t may be argued, with considerable justice, that the world does not need another Symphony for Strings. We have already particularly fine examples by Mendelssohn and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, to say nothing of Mozart. Personally, I do not think, for example, that we are likely to see the equal of Emanuel Bach’s Six Symphonies for Strings, dedicated to the Baron von Swieten in 1773 (Wq. 182). In particular, the middle movement of the third of these Symphonies—the one in C Major—comes to mind as an utterly shattering cry from the heart. He who is not moved by this music is beyond hope, in my opinion. These works remain every bit as contemporary in their relevance and in their power to move as they were in 1773. Such music must give pause to those who proclaim the ephemeral relativism of musical style, and its inflexible association with a specific time and place. There are indeed musical compositions that depend upon wig powder and lace for their justification; but they are not representative of the spirit of Man at its best.

The reason why I have bothered composing this piece at all lies in the nature of music-making and in its relationship to the very life-force itself. I feel that it is incumbent upon us as musicians to strive as best we can to practice our art as well as we are able, as performers, composers, teachers, or whatever. For me, musical composition represents an attempt to express myself musically (in a way akin to performing, and yet different from performing) and to deepen my musical understanding. I posit a dynamic interplay among several entities: the personality of each individual musician; the personalities of that musician’s teachers and of his most esteemed colleagues; the personalities of the old masters’ music and theoretical works, as internalized by each individual musician; the entire tradition of Western music itself, as interpreted by each individual musician; and the Platonic musical ideals towards which each of us gropes, each in his own way, as mediated by the possibilities and restrictions of the laws of harmony and counterpoint, and, to some degree, by the age in which we live. This interplay is always dynamic and frequently daunting. It is a dialogue among the living and the dead; and it plumbs the very nature of God. Whether God exists as a Supreme Being, or as a projection of the human spirit is beside the point, as far as music-making is concerned. The concept of God as both a spiritual ideal and a pragmatic foundation for musical endeavor is vital, even if it is honored more in the breach, as the saying goes.

I am conscious of the dual nature of musical endeavor as both derived from spiritual idealism of the highest sort, and from pragmatic realism. Musical composition is, in theory, the most uncompromising avenue of musical expression. Even the unaccompanied performer must make concessions to the limitations of his instrument; and it is one of the drawbacks of chamber-music-making, as well as one of its glories, that it involves a high degree of compromise. If one is fortunate enough to work with reasonably like-minded colleagues, this can be both a learning experience and an opportunity for artistic achievement of the highest order; however, all musicians can relate personal experiences in which these happy conditions did not prevail: and such cases may be remembered as among the worst experiences of one’s musical life.

Musical composition is largely free from such practical restrictions. One is limited only by one’s lack of talent, imagination, and technique—and by the musical possibilities and limitations of the overtone series, the capabilities of the instruments and voices for which one composes, and the restrictions of the human psyche itself.

And so it is with this attempt of mine to compose a string symphony. I compose as I wish, because to do anything else would vitiate the impulse that makes me attempt to compose in the first place. That is the idealistic side of the coin. I employ a tonal language because I find it to be the most capable and powerful mode of musical expression. That is, for me, a decision based upon both pragmatic and idealistic considerations. It is simply not practical for me to attempt to utilize a mode of composition in which I do not believe, and which does not allow me to express myself. There are many other ways of organizing sounds, but none of them moves me, or feels as if it represents my musical self. Those who feel differently have an obligation to pursue their own personal modes of musical composition; this is mine. If my own ideas regarding composition were to be generally adopted by the so-called “establishment,” they could conceivably become the basis for a new and tyrannical approach to music-making, every bit as reprehensible as that which held sway among the academic composers of the 1960s. Unbridled cultural conformity is as bad as the unbridled cultural relativism now in fashion. I, personally, am moved by the galant speech of our predecessors; and so I employ it, along with other musical modes of expression. I am personally moved by the wonderful sonority of a full basso continuo section; and by the potential tone colors provided by the presence of the harpsichord; and by the expressive variety produced by its now accompanying with full chords, now playing only the bass line without harmonic accompaniment—either in unisons, or, now and again, in octaves; and by its being silent, now and again, as musical necessity dictates—and by the endless variety and expressivity of which a really good basso continuo player is capable. It is for this reason that I do not attempt to write out a basso continuo harpsichord part, but rather choose to leave the harpsichordist free to do as he sees fit, without interference from me. (I cannot help but regard the departure of the harpsichord from the orchestra as a loss; for its ability both to define the bass line and to complement the sonorities of the other instruments of the ensemble is quite remarkable. Fortunately, we of the twenty-first century are able to restore it to the ranks of orchestral instruments; and, equally fortunately, we are not obligated to do so.)

