music does it have a future

7/27/2019 Music Does It Have a Future

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Music: Does It Have a Future?

Author(s): George CrumbSource: The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Summer, 1980), pp. 115-122Published by: Kenyon CollegeStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4335131 .

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MUSIC: DOES IT HAVE A FUTURE?George Crumb

nHE question"'Whatwill the music of the future be like?"fre-quentlyarises in discussions with composersandwith audiences.I suspect that some ulteriormeaning s implied-either a sense ofdoubtthat music will ever againbe as vigorousandimpressiveas it wasin some past "golden age," or conversely, the hope that the undeniablyfrenetic activity of the present presages some future "golden age," asgloriousand as rich in achievement as any of the past! Even the mosttimid attemptat prophecy must be based on a close appraisalof pasthistoryandpresenttrends. The future is the child of the present, even ifa rebellious child.

The retrospective glance is a relatively easy gesture for us tomake. If we look at music history closely, it is not difficult to isolatecertainelements of great potency which were to nourishthe artof musicfordecades, if not centuries. Thedynamicconceptof sonata-structure sa striking example of an idea that bewitched composers for two cen-turies, at least throughBela Bartok. Sonata-structurewas, of course,intimately connected with the evolution of a functional tonality, andtonality itself, independently, represents anothergerminal concept ofgreat potency.What, then, are the significantandcharacteristic endencies andimpulses in contemporarymusic which might conceivably project intothe future? I am certain that most composers today would considertoday's musicto be rich, not to say confusing,in its enormous diversityof styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics. Perhapsanattempt to isolate the unique aspects of our music will give us someperspective on our future prospects.One very important aspect of our contemporary musical cul-ture-some might say the supremely importantaspect-is its extension

in the historical and geographicalsenses to a degree unknown in thepast. The vertical extension is throughtime;in a real sense, virtuallyallmusic history and literature s now at our fingertipsthrough both liveperformances and excellent recordings, whereas earlier composers115

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116 THE KENYON REVIEW

knew the musics of only one or two generationsbeforetheirown time.The consequences of this enlargedawareness of our own heritagearereadily evident in many of our recent composers. For example, theinfluence of medieval music on the British composer Peter MaxwellDavies comes to mind.For many such composers, the sounds of medi-eval music-at times harsh and raw, at times fragile and hauntinglysweet-would more closely approximatethe contemporary deal thanwould, say, the sounds of a Brahms or of a RichardStrauss. I haveobserved, too, that the people of the manycountriesthat I have visitedare showing an ever increasinginterest in the classical and traditionalmusic of their own cultures.Perhapswe havecome to thinkof ourselvesas philosophicallycontemporaneouswith all earlier cultures. And itcould be that today there are more people who see culture evolvingspirallyrather han linearly.With the concentriccircles of the spiral,thepoints of contact and the points of departurein music can be morereadily found.The geographicalextension means, of course, that the totalmusical culture of planet Earth is "coming together," as it were. AnAmericanor Europeancomposer, for example, now has access to themusicof various Asian, African,and South Americancultures. Numer-ous recordingsof non-Westernmusic are readily available, and liveperformancesby touringgroupscan be heard in many small towns andcities. Such influenceswould, of course, be felt on different evels: onlya few Westerncomposers would have a sophisticatedtechnicalknowl-edge of the IndianRaga, for example; but, in general, the sounds,textures, and gestures of this music would be well known. This aware-ness of music in its largest sense-as a world-wide phenomenon-willinevitably have enormous consequences for the music of the future.Unquestionably,ourcontemporaryworldof music is far richer,in a sense, than earlierperiods, due to the historicaland geographicalextensions of cultureto which I have referred.As a standard or com-parison, it is revealingto take a representativeEuropeancomposerofthe nineteenthcenturyanddefine his "culturalhorizons."I thinka goodchoice is the French composer Hector Berlioz, since his music wasregardedas avant-gardeby his contemporaries.If we first considerthehistorical dimension, I think we should have to agree that Berlioz'scontactwithany music writtenbeforethe Viennese Classicalperiodwasminimal,althoughBeethoven was avowedly a very powerfulinfluenceon his development. I doubtthat Berlioz hadany real understanding fBaroque style or technique,judgingfrom the curiously inepthandlingofthefugato style in several of his works. Berlioz spoke of Palestrina ndisparagingerms. In regard o his contactwith non-Westernmusic, we



