Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Walter Aaron Clark

Reviewed work(s):
Music and Nationalism in 20th-Century Great Britain and Finland by Tomi Mkel
Source: Notes, Second Series, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Mar., 1999), pp. 680-682
Published by: Music Library Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/900440
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680
to include more information than would be
possible if all items were presented in facsimile.
Blackburn's selection and organization
of these materials and his insightful essay
demonstrate his detailed knowledge of
Partch's career. Highlights of the volume
with
include Partch's correspondence
W. B. Yeats and extracts from Partch's illustrated music journal Bitter Music. Also included are the exchange between Alwin
Nikolais and Partch concerning the first
production of The Bewitched and Partch's
manual for the performance and maintenance of his instruments. In addition, there
are several articles by Partch that were not
in Thomas McGeary's earlier collection,
Bitter Music: CollectedJournals, Essays, Introductions and Librettos(Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1991).
Blackburn declares that the ambition of
the book "is to let Harry, for once, speak
for himself" (p. 519). Reading this, I can't
help hearing Partch's voice: "Then why the
hell didn't you reproduce the layout of my
own scrapbooks?" Unlike Partch's ghost, I
realize that Blackburn was attempting to
achieve a fairly complete biography and
that an exact facsimile may have been of
use only to musicologists. However, as a
musicologist interested in Partch, I would
love to see a complete facsimile of such material as Bitter Music without the artistic
remixing of Partch's voice that occasionally
obscures this book's contents. Blackburn's
notes provide helpful explanations and
context and will prove essential for the
reader, yet these notes are not always complete and the index disappoints, making
the book less useful. Such academic quibbles are disallowed by Blackburn: "To the
extent that the book appears non-academic, it has succeeded to that degree" (p.
519). Of course, the book was never intended to save musicologists a research
trip, and I am pleased to note that the complete collection will now join the materials
housed at the University of Illinois Harry
Partch Archive.
Blackburn might have aimed more at
those readers who did not know the composer as "Harry"and are coming to him for
the first time. Even though the details of
Partch's life and career are not as evident
as they would be in a true biography, his
spirit and personality come through clearly.

NOTES, March 1999

The book reveals how he doggedly fought
to gain support for his work and repeatedly
decided to "have his say" in articles and
letters. Although Blackburn states that "in
the world of music, Partch rang every
proverbial doorbell and then ran away" (p.
460), one admires Partch's persistence in
banging on certain doors; he would never
have won those Guggenheim Awards otherwise. Partch maintained his wit and anger
to the end of his life. In a 1969 letter concerning his attempts to hire assistants, he
wryly observed that since his Wisconsin period "the only persons deeply involved in
my work are fantastically fertile.... Where
a dedicated homosexual requires only hundreds of dollars these family men require
literally thousands" (p. 422). Other late letters expose the frustration of receiving increasing recognition while suffering the
same setbacks and broken promises that
had plagued his earlier career. In a 1972
letter concerning his disappointment in
the filming of Delusion, he wrote: "This is a
very painful letter for me to write, and
probably for you to read, yet written it must
be. I must go on record" (p. 432). His
preservation of the material presented in
this book is one indication of just how determined he was to shape his own story. In
a 1971 letter to Columbia Records, he criticized a draft summary of his career and offered a correction by quoting approvingly
from a 1930 review of his work (p. 425). He
persistently fought to go on record-to preserve his music, instruments, theories, and
life story in his own voice. This constant effort at preservation has been valiantly continued by Blackburn in a beautiful book
that should succeed in opening more doors
(and ears) to Partch.
W. ANTHONY

SHEPPARD

WilliamsCollege

Music

and Nationalism
in 20thCentury Great Britain and Finland.
Edited by Tomi Makela. Hamburg:
Von Bockel Verlag, 1997. [243 p. ISBN
3-928770-99-3.]
This book is a collection of nineteen papers delivered at a symposium at the
Finnish Institute in London in December
1992. The essays, by British and Finnish

