«Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism
Massimiliano Locanto (Università degli Studi di Salerno) [email protected]
David Oppenheim: Have you read the reviews? Igor Stravinsky: No! D.O.: The critics…? I.S.: No! D.O.: They were very good. That must make you very happy. I.S.: I’m not happy by good critics! D.O.: And bad critics? I.S.: Just not very unhappy by bad critics!
These words are drawn from a short excerpt included in documentary film produced in 1965, when Stravinsky, who had long since moved to California, had definitively became a serial composer1. If we were looking for something that best summarizes in very few words the old composer’s attitude toward music critics and music criticism, this short dialogue would probably be one of the best choices. It perfectly reflects his typical ostentation of indifference and contempt but behind which a real apprehension and sensitivity to criticism were, in fact, concealed. A lot has been written and said about Stravinsky and his critics2. However, this relationship has been usually considered from the point of view of the reception processes3. In this paper, on the contrary, I will address the issue
1. CBS News Special: Igor Stravinsky, by David Oppenheim, CBS News, broadcast 3 May 1966. The program was narrated by Charles Kuralt, with David Oppenheim as producer, writer and interviewer. The excerpt quoted here is also contained in Igor Stravinsky: Kompositör [Igor Stravinsky: Composer], a film by János Darvas, Munich, Metropolitan, 2001. I would like to thank János Darvas for the precious information he gave me about this and other excerpts. 2. See in particular Walsh 1998 and Campbell 2003. 3. Also Campbell 2003, which, to some extent, deals with Stravinsky attitude toward criticism, is largely devoted to «[…] the reception that Stravinsky’s music has met at
Journal of Music Criticism, Volume 1 (2017), pp. 113-139 © Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini. All rights reserved. Massimiliano Locanto the other way round. My question will be about how Stravinsky reacted to the criticism of his works. Or, rather, why Stravinsky usually reacted so negatively to such criticism. I will focus on a particular period of Stravinsky’s life, when his clash with his critics took on a particularly virulent tone, which is to say the years following his ‘serial turn’. Apparently, Stravinsky’s great hostility toward his critics remained unchanged from the very beginning of his career to his final years. Scholars have hardly recognized any significant difference in this regard between Stravinsky’s writings published before World War ii — Chronicle of my Life, Poetics of Music, and the many shorter writings and interviews released in the period between the wars — and the ‘conversation books’ edited with Robert Craft from 19594. Stuart Campbell, for example, noticed that albeit in these latter writings «[t]he virtuosity in using the English language suggests Robert Craft’s hand […] the zest — flowing presumably form the composer himself — was equal to that evident when squibs where launched earlier in Stravinsky’s career»5. However, what did change from time to time was the motivation for Stravinsky’s hostility toward his critics, which reflects on each occasion the composer’s concerns about the reception of his music within a different cultural context. During the Californian years, it reflects the composer’s preoccupation about how his serial compositions would be perceived in a cultural context that was divided between a growing mass culture and an increasingly influential and intellectually prestigious elite of composer- theorists. My aim in this essay will be to prove this assertion. However, since it is evident enough that if we want to understand the changes we must know the premises, before focusing my attention on the American years I will briefly recall the origins and motivations of Stravinsky’s troubles with music criticism in the early years of his career. In this first part I will largely rely on previous studies6.
different times» (p. 230). Walsh 1998, on the contrary, is entirely dedicated to the historical, biographical, cultural and psychological motivations behind the composer’s fight against critics. However, Walsh study is largely focused on the reception of the early scores for the Ballet Russes and of some works of the French period. My focus, on the contrary, will be on the late Stravinsky. 4. Stravinsky 1935-1936; Stravinsky 1942; Stravinsky 2013. 5. Campbell 2003, p. 246. 6. In particular Walsh 1998 and Campbell 2003. 114 «Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism
In Europe
To begin, we must consider that a deeply negative attitude toward music criticism was not an exclusive prerogative of Stravinsky, since it was shared by many modernist and avant-garde composers of both the first and the second half the twentieth century. However we can agree with Stephen Walsh that «some composers mind critics more than other», and in this respect Stravinsky was probably one of the most concerned about music criticism7. Secondly, in any one individual case there may be a different reason for this attitude. In the case of Stravinsky, we can agree with Walsh that these reasons are historical, cultural and, above all, psychological. Exile was probably the most important factor. For almost his entire life Stravinsky was in a sort of enforced exile, and he always had to negotiate with alien cultures and foreign societies. He had to find a way not only to promote himself but also to justify both his presence and his outstanding position as a foreign artist within the hosting country. Paradoxically enough, his growing success and fame was due, to a large extent, to the ‘foreign’ element the audience perceived in his music. The favorable reception of his ballet music in Paris was largely due to the exotic-Orientalist elements that the Parisian audience perceived in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. More in general, this benevolence was part of a wider French sympathy toward Russian music which dated back to the late 1870s, when the Parisian audience began to be acquainted with the music of the ‘Mighty handful’. As Stuart Campbell noticed, this sympathy «had political and financial as well as cultural resonances»8. To French ears, Stravinsky’s music sounded like an extension of the Russian tradition they had already welcomed. The French intellectual milieu headed by Jean Cocteau considered Stravinsky’s best quality to be a foreigner and an outsider, free from the bonds of the traditions of late-romantic French music. All this, however, could not roll on without certain incidents and misunderstandings with non-Russian music criticism. The whole reception history of Stravinsky’s early works in Paris is dotted with such misunderstandings. We can conclude with Campbell that «[…] the generality of French opinion lost enthusiasm for Stravinsky once his music had parted company with their ideas of what was ‘Russian’»9.
