Music

Romantics’ Return Terry Teachout

o what extent, if any, should “neoromantic.” For them, any mu- belief in the historical inevitability T the quality of a work of art be sic written after World War I, be it of abstraction was conditioned by his judged by its originality? by Puccini and Rachmaninoff or by Marxist politics. Yet Porter might The answer to this question is far such present-day “new tonalists” as just as well have been speaking of from obvious. Yet in the course of Lowell Liebermann and Paul Mora- the composer-conductor Pierre the century-long reign of mod- vec, is unacceptable if it makes use of Boulez, who famously declared in ernism in the arts, it came to be tak- expressive devices derived from the 1952 that “any musician who has not en for granted that to be innovative composers of the 19th century.1 experienced . . . the necessity for the was desirable in and of itself. De- It is tempting, and not altogeth- dodecaphonic [twelve-tone] lan- spite the fact that every great artist er wrong, to suggest that the last guage is useless. For his whole in every medium has derived innu- word about such criticism was pro- work is irrelevant to the needs of his merable aspects of his style and nounced by Fairfield Porter, the epoch.” technique from the example of his American painter who was also one In the event, history proved predecessors, the word “derivative” of the outstanding art critics of the Greenberg and Boulez equally 20th century: became one of the most commonly wrong. Not only is figurative paint- employed terms of abuse in the crit- To say that you cannot paint the ing still alive and well, but the ical lexicon. figure today is like an architec- twelve-tone method of Arnold Even after the collapse of the tural critic saying that you must Schoenberg, which Boulez advocat- avant-garde monopoly, many crit- not use ornament, or as if a liter- ed with a zealousness bordering on ics have continued to employ the ary critic proscribed reminis- now-discredited rhetoric of late the dictatorial, is no longer practiced cence. In each case the critical by any important composer any- modernism—in particular, music remark is less descriptive of what where in the world, and no more critics who object to the growing is going on than it is a call for a popularity of the kind of tonal mu- following—a slogan demanding than a handful of twelve-tone works sic they contemptuously dismiss as allegiance. In this case criticism has entered the standard concert is so much influenced by politics repertoire. Terry Teachout, Commentary’s that it imitates the technique of 1 regular music critic and the drama crit- a totalitarian party on the way to For more about Liebermann and Moravec, ic of , also writes power. see my essay, “The New Tonalists” (Com- about the arts at www.terryteachout.com. mentary, December 1997). Moravec’s Te m - Porter, himself a figurative pest Fantasy, which won the Pulitzer Prize A member of the National Council on the last year, is now available in a “creator Arts, he is at work on a biography of painter, had in mind here the criti- recording” by the clarinetist David Krakauer . cism of Clement Greenberg, whose and the Trio Solisti (Arabesque Z7691).

