The American Scene; Status of Composer

Good morning. At this time of the year throughout the country, the musicals have started, the opera season is well underway and the concert season is well underway and this morning we would like to investigate what the role of American composers has been and is in these fields. Of course, Jean -Colomanati and his Amal and the Night Visitors is well -known and played quite often at this time of the year and names in the concert hall come to mind but the question is, are these Americans exceptions in these fields or are they well -known and popular? And to help us discuss this question this morning, we're very pleased to welcome Mr. H .E. Nutt, Director of Music at Illinois Tech and Dean of the Faculty for Vander Cook College of Music and Mr. Clinton D. Flown, Instructor in the Department of English at Illinois Tech. Gentlemen, to begin with, maybe we'd better try and establish what we mean by an American composer. Mr. Flown, what would you say? Well, always comes the difficulty. Well, do we mean American -born? Are we going to restrict it to

American -born composers or do we mean primarily American -trained? If we mean American in terms of the legal aspect, we'd have to admit that Stravinsky and Paul Hindemuth, Derriss Milo, Schoenberg and Bartok, I believe, are American composers. At the same time, their general outlook and their training and certainly three -quarters of their lives were in our being spent abroad. Mr. Nutt, I would agree with that. Those men were born in foreign countries, and although they work here in our legal citizens, we could hardly regard them as American composers. I think we'd have to consider those that are born and principally trained in this country as being true American composers. Would an influence play a part in defining what kind of composers we're talking about? People influenced by America. Yes, I think. So I think we've had a good many American -born composers who have studied

abroad, Rome, especially. How many have studied with Nadia Boulin -J, for instance, in Paris, Copeland for one? In fact, it's sometimes known as the Boulin -J school. This has virtual times of Machini called it the Prairie School of American Composition. The same time, I think, a relatively safe and restricting the discussion to American -born composers, because I know of no European composers who have been trained primarily in this country. But have European composers been influenced by America in any way? The only well -in terms of jazz, and in terms of the Negro spiritual, Gershwin, I suppose, is probably the best known in terms of influence. At least for a well, acknowledged is influence. Aside from that, I can think of no one. Of course, the Negro spirituals of this country influenced him and his New World Symphony, as he called it, in writing that, to use the American Negro spirituals and folk songs as the basis for that. It's very, very strongly seen in that. That's one of a real good examples of it.

Of course, we can't call these people American composers. Well, he lived in Iowa, but I'm not sure that he even became an American citizen legally, but he was certainly influenced by what goes on here. I think we'd have to restrict it to American -born composers and or those people who have been trained primarily in this country. I think there's one other definition we should get out of the way then. What kind of music are we talking about? All kinds of music, or specifically interested in classical concert music, or what? Well, in this broadest aspect, anyone who writes music as a composer, whether he writes a jingle for television, or background music for soap opera, or so -called absolute music, or music for the movies, he's still a composer. Anyone who makes his living by composing as a composer, and I suppose that's the definition of a professional composer, but I imagine we have to make a breakdown between what we generally call serious music and popular music, and I'm going to hand over to you.

We could get into a good argument, I'm afraid, about serious, because I'm sure that even composers of movie music are serious about what they do, and one of the largest fields of composing knows for school organizations, a band, orchestra, and chorus. These men are certainly serious about what they do, although in perhaps an opinion of many died in the world classical fans, their music is not classical music. It probably will not endure. It's more of what you call training music, leading young players through stages in their training to where they would be able to play a more serious, what we would consider a serious, serious, great of music. But they have to have a training in certain style and form and music before they will be able to play serious music. And it is quite a commentary on our situation in America, in that we have so many community symphony arcs school, band, and orchestra players. I hear some people talking about the shortage of good string players. I think there is a shortage as far

