Once upon a time on the shoulders of giants

The following lengthy quote is taken from Schoenberg's 1931 essay, "National Music" (published in Style and Idea).  Today we might easily dismiss this as a bit of jingoism, and, indeed, in other parts of the essay he opposes the tradition of German music to "Latin and Slav hopes of hegemony."  And the date is not inconsequential.  That's how the historian might be tempted to chew it up and spit it out.  And that's certainly how I dismissed the essay when I first read it years ago.

But since my first reading, I have noticed -- especially recently in the proliferation of web sites of young composers -- the practice of listing "influences."  For a single composer's web site these influences can range from Monteverdi to Zappa and Josquin to Radiohead.  It seems important to list as many divergent influences as possible (on one composer's site I stopped counting at around fifty names -- I'm not making this up).  Evidently it is now important to leave the impression that one has absorbed the entirety of the last half millennium of western civilization in one's music -- and of course ending by leaving the impression that all of it is somehow absorbed and molded (with the aid of Garage Band (TM)) into a unique music that is Relevant.  Indeed, it may be.  But listing Varese as an "influence on my music" is not the same as to claim you've ever heard a single note of his music -- the name, perhaps: it's impressive.

But gentle sarcasm to one side, there is a significant difference between Schoenberg's list quoted below and virtually every list of "influences" I've seen from contemporary composers.  Schoenberg is able to say what he learned from his influences in terms specific and concrete enough that, if challenged, they could be expanded and tested.  He didn't hear Brahms and somehow, magically -- maybe by osmosis -- take in the (clouds parting) "spirit of Brahms" that then showed through in his music.  Here is Schoenberg's list.  And then I will be back for a final comment.

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My teachers were primarily Bach and Mozart, and secondarily Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner.

From Bach I learned:

1. Contrapuntal thinking; i.e. the art of inventing musical figures that can be used to accompany themselves.
2. The art of producing everything from one thing and of relating figures by transformation.
3. Disregard for the 'strong' beat of the measure.

From Mozart:

1. Inequality of phrase length.
2. Co-ordination of heterogeneous characters to form a thematic unity.
3. Deviation from even-number construction in the theme and its component parts.
4. The art of forming subsidiary ideas.
5. The art of introduction and transition.

From Beethoven:

1. The art of developing themes and movements.
2. The art of variation and of varying.
3. The multifariousness of the ways in which long movements can be built.
4. The art of being shamelessly long, or heartlessly brief, as the situation demands.
5. Rhythm: the displacement of figures on to other beats of the bar.

From Wagner:

1. The way it is possible to manipulate themes for expressive purposes and the art of formulating them in the way that will serve this end.
2. Relatedness of tones and chords.
3. The possibility of regarding themes and motives as if they were complex ornaments, so that they can be used against harmonies in a dissonant way.

From Brahms:

1. Much of what I had unconsciously absorbed from Mozart, particularly odd barring, and extension and abbreviation of phrases.
2. Plasticity in molding figures; not to be mean, not to stint myself when clarity demands more space; to carry figures through to the end.
3. Systematic notation.
4. Economy, yet richness.

I also learned much from Schubert and Mahler, Strauss and Reger too.  I shut myself off from no one....

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There was a time,
if I can believe what's written in a thousand books,
when we learned from giants we called great.
Now it is enough (more than enough) merely to name them,
reducing them to gnomes like us.

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