical trade started, and it has not much subsided ever since. The role of music in society, its function therein, or the absence of such function are favorite subject matters of permanent discussion, oral or printed.

It seems that this has not been the case in earlier periods. One certaily does not read much about sociological problem in the historical accounts of the centuries before the nineteenth. All that seemed to matter was the artistic quality of the music as determined by the experts - composers, performers, theorists, critics - who measured the relative accomplishments by stan- dards immanent to the art itself. Apparently it was assumed without question that music always had an public audience, inasmuch as music was understood to be a form of communication among human beings.

It may be well, however, to notice that a somewhat different attitude seems to have prevailed during the Middle Ages. A symptom of this may be seen in the fact that in the classification of the so-called seven liberal arts music was grouped together with the abstract arts of measurement and proportion - that is, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, which we today would call exact science, and not with the arts of communication: grammar, rhetoric and logic. Looking at the formidable com- plexities of fourteenth and fifteenth century music one is tempted to think that these works were not really meant to be understood or enjoyed by the people who heard them in the same sense as we are ac- customed to relate the recipient to the art object that he perceives. One might suspect that the ideal recipient of those involuted musical edifices was God in whose honor also had been constructed those gigantic involutions of Gothic masonry in which that music was heard.

Undoubtedly, the social revolutions that followed World War I in the defeated countries, and especially the overthrow of traditional values in Russia prompted this interest in ther social aspects of artistic creation. 32 III 2

Of course, this was religious music, that is, just one sector of the entire realm of music. But it was identical with art music, or what we nowadays call "serious" music. The secular music of that age was only marginally related to associated with affected by the standards that were traditionally set up for the high-level church music, although we have to admit that some of the chansons and other ensemble pieces by composer such as Machaut, Cordier or Landini were pretty demanding as far as contrapuntal construction and rhythmic complexity are concerned. It is hard to tell what kind of response such pieces found, whether there was any public demand for them in our sense of such terms, or whether they were appreciated by a small minority just like our new complex music today. At any rate, the less exacting specimens of secular music, which would cor- respond to what we now call "entertainment" music, certainly had their consumers, as such music always has.

The articulation formulation of the demand requirement that music ought to communicate something or other and thus evoke a definite response in those who are exposed to it as listeners seems to be a product of the Renaissance. The most obvious result of this change in the pychology of the recipients is opera. Here music becomes a medium through which general human ex- perience is given eloquent articulation in the most immediate direct form. From here on the listener expects that music will tell him something - be it, on the most primitive level, simple acoustical information, like the imitation of bird calls, the rhythmic pounding of galopping horses, or other more or less entertaining descriptive tricks - or, on a higher level, supply magic insight into emotional depths that without music might remain obscure.

But secular music has not remained operatic - it has become what was called "absolute", that is not explicitely associated with extra-musical content, in other words, purely instrumental music without text words. This music has gradually become more and more autonomons. Its changes and developments were distated by internal evolutionary processes rather than by changes in the expectations of the listeners, notwithstanding the materialistic theories that try to demonstrate such changes

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to be caused by mutations of the social structure. We don't believe that the Concerto grosso form that was dominated the instrumental scene well into the eighteenth century was replaced by the symphony because of public demand due to some dislocation in the texture of society, although it may be possible from our distant vantage point to discover some parallel evolutionary changes in various fields and ponder the secrets of their synchronization in history.

At any rate, secular music has undergone rather dramatic changes ever since the seventeenth century, but its audiences have not modified their expectation that music should communicate some sort of a message to which they hope to respond sympathe- tically, and, it must be said, composers have consistently shared this attitude with a very few exceptions we have heard about in the present timme, exceptions that may well be explained by the predicament that we experience today.