as some of the major symmiarchs are concerned at times, but not in the amateur symmiarchs in this country, who are really trying to play a serious, great of music, not only classical of previous centuries, but of modern classical music. Well, when we consider American composers, can we afford to ignore the popular composers? Isn't this one of the greatest? Well, what do you mean popular music? Dance band music? Right. What is considered pop music? Musical comedy. Well, I suppose that certainly abroad, I think we are best known by, or rather for, our American composers. And I think when the laymen especially thinks of American composers, they will think in terms of George Gershwin and Vincent Dumans, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rogers, George M. Cohan, and Jimmy Van Hussin, is it? I believe there are good many others. Certainly in terms of the prestige involved, I think these people in the eyes of most Americans, ranks above the serious composer. We think of those

names that I've just met and compared to the more serious composers, Roger Sessions and Samuel Barber, Leo Saurby, and a good many others. Name just a handful. I think the popular composers are certainly better known, and there is no question they certainly make a much better living. Would you include Leonard Bernstein in this list too? Well, he and Gershwin, I think I would include as both. I think both of them, well it's sort of a reversal. Bernstein began as what I would call a serious composer, who has gone into, let's say, program music, musical comedy, for instance, on the town, wonderful town, con -deed, and this one that's not playing what you call a west side story, whereas Gershwin started with the popular music and then eventually went to the more serious forms, ending up I suppose with the poor game bass. Well, you mentioned earlier making a living. Do composers make a living? You said that people who write popular

music can make a living, but people who write classical music or the more serious music can't. Well, when I say make a living, I mean by writing music alone. I can think of no serious composer, American born, serious composer who makes a living by writing music alone. He either must teach or he must perform or he must arrange. Yeah, wouldn't you agree? Yeah, that's it. Many of them teach because in their teaching work, it gives them time and also sometimes with local orchestra and we do have them in many university towns, it gives them a chance to get their works performed, and to try it out, a kind of a laboratory idea, because it is difficult to compose in many things without hearing the results of your composition. Sometimes it's very disappointing to a composer, he puts it on paper, and he hears it played, and it doesn't come out the way he had pictured it in his mind, as he had imagined it, as he had created in his mind. So those who teach have not only security, but they have a laboratory in which to work their music. Well, why can't a classical writer make a living just from writing

music? That's easy, I can tell you that. If he's going to do that, it means that his music has to sell. The publishers cannot afford to put out that music unless enough people are going to buy it, if they write the music in two serious events, two heavy events, especially, there are not enough orchestras that are going to play. And even if they sold a copy to every orchestra in this country, that still would not pay the cost of publishing it. They have to sell quite an addition of that music, and it's expensive to get out. The big game, the big field isn't the public schools, where they have so many orchestras and bands that a publisher knows that he has a chance of making money, both for himself, and royalties for the composer. Of course, on the serious music, on the heavier music, many organizations pay either the composer direct or ask app or some of their societies who collect for the composer. They pay a royalty for the privilege to perform for what you call profit. In that way,

the composer is assured of income from his compositions, even though they are serious, but still, it would take a mighty lot of it to earn a good living at it. And I agree with the fact that it'd be kind of rough to be a professional, strictly a professional composer. If you're going to stick to, should we say, long -haired classical music? It's a rough game. You mentioned that school bands and orchestras are a good market for music. Do they play new music? Do they play modern American music? And is it classical? Oh, yes. I would say so. A writer like Percy Chepty, who was somebody's first works for a band. He had written in the orchestral at him, but somebody's first works for a band were commissioned by Edwin Franco Goldman of New York, who runs a Goldman band, which is very famous through the money from the Guggenheim Foundation. His first commissioned work, I believe, was known as Pageant. And it is very modern, very contemporary. And at first, a little slow to catch on, dissonant and rather angular in its

melodic construction. And now, his writings are becoming popular. And he is not only successful in writing symphonic music for orchestra, but for bands, the better bands, but there are a lot of them in this country that can play that music now. And he is becoming much better known through that. I don't think we ought to think of the symphonic music as only for orchestra because the band is more typically American than the orchestra, really. In this country, bands were more popular. First, before orchestra, the Patrick Gilmore band coming over from Europe, that is, Patrick Gilmore came here from Ireland and established a very fine concert band and John Phillips did much to popularize good band music, but he mixed it. He found that he couldn't play two serious programs entirely by mixing some lighter music with it, which was good music, but still not as hard to listen to for the average person. He gained great popularity for better band music. Well, Clint, do you feel that bands are

