First men and women singing in unison produced music in octaves, 1 and 2 of the harmonic series. Next came the centuries of organum when the parts were sung in fifths and fourths, 2, 3, and 4 of the harmonic series. Then followed the centuries of the major triad (c-e-g), 4, 5, and 6 of the harmonic series. When the 7th overtone in the harmonic series appeared, we had the very important dominant 7th chord (c-e-g-b♭), looked upon as outrageous heresy and dissonance! It was years, even centuries, before it was admitted as a respectable member of the family! The 9th harmonic forming the dominant 9th chord (c-e-g-b♭-d) had the same hard row to hoe, and is one of our modern chords. César Franck shocked the musicians by opening his famous violin sonata with this chord! We can trace the whole-tone scale of Debussy to the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th overtones of the series, (b♭-c-d-e-f#). Scriabin’s “mystic chord” is formed from the 8th, 11th, 7th, 10th, 14th, and 9th overtones (c-f#–b♭-e-a-d). It is a short step now to polytonality and atonality, to Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Milhaud, and Honegger.

You have seen the white ray of sunlight enter your window, which upon a second glimpse divides into all the colors of the rainbow. In other words, the white light is the fundamental tone, which is the sum of all the other colors, much as any single tone is the sum of its overtones, and it is with these overtones that our modern composers are experimenting. Here we see that modern music is the result of evolution (slow growth) and not revolution!

Stravinsky, l’enfant terrible in music, the most daring composer of a most daring period has thrown over all restraint! His music has no heart quality, and so strongly is he influencing the younger men, that “heart music” has gone out of style, a brusque, ugly music taking its place, because the composers are afraid that to show sentiment would be weakness! However, the high class music of today is trying to express humor, activity and vigor, for which reason our jazz appeals to Europeans. The War made Stravinsky the “man of the hour” in music. He is the direct opposite of the refined, beauty-worshipping Debussy and mystic Scriabin. The composers upset by the devastating war, needed strong food, and they hungrily pounced upon the morsels flung to them by Stravinsky, the ring-leader.

But withal, “the worm will turn” and already, those with ears to hear, realize a change in the air, and they foretell a new classic period made out of this hurly-burly of many forms, touched by the fairy wand, “Things-that-Live”! And Stravinsky himself has turned.

After Stravinsky had written several ballets for his countryman, Diaghilev, he turned his attention to chamber music, and wrote works for small groups of wind instruments and a string quartet, Concertino, and a concerto for piano and wind instruments, in which he tried all sorts of experiments. He believes in absolute music, and has written these without program, making the music express what he has to say. Whether he has succeeded, must be laid before Judge Time. He is supreme master of orchestration, and is largely responsible for treating each instrument as though it were playing a solo, which we described as poly-instrumentation. We should not have enjoyed Stravinsky as a neighbor, for he begged, borrowed or bought every kind of instrument and learned all their tricks by trying them out himself.

We know very little of what is going on in Russia today, but Serge Prokofiev, one of the younger Russian composers, has left his home and lives in Paris where his works are often given. He has written piano concertos, violin concertos, and the best we have heard from his pen is a chorus with orchestral accompaniment, Sept, ils sont Sept (Seven, they are seven). He has also written ballets and operas.

A fellow-student with Serge Prokofiev in the Petrograd conservatory was Nicolai Miaskovsky, now living in Moscow where he heads the musical movement. His principal works are symphonies, one of which was played in Paris by a countryman, Lazare Saminsky, in June, 1925.

Another young composer whose piano sonatas have come out of Russia is Samuel Feinberg. They are somewhat in the style of Scriabin.

The two Tcherepnins, father and son, are living in Paris. The son, Alexander, has written chamber music in 20th century style.

Poland

In modern Poland, Karol Szymanowski (1883) has written symphonies, chamber music, songs, piano sonatas and many other piano pieces which reflect Polish national color and French impressionism (See Page 520).

Lady Dean Paul, who writes under the name of Poldowski, although living in London, is really a Pole. (Page 439.)

Tadeusz Iarecki, of New York City, recently received a prize in Poland for writing the best composition by a native composer. This same quartet took the first Berkshire Chamber Music Prize (1918) and was published in New York by a society whose object is the publication of American Chamber Music.

Alexander Tansman (1892) a young Pole has met with unusual success in Paris, where he writes works for orchestra, chamber music and ballet.