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None of this means, however, that transform their stolen goods into dissolution of tonality altogether.” a mature artist simply imitates the something wholly personal and in- He further believes that the avant- art of the past. The following dividual. When a great composer garde establishment, as a result of thought experiment may help to knowingly evokes the past, he does its dominance over the music de- explain why. Suppose a reputable so in ways other than imitative. The partments of influential colleges musicologist were to announce one “neoclassical” compositions of Paul and universities, was able to exert day that he has discovered the Hindemith and , for undue influence on the postwar manuscript of a hitherto unknown example, do not sound like Bach, classical-music scene in America, Fifth Symphony by Brahms, and Handel, Haydn, or Mozart. Even with devastating results: though they make use of composi- that this symphony is comparable in [Its] attitudes filtered down to quality to its four predecessors. tional devices borrowed from the journalist-critics, who expressed Then, after the work has been per- works of those earlier composers, them in the press, fostering a di- formed and recorded by a promi- they employ these devices in their vision in the public between nent conductor and taken up by nu- own highly idiosyncratic ways, with those who prided themselves on merous orchestras, an obscure mu- highly individual results. As a result, their sophistication and dispar- sician discloses that he wrote it (and the neoclassicism of Hindemith, aged new music that lacked forged a manuscript copy suffi- Stravinsky, and their most gifted fol- “originality” and those who de- ciently plausible-looking to hood- lowers is viewed—correctly—as an fiantly rejected “modern music” wink the musicologist) in order to original style in its own right. altogether. . . . This disparage- win recognition for his other com- Neoromanticism, by contrast, ment and suppression of tonal positions, all of which are similar in has almost always been regarded music amounted to a de facto style to the music of Brahms. with suspicion by critics, even blacklisting of composers who Would we still want to listen to though it has been embraced by at failed to conform to the ap- “Brahms’s Fifth,” knowing that it is least as many composers as has neo- proved version of music history. not really by Brahms? And would classicism. (The second edition of Among those American com- the actual quality of the work itself the New Grove Dictionary of Music posers who suffered most from the be diminished in any way by that and Musicians devotes twice as postwar intolerance of the avant- knowledge? much space to neoclassicism as to garde establishment, Simmons says, Obviously, the answer to the first neoromanticism.) Is this because were Samuel Barber, Paul Creston, question is yes and to the second neoromantic music is inferior in Nicolas Flagello, Vittorio Gianni- question no. In practice, however, quality? Or is it merely the last gasp ni, Howard Hanson, and the Swiss such things simply do not happen. of the same prejudice in favor of in- émigré composer Ernest Bloch, To the best of my knowledge, no novation for its own sake that once who spent most of his adult life in one has ever successfully faked an led avant-garde composers and the U.S. According to Simmons, important large-scale work of art by their critical sympathizers to dis- these men ranked among “the most a great artist working in a medium miss all tonal music as “useless”? conservative of the [American] tra- other than painting. This is not to ditionalists,” and their insistence on say that such a thing would be im- These questions are at the heart embracing “many of the stylistic possible, but that it seems never to of Walter Simmons’s Voices in the features of late-19th-century music” have occurred to anyone.2 Wilderness: Six American Neo-Ro- made them anathema to critics who In fact, to anyone capable of mantic Composers, the first in a refused to believe that such an ap- composing a symphony as good as planned six-volume series of critical proach could yield artistically valid those of Brahms, it would almost studies of modern American com- results at mid-century. Yet Simmons certainly not occur to attempt one posers who, in the author’s words, believes their best work to have that sounded as though it were by have “created significant, artistical- Brahms. The minds of great artists ly meaningful bodies of work with- 2 The Dutch painter Han van Meegeren was do not work that way, just as the out abandoning traditional princi- able successfully to forge Vermeers in the style of a master is peculiarly resis- ples, forms, and procedures.”3 1930’s and 40’s and sell them for high prices (one was purchased by Hermann Goering) tant to being counterfeited (as op- In Voices in the Wilderness, Sim- because Vermeer was at that time a compar- posed to being parodied) by a crafts- mons contends that the conven- atively obscure artist, whose true style was man of lesser stature. Imitability is tional wisdom regarding modern known only to a small group of scholars and not a trait readily associated with music is in need of revision. He re- connoisseurs. Today, van Meegeren’s fake Vermeers, which can be viewed on line at greatness. pudiates the mistaken notion that http://www.tnunn.f2s.com/vm-main.htm, In any case, to paraphrase T.S. “the evolution of the tonal system would immediately strike any art-world pro- Eliot, great artists do not imitate, proceeded according to a linear pro- fessional as anachronistic. they steal, and in so doing they gression that led inevitably to the 3 Scarecrow Press, 419 pp., $69.95.

