"ADVANCED" MUSIC

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1500, 10 May 1924, Page 2

"ADVANCED" MUSIC

PLAYING PIANO WITH WOOD

In reply to a recent newspaper inquiry a number of leading English musicians agreed that the chief characteristic of modern music is its essentially "experimental" nature. Mr Hugh Arthur Scott, in the "Nineteenth Century," says that in all countries the more "advanced" composers are writing music which in most cases is incomprehensible even to accomplished musicians. Profound students and learned theorists find it impossible even to begin to reconcile this music with any of the principles upon which European music has been constructed hitherto. Professor Corder took a piano piece of Schonberg, wrote it out backwards, and then successfully defied' anyone to say which of the two versions was the right one. Other composers have written piano works which require the use of the fist and- the forearm, and in some cases blocks of wood, to strike certain of the "chords," and in gravely submitted orchestral compositions the "instruments" employed include iron chains, typewriters, revolvers and sledgehammers. Most of the composers of eminence in the past have puzzled many of their contemporaries at first, but the present position cannot be accounted for in that way. The new eccentric composers make no nearer approach to music than a child does in banging the keyboard with his open hand. Seemingly elaborate pains are taken to avoid any combination of notes which could conceivably afford pleasure to the ordinary ear. If such col' locations of tones as some ,of these composers put forward constitute music, then it is open to anyone to become a composer forthwith. Formerly music has been a development of that of the past, but in the "new" music no intelligent connection can be traced. Probably Richard Strauss initiated the Modernist Revolt, though he has long been outclassed in violence and sensationalism. One great difference of the "advanced" music from that of the masters is its selfconsciousness. This is an age of "stunts" and self-advertisement, and musicians, like many others, are seeking notoriety at all costs. To do anything great in music on established lines requires nothing less than genius. Brahms in the last generation and Elgar in this proved it could be done, but it is beyond the capacity of smaller men. Yet by being nonsensical, extravagant, preposterous, and outrageous they can attract attention at once. Their efforts have some relation to those in pictorial art of the atona'ists, the polytonalists, the post-impressionists, the cubists, and the like. Musical theory and practice necessarily undergo continuous expansion and development, but this formerly came about spontaneously as one great master succeeded another. Xow it seems to be aimed at deliberately and artificially as an end in itself. Often great technical skill is displayed, as by Scriabin, Stravinsky, and Schonberg, but there is no commensurate inspiration. Most of the masters indulged in occasional extravagances and audacities, but they did not produce works consisting of nothing else. Since Bach and Handel laid the foundations of modern music the line of unquestionably great masters has never been broken until today. Probably the necessary genius will present himself in due course, and then all that is of real value in the wild and frantic experimentalising of to-day may be turned to proper account.