Arnold Schoenberg, Musical Anarchist

Arnold Schoenberg, born in Vienna (1874), taught himself until he was twenty. He then studied with Alexander von Zemlinsky, who later became his brother-in-law. Zemlinsky once pointed him out saying, “He is in his early twenties and I have taught him all I know; he brought me an orchestral work recently for which he had to paste two pieces of score paper together to write out his score, so large an orchestra had he employed!” This was his tone poem, Pelleas and Melisande, first performed in 1904. To this early period belong some songs, a song cycle with orchestra on texts by Jens Peter Jacobsen, Gurrelieder, and the sextet, Verklärte Nacht (Illumined Night).

Both Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler were his friends, and through Mahler’s efforts many of his compositions were performed. His string quartet was played in America by the Flonzaley Quartet. His Chamber Symphony, and his second string quartet, with solo voice, performed (1924) at the Berkshire Chamber Music Festival, belong to this same period.

So far, all that Schoenberg composed was based more or less on models of the past, but being naturally an anarchist in music he tried to escape from doing what others had done. Instead of writing works that took fifty minutes to play like his string quartet (in one movement), he wrote five orchestral pieces and piano pieces that were mere suggestions of compositions, so short were they. He cut out all development of themes, all old forms, all feeling for tonality, writing in the twelve-tone scale which we explained as atonality; he built his chords in intervals of fourths instead of thirds, and purposely changed all the rules of harmony; he distorted all the intervals, using a seventh or ninth instead of the octave, and making every fourth and fifth a half step larger or smaller than was customary. His melodies are marked by large skips and queer intervals, but when one once knows his language, by its very queerness, it is easily recognized as Schoenberg’s. Although he has broken away from the slavery of old traditions, he may have “jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire”!

In Pierrot Lunaire, a cycle of twenty-one songs with chamber music accompaniment, he uses a curious effect for the voice “which must be neither sung nor spoken.” This same effect he uses in chorus in his music drama, Die Glückliche Hand (The Lucky Hand) for which he also wrote the libretto. Although this and another music drama Erwartung (The Awaiting) were begun in 1909, they were both performed for the first time in 1924 in Vienna. This long delay was due to the prejudice against the work of this innovator, who on the one hand has been laughed at, scorned, and reviled, and on the other praised to the skies by a small group of disciples and imitators whose works sound very much like their teacher’s.

Among these pupils are Egon Wellesz (1885) who more than the other disciples has broken away from the master. He has gone his way in writing music for the stage and combining the old ideas of ballet and orchestral music with Greek drama in a modern dance drama. He has also written interesting chamber and orchestral music. Dr. Wellesz is also an authority on musical history; he has written many books and articles on the subject, especially on early opera, Byzantine and Oriental music. He has written a book on Schoenberg (1921).

Alban Berg (1885), also a Schoenberg pupil, has written unusually fine chamber music and a new opera, Wozzek, fragments of which were played at a festival in Prague (Czecho-Slovakia) in May, 1925, by the International Society of Contemporary Music, a movement most valuable in encouraging and developing modern music. This society holds yearly meetings in Europe, at which are heard the works of all the young composers of the world, each country having a branch, which sends its share of new works to make the festival’s programs.

Others of the Schoenberg group are Anton von Webern (1883), Paul Pisk, Karl Horovitz (1884–1925), Ernest Krenek, and Ernest Toch (1887).

Erich Korngold

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1898) startled the musical world, just before the War, by the astonishing compositions he wrote as a little boy. Among these were orchestral works and a piano sonata of extraordinary promise. He was born in Vienna and is the son of a musician and musical critic. Young Korngold is known in America as the composer of Die Todte Stadt (The Dead City) an opera in which the soprano, Maria Jeritza, made her first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House. In many ways the opera goes back to the old pre-Wagner form and is full of melody, unusual in a young 20th century composer! He has written other operas bordering on the lighter Viennese operetta and has kept away from the Schoenberg influence.

Modern German Music

Richard Strauss was the last of the great classic school of German composers, which for two hundred years had led the world in music. Curious as it seems, he has not influenced directly the younger composers, who turned to Debussy, Busoni, Schoenberg and Stravinsky. (Page 410.)

Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) although an Italian, had a strong influence in two fields of German music, that of piano playing and composing. He lived in Berlin and was one of the brilliant thinkers and musicians of the period. He left chamber music and orchestral works, also several operas, one of which, The Harlequin, finished just before his untimely death, combines traditional form with radical ideas. His sonatinas for piano and a set of studies on American Indian Themes are important. He made a deep study of all methods, old and new, and gave his pupils the advantage of this wide experience.

Although the young Germans are not copying the huge symphonic form of Bruckner and Mahler, these two have gained greatly in popularity and are serving as models. Hans Pfitzner (1869), opera composer, is one of the most German of the living composers of the pre-war period; Franz Schreker (1878), an Austrian, living in Berlin, has taught many of the younger composers. He writes operas and songs. Schoenberg, although in Vienna, is felt even in Berlin.

Hindemith

Of the young Germans, Paul Hindemith is the most important. He was born in 1895 and according to Riemann, “is the freshest and most full-blooded talent among the younger German composers.” He seems to satisfy the two factions, for he is not too radical for the Old or too old-fashioned for the New, so as Lawrence Gilman says, “he carries water on both shoulders.... He seems to be able to write polytonally or atonally if he chooses, and also to write as the Academics might observe, like a gentleman. Richard Strauss is reported to have said to him: ‘Why do you write atonally when you have talent?’”

Today he is viola player in the Amar Quartet, but he has played in cafés, in the “movies,” dance halls, operetta theatres, and jazz bands! Although only thirty, he has many chamber music pieces to his credit and three dramatic works. His success has been tremendous.

A society to further an interest in the new music was founded by Hermann Scherchen and Eduard Erdmann. Scherchen created a sensation in Berlin just before the war by conducting Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, and after having been a prisoner of war in Russia he came back with renewed purpose of bringing the new music to the public. He has published a few songs and a string quartet. His right-hand man Erdmann, besides being a pianist, has written a symphony, the first attempt of a youth without orchestral experience, which astonished the audience as a combination of Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, “to which is added a portion of genuine Erdmann flavor,” says Hugo Leichtentritt.

Another young German is Heinz Tiessen (1887), who is writing besides piano music in atonality, incidental music to a drama by Hauptman, and songs.

Philipp Jarnach (1892), a pupil of Busoni, Spanish by birth, educated in Paris, lives in Berlin and writes in the new style. Kurt Weill (1900) is also a gifted Busoni-ite.

Ernst Toch (1887), Viennese by birth, who lives in Germany has written string quartets, sonatas, concertos, and a symphony.

Heinrich Kaminsky is accepted in Germany as the composer who is trying to build a bridge from Bach to modern times. His Concerto Grosso for double orchestra commands great respect.

Hungary—Bartók and Kodály

Béla Bartók (1881) and his friend Soltan Kodály (1882) have done much to bring Hungarian folk music into the modern world, for they are steeped in folk tunes, which they use with skill and imagination. Bartók has written a short opera, two ballets, orchestral works, string quartets, violin sonata, and many piano compositions. His children’s pieces are delightful, based as they are on Hungarian folk tunes.

We have spoken at length of the gypsy music of the Hungarians brought to us by Brahms, Liszt and Sarasate (violinist and composer). We also told you that the Hungarians were Magyars. Adjoran Otvos, in the League of Composers Review says: “Bartók and Kodály have accomplished a pioneer work of quite a different nature, an exploration into the folk music of Hungary which has yielded a collection of historic significance, the most important and only authentic one made in that country.

“Bartók, poor and supported only by a scholarship, started in 1905, an investigation of the music of his race. Spending a week with a friend in the country, he heard a servant, while at work, singing a tune quite different from the hybrid (mixed breed) gypsy airs which pass for Magyar music, in Hungary and elsewhere. He contrived to conceal himself and day after day, while the servant worked, recorded a number of songs whose primitive character, he at once recognized. With this impetus, he embarked on a tour which lasted over two years, as long as his money held out. On his journeys among the peasants he met Kodály, out on a similar mission of research. Without previous inkling of each other’s aims, they proceeded together, recording the ancient songs of the Magyars in the compilation which is famous today.”

Ernest von Dohnányi

Ernest von Dohnányi (1877) a noted pianist and composer of Hungary has spent most of his life in Berlin and has toured Europe and America in piano recitals. He has written many works for orchestra, chamber music, piano and opera, all of which show more influence of Brahms than of men of his own land. He has been engaged as conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra of New York for the season 1925–26.

