The Science of Music

...At least Munch is discussed In the final pages, Schonberg gets so desperate that he lumps today's younger conductors--men of great but diverse talent like Kertesz,Mehta, Davis, Boulez and Maazel--into something that he thinks may eventually be described as "the New Eclecticism" now that national origin no longer influences style It Schonberg would put aside his Gobineau and listen, he might be able to hem that it was purest journalese to link style to citizenship in the first place His "Austro-German tradition" (a term no Austrian would condone) included the pedantic Klemperer, the feverish Furtwangler, and the suavely mannered Karajan All they shared was a language...

...The editors possess but one virtue democracy So many diverse views are aired that reading the book is like watching a tennis match Copland eloquently laments the gap--yet another one--between composers and performers Varese hymns the joys of composing for computers Hindemith damns the serialists for their solipsistic arrogance Stravinsky, all wit and venom, advises record companies that their raison d'etre should be the recording of music "not generally available live " Then he sneers at all recording directors but his own...

...A woefully innocent music lover was certainly on the editors' minds part of the time Debussy's amusing banter, "Richard Strauss is no relation to The Blue Danube," is firmly shored up by two footnotes One tells us who Richard Strauss was, another tells us what The Blue Danube was But where are Schwartz and Childs when we really need them...

...Babbitt's serve is easily returned Who cares if you compose...

...The Big Names hold such fascination for Schonberg that he won't call Szell a rigid, hard-driving conductor, though he will say that "some" think so He does a good job of pointing out Bernstein's excesses, then mysteriously insists these won't matter in opera since he is a man of the theater Has he never heard Bernstein's Falstaff, with the performers goosed into a frenzy where Verdi wanted bustle...

...Starkly unannotated, for example, is a reference to Teo Macero's Areas The reader is left to fend for himself, amid jargon and graphs, when the wandering tribes of the avant garde descend--those serial-ists, electronic wizards, and composers by slide-rule, computer, or purest chance (only the piano is 1 prepared'--they stick things m it...

...The Big Names of the Past, those great distorters like Nikisch and Mahler, Mengelberg and Koussevitzky, get whole chapters of non-criticism Sure, they played hell with the score and gave a composer precisely what he did not ask for So what...

...The Science of Music CONTEMPORARY COMPOSERS ON CONTEMPORARY MUSIC Edited by Elliott Schwartz and Barney Childs Holt, Rinehart and Winston 375 pp $10 00 THE GREAT CONDUCTORS By Harold C Schonberg Simon & Schuster 384 pp $7 50 Reviewed by HARRIS GREEN Editor, Prentice-Hall These two books remind one that serious, or deficit-financed, music is not only fragmented today but fragmented into patterns as firmly fixed as a mosaic Surprising patterns they are, too, for in attempting to trace them, these volumes outline conditions they had no intention of revealing Editors Elliott Schwartz and Barney Childs have actually widened "the very real gap between the composer of new music and the musical public" that they hoped their anthology would bridge Some of their contributors may well get hate mail And Harold C Schonberg, the music critic of the New York Times, thwarts the stated purpose of his book by revealing the secrets of that other musical tyrant, the critic...

...Conductors wield the real power m music today because most composers have, like Edward VIII, abdicated to remain true to a socially unacceptable beloved A solid critical study of the breed would be something in the nature of a public service Harold C Schonberg's The Great Conductors is rather in the nature of a newspaper reviewer's "Sunday piece " Journalese and anecdotes crowd out reasoned judgment, and there are facts galore At one mad point, the definition of a baton is set down with a crash...

...The avant garde abandons the wishful thought that the public will catch up eventually, as it did with, say, Schubert (Actually, Schubert had a public, all he needed was an agent) But this gain in historical sense is made only with a sacrifice in esthetics Now music has become a science, a conduit for a higher technology whose language is mathematics No wonder an avant-garde concert is like a lecture in Swahili...

...The time has passed when the normally well-educated man without special preparation could understand the most advanced work in, for example, mathematics, philosophy, and physics ". There you have it, laymen...

...Schwartz and Childs offer no hope that the Great Synthesizer (let's call him "Godot") will arrive soon and put avant-garde discoveries to a recognizably musical use Ironically for editors delighted by diversity, they seem unconcerned that most composers today must teach to eat I see no triumph in the avant garde being entrenched in the groove of Academe Their profs trained them and they tram their students to compose the kind of stuff a mother couldn't love Not the Zeitgeist but a poltergeist decreed this vicious circle Still, who can deny a composer his lectures, books, and anthologies...

...Many of the anecdotes are so good I hope they're true Yet what pro-fiteth a reader to learn that Otto Klemperer has fists "the size of beer kegs" and was once told by Philharmonic oboist Bruno Labate to stop talking and start rehearsing ("Klemp, you talka too much"), if he isn't warned that the revered Dr Klemperer is a very heavy-handed, long-winded interpreter of Beethoven' Once I saw him reduce the Eroica to the Phlegmatic To Schonberg, this would be a "monolithic" reading in the "Austro-German" tradition of "high seriousness" I prefer the Beethoven tradition Eyewitnesses whom Schonberg cites le-port that Beethoven teriafied musicians at rehearsals when he acted out the passion embedded in his scores...

...That "gap" between public and composers today apparently held such giddy fascination for Schwartz and Childs that they compiled Con-temporary Composers on Contemporary Music m a state of vertigo It has no index Its title is misleading since Debussy, Satie, Busoni and Berg are included Nor did anyone decide whether to select for an innocent but eager music lover or for some confirmed avant gardiste who cannot think up his own insults and will savor Professor Milton Babbitt's winningly entitled essay, "Who cares If You Listen...

...These eyewitness accounts, from diaries and letters and journalism, are by far the best parts of Schonberg's book I rather trust men like Mozart, Berlioz, Wagner and Shaw It's Harold C Schonberg I doubt Left to himself, he keeps lumping conductors into schools and leaving them there This enables him to get everyone but Donald Voorhees into the index, but not to discuss conductors critically Italian conductors, we learn, are "primarily exponents of Italian opera So he mentions Carlo Maria Giulint, who actually excells in a broad repertory, and the late Guido Cantelli, whom Toscanini called his successor, and then zips ahead to Toscanini...

...That was how they did it in those days, folks Yet Toscanini, who was their contemporary, had the artistry to go behind the notes, where music always lies, and the humility and moral sense to stay there so composers could say what they intended The Big Names could "conduct" They could bend a hundred men 10 their will But Toscanini made music...

...Schonberg handles the Maestro fairly well until, again, the sweeping statement betrays him I am sure Toscanini did not think the musical line "more important than harmony", he simply brought out line so much more than most conductors that an inattentive listener might think he favored it An attentive journalist would not omit Ballo from the list of operas Toscanini recorded, nor take the word of Sir Adrian Boult that the Maestro had no interests but music The nbc musicians who worked with Toscanini for 17 years said he did...

...Our musical life will never get put back together again as long as composers consider quarantine a sign of health and the Number One critic of our leading newspaper believes that mediocrity, like whiskey, improves with age...

...And Professor Babbitt He welcomes the public's hostility and drinks to the Zeitgeist in sour-grapes vintage "Why refuse to recognize the possibility that contemporary music has reached a stage long since attained by other forms of activity...

...A sweeping statement about "the French School"--it is noted for "logic rather than high emotion"--also lists Charles Munch as an old grad I would have thought the many tunes Munch completely lost control of himself on the podium in the heat of a climax would have got him expelled long ago...