ON STYLE AND MANNER IN MODERN

I

COMPOSITION

By CHARLES LOUIS SEEGER, JR.

I

SUBMIT, as a fundamental definition in any sound critique of music, that style is to be recognised upon the basis of the balanced articulation of all the essential resources of technique, in contrast with manner, which is to be recognised upon the basis of the special cultivation of a few of the resources and the comparative neglect of the others.

The resources of musical technique may be resumed concisely and comprehensively as the functioning of the physical materials of the art (tonal and rhythmic) in the three main branches of composition (melody, harmony and form) or, in other words, the manipulation of the former by the latter. By the articulation of the resources I mean their fitting together in composition. By a balanced articulation I mean the equal stressing and developing of all resources.

Style, therefore, will tend to close-knit or organic composition; manner, to loose or diffuse composition.

The distinction between the terms "organic" and "diffuse" lies in the extent of the development of the strict implication of a subject. In organic composition (e.g., fugues of Bach and some symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms) a minimum of material constitutes, through its elaborate and thorough development, a large part of the whole. In diffuse composition, the presentation of a maximum of material precludes the specific development of any particular unit. A minimum of material is clearly presented in the comparatively small number of measures comprising the commencement of a phrase, section or piece. If this is developed, as in organic composition, it may be called a subject; if not, there is no need for a special designation. Of course, any subject can be shown to imply any conceivable collection of tones and beats. Strictness of implication, then, is important as denoting the orderly procedure of musical logic, not accident of whim or the artifice of pedantry.

II

We may qualify the above definition concerning style and manner only in view of two sets of conditions, viz: (a) the situation in the art of music at a given time (and, possibly, place) and (b) the character of a given composer.

(a) The present situation in the history of occidental music may be likened to the situation in the case of a broad stream, when, in flat country, many islands divide its current into many streamlets. Perhaps, some of the streamlets become so shallow that they dry away; others lose themselves in bogs; others join, attract tributaries and make a river again. The last "grand style"1 has gradually split apart. Those who attempt to continue or recreate it are like the streamlets that run dry or end in in a bog—a bog haunted by vain historical and archeological ghosts. The Romantic movement has long emphasised the worth of individual differences in contrast to the conforming to a divine norm—the unique in contrast to the universal. Thus we have, instead of one great style, many manners, each one so different from the other as to be nearly unintelligible to any but its special devotees. Each composer who has produced valuable work during the last half century has done it by emphasising a few of the resources of technique in which he was especially apt, while neglecting (comparatively speaking) the improvement of his weak points. Our technique has been enriched to a point bewildering both to those who know and those who do not know that nobody living can be said to have the skill to use it as a whole. One cannot but admire and prize the outstanding work of the twentieth century, nor can one, on the other hand, ignore the suspicion that the producers of it reached rather prematurely the end of their rope. Of the attempt to initiate a new grand style not much can be said. Any prediction for which pure divination is not claimed, should assume the character of the scientific hypothesis, prove capable of subjection to searching analysis and await with enthusiastic interest the event of its verification or rejection by musical fact. Such an hypothesis might be: (1) in the not too distant future a great style will emerge by the gradual reordering and consolidation of the scattered strands of musical technique;

1I believe it is convenient to recognise three "grand styles": I. Des Prés-Palestrina, or even as late as Sweelinck; II. Bach-Händel; III. Mozart-Brahms, including, of course, Wagner. The use of names instead of dates gives us a little more familiar, though more controversial, classification than the somewhat more precise nature of dates, or centuries. The resemblance, however, between the first and last (roughly, the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries) contrasts strikingly with the second (roughly, the first half of the eighteenth).

(2) the romantic tendency may persist for some time before this eventuality can be said to be clearly envisaged; (3) we may hasten the breakup of the romantic tendency (in so far as it assumes unlimited control of taste) by carrying to an extreme its salient characteristics; (4) we may resurrect and develop the neglected resources until such a time as the over-emphasised resources can be stabilised and coördinated with them.

This would be a process of Pasteurisation. The attenuated form of the bacillus romanticus would be cultivated and used to inoculate the victims of our worst musical epidemic-the cult of wrong notes. The revolutionary-minded who loves to have his progress catastrophically dished would have his place under caption (3); for we are not impatient with what Debussy, Schönberg, Scriabin and Stravinsky have done in the enlarging of musical technique, but with what they have not done-that is, what no one seems to be able to do, to be as enterprising in all the resources of technique as these masters have been in the two or three they have spent all their time in developing. The conservative advocate of gradual change would have his place in caption (4). The foolish controversy between conservative and radical could be smoothed out so that at least being one's own worst enemy would not be the only thing they held in common. And best of all, the maundering cult of ninth-chord writers would be hipped on both sides.

