The Nation (American magazine)/Volume 123/3194/Add Americana
Add Americana
This is a book by a successful American, conscious of his success and fortified, therefore, in his status, wisdom, and wit; talking—not writing—to "just plain folks"; talking faster than any man can think, and with no time, therefore, to do more than send out through his mouth whatever has drifted in through his ear: the homely philosophy, bromidic wise-cracks ("Consistency may be a jewel but most people would rather wear diamonds, even so"), and muddy notions about music that are characteristic of his place and time.
Out of all the dizzy chatter certain truths emerge. "With a very few but important exceptions jazz is not as yet the thing said; it is the manner of saying it." This is true in two senses Since, in the first place, the thing said—the fundamental plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk of every measure—is utterly invariable, jazz is an art of embellishment, embellishment superimposed for the purpose of concealment on what is itself incapable of change. And since, in the second place—and this is what Mr. Whiteman means—the superimposed melodic embellishments, "with a very few but important exceptions," are poor in quality and restricted in rhythmic variety to a little syncopation, the art of embellishment is mostly an art of orchestration. Mr. Whiteman, on the occasion of his first Aeolian Hall concert in February, 1924, caused considerable befuddlement by his own befuddlement in calling it "An Experiment in Modern Music" intended to demonstrate the beginning of "a new movement in the world's art of music"; for the development which he actually demonstrated was that of a new type of orchestration, which was mostly his work and represented a genius for combining instrumental timbres comparable with that of Berlioz or Stravinsky, as his own orchestra represented a genius comparable with that of Gericke or Stokowski.
But there is a constant and growing demand for change and novelty. "Four years ago a whole chorus could be run through with but one rhythmic idea. Now there must be at least two rhythmic ideas and sometimes more." And new ideas are progressively more difficult to supply. For one thing, then, recourse is had to trick and comedy scoring, even to the cheapest of cheap vaudeville entertainment, a tasteless degradation of instrument and players. But it seems that a more valuable, if less expected, source of help is serious music. Either the theme of a serious composition is taken as the point of departure of a subsequently original jazz composition; or the entire serious composition or a section of it is played—often as a novelty interpolated in a jazz scoring—in fox-trot time, with its melody dislocated, a new rhythmic trick at each half-chorus, low comedy on the high clarinets by Ross Gorman, and so on. The first use is unquestionably legitimate, the second unquestionably not. But, legitimacy aside, one is aghast at the lack of discrimination, the appalling ignorance of musicians who can think of these practices as a continuation of the job left unfinished by the serious composer, and expect Handel to enjoy and respect the use made of his theme in "Yes, We Have No Bananas"; who can, inasmuch as "nine-tenths of modern jazz music … is frankly stolen from the masters," chuckle over "lowbrows who say they can't abide classical music and highbrows who squirm when they hear jazz," and not realize that what the first enjoy and the second squirm at is the perversions of the serious compositions, not the originals; who can, therefore, pride themselves on stimulating with the perversions a taste for the originals, and wonder at the inconsistency of "the patrons of music in America who for years have been keeping good music barely alive … by artificial stimulation … while they lamented the lack of a musical public …" and yet do not "rejoice to see music rising like a wave and engulfing America, to see people music-mad."
It is all like that. Perhaps the other idiocies are more familiar: about jazz expressing America, its "composite essence," "fundamental emotion," "place and time"; about its having to create new forms to do it; about art that is too good for the mass being too good for this earth and not standing the test of time, since "beauty is emotion, not intellect—and emotion is universal." B. H. Haggin
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1987, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 37 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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