Studies of Music in the Twentieth CenturyAuthor(s): William W. AustinSource: The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jan., 1982), pp. 63-66Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/763637Accessed: 21/06/2010 16:27

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STUDIES OF MUSIC IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

WILLIAM W. AUSTIN

H ow do musicologists cope with music of the twentieth century? As variously as composers, performers, and listeners do. That is, I be-

lieve, not so variously as the millions of scholars, authors, and readers cope with the Babel of world literature of the twentieth century, but more variously than the smaller numbers of scholars, choreographers, dancers, and fans cope with the exciting rise of contemporary dance. If music itself is a sister to poetry and dance, musicology may be an in-law, keeping up her late-nineteenth-century alliance with art history, while ogling at anthropology and sociology, and studiously renewing her ancient family roots in music theory.

Literary scholarship prospers today on polemics among competing schools of criticism, sometimes to the point of neglecting poets and usurping their appeal to common readers. Musicology, still a slender thing in proportion to the blowsy amplitude of song and dance, en- courages most musicologists to concentrate on some chronologically continuous part of the thousand-year European library of scores. Their work coheres and progresses. It presupposes a consensus about some values, and shuns discussion of most values. Typically, it refines texts and interprets them historically. Thus it resembles nineteenth-century philology more nearly than late twentieth-century semiotics or decon- struction. Of course musicologists reflect and participate in some twentieth-century trends, but the coherence and gratifying progress of their philological work do not extend to much collective treatment of new music. Rather, individual musicologists interested in new music have to seek their own paths individually. Some musicologists whose interest is only sporadic or only lip-service may seem to console them- selves with kinds of journalism about new music that they would scorn in relation to any period from Guido to Wagner. Yet a hope of some scholarly consensus about Stravinsky, Cage, and the rest is still alive.

In this situation, perhaps my best response to Musicology's request for a thousand words or so is frankly to discuss my own fluctuating hope. Music in the 20th Century (1966) was addressed to "anyone interested in the music of Schoenberg, Bart6k, and Stravinsky." Readers might like, I said, "to partake in a growing consensus affirming their importance." I hoped that this consensus would soon extend to jazz,

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though my editors doubted this. I was more confident that the consensus would soon extend to Debussy. Did I persuade Professor Lang? I emphasized that Debussy sought a broad audience only with reserva- tions: he could not compete with Strauss, Puccini, or Lehar, nor did he wish to; he could not yet compete with Mozart. About Mozart's audience and its ways of listening, I noted that all of us were very ignorant, but all could observe some twentieth-century changes. I thought it worthwhile to relate the consensus on Stravinsky, Bart6k, and Schoenberg to that on the classics, but I adhered to Debussy's thought that "classic" was an inappropriate label for contemporaries.

The New Grove (1970-80) can be cited in a crude way as con- firming my assertion, my hope, and my trust. In number of pages per entry, Stravinsky, Bart6k, Schoenberg, and Debussy rank here above Strauss. Jazz is almost catching up. Of course Grove contains ample evidence for questioning any consensus, but the table that follows includes several interesting bits of confirmation.

Table 1: Prominent 20th-century composers in The New Grove.

Pages Composers Born Around: in

Grove 1860 1875 1885 1895 1905 1915 1925

27 Bartdk 26 Mahler Stravinsky 23 Schoenberg 22 Debussy 21 Strauss 18 jazz 16 Elgar

Janrcek 15 Ives Britten 14 Berg Hindemith 13 Prokofiev 12 Faurd Ravel Webern 11 Vaughan Williams Weill Shostakovich 10 Puccini

Sibelius 9 Rakhmaninov Tippett 8 Kodaly Boulez

Stockhausen 7 Hoist Copland Henze 6 Delius Reger Malipiero Poulenc Messiaen Cage

Nielsen 5 Satie Skryabin Grainger Eisler Carter Berio

Szymanowski Dallapiccola Varese Walton

While my first book was in press, I wrote three articles that remain unpublished. One on Charlie Christian was written for a Festschrift that never found a publisher. One on Stockhausen was meant for The Musical Quarterly, one on Frank Martin, more analytical, was offered to Perspectives of New Music, but their editors had their own reasons for rejecting these. I mention these articles for two reasons: to indicate my specialized efforts in relation to the consensus, and to console, if I can, younger rejected authors.