7. Walsh 1998, p. 132. 8. Campbell 2003, p. 246. Campbell also quotes this illuminating statement by Boris de Schloezer: «What [Westerns] look for first and foremost in Russian Art is precisely that which is different from theirs; it is a certain ‘barbaric’ aspect — rough, untutored and, in a word, Asiatic. This Asiatic face of Russia, they think, is Russia’s true face» (Schloezer 1929, p. 191). 9. Campbell 2003, p. 237. 115 Massimiliano Locanto More importantly, as Walsh argued, not only was Stravinsky considered an outsider in France — and later on in the USA — but also, from the very beginning of his ‘exile’, in his motherland itself. From his first Parisian successes, Stravinsky was perceived and described by Russian musical critics as a composer who was at the same time too much influenced by foreign — French, in particular — elements, and too much rooted in the St. Petersburg musical tradition of the Belyayev circle and in Rimsky-Korsakov’s teaching. Both aspects, they argued, prevented his music from being sufficiently original. The first Russian reception of Stravinsky’s ballet scores was, toput it charitably, ambivalent. Since the premiere of the Scherzo fantastique and Feu d’artifice in 1909, Russian critics had admired Stravinsky’s orchestration and use of brilliant harmonies. However, they considered these qualities to be disproportionate, useless or one-sided. Some examples are worth mentioning. After hearing Siloti’s performance of the Firebird Suite in 1910 the composer and critic Vyacheslav Gavrilovich Karatïgin (1875-1925), who was probably Stravinsky’s most trenchant critic in his homeland, wrote a long and unfavourable review, whose verdict is summed up in the following words: «Even though this music is somewhat superficial in spite of all its brilliance […] would you not put it the other way around […]: that this music is brilliant despite a certain superficiality?»10. A year later the composer and music critic Nikolay Myaskovsky (1881-1942) wrote a review based on a detailed study of the piano reduction of the Firebird full ballet. Albeit stressing the «[…] abundance of invention, intelligence, temperament, talent», Myaskovsky also pointed out that the work «lacks originality. The very essence of its musical material is not yet marked by a vividly expressed individuality»11. And I would be amiss not to mention the critic who, in Taruskin’s words, was for three decades «Stravinsky’s number- one’ Russian detractor»12: Leonid Sabaneyev (1881-1968). This is part of a long review of the Rite of Spring published two weeks after the Paris premiere on 29 May 1913:
I have looked through the music of this new work of Stravinsky’s. I will admit that I have never had a particularly high opinion of this writer’s compositional (in the sense of ‘musical’) talent. In his music this young composer is as careful as a banker. Nothing with him has ever been spontaneous, inspired, intuitive.
10. Karatïgin 1910; reprinted in Stravinsky 1998, vol. i, p. 460, translation by Svetlana Savenko, in: Levitz 2013, p. 256. 11. Myaskovsky 1911; quoted in Myaskovsky 1960, vol. ii, p. 26, translation by Svetlana Savenko, in: Levitz 2013, p. 256. 12. Taruskin 1996, vol. i, p. 227. 116 «Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism Everything is the fruit of mental toil — of apt and accurate calculations and constructions. His original creativity, if one can call Stravinsky’s activities by this exalted term, was very like Rimsky-Korsakov’s, but without his delicacy and fantasy. Later came a period of ‘Frenchification’. Stravinsky began to copy the ways of Ravel and Debussy. But again the imitation was infinitely weaker than the original. In the end, with Petrushka Stravinsky offers something that is in some sense ‘his own’. But how antipathetic I find this ‘his own’. Ostentatious complexity, beyond which is inward poverty. The utter, irremediable absence of any “innards’ to the music, any hidden essence, any psychology. Stravinsky’s music is a sort of spillikins in sound. Fake, moreover, contrived, confused. The harmonies seem unusual from lack of habit and on closer inspection it turns out that this unusualness is trumpery, behind which is concealed a poverty-stricken simplicity. They live no inner life, unlike the harmonic innovations of genuine talents. They are rickety and feeble13.
We can have little doubt about Stravinsky’s sensitivity to these judgments of his music by critics in his motherland. He hoped that his works could receive in Russia the same success and the same favorable reception they had had in Paris, but all in vain. This unfavorable response on the part of Russian music criticism, right at the beginning of his career was, from a psychological point of view, traumatic for the composer. The second important reason for Stravinsky’s enduring struggle with music critics — one that is closely linked to exile as well — was his overwhelming drive to push music criticism in a useful direction favourable to his propagandistic and self-promoting intentions. Worried about the possibly negative influence which criticism might exercise on the reception of his music in Europe — and later in the USA — he tried to gain direct and total control by giving many interviews, writing open letters and, finally, entire books. Albeit largely ghost-written, these writings clearly reflected the composer’s own concern about the reception of his works. In them Stravinsky promoted a modernist aesthetics which was well suited to his propagandistic strategies. Some ‘aesthetical’ notions, in particular, point precisely in this direction, such as the idea that competence in writing about music consists in knowing how music is made; and this corresponds to a large extent to knowing how music is composed (by the composer). This idea, of course, was not an exclusive prerogative of Stravinsky. To a good extent it was a typically modernist stance, also exemplified, for example, by Arnold Schoenberg’s writings. An entire section of his collection of Style
13. Sabaneyev 1913; translated by Stephen Walsh, in: Walsh 1998, p. 134. 117 Massimiliano Locanto and Idea is devoted to the problem of the unsuitability of music criticism14. Schoenberg repeatedly addresses the issues of the degeneration, inadequacy and unsuitability of music critics, stressing their lack of grounding in the technical aspects of music composition. Since music critics «usually cannot read a score», Schoenberg maintained, they can only relies on «a somnambulistic ability». For both Schoenberg and Stravinsky, a good knowledge of the technical aspects of music composition was the best, if not the only, way to write something useful about music. However, in contrast to Schoenberg, Stravinsky used this idea as leverage not only to impose his authority on musical criticism, but also to take its place, and to take on its role for himself. Many articles and interviews released by him in the inter-war period are aimed at denigrating the role of the mauvais bergeres, as he dubbed music critics, in order to give the composer alone total freedom, like a good shepherd, in driving the audience where he wanted, and to leave him the first and last word about his music15. Schoenberg, in comparison, never went on to say that his music could only be criticised by himself or, as we shall see shortly in Stravinsky, that it could not be criticized at all. In Stravinsky’s writings and interviews recently collected by Valérie Dufour, there are many examples of this authoritarian attitude, but one in particular seems to me most telling. It is a typescript, now held at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, entitled ‘Questions d’un profane de New York à Stravinsky’ and it is an unpublished interview which was prepared in 1928 by a representative of the Aeolian Company named Henry Dubois, as explanatory notes that were to be printed on the mechanical piano roll of the Concerto for Piano and Wind Orchestra. The Aeolian Company was used to print such explanatory notes by the composer in order to facilitate the understanding and spreading of Stravinsky’s work to a large, and not always well-trained, audience, in particular in the United States, which was the fastest growing and most promising marketplace of the Company. This is the question of the rather elusive layman from New York:
En février 1925, nous avons entendu une de vos expressions, le Concerto pour piano et orchestre d’harmonie. Nous étions agités par une force, mais nous n’en comprenions pas le sens. Nous sentions qu’il avait là de la beauté, mais nous ne pouvions pas
14. Schoenberg 1975, pp. 185-204. The section is titled ‘Critics and Criticism’. The titles of the writings contained in this section are: ‘A Legal Question (1909); ‘An Artistic Impression’ (1909); ‘About Music Criticism’ (1909); ‘Sleepwalker’ (1909); ‘The Music Critic’ (1912); ‘Musical Historians’ (c. 1915); ‘Those Who Complain about the Decline’ (1923). 15. Stravinsky 2013, pp. 12, 221. 118 «Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism l’apercevoir clairement, comme vous avez dû l’apercevoir vous- même. Nous nous sommes tournés vers les critiques pour quêter un peu de lumière car eux, s’ils ne sont pas des artistes créateurs, sont néanmoins versés dans la perception de la beauté une fois qu’elle a été exprimée. Nous avons trouvé que les critiques avaient failli. Ils furent prompts à dire qu’une beauté ou un sens qu’ils n’ont pas pu percevoir n’existait pas. Nous ne les croyons pas. Et nous nous tournons maintenant vers la dernière source — le compositeur lui-même. En toute humilité, nous vous demandons de nous aider. Voulez-vous prendre la place des critiques qui ont failli16?