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GEORGECRUMB 117

know that he visited London in 1851 in connection with the GreatExhibitionheld there. While in London, Berlioz heard some Chineseand Indianmusic in authenticperformance,and this most progressiveandmodernisticcomposerof the timecould makeno sense at all of whathe heard. His description of Chinese music:I shall not attempt to describe these wildcat howls, these death-rattles,theseturkeycluckings,in the midst of which, despitemyclosest attention,I was ableto make out only four distinct notes.'His descriptionof Indianmusic is even less flattering!Perhapsthe true cross-fertilizationprocess betweenmusical cul-turesdid not begin until afterWorldWarII, althoughone can trace thefirstpremonitions n Mussorgskyand especially in Debussy towardtheend of the nineteenthcentury. This representeda relativelyhighdegreeof sophistication,indeed, when comparedwith Mozart and Beethoven,forwhomexotic music meant the cymbalandbass drumborrowedfromthe TurkishJanissarymusic!Apartfromthese broadercultural nfluenceswhichcontributetothe shapingof our contemporarymusicalpsyche, we also have to takeinto account the ratherbewildering egacy of the earlier twentieth cen-turycomposersin the matterof compositionaltechnique andprocedure.AlthoughI am impressedby the enormous accruementof new elementsof vocabulary n the areas of pitch,rhythm,timbre,andso forth,I senseat the same time the loss of a majesticunifyingprinciple n much of ourrecent music. Not only is the question of tonalitystillunresolvedbut wehave not yet invented anythingcomparable o the sure instinctfor formwhich occurs routinelyin the best traditionalmusic. Instead, each newwork seems to require a special solution, valid only in terms of itself.There is, to be sure, a sense of adventure and challenge in articulatingour conceptions, despite the fact that we can take so little for granted;and perhapswe tend to underestimate he struggle-elementn the caseof the earliercomposers. Nonetheless, I sense that it will be the task ofthe future to somehow synthesize the sheer diversity of our presentresources into a more organicand well-orderedprocedure.Perhaps we might now review some of the specific technicalaccoutrementsof our presentmusic and speculate on theirpotential forfuture development. The advent of electronically synthesized soundafter World War II has unquestionably had enormous influence onmusic in general. Although I have never been directly involved in

I Hector Berlioz, Evettitngswith the Orchestra, transand ed JacquesBarzun(New York: AlfredA Knopf, 1956,? Jacques Barzun), pp 249-50.



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electronic music, I am keenly aware that our sense for sound-characteristics,articulation,texture, and dynamics has been radicallyrevised and very much affects the way in which we write for instru-ments. And since I have always been interestedin the extension of thepossibilities of instrumental diom, I can only regardthe influenceofelectronics as beneficial. I recently participatedin a discussion withMarioDavidovsky, who, in my opinion, is the most elegant of all theelectronic composers whose music I know. Davidovsky's view is thatthe early electroniccomposershad a trulymessianicfeeling concerningthe promise of this new medium. In those euphoric days of intenseexperimentation,some composersfelt thatelectronicmusic, becauseofits seemingly unlimitedpossibilities, would eventuallyreplaceconven-tional music. Davidovsky now regardsthe mediumsimplyas a uniqueand important anguageat the disposal of any composer who wants tomake use of it, and as a valuableteachingtool for the ear. In anycase, itis obvious that the electronicmediumin itself solves none of the com-posers' majorproblems,which have to do with creatinga viable style,inventingdistinguishedthematic material,and articulating orm.

Thedevelopmentof new instrumental ndvocal idioms has beenone of the remarkablephenomenaof recent music. There undoubtedlyhave been many contributing actors: the influence of folk instrumenttechniques;the influenceofjazz, and, later,rocktechniques;the libera-tion of percussioninstruments a developmentfor which Bela Bartok isespecially important);and finally, the advent of an ever-increasingnumber of young instrumentalistsand singers who specialize in theperformanceof contemporarymusic,and who themselves are interestedin probingthe idiomatic resources of their instruments.The develop-ment of idiom, of course, has been an ongoing process over the cen-turies;in fact, it is incumbenton each age to "reinvent" instrumentsasstyles and modes of expression change.An example of this process can be seen in the evolution of thepiano idiom. In the hands of Beethoven the expressive range of theinstrumentwas progressivelyenlarged.The gradual.expansionof thepiano in terms of range, sustainingpower, and brillianceand the intro-duction of the una corda pedal effect were fully exploited in the enor-mous body of literaturewhich Beethoven conceived for the instrument.It must have seemed to many of Beethoven's contemporariesthatnothingmore remained o be done. And yet, shortlyafter Beethoven'sdeath in 1827,Chopin publishedthe opus 10 Etudes. This astonishingnew style, based essentially on the simple device of allowing widelyspaced figurationto continue vibrating by means of the depresseddamper pedal, opened up a whole new approachto the instrument.



