Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1929-12)

80 The Phonograph Monthly Review December, 1929 A general assumption, conscious or unconscious, is that recorded music must of necessity be an inferior sort of music, an imitation or a counterfeit of the real thing, hardly to be taken seriously by any one seeking an approach to true music. Or, at best, if admission is made that recorded music may be taken seriously, it is attended with abundant cautions against confusing it with musical realities. A Service to Musical Culture. Now, while I feel an eagerness to near fine music by competent players whenever I have the opportunity, I also believe that such glorious things are now being done in the recording of music by newly developed and develop- ing processes that it is time to drop this condescending attitude and to recognize reasonably and whole-heartedly the immense service to genuine musical culture that record- ed music is capable of performing, and is already 4 , beginning to perform despite the discouragements and lack of appre- ciation that come from deeply rooted prejudices and mis- understandings. Very few persons, relatively speaking, have any conception of the extent to which great music of the past and the present is being recorded, with almost unbe- lievable excellence of reproduction. Ignorance about this is often densest among leaders in musical culture, and some- times seems almost willful. Let me attempt to clear away misunderstandings of what I have in mind. Past imperfections in reproducing methods account for much of this prejudice. And it must be admitted that a degree of perfection in a reprodution that will have precisely the same effect as an original is unattainable in music as in any other art. But art itself is a struggle for an unattainable ideal. How little open minded some musicians are on this subject may be illustrated in some remarks by Daniel Gregory Mason in a recent issue of The Musical Quarterly in a discussion of “The Depreciation of Music.” He admits that there have been great improvements in music-reproducing devices, but contends that, even making the large concession of the possibility of virtual perfection, which of course he does not admit, there would still be no attainment of the ideal, for no true artist gives two succes- sive performances of the same piece in exactly the same way. “To do so would stultify his freshness,” he says. But no true artist would paint a subject twice in exactly the same way, yet it does not stultify his freshness to leave his paint- ings each as a permanent record of the mood he had at the particular time of painting that picture. Monet left innumer- able paintings of ^ a haystack, showing that the permanence of each one of his paintings had no effect on his making a fresh effort on the next. And it is hard to understand how looking at any one of these paintings repeatedly would close any one’s mind to the freshness of other paintings. The Audience as a Factor. But much stranger than this remark by Mr Mason is the exaggerated emphasis he puts on the importance of the actual presence of an audience to the artist. “Every per- former,” he says, “knows that his performance really lives only when he is face to face with his audience. Every com- poser knows that it is only in living contact with his audience that he can judge his work.” Without obtuseness to the element of truth in what Mr. Mason here says, one may yet wonder at his astonishing oversight of the fact that great artists in all ages have often worked in a splendidly lonely yray. Poets, painters, sculp- tors have done so. And so have great composers—trusting to future interpreters to give living sound to their music, which at best they could only imperfectly indicate by notation and printed words. Would it have injured their powers as com- posers to know that their living music, in sounds as thev conceived it, could be handed down to the future? Much of Schubert’s music, to take only one example, went entirely unheard in his day. Is it less great or true music from that fact? Is a man no real artist who writes, paints, composes or plays for the ideal audience conceived in his own heart, trusting that circumstances and time will enable him to reach the understanding or the heart of another? It seems rather absurd in a stern idealist like Mr. Mason, for whose work in behalf of music one feels so grateful, to sav things permitting of inferences like this. Indeed, the effect of the absence of a corrective audience is plain in this case. That may be conceded to his argument. One suspects that what Mr. Mason really had in mind was not the absence of an audience in the recording of music but the assumed conjur- ing up in the recording musician’s mind of a huge below-par audience such as records are widely supposed to appeal to. Contacts Sometimes Destructive. Without any denial of the supreme value of those mo- ments in music when the personal presence of the artists and intelligent responsiveness of the audience are productive of ideal conditions, it is well to remember that personal con- tacts are quite as likely to be destructive of moods of ideal production or reception. A great book written in isolation and that may be read in all the freedom from distraction that isolation gives is recognized as a sound contribution to culture. Recorded music opens the same possibilities. And why, in the face of such possibilities, which in many instances are already actualities, do we insist on calling it all “canned” music? I have enough sense of humor, I hope, to realize that a word so applied can never be downed. We can only hope that its opprobrious implications will in time be forgotten. Yet it may be helpful to point out that we do not say that important expressions of valuable ideas are “canned” ideas because they have been permanently re- corded in print. In speaking of what print does for ideas and personalities we often say that it “immortalizes” them, not that it “cans” them. May not some one venture to sav .sometime that a fine record of a great performance of music “immortalizes” that performance? Of course it is not the printing machinery that does the most important part of the immortalizing accomplished by a book. We take it for granted that the personality behind the book does this. But we still make the machinery con- spicuous and contemptible in talk about recorded music, call- ing such music with unfair emphasis and inaccuracy “me- chanical.” There are already in existence records which would justify application of the words Milton wrote of good books : “A good record is the precious life blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life be- yond life” A Dream Come True By ELBRIDGE W. NEWTON We turned from the main highway and followed a road in the forest so narrow that the limbs of the trees brushed against the sides of our car. Doctor E, who was driving, warned “Look out for that hemlock bough ahead, that it doesn’t slap you in the face!” Five minutes later he stopped the car and said to me: “You are now in the heart of the National High School Orchestra and Band Camp at Interlochen, Michigan, and here is the cabin where you will stay.” I climbed out and was about to reach for my grip when from further down among the trees came the haunting, velvety tone of a euphomium, a band instrument. “What is that?” I demanded in amazement. “Oh, that is a boy fourteen years old, from somewhere or other. I have forgotten what state he comes from. But he does know how to play, doesn’t he? You see,” Doctor E explained, “the Interlochen ‘Bowl’ is right ahead in the woods within a hundred yards, and this afternoon they are having a band rehearsal.” Just then the whole band burst upon us, perfect in the intonation of its many parts. I slid to the foot of a tree, all ears. They were in the midst of one of the charming ballets of Leo Delibes. “Who is conducting?” I whispered. “I don’t know. Some famous band conductor. Naturally any big band man who knows about these kids is eager to come up here and conduct them, because they can play almost anything at the first reading, and do a corking job.” There I sat and listened, unconscious to the fatigue of my thousand-mile journey, most of it made in the blistering August heat,—sat and listened entranced, until the last lingering richness of tone was gone. I opened by eyes, and the Doctor helped me into the cabin with my baggage. He explained to me that this was