And this is Stravinsky’s answer:
Je fais un bon accueil à cette lettre et au questionnaire qui l’accompagne parce que, manifestement, ils émanent d’un ‘profane’ (layman) de l’art en général, et plus particulièrement de l’art musical. Sa sincérité qui me touche, sa bonne foi qui ne fait aucun doute, me portent à la rencontre du désir louable qu’il a de s’éclairer. Je veux donc le guider, autant qu’il m’est possible, dans ce mystère qui m’échappe à moi-même, qui s’appelle l’inspiration et que le commun considère à tort comme constituant l’art musical tout entier. Par contre, j’ai la certitude de l’éclairer plus utilement et avec plus d’assurance en lui faisant comprendre que la musique, comme tous les arts et comme, du reste, toutes les créations de la pensée humaine dans quelque domaine que ce soit, comporte une large part d’éléments objectifs et pose des problèmes dont la solution exige des moyens et des méthodes à la fois différentes et complexes. J’ai toujours constaté, par le jugement et l’opinion de la masse, si souvent, hélas! conduite par de mauvais bergers, que la musique est considérée comme un produit qui, sans même que le consommateur soit préparé à son action, doit lui dispenser d’emblée un maximum de jouissances. Cela est impossible. La musique n’est pas un bonbon et son compositeur n’est pas un confiseur. Sans une initiation préalable elle n’a jamais été assimilable qu’à la longue17.
In the preface to the volume from which this quotation is drawn, Valérie Dufour states that Stravinsky’s contempt for music criticism was not motivated by any theory, or speculative intention but only by the need to create a direct link between him and his audience18. However, despite speculation not being a motivation, it was nonetheless an important tool in the hands of the composer
16. Ibidem, pp. 220-221. 17. Ibidem, pp. 221-222. 18. Ibidem, p. 11. 119 Massimiliano Locanto and his self-promoting strategy. From the idea that composer is the most qualified person to talk about his own music, Stravinsky went on to express the idea that music can reach an aesthetic condition where it cannot be criticisable or discussed anymore, because it is in «objectively working order». The clearest and best known assertion of this kind can be found in the last lines of a short article in French published in Excelsior on 29 April 1934 with the title ‘Igor Stravinsky nous parle de Perséphone’. Here Stravinsky, after explaining his unorthodox treatment of André Gide’s texts, peremptorily states that:
La musique n’est pas la pensée. […]. Elle nous est donnée uniquement pour mettre de l’ordre dans les choses: passer d’un état anarchique et individualiste à un état réglé, parfaitement conscient et pourvu de garantie de vitalité et de durée. […] Ce ne sont pas des caprices de ma nature. Je suis sur un très sûr chemin. Ce n’est ni à discuter ni à critiquer. L’on ne critique pas quelqu’un ou quelque chose en état de fonction. Le nez n’est pas fabriqué: le nez est. Ainsi mon art19.
In the USA
When Stravinsky moved to the United States he brought with him this wealth of experience and ideas about music criticism. In the American years, however, his relationship with critics, in particular those involved in the musical press, turned even worse than in Europe, and all this reached a true climax after the ‘serial turn’. The Stravinsky-Craft conversation books are full of allegations and offensive statements towards music critics, who are always accused of ignorance, arrogance and malice. The «mauvais bergers» of the French years here became the «professional ignoramus», the «journalist-reviewer pest»20. It is important to recognize that in the conversation books and, more in general, in Stravinsky’s and Craft’s rhetoric strategy, the question of music criticism is usually raised when the problem of the reception of contemporary avant-garde music and, more specifically, of (Stravinsky’s) serial compositions is also addressed. The role of music criticism in the changing reception of non- contemporary music and in the evaluation of its performances, for example, are not usually the main concern of the Craft-Stravinsky duo. The following quotation, from the Conversation of 1959 — the first of the conversation books — opens a chapter, entitled ‘About Music Today’, which ends with Craft
19. Gide 1934. 20. Stravinsky – Craft 1962b, p. 172. 120 «Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism asking Stravinsky how would he ‘draw’ his recent music (Stravinsky replied with a well-known drawing depicting, as he saw it, the polyphonic and interval-based character of his serial compositions):
R.C. What do you mean when you say that critics are incompetent?
I.S. I mean that they are not even equipped to judge one’s grammar. They do not see how a musical phrase is constructed, do not know how music is written; they are incompetent in the technique of the contemporary musical language. Critics misinform the public and delay comprehension. Because of critics many valuable things come too late. Also, how often we read criticisms of first performances of new music — in which the critic praises or blames (but usually praises) performance. Performances are of something; they do not exist in the abstract, apart from the music they purport to perform. How can the critic know whether a piece of music he does not know is well or ill performed21?
Three years later, in the third conversation book (Exposition and Developments, 1962), the question of music criticism was again presented as part of a wider problem concerning the reception of the contemporary music:
R.C. Do you care to comment on the current musical scene, on the characteristics of the newest music you have heard, for example; on new scores seen; on the problem of young composers; on the question of music criticism, on the position of recording in contemporary music22?