The predicament consists, plainly spoken, in the fact that the contemporary composer does not have as many paying cust- omers as he not only wishes to have, but also needs in order to keep alive and active. The protracted discussion of sociological, political and economic conditions within under which the relation of the composer and his public unfolds basically turns about this complaint. Among the numerous explanations offered the most plausible is twofold: on the one hand it is a matter of quantity in that the number of potential public music customer has grown immensely during the last twohundred years , and on the other hand the composers felt themselves driven to more increasingly rapid and drastic changes of their musical language.

while the number of actual listeners has not increased at the same scale

The size of the potential audience has at least theor- etically become identical with the total population of the civilized world since after the social upheavals due to industrial and other revolutions the consumption of art has ceased to be the prerogative of privileged classes groups. In the nineteenth century The middle class has set out developed the ambition to

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emulate the ambitions of the upper levels of sociely and began to aspire aspire at the the enjoyments previously reserved for the aristocracy,. In order to satisfy this new and quantitatively increasing demand the musical world had to develop an adequate organization, and in order to channel music to the new customers the modern commercial apparatus of distribution was created - publishers, concert organizations, agents, opera houses, and eventually recordings broadcast and television corporations. It is the nature of the commercial mind that it will not rest at peace before it has made all potential customers active buyers of the product that it promotes, and for any sales resistence that it meets, it will blame the product for not conforming to the desires of the customer. The fact is that in our century, if not even somewhat earlier, the new music at any given time did not conform to then prevailing tastes of the commercially envisaged ideal, that is, ideally unlimited set of potential customers.

That this seems to have been different in the good old days may be inferred, for instance, from the observation that concert pro- grams consisted almost entirely of new compositions. What we nowadays call the standard repertoire, the treasury of well- known, tried and tested warhorses, did not exist. It also was customary, still in Beethoven's time, for a composer to organize every year or so a concert exclusively of his in which he displays in which he would present exclusively his own works and try to provide added attraction by inserting one or two new items he had written especially for the occasion, It probably worked because up to the nineteenth century the musical language had not changed as rapidly and thoroughly as it did later.

much like a painter who would mount a one-man show to exhibit his latest creations.

The request for originality in art seems to accentuate itself in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Earlier periods But the degree of the difference in which the originality of the new work asserted itself in relation to the traditional material is was limited by the principle that it ought to remain perceivable as a deviation from the convention and not to be experienced as an abrupt and shocking break. In one of his letters to his father,

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Mozart describes how in his opera "The Abduction from the Seraglio" he depicted the inordinate rage of a character named Osmin by assigning the middle part of his aria to a key more remote from the principal tonality than would have been standard procedure for that part of an aria. He carefu adds that he was careful to chose not too remote a key because, according to his esthetics, even the outrageous must be expressed within the limits of the pleasing and rational. This statement clearly reveals what limitations of his originality a composer was willing to take upon himself, but it also reveals that he was able to expect the appreciation of his finesses by an audience that was so conversant with conventional procedure that it would readily notice and even a slight deviation from it and eval- uate its significance.

As the nineteenth century went on, connoisseurs of such cap- acities were found less and less in a steadily growing general aud- ience. Eventually such perspicacity is limited restricted to a group of experts - a minority of critics and mainly to the colleagues of the composer who study his scores with the aid of analyses provided by him, perhaps a few critics and scholars. And it is these groups who exert a silent and only subsonsciously felt pressure onto the composer prodding him toward further exper- imentation, a pressure that augments his own urge to try new untrodden ways. Thus he is The customers at large do not push him into the lonely vacuum of which he frequently com- plains. They do not respond to his innovations any longer be- cause they are not any longer aware of any convention to which the innovations could be related.

The composer frequently comforts himself by rationalizing that he is ahead of his time, that the mentality of the public at large will eventually catch up with him. This way of thinking is supported to some extent by historical evidence. The progressive composers and critics love to quote gleefully devastating contemporary reviews in which writers composers like Beethoven and Wagner were

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denounced as frauds imposters, lunatics and criminals. It is easy now to unmask the perpetrators of such obvious misjudgments as ludicrous dunces although some of these conservative critics, as for instance Wagner's Viennese adversary, Hanslick, were by no means idiots. but rather On the other hand, our own reactionary adversaries try to point out show that the notion that new music is unsuccessful and unpopular with the general audience because it is ahead of its time is a fraud and a fabrication of the sour grapes order, for, as they say, the really valid new music - such as Beethoven and Wagner for instance, - has always been successful even while it was new, in spite of isolated rantings of stupid critics. Probably both viewpoints have merits, and history can, as we have seen, easily be interpreted to support either one with impressive evidence. The term "Zukunftsmusik" - music of the future - formulated coined by Wagner has become a powerful slogan. Of course, he meant by it not so much that his music would be under- stood only at some later time, but that he was confident that the future would belong to him and his work.

