Signs Of The Time And The Destinies Of Music
"The radio, records, music scores, books - all these propaganda media - are used to implant western 'culture' in the East. The modernists seek in their own way to assume guardianship of the young oriental musical cultures to deprive originality and nip in the bud their longing for a great realistic art."

"Dmitri Shostakovich"
Sovetskaya Musika, published in Music Journal (USA) 1962 - 68


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 The great social changes taking place in the world today and the rapid advances of science and engineering are in their turn exercising a potent influence on the spiritual culture of people. Music is also affected by them: the strife of two ideologies, the communist and the bourgeois, is reflected in music too, and music is used as an effective weapon in this strife.

In our day the social role of music has considerably grown. In the arsenal of the ideological education of the masses, music is acquiring still greater importance, which is enhanced by modem means of its mass propaganda. A new revolutionary song, written in one land, soon becomes popular all over the world, helping to rally and educate millions of people. In countries where reaction holds sway, persons are cast into prison or even shot for the singing of such songs.

Music in the hands of the reactionary forces serves their class interests. Along with preachings of a "pure art," catering to the elite, the United States and other capitalist countries release large quantities of low-standard music for "mass consumption," contaminating with it the minds of the people.

In the Western press there appear articles urging the government to pay greater attention to the educational role of music. Howard Hanson, Director of the Eastman School of Music, in his article published in Music Journal in January, 1961, said that a nation like the United States, obsessed with the fear for the future and laying principal stress on the solution of material problems, may finally solve them and in doing so save its life but lose its soul. It is a sacred duty, he says, to prevent man himself in the age of automation from being converted into an automaton.

The post-war years have truly witnessed the enormous growth of the world prestige and popularity of Soviet music, which is in the vanguard of world art and is winning millions of new listeners and admirers. Musical theatres, symphony orchestras and the concert stage more and more often now feature in their programmes the works of Soviet composers, which evoke a wide response and often homage in the press of the West.

And what sincere, deep-felt tribute is so often paid to Soviet music by ordinary people in capitalist countries! Writing of the concerts of Soviet music in 1959, Harold Collins, a reader of the American Worker, pronounced them splendid. But the most remarkable and the most important historic event, in his opinion, was the attitude of the audiences to them. The enthusiasm and stormy applause of the audiences applied not only to the music and its performance, he wrote, but to something much deeper than that. The applause of the Americans, he continued, was a striking demonstration of friendship. It was not only coming across the footlights, the applause was breaking down all barriers and overcoming all distances. And he hoped, he said, that this reaction of the American public would become known to the gentlemen who still continued to fan the cold war.

Our music goes to the hearts of people because of its noble ideals, humanism, and aesthetic merits. "Humanism, which constitutes the very essence of life of the Soviet people, permeates this music, determining its content and form," Les Nouvelles Critiques wrote in December, 1957. In the West our music is sometimes called "an open book" in which the beauty and riches of the Soviet people's spiritual life are imprinted. "Everything in the name of man, for the benefit of man"-is a motto which people all over the world can discern in the sounds of our music.

The attitude to our music on the part of modernist musicians (in this article we use modernism as a general term for all modern, decadent bourgeois schools and trends in music and aesthetics) and viciously anti-Soviet critics, to whom our ideals, our views on music and even the very idea of humanism in art are alien, is quite different. It is sharply negative. It was in reference to such persons that Sergei Prokofiev, the outstanding Soviet composer, aptly stated in 1951: "Our music strives to instill in man peace and confidence in his strength and in his future. That is why it is hated by those who seek to explode that future and to break the peace of mankind with the conflagration of new sanguinary wars. They are powerless to smother the strains of our songs, our symphonies of peace and labor. . .