This time, after answering at length all other questions — including the last one regarding recordings — Stravinsky said he preferred not to speak of critics at all: «As for Brother Criticus, I do not wish to spoil my temper, and my book, by speaking of him». But immediately afterwards, in a footnote, he added a long remark, in which once again he emphasized the central role of the musical press in the reception of new music:
The open-door policy to new music in England in the last few years was made possible to a great extent by the accession of an intelligent younger generation in the musical press. In consequence, London has become a great capital of contemporary music. New York could and should be such capital, too, for it
21. Stravinsky – Craft 1959, p. 119. 22. Stravinsky – Craft 1962a, p. 108. 121 Massimiliano Locanto boasts a great number of fine instrumentalists than any city in the world. But New York must clean its journalistic house first23.
A good deal of Stravnsky’s last writings can be interpreted precisely as a response to the negative reception of his serial compositions. Craft and Stravinsky devoted several sections, such as open letters to the editors and responses to critics, that are clearly intended to denigrate those critics who had shown themselves to be hostile to his recent compositions. An entire section of Themes and Conclusions is devoted to Stravinsky’s reply, in the form of open letters to the editors, to various reviews and statements by critics such as Albert Goldber and Martin Bernheimer, of the Los Angeles Times, and Harold Schonberg and Clive Barnes of the New York Times24. The culmination of this crusade against the critics was a long appendix added to the American edition of Expositions and Developments of 196225. The title itself of the appendix was an anathema: ‘Slightly More of a Plague on One of Their Houses (A Comparison of Two Critics)’. This time Stravinsky’s and Craft’s victims were two eminent critics: Winthrop Sargeant (1903-1986), of The New Yorker magazine, and the musicologist and New Herald Tribune columnist Paul Henry Lang (1901-1991). Stravinsky did not mention them explicitly by name, explaining that he could not go about immortalising such people by naming them, but referred to them with malicious pseudonyms: S. W. Deaf for Winthrop Sargeant, and H. P. Langweilich for Paul Henry Lang (in German Langweile means ‘boring’). In any case the identity of the two critics was clear enough to the readers of the time. Stravinsky accused Lang and Sargeant of «public ignorance» and of «pretending to know when they know nothing». Apparently, Stravinsky’s anger was justified by Lang and Sargeant’s ignorance and lack of musicianship. The composer quoted some evident mistakes and howlers of the two critics such as, to give just one example, Sargeant’s statement that «At least the symphony avoided the 12-tone scale and its characteristic pedantry»26. Stravinsky pointed out that even Mozart used a 12-tone scale (that of the piano keyboard), so unmasking and ridiculing the totally inappropriate use of the term ‘scale’ in reference to the 12-tone ‘rows’. «How can» — Stravinsky wondered — «a man write ‘professional’ (in the sense of ‘paid for’) music journalism today and not know that Schoenberg did not invent or use a new ‘scale’?»27.
23. Ibidem, p. 111. 24. Stravinsky 1972, pp. 202-220. 25. Stravinsky – Craft 1962b, pp. 170-179. The appendix was not included in the English edition of the book published by Faber and Faber in the same year (Stravinsky – Craft 1962a). 26. Sargeant 1959. 27. Stravinsky – Craft 1962b, p. 173. 122 «Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism However, although mistakes of the kind quoted above are fairly self- evident, the real reasons for Stravinsky’s fury against the two critics should be sought elsewhere. After all, the journals of the time were full of mistakes of that nature. Why, then, did Stravinsky react so cruelly against certain critics and not others? The backstory surrounding the appendix against Sargeant and Lang is revealing in this regard28. Stravinsky’s text was the culmination of a resentment that he had long experienced with the two critics. Since dealing with both of them would require excessive space, I will deal in detail only with Lang, who was definitely the most hated (and feared) of the two by Stravinsky29. The beginnings of Stravinsky’s preoccupation with Lang can be traced back to March 1956, when the critic wrote an article entitled ‘The Position of Igor Stravinsky’ in the column ‘Music and Musicians’ of the New York Herald Tribune. Lang’s account of Stravinsky as a composer was not negative. He fully acknowledged Stravinsky’s great skills and recognized his «prodigious craftsmanship». Lang also stated that «[Stravinsky] simply towers above his younger Russian colleagues, and [his] influence must be reckoned as one of the most pervasive in the history of music». The article contained some negative judgments about the Poetics of Music 30; but, as Charles Joseph noticed, they were merely echoing what many detractors had long thought about Stravinsky’s book31. However, while recognizing Stravinsky’s great artistry and craftsmanship, Lang criticised a lack of ‘content’, genuine inspiration and ‘inward truth’ in Stravinsky’s mastery of the stylistic and technical aspects of music:
28. Campbell 2003 and the other scholars who addressed the topic of this essay have given much attention to this appendix and to the story surrounding it. Some interesting remarks about the Stravinsky-Lang quarrel can be found in Joseph 2001, pp. 26, 157. 29. «To compare Deaf with Langweilich, however, is to discover merit even in Deaf. […] Deaf is at least readable, and he can be amusing. Moreover, he tends to use the first person, which is to say, ‘in my opinion’. His opinions are always on the ‘I dislike’ level, therefore, which — though I fail to see why the likes or dislikes of such people should matter — is probably the most acceptable level. In comparison, Langweilich writes so atrociously that the reader is able to follow him at all only because he is certain in advance of the malicious intent» (Stravinsky – Craft 1962b, p. 173). 30. «Stravinsky explained his esthetic creed in Musical Poetics. It is a very bad book, a sort of inverted ostentation, insolent and enigmatic, and as evidence of his beliefs he offers not logic but new dogma: the new hedonism of the composer ‘in quest of his pleasure» (ibidem). 31. See Joseph 2001, p. 26. Joseph (ibidem, p. 274, fn. 19), for example, mentions Theodore Chanler who, while reviewing Harvard’s original French edition of the Poétique musicale, had described his thoughts on ontological time and the creative process as «expressed with an almost boyish outspokenness, a good description indeed for many of Stravinsky’s famous utterances» (Chanler 1942). 123 Massimiliano Locanto It is when we come to seek for underlying motives and to assess positive achievements that we find ourselves in difficulties. […] [Stravinsky’s] method is that of the mosaic artist, musical sentences and paragraphs built with carefully calculated conscious artistry. It is not an inner sap that nourishes him but the external architecture, and such an art is the art of detail. […] ‘Pleasure’ here means a sovereign ability to play with music. […]. The soul is banished and although the ingenuity and spirit applied seem endless and inexhaustible, one is perilously close to feeling the same elation one experiences when watching a juggler work with three platters, then four, then five and so on. After a while this does not satisfy him and he throws them behind him, between his legs, and finally whistles a tune as if to show that all this is a trifle for him. Is not this great amount of fastidious work, the minute solution of stylistic problems out of proportion with the content? Could anyone but a well- trained musician really appreciate it? Would it not have been better to operate with simpler means, to avoid the hairline finesse and jewel-studded clock-work? No, because this prodigious craftsmanship is here art itself. Not inward truth is at work, but an acquired truth, acquired from without. […] It is like a historical novel which takes small details from without, anecdotes, stories, also facts, from which is constructed something of a whole. He puts together the whole from the parts, not like the original novelist who creates the whole from which the parts are deduced. It is an art that rests on much scholarship and the author of a historical novel is always a collector, a collector of documents and color patches. Stravinsky used this literary procedure, delving into Bach, Pergolesi. Weber, even Machaut, or jazz, seized the documents and color patches and fashioned from them brilliantly successful musical stories that have, despite their genesis, a strong individual relief 32.