still as popular today as they were? Yes, although I don't feel that they have the prestige in the eyes of most people that a symphony orchestra does. And while we're on the subject of being performed, in terms of live performance, is it just the fall of the publisher who must, after all, realize a profit that we assume since the age of patrons is over, that that's one of the reasons, certainly, that he's publishing the work, and can we blame it just on the publisher and on the symphony orchestra? What about the audience? The American audience. Don't they, in some way, dictate what a symphony orchestra conductor will schedule? I think so to quite an extent, because in order to get financial support for a symphony orchestra, money has to come from some place. People who have the money dictate more or less what they play. We've had some good evidences of that here in Chicago with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Times Pass, some rather tempestious times, because certain patrons of the orchestra were shelling out what had been a money like the music of a certain sort, and they did say to a

certain extent what was to be played. But I think that influence is getting less, I believe it's diminishing, because through radio, and television, and recordings now, more people are hearing all over the country. It doesn't make any difference where you are. A boy or a girl in a very small town are certainly able to listen to the very best of music at a very low price. What are the hearing, are they hearing the new music? Oh, I think so. I do quite a lot of festival and clinic work among schools. And the children in the schools now are not only listening to it, they're performing it. And I can remember 25 years ago in this game that even our Latin American music was not very well known in this country, because we didn't know how to play it, we didn't have the feeling for it, we hadn't heard enough of it. Now, through the recordings and through broadcasts and TV and radio, the children are listening to it, they get the feeling for it, it becomes familiar, and anything it becomes familiar than they like.

And in that way, the taste has been built, and we have to give quite a bit of credit to these means, the TV and radio, and especially recordings, because now we have music from every place. And we have the influence of that music on the desires and the acceptance on the part of young people. And there's our audience of the future, and there is the hope of the American composer, and many of them are realizing that and are certainly pointing their music in that direction. And these children will accept serious music as no question but. Clint, how would you explain the fact that if this is true, if music is being disseminated more and more widely, why aren't concert hall audiences accepting American music? Well, I think in terms of the number of symphony orchestras that we have, I think that the audience has been, the live audience has been increasing, and operapoe of recordings, I would say especially, the advent of the long -playing record, and the rise of many, many small independent companies has been a boon

to the unknown, of course, of both American and European. If he can't get a hearing in this symphony hall, he can certainly get it on a record. That's the idea now. And that leads to a demand then for his music in the symphony hall, and that's been the history of it. Well, why would you say a person would buy a record by an unknown composer and not go and listen to him in the concert hall? Well, sometimes it's not possible. If it's, let's say, a small town in Montana, or Idaho, or one of the decores that doesn't have a symphony orchestra, the only access they have is through radio and television and the recording. Well, let's face this too. Try it too, of course. In our schools, many of the teachers, they play records a great deal now. It's not only an appreciation thing, but it's a part of the education of the student. And on a long -play record, you get so much that they can mix up new music with the old, and you don't buy just one number anymore, not a long -play. You get many bands of numbers. And for that reason, they will say, well, let's listen to this, even though they haven't heard of the

composer and never heard of the music before. I think, in general, people, they're going to play the whole record and listen to all of it. And by getting a little taste of it and they listen to it more and more, they say, well, that's good. And then they want more about the, they want more of the music. And the demand is created. And as Clint said about the number of small companies that are putting out records, it's fabulous now. It doesn't take very much capital to do that. And so we're getting a wide dissemination of new music, that's for sure. I know, personally, I'm a little bit dyed in the wool classical music fan. And yet, through listening to a great deal with the new music, I am now becoming familiar with it. And for example, one of the very latest recordings that's created quite a furore is this 20th century folk mass by Jeffrey Beaumont, an English recording of a mass that is designed for church use. And yet they use a 45 -piece symphony orchestra and a 13 -voice chorus, singing in modern style. I played this record for my class and music history and appreciation of the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech.

