University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Journal of Musicology.
http://www.jstor.org
WILLIAMW.AUSTIN
ow do musicologists cope with music of the twentieth century? As
variously as composers, performers, and listeners do. That is, I believe, not so variously as the millions of scholars, authors, and readers
cope with the Babel of world literature of the twentieth century, but
more variously than the smaller numbers of scholars, choreographers,
dancers, and fans cope with the exciting rise of contemporary dance. If
music itself is a sister to poetry and dance, musicology may be an in-law,
keeping up her late-nineteenth-century alliance with art history, while
ogling at anthropology and sociology, and studiously renewing her
ancient family roots in music theory.
Literary scholarship prospers today on polemics among competing
schools of criticism, sometimes to the point of neglecting poets and
usurping their appeal to common readers. Musicology, still a slender
thing in proportion to the blowsy amplitude of song and dance, encourages most musicologists to concentrate on some chronologically
continuous part of the thousand-year European library of scores. Their
work coheres and progresses. It presupposes a consensus about some
values, and shuns discussion of most values. Typically, it refines texts
and interprets them historically. Thus it resembles nineteenth-century
philology more nearly than late twentieth-century semiotics or deconstruction. Of course musicologists reflect and participate in some
twentieth-century trends, but the coherence and gratifying progress of
their philological work do not extend to much collective treatment of
new music. Rather, individual musicologists interested in new music
have to seek their own paths individually. Some musicologists whose
interest is only sporadic or only lip-service may seem to console themselves with kinds of journalism about new music that they would scorn
in relation to any period from Guido to Wagner. Yet a hope of some
scholarly consensus about Stravinsky, Cage, and the rest is still alive.
In this situation, perhaps my best response to Musicology's request
for a thousand words or so is frankly to discuss my own fluctuating
hope. Music in the 20th Century (1966) was addressed to "anyone
interested in the music of Schoenberg, Bart6k, and Stravinsky." Readers
might like, I said, "to partake in a growing consensus affirming their
importance." I hoped that this consensus would soon extend to jazz,
H
63
64
though my editors doubted this. I was more confident that the consensus
would soon extend to Debussy. Did I persuade Professor Lang? I
emphasized that Debussy sought a broad audience only with reservations: he could not compete with Strauss, Puccini, or Lehar, nor did
he wish to; he could not yet compete with Mozart. About Mozart's
audience and its ways of listening, I noted that all of us were very
ignorant, but all could observe some twentieth-century changes. I
thought it worthwhile to relate the consensus on Stravinsky,Bart6k, and
Schoenberg to that on the classics, but I adhered to Debussy's thought
that "classic" was an inappropriate label for contemporaries.
The New Grove (1970-80) can be cited in a crude way as confirming my assertion, my hope, and my trust. In number of pages per
entry, Stravinsky, Bart6k, Schoenberg, and Debussy rank here above
Strauss. Jazz is almost catching up. Of course Grove contains ample
evidence for questioning any consensus, but the table that follows
includes several interesting bits of confirmation.
Table 1: Prominent 20th-century composers in The New Grove.
Composers Born Around:
Pages
in
Grove
27
26
23
22
21
18
16
15
14
13
12
11
10
1860
1875
Mahler
1895
1905
1915
1925
Schoenberg
Debussy
Strauss
jazz
Elgar
Janrcek
Ives
Britten
Berg
Faurd
Puccini
Sibelius
Ravel
Webern
Vaughan Williams
9
8
Rakhmaninov
7
6
Hoist
Reger
1885
Bartdk
Stravinsky
Hindemith
Prokofiev
Weill
Shostakovich
Tippett
Kodaly
Delius
Nielsen
Satie
Skryabin
Malipiero
Grainger
Szymanowski
Varese
Copland
Poulenc
Eisler
Boulez
Stockhausen
Henze
Messiaen
Carter
Dallapiccola
Cage
Berio
Walton
While my first book was in press, I wrote three articles that remain
unpublished. One on Charlie Christian was written for a Festschrift
that never found a publisher. One on Stockhausen was meant for The
Musical Quarterly, one on Frank Martin, more analytical, was offered
to Perspectives of New Music, but their editors had their own reasons
for rejecting these. I mention these articles for two reasons: to indicate
my specialized efforts in relation to the consensus, and to console, if I
can, younger rejected authors.
With some hesitation, I accepted the invitation of Professor
65
66
Cornell University