On that Lewd, Pulsating Jungle Music

[karlhenning]

I happened to take down from the shelf a book I haven't thought about for a long time (nor ever actually read); and in leafing through it while I was waiting for the odd disc to be 'ripped' (such an unfortunate term), I've wondered why I bought the book.

It furnishes great fodder for the game Guess the Source, though:

I hesitate to think . . . of what the effect of music upon the next generation will be if the present school of 'hot jazz' continues to develop unabated. Much of it is crass, raucous and commonplace and could be dismissed without comment if it were not for the radio whereby, hour after hour, night after night, American homes are flooded with vast quantities of this material, to which accompaniment our youngsters dance, play and even study. Perhaps they have developed an immunity to its effect — but if they have not, and if the mass production of this aural drug is not curtailed, we may find ourselves a nation of neurotics which even the skill of the psychiatrist may be hard pressed to cure.

(No googling!)

A lot of this sentiment was in the air, no doubt; yet I am astonished to read it from . . . well, the person who wrote it.

What was he thinking, though? "If [it] continues to develop unabated"?  "If [it] is not curtailed"?

One thing is for sure:  A lot of people get so nervous about newer music that they don't care for (or understand, or whatever), that they happily take leave of both reason and their moral center.

[Gurn Blanston]

Are we supposed to have a guess at the quotee? I have an idea or two in that direction.

It reads a lot like one of my father's diatribes against rock 'n roll...

[Scarpia]

I happened to take down from the shelf a book I haven't thought about for a long time (nor ever actually read); and in leafing through it while I was waiting for the odd disc to be 'ripped' (such an unfortunate term), I've wondered why I bought the book.

It furnishes great fodder for the game Guess the Source, though:

>I hesitate to think . . . of what the effect of music upon the next generation will be if the present school of 'hot jazz' continues to develop unabated. Much of it is crass, raucous and commonplace and could be dismissed without comment if it were not for the radio whereby, hour after hour, night after night, American homes are flooded with vast quantities of this material, to which accompaniment our youngsters dance, play and even study. Perhaps they have developed an immunity to its effect — but if they have not, and if the mass production of this aural drug is not curtailed, we may find ourselves a nation of neurotics which even the skill of the psychiatrist may be hard pressed to cure.

(No googling!)

A lot of this sentiment was in the air, no doubt; yet I am astonished to read it from . . . well, the person who wrote it.

What was he thinking, though? "If [it] continues to develop unabated"?  "If [it] is not curtailed"?

One thing is for sure:  A lot of people get so nervous about newer music that they don't care for (or understand, or whatever), that they happily take leave of both reason and their moral center.

Palestrina?

[karlhenning]

Are we supposed to have a guess at the quotee? I have an idea or two in that direction.

It reads a lot like one of my father's diatribes against rock 'n roll...

Might be someone your dad knew . . . .

[greg]

50 Cent?

[Cato]

If we are not allowed to use Google  0:)

my guess would be the moron theologian E. Michael Jones who wrote a very silly book about 15 years ago called Dionysus Rising: The Birth of Revolution Out Of the Spirit of Music in which - and I am not making this up - he claims Schoenberg's wife cuckolded him as a reflection of chromaticism and free atonality, the latter reflecting the "free sexuality" of the bohemian fin-de-siecle atmosphere of Vienna.   

From a review on Amazon by a certain Robert Badger:

E. Michael Jones has written much on the problems of modernism and the modern world. Gropius and his cohorts have given us an architecture that is bland in the extreme. The sexual revolution has caused untold harm. I admire and respect some of his earlier work, but I really must disagree with Jones with respect to Arnold Schoenberg.
Schoenberg was in many ways a traditionalist. Despite his often groundbreaking work, and with exceptions such as the Five Orchestral Pieces, he kept Brahmsian rhythms and more or less worked in classical forms. This is especially true of Schoenberg's last period. Schoenberg did not see himself as a revolutionary. He saw himself as one carrying on the Austro-German school of composition, a school that he viewed as absolutely central to music as a whole. It was his hope that his new theories of composition would maintain the dominance of the Austro-German school for at least a hundred years.

This has not happened. If anything, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern are the summation of the Austro-German school of composition. Schoenberg was at the heart of the Austro-German school.

Jones, in stating that Schoenberg ventured into atonality because of an unfaithful spouse, really is taking things too far. I don't think that he adequately understands Schoenberg's place in music. It is a pity because rock music and other forms of popular music have been terribly destructive as he rightly points out. Unfortunately, Jones does not posess an adequate understanding of the traditionalist roots of Arnold Schoenberg.

See:

http://www.amazon.com/Dionysos-Rising-Cultural-Revolution-Spirit/product-reviews/0898704847/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R1B19B5B91VB7N

[karlhenning]

I appreciate the restraint viz. google.

The man who wrote that is: Howard Hanson

[some guy]

Ah Karl, too soon!!

(I was in the middle of writing to Cato about your clue: "A lot of this sentiment was in the air, no doubt; yet I am astonished to read it from . . . well, the person who wrote it." And was advancing the names of Stravinsky, Copland, Barzun, and Bernstein. And already we have our answer? Howard Hanson?

I must say, I'd be more surprised if anyone on my list had come up with that, but that's because I don't know Hanson all that well. His opinions on music, anyway.