Attempts toward making modern music a matter of the present instead of the future were made during the period of neo-classicism, between 1920 and 1940 approximately. Especially in Germany, the concept of Gebrauchsmusik, music for use, gained many followers. It was based on the idea that serious music had become an object of passive admiration rather than of vital concern, that it had alienated the public by requiring it to marvel at its high-brow complexities. The new trend was toward music-making instead of listening to it. Consequently a type of music was promoted that would be easy enough to be handled by a moderately equipped layman, "Spiel- musik", that is music for play, geared to the capacities and tastes of communities of juveniles, such as boy-scouts and others, their tools being recorders and guitars. These people were fiercely anti-romantic and despised any music written between Bach and Brahms, without noticing that their own aspirations were more romantic than anything else, for their ideal what animated them was a dream picture of

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the good old days when society was one big happy family and the lion lying down with the lamb. As an example of such paradi- saical conditions they liked to quote Johann Sebastian Bach hap- pily grinding out a new cantata for every Sunday to the delight of an equally happy community of eager consumers. It was con- veniently forgotten that he had trouble enough with his board of supervisors who found his music frequently enough abstruse and unpalatable.

The revival of the Concerto Grosso style was based on the same wishful thinking that by restoring the outward appearance of seventeenth century music one could also restore the happy harmonious social organization that supposedly had existed at that time, and supported produced a happy relationship between the composer and his public. Although much of the music generated on these premises turned out to be rather dry, academic and pedantic, it achieved a remarkable success especially at the hands of Paul Hindemith. His music appel has appealed to interpreters who feel slightly guilty because they neglect contemporary music because who hate really new music but feel guilty of they do not play some contemporary stuff, for its can be performed without performance does not demand anything beyond the traditional skills and it sounds looks scholarly and sounds modern without being shocking.

Couriously enough the adventures trials and tribulations which the other type of con- temporary music, the really progressive one, had to endure eventually brought it to a point where its practitioners too are trying to reach out for a more direct rapport with the listener. During the neo- classicistic era the new music as embodied in atonality and twelve-tone technique was severely isolated from cont the public at large. This was accepted as an inevitable fate in the countries of totalitarian rule because no matter what their dominant ideology proclaimed to be the truth, they had to repress any kind of art that would reveal and underscore the essentially precarious condition of human existence and encourage pro- test against existing conditions. But this type of ad-

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vanced music was not much better received in the so-called free world. It was tolerated, but not welcome. This state of affairs has astonishingly changed during the last twenty years.

Warren story

Not that the attitude of the famous general audience, the mass of customers had changed. But within the profession, among the composers, a total about-face took place. The new generation of young composers were not any longer interested in the folkloristic or neo-classical exercises of their predecessors. They had discovered Webern and the ideas of serialism, which I shall discuss in my our next meeting. Sociologically speaking, however, not much had changed. This new, serial music did not become any more popular with the established institutions than the new music of 1920 had been. It seems that the feelings of frustration caused by this isolation have sparked the introduction of the element of action into the production of and performance of music. Music then becomes a Happening. It incorporates action of extra-musical nature which is not only to be heard in its acoustical results, but also seen while it is carried out. The listener, or witness, is encouraged to emerge from its his position of a passive recipient glued to a chair, and invited at least to move around or even to participate in some ways in the proceedings. Obviously such goings-on corrode the traditional concept of the work of art as being a rationally constituted unit of thought, as a premeditated piece of construction. The elements of chance and improvisation take over. It is clear that this tendency involves an element of protest against traditional values und displays intentionally an anti-establishmentarian attitude. No matter how sincerely one might sympathise with such an attitude, the effect is problematical. For even the most outrageous Happenings are not likely to bring the Establish- ment down - in fact, they are most popular as sensational titillation with the most solid members of the Establishment - and their when compared with the more disciplined accomplishments less overboarding

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of the non-aggressive art, they are usually very disappointing in terms of intellectual or any other interest.