With some hesitation, I accepted the invitation of Professor

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Friedrich Blume to write on "Neue Musik" for the supplement to Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart and for a paperback Epochen der Musik- geschichte (1974), reprinting Blume's and Besseler's important articles on earlier periods. My article, addressed to anyone seeking perspective on the "Neue Musik" slogan, reflected some changing estimates. Here Cage, Boulez, and Stockhausen won proportionately more of my attention than in Music in the 20th Century, though I still disclaimed adequate knowledge to treat them as I could Schoenberg, Bart6k and Stravinsky. Rock took a small place alongside jazz. Debussy got less attention now, though I was and am and will be - in a moment - increasingly concerned with him. Berg and Webern shared prominence with Schoenberg, Bart6k, and Stravinsky. Schoenberg represented "new harmonies," Stravinsky "new rhythms," Webern "new melodies, structures, and processes," and Berg and Bart6k "new social groupings." These headings did not confine any composer to discussion under a single heading, but showed my continuing preference for naming composers rather than "isms." The up-grading of Berg and Webern, incidentally, did not mean giving Hindemith or Prokofiev much less space than I had done before; rather it reflected my sense that any agreement about Schoenberg, Bart6k, Stravinsky, Berg, and Webern is a fragile one, more academic than most professors acknowledge. Even jazz may be more an academic concern than it was before the triumphs of rock. And Debussy?

"New Music" shows up in the next-to-last chapter of "Susanna," "Jeanie," and "the old folks" (1975), which is a study in cultural history, addressed to "anyone striving to clarify" meanings of such terms as Black, American, folk, popular, art, poetry, and music. The "New Music" chapter dwells on Ives, then surveys dozens of more recent composers, with some emphasis on Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Thea Musgrave. The final chapter dwells chiefly on Ray Charles, with only Pete Seeger prominent among dozens of other "new singers and song-writers." Throughout this book, while "clarification" is more important than any possible consensus, there are references to hopes. Thus, "For Foss and Musgrave, unlike Ives or Copland or Thoreau, the hope of a 'universal language' is attenuated, if it survives at all." And for Ray Charles, in his own words, "I don't care what they done to my songs, but see the main thing, mama, what they tryin' to do to me.... But oh, I'm gonna keep on workin' on the buildin' just like you taught me, mama." Readers might join me in hoping that our songs and our scholarship could contribute to a collective enterprise like Charles' "buildin' " if we would remember the "main thing" and take lightly our possible, improbable special contributions. Clarification within one realm does sometimes remove obstacles to our collaborating in whatever other realm we choose together.

"Consensus" is a worn-out word. If I had been more alert to its accretions of meaning from the 1950s, I should have seized on the different metaphor that was gaining currency in the sixties: "network."

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When we abandon "consensus," we do not necessarily cast ourselves adrift individually in the rough seas of impersonal society. We are connected, by many networks, with a few neighbors and with uncounted individuals all over the globe. Musicology, like literary scholarship, is such a network. Within its loose, far-flung, and shifting expanses, there are many smaller, more tightly woven networks. Which of these are the most fragile we do not know. Which are tough enough to survive storms and tidal waves we may sooner or later learn.

The music of Debussy seems to me so strong that the network of its friends could survive and stretch even if the networks of Joyce and Kafka, or Schoenberg, Bart6k, and Stravinsky, and jazz were shredded. For some young composers today, as well as most performers and listeners, Schoenberg, Bart6k, and Stravinsky are all too academic, too much associated with schoolrooms. The whole European heritage of skills and tastes can be represented by Machaut, Berlioz, Ives, and Debussy, or by almost any sort of personal choice from among its hundreds of masters. At the same time, non-European musics loom. More and more composers - Cage, Boulez, and Stockhausen among them - are learning to study something from India or Indonesia or Africa as deeply as Debussy studied the little he could hear. More and more young musicologists, I think, will be tracing connections between Debussy and young composers, connections that may skip over Schoen- berg and Stravinsky, while incorporating some extra-European link. Though such scholars seek no new consensus, much less a patched-up old one, they may be "workin' on the buildin' " of a global music and musicology.

Cornell University

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Article Contentsp. 63p. 64p. 65p. 66

Issue Table of ContentsThe Journal of Musicology, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jan., 1982), pp. i-iv+1-142Front Matter [pp. i-iii]Musicology in the 1980s: Points of Arrival and GoalsIntroduction [pp. 1-4]Music History and Cultural History [pp. 5-14]Theory, Analysis, and Criticism [pp. 15-18]The Performance of Early Music in America [pp. 19-28]The Bibliographical Prognosis [pp. 29-33]Directions for Chant Research in the 1980s [pp. 34-38]Musicology and Fifteenth-Century Music [pp. 39-43]The State of Research in Italian Baroque Opera [pp. 44-49]Classic Period [pp. 50-53]The Nineteenth Century [pp. 54-58]American Music and American Musicology [pp. 59-62]Studies of Music in the Twentieth Century [pp. 63-66]

Process and Morphology in the Music of Mozart [pp. 67-94]Mozart, Haydn and the Sinfonia da Chiesa [pp. 95-124]Conference ReportBoston Early Music Festival and Exhibition. May 26-31, 1981 [pp. 125-129]

ReviewReview: untitled [pp. 130-141]

Back Matter [pp. 142-142]