The Universal Language and the Native Tongue, Music Between Art and Identity

“ Now, why do you want to throw your life away amidst the poverty and ignorance, in the hopeless struggle, of the black people of the United States? Then look at the terrible handicap you are placing on yourself by going home and working as a Negro composer; you can never be able to get the hearing for your work which it might deserve. I doubt that even a white musician of recognized ability could succeed there by working on the theory that American music should be based on Negro themes. Music is a universal art; anybody's music belongs to everybody; you can't limit it to race or country. ”

“ And this will be the proof that nationalism, so-called, is merely an extraneous thing that has no part in pure art. For if we take any melody, even of the most pronounced national type, and merely eliminate the characteristic turns, affectations, or mannerisms, the theme becomes simply music, and retains no touch of nationality. We may even go further; for if we retain the characteristic mannerisms of dress, we may harmonize a folk song in such a manner that it will belie its origin ”

“ May we not say that, just as the individual honour of each of us, unless we are members of the self-styled upper classes of a few countries, is now supposed to be able to take care of itself, so the blood in a composer's veins will, if his music is worth anything, be able to take care of itself also? Neither honour nor artistic personality is affectable by external considerations which are on a different plane of value. And music indeed is the most specifically international, or supernational, of all the arts ”

“ This fact, which has now become a well-recognized part of aesthetic theory, distinguishes music from all the other arts. Music supplies us with no definite images of nature, as painting and sculpture do, and with no ideas, as poetry does. It contains feelings, but no meanings. Music offers us no background for emotion, no objects upon which it may be directed, no story, no mise en scene. It supplies us with the feeling tones of things and events, but not with the things or events themselves. It moves wholly in a world of its own, a world of pure feeling, with no embodiment save only sound. ”

“ Of them all, music alone claims an absolute and independent position. Its appeal does not rely upon association, and demands no definable intellectual foundation. It stands in this way, even{211} in its most primitive forms, as an example to all other arts, serving to remind them of what there is in each of the essential artistic quality; to remind them yet again of the inevitable danger that must be encountered when the artist adds to his natural burden the task of interpreting the changing ideals of life. ”

“ In music, then, rather than in poetry, is to be found the true type or measure of perfected art. Therefore, although each art has its incommunicable element, its untranslatable order of impressions, its unique mode of reaching the "imaginative reason," yet the arts may be represented as continually struggling after the law or principle of music, to a condition which music alone completely realises ”

“ The prime end of music—and of the other arts—is beauty. Song is not story, melodies have nothing to do with morals, and all the theories about music—such as those of Darwin and Spencer—are wrong when they attribute to it any ulterior purpose or origin whatever. Music is an end, not a means. ”

“ Hence it requires one kind of treatment at one stage, another at another, both being perfectly right and true in relation to their proper period. But there are behind these special rules certain psychological laws which seem, so far as we can understand them, to be coeval with humanity itself; and these form the permanent code by which music is to be judged. The reason why, in past ages, the critics have been so often and so disastrously at fault is that they have mistaken the transitory for the permanent, the rules of musical science for the laws of musical philosophy. ”

“ Those who, as I do, hold that the best chance for the political future of the world lies in the weakening of national and racial as well as class consciousness, must needs regard very suspiciously any of these modern attempts to force music into channels which are deliberately designed for it by non-musical considerations: the fettering, by set purpose, of art is a very considerable step towards the fettering of life itself. ”

“ Daniel Gregory Mason, whose wholesome influence, by the way, is doing as much perhaps for music in America as American music is, amusingly says: "If indeed the land of Lincoln and Emerson has degenerated until nothing remains of it but a 'jerk and rattle,' then we, at least, are free to repudiate this false patriotism of 'my Country right or wrong,' to insist that better than bad music is no music, and to let our beloved art subside finally under the clangor of the subway gongs and automobile horns, dead, but not dishonored." ”

“ What, then, is the precise value we ought justly to ascribe to that word "American" as applied to music, and wherein have those we may call champions of the adjective been inclined to exaggerate it? If we analyze their attitude, we shall find them the prey of two fallacies which constantly falsify their conclusions, and make them dangerous guides for those who have at heart the real interests of music in America. The first of these fallacies is that which confuses quantity with quality, and supposes that artistic excellence can be decided by vote of the majority. ”

“ Why Bohemian music or Czech music or Slovak music or Czechoslovak music? Does there exist any nationality in music?
Every nation, with its mother-tongue, its peculiar customs, its distinct mode of life, varies more or less in form of culture from all other nations. The differences of geographical positions, racial inclinations, and inborn temper influence all departments of life—even Art. "No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, usages, and arts of his times shall have no share. ”

“ It has in most cases a flavor of the playful unconsciousness of youth, simplicity of structure and a kind of pathetic gaiety. This close connection between a race or a geographical attitude of mind and its folk-music is really a foretaste of the connection which persisted throughout the whole story of art’s evolution. A people’s music so accurately represents its temperamental qualities that, if there was any doubt about a race’s character, the music they favor would solve it. In folk-music the element of rhythm figures very considerably ”

“ A day will come when the negroes of Timbuktu will listen to Mozart's and Beethoven's music and feel that it belongs to them, as truly as it ever did to the citizens of Munich or of Vienna.
THE FOLK SONG The folk song lies at the opposite pole from universal music. It is music which smacks most of the soil whereon it has been produced. By its very nature it is intelligible at all times to all persons in the locality, if only because music is not an intellectual art; it deals in rhythms, it does not deal in ideas. ”