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been comparable in quality to that made music, putting aside the ques- Rochester Orchestra in dozens of of such European contemporaries as tion of its originality, was not con- recordings of his own music and Arthur Honegger, Sergei Prokofiev, sistently interesting enough to com- that of many other American com- Dmitri Shostakovich, Ralph Vaugh- mand attention. Given the fact that posers. His Second Symphony an Williams, and William Walton, this is the first in a series of vol- (“Romantic,” 1930) was a genuine and he defines the nature of their umes, it thus strikes me that Sim- popular success ( achievement in unequivocal terms: mons’s cause might have been bet- performed it with the NBC Sym- ter served had he chosen instead to phony) and is still played on occa- Each composer’s body of work is write about such better-known fig- characterized by an overall seri- sion by American orchestras, while ousness of purpose reflected in ures as David Diamond, Bernard his only opera, Merry Mount, was works of ambitious scope that at- Herrmann, or Ned Rorem, all of produced in 1934 by the Metropoli- tempt to address the fundamen- whom he cites as being “arguably tan Opera, though it failed to be tal existential and spiritual con- comparable in stature” to Flagello, taken up elsewhere. Gerard Schwarz cerns of humanity. Giannini, and the other composers recorded most of his orchestral included in Voices in the Wilderness. scores with the Seattle Symphony in My guess is that many readers— To be sure, Simmons has spent the 80’s, and these recordings led to even those well disposed to the far more time with their music than a resurgence of interest in his mu- revaluation of the music of Ameri- I have, and I may be wrong to dis- sic that continues on a limited basis ca’s tonal modernists—will find this miss Flagello and Giannini as mi- to this day. argument somewhat suspect, at least nor figures. Moreover, his book is Hanson’s “Romantic” Symphony at first glance. To be sure, the mu- useful and admirable for reasons offers a near-ideal occasion for a sic of Samuel Barber has always other than its specific critical judg- consideration of the relative impor- been popular with concertgoers, ments. To begin with, his introduc- tance of innovation and individual- and in recent years it has also come tion offers an impressively clear ity in art. A tuneful, expansive exer- to be viewed favorably by a genera- summary of the various ways in cise in traditional romanticism, tion of critics who do not share the which the history of musical mod- couched in an idiom conservative biases of their elders.4 But none of ernism is in need of correction and even by the prevailing standards of the other four American composers revision. His largely non-technical 1930, it contains no musical devices discussed in Voices in the Wilderness descriptions of the music discussed that would have sounded out of has achieved anything remotely ap- in Voices in the Wilderness are mod- place in a symphony written a quar- proaching Barber’s near-universal els of accessibility. Above all, he is a ter-century earlier.5 Yet it is not currency; while Creston and Han- thoughtful, balanced critic whose “derivative,” at least not in the sense son were once heard frequently in respect for his subjects does not stop of sounding like someone else’s mu- American concert halls, the music him from admitting their flaws; his sic, nor will listeners familiar with of Flagello and Giannini has always analysis of Samuel Barber’s musical later works by Hanson have any been more or less obscure. In addi- style, for example, is exceptionally trouble spotting his distinctive tion, the inclusion of Ernest Bloch fair-minded and insightful. stylistic fingerprints. Save for an oc- in a group of American neoroman- casional fleeting reminiscence of tic composers deserving of wider Outside of the introduction, the Sibelius, the “Romantic” Sympho- recognition, though it may make a most valuable parts of Voices in the ny is a genuinely individual state- kind of sense on paper, serves in Wilderness are the chapters devot- ment, one whose implications Han- practice merely to render Sim- ed to Howard Hanson and Paul son himself summed up neatly at mons’s argument more diffuse and Creston, both of whom are prime the time of its premiere: less compelling. candidates for revival, albeit to dif- No less problematic is that so lit- ferent degrees and for differing The symphony represents for me tle of what Simmons believes to be reasons. my escape from the rather bitter the best music of Flagello and Gi- Indeed, Hanson (1896-1981) type of modern musical realism annini is available on CD. To this never quite disappeared from the which occupies so large a place end, he has posted on his website, American musical scene, and for a 4 See my “Samuel Barber’s Revenge” (Com- www.walter-simmons.com, down- time he was almost as well known as mentary, October 1996). loadable mp3 digital sound files of Aaron Copland or Virgil Thomson. 5 Simmons points out that Hanson began excerpts from the music of all six Like them, too, he was more than composing at a time when Debussy, Pucci- composers. Upon listening, alas, I merely a composer. Hanson ran the ni, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Sibelius, and Richard Strauss were all alive and active. He conclude that Flagello and Gianni- Eastman School of Music in was, in other words, “not reviving a style ni were competent but essentially Rochester, New York from 1924 to from the past” but “evolving along a contin- academic composers whose well- 1964, and conducted the Eastman- uum still very much alive.”