Let us now take a look at the machinery that connects the composer with his public transmitting this music toward the audience in one direction and providung him with his livelihood on the other way determining the social and economic position of the composer. In modern times the source of power in this machinery is the concept of Copyright, that is, as is well known, the principle that the originator of the work of art is entitled to fair compensation by the users of his work - a concept related to the idea of the patent in science and industry. It is a relatively novel idea. In the United States, for instance, it was legally codified only in 1790. and But it has gained worldwide recognition only in the nineteenth century.

where it is anchored in the Constitution

Prior to the establishment of this principle and the setting up of the organisations necessary to enforce it the composer was usually compensated for his labors by a one-time fee that that may or not have transferred all or some rights to the buyer, or he was on the payroll of a prince or of a church and had to produce and deliver his products to his employer, frequently according to the latter's specifications. A Joseph Haydn for instance lived and worked during the greater part of his life under these conditions and fared very well. His social status at the court of the princes Eszterházy was far from exalted - he ranked more or less on the same level as the chief cook or the master of the stable, but this did not prevent him from becoming fabulously successful. It seems that hundreds of his works were printed during his life time by numerous publishers in many countries, which is astonishing in itself, because at that time there was not a trace of what we today call publicity: no newspaper reviews, no trade magazines, no broadcacts - only word of mouth propaganda. Haydn who had been raised in a pre-revolutionary atmo- sphere had no complaints about his position. It is remarkable that when he became a free agent after quitting the princely service at the age of sixty he was able to adjust to the conditions of incipient commercialism just as well - but that is another story.

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Mozart, member of a younger generation, was in a much less happy situation. In the first place it was his bad luck that his employers, the archbishops of Salzburg, were much less congenial than the princes Eszterházy. But It was also not only Mozart's natural inclination to chafe under the restrictive aspects of his position, but also the unrest of the late eighteenth century that prompted him to kick against the pricks. Gentle of character as he was, he was not very successful in his fight against society. A Again One more generation later we see Beethoven, a much more forceful personality, continuing the struggle for a dignified and materially secure position of the composer in society.

Only in our century the idea of the Copyright has found general, if reluctant recognition. It seems hardly believable is curious, but it is nevertheless nonetheless a fact that organizers of concerts - not to speak of proprietors of taverns or nightclubs with musical entertainment - do not hesitate to pay for the use of light, and heat, advertising, printed matter and for the services of their personnel from publicity agent to dishwasher, but find it outrageons that the com- poser whose music they use wishes to be compensated. Even after the principle of proper remuneration was grudgingly acknowledged, the notion still persisted that royalties were rather a sort of a tip for especially pleasant services than the a fee due for the use of another person's property. The idea of a systematical exploitation of the Copyright be- came interesting for the composer as soon as his work was likely to have many repeated performances at distant places over indefinite periods of time. Mozart was satisfied to write quickly a new aria for a singer of his acquain- tance for a flat fee of a few dollars in order to pacify the corner grocery store who threatened him because of staggering unpaid bills, and the singer would use the aria in her next concert, and perhaps never again. Beethoven's symphonies and sonatas and Schubert's songs were performed But when the works of the classics were performed count- less times all over the world, their successors did not want to be cheated out of their just reward like their famous ancestors.

story about Minneapolis

Obviously it is impossible for the individual composer to control innumerable, or even a few performances of his works in five continents. Therefore arround approximately from 1900 on

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organised performing rights society societies were formed in the various countries which developed the apparatus necessary for collecting the monies due to the composers. It is easy to see that this is a business as formidable as it is picagunish, for it means to not only to collect from the big symphony orchestras whose programs are published in the newspapers and thus are easily controlled, but also from humble community concerts where one or two short pieces of a member of the society may have been played, and also from the innumerable night clubs where not no printed programs will reveal how many and which songs were played how many times every night. These monies are not only to be collected, but also to be distributed fairly among the members of the anyone of the various national soci- eties which are tied together by mutual agreements and exchange their membership lists. On the whole The numbers of IBM cards re- gistering all necessary data and channeling the resulting dollars and cents to their rightful recipients have seven eight and more digits. On the whole we have to acknowledge that the performing right societies are doing a most creditable job. especially, since it has been acknowledged by all of them that appart of Obviously the big money that makes their operation worthwhile and even possible results from the mass production and mass performance of entertainment music. But it has been acknowledged within all of these societies that so-called serious music, being quantitavely limited in commercial oppor- tunities and qualitatively working operating under a handicap, should be subsidized by the lucky entertainers. Very little is heard about corruption or graft in these societies, and their share of annoying red tape is no worse than that of other comparable organisms.

