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# 2025-06-27 - The Pleasures of Music by Aaron Copland
> Aaron Copland has been acclaimed by the "Dean of American
> Composers." Born in Brooklyn [in 1900], he was the first American
> to study composition with Nadia Boulanger, who later taught so many
> of his musically gifted compatriots. Some of his best-known
> compositions draw their inspiration from folk sources, notably the
> ballets Rodeo, Billy the Kid, and Appalachian Spring. He is also a
> compelling lecturer and writer on music. "The Pleasures of Music"
> was originally presented as a lecture at the University of New
> Hampshire.
That music gives pleasure is axiomatic. Because this is so, the
pleasures of music may seem a rather elementary subject for
discussion. Yet the source of that pleasure, our musical instinct,
is not at all elementary, is, in fact, one of the prime puzzles of
consciousness. Why is it that sound waves, when they strike the ear,
cause, as a British critic describes it, "volleys of nerve impulses
to flow up into the brain," resulting in a pleasurable sensation?
More than that, why is it that we are able to make sense out of these
nerve signals so that we emerge from engulfment in the orderly
presentation of sound stimuli as if we had lived through a simulacrum
of life? And why, when safely seated and merely listening, should
our hearts beat faster, our toes start tapping, our minds start
racing after the music, hoping it will go one way and watching it go
another, deceived and disgruntled when we are unconvinced, elated,
and grateful when we acquiesce?
We have a part answer, I suppose, in that physical nature of sound
has been thoroughly explored; but the phenomenon of music as an
expressive, communicative agency remains as inexplicable as ever. We
musicians don't ask for much. Al we want is to have one investigator
tell us why this young fellow seated in row A is firmly held by the
musical sounds he hears while his girl friend gets little or nothing
out of them, or vice versa. Think how many millions of useless
practice hours might have been saved if some alert professor of
genetics had developed a test for musical sensibility.
The fascination of music for some human beings was curiously
illustrated for me once during a visit I made to the showrooms of a
manufacturer of electronic organs. As part of my tour I was taken to
see the practice room. There, to my surprise, I found not one but
eight aspiring organists, all busily practicing simultaneously on
eight organs. More surprising still was the fact that not a sound
was audible, for all eight performers were listening through
earphones to their individual instrument. It was an uncanny sight,
even for a fellow musician, to watch these grown men mesmerized, as
it were, by a silent and invisible genie. On that day I fully
realized how mesmerized we ear-minded creatures must seem to our less
musically inclined friends.
If music has impact for the mere listener, it follows that it will
have much greater impact for those who sing it or play it themselves
with some degree of proficiency. Any educated person in Elizabethan
times was expected to be able to read musical notation and take her
or his part in a madrigal-sing. Passive listeners, numbered in the
millions, are a comparatively recent innovation. Even in my own
youth, loving music meant that you either made it yourself, or you
were forced out of the house to go hear it where it was being made,
at considerable cost and some inconvenience. Nowadays all that has
changed. Music has become so very accessible that it is almost
impossible to avoid it. Perhaps you don't mind cashing a check at
the local bank to the strains of a Brahms symphony, but I do.
Actually, I think I spend as much time avoiding great works as others
spend in seeking them out. The reason is simple: meaningful music
demands one's undivided attention, and I can give it that only when I
am in a receptive mood, and feel the need for it. The use of music
as a kind of ambrosia to titillate the aural senses while one's
conscious mind is otherwise occupied is the abomination of every
composer who takes [their] work seriously.
Thus, the music I have reference to in the article is designed for
your undistracted attention. It is, in fact, usually labeled as
'serious' music in contradistinction to light or popular music. How
this term 'serious' came into being no one seems to know, but all of
us are agreed as to its inadequacy. It just doesn't cover enough
cases. Very often our 'serious' music /is/ serious, sometimes deadly
serious, but it can also be witty, humorous, sarcastic, sardonic,
grotesque, and a great many other things besides. It is, indeed, the
emotional range covered which makes it 'serious' and, in part,
influences our judgment as to the artistic stature of any extended
composition.