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GEORGE CRUMB 119

Important new breakthroughs n piano idiom were then achieved byDebussy in the late nineteenth century and by Bartok in the earlytwentieth century. And in ourown day, the concept of pianoidiom hasbeen enormously enlarged once again by the technique of producingsound throughdirect contact with the strings.I thinkit can trulybe saidthat the potential resources of instrumentscan never be exhausted: thenext generationwill always find new ways!The revolutionary reatmentof vocal idiom in the new musichasbeen an interesting development. The traditionalbel canto ideal hasbeen very much enlarged by the influenceof popular styles of singingand also by non-Western ypes of vocal timbre.In conjunctionwith thisdevelopment, the traditionalvoice-piano medium seems to have givenway to a new genre, consisting of voice and a varied instrumentalchamber ensemble. A curious phenomenon is that the soprano voicetype seems to clearly dominate; he othervoice types have been moreorless neglected by recent composers, and as a consequence, I suppose,we seem to have very few excellent singers, other than sopranos, whospecialize in the new music. Othersignificant endencies in the area ofvocal composition are the neglect of the choral medium and the failure,thus far, to create a new type of large-scalemusic-theater.In respect toopera,it strikes me that AlbanBergreallytiedtogetherall the strandsofthe tradition n his WozzeckandLulu, andI feel that nothingof compa-rable significancehas been done since. In any case, the task of findingfresh approachesto opera and to choral music will be inheritedby thefuture.Perhapsof all the most basic elements of music, rhythm mostdirectlyaffects our centralnervous system. Althoughin our analysis ofmusic we have inheriteda definite bias in favor of pitch, rather thanrhythm, as being primary,I suspect that we are frequently unable tocope with rhythmicphenomena n verbal terms. It mightbe arguedthatthe largest aspect of rhythmis tempo, and it is interestingto observethat, whereas the nineteenthcentury tended to rankcomposers on thequalityof theirslow movements-since it was assumed that slow musicwas more difficultto write-the situationat the present time has beencompletelyreversed.The problemnow seems to be the compositionofconvincingfast music,or moreexactly, how to give our music a sense ofpropulsion without clinging too slavishly to past procedures, for exam-ple the Bartokian ype of kineticrhythm.Complexity n itself, of course,will not provide rhythmic hrust;andit is truethatharmonicrhythmhasto operatein conjunctionwithactualrhythm n order to effect a sense ofpropulsion.Three composers-two traditional and one contemporary-



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especially interest me with regard to their imaginative handling ofrhythmand mightpossibly have some bearingon our currentapproachto rhythmicstructure. The first is Beethoven, whose sense of rhythmiccontrolwas absolutelyuncanny. Of all composers,he was the masterofthe widest possible range of tempos, from prestissimoto molto adagio.The Beethoven adagio, particularlyof the third style period, offers aformatwhich mightbe furtherexploredin contemporary erms:withinthe context of an extremely slow tempo, a sense of much fastermove-ment is achieved by tiny subdivisionsof the beat. Such a device offerscontrast and yet gives a sense of organic unity. Another composerwhose rhythmic sensitivity impresses me is Chopin. I am thinkingprimarilyof certainof the nocturnes, in which he achieves a sense of"suspendedtime" (as in much new music), but also providesa feelingof growthand progressionthroughtime. And lastly, I would mentionMessiaen with regardto his use of the "additiverhythmicprinciple,"which, in his book Technique of My Musical Language, he associateswith Hindu music. I feel thatthis principlecould be of greatimportancein the further development of our rhythmical anguage.When we come to a discussion of the role of pitchin new music,we enter an arena of widely conflictingopinions. In general, I feel thatthe more rationalistic approachesto pitch-organization,ncluding spe-cifically serial technique, have given way, largely, to a more intuitiveapproach.There seems to be a growingfeeling that we must somehowevolve a new kind of tonality.Probably he ideal solution,anticipated, tseems to me, by Bartok, is to combine the possibilitiesof our chromaticlanguage-which is so rich and expressive in its own right-with a senseof strong tonal focus.An interesting practice in music since the atonal period of theViennese composers has been the widespreaduse of a few tiny pitchcells. One such cell, which pervades the music of Anton Webem andBartok,is the combinedmajor-minorhird:C-E-E-flat; another suchuniversally used cell is the perfect fourth flanked by tritones: C-F-sharp-B-F; another is the chromatic cluster: C-C-sharp-D.These three cells, in various permutations,together with a few otherbasic types, areastonishinglyprevalent n contemporarymusic of what-ever style.There has been considerable experimentationin the field ofmicrotones n recent years, but to Westernears at least, a structuraluseof microtones is frustratinglydifficult to hear. Microtones seem to bemost frequentlyused in a coloristic manner,for example in "bending"pitches. It would be very difficult o predictwhat role microtonesmightplay in a work composed in the twenty-fifthcentury, but since music