And of the 38th in the class, two said they didn't like it. They were shocked by it, because it seemed sacrilegious to them. And two very definitely said they liked it. And the others said they didn't know. They were so puzzled, they just couldn't tell. It was so new to them. Now, that was about, I believe, three weeks ago. A number of them have bought the record. They've listened to it. And little by little, as they become familiar with the intent of the music, they say, you know, that music is all right. And now that will get an acceptance of it, but some people will shock them the first time they hear it. But it's serious, because the words, well, they're words from the Bible. And the music, though, is in the modern form. But they're appealing to the young people. Go ahead. I don't think that we should say that the American composer is unique in the sense that he's not being appreciated. To me, the whole problem relates itself finally to the intellectual climate of the country. It seems to me that there's a tremendous suspicion that we even have a term, don't we? Not a very nice term. Egghead. And it seems to me that the

American composer has no more rough time than does the American poet or the American painter. It's a tremendous suspicion, because it's not understood immediately. Whereas pop songs tend not either too. I can remember back in reading my music history that some of the classical composers of former centuries had a rough time too, getting acceptance on some of the things they did, because it was new. And it is difficult to evaluate a present -day composer in today, maybe 50 years from now, maybe some of these men that are composing now. I have every faith in believing that they will be recognized as being outstanding composers. Well, can we get into that area for a minute? What do you feel makes an outstanding composer? Is it breaking new ground? Is it being inventive? Is it reaching the popular appeal? What is it? Well, I suppose we can take a very safe and sound approach. A Bach is generally known as a fulfiller of a tradition, not an innovator, or as Beethoven is primarily thought of as being an innovator, that is a creator of new forms

and new means of expression. Bach, in his own day, was known as an old foggy. I think it was less than 50 years after his death, when you could buy a Brandenburg concerto for the equivalent today of about 23 or 24 cents, that he was just considered all hat. I think of some American composers that we might tend to think of in the same way. But it's difficult now. The emphasis, once again, not just restricted to music, but in the area of poetry and painting. And I suppose literature in general is upon originality. And in too many cases, I feel that it's originality for originality's sake. And there's nothing that wears his thin as soon as that. No, those won't last very long. They're trying to be different in order to become popular. For some of them, I can think of some of the young American composers who did that to attract attention. And then having gotten the attention, go on to do some pretty nice works. And I think Bernstein is one of those men that has shown through, especially through his

TV appearances and analysis of classical works, his ability to think in that idiom. And I think, in some of his days, he's going to come through some really fine things in that line. And there are others. Trojan Tha would be one. Oh, yeah. He had one with the airplane motor on the stage. We might mention John Cage, although I don't know whether you can say he went on to do any. Well, some of them are pretty young yet then. They're not old enough yet to have written their best. I think it has to age a bit in the wood before they get to that point. Well, it takes time then before we can say whether we have had any definitely great American composers yet. Is that true? Yes, I think so. And just on the idea of popularity, after all, it's rather a short -go business. I think popular music, that is popular songs in the jukebox, jukebox craze, would illustrate this sort of thing. I'm thinking especially of the tendency to be very original or weird, as I call it, in terms of the instrumentation. Oh, yeah. A harpsichord, for instance, or the tinny piano. Well, the harpsichord will probably laugh at us

just as much as they laughed at our parents, let's say, for the music of the 1920s. But the harpsichord isn't new or really weird. No, but it's being used and certainly very peculiar. Of course, one of the reasons the harpsichord has come back so strongly is affected. Electronic recording has made it possible for a very weak instrument now to be brought right up so that you get a lot of sound from it. The harpsichord, like the classical guitar, has a rough time of it without benefit of amplification. And when Sigovia plays an orchestra hall, he demands absolute silence. He won't play one note until the audience is absolutely quiet, because he does not want, he feels that amplification will distort his instrument so that he wants it on its own. It's pure music. Well, are these new electronic devices and the new methods of reproducing music affecting the composer in any way? Not in terms of his basic outlook. I wouldn't think

so. In terms of the arranging involved, I suppose. Yes. Is it Studio 8 in New York that has the Montavani sound, the echo, a business fact, the shimmering strings and all that? It's very difficult to hear a singer on records today who doesn't have the benefit of the echo chamber. I think it was Spike Jones who had a shallow underwater or something like that. Well, electronically they can make any orchestra singer band or what have you sound better than it is or worse than it is, depending on what they do to it. And that is a great deal, the technical control and the mixing panel and whoever is producing this show, they can certainly make a difference. Well, isn't the arrangement of a piece of music as important as the original idea, as the basic concept? Well, every composer is an arranger, but I don't think the Congress of that would work. No. Well, I don't think you can call Robert Russell Bennett when he's arranging, that it's for musical shows, or Nelson Riddle, let's say in Hollywood, I believe he does most of Judy Garland's and Frank Sinatra's work. I don't think you can call that creative.