The present situation is in some ways very like the situation in Europe during the opening years of the seventeenth century. Not long before, the great stream was undivided. Composers had spoken not of "expressing themselves" but of how a supernatural being moved their hands in the achievement of a purpose loftier than their poor earthly minds could conceive. But eventually young men found the stream too serene, even sluggish-too stiff, possibly frozen. They forsook the grand style and deliberately tried to formulate outside of it a procedure almost arbitrarily opposed to the salient characteristics of the work of Palestrina, Lasso and the others. Of course, the grand style had, even in the hands of Palestrina himself, begun to lose its vitality. His style seldom shows as strong a melodic flow in the various parts as his best predecessors (Des Prés, for example), but is predominantly chordal. The instrumental and solo-dramatic genres adopted by the nuove musiche had been gradually taking form during his lifetime and were not by any means made of whole cloth by the early opera writers. There was, nevertheless, a deliberate and successful revolution whose result was the obliteration

of the old style in less than half a century. Out of it came a century of experiment and gradual consolidation that made possible the grand style of Bach and his contemporaries. The twentieth century sometimes seems to promise a repetition (in reverse order, however) of the seventeenth. During the nineteenth century the tendency was not toward crystalisation, but toward volatility; not by too severe restrictions but by too great license it dissipated its efforts. Formerly, the art tended to become too highly organised for the young artist and courtier: there was need to simplify it and reach a wider audience. Recently, the audience has become nearly as large as it can be, but in being distributed to that audience the resources of the technique have also been distributed and the former style diffused. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, the revolt against the closed circuit of strict counterpoint centered in the freeing of melody from the rules of its association with other melodies, substituting block chords instead. But since then, the free melodic line has become enthralled to the increased complexity of the chordal support. Counterpoint is therefore to us, what chords were to the nuove musiche.

(b) The second qualification of the fundamental definition regarding style and manner need not be as elaborately set forth as the general historical qualification given under section (a). But it is necessary to say a few words regarding the mutual adjustment of the two qualifications themselves.

It is unfortunately true that the recognition of personal differences is far more common in the music profession to-day than is the recognition of the evolutionary approach to music. That is, it is more common to adhere to the "great man theory" to account for what has happened and to predict what is to come than it is to view the art as proceeding along a logical path of development partly moulded by forces from without (social, economic, mechanical, etc.) and partly following out an organic life of its own, both more or less independent of the efforts of men as individuals. Broadly speaking, the two theories should be concurrently employed. Reliance upon the first only is characteristic of the intellectually lazy; reliance upon the second serves only too often as a smoke-screen for the sciolist. We should not say the times make the man or the man makes the times. The fallacies of both have been long apparent. It is wiser to distribute the explanation fairly evenly between the two. Possibly, it may be a century before the technique of music will be balanced sufficiently (by many good workers) to allow the turning out by one man of a body of work comparable to the work of Bach, Beethoven

or Palestrina. It may be that if that man lived sooner he would not be able to do such work. Yet maybe no matter when he lived he might do it.

The same is true of more detailed analysis. Perhaps, for instance, only Debussy could have made of the whole-tone scale what he did. But on the other hand, perhaps about the same thing would have been done had Debussy died in his first childhood.

The closeness with which any individual composer may approach the ideal balance required by our definition of style depends (after his position in history has been allowed for) upon two things: first, the nature of his talent, and second, his ability to give it or receive for it discipline such as will improve it. He has, in no case, a perfectly balanced talent. For instance, in some the tonal may outweigh the rhythmic, or the melodic the harmonic, and vice versa. In some, sensitivity is more highly developed than imagery, and so on through an imposing list of possibilities. He can, however, make some correction for his native lack of balanced musicianship, and it is here that our custom of talking and writing about music plays a very important rôle. For many of these abstract terms are not clearly defined or definable for musical use. Slovenly treatment of music by language does no good and maybe much harm. A sound musicology must meet not only the requirements of language logic, and, of course, musical truth, but must always be careful to make clear its own relation to actual creative work in music.

All this creative work is done in three periods. First, there is the period of prevision-the acquisition of the idiom, the knowledge of the possibilities of the technique, their coördination and the maturing of the taste or critical judgment that selects what to use, when and how to use it, by actual practice. Second, there is the period of vision or inspiration, as we call it-direct artistic outpouring, concentrated and partly at least defying analysis in words. Third, there is the period of revision of the inspired work in terms of the first process.

The first and third periods, when not interrupted by flashes of the second or approximations of it, tend to be cool, deliberate and experimental. In the third, the larger part of the labor involved in any specific composition is done. Any attempt to discipline the talent through the study of the technique is primarily concerned with these two periods.

The second period is apt to be heated and hasty, though it undoubtedly varies greatly in character among composers. It