“ As folk songs we are wont to designate those lyrics of simple character which, handed down from generation to generation, are the common property of all the people. Every nation, regardless of the degree of its musical intelligence, possesses a stock of such songs, so natural in their simple ingenuity as to disarm the criticism of art, whose rules they follow unconsciously and with perfect concealment of means. Their origin is often lost in the obscurity of tradition and we accept them generally and without question as part and parcel of our racial inheritance. ”

“ It can be called a folk-song only in the sense that the people sing it, though in a measure it must reflect the character of the people—in a measure only, for one nation is very much like the other when fired by patriotism. Almost invariably, however, such songs are created at times of national stress, when feelings run high and poetic outbursts come from unexpected quarters. Such are the circumstances under which nearly all patriotic songs were created, 'Yankee Doodle,' 'Hail Columbia,' 'The Star Spangled Banner,' 'John Brown,' and 'Marching Through Georgia' included. ”

“ In O'Grady's writings the submerged river of national culture rose up again, a shining torrent, and I realized as I bathed in that stream, that the greatest spiritual evil one nation could inflict on another was to cut off from it the story of the national soul. For not all music can be played upon any instrument, and human nature for most of us is like a harp on which can be rendered the music written for the harp but nor that written for the violin. ”

“ But the means of 'creating' a national music to which I have alluded are childish. No: before a people can find a musical writer to echo its genius it must first possess men who truly represent it—that is to say, men who, being part of the people, love the country for itself: men who put into their music what the nation has put into its life ”

“ In folk-song we see its beginning, and at the present stage of human history we also see, from the folk-songs which have survived, just how far music, under the sole guidance of the voice and of instinct, is able to advance. For the day of folk-song is over. There won't be any more. Civilization inevitably kills it. When music is made for people by experts, they stop making it for themselves. ”

“ That type of musical æsthetic which insists much on the importance of the racial and national differences dividing human kind into groups, and of the special features, technical and expressive, characterizing the music of these various groups, is constantly challenging our American music to disavow what it calls a featureless cosmopolitanism, and to achieve individuality by idealizing some primitive popular strain, whether of the Indians, of the negroes, of the British colonizers, or of our contemporary "ragtime." ”

“ Now that America is able to boast the beginnings of a sophisticated art, it is beginning to be more deplored that there is not present the rich vein of folk-music to lend to our native art that vital and distinctive touch that should give it its place among the nation's music. ”

“ Awaiting the advent of a new genius of international significance who should revolutionize music, or resurrect it from a stagnation little better than death, such an effort toward national expression was the most successful safeguard against imitation and subservience. Moreover, it was productive of enthusiasm, which is a quality of youth in music. Accepting forms and technique as matters of course, composers threw themselves with joy into the expression of the spirit of their beloved land. ”

“ For a complete appreciation therefore of national music, we must always take into consideration the traits and environment of the people from which it sprung. Music, to be sure, is a universal language, but each nation has used this language in its own way. The most striking fact in present-day music is the variety gained from a free expression of nationalism [335] without infringing upon universality of appeal. ”

“ Of course, while country music speaks from the heart of the American people, it has—like liberty itself—a great and universal appeal. Indeed, millions of people around the world can be counted among its fans. Maybe that is because country music crosses the barriers of culture and language, capturing all the joys, struggles, laughter, and heartache that are part of our daily lives. In any case, the growing popularity of country music is a tribute to generations of American composers, lyricists, singers, and musicians. ”

“ Of course, as the music of a country progresses, it will advance farther and farther from the Volkslied, it will grow richer and more complex, it will treat its material by methods which the artist has inherited, not so much from his nation as from his predecessors in the art. Yet it still remains true, that the line of ancestry is continuous, that the course of genealogy may be traced, and that the masterpiece, with all its finish and civilisation, is of the same flesh and blood as its humbler compatriot. ”

“ American motivation, but to a large extent consist of a strange brew composed of anti-European revulsion, personal prejudice, and the projection of this or that problem, or a solution with which he has become acquainted. What is lacking, as in the entire nationalist movement in our music, is awareness of the fact that genuine national character comes from within and must develop and grow of itself, that it cannot be imposed from without, and that, in the last analysis, it is a by-product, not an aim, of artistic expression. ”

“ Another principal motive in our discussion is the conflict between the idea of music as an imported European commodity and the indigenous impulse toward musical expression. Obviously, in music criticism this conflict is clearly visible; for in the beginnings of our musical development we imported not only music but musical opinion as well. ”

“ If we nourish the hope of surmounting the dangerous crisis through which western culture is presently passing, we must make clear distinctions, and if we wish to surmount the particular, so to speak, accessory crisis of American musical maturity, we must not lose sight of the difference between ideas of an aesthetic or sociological nature on the one hand, and, on the other, the individual works of art which supposedly embody them. ”

“ As our governmental theories are the outgrowth of the experiments and experiences of all previous history, why should not our music, voicing as it must the passions of a cosmopolitan people, use cosmopolitan expressions? The main thing is the individuality of each artist. To be a citizen of the world, provided one is yet spontaneous and sincere and original, is the best thing. The whole is greater than any of its parts.
Along just these lines of individualized cosmopolitanism the American school is working out its identity. ”

“ The “great line of western tradition” provides the most fertile source of nourishment also for American music. This is now being recognized almost universally throughout the United States: and the recognition appears as the premise for our music education, criticism, and, in fact, for the responsible agencies of our entire music life. Today one hears very little of musical nationalism. ”