A twenty-eight year old pupil of Béla Bartók, Georg Kosa, shows decided gifts in his first orchestral work, Six Pieces for Orchestra.

Czech School

The Czech school founded by Smetana and Dvorak and Zdenko Fibich (1850–1900) and continued by Vitezslav Novak (1870), Josef Suk (1874), and Vaclar Stepan (1889), has had a rebirth in the 20th century. Leos Janacek, although over seventy, is the leading spirit; Rudolf Karel (1881), a pupil of Dvorak, Bohuslav Martinu, a follower of Stravinsky, and Ernest Krenek (1902), a pupil of Schreker, and Alois Haba (1893), pupil of Novak and Schreker are the working forces. (Janacek died in 1928.)

The Quarter-Tone Man

Alois Haba first wrote chamber music, then he tried some interesting experiments for which he is known as the “quarter-tone man.” We have heard of quarter-tones among the Hindus and Arabs (Chapter VI) and as the human ear has become more educated, the possibility of dividing the scale into quarter-tones is much discussed, and seems to be the next step in developing music along the line of overtones (see above). Did you ever realize that as with eyes that are far-sighted or near-sighted, ears may vary too, in the amount they hear? Most people think that every one hears alike, but this is not so. Stravinsky was one day sitting with a friend on the shore of a Swiss Lake near which he lived. The friend said the water was calm and still, but Stravinsky heard, a definite musical sound! Many of these musical sounds unheard by our ears he has shown us in his music. In the same way it is said that Haba has an extraordinarily keen ear and in trying to express what he hears, he has written two string quartets in the quarter-tone system. Stringed instruments are not in tempered scales and lend themselves to any division of the interval, into third-tones, as Busoni tried, and quarter-tones as Haba has written. But he has gone further and has made a piano on which quarter-tones may be played. This may prove to be the basis of music of the future, or it may be merely one of the numerous experiments without lasting value.

For many centuries Italy has been known as producing the opera of the world. Of late years opera has not been considered the highest form of musical art, so with the coming of the 20th century, a group of composers has been working in Italy, trying to get away from the old opera writing and to develop along the line of orchestral and chamber music.

Alfredo Casella (1883) is perhaps responsible for this movement for he lived in Paris for many years and came in contact with Debussy’s music and the modern movement there. One of his earliest works to attract attention in America was War Films, a series of orchestral pictures that were very real. He has written piano pieces, chamber music and orchestral works and one of his latest is a ballet, in which it looks as though he were leaving his path of dissonance for in this he has used folk song as a basis for a new and delightful expression.

G. Francesco Malipiero (1882) has written two string quartets, one of which received the Coolidge Prize of the Berkshire Chamber Music Festival; in these he has broken away from the large sonata form. He has also written lovely songs.

Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880) has written two operas on texts by Gabrielle d’Annunzio called La Nave (The Ship) and Fedra. His most recent work, Fra Ghirardo was performed at the Metropolitan in 1929.

Ottorino Respighi (1879) wrote operas in true Italian fashion, but deserted them for chamber music and orchestral works. Pines of Rome and Fountains of Rome, we hear often. His Violin Concerto in Gregorian Mode was played by Albert Spalding. His latest opera, La Campana Sommersa (The Sunken Bell) was given at the Metropolitan in 1928.

All these men show the traces of the Italian love of melody, with the influence of French impressionism, and German romanticism.

Two or three of these modern Italians now live in Paris, among them Santoliquido and Vincenzo Davico, both song writers.

And now Noah’s Ark has been put to music by a young Italian, Vittorio Rieti with wit and humor, in a work for orchestra, played in May, 1925, at the Prague Festival.

Manuel de Falla

In Spain, one man who has continued along the lines of Albeniz and Granados is Manuel de Falla (1876). He studied first with Felipe Pedrell, the father of the modern Spanish school. In 1907 he went to Paris where he met Debussy and Dukas. He wrote a ballet El Amor Brujo (Love, the Magician). He combines a picturesque Spanish folk style with a modern way of writing music. One of his most attractive works is a scenic arrangement from a chapter in Don Quixote, Cervantes’ masterpiece, as Spanish as a Spanish fandango. It is a marionette ballet called El Retablo de Maese Pedro (Master Pedro’s Puppet Show). It is a charming work and you will like it. His writings have simplicity, and freshness, which can come only from deep study and so perfect a mastery of art that there is no self-consciousness. He is a true nationalist delighting in Spanish color; his music has nobility and humanness as well as charm.

