Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
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was also intended for the listener as a verbal vehicle for musical crea-
There was nothing parochial about those first issues; they were
dominated by European reports. There is the sense that the initia
impulse for the publication grew out of a need to know what was goin
on; out of an urgent necessity for American musical life to push out o
provincial isolation. Within a few issues, however, the American scene
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twenties was closer to that of the fifties and sixties than to that of the
into his society. As one thumbs the pages of this chronicle and watches
the excitements and grand gestures of the twenties give way to the purposefulness and utilitarianism of the thirties, the essential relationship of
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conducted by Webern.
The characteristic climate of the thirties was, of course, crisis-world
economic crisis, political crisis, European and Western cultural crisis,
contemporary-music crisis. In 1933 Sessions actually wrote an article
entitled "Music in Crisis;" the same year, Eric Blom wrote another on
what he called "a slump" in contemporary music. The sounds of despair
were everywhere; one I.S.C.M. report after another was filled with
lamentations. Indifference reigned; new ideas seemed to have been in
short supply, new talents were nowhere to be found. It is certainly
striking that, between the appearance of Shostakovich in the late twenties and the postwar generation, scarcely a single figure of international
stature appeared on the scene. At best, the names of composers like
Messiaen, Dallapiccola, and Elliott Carter turn up in the late thirties,
but their real significance was established only after the war. The heroes
of the day, the sensational new creative talents hailed by the critics were
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cliches as to argue that the great national styles have been determined
by the character of the creative imaginations of composers rather than
the other way round.
Among the European composers, Kurt Weill and Hindemith were the
best received here. Stravinsky was perhaps a little too raffine, although
his music was certainly often performed. Schoenberg, Krenek, and
others found shelter in the university, which was still a rather isolated
place for a composer, but where it was possible to avoid the intensely
practical turn taken elsewhere.
Even before his arrival, Schoenberg's presence also helped to stir up
the American avant-garde. Schoenbergian chromaticism was crossed
with all kinds of curious orientalisms to produce a special and mild
forties. The new American avant-garde tended to turn away not only
from Europe but even completely away from Western tradition. Most
significant were the attempts to use non-Western materials ranging in
origin from Bali to Armenia. The California percussion movement also
suggested a link with the American twenties through Varese and Cowell.
Since Cowell, Lou Harrison, Colin McPhee, and John Cage were regular contributors, the magazine was involved in these movements to a
certain extent.
Modern Music will not take us much further. Its last years were much
* 19"
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Boulez.
there were few contributors who could write significantly about music
within the stylistic framework of verbal clarity and simplicity established
to Modern Music was of the same essential nature as the musical solutions
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