XIII
It is quite untrue to say that the music of to-day is predominantly frivolous. The modern composer might well reply that even for those who cling to the ideals of the past there are plenty of old-world frivolities that have triumphed over their contemporary solemnities. The devotees of Haydn, Mozart and Cimarosa easily forget that all these three wrote music of deeply serious character and that it was chiefly their serious music which won the respect of their own audiences. There is not even anything new in the modern composer’s occasional habit of making a fool of his critics. But the jokes of the old composers, like those of Aristophanes, often require the elucidation of learned commentators, whereas in our own day the newspapers provide the needful commentary, sometimes before the musician makes his joke. The “verbal hæmorrhage”—as it has been appropriately called—of musical journalism is responsible for most of the deliberate silliness recently perpetrated by composers, who in these days are fully alive to the value of publicity. Music of this type is as ephemeral as the criticism which it is designed to provoke. At the same time it is perfectly reasonable that modern composers should occupy themselves in an artistic spirit with modern dance-forms. They may well take their place in musical history just as the waltz, the minuet, the pavan and the galliard have done.
Weakness of inspiration is more evident in the tendency to play modern tricks with old forms and old styles. The sham antique suite of nineteenth-century drawing-room music is one of the products of the past which are now beneath even ridicule; the contemporary practice of taking a theme which suggests some commonplace of Bach or Haydn and treating it to a development which suggests an orchestra of amateurs reading at sight from badly copied parts may fulfil some useful function in making the idolatry of the classics ridiculous, but as contributing to the expression of contemporary thought its value is purely negative. There is enough criticism of music already without that which is written in notes. It is natural enough that young composers should wish to shock the respectable and it is very good for the respectable to be shocked. Music which is intentionally destructive may help to clear the ground and sweep away some of the romantic rubbish that still encumbers the minds of us who listen. But the composers must be careful not to forget that the listeners will be only too glad to return to the fleshpots of sentimentality if the prophets of the new generation can give them nothing but emetics with which to assuage their hunger.
A characteristic of modern music which often baffles the listener of an older generation is its abruptness. There are various causes which contribute to this. Abruptness of expression is characteristic of our time; it is the mark of our speech as well as of our music. Abruptness is often deliberately assumed by composers as a protest—perhaps superfluous—against the ceremonial formalities of the older music. It is sometimes even a new form of sentimentalism, a cult of the mysteriously fragmentary, a continuation of the example set once or twice by Schumann. And in very many cases it is due to the examples of the painters, who have little scruples about exhibiting sketches which are studies of particular technical problems. A great deal of modern music is sketchy for the simple reason that a great many new technical problems have arisen and it is both interesting and necessary to make studies of them in isolation. The publication of such studies may often help other people to understand what the artist is trying to achieve, whether in paint or in sounds. It is the museum habit and the astuteness of the picture-dealer which have combined to make the public attribute to these things an exaggerated value, for financial values easily become confused with moral ones. In the case of musical studies of this type it is perhaps more often the composer who attaches the exaggerated value and the public that is disappointed at not obtaining it.
The most frequent accusation brought against modern music is that it is devoid of melody. It is an accusation which has been made for at least a hundred years. When it is made to-day the modern musician may point out that many of the most advanced teachers of composition insist on their pupils practising the composition of real independent melodies, that is, of melodies which do not depend on an implied harmony. The ordinary lover of melody is hardly capable of realizing what this means, and the most gifted pupils generally find it an unexpectedly severe discipline. What the plain man understands by a tune is a melody in simple and obvious rhythm; and he is by now so accustomed to the classical key-system that its conventional stresses automatically suggest—even if only half consciously—the conventional harmonic relations, with the result that he is quite willing to accept as a tune a succession of notes which in reality is often meaningless when considered as a pure melody. Our popular hymn-books will provide plenty of examples. The rejection of the classical key-system makes this type of melody impossible, and one of the chief reasons why the present age has rejected the classical key-system is because it is seeking new and more supple rhythms for its melodic line.
Another favourite accusation, expressed in different ways by different people, and to most people curiously difficult of expression, may be generally formulated by saying that modern music is devoid of feeling, or even that it stimulates and appeals to feelings which are unpleasant or even morally repugnant. My attempt to put this charge into a few words is unreasonable, I admit, but I think it more or less represents the attitude of a large number of people whose conduct is guided more frequently by good feeling than by conscious reasoning. Such people feel instinctively that music, more than anything else, is or ought to be a matter of instinctive feeling. As music-lovers, they are exactly the people who are most completely under the spell of association. But as I have already attempted to show, it is just this tyranny of association against which the leaders of new movements most energetically rebel. In time they or their successors will accumulate a new store of associations; for the present they are compelled and indeed anxious to do without them altogether. If the older listeners persist in attaching unpleasant associations to the new music, it is the listeners’ own fault; it is they who by force of habit provide those associations out of their own good feeling.