Anymore than you can call an applied musician, let's say a pianist or a violinist, a creative musician. After all, he is achieving, he's interpreting, but somebody else has written. And since the arranger is doing the same thing, although in a different medium. Yeah, he's reproducing what the creative mind heard and set down on paper. And that's all, if he's a good technician, a good musician, he has to be a good musician, but not necessarily of a creative mind at all. Well, I was thinking of someone like Ravel, who was as famous for as arranging as he was for the particular idea. Yes, his orchestration, I mean, I think he orchestrated the Missouri with it. He picked it an exhibition. Yes, well, that seemed to be sort of a standard thing. A Calier did it, Sir Henry Wood did it, there must be five or six people. In a way that reminds me of a book that you would give to a small child with just the outlines in and then give him a box of crayons or watercolors as the case might be and say fill it in. Through all, it is a matter of sound color. And well, of course, to his own music too. The Ken Composers

today use electronic devices to produce new sound colors so that they can get a different sound. Are people trying that? Well, if you're... I think I'm not interested in what he's going to consider that as serious music and not, though. The Theraman certainly has had its use in Hollywood, and I don't know about the other word. I like his use of that word, weird, because some of it is weird. And I think they do it in a kind of a calculated way that is to attract attention to a certain extent. But on the other hand, some of them are very serious and experimenting and exploring new ideas because it's kind of like the Baroque period, and we didn't get into great music out of it. But we did get a period of experimentation and adventurous creative attempts, at least. And out of that came a lot of good things. But the music itself, the creative during that period, was not so much. I've never been able to get too enthusiastic about it. But still, we have to admit that during that period they opened up the way for many things which are coming now and will come in the future. It was that. At one time Germany was the center of great music at one time France

was. Do you think America will ever be? I think so, yes. I do. I think that our contribution in terms of jazz, I don't think we have a peer in any nation in the world. In terms of the musical comedy, it seems to me in about five or six years, we ought to be able to write the history of the musical comedy. Compare over the musical shows that came out just after the First World War. Compare that to something like Pal Joy, for instance, Oklahoma. I suppose the big four running with the so -called organic organization that is you don't have a song just thrown in for the sake of a song. It contributes, let's say, some sense in some way to the development of the plot. My fairy lady would be another one? No, definitely. Even West Side Story, Music Man, so forth. But you haven't mentioned music which is traditionally classical in nature. Well, no, I suppose we haven't. In some ways, culturally, I suppose we are open to the generalized European charge. Perhaps we are too young, as a nation. Remember, we have a very heterogeneous

culture. And the American composer is subjected during his musical adolescence, let's say, which in some cases never stops. There are so many, many different influences, whereas the European composer, especially the nineteenth -century stereotype, had folk songs to rely upon and consider a good many of the now famous European composers. Stravinsky, Anagher, Hitometh, Bartok, they rely very heavily upon folk songs of their own country. One very brief answer now, considering all the difficulties that we've mentioned today for a composer and considering the changing markets and so forth, would you recommend to anyone that they become a composer? Is there a future? I don't believe you recommend anyone to become a composer. A person who has that creative mind is going to compose. He can't help it. And whether he ever gets an audience, he always hopes for an audience for his stuff. But he composes because the compulsion is there. You can't help it. Thank you very much, gentlemen, Mr. Nott and Mr. Flown, for your very interesting discussion this morning. It appears from our

discussion this morning that America does have a place in the composing field, and that the future of America and its composers is very well established. Good morning for the American scene. Thank you.