Everyone is aware that so-called serious music has made great strides
in general public acceptance in recent years, but the term itself
still connotes something forbidding and hermetic to the mass
audience. They attribute to the professional musician a kind of
masonic initiation into secrets that are forever hidden from the
outsider. Nothing could be more misleading. We all listen to music,
professionals and nonprofessionals like, in the same sort of way, in
a dumb sort of way, really, because simple or sophisticated music
attracts all of us, in the first instance, on the primordial level of
sheer rhythmic and sonic appeal. Musicians are flattered, no doubt,
by the deferential attitude of the layman in regard to what he [or
she] imagines to be our secret understanding of music. But in all
honesty we musicians know that in the main we listen basically as
others do, because music hits us with an immediacy that we recognize
in the reactions of the most simple-minded of music listeners.
It is part of my thesis that music, unlike the other arts, with the
possible exception of dancing, gives pleasure simultaneously on the
lowest and highest levels of apprehension. All of us, for example,
can understand and feel the joy of being carried forward by the flow
of music. Our love of music is bound up with its forward motion;
nonetheless it is precisely the creation of that sense f flow, its
interrelation with and resultant effect upon formal structure, that
calls forth high intellectual capacities of a composer, and offers
keen pleasures for listening minds. Music's incessant movement
forward exerts a double and contradictory fascination: on one hand it
appears to be immobilizing time itself by filling out a specific
temporal space, while generating at the same moment the sensation of
flowing pas us with all the pressure and sparkle of a great river.
To stop the flow of music would be like stopping time itself,
incredible and inconceivable.
To the enlightened listener this time-filing forward drive has
fullest meaning only when accompanied by some conception as to where
it is heading, what musico-psychological elements are helping to move
it to its destination, and what formal architectural satisfactions
will have been achieved on its arriving there.
Musical flow is largely the result of musical rhythm, and the
rhythmic factor in music is certainly a key element that has
simultaneous attraction on more than one level. To some African
tribes rhythm /is/ music, they have nothing more. But what rhythm it
is! Listening to it casually, one might never get beyond the
ear-splitting poundings, but actually a trained musician's ear is
needed to disengage its polyrhythmic intricacies. Minds that
conceive such rhythms have their own sophistication; it seems inexact
and even unfair to call them primitive. By comparison our own
instinct for rhythmic play seems only mild in interest--needing
reinvigoration from time to time.
It was because the ebb of rhythmic invention was comparatively low in
late nineteenth-century European music that Stravinsky was able to
apply what I once termed "a rhythmic hypodermic" to Western music.
His shocker of 1913, The Rise of Spring, a veritable rhythmic
monstrosity to its first hearers, has now become a standard item of
the concert repertory. This indicates the progress that has been
made in the comprehension and enjoyment of rhythmic complexities that
non-plussed our grandfathers. And the end is by no means in sight.
Younger composers have taken us to the very limit of what the human
hand can perform and have gone even beyond what the human ear can
grasp in rhythmic differentiation. Sad to say, there is a limit,
dictated by what nature has supplied us with in the way of listening
equipment. But within those limits there are large areas of rhythmic
life still to be explored, rhythmic forms never dreamt of by
composers of the march or the mazurka.
Tone color is another basic element in music that may be enjoyed on
various levels of perception from the most naive to the most
cultivated. Even children have no difficulty in recognizing the
difference between the tonal profile of a flute and a trombone. The
color of certain instruments holds an especial attraction for certain
people. I myself have always had a weakness for the sound of eight
French horns playing in unison. Their rich, golden, legendary
sonority transports me. Some present-day European composers seem to
be having a belated love affair with the vibraphone. An infinitude
of possible color combinations are available when instruments are
mixed, especially when combined in that wonderful contraption, the
orchestra of symphonic proportions. The art of orchestration,
needless to say, holds endless fascination for the practicing
composer, being part science and part inspired guesswork.
As a composer I get great pleasure from cooking up tonal
combinations. Over the years I have noted that no element of the
composer's art mystifies the layman more than this ability to
conceive mixed instrumental colors. But remember that before we mix
them we hear them in terms of their component parts. If you examine
an orchestral score, you will note that composers place their
instruments on the page in family groups: reading from top to bottom
it is customary to list the woodwinds, the brass, the percussion, and
the strings, in that order. Modern orchestral practice often
juxtaposes these families one against the other so that their
personalities, as families, remain recognizable and distinct. This
principle may also be applied to the voice f the single instrument,
whose pure color sonority thereby remains clearly identifiable as
such. Orchestral know-how consists in keeping the instruments out of
each other's way, so spacing them that they avoid repeating what some
other instrument is already doing, at least in the same register,
thereby exploiting to the fullest extent the specific color value
contributed by each separate instrument or grouped instrumental
family.