Book Reviews
musicologists but all in English, are divided
into four categories: "Nationality and Nationalism in the Arts"; "Facets of Britishness"; "To Be a Twentieth-Century 'Finn'";
and "Writing about Music." Though Ralph
Vaughan Williams and Jean Sibelius figure
prominently, chapters on other English
and Finnish composers, as well as excellent
essays on musical nationalism in Ireland
and Scotland, provide welcome balance
and context.
Section 1 begins with a thought-provoking piece by Tomi Makela entitled "Towards a Theory of Internationalism, Europeanism, Nationalism and 'Co-Nationalism'
in Twentieth-Century Music." Politically
and militarily, nationalism is the curse of
the twentieth century; culturally, the picture is somewhat different. Many of the
leading composers of the last hundred
years have written music closely identified
with national and ethnic groups. This
repertory continues to be popular with the
public and has arguably brought disparate
peoples closer together, not driven them
further apart. Yet the question posed by
Carl Dahlhaus and others remains: Does
the nationalist label really apply to composers like Vaughan Williams and Sibelius?
Does not nationalism per se imply an
overtly ideological agenda, a level of political involvement divorced from the mere
quotation of folk tunes or evocation of an
idealized past? Would it not be more appropriate to refer to such composers as
proponents of a "national style" rather than
of nationalism, with all the connotations of
cultural chauvinism such a label carries?
There may not be a satisfactory answer to
this question, because the impulse to write
music in a national style can rarely if ever
be neatly separated from a striving for national self-definition, though it may emanate from personal nostalgia and not a
cultural superiority complex. In other
words, few if any composers fit tidily into
one category or the other; ultimately, the
dichotomy is an artificial one. In any event,
the nationalist label will persist, despite its
inherent ambiguity. This issue lies at the
heart of the volume under consideration,
for the connection between Great Britain
and Finland is closer and more important
than one might think. Sibelius served as an
inspiration for composers in Britain as well
as in his homeland. He successfully com-

681
posed music of a Finnish character while
employing advanced harmonic and formal
materials (the "international" component
in his style) that placed him within the
mainstream of European music. The same
is true of Vaughan Williams.
And yet, how do we identify the precise
elements that mark a piece as "English"?
The theorist Arnold Whittall ("Personal
Style, Impersonal Structure? Music Analysis
and Nationality") concludes that "features
become significantly English when sufficient numbers of other composers adopt or
adapt them" (p. 21). For him, the national
character of a work is a matter of consensus. This tends, however, to sidestep the
issue of the deployment of folk materials,
which persuasively identify a work's nationality (if not the composer's) regardless of
how many other composers may or may
not mimic the style. But Whittall rightly
observes that at the end of our century,
nationalism "tends in reality to be a particular, personal, multinational synthesis"
(p. 25).
The issue of Vaughan Williams's
"Englishness" and the critical reception of
his music over time is explored by Alain
Frogley ("'Getting Its History Wrong':
English Nationalism and the Reception of
Ralph Vaughan Williams"). The reputation
of Vaughan Williams has been plagued by
all kinds of misconceptions. The postWorld War II generation regarded him as a
stodgy figurehead of the establishment,
when in fact his works from the twenties
and thirties were highly experimental and
devoid of romantic sentimentality. He was
not insular in his outlook, and "the bulk of
his work was in genres such as symphony
and opera, not mass, motet, or folk-song
setting" (p. 157). His attachment to folk
song emanated not from some escapist
longing for an idyllic past, but rather from
his socialist political leanings. Despite his
evocation of the English countryside, he
was a confirmed urbanite who spent most
of his life in London. In short, his reputation is "still mired in the confused ideological landscape of Britain's long slide from
international power." In his case, "ideas of
national character have ... been selectively
manipulated" by critics seeking to prove
one ideological point or another (p. 161).
Sibelius has suffered a familiar fate according to Matti Huttunen ("Nationalistic