Year in and year out the music of the socialist countries is gaining ever stronger positions in world progressive art. Composers of striking talent in all genres of music have come to the fore in these countries. Among them are V. Dobias, D. Kardos, E. Suchon and J. Hanus (Czechoslovakia), W. Lutoslawski, W. Rudzinski, K. Sikorski (Poland), P. Des3au, E. Mayer, C. Eisler (CDR), I. Dumitrescu, P. Constantinescu (Rumania), P. Vladigerov, L. Pipkov, and P. Stainov (Bulgaria), Z. Kodaly, F. Szabo and P. Kadosa (Hungary), Ma Se-chung, Ho Lu-ting (Chinese People's Republic) and many others.

Reactionary ideologists cannot ignore the fact that socialism alone creates the conditions for an unprecedented bloom of musical culture, a culture placed at the service of the entire people.

The formation process of the new music in the socialist countries does not run smoothly, for there is always a struggle against alien influences. Hostile forces from without do not abandon attempts to discredit the distinct humanistic principles of socialist art. All kinds of international musical alliances of a modernistic bent seek to extend their influence on the composers of these countries, to split their ranks and to poison the youth particularly with formalism. But these attempts can lead nowhere. Realistic art called upon to serve the people and socialist construction has a firm foothold in these countries.

Significant changes are now taking place in the musical life of the Eastern countries which have embarked on the road of independent development. At the International Musical Congress held in Teheran in April of 1963, major attention was devoted to problems of the musical culture formation of the Eastern peoples.

In this natural, newly awakened interest in oriental music different tendencies have come to light, however. Representatives of the Asian and African countries at the Congress were unanimous in their definitions of the paths of development of their musical cultures. In an age when our peoples are gaining their independence, it is necessary for us to develop our own music" declared Salakh el Mahdi from Tunisia. Composers and music scholars, urged to safeguard the national traditions, expressed great alarm for the destinies of their musical cultures in connection with the growing danger of their being absorbed in the spate of low-standard music exported to them. The United States and the Western capitalist countries are now exporting to the East large quantities of poor jazz music, sentimental drawing-room songs, the Hollywood version of "native music," Catholic chorales, sugarish songs in ritual style, etc. The radio, records, music scores, books - all these propaganda media - are used to implant western "culture" in the East. The modernists seek in their own way to assume guardianship of the young oriental musical cultures to deprive originality and nip in the bud their longing for a great realistic art.

Within the musical life of the Eastern peoples there is a struggle against imperialist expansion, clericalism, for national independence and a national renaissance. In this respect, of interest was the speech made by J. H. Nketia, from Ghana,

who outlined correct and clear prospects for the bloom of African music. He pointed out that in the countries where rapid social transformations were taking place a re-evaluation of values was necessary. This was bound to lead to changes taking place in any living culture, he said, and therefore music was now going through a turbulent period. It is not European missionaries that are the bearers of civilization in Africa today but the Africans themselves," he said. 'We must create the conditions whereby old music would serve as a basis for new." He argued that in the new social conditions the national musical traditions were bound to undergo changes and that African music would assimilate the best achievements of world musical art.

A dangerous tendency evinced itself at the Congress in the attempt to present the peculiarities of oriental music, distinguishing it from European, as an insurmountable carrier to a rapprochement of the two musical cultures. To certain music scholars the specific features of oriental music are a gulf between the oriental and European music which cannot be bridged. These scholars shut their eyes to the common laws of the history of musical development and greatly overrate the old traditions of national cultures as isolated in themselves. To them the national musical legacy is very much like a museum-piece. The word "protection" was thus used much more often at the Congress than "development." It is quite obvious that such conceptions and such an approach are not conducive to mutual trust, friendship among peoples, understanding and closer intercourse in the interests of social progress, but fan national egoism, antagonism and the spirit of national exclusiveness.

The age of progressive social changes which has dawned cannot but affect the work of the composers of the East, now confronted with the task of combining their best national traditions with the advanced experience of European music. They endeavor to express the new world perception of the people, and the people's aspirations for freedom, through the rich and versatile media and devices of their art.

Music Journal, Jan., 1964.


 

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