In modern orchestration, clarity and definition of sonorous image is
usually the goal. There exists, however, another kind of orchestral
magic dependent on a certain ambiguity of effect. Not to be able to
identify immediately how a particular color combination is arrived at
adds to its attractiveness. I like to be intrigued by unusual sounds
which force me to exclaim: Now I wonder how the composer does that?
From what I have said about the art of orchestration, you may have
gained the notion that it is nothing more than a delightful game,
played for the amusement of the composer. That is, of course, not
true. Color in music, as in painting, is meaningful only when it
serves the expressive idea; it is the expressive idea that dictates
to the composer the choice of [their] orchestral scheme.
Part of the pleasure in being sensitive to the use of color in music
is to note in what way a composer's personality traits are revealed
through [their] tonal color schemes. During the period of French
impressionism, for example, the composers Debussy and Ravel were
thought to be very similar in personality. An examination of their
orchestral scores would have shown that Debussy, at his most
characteristic, sought for a spraylike iridescence, a delicate and
sensuous sonority such as had never before been heard, while Ravel,
using a similar palette, sought a refinement and precision, a gemlike
brilliance that reflects the more objective nature of his musical
personality.
Color ideals change for composers as their personalities change. A
striking example is again Igor Stravinsky who, beginning with the
stabbing reds and purples of his early ballet scores, has in the past
decade arrived at an ascetic grayness of tone that positively chills
the listener by its austerity. For contrast we may turn to a Richard
Strauss orchestral score, masterfully handled in its own way, but
overrich in the piling-on of sonorities, like a German meal that is
too filling for comfort. The natural and easy handling of orchestral
forces by a whole school of contemporary American composers would
indicate some inborn affinity between American personality traits and
symphonic language. No layman can hope to penetrate all the
subtleties that go into an orchestral page of any complexity, but
here again it is not necessary to be able to analyze the color
spectrum of a score in order to bask in its effulgence.
Thus far I have been dealing with the generalities of musical
pleasure. Now I wish to concentrate on the music of a few composers
in order to show how musical values are differentiated. The late
Serge Kossevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony, never tired of
telling performers that if it weren't for composers they would
literally have nothing to play or sing. He was stressing what is too
often taken for granted and, therefore, lost sight of, namely, that
in our Western word music speaks with a composer's voice and half the
pleasure we get comes from the fact that we are listening to a
particular voice making an individual statement at a specific moment
in history. Unless you take off from there you are certain to miss
one of the principal attractions of musical art, namely, contact with
a strong and absorbing personality.
It matters greatly, therefore, who it is e are about to listen to in
the concert hall or opera house. And yet I get the impression that,
to the lay music lover, music is music and musical events are
attended with little or no concern as to what musical fare is to be
offered. No so with the professional, to whom it matters a great
deal whether [they are] about to listen to the music of Monteverdi or
Massenet, to J. S. or to J. C. Bach. Isn't t true that everything
we, as listeners, know about a particular composer and [her or] his
music prepares us in some measure to empathize with [her or] his
special mentality. To me Chopin is one thing, Scarlatti quite
another. I would never confuse them, could you? Well, whether you
could or not, my point remains the same: there are as many ways for
music to be enjoyable as there are composers.
One can even get a certain perverse pleasure out of hating the work
of a particular composer. I, for instance, happen to be rubbed the
wrong way by one of today's composer idols, Serge Rachmaninoff. The
prospect of having to sit through one of his extended symphonies or
piano concertos tends, quite frankly, to depress me. All those
notes, think I, and to what end? To me, Rachmaninoff's
characteristic tone is one of self-pity and self-indulgence tinged
with a definite melancholia. As a fellow human being I can
sympathize with an artist whose distempers produced such music, but
as a listener my stomach won't take it. I grant you his technical
adroitness, but even here the technique adopted by the composer was
old fashioned in his own day. I also grant his ability to write long
and singing melodic lines, but when these are embroidered with
figuration the musical substance is watered down, emptied of
significance. Well, as Andre Gidé used to say, "I didn't have to
tell you this, and I know it will not make you happy to hear it."
Actually, it should be of little concern to you whether I find
Rachmaninoff digestible or not. All I am trying to say is that music
strikes us in as many different ways as there are composers, and
anything less than a strong reaction, pro or con, is not worth
bothering about.
By contrast, let me point to that perennially popular favorite among
composers, Giuseppe Verde. Quite apart from his music, I get
pleasure merely thinking about the man himself. If honesty and
forthrightness ever sparked an artist, then Verdi is a prime example.
