Contemporary Composers

Contemporary Composers

Lovers and critics of modern music who are at the same time interested students of the social changes which have preceded and accompanied its growth must often ask themselves whether there is any deep connection of cause and effect between the two sets of phenomena, or whether they merely happened to take place at the same time. Have the important social transformations of the nineteenth century reached so far in their influence as to the music of our time? Has sociology any light to throw upon musical art? The question raises a problem as difficult as it is fascinating; and the suggestions which follow are to be taken as guesses and hints, intended to provoke fertile thought, rather than as constituting in any sense a finished theory. [4] The change in the nature of the musical public that has taken place during the nineteenth century has been gradual but far-reaching. The essence of it is expressed by saying that at the end of the eighteenth century music was in the hands of the nobility and gentry, and that at the beginning of the twentieth it is in those of all the people. Under feudal conditions it was organized by the patronage system according to the tastes of the aristocratic few. The thirty most fruitful years of Haydn's life were spent in the employ of Prince Esterhazy; Mozart, a skilled pianist as well as composer, was less dependent on his patron, but his life was probably shortened by the hardships he had to face after he had broken with him; Beethoven, staunch democrat though he was, realized what he owed his four patrons, Archduke Rudolph, and Princes Lobkowitz, Kinsky, and Lichnowsky, and wrote, after the death of some of them had reduced the value of his annuity: "In order to gain time for a great composition, I must [5] always previously scrawl away a good deal for the sake of money.... If my salary were not so far reduced as not to be a salary at all, I should write nothing but symphonies ... and church music, or at most quartets." No doubt the patronage system had its faults and abuses, which have been quite adequately discussed by critics; the fact remains that under it was done the supreme creative work of the golden age of music. Greater than any of its material advantages was the spiritual homogeneity of the group who practised it. By excluding the lower classes, however unjustly, they achieved, though artificially, a unity of feeling that could not then have been achieved otherwise; and as art is in essence an emotional reaction this unity of feeling provided a soil in which its seeds could grow. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 56593
Author: Mason, Daniel Gregory
Release Date: Feb 18, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English