The record changer (Jan 1955-Dec 1957)

5 ie Agony of Modern Music, by Henry leasants. New York; Simon and Schuster, m. $3.00. Editor's Notes: (1) Reviewer Berton is a \wcomer to the pages of this magazine, but \\rdly a newcomer to jazz. He is, instead, a vmrnee, with this review marking his re'try into jazz activity after an absence of ■leral years. During the late '30s and early s, he was a distinguished pioneer among la disc jockeys, with highly regarded ograms on New York radio stations. (2) ', \e book reviewed here is a recent publica\ n that has been stirring up considerable r itroversy in liter ary-and-musical circles, th some hot and heavy reviews and rrespondence in several leading national fblications. Despite the fact that Mr. ■ \asants refers extensively to jazz in deUoping his arguments about modern 'senUS, music, this is to our knowledge the first \\section of the book in a jazz magazine.) [ British filmgoers call the trailers Dreadful jjSurnings. That would have been an apbpriate subtitle for the opening, or "ArguIjnt" of Mr. Pleasants' book, which tells ji'There is more creative talent in the Pjmusic of Armstrong and Ellington, in the Bongs of Gershwin, Rodgers, Kern and Berlin, than in all the serious music comt 'posed since 1920." lie inclusion of Mr. Berlin in the same reath with Louis and Duke was not a slip 'i the pen ; if you want to waste an hour and 11 you can run through the book yourself fffl find hundreds of similar pearls. In fact, li reviewer's real problem is that merely K point out Mr. P.'s obvious howlers and prefaced lies, let alone discuss the issues, ||uld require a bigger book than the one |i\ P. wrote. All one can do is choose a |V samples and assure the reader they are fc»resentative. lit is a pity Mr. Pleasants could not have Itn persuaded years ago to seek more * bgenial employment, leaving music to pise who like it. Without a real ear, with| , a shred of love for art or artists, a man ftjht to hold his tongue about such things || he make mischief. But there is no profit g holding one's tongue. Mr. P. has chosen 1 1 make mischief; and the profit may be R jsiderable. Books Noted by ralph berton He is a deft fellow with the pastepot and scissors, and could teach most shysters a few tricks on how to shark up a case and muddle the issues. He also has plenty of malice, the gift of gab, and no scruples. To let such a creature loose in a reference room can have unfortunate consequences. It is wonderful how the man with a sound business instinct will find himself an "angle" even in so unlikely a field as musicology. Mr. P.'s an^le is as old as politics: he is the Peepul's Friend. The gimmick is simply that such brazen demagogy had never before been paraded as serious musicology; but then, the situation today was ready to hand for the touch of the demagogue. On the one hand there is the relatively low vitality of most contemporary longhair music, and a concert audience that finds itself subsisting largely on past glories ; on the other, the growth of a young, vigorous music — jazz — within earshot, as it were, of the sickroom. Catering to that immortal trait of the Peepul that made the Roman circuses such a success, Mr. P. hopes to use the young art to hunt down the old art and kick it to death before its time, all in the name of Healthy Controversy. A number of well meaning people have already been taken in, to some degree — for example Olin Downes and Winthrop Sargeant. Both praised it with faint damns, calling it, despite its sins, "a welcome corrective," as if any book deliberately calculated to sow confusion could "correct" anything. As Master of the Hunt, Mr. P. has been preening and pontificating on TV forums, etc., and I fear the end is not yet. The rabble are beginning to prick up their ears, to awaken to the fact that they have a champion, a duly ordained "critic" to put the seal of authority on their ignorance, ready to rally the deaf majority against the struggling world of modern longhair music, as joyously as a lynch mob overtaking a wounded fugitive. Need I add that the same man who does not (or cannot) discriminate between Louis Armstrong and Irving Berlin, nor, for that matter, between Schumann and Meyerbeer (p. 73), lumps together all modern music good, bad, and indifferent? But that isn't all. He seems to have some trouble deciding just where the Good ended and the Bad began. It more or less depends on which page you're reading, or even which paragraph. The opening declaration (p. 3) certainly seems definite enough: "The last really modern serious composer, modern in the sense that he spoke with the full authority of the cultural forces of his time . . . (I have no idea what this beautiful phrase means, if anything.) was Wagner. With him ended the long evolution of the art of music in the harmonic or European sense. All that has followed has been reaction, refinement — and desperate experimentation." I took this to mean that Wagner's successors were no good. But what is a "good" composer? Again (p. 63) we are told off in no uncertain terms: "All that counts is how society reacted to this music when it was new. . . . Nor have ill-disposed critics been able to oppose effectively a good composer's progress. The only verdict that counts is the public's. Thus the problem resolves itself into a simple question of success and failure." What a delightfully simple test for artistic merit! Could Louis B. Mayer have said it any more plainly? Going back now to p. 3 with this yardstick firmly in hand, I was disconcerted by Mr. P.'s very next paragraph : "Those of his [Wagner's] successors who achieved genuine celebrity — Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss, Debussy, Ravel, Sibelius, Schonberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Berg, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich— may be described ... as triflers. >> and while I was still knitting my brows over that one, he threw me another fast curve (p. 4, next sentence) : "They have had at least a public." I had always been under the impression that some other fellows named Liszt, Tschaikov L he Record Changer is published monthly and copyrighted 1955 by William Grauer, Jr., "418 West 49th St., New York 19,, N. Y. For subscription Wis and collectors' advertising rates see the information blanks in another section in the book. Write or telephone for our commercial advertising