I do not care one way or the other for fashion and doctrine. I never did. When I went to school in the ’sixties of the last century, I was taught that tonality was of historical interest only, and that it was useless for a would-be contemporary composer to study any music composed before Debussy. I thought at the time that this was utter nonsense; and I have not changed my opinion in this regard. Nowadays, things are a little freer than they were then: and, indeed, the very fact of the secular decline of Music has freed the would-be “serious” composer to be completely honest with himself and with God (see above), since he no longer has to worry about pleasing or displeasing this or that patron. In the past, some would-be composers have seized upon this absence of a viable audience as an excuse to wreak havoc; but to me the spiritual and personal functions of music-making are so powerful as to render such a course of action utterly unacceptable. The fur-lined teacup of Dada is amusing and it definitely has its place; but the mind and the heart crave something more; and to attempt to justify Dadaism as a legitimate response to the catastrophic abominations of the disorders of the twentieth century is to validate the legitimacy of these abominations. I believe that it is possible—even in the face of all that has happened in the past hundred years!—to strive for something better, without descending to the goody-goody two-shoes banality of socialist realism and “everybodyism” on the one hand, or to the criminal mendacity of those who drove millions of young men to their deaths in the trenches, in the name of Culture and of Virtue. I believe that it is incumbent upon us to try to move the emotions and the intellect, and to do all those things that music ought to do—and to do them in a very personal way; and I do not see how it is possible to do so if one allows “Camp” and Dada, or a psychotic anomie, driven by Darwin, despair, and quantum mechanics to define one’s aesthetic sensibility. The other day, the centenarian composer Elliot Carter (and may he be with us for many more years!) was quoted as declaring that he is more interested in music written today than in the age of gaslight and horse-drawn vehicles. Well, personally I fail to see the connection between horses, gaslights, and musical endeavor. I compose at the computer; and it can cause me every bit as much vexation as a recalcitrant quill; so what else is new? One cannot, in all fairness, blame either the computer or the quill pen for one’s failures or successes; nor should one allow either to influence one’s judgement. If I were to “go ballistic” and attempt to eat my computer keyboard, would this not be the equivalent of eating crow by swallowing my quill pen? Alas! the sad and wonderful fact is, that we are just as human—no more and no less—whether we work by gaslight or by the light of those god-awful energy-saving fluorescent bulbs. It is pleasant to imagine that advances in technology can transform and improve the fundamental nature of the human animal; but the history of the last century has, I think, pretty much disproved that notion. Life has changed vastly in its quotidian details since C.P.E. Bach and Mendelssohn composed their String Symphonies; but at bottom, it is still much the same. Our illusions and hopes have changed far more than the underlying realities: as artists, we want far more but accomplish far less—or so I fear. And so it is that the music of the old masters still has the power to move us, while their medicine and their notions of natural philosophy evoke derision—because music originates within the spiritual inner being of man, not in the material world of quill pens and computer screens. It is incumbent upon each of us to find his own personal mode of expression; but to ignore the power of certain musical procedures simply because they were first used centuries ago contravenes both common sense and the very nature of art and of humanity itself. To adopt these views as one’s point of departure in attempting to compose must inevitably entail the risk that one’s music may sound archaic—and indeed it will, insofar as any attempt to re-espouse a set of musical and aesthetic desiderata, spiritual intentions, and an aesthetic world view that has been out of fashion for over a hundred years must appear and sound out of step with the modern world, as we are accustomed to its appearing and sounding. I maintain that it is in fact very much in step with this world, since man as a species has changed not at all for many thousands of years: rather, it is contrary to human nature not to take such a step, in the light of the history of music since the death of Brahms, however radical this step may appear. I admit to having no compunctions whatever about composing whole passages that could have been written hundreds of years ago. So much has been discovered that it may no longer be possible to discover fundamentally new ways of organizing sound without transgressing beyond the boundaries of musical affect, as dictated by the human psyche, the human ear, and the very laws of acoustics themselves—which boundaries are as narrow as the prerequisites for the survival of life itself. This fact—if indeed it be a fact—demands a radically new approach to the concept of musical obsolescence. I believe that if a musical language remain powerful enough to move modern listeners, then it must by definition remain eligible for use in contemporary composition. It is, in this sense, a contemporary mode of musical expression. Nonetheless, the listener will seldom mistake my attempts at musical composition for anything but contemporary musical endeavors: my usage, for example, of galant musical idioms reflects my personality and my world view—which must, of necessity be my own, and, at least in part, a product of the times in which I have lived. I do not believe, for example, that Virtue and Reason alone will save us. I have seen what a two-edged sword the Enlightenment can be. And so it is that my range of experiences and knowledge, both musical and extra-musical, and my individual personality compel me to alter the old galant mixed styles in ways that might seem a little strange to their original practitioners. And if the reader be disturbed to read that a contemporary musician chooses to utilize galant dialects in the construction of a contemporary musical work, let me rephrase the whole matter in such a way as to provide, perhaps, some degree of comfort: All tonal languages that remain capable of moving us are by definition modern—as I have already noted. Modern tonal musical languages—including the modern galant musical languages, upon which I have drawn freely—were invented and perfected hundreds of years ago. (I say “perfected,” even though these languages are, of course, subject to revision and extension.) They are nonetheless modern, just as a contemporary chair or table, based loosely upon ancient forms, are modern—and for the same reasons: the immutable structure and nature of the human form. The languages upon which I draw are, therefore, contemporary, despite their ancient origins, which they share with the languages by which we express ourselves verbally. Musical languages, like their verbal counterparts, are indeed subject to change (although perhaps to a lesser degree than verbal languages); it is perhaps possible that we may some day invent a new musical language; but the ancient roots of musical communication must inevitably remain; and musical style must never change in such a way as to render meaningful communication impossible. I claim, therefore, to be utilizing only contemporary idioms in my efforts to compose. There: don’t you feel better already?

 

The listener may notice elements of Ragtime and Dixieland Jazz in the last movement of this String Symphony—although it might be equally possible to attribute these elements to my familiarity with some of the rhythmically-rich music of the so-called Middle Ages and Renaissance. I was not conscious of the Ragtime-Dixieland connection while I was working on the piece; but I must admit that it is supported by my admiration for the music of Scott Joplin and his colleagues and Dixieland successors.

 

Daniel R. Waitzman

December 19, 2008.

(Subsequent revisions,
incl. May 11, 2010.)

 

Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Robert Waitzman. All rights reserved.

 

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