What a pleasure it is to take contact with him through his letters,
to knock against the hard core of his peasant personality. One comes
away refreshed, and with renewed confidence in the sturdy,
nonneurotic character of at least one musical master.
When I was a student it was considered bad form to mention Verdi's
name in symphonic company, and quite out of the question to name
Verdi in the same sentence with that formidable dragon of the opera
house, Richard Wagner. What the musical elite found difficult to
forgive in Verdi's case was his triteness, his ordinariness. Yes,
Verdi is trite and ordinary at times, just as Wagner is long-winded
and boring at times. There is a lesson to be learned here: the way
in which we are gradually able to accommodate our minds to the
obvious weaknesses in a creative artist's output. Musical history
teaches us that at first contact the academicisms of Brahms, the
/longeurs/ of Schubert, the portentousness or Mahler, were considered
insupportable by their early listeners, but in all such cases later
generations have managed to put up with the failings of men [and
women] of genius for the sake of other qualities that outweigh them.
Verdi can be commonplace at times, as everyone knows, but his saving
grace is a burning sincerity that carries all before it. There is no
bluff here, no guile. On whatever level he composed a no-nonsense
quality comes across; all is directly stated, cleanly written with no
notes wasted, and marvelously effective. In the end we willingly
concede that Verdi's musical materials need not be especially choice
in order to be acceptable. And, naturally enough, when the musical
materials /are/ choice and inspired they profit doubly from being set
off against the homely virtues of his more workaday pages.
If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing
without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann
Sebastian Bach. Only a very few musical giants have earned the
universal admiration that surrounds the figure of the
eighteenth-century German master. What is it that makes his finest
scores so profoundly moving? I have puzzled over that question for a
very long time, but have come to doubt whether it is possible for
anyone to reach a completely satisfactory answer. One thing is
certain: we will never explain Bach's supremacy by the singling out
of any one element in his work. Rather it was a combination of
perfections, each of which was applied to the common practice of his
day; added together they produced the mature perfection of the
completed /oeuvre/.
Bach's genius cannot possibly be deduced from the circumstances of
his routine musical existence. All his life long he wrote music for
the requirements of the jobs he held. His melodies were often
borrowed from liturgical sources, his orchestral textures limited by
the forces at his disposal, and his forms, in the main, were similar
to those of other composers of his time, whose works, incidentally,
he had closely studied. None f these oft-repeated facts explain the
universal hold his best music has come to have on later generations.
What strikes me most markedly about Bach's work is the marvellous
rightness of it. It is the rightness not merely of a single
individual but of a whole musical epoch. Bach came at the peak point
of a long historical development; his was the heritage of many
generations of composing artisans. Never since that time has music
so successfully fused contrapuntal skill with harmonic logic. This
amalgam of melodies and chords, of independent lines conceived
linear-fashion within a mold of basic harmonies conceived vertically
provided Bach with the necessary framework for his massive edifice.
Within that edifice is the summation of an entire period, with all
the grandeur, nobility, and inner depth that one creative soul could
bring to it. It is hopeless, I fear, to attempt to probe further
into why is music creates the impression of spiritual wholeness, the
sense of his communing with the deepest vision. We would only find
ourselves groping for words, words that can never hope to encompass
the intangible greatness of music, least of all the intangible in
Bach's greatness.
Those who are interested in studying the interrelationship between a
composer and his work would do better to turn to the century that
followed Bach's, and especially to the life and work of Ludwig von
Beethoven. The English critic, Wilfrid Mellers, had this to say
about Beethoven recently: "It is the essence of the personality of
Beethoven, both as man and as artist, that he should invite
discussion in other than musical terms." Mellers meant that such a
discussion would involve us, with no trouble at all, in a
consideration of the rights of man, free will, Napoleon, and the
French Revolution, and other allied subjects. We shall never know in
exactly what way the ferment of historical events affected
Beethoven's thinking, but it is certain that music such as his would
have been inconceivable in the earlier nineteenth century without
serious concern for the revolutionary temper of his time and the
ability to translate that concern into the original and unprecedented
musical thought of his work.
