Chapter XII The Eighth Season, 1934-1935

With the recording series now in full swing, the amount of New Music activity increased. Whereas in earlier years, the Quarterly issues had been supplemented periodically by a concert given one month and an Orchestra Series edition a few months later, the schedule for 1934-35 was so full that in almost every month of the year at least one event took place. (Sometimes, as in October and march, there were three.) In the eighth season of New Music and the tenth year since the start of the Society, Cowell was to produce no less than fifteen concerts, publications, and recordings, a rigorous pace demanding much advance planning, especially since Cowell, as usual, was teaching in new York that fall. p.295

The "Russian issue was published on October 25, 1934.....these pieces...were "very much in vogue, very fashionable in 1934." Gerald Strang, writing to "whoever-receives-this" at New Music , sent in some $5 memberships and reported: "The New Music Workshop here has been concentrating on choral music this fall. We have sung the things in the October issue and a lot of other Russian works. Many of them are surprisingly good and surprisingly singable." p.300

Green's Sea Calm , on the other hand, is a thoroughly modern work__dark and dissonant. for full appreciation one should know that the madrigal had been written in quarter-tones; if not, one would probably blame the choir for poor intonation. In spite of effective ebbing and flowing of the music to depict the marine landscape, the recording is less than successful because of the heavy dragging pace and the unsure placement of the voices in Vrionides's choir. p.307

The January NMQR release contained Cowell's Suite for Woodwinds . . . the four movements of Cowell's are dark, dissonant, and touched with a sardonic wit.

Cowell was able to incorporate in his miniature suite many of the ideas characteristic of his music: the Andante contains frequent repetition of note and motive followed by dissonant contrapuntal lines moving in opposite directions outward; the Jