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A COMPOSER'S INFLUENCES
ERNST KRENEK
To ASCE R T AIN and evaluate the influences that might have caused
a creative artist to orient himself in certain directions and to make
decisions that would determine his own course as well as that of his art
(provided he is himself in a position to emanate influence) is a difficult
task, because the presence or absence of influence is, like all matters of
history, not verifiable through experiment. Faced with the evidence of
what has happened, we will never know what might have happened if
some elements contributing to the actual result of the process had been
different. Although it may appear obvious that certain phases in a
composer's growth were caused by influences to which he was exposed,
we can never be sure whether he would not have turned in the same
direction without those circumstances.
Within the narrower realm of the metier,of technical procedure, it is,
on the whole, possible to trace influence with a far greater degree of cer-
tainty than it can be when dealing with matters of style and general
orientation. All of these aspects will most frequently coincide in the case
of the apprentice who is obviously influenced by the master from whom
he not only learns his craft, but who also is the most vividly present model
of achievement asserting itself with authority. One usually recognizes as
a good teacher one who does not try to impress his own image upon the
receptive minds of his students; I, for one, have always tried to maintain
this goal in my own teaching, although I could not always prevent my
students from imitating some of my idiosyncracies. But influence is not
only passively received, it is also, consciously or not, sought after. The
beginner, however, will sooner or later try to branch out in a direction
different from that prevailing in his teacher's studio.
In my own case, I remember that during my third year at the State
Academy of Music in Vienna (1918) I came upon the LineareKontrapunkt
by Ernst Kurth. It had probably been received by the school library as
a reference copy and passed on to my teacher, Franz Schreker, as con-
cerning his department. He admitted having never looked at it and, at
my request, let me borrow i . I read the disquisition of the Austrian-Swiss
musicologist with rapt attention, and it turned my entire musical orien-
tation inside out. I was fascinated by the notion that music was not just
a vague symbolization of Gefuehlinstinctively conjured up into pleasant
sounding matter, but a precisely planned reflection of an autonomous
36
A COMPOSER S INFLUENCES
* 41 ?