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in contemporary thought. Much gradual estrangement of the au- he found it harder and harder to get contemporary music seems to dience from the music of its own a fair hearing. me to be showing a tendency to time. . . . A radical repudiation of Still, it is impossible to see why a become entirely too cerebral. . . . the intellectual complexity of se- beautifully crafted, unfailingly ef- I have, therefore, aimed in this rialism and minimalism aroused fective piece like Creston’s Second symphony to create a work that an astonishingly enthusiastic re- Symphony (1944), perhaps his best was young in spirit, lyrical and sponse from audiences. Howev- and certainly his most successful romantic in temperament, and er, most of the composers who composition, should have fallen out simple and direct in expression. had maintained their commit- of the standard repertoire. A two- ment to traditional tonality all movement work of tremendous It is not, however, an especially along were now largely forgotten. memorable statement, for the the- rhythmic vitality in which the ex- matic material is both undistin- Even more completely forgotten panded language of modern tonal- guished and poorly argued. This has than Hanson was Paul Creston ity is used to ingenious effect, it was nothing to do with the piece’s al- (1906-1985), who for a time had aptly described by the composer as leged lack of originality. Rather, as ranked alongside Copland as the “an apotheosis of the two founda- Simmons observes, the “Romantic” most frequently played American tions of all music: song and dance.” Symphony consists of “a sequence composer. The son of poor Italian While the Second Symphony of emotional states, juxtaposed with immigrants, Creston was a com- breaks no new musical ground, it is no apparent sense of progression, pletely self-taught musician who did a wholly personal statement, and either psychological or purely mu- not finish his first full-scale work Simmons’s enthusiastic summing- sical.” It is not bad because it is un- until he was twenty-six—an unusu- up of its considerable virtues is in original, but because it is musically ally late start for a classical compos- no way exaggerated: unsatisfactory, even on its own con- er. Despite his lack of training, he servative terms. won immediate recognition, and Perhaps Creston’s most remark- able compositional gift was his Not until later in life did Hanson throughout the 40’s and 50’s his ability to create music that abandon the traditional Austro- works were performed by such sounds spontaneous and natural, German symphonic framework that world-class artists as Toscanini, Eu- but, on closer inspection, reveals he so clearly found unsympathetic. gene Ormandy, Pierre Monteux, a subtle logic underlying virtual- Once he did so, he began to pro- Fritz Reiner, George Szell, the pi- ly every measure. . . . In its rich duce more loosely structured pieces anist Earl Wild, and the Hollywood elaboration and thorough inte- whose freer form was better suited String Quartet. By the mid-60’s, gration of a personal and origi- to their romantic content. The though, his music had disappeared nal aesthetic concept into a co- strongest of these works, in partic- from the programs of America’s ma- hesive work of great appeal, Cre- ular the Fifth Symphony (“Sinfonia jor orchestras, and for the rest of his ston’s Second stands as a major Sacra”) of 1954, are both struc- life he devoted most of his energy landmark of American neoro- turally convincing and powerfully to teaching and writing a series of manticism and one of the most expressive, and there is no good rea- theoretical works, dying in obscuri- significant American symphonies son why they should not be more ty in 1985. of the 1940’s.7 widely heard today.6 Few classical composers have achieved such popularity so quick- The failure of American orches- Why, then, are they not? One ly, followed by an equally quick de- tras to program this piece—or any possible explanation is put forward cline in prestige. Part of the prob- of a half-dozen of Creston’s other by Simmons, who recalls in the in- lem may have been that Creston’s 6 troduction to Voices in the Wilderness mature style failed to