In order to have performances to be controlled by his performing right society, the composer's music must be avail- able to prospective interpreters, and this is where the publishers enters the picture. He is in a difficult position because even the most successful composer will inevitably feel that his publisher has not done enough for his work. Especially if when he observes notices more prosperous how some colleagues of his reach greater fame and prospesity than himself, he will ascribe their success to the inventiveness and efficiency of the publisher and reproach him for not applying these gifts to his own output.

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By the way, the notion that the publisher disposes of in- credible, perfectly magic powers also exists in the heads of these adversaries of new music who firmly believe that there is a con- spiracy of critics, agents, interpreters, broadcasters and what not nursed and maintained with the inexhaustible funds of male- volent publishers with for the purpose of cramming down the throats of an innocent public the indegistible modern stuff. Strangely the question why the publishers should waste their riches in this manner while they could make more and easier money by peddling the music that everyone seems be is craving is never asked nor answered.

The expectations which the publisher seems seems to be doomed to disappoint are based on his peculiar relationship to the work he has acquired. If somebody buys a painting for ten dollars and sells it for tenthousand, the painter who originally sold it does not share the margin, which may appear immoral and outrageous, but it is legal, and is accepted as fair. Incidentally, this is why musical works are not interesting as objects of investments, for one can not hang them on the wall or hide them in the basement and wait till the market has gone up. One can not own a piece of music as one owns a statue. So far it has not been noticed that electronic music offers a pos- sibility of a similar kind: a rich man could commission a com- poser to produce an electronic tape of which no copies would be he would be the sole owner so that whoever wanted to hear this work would have to be invited by the owner.

At any rate, the publisher does not own the work as an art dealer does. It is entrusted to him for exploitation, and the composer depends for his income on that exploitation. Nowadays the main vehicle for making the musical work a source of income is the public performance with admission fee. In the old days the sales of printed copies, in the jargon of the trade somewhat prominently disrespectfully called "sheet music", was just as important. Even vocal scores of operas met an astonishing demand. I was told by Wagner's publisher that of the vocal score of Parsifal more than a hundredthousand copies were sold during the composer's life time alone - which was just a few years after the completion of the work. Some A percentage of these fan-

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tastic numbers may be accounted for by the aura of sensation that sur- rounded the work, but the Parsifal score is difficult enough to scare even present-day amateurs - if there were any who would care wish to tackle an opera score at all. If our music lovers care to use their fingers, it is more to turn dials or push buttons than to tickle the keys. Sheet music that still sells in large quantities in is mainly educational material the old, classical and early romantic music, which owes this per- sistent popularity chiefly to the fact that it is reg regarded as educ- ational material. Easy choral numbers come under similar headings.

Thus, very few people buy music for solo instruments, chamber groups or voice. Professional inter- preters expect to receive com- plimentary copies which they are given in the hope that they will use them in public per- formances.

Performances which have become the main source of revenue as far as new music is concerned are then the main target of the publisher's promotional activity. The established concert institutions are not a very promising hunting ground since their audiences still demand the same fare as sixty years ago - or at least the managers think so. At that time we were told, as I remember, that the audiences consisted of old people who were reluctant to accept the dramatic innovations of new music. In the meantime one or two new generations must have taken the seats of those oldsters, and yet they their attitude seems to be very much the same. I they ever had a different attitude while they were young, the Establishment has apparently succeeded in assimilating them sufficiently to make them docile cust- omers of the old wares.