Morton Gould, that's who would REALLY surprise me.

Oh, right. Game over.

Spit.)

[karlhenning]

Sorry!

[Grazioso]

The early reception--or rather rejection--of jazz makes for fascinating and unsettling study, given the copious quantities of musical ignorance and racial prejudice involved. For the classical music world's reaction to and appropriation of jazz, see The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross (a superb book about classical music in the 20th century).

Funny that Hanson should describe jazz as "crass, raucous and commonplace" when there are more than a few in the classical music world who would use "crass and commonplace" to describe his particular brand of bland, inoffensive, and ultra-conservative Neo-Romanticism.

One thing is for sure:  A lot of people get so nervous about newer music that they don't care for (or understand, or whatever), that they happily take leave of both reason and their moral center.

Not surprising since music can (ideally) express powerful, deeply rooted feelings more immediately, vividly, and intimately than the other arts: I suppose it's unnerving for a stick-in-the-mud to hear the emotions that animate jazz, rock, hip-hop, etc. made manifest to the ear. It's like how some conservatives seem shocked into fear and anger when they realize that a lot of liberals genuinely believe what they say, that another worldview actually exists--and of course vice versa where the political spectrum is concerned.

Be that all as it may, we all know now that Elvis was really the one responsible for the decline of American civilization--or was it Public Enemy? 

[Cato]

Be that all as it may, we all know now that Elvis was really the one responsible for the decline of American civilization--or was it Public Enemy? 

In The Straight Story, David Lynch's great movie about a man who rides a lawn mower 350 miles through Iowa into Wisconsin to visit his dying brother, the main character (Alvin Straight) meets a wild woman who plays Public Enemy at the highest volume, while she drives through Iowa cornfields, in order to scare away deer!   

[Elgarian]

Be that all as it may, we all know now that Elvis was really the one responsible for the decline of American civilization

Indeed. I was going to guess that Karl's quotation had come from Elvis's dad.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Funny that Hanson should describe jazz as "crass, raucous and commonplace" when there are more than a few in the classical music world who would use "crass and commonplace" to describe his particular brand of bland, inoffensive, and ultra-conservative Neo-Romanticism.

Hanson was such a boring composer, it doesn't surprise me that he said this. I would have been surprised if it had been said by the likes of Stravinsky or Varese.

Palestrina?

LOL

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Anyway, they've been saying stuff like this for ages:

"I am astonished at the foolish music written in these times. It is false and wrong and no longer does anyone pay attention to what our beloved old masters wrote about composition."

-- Samuel Scheidt, 1651

[karlhenning]

Hanson was such a boring composer, it doesn't surprise me that he said this. I would have been surprised if it had been said by the likes of Stravinsky or Varese.

But neither Stravinsky nor Varèse would have said any such thing; they used their ears like men.

I admit that whatever little I have heard by Hanson, never invited me to listen to more;  but this citation surprised me in its vehement denunciation of jazz as a sort of neural pathology; and its implicit calls for (essentially) censorship.

[karlhenning]

Also, that dated "we've got to stop this hideous jazz before our civilization crumbles!" mindset sounds all the more discordant, as I've been reading a very engaging history of jazz (by a professor whom I used to assist).

[Franco]

IMO, Howard Hanson is a good composer.  His music exhibits a strong sense of form and his compositional technique is flawless, in that he is a good person to study if one wishes to see how classical composition is done.   Having said that, his music does not contain that ineffable quality that all great art seems to have, and he is overshadowed by other composers such as Stravinsky, Shostakovich and even Piston, who were his contemporaries.

His statement concerning jazz of the '20s does not surprise me and was pretty common during this period (Stravinsky's fascination with jazz of the '20s and his attempt to incorporate it into his style for a few pieces, was the exception, although an idea which had tender for while among some composers such as Ravel, Milhaud and a few others), and this kind of statement (not coming from a moralistic p.o.v. but of a "that's not art" p.o.v.) is still promulgated by classical musicians and fans.

The same kind of thing is said about new music, so there seems to be equal opportunity stylistic bigotry practiced by some in the "high" arts.

Small-mindedness is not limited to rednecks.

[Chaszz]

Palestrina?

ha ha ha ha!! great!!

[Chaszz]

"The younger generation is uneducated and irresponsible, and makes us afraid for the future."

- Egyptian wall inscription, c. 4000 BC.

[jochanaan]

I appreciate the restraint viz. google.

The man who wrote that is: Howard Hanson

My surprise is not because of Hanson's reputation as a composer--he was an unabashed neo-Romantic and said so--but rather, his reputation as a forward-looking conductor and educator.  Didn't he, at the Eastman School, encourage free exploration of musical modernity?

IMO, Howard Hanson is a good composer.  His music exhibits a strong sense of form and his compositional technique is flawless, in that he is a good person to study if one wishes to see how classical composition is done.   Having said that, his music does not contain that ineffable quality that all great art seems to have, and he is overshadowed by other composers such as Stravinsky, Shostakovich and even Piston, who were his contemporaries...

De gustibus non disputandum est, but I respectfully disagree based on my own listening to Hanson's music.  Even in the 20th century, a composer doesn't have to be forward-looking to be great.