682
and Non-nationalistic Views of Sibelius in
Twentieth-Century Finnish Music Historiography"). Critics with a nationalist bent
saw him as the culmination of hundreds
of years of musical evolution in Finland.
Other, nonnationalist writers, especially
after World War II, focused on his technical procedures and simply ignored the programmatic and textual elements tying him
to Finland. "At the beginning of our century the distinctive Finnish character was
seen as the path to an international status.
After the Second World War the situation
was reversed: symphonic coherence was the
hallmark of Finnish music. The dialectics
of national and universal has worked in
both directions" (p. 230).
Irish and Scottish composers of our century and the historical context of their creative work are terra incognita to most of us.
Jeremy Dibble and Malcolm MacDonald
shed valuable light on these subjects.
Finnish composers, between the wars and
in the last two decades, engage Erkki Salmenhaara and Mikko Heinio.
The small dimensions of this book, the
simplicity of its design, and some curious
anomalies in editing (typographical errors
and misspellings) suggest a low-budget
publication, and Makela admits as much in
his foreword. Yet the content of this book
belies its plain exterior. Here is a volume
brimming with keen insights from some of
the leading scholars in these areas. This is a
must-read for anyone interested in nationalism and its musical manifestations in
Britain and Finland.
WALTER
AARONCLARK
Universityof Kansas
and Music. Edited by
Oxford:
Clarendon
Mary Bryden.
Press, 1998. [xviii, 267 p. ISBN 0-19818427-1. $75.]
Samuel Beckett

A study of Samuel Beckett's relationship

to music could address three major topics:
the significance of music in his works, the
significance of music in his life, and the significance of his writings in the music of others. The first and most rewarding topic is itself multidimensional. Multiple references
to musical works, lyrics, and composers are
found throughout Beckett's writings, and
his writing style exhibits a prominent musicality, particularly when one listens to his

NOTES, March 1999

theater works in performance. A study of

this first topic should also focus on
Beckett's literal use of music in theater
works that explore and dramatize the relationship between music and language. In
such works, Beckett called not for incidental music or sung text, but for Music to appear as a literal character, only vaguely indicating what the "lines" of Music should
sound like.
In her introduction to Samuel Beckettand
Music, Mary Bryden promises that the book
will focus on "the significance of music in
the work of Beckett" (p. 1) and states that
"whether read aloud or silently, Beckett's
careful words resemble elements of a musical score, coordinated by and for the ear,
to sound and resound" (p. 2). Such testimonials to Beckett's musicality are made
throughout the book but rarely are followed by extended explication and exemplification. Walter Beckett offers (in but
two pages) the volume's most focused discussion, rightly noting that Beckett's musicality is "largely brought about by his use
of language, the paring down of words
and the length of time given to pauses or
silences, thereby creating a rhythmical
whole" (p. 181). He cites specific examples
from Waitingfor Godotbut transcends this
reader's perceptive abilities when he claims
to hear specific chords while reading certain phrases in Beckett's works.
The most substantial discussion of music
in Beckett is offered by Bryden herself.
Focusing on the novels, she points to
Beckett's acute attunement to sound in his
descriptive writing and notes the major role
silence plays in his prose. She attempts to
connect Beckett to John Cage's views on
silence but neglects to emphasize that
silence in Cage's music is a celebration of
unintended sound, whereas in Beckett's
style it is a determined rhythmic element.
(Throughout, Bryden quotes statements by
or about Cage, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, and Arnold Schoenberg in an attempt to surround Beckett with composers.
This proves to be the basic strategy of the
book.) Bryden focuses on the role of musical reference in Beckett's works and eloquently notes that within his plots, singing
offers "a respite for the Beckettian organism whose inner ear is all too often a straining, buckling receiver for a stream of
sound-scars" (p. 29). Although she remains
focused on Beckett's descriptions of listen-