Music for Museums? by Carl Van Vechten — Read

I saw people actually enjoying themselves at a recent piano recital. During the performance of some of the numbers they laughed; at other times they nudged one another and made comments. The conclusion of each piece was punctuated by a certain amount of vociferous applause, and an almost equal amount of disapprobation. One group of pieces on the programme, Claude Debussy's _Children's Corner_, was familiar; as a result, it aroused less interest than some of the other music played. Albeniz, one of the new men who is making the list of Spanish compositions extend beyond the folk-song, was represented by his _El Albaicin_; Maurice Ravel by _Gaspard de la Nuit_, a very successful attempt to paint atmosphere and character in the very limited tonal medium of the pianoforte; Scriabine by four preludes and a sonata; and Leo Ornstein, the pianist, by _Seven Sketches_ and _Two Shadow Pieces_. Mr. Ornstein's compositions have no truck with majors and minors, thirds and fifths, pentatonic and diatonic scales. His descending fingers strike masses of keys; some auditors seemed to think there is no plan in these assaults on the board. Personally, I am willing to wager that the last piano sonatas of the deaf Beethoven meant just as little to their first hearers. We have become accustomed to the sweet and unsubtle way of the tonic and dominant. Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Strawinsky are yet discordant to our melody-soaked and harmony-demanding ears.

Yet, if concert programmes are consulted, one will find in them very little music earlier than the eighteenth century. The symphony orchestra is really a discovery of the nineteenth century. When our symphony orchestras play Bach, Haydn, or Mozart, the reënforcements, the rearrangements, would astonish those old composers as much as the electric signs on Broadway, could they be brought back to hear them. Either one-half the band -- nay, two-thirds -- must sit still during the playing of these numbers, if the original body of tone is to be preserved, or else some readjustment is necessary. For instance, it is quite customary to allow the full body of strings to play a Mozart symphony, although the wood-winds and brasses are not appreciably greater in number in the modern orchestra than they were in Mozart's time. Lack of proportion and over-emphasis are the natural results.