develop to any The composer’s 1958 recording of the “Ro- how in the 1980’s the tonally based mantic” Symphony with the Eastman- substantial degree—his music was Rochester Orchestra is available on Hanson music of such “minimalists” as all of a piece, early and late—and Conducts Hanson (Mercury 432 008-2). Ger- Philip Glass and John Adams was this caused him to become increas- ard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony have greeted with immediate acclaim by ingly predictable and repetitious recorded the Fifth Symphony (Delos DE audiences who had grown tired of 3130). from the mid-50’s onward. In addi- 7 the hermetic insularities of late tion, his extroverted, brightly col- Creston’s Second Symphony has been re- modernism: corded several times, most recently (and very ored work, redolent of the optimism effectively) by Theodore Kuchar and the Na- The result of force-feeding non- of the postwar era, clashed violent- tional Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, cou- traditional musical styles to a ly with the mounting intellectual pled with the First and Third Symphonies sourness of critics of the 50’s, who (Naxos 8.559034). Of like interest is the Hol- public that became increasingly lywood String Quartet’s 1953 recording of uncertain of its own reactions and had no use for populists like Cre- Creston’s String Quartet (Testament SBT insecure in its own tastes was a ston. As they grew more influential, 1053).

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important works—says much about critics of the 60’s and 70’s. As late as No less significant is the fact that the continuing effects of the now- 1981, was capa- younger tonal composers like Paul defunct avant-garde monopoly on ble of writing in its obituary of Moravec are coming at last to be our musical life. Howard Hanson that he “stood for a seen as major figures in their own tradition that most of his influential right. It would be salutary if this de- old age, Samuel Barber spoke In his colleagues considered dead.” Only a velopment were accompanied by the bitterly of his failure to win the same few of Hanson’s younger contem- discovery by younger performers of acclaim from critics that he had won poraries, most notably Ned Rorem, those earlier composers who were from American concertgoers: would live long enough to see the wrongly dismissed as “derivative” be- It’s true I’ve had little success in tide turn in favor of tonality. “The cause they believed in the enduring intellectual circles. I’m not talked Red Queen [of Alice in Wonderland ] validity of tonality. Whatever they about in the New York Review of said you’ve got to run fast to stay in may have lacked in “originality,” the Books, and I was never part of the one place,” Rorem once said. “I best of them lacked nothing in indi- Stravinsky “inner circle.” In stayed in one place. Now it’s clear viduality. As Walter Simmons right- Aaron Copland’s book, Our I’ve run fast.” ly says, their attractive, accessible American Music, my name ap- Hanson and Paul Creston were music “had—and still has—the abil- pears in a footnote. . . . In fact, it not so fortunate, and even now ity to bridge the gap between com- is said that I have no style at all, their music, like that of other Amer- poser and audience [and] to enrich a but that doesn’t matter. I just go ican traditionalists like Walter Pis- musical repertoire that has become on doing, as they say, my thing. ton and William Schuman, is more stagnant with the tried and true.” I believe this takes a certain talked about than played. Fortu- courage. For all these reasons, their music nately, the existence of recordings deserves to be heard, not merely on It did indeed, and it took even of many (though by no means all) record but also in the concert halls greater courage for those American of the major works of these com- and opera houses of America and, composers who became even more posers has made it possible for in- ultimately, the world. I hope that isolated than Barber to live with the dividual listeners to uncover the Voices in the Wilderness and its suc- uncomprehending hostility of the lost tradition of tonal modernism. cessors will help make that happen.

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