The Netherlands

Clarence G. Hamilton says in his Outlines of Music History that Netherland composers are patriotically laboring for a distinctive school. Few names are known outside of Holland, with the exception of Alphonse Diepenbroek (1862–1921), Dirk Schaefer (1874), Sem Dresden (1881), James Zwart (1892), Julius Roentgen (1855), who has collected many of the Dutch folk songs, and Dopper, conductor and composer for orchestra.

In Belgium, Jan Blockx (1851–1912) wrote successful operas and chamber music; Paul Gilson (1865) has written orchestral and chamber music works which have won him a foremost place among modern Flemish composers; both César Franck and Guillaume Lekeu were Flemish (Belgian); Joseph Jongen, while not writing in the very modern style, is well known for his symphonic poems, chamber music, a ballet S’Arka (produced at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels), songs, piano pieces and organ works.

Switzerland

Jaques Dalcroze (1865) is better known as the inventor of Eurythmics, a system of music study from the standpoint of rhythm, than as composer, but he has written many charming songs in folk style. Gustave Doret (1866), has written several operas, cantatas, oratorios which have been performed in his native land and in Paris. Hans Huber (1852) has a long list of compositions in all forms. Ernest Bloch, though born in Switzerland is living in America and is by far the greatest innovator of these Swiss writers. Emile Blanchet, is a writer of piano music, rather more poetic than of the very modern style. Arthur Honegger, the foremost young composer of France, though born in Havre, is often claimed as a Swiss composer, because his parents are Swiss. Rudolph Ganz, pianist, composer and conductor in America was born in Switzerland.

England

When we come to Frederick Delius (1863) we meet first with a new feeling in English music. He has written orchestral pieces (Brigg Fair, concertos, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring), chorals (Appalachia, The Song of the High Hills and others), chamber music and songs. He was the first Englishman to write in the impressionistic way. His opera The Village Romeo and Juliet is very modern in form, and the music interprets the story and is not built like the Italian operas.

Delius is of Dutch-French-German stock, but was born in England, and has lived there and in France. He never tried for music posts or prizes but has remained apart to compose. Though his work often sounds like the 18th century virginal music, he is not conscious of it.

He has, in his chorals, done some of the best work since Beethoven, says one biographer, and in them are strength, power and beauty, quite different indeed from the sensuous and sweet smaller works. He is a careful worker, a great idealist, and a truly great musician.

There are many well-trained musicians like Holbrooke and Hurlstone who have done much for music in England but this chapter belongs to those who are carrying on 20th century ideas.

Among them is Vaughan Williams (1872) to whom folk music is as bread to others. He uses it whenever he can. In his London Symphony, his most famous work, he has caught the spirit of the city and it is a milestone of the early 20th century. Isn’t it curious that the most important work written on the poetry of our American Walt Whitman is by an Englishman! This is the Sea Symphony for orchestra and chorus, an impressive work by Vaughan Williams. He has also written Five Mystical Songs, Willow Wood (cantata), On Wenlock Edge (six songs), Norfolk Rhapsodies, In the Fen Country.

Granville Bantock (1868) is a musical liberator for he was the first to free English composers from the old style of Mendelssohn and the new kind of classicism of Brahms, and release them to write as they felt. He wrote music on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Persian), Sappho, Pierrot of the Minute, Fifine at the Fair, Hebredean (Scotch) Symphony, which shows his love of Scotch music, and many other works. He succeeded Elgar at Birmingham University and has made valuable studies and collections of Folk Music.

A lover of chamber music, the fantasy and fancy, is Frank Bridge (1879). He is a thorough musician and has written The Sea, the Dance Rhapsodies for orchestra, symphonic poem Isabella on Keats’ poem of the same name. Three Idylls for Strings and other works.

Gustave Holst (1874) whose original name was von Holst although he is not of German descent, was a pupil of Sir Charles V. Stanford and is now an inspiring teacher and conductor. He has had many posts and has written many important works: an opera, The Perfect Fool, the Hymn to Jesus, one of the finest choral works of the century, The Planets, a very fine orchestral work, military band music, songs and part songs, some of which are written with violin accompaniment,—a charming idea!