Clearly enough, Lang’s critic was anything but new: it was simply echoing many topoi of the reception of Stravinsky’s music. It weaved some threads that, from Karatïgin, to Adorno’s Philosophy of New Music, had been running for a long time in the criticism. This article also shows that, despite some lack of technical-musical knowledge, Lang was not at all a poor critic or a poor writer. His interpretation of Stravinsky’s historical position, although perpetuating some old ‘orientalist’ clichés, was far from trivial:
32. Lang 1956. 124 «Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism Both his character and historical position make a symbol of Stravinsky, the symbol of the cultural aspirations and disappointments of Russia, the symbol of its great power and of its failures. The struggle between East and West is exemplified in this great Russian master whose original barbarous force was sacrificed to the blandishments of the ultracultivated West, and the eastern musician became the apostle of western music33.
Therefore, since Lang’s criticism was not so new, and ultimately was neither so negative, one might wonder why Stravinsky should have been worried about it. However, there was a point in Lang’s criticism that undoubtedly bothered Stravinsky: the critic believed that the long-lasting popularity of Stravinsky’s music was due to his abandonment of avant-gardism:
This immense artistry, always seductive to the cultivated musician, has ended by conquering the public too. […] Stravinsky, whose earlier concerts caused scandals […] can [now] fill a large concert hall with an enthusiastic public. The reason for this popularity is that the riddles and contradictions have been removed. The Stravinsky of the neo-classic persuasion is not a revolutionary avant-gardist; his is the voice of wise disillusionment, like that of his lesser disciple, Orff. This music is far removed from the rebellions of youth, and yet there is in it a concealed youthfulness which partly accounts for its appeal34.
Clearly enough, in this view, which was well suited to compositions of the neoclassical period, there was no room for Stravinsky’s last serial works. Lang’s opinion was in contradiction with the recent tendencies and convictions of the composer, who, in adopting the dodecaphonic method and gradually developing a personal serial technique, meant rather to keep up with the tendencies of the post-war musical avant-garde35. A few years later, in January 1960, Lang wrote a review, titled ‘The Puzzle of Stravinsky’, on a series of concerts in which some of Stravinsky’s latest and most technically ‘advanced’ serial compositions — Movements for piano and orchestra (1958-1959), Epitaphium (1959) and Double Canon (1959) — had been performed36. Here Lang expressed more explicitly his
33. Ibidem. 34. Ibidem. 35. According to Charles Joseph ( Joseph 2001, p. 26), Stravinsky, who had noticed Lang’s article, wrote in the margin of his copy (now stored in the Paul Sacher Stiftung archives), «Why should a learned musician be so deaf to contemporary music?». 36. Lang 1960. 125 Massimiliano Locanto perplexity about these works and, more in general, Stravinsky’s adoption of the serial technique37:
One of the new work took less than half a minute, the other two, a work for piano and orchestra perhaps twelve. On the whole, the[ y] presented Stravinsky, once the incarnation of robust energy and irresistible élan in a less favorable light. I had the distinct feeling that the aging master is no longer quite a free agent: he joined a sect, was anointed, and now is exhibited as the prize catch. Simon-pure dodecaphony now claims Stravinsky, a life-long and very outspoken opponent of the system, I want to make it clear that I look upon the twelve-tome system as a legitimate, logical, useful manner of composition, that has produce genuine masterpieces. It can also be deadliest exercise in planned boredom. The latest Stravinsky pieces of this denomination are written with unparalleled skill, for the master has an inner hear that can apprehend anything and everything, then elaborate with the unerring hand of a virtuoso who today has no equal in the craft of composition. Nevertheless he is no longer quite himself. He is on alien territory and what he is doing now after a glorious career fairly contradicts his past.
Much of the Appendix to the 1962 book by Craft-Stravinsky was a reply to the 1960 review by Lang. Stravinsky stated that «no such thing as ‘Simon- pure dodecaphony’ does or could exist» and that «The expression ‘twelve-tone system’ sounds as absurd to a musician today as ‘nervous breakdown’ does to a doctor», thus again ridiculing Lang’s inappropriate use of musical terms38. Stravinsky’s tone was generally rather offensive to Lang:
Langweilich writes so atrociously that the reader is able to follow him at all only because he is certain in advance of the malicious intent. And Langweilich’s basic musicianship is so much in question, too, that America’s most famous conductor once publicly declared him incapable of distinguishing flat from sharp.
Lang reacted to Stravinsky’s assault in a reply to the New York Herald Tribune on 11 March 1962, entitled ‘A Critic’s Reply to Composer: More in Sorrow than
37. In a previous review of the performance of Epitaphium and Double Canon on the New York Herald Tribune, of December 1959, Lang’s judgment had been much more cautious: «The length of these of these dodecaphonic pieces shows that we are in Stravinsky’s latest, Webern, period. I can’t say anything about the first one [Epitaphium], it was over before I could focus my attention on it, but the quartet [Double canon] sounded admirably polished and suave. It was perfectly enjoyable without the formidable synopsis contributed in the program notes» (Lang 1959). 38. Stravinsky – Craft 1962b, p. 174. 126 «Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism in Anger’. In addition to accusing Stravinsky of a hysterical and disproportionate aggression, his article also contains interesting reflections on the role and the duties of the musical critic, to which I will come back later. The occasion for the last quarrel between the composer and the critic came after another unfavorable review by Lang in the New York Herald Tribune (15 June 1962), this time dealing with Stravinsky’s television opera The Flood, first (and last) broadcast on 14 June 1962. Here Lang, along with several other things, criticized «the junior high school quality» of the work’s prologue by Robert Craft. As for the score, Lang’s opinion was, once again, that when the music seemed to be pleasant, it was so despite the adoption of serial technique, and thanks only to the old mastery of the composer and his talent for theatrical music.