Beethoven brought three startling innovations to music: first, he
altered our very conception of the art by emphasizing the
psychological element implicit in the language of sounds. Because of
him, music lost a certain innocence, but gained instead a new
dimension in psychological depth. Secondly, his own stormy and
explosive temperament was, in part, responsible for a "dramatization
of the whole art of music." The rumbling bass teremolandos, the
sudden accents in unexpected places, the hitherto unheard-of rhythmic
insistence and sharp dynamic contrasts, all these were
externalizations of an inner drama that gave his music theatrical
impact.
Both these elements, the psychological orientation and the instinct
for drama are inextricably linked in my mind with his third and
possibly most original achievement: the creation of musical forms
dynamically conceived on a scale never before attempted and of an
inevitability that is irresistible. Especially the sense of
inevitability is remarkable in Beethoven. Notes are not words, they
are not under the control of a verifiable logic, and because of that,
composers of every age have struggled to overcome that handicap by
producing a directional effect convincing to the listener. No
composer has ever solved the problem more brilliantly than Beethoven;
nothing quite so inevitable had ever before been created in the
language of sounds.
One doesn't need much historical perspective to realize what a
shocking experience Beethoven's music must have been for his first
listeners. Even today, given the nature of his music, there are
times when I simply do not understand how this man's art was 'sold'
to the big musical public. Obviously, he must be saying something
that everyone wants to hear. And yet if one listens freshly and
closely the odds against acceptance are equally obvious. As sheer
sound there is little that is luscious about his music--it gives off
a comparatively 'dry' sonority. He never seems to flatter an
audience, never to know or care what they might like. His themes are
not particularly lovely or memorable; they are more likely to be
expressively apt than beautifully contoured. His general manner is
gruff and unceremonious, as if the matter under discussion were much
too important to be broached in urbane or diplomatic terms. He
adopts a peremptory and hortatory tone, the assumption being,
especially in his most forceful work, that you have no choice but to
listen. And that is precisely what happens: you listen.
Above and beyond every other consideration Beethoven has one quality
to a remarkable degree: he is enormously compelling. What is it he
is so compelling about? How can one not be compelled and not be
moved by the moral fervor and conviction of such a man. His finest
works are the enactment of a triumph, a triumph of affirmation in the
face of the human condition. Beethoven is one of the great
yea-sayers among creative artists; it is exhilarating to share his
clear-eyed contemplation of the tragic sum of life. His music summons
forth our better nature; in purely musical terms Beethoven seems to
be exhorting us to Be Noble, Be Strong, Be Great in Heart, yes, and
Be Compassionate. These ethical precepts we subsume from the music,
but it is the music itself--the nine symphonies, the sixteen string
quartets, the thirty-two piano sonatas--that hods us, and holds us in
much the same way each time we return to it. The core of Beethoven's
music seems indestructible; the ephemera of sound seems to have
little to do with its strangely immutable substance.
My concern here with composers of the first rank like Bach and
Beethoven is not meant to suggest that only the greatest names and
the greatest masterpieces are worth your attention. Musical art, as
we hear it in our day, suffers if anything from an overdose of the
masterworks, an obsessive fixation on the glories of the past. This
narrows the range of our musical experience and tends to suffocate
interest in the present. It blots out many an excellent composer
whose work was less than perfect. It may be carping to say so, but
the fact is that we tire of everything, even of perfection. It would
be truer to point out, it seems to e that the forerunners of Bach
have an awkward charm and simple grace that not even he could match,
just because of his mature perfection. The artist, Delacroix, had
something of my idea when he complained about the playwright, Racine,
"that perfection and the absence of breaks and incongruities derive
him of the spice one finds in the works full of beauties and defects
at the same time."
Part of the pleasure of involving oneself with the arts is the
excitement of venturing out among its contemporary manifestations.
But a strange thing happens in this connection in the field of music.
The same people who find it quite natural that modern books, plays,
or paintings are likely to be controversial seem to want to escape
being challenged and troubled when they turn to music. In the
musical field there appears to be an unquenchable thirst for the
familiar, and very little curiosity as to what the newer composers
are up to. Such music lovers, as I see it, simply don't love music
enough, for if they did their minds would not be closed to an area
that holds the promise of fresh and unusual musical experience.
Charles Ives used to say that people who couldn't put p with
dissonance in music had "sissy ears." Fortunately, there are in all
countries today some braver souls who mind not at all having to dig a
bit for their musical pleasure, who actually enjoy being confronted
with the creative artist who is problematical.
These adventurous listeners refuse to be frightened off too easily.
I myself, when I encounter a piece of music whose import escapes me
immediately, think: "I'm not getting this, I shall have to come back
to it for a second or third try." I don't at all mind actively
disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy
about it, I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise
it remains in my mind as unfinished business.