John Ireland (1879), has written a fine piano sonata and a violin sonata, Decorations (a collection of small pieces), Chelsea Reach, Ragamuffin and Soho Forenoons, chamber music and orchestral pieces.

Cyril Scott (1879) was trained in Germany. He is a mixture of French impressionistic writing and Oriental mysticism, as you can see from the titles of his pieces: Lotus Land (Lotus is an Egyptian flower), The Garden of Soul Sympathy, and Riki Tiki Tavi, a setting of Kipling’s little chap of the Jungle Book, which is very delightful. He is one of the first English Impressionists who paved the way for the young English School. He has made many interesting experiments in modern harmony and rhythm.

Arnold Bax (1883), of Irish parentage, is a gifted and poetic composer who has written many things in small and large forms, chamber music and piano sonatas, The Garden of Fand for orchestra, Fatherland, a chorus with orchestra and other things, all of which show him to have a creative imagination and rich musical personality.

Lord Berners (1883) (Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson), a lover of the works of Stravinsky and Casella of the modern Russian and Italian Schools, was trained in an old-fashioned way, and then Stravinsky and Casella, seeing in his music possibilities for freer writing, encouraged him to break away from old ways, and he became one of the most modern of the young English composers. He writes interestingly in caricature and sarcasm, in fact he is a musical cartoonist in such pieces as the Funeral March of a Pet Canary, Funeral March of a Rich Aunt, full of originality and of fun in choosing subjects. He wrote, too, three pieces, Hatred, Laughter and A Sigh which are amazing musical studies. His work is interesting because of its daring in his very correct surroundings.

Eugene Goossens (1893) of Flemish ancestry, understands dissonance and modern combinations, which he uses with fascinating charm. His violin sonata and Nature Pieces for piano show his depth of feeling, his Kaleidescopes (12 children’s pieces) show his humor, love of the grotesque, and Four Conceits, his power to be musically sarcastic. His Five Impressions of a Holiday and Two Sketches for String Quartet are so delightful that modern music would have lost much without them. He is a gifted conductor and has directed concerts in London, in Rochester, New York, and is engaged as guest conductor of the New York Symphony in 1925–26.

Arthur Bliss (1891) like Stravinsky, whom he admires, is the enfant terrible of English music and is not held down by any rule or fixed standards except that of good taste. He uses instruments in daring ways, and shows a natural knowledge of them. One of his pieces is for an unaccompanied Cor Anglais (English horn). Among his pieces are The Committee, In the Tube (Subway) at Oxford Circus, At the Ball. He wrote a Color Symphony, so-called because when composing it, he experienced a play of color sensation, although he did not write it to be used with the color organ, as does Scriabin in Prometheus. He is a most daring experimenter, and altogether an interesting young musician. In Rout, a gay piece for voice and chamber orchestra, he used meaningless syllables in place of words. He spent several years in Los Angeles, but has returned to England.

America

In America we not only hear the works of all the people of whom we have spoken in this chapter, but among our composers are a few who show marked twentieth century ways of composing. Some of them are American born, some have adopted the country, but all are working for the advancement of American music: Loeffler, our first impressionist, Bloch, Carpenter, Gruenberg, Whithorne, Morris, Jacobi, Marion Bauer, Eichheim, Carl Engel, Ornstein, Varese, Salzedo, Ruggles, Cowell, Antheil, and Copland.

Several organizations have worked for the cause of modern music by presenting concerts devoted to works by contemporary Europeans and Americans. The Pro Musica Society has been responsible for the visits to this country of Maurice Ravel, Bela Bartok, Darius Milhaud, Alexandre Tansman and Arthur Honegger.

The League of Composers (founded 1923) has had many notable “first performances” of compositions by Schoenberg, Bloch, Bartok, Stravinsky, Gruenberg, Malipiero, Hindemith, Copland, de Falla, Whithorne, Carrillo, etc.

Our Good-Bye

This book has been longer than it should have been, yet our sins have been of omission rather than commission. But if we have only made you realize that the world cannot stand still, that music is always growing whether we understand it or not, and the good is handed on to the next generation even though much “falls by the wayside,” we will not have written in vain.