The whole thing is nothing but 20 minutes intermezzo, an oversized vignette in an hour-long show, generously padded with credits, bits of art history, and biographical sketches. There is, of course some music […] but ‘ Noah’ is far from being a major, or even a significant work. […] Mr. Stravinsky is not a dour dodecaphonist by nature, nor indeed by grace; compared to other living practitioners of the ‘system’ he is a Bohemian, and though reformed and under discipline, his glorious past is there. Like Monteverdi, who after a long rest for theater music, bestirred himself in his old age, and returned to the stage, Mr. Stravinsky also returns to the theater. […] The descriptive music is quite pleasant, full of good old- fashioned tremolos for the strings, but the rest of the background music consists of little cryptograms that must be decoded phrase by phrase, a difficult task without the visual help of the score. […] The best numbers are the tiny overture and such self-contained pieces as ‘The Building of the Ark’. The opening Te Deum is also impressive, as is the very short closing Sanctus, and the two-part vocal interludes are vaguely medieval — sounding but monotonous39.
The composer reacted a few days later (24 June 1962) with a telegram wired to the New York Herald Tribune, which the newspaper published. Stravinsky lamented the damaging nature of the review, by angrily stating:
Of hundreds of reviews of my New York work, most of them, like every opus since 1905, were gratifyingly unfavorable. I found only yours entirely stupid and suppurating with gratuitous malice. The only blight on my eightieth birthday is the realization my age will probably keep me from celebrating the funeral of your senile music columnist40.
39. Lang 1962b. 40. Text of the cable quoted in Joseph 2001, p. 157. The «senile music columnist» is, of course, Lang. 127 Massimiliano Locanto It must also be said that this angry telegram was to some extent a reaction to Lang’s continuing insinuations concerning Stravinsky’s association with Craft. In his reply of March 11, Lang had said that in his conversation book, «[Stravinsky’s] amanuensis, Robert Anton Schindler Craft» put to «the great composer […] questions, some straight, some leading, some loaded». He also described Craft as «the ‘ventriloquist of God’» — one who «makes Mr. Stravinsky concern himself with matters a great composer should leave to his musical accountants». Lang’s depicted Craft as someone dominating Stravinsky and being responsible of many idea expressed in the book:
At the end of the volume, in a special appendix», Mr. Stravinsky and/or Mr. Craft (by now the collaboration has reached a stage where Mr. Stravinsky should use the business designation «A division of Craft Products, Inc.») launches a hysterical attack\ on music criticism in America and in particular on two New York critics41.
The critic’s offensiveness reached a climax in the closing of his reply:
I am afraid that when these controversial volumes are finished we may discover that what protrudes from Mr. Craft’s head is not Mephistophelian horns, as once suspected, but donkey’s ears.
In the review of The Flood, too, Lang had referred to Robert Craft — who was responsible for the composition of the scenario, of the text and of many visual aspects of television opera — as «[Stravinsky’s] amanuensis, librettist, and valet de chamber»42. However, what Stravinsky actually feared in Lang’s writings was not so much his insinuations (not entirely unfounded) surrounding the decisive role of Craft in their books and in his own artistic choices, nor Lang’s alleged ignorance of the technical aspects of music, but rather the enthusiasm for his more ‘traditional’ neoclassical works and the negative assessment of his recent serial compositions. In fact, we must consider that Stravinsky had pinned on these works all his hopes on again becoming a leading figure of avant-garde music in both Europe and the United States, so as to catch up with what he called ‘the young generation’ of Boulez, Stockhausen, Babbitt and so forth. Understandably, therefore, the reception of his serial compositions made him worried about music criticism more than ever. However, in addition to hoping to
41. Lang 1962a. 42. Lang 1962b. 128 «Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism regain a leading position within the international musical avant-garde, Stravinsky was also confident that some of his last compositions (in particular those for the stage) would give him a new popularity with the vast American audience. Unlike many other serial composers who had made their mark on the musical scene in those years, Stravinsky had not given up all hope that even the most ‘advanced’ music could be understood by the widest possible audience. He believed that intellectual élite could take control of the mass media. In the Working Notes for The Flood — a sort of scenario containing many suggestions for the Television direction of The Flood, composed with Balanchine in March and April 1962, and then published in the Dialogues — he wrote: «As for the question of mass media, I can only say that ‘the intellectual élite’ — If one exists, and I hope it does […] — is not opposed to mass media, but to those who seek to determine what is suitable for mass media»43. He was not looking for a «total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance», as hoped by Milton Babbitt in his famous 1951 article ‘The Composer as a Specialist’, (re-entitled ‘Who Cares if You Listen?’)44. After all, Stravinsky owed most of his first successes to theatre goers in Paris and throughout Europe, and for him the public was bound to remain a constant preoccupation. Unfortunately, he did not really grasp the difference between the public of theatre and concert goers and a mass-media audience. Therefore, what made Lang’s and Sargenat’s reviews contemptible for Stravinsky was not their lack of the composer’s knowledge he thinks necessary, but their his enthusiasm for those composers (mostly operatic composers) whose traditional and conventional musical language was gaining growing popularity among the American audience and who represented the most fearsome threat to Stravinsky: he mentioned some of them, who had been publicly praised by Sargeant, such as Vittorio Giannini and Gian Carlo Menotti45. This latter, in particular, had become very popular among the American audience, thanks to his radio opera The Old Maid (NBC, 1939), and, above all, his television opera Amahl and the Night Visitors (NBC, 1951) whose popularity was really unparalleled. The Flood — the television opera so negatively reviewed by Lang — was now the serial composition where the composer had pinned much of his hopes of increasing his popularity with the American television audience. Stravinsky sincerely hoped that this opera would go down well with the public. In Expositions and Developments he wrote: «I tried hard to keep The Flood very simple as music:
43. Stravinsky – Craft 1961, p. 80. 44. Babbitt 2003, p. 53. 45. Stravinsky – Craft 1962b, p. 173. 129 Massimiliano Locanto after all, it was commissioned for television […]»46. In an article on Newsweek advertising the TV show one month before its premiere, Emily Coleman tried to reassure the public: «The score is in Stravinsky’s latest musical style, which uses, the so-called ‘serial technique’, a complex and frequently trying method of composition […]; The Flood, however is extremely easy to listen to»47. The composer himself was even more explicit:
Whether or not the musical idiom is more accessible to a large audience than it would have been if I were composing directly for the stage, I cannot say, But The Flood could become the first work in a so-called serial idiom to achieve a degree of lay- listener popularity — a serial ‘Peter and the Wolf’48.