As far as public performances go, opera productions are the most rewarding financially, because opera houses are seating lots of people, admission is relatively high and royalty percen- tages adequate. In Europe royalties from radio and tele- vision broadcasts are equally substantial because theirs there these agencies are important users of new music - not so much because their audiences are clamoring for it, but because radio and television are operating under the conscious of rendering a public service. and of They are aware of their obligation to serve every sector of the population - even that strange minority group that is interested in new music - and to support actively the progressive trend in the arts. They not only broad-

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act this music, they also commission composers have series of public concerts with new music, they organize or sponsor festivals, and they commission composers to write new works for them, It is not necessary here to point out what merits the American radio and television has to show in this re- spect. In this country we frequently hear expressions of pity for the customers European radio listeners because they are being taxed for their pleasure. Actually, they are not subject to any tax. They pay a very modest license fee, which is simply no more than a token of appreciation for the service they are getting. While it is customary to pay for a concert ticket, why then should the music we hear on the radio be free? In this country the public is expecting the radio program for nothing, because the music is essentially offered only as a bait to keep the listener glued to his machine until the message of the advertiser arrives, which is the sole purpose of the whole operation. It is peculiar, however, that the listener actually believes that he is getting something for nothing. Whenever the question arises whether serious music and opera should be subsidized by the public funds, we hear some angry taxpayers protesting that they don't care for opera and don't see why they should pay for the pleasure of those few snobs who pretend to like it. These people seem to forget that they are subsidizing the whole radio program when when they pass the check stand at the supermarket, for the advertisers don't by any means offer the splendiferous spectaculars out of sheer love for their customers, but charge pass the formidable expenses on to them when they set the price for cigarettes, hand lotion, cereals their commodities. And those who never look at TV have to pay likewise. But, of course, they are a hope- less minority, nearly suspect of subversion.

and some of them have added electronic studios to their im- posing list of facilities.

As we know, there is a roundabout way of subsidizing art through public funds, as long as private money can may be channeled used for such purposes instead of being gobbled up by the tax office, and perhaps it is not so bad a system either, because the sponsorship is more diversified und decentralized than under a bureaueratic organization. In one of his conversations with Robert Craft, Strawinsky observed that there is no demand whatsoever for new music and that the agencies that com- mission new music are buying up surplus symphonies just as govermments are buying up surplus wheat and butter with- out being really interested at all in having those products. I think that there is a certain difference. The governments may not be interested in wheat and butter, but they are very

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keenly interested in the voting power of the masses of farmers that produce those extra masses of wheat and butter. The makers of symphonies and related items are very few, and they do not elect the directors of the foundations that are willing to take care of the surplus. It seems that there are quite a few people around who are interested in listening to a new serial composition even by Stra- winsky. It is not useful to compare their numbers with those of the Tchaikowsky or Beatles fans. Certainly their number and buying power is are not enough to maintain the progressive composer in state. Therefore he should not feel guilty for not being able to com- pete in the market place with the purveyors of more conventional material. Not he is subsidized, but the minority of those interested in new music. And this minority is the silent one - for whenever new music appears by mistake or miscalculation in the programs of the Establishment, it is the majority of the conformists which pesters the management and the press with complaints and outraged protest. I have not yet to read that somebody has complained about too much Tchaikowsky or Brahms.

Howerer, for the last ten years or so, new music has gained an in-position all over the world - not with the established institutions but with a new layer of in-between agencies: festivals, private associations, small groups of performers and listeners at colleges, radio stations and so forth. I feel that this is a very welcome development, for it is by no means an axiom that any and all music has to be demanded and digested by all people, just as not every book published has to be read by everybody in sight. To call this minority of appreciative listeners an elite may not be liked by them, or it may offend those who do not belong to it; and it is not relevant either Some in any event. or not be liked by

Even so, their numbers are growing. Superficially looked at, our period seems to show a bewildering array of com- pletely heterogeneous musical styles. Actually, since 1945 a new international style has become more and more pronounced. Experience shows reveals that if a manner of writing no matter how absurd and provocative it seams appears to be when it is new, is taken up by more and more composers, it almost

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automatically becomes more palatable and acceptable to a growing number of recipients. Thus our present silent minority may, as time goes by, eventually gain a quite different status. Then it will be time to look for something new.