AN OPEN LETTER TO "MATERFAMILIAS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 250, 6 April 1944, Page 16

AN OPEN LETTER TO "MATERFAMILIAS"

Dear Materfamilias and Any Others Whom It May Concern, TOO am a lover of good programmes, and I too do much of my listening in the moments between baby feeding, housecleaning, and cooking. I agree with your judgments on programmes as I agree with those of "G.M." on films — that is, nearly always. It’s strange, therefore, to hear one of my own kind asking, and merely in parentheses, for the answer to such a colossal question as "What is an exact definition of ‘classical’? Serious?" If you mean that you seriously want a serious definition, that’s what I’m out to discover for you. But if you mean that you imagine the definition of "classical music" may be "serious music," then I must tell you how hopelessly astray you are. Moreover, I can’t help feeling that there must be many others like you, who have only the vaguest idea of what "classical music" really is, and for the sake of listening in general I think I'll make an effort to define it for you. So here goes. Being interested enough in the problem to want a representative opinion, I spent some time in accosting innocent bystanders in the subject. I got a number of different opinions and ideas, more than I bargained for, and after reflection I was able to sort them out into various groups. GROUP 1: HIS is you, Materfamilias, and anybody else who thinks that "Classical Music" is synonymous with "Serious Music." This is just a plain fallacy, evident at once if you think about it. Lots of Classical Composers wrote music that wasn’t serious at all. I imagine other musicians besides myself have frequently laughed aloud when listening to Haydn. And if you think that non-Classical composers do not write music in a serious vein, you have only to listen to Negro singers singing "Deep River." Likewise composers of modern Swing, whom nobody can remotely accuse of being Classical Composers, take themselves very very seriously indeed. GROUP 2: Question: What is your definition of Classical Music? Answer: Anything that isn’t Jazz. THIS, alas, I found to be the majority opinion. Well, at any rate, these people are honest. I have met them many times, and at many places, in my career as a musician and a housewife. These are the people who know that I can play the piano, and who crowd around me at parties, with requests for Frank Sinatra’s latest or Vera Lynn’s newest. I answer that I don’t play that sort of music much, and have never heard the tune in question, but that if they produce the music I'll give it a go. They stare more in sorrow than in anger at a pianist who has never heard Frank Sinatra’s latest or Vera Lynn’s newest, who can’t play it without hav‘ing heard it, and who actually likes to

have notes in front of her before playing something she has never heard before. They quickly substitute another pianist for me, someone called Jimmy or Tommy or Ted, who not only has heard ALL the latest hits, but can thump them out in octaves with his right hand while improvising a monotonous tonic-dominant bass with his left hand, keeping everybody in roars of raucous song and laughter by putting his right foot on the right pedal and keeping it there, the while his left foot bangs upon the floor in a regular pulse. This goes on for several hours, until the pianist goes off for supper. There is

a lovely silence. Suddenly somebody remembers my existence. "Oh, DO play for us!" "Very well, what shall I play?" "Oh, YOU know, something Classical!" I am now so coldly infuriated that I try to catch them out by insisting that they name something, hoping that not one of them knows the name of a Classical work. I’m right. They don’t. I am asked, all at once, from three different directions, for the "Warsaw Concerto," "Rustle of Spring,’ and "Parlez-moi d’armour." You see? Classical Music is the "Warsaw Concerto," "Rustle of Spring," and "Parlez-moi d’Armour." In: other words, Classical Music is everything that is: not Jazz. Could bad taste go further? GROUP 3: HERE was only one man in this Group. Said he: "Classical Music? I don’t know what it is and I don't care. You can take your music and your crooners and your bands and throw them over the wharf. I only listen to the Racing Results and Dad and Dave." Feeling that no amount of argument or explanation would do any good, I tabulated this Group as "Ignorant and Proud Of It Too," and vacated his immediate presence. GROUP 4: ae was only one in this Group, too. Me: How would you define Classical Music, Roger? Roger: Oh, I don’t know. Bach and Beethoven and All That. Me: Yes, but a couple of names isn’t a definition. (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) Roger: Well, I suppose to be Classical, music must pass a definite test. It’s got to be good. Me: How good? Roger: Well, better than most. It’s got to stand the test of years. Me: Like "Sweet Adeline’? How many years, anyhow? Roger: Well, it’s got to be recognised by all the best musicians as being great, and when hundreds of great musicians down the years have gone on performing it and saying it’s great, and all the audiences have accepted it as great, then I suppose it becomes a Classic. Me: That’s a good working definition of a Classic, but you still haven't defined Classical Music. Roger: Well, dash it all, how would you define it? GROUP 5: ELL, here I am at last, with an opinion of my own. Group 5: that’s Me. Let me say that much as I detest Group 2, and am sorry for Group 3,°I find much to admire in Group 4, which is Roger. Roger and I were at primary school together, and learned the piano from the same music teacher. Together we sat at a table and wrote lovely consecutive fifths; together we wrote out, as a punishment, "I MUST learn to count aloud"; together we made the exciting but laborious voyage through Bach’s 48. One can never really shake off the effects of a sound musical education, and although Roger’s music shelves are now crammed with opus numbers of such composers as Ellington, he still listens to Beethoven on the radio, and can tell a good lieder-singer from a bad one. He explains to me in great detail the different forms of Jazz, from Boogie to Blues, and tries to convert me to his belief in the Great God Gershwin. I am very fond of Roger, though I argue with him on every possible occasion. Preferring Jazz, he at least knows his subject, which is more than can be said for Group 2. He at least differentiates between its best and worst aspects. There be those, in the opposite camp, who execrate Jazz and yet don’t know that there is a difference in spiritual worth between the Ninth Symphony and the Overture to William Tell. There is a very precise and unambiguous definition of the term "Classical Music." A Classical work is one in which the formal aspect takes prece- dence of the emotional, That’s simple enough, surely. It includes one type of music only. There was a period in musical history which we have labelled "The Classical Period," because most of the works written at that time were of the above type. That is, they were compositions in which the structure, architecture, general plan, or call it what you will, dominated the mind of the composer, Other descriptions of this sort of music are abstract, intellectual, absolute; the greatest Classical Composers--- Bach, Haydn, and Mozart — exemplify this style to perfection. This is not to say that their works were inspired by no feeling or emotion, byt merely that their method of putting their ideas into music was through the medium of formal composition. So if you find a work without a title or a literary idea attached, labelled merely Op. something-or-other, and bearing the signature of one of the above musicians or their contemporaries, you

may be pretty certain you're correct. in labelling it "Classical." Other than that, the word has no musical meaning. What about all the rest of Music? Well, there are dozens of other labels that you can gum on to compositions if you want to, Romantic and Impressionistic and National and Modern and as many others as musicians can invent to describe the works of other musicians; there are many composers who won’t fit into any pigeon-hole. But you don’t want me to go into All That! Classical music may be grave or gay, serious or delightfully humorous. It may belong to any age, for the Classical Period doesn’t contain all the Classical music, and some of the music written in it wasn’t Classical. It is certainly the highest type of music, and repays most fully the student’s devotion to it. Well, then! Classical Music is music where emotional content is subservient to, or expressed through, formal structure. A Musical Classic is a work of art which Time has proved to be great. So now you know. Or at least you know enough to make you, if you are interested in this subject, go in search of more detailed and definite information than I have given you. With these few ideas, Materfamilias, I must say adieu. Baby-feeding time is here again. Your friend and admirer,

DOROTHY

SCOTT

Dunedin).