From Charles Joseph’s in the New York Public Library, we know that Stravinsky had saved more than sixty press reviews, storing them in a file marked «American critics about The Flood, June 1962»49. As Joseph points out, «[…] the fact that Stravinsky read so many is telling. His files confirm that he closely monitored reactions to his work while publicly dismissing them» Stravinsky «[…] read every review, correcting those that erroneously referred to the work as Noah, as if the gesture itself retained for him a certain bittersweet vestige of control. For a composer who claimed immunity from public opinion, especially the opinion of critics, such documents testify to strong feelings of hurt»50. All this notwithstanding, The Flood was, inevitably, a flop, and there can be little doubt that the chief cause of the failure lay in the most publicised and most feared — but very little known — serial ‘style’ of Stravinsky’s score — even though the overtly modernist style of the staging, costumes and television production all played their part. In the audience’s perception of the day, ‘serial’ meant ‘difficult’, ‘obscure’, ‘unpleasant’51. In the end, the Stravinsky-Lang affaire clearly shows that it would be a mistake to believe that Stravinsky was truly indifferent or insensitive to the judgments of his work by non-composer music critics. Throughout his entire life he had always paid great attention to music criticism, by collecting a large number of reviews, articles, press clippings and essays. However, the documents in his personal library clearly show that this habit became even more systematic
46. Ibidem, p. 127. 47. Coleman 1962, p. 53. 48. Ibidem. 49. Joseph 2001, p. 157. 50. Ibidem. 51. On the circumstances surrounding the flop seeibidem , pp. 132-161. 130 «Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism in the Californian years, and in this respect The Flood is a paradigmatic case. This increased susceptibility was largely due to the specificity of the American post-war cultural context. Stravinsky understood that, at a time when composers were continuously looking for novelty in compositional technique and musical language, audiences were turning to critics for explanations about and opinions on this increasingly difficult music. Hence the role of the critics became of greater import than before; they could play a part of unprecedented importance in shaping the reception of the New Music. Never had critics possessed more power to condition the audience’s response to the novelties of avant-garde composers52.
Conclusion: ‘Good’ Critics and ‘Bad’ Critics
The controversy between Stravinsky-Craft and Lang-Sargeant had the merit of driving a narrative on the role and function of the music critic, unmasking the ideology behind Stravinsky’s authoritarian vision. What did, in fact, Stravinsky regard as the proper function of criticism? The composer gave no answer to this question, if not a totally negative one: if we were to trust his words and his writings we would have to conclude that he was really convinced that music critics need to be, at best, re-educated, and in the worst-case scenario replaced by composers-critics. What seemed to annoy Stravinsky most about Sargeant and Lang was that neither of them was a (serial) composer. The point for Stravinsky was always the same: competence in writing about music consists in knowing what the composer knows. The appendix to the 1962 book opened with these words:
One solution to the question of what to do with Brother Criticus would be for composers to publish their own review. This should be less exclusively propagandistic than any now in existence (I am thinking of certain publishers’ magazines) and it should satisfy an altogether different purpose; but the important thing is that it should be a composers’ — i.e., a professional — review53.
In his reply to Stravinsky, published in The New Yorker on 3 March 1962, Winthrop Sargeant stated, not without good reason: «One gathers that his ideal musical world be one in which the music written by composers was performed by composers before an audience of composers, including critics who were
52. See Elder 2008, pp. 3-5. 53. Stravinsky – Craft 1962b, p. 171. 131 Massimiliano Locanto composers»54. Sargeant’s objection was well-founded: Stravinsky’s emphasis on the knowledge of the technical aspects of music composition completely distorted the image of the music critic, depriving him of his role. If by ‘music critic’ we only mean the music reviewer — this, in fact, was the kind of music critic Stravinsky hated, and Sargeant and Lang were both attacked by Stravinsky for their activity as reviewers — then we can agree with Edward T. Cone:
[The critic-reviewer] writes primarily for the consumer. His reader wants to know what to buy: what concerts and operas to attend, what records to listen to, and what to think about what he hears. The reviewer’s ears, then, must be fundamentally similar to those of the lay audience — although, one hopes, sharper and more focused. His essays must describe as accurately as possible how the music sounded-how it went, if it was new; how it was performed. […] The reviewer’s authority, then, stems from his reader’s conviction that the reviewer’s taste is trustworthy — which most frequently means, consonant with the reader’s […] The successful reviewer, then, must write from the layman’s point of view55.
One of the critical responses that best highlighted the ideological aspects of Stravinsky’s vision of music criticism, however, came from Lang himself, in his reply of March 11, which was introduced by this simple question: «Is a composer the only one capable of judging a work of music?». Lang’s words clearly alluded to the authoritarian nature of Stravinsky’s vision:
[…] I am compelled to remind [Stravinsky] that try as he will, the independent critic can no more be abolished in America than the Jury. This is a country that will never tolerate what Mr. Stravinsky really wants, namely that the critic should exist only by sufferance of the composer. The distinguished musician repeats the old canard that no one but a composer is able to criticize another composer, assuming that through some pre-established harmony the composer’s interests would thus automatically be secured. His own cold dismissal of other composers, and his studied silences, however, give little assurance for confidence on this score. But perhaps he is calling for a type of composer-critic who will pamper the new ruler like lackey fearful of losing his weekly wage56.
The role of musical criticism was further clarified by what Bernhard Haggin wrote in a long review of the Stravinsky-Craft conversation books in
54. Sargeant 1962. 55. Cone 1981, p. 2. 56. Lang 1962a. 132 «Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism the Hudson Review. In the end, Haggin defended Stravinsky against Lang, but he could not help noticing that
[…] what criticism calls for is not the knowledge of the composer, the doer, the insider, but rather the perception, the judgment, the taste of the non-doer, the outsider-i.e. the listener. And what the composer writes as a doer, an insider, is likely to be intelligible, interesting and valid for other composers and a few performers and listeners who share his special interest and viewpoint, but not for the majority of non-professional listeners for whom the critic writes as a professional listener57.
