Composers Must Live

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 324, 7 September 1945, Page 9

Composers Must Live

I | ad is a strange state to which the great improvements in the technical and mechanical arts have brought our newest composers. Their productions are no longer music; they go beyond the level of human feelings, and no response can be given them from mind and heart." These remarks, which were quoted by Owen Jensen in his first talk on "The Arts To-day: Music" from 1YA, are not the comments of a modern critic on Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony-they are what Goethe wrote about Beethoven’s Fifth. Having thus shamed his listeners into some open-mindedness towards contemporary music, Mr. Jensen gave an excellent general survey of the field, running a spirited race against the studio clock. In his second talk he settled down to a more informal and leisurely discussion of the status of the composer. The church is no longer the living composer’s patron, nor are there wealthy Esterhazys, nor Princes of Weimar or Salzburg to employ him. In Finland and Russia the State has provided annuities for-com-posers, and in America some hold university, appointments. The cinemas provide something of a market, and the broadcasting companies occasionally commission work. But it now rests mainly upon ourselves as singers, players and listeners, to expect and accept contemporary music, to use it and, what’s more, to pay for it. If there are too many of us whose musical enjoyment ends at Brahms or Debussy, the output of good composition will wither up. Mr. Jensen did not express himself in the stately idiom of St. Paul, but with his own brisk and fluent persuasiveness he seemed to be recommending more faith, hope and charity in our attitude to contemporary music, and-if we want to be provided with anything better than sounding brass and tinkling cymbal — a rather stronger accent on the charity,