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GEORGE CRUMB 121

must somehow relateto ourcentral nervous system, which has evolvedover countless eons, its widespreaduse would seem problematical.I have already alluded to the problem of form in new music,arisingprimarily rom the erosion of so many traditionalforms whichdependedon functionaltonality. Of course the simpler,more primitiveforms remainto us, and the variationprinciple s always available.Twobasic types of form, bothof which were knownto earliermusic, seem tohave a peculiarattractionto recent composers. These two types arediametricopposites. One is the "'non-repetitive"principle, which im-plies a progressionalong a straight ine without ever referringback toitself. The other could be called the "minimal" type, which usuallyconsists of a repetitionad infinitumof one idea, whetherit be a rhythmicmotif, a chord,or a melodicsuccession of pitches. Curiously,bothtypesare represented n ArnoldSchoenberg's music: the "non-repetitive"inseveralworks, and the "'minimal"n the "Sommermorgenan einem See(Farben)" from the Five Pieces for Orchestra. Of course, both typescould more correctlybe termedformalproceduresratherthanconven-tionally articulatedformal structures like the sonata-structureor therondo-structure.In any case, these aforementionedtwo types do noteasily lend themselves to large-scale structure; their overextenlsionwould most likely producefatigueand monotony. And so, perhapswemust againreevaluatethe more traditionalprincipleof repetition-with-contrast, which served the earliercomposers so well.Perhaps many of the perplexing problems of the new musiccouldbe putintoa new lightif we were to reintroduce he ancientideaofmusic being a reflectionof nature. Althoughtechnical discussions arealways interestingto composers, I suspect that the truly magicalandspiritualpowers of music arise fromdeeper levels of our psyche. I amcertain that every composer, from his formativeyears as a child, hasacquireda "naturalacoustic" which remainsin his ear for life. The factthat I was born and grew up in an Appalachianrivervalley meantthatmy ear was attuned to a peculiar echoing acoustic; I feel that thisacoustic was "'structured nto" my hearing, so to speak, and thusbecamethe basic acoustic of my music. I shouldimaginethat the oceanshore or endless plains would produce an altogetherdifferent"inher-ited" acoustic. In a larger sense, the rhythms of nature-large andsmall, the sounds of wind and water, the sounds of birdsand insects-mustinevitablyfind theiranaloguesin music. Afterall, the singingof thehumpbackwhale is already a highly developed artistic product: onehears phrase-structure,climax and anticlimax, and even a sense oflarge-scale musical form!I am optimisticabout the futureof music. I frequentlyhear my



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own perioddescribed as uncertain,confused, chaotic. The two decadesfrom 1950 to 1970 have been described as ithe rise and fall of themusical avant-garde,"the implication being that nothingat all worth-while was accomplished during those years. I have even heard theextremely pessimistic idea expressed by some composersthat "CCo'nwie-liafitiia est" -all possible combinationshave by now been exhaustedand music has finally reacheda dead end. My own feelingis that musiccan never cease evolving; it will continually reinvent the world in itsown terms. Perhapstwo millionyears ago the creaturesof a planet insome remote galaxy faced a musical crisis similar to that which weearthly composers face today. Is it possible that those creatures haveexisted for two million years without music? I doubt it.

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