This objection is, undoubtedly, the most frequently encountered in this type of music. A careful survey will show that, unfortunately, this position had always stood toward any type of new music. Let us consider these few examples:
"There are barbarians who, short of any measure of ear, insist on doing music"
(Sarti, alluding to Mozart Quartets).
"Mozart had never intended to create anything unique. This is the remarkable thing, but not the grandiosity. Stubborness, phantasy and vanity have paved the way for the birth of Don Giovanni, but not the heart. It is beyond any doubt that Mozart was endowed with remarkable gifts that made him skillful, creative and pleasant".
"But I have not so far come upon anybody who would consider him as a real or a
reasonably efficient artist" (Musicalisches Wochenblatt, on commenting Don Giovanni, after Mozart).
"If the best of the critics and orchestras have been unable to find any meaning to the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, we certainly shall be allowed not to find either".
"True, the Adagio is much beautiful, but the other moveents, especially the last, seem a collection of unintelligible queer armonies" -Beethoven was deaf at the time of its composition- (Boston Daily Atlas, about Beethoven).
"Is indefatigable, almost inexhaustible in his dissonances, likely to smash the eardrum. The same in his tight transitions, his awful melodic and rhythmic distortions".
"He has gathered everything unimaginable to produce a sense of originality" (Relistab, about Chopin).
You can collect as many criticisms as these, set forth sometimes with virulence and hostility, directed against those past composers now deemed leading figures in the universe of music. I believe we have today the same type of shortsightedness in assessing the real merits of some contemporary composers, who will probably take rank among the great of the future. So, it would be wise not to reject certain modern musics we have not even heard on the sole basis of some "learned" statements, lest we incur on the some mistakes the critics of Moz<art did in the past.
A certain instance of enmity toward the musical creator is shown in the experience of having had a person, who rejects by principle modern music, listening to some musical piece of especial beauty, not telling him that it was contemporary. He, instead of admitting his error, ascribed the good shape of the work to the fact that the composer did not the same as the modernists do. I have personally intervened on this trial on several occasions with adversely predisposed people, with astonishing confirmatory results. As the saying goes: "No more utterly deaf than that who refuses to hear".
Finally, to stamp the label of unpleasant to whatever work is to shorten ruefully the extent of music as a whole. I am certain that saying merely that Bach's The Well Tempered Clef, Mozart's Requiem, or Brahms' Fourth Symphony were beautiful compositions would have elicited a great sorrow into the composers. Moreover, these outstanding works would have been divested of their real and essential value.
True, the innermost purpose of composers of all times is to produce something higher than decorative pieces. |