This doesn't resolve the problem of the music lover of good will who
says: I'd like to like this modern stuff, but what do I do? Well,
the unvarnished truth is that there is no magic formulas, no short
cuts for making the unfamiliar seem comfortably familiar. There is
no advice one can give other than to say: relax--that's of first
importance, then listen to the same piece enough times to really
matter. Fortunately not all new music must be rated as difficult to
comprehend. I once had occasion to divide contemporary composers
into categories of relative difficulty, from easy to very tough, and
a surprising number of composers fitted into the first group.
One of the attractions of concerning oneself with the new in music is
the possible discovery of important work by the younger generation of
composers. The French critic, Sainte-Beuve, had this to say about
discovering young talent: "I know of no pleasure more satisfying for
the critic than to understand and describe a young talent in all its
freshness, its open and primitive quality, before it is glossed over
later by whatever is acquired and perhaps manufactured."
The young composers of today upset their elders in the traditional
way by positing a new ideal for music. This time they called for a
music that was to be thoroughly controlled in its every particular.
What they produced, admirably logical on paper, often makes a rather
haphazard and samelike impression in actual performance. After a
first hearing of some of their works, I jotted down these
observations: "One gets the notion that these boys [and girls] are
starting again from the beginning, with the separate tone and
separate sonority. Notes are strewn about like embra disjecta; there
is an end to continuity in the old sense and an end of the thematic
relationships. In this music one waits to hear what will happen next
without the slightest idea of what /will/ happen, or why what
happened did happen once it has happened. Perhaps one can say modern
painting of the Paul Klee school has invaded the new music. The
so-to-speak disrelation of unrelated tones is the way I might
describe it. No one really knows where it will go, and neither do I.
One thing is sure, however, whatever the listener may think of it,
it is without doubt the most frustrating music ever put on a
performer's music-stand."
Some of the younger European composers have branched off into the
first tentative experiments with electronically produced music. No
performers, no musical instruments, no microphones are needed. But
one must be able to record on tape and be able to feed into it
electromagnetic vibrations. Listening to the results, one feels that
in this case we shall have to broaden our conception of what is to be
included under the heading of musical pleasure. We will have to take
into account areas of sound hitherto excluded from the musical scheme
of things. And why not? With so many other of [one's] assumptions
subject to review how could one expect music to remain the same?
Whatever we may think of their efforts, these young experimenters
obviously need more time; it is pointless to attempt evaluations
before they have more fully explored the new terrain.
No discussion of musical pleasures can be concluded without
mentioning that ritualistic word, jazz. But, someone is sure to ask,
is jazz music serious? I'm afraid it is too late to bother with the
question, since jazz, serious or not, is very much here, and it
obviously provides pleasure. The confusion comes, I believe, from
attempting to make the jazz idiom cover broader expressive areas than
naturally belong to it. Jazz does /not/ do what serious music does
either in its range of emotional expression or in its depth of
feeling, or in its universality of language. (It does have
universality of appeal, which is not the same thing.) On the other
hand, jazz does do what serious music cannot do, namely, suggest a
colloquialism of musical speech that is indigenously delightful, a
kind of here-and-now feeling, less enduring than classical music,
perhaps, but with an immediacy and vibrancy that audiences throughout
the world find exhilarating.
Personally, I like my jazz free and untrammeled, as far remove from
the regular commercial product as possible. Fortunately, the more
progressive jazz [people] seem to be less and less restrained by the
conventionalities of their idiom, so little restrained that they
appear in fact to be headed our way. By hat I mean that harmonic and
structural freedoms of recent serious music have had so considerable
an influence on the younger jazz composers that it becomes
increasingly difficult to keep the categories of jazz and nonjazz
clearly divided. A new kind of cross-fertilization of our two worlds
is developing that promises an unusual synthesis for the future.
Thus, the varieties of musical pleasure tat await the attentive
listener are broadly inclusive. The art of music, without specific
subject matter and little specific meaning, is nonetheless a balm for
the human spirit; not a refuge or escape from the realities of
existence, but a haven wherein one takes contact with the essence of
human experience. It is an inexhaustible font from which all of us
can be replenished.
# See Also
(HTM) Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, by J.W.N. Sullivan (1927)
(DIR) What To Listen For In Music by Aaron Copland
tags: article,music
# Tags
(DIR) article
(DIR) music