Of course, those who took the part of Stravinsky were just as numerous. Significantly, however, they were almost always composers, such as Earle Brown who, a few days after Lang’s reply to Stravinsky of March 11, wrote an open letter to The New Yok Herald Tribun (25 March 1962) entitled ‘Lang is Wrong’. Brown stated that with his reply Lang had «convincingly confirmed and documented Stravinsky’s allegations as to the incompetence and primitiveness of the critics»58. Other composers, such as Arthur Berger (to whom we owe the first systematic theoretical description of Stravinsky’s use of the octatonic collection, and who was, in fact, a devoted admirer of the Russian composer) were more cautious. Berger feared that Stravinsky’s excessively polemical tone may have deflected attention from «the really illuminating passages» of his conversations with Robert Craft59. Similarly, a few months before Ernst K�enek had suggested Stravinsky that he should not reply further to a review of The Rake’s Progress by Albert Goldberg (of the Los Angeles Times), because «it is usually a thankless task for the artist to reply to his critics. Perhaps silent contempt is the best punishment, although one’s patience frequently is taxed to the breaking point»60. No composer, however, noticed that Lang was right in claiming that Stravinsky’s authoritarian attitude toward critics was based on the assumption that the composer is the best or the only one capable of judging a work of music. Stravinsky, for his part, looked for a solution to the problem of ‘Brother Criticus’ which was well suited to his ideas and to his ends, and he probably believed that he found it in the new figure of the music theorist-composer, which was gaining ever greater prestige in high American musical culture and the music academy in those years:
57. Haggin 1962-1963, p. 633. 58. Brown 1962. 59. Haggin 1962-1963, p. 633. 60. SSC, vol. ii, p. 343. 133 Massimiliano Locanto Who should the editorial composers be? Several age groups must be represented, first of all, and their consequent, or individual (not consequent), points of view. Who is qualified to write? Indeed, who, among composers, can write? The elder statesmen, people like Virgil Thomson, Roberto Gerhard, Ernst K�enek, Roger Sessions, are the most articulate and the strictest in their integrity of words. In the next-to-senior group, the first names to occur to me are Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, George Perle, Arthur Berger, and, of the middle-aged group, Boulez. I am not familiar enough with the work of such talked-about younger composers as Peter Maxwell Davies, Dieter Schönbach, Giacomo Manzoni, to be qualified to recommend any of them, but I know that the point of view of their generation should be voiced. Finally, if non-composer critics prove indispensable to such an enterprise I can even recommend some of those: Lawrence Morton and Joseph Kerman61.
Most of the composers mentioned by Stravinsky were also influential theorist, writers or thinkers about music (and vice versa). Stravinsky probably saw in the scientific ‘objectivity’ of the composer-theorist a possible bulwark against the ‘arbitrariness’ of the kind of music criticism he had always hated. His close association with academic specialists in serial theory such as Milton Babbitt and Claudio Spies can be considered as an attempt — only partially successful — to impose his authority on music criticism, with the complicity of the music-theoretical American academic establishment. The point of view of the music theorists, who at that time were shifting towards Yale’s Schenkerism and Princeton neo-serial approach, shared with Stravinsky some ideological ground, in particular the idea that the best way to appreciate, evaluate and understand a good piece of music is to understand its structure; and since, in the case of serial music, this also corresponds, to a large extent, to an understanding of how music is composed, this clearly represented a point of contact with Stravinsky’s ideas. It is not by chance that in those years many American music theorists were also composers. Many of Stravinsky’s advocates came from the academic world and were at one and the same time theorists, composers and music critics. If only to a small extent, then, Stravinsky’s ‘utopia’ of a world where critics are at the same time composers and, we can now add, music theorists, was becoming a reality in those years. By the time Stravinsky and Craft wrote their conversation books, Milton Babbitt had founded the Journal of Music Theory. The figure of the professional music theorist had established its identity within American musical culture and ensured an enclave of its own in the field of
61. Stravinsky – Craft 1962b, p. 171. 134 «Brother Criticus»: Stravinsky ‘the Serialist’ against Music Criticism academic power, and started to exert its influence also on the world of music criticism. Some influential composer-theorists were beginning to serve as music critics as well. One of them, for example, was noticed by Haggin in the above- mentioned review of the Stravinsky-Craft conversation books:
We have seen that some of Stravinsky’s writing in these volumes provides an illustration of this [the idea that a music critic should know what the composer knows]; and I have found another in a few articles a reader sent me that were written by the new critic of The Nation, a composer named Benjamin Boretz. Whether he discusses contemporary works, or old works and their performances — the weaknesses of Schubert’s C-major Symphony, with respect to which Furtwangler’s recorded performance is good; the strengths of Beethoven’s Eighth, with respect to which Wallenstein’s concert performance was bad; the characteristics of Mendelssohn’s writing, with respect to which several Klemperer performances are exemplary — my experience of what he is talking about (including a new look at the Schubert and Beethoven scores) doesn’t enable me to recognize what he describes in the music or to accept his evaluations of the performances. And I would suppose that his Nation readers got no more from the writing than I62.
Boretz’s was one of the few voices which rose to the defense of The Flood. The influential composer and music theorist wrote an article, published in The Nation, arguing that Stravinsky had created the opportunity for an interesting encounter between serious music and popular culture63. Stravinsky probably recognised that ‘words about music’ could serve an unprecedented role in shaping the reception of his serial compositions. The importance of specialized musical knowledge was a crucial and recurring topic in one of the most influent composer-theorists of his entourage: Milton Babbitt. In Babbitt’s view, the ‘competent professional’ was the sole figure that would allow advanced music to figure germanely in contemporary intellectual history. He considered specialistic musical knowledge as a measure of the intellectual dignity of music, and as an aspect of the ongoing process of specialization that was affecting science in general64. Discourses on music, in other words, should be limited to those with adequate musical competence. Unfortunately for Stravinsky, however, the power of the critic-composer-theorists was a double-
62. Haggin 1962-1963, p. 633. 63. Boretz 1962. Boretz wrote extensively for The Nation during the 1960s. See Joseph 2003, pp. 157-158. 64. See Schuijer 2008, pp. 254-255. 135 Massimiliano Locanto edged sword. In a text entitled ‘The Unlikely Survival of Serious Music’, of 1958, Milton Babbitt had prophetically stated:
Back in the early Fifties when we saw that we were in trouble, when we saw that we didn’t have the appropriate audience (and we do concern ourselves about such things, if only for selfish reasons), we thought that perhaps we could appeal to our fellow intellectuals by impressing them with the seriousness of our words. We thought we would attract them with our words about music and this would eventually lead them to the sound of our music. Well of course our words went as unheeded as our music went unheard. But we learned a lesson. We discovered that what induces even more resentment than taking music seriously is taking talking about music seriously. This is not a trivial concern. You know, in the beginning is the work, and these days in the beginning with the work is the word about the work. Music is talked about before it is listened to, while it’s listened to, and instead of being listened to65.
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