It’s probably a truism to say that there are only two kinds of music: good and bad, but now that tonality is back in vogue and the serialists are on the retreat, it may be a good time to step back and take stock. My principal motivation has been the audition of a number of new releases and reissues by some mediocre-to-truly-miserable 20th century tonal composers, an experience which has driven home just how desperate the situation must have seemed at the turn of the last century if you happened to be working within the German classical tradition. It has also become clear just how inadequate traditional music history is in describing (never mind explaining) exactly what was going on at the time.
First of all, there is the obvious and somewhat artificial distinction between “tonal” and “atonal” music. It is artificial because when most people think of music they don’t classify it on this basis at all. What most of us really mean by “tonal” is “melodic,” which is a different matter entirely, although tonality certainly has its role to play. The reason for the emphasis on music’s harmonic aspect is simple: it is the quality most easily analyzed and discussed by music theorists. To date, no one has ever been able to quantify the expressive qualities of melody, but harmony can be addressed systematically in wholly technical terms. Still, the fact is, there’s plenty of atonal music that is quite melodic, indeed ravishingly so (think: Berg).
All of the generally acknowledged great composers were, in some form or another, melodists, able to express in just a few bars of tune those personal qualities found nowhere else. Rather than seeing 19th century music history as a gradually evolving “crisis of tonality,” is seems more logical to view it as both composers and listeners did themselves: as an ongoing search for new types of melody. From this perspective, the situation in greater Germany looks all the more interesting, and becomes increasingly understandable. By the end of the 19th century, German music had, melodically speaking, effectively written itself out. The works of Brahms and Wagner, each in their own way, demonstrate this quite clearly.
Wagner, whose early work reveals him to be at best a spotty melodist, avoided traditional instrumental music entirely and evolved a style that allowed him to construct his music dramas on a basis more congenial to his strengths: using brief, pregnant motives. Brahms faced a bigger problem, in that he worked in the large, abstract forms created by the great composers of the classical period, and the basis of these media was melody. Writing good original tunes was, as Brahms himself recognized, one of his greatest challenges. His recourse to Hungarian melodies, alongside other supplements to his propriety thematic material (such as his frequent acts of thematic homage to past masters), was a frank acknowledgment of the importance in finding distinctive–or at least appropriate–ideas with which to populate his musical structures.
Outside of Germany, things were going swimmingly. The great nationalist composers such as Dvorák, Sibelius, and the Russian school were exploring a vast fund of melodic archetypes inspired by their native folk music. In France, music in large abstract forms had never been a priority, and when it became one at the turn of the 20th century, it proved infinitely adaptable to the French approach of “borrow from wherever but call it French.” Melody never had it so good. Only in Germany did the aesthetics of nationalism result in a doctrine of musical purity that made it virtually impossible for native composers to absorb new influences, and renew their stock of musical materials. Composers that attempted to do so, like Mahler, already an outsider by birth and ethnicity, were either spurned, or like Richard Strauss found themselves avoiding abstract forms such as symphonies, concertos, and chamber music entirely.
Enter Schoenberg and his crew. It’s worth remembering that the twelve-tone method was born as a rejection of free atonality, and has as its basis a new way of thinking about melody. The most immediately appealing thing about it, aesthetically, is that it represents a closed system: as “pure” as any there is. From a strictly intellectual point of view, and ignoring the question of depth of musical expression, it would seem to be ideally suited to the creation of the kind of large, abstract forms that had come to symbolize musical greatness, German style. At least, Schoenberg thought so. It has tremendous appeal on paper, which is how most third-rate composers conceive of music anyway. That the final result may sound awful is always a secondary consideration.
More to the point, there is plenty of twelve-tone music that does not sound awful, in which the method can be used to create a personal, expressive, and even appealing melodic style (take Rautavaara, for instance). The serial revolution also aided in the creation of music based on criteria other than melody, a difficult proposition in non-programmatic pieces, but one which a few composers have managed triumphantly (consider Dutilleux). We also know this because we now find composers writing tonal music equally devoid of traditional melody, and the result as often as not simply sounds ridiculous, the musical equivalent of trying to communicate in a language devoid of nouns. At least the atonal stuff does not lead the ear into expecting something that it has no intention of delivering.
At a time when many composers of that nationality despaired of the creating an individual melodic style that was also aesthetically “German,” the opportunity to write music on a different basis entirely must have been all but irresistible. It’s not their fault that the vast herd of worthless lemmings at the university level took advantage of what started as a purely local artistic solution, and turned it into a style that allowed them to be at once modern and resolutely unoriginal, not to mention impersonal. Even so, there’s a certain honesty in the pride that they took in their sterility. More to the point, greatness transcends the technicalities of style. It’s a quality that may have seemed in short supply during the recent “twelve-tone interruption,” but this is largely an illusion. It’s always been a precious commodity.
Not the least of the atonal revolution’s accomplishments was to remind us of this fact, particularly now, when once again we are tempted to award the accolade of “great” to music whose principal value lies in its being merely inoffensive.
David Hurwitz
