Centrepiece
Box-office democracy
Colin Welch
Last week, following in the footsteps of Prof. Ed Schildknecht of Indiana, I attributed the excesses of Bernhard Alois
Zimmermann and his fellow-cacophonists to the perverse workings of socialism and democracy. Some of you may have thought this a bit far-fetched. But I ask you: if Zim- mermann, for instance, makes a living, what but socialism or democracy can ex- plain or supply it? I will bet you a disc of Lortzing's Zar and Zimmermann that never has any work of Zimmermann, B.A., been played by an unsubsidised orchestra (if that is the right word) on unsubsidised in- struments and devices in an unsubsidised hall at a profit. It must be socialism which, like the milch cow with a thousand teats (Mencken's characterisation of Roosevelt's New Deal), makes good the deficits and gives Zimmermann directly or indirectly an income.
Against democracy the charge is more complex. Obviously no one has ever voted for Zimmermann. If he stood in a by- election against even the most recondite normal composers, he would surely lose his deposit: Max Reger (Con) 25,283; Hans Pfitzner (Nat) 21,007; B. A. Zimmermann (Cac) 314. But what democracy has voted for is the extinction of the rentier and the emasculation of the private patron. It did not vote for the extinction of art, which it vaguely favours. So the functions of the patron have been transferred to a multiplicity of public bodies, which have virtually all been infiltrated and captured from within by the apostles of modernism. In theory answerable to the socialists who supply their funds, they are in practice answerable to no one at all. Any criticism of their antics is dismissed as cheeseparing philistinism.
A frightful uproar was generated years ago by Manchester Corporation which, against the advice of its 'experts', impudently refused to buy Henry Moore's `Draped Torso'. In the company soon after of a group of indignant aesthetes, I found myself alone in suggesting that the Cor- poration was quite within its rights, alone, that is to say, except for Henry Moore himself, who honourably and sturdily defended the Mancunian philistines (and had perhaps already found a more amenable public buyer). This however was a very untypical revolt. The experts are nor- mally vigorously defended by elected politi- cians who may understand nothing of what the experts are about but would die rather than confess it. Similar developments have occurred in private foundations, in which money left by dead philistines is normally dispensed by living 'experts'. Thus have patrons, who were only ordinary people with very varied tastes who happened to be rich, been replaced by closely-knit conspiracies and oligarchies of modernistic freaks, who are the product of democracy and act arrogantly in its name; yet, as in so many other fields, democracy has here acted indirectly and perversely, by delegation, to produce results which 95 or more voters out of a hundred would have rejected, given the chance, The box-office is in fact far more democratic than the freaks, but for its verdicts they have absolute con- tempt. In no way answerable to their despised paymasters, it would be quite unjust to regard these freaks as totally and con- sciously irresponsible. They are answerable to each other, to their peers. Like Marxists, also a tiny minority, they regard themselves as acting in the best interests of all, of the masses, who just happen not yet to have acquired that higher consciousness and enlightenment which would teach them where their best interests lie. Like Marxists, they are answerable to the future, in par- ticular to the future of art. This art exists already, unpopular, misunderstood, even hated. Yet if tended and cherished, and forced by the enlightened few on the unen- lightened many, many freaks genuinely believe that it will wax and flourish, become in time universally known and loved.
The case of Mahler seems to me a specially interesting one. His symphonies made little headway in his lifetime, though he was exceptionally well placed to secure them a hearing. So far as I know, it was the critics as much as the public who objected to them. What the critics may have objected to is what some of us object to still: Mahler's torrential prolixity and looseness of form; the sentimentality and banality of many of his tunes and themes; the absence (except in the Ninth) of any warm `middle' to his orchestration, with a resultant
preponderance, despite the use of vast and exotic resources, of high squeaks and low grunts; his protracted development sec- tions, in which commonplace materials are often subjected to repulsive variations, distortions and combinations; his stridencY, exhibitionism and bombast, his nimietY; whiffs of cheap scent and a pervading flavour of cream, whipped and over- sugared, which has turned sour. None of these defects, if justly described, has prevented him from achieving a stupen- dous posthumous popular success; indeed, I'm sure that most of them have powerfully contributed to that success. His own lack 01, taste and proportion, his hysteria and self- indulgence may well commend him to those wondering where to go after the Beatles. I can remember when the bitter-sweet adagietto of the Fifth, which with ques- tionable fitness accompanied the Death in Venice film, was his only piece recorded. Ted Heath has now whole shelves filled with rival versions of every symphony: he carfnot be alone. What is far more surprising is that these defects have not denied Mahler the esteem even veneration, of his Viennese successors: of Schoenberg, Berg, their followers all critical acolytes. I suppose that you conk' regard Berg as Mahler taken a stage further; though my ears suggest a difference of kin° rather than degree. But between the cerebral (later) Schoenberg and the effi„°:, tional Mahler, is there any true ale whatever? What on earth, we ask, e°11„ Schoenberg have found to admire Mahler? What but, as Samuel LiPrna" argued in a brilliant Commentary article,' the supposed proof of what he desperate wanted to believe: that a composer once re- jected as difficult and modern can beconl,cs top of the pops! We know Schoenbert, ambitions, pathetic as they may seem: ot as whistled by errand boys, to be recognisedi,r a sort of Tchaikovsky, but better. Mall:e was the great exemplar who had made tn. charts, whistled if not by errand boys. 3,(.. least by social workers, junior Probatioiji.. officers and teachers, students and las night-of-the-prommers. can Yet, alas, Mahler's `proof' that Y°1-I be both `modern' and popular misleading. He can certainly stray at ti.rfilh, into a piquant sort of modernity, especti.Jt in those development sections. But surely in not the acid dissonances of these ehxcthe sions into the 20th century which grab groupies, but the acres of Schmalz whInLo separate them. Schoenberg, Zirrirnertna _c and others who may cling desperate
-esperate hOpo
to his coat-tails provide no such Sclunal',1_, is utterly wallow in. Failing to do so, can they e'c' hope to make the charts?
ti which proves that the cacophonists'
There is in fact nothing in musical history will ever come. The possibility exists;will does the possibility that cacophony as,_ turn out to be a painful and fruitless w of time and resources, with cornpreh ensivvr
and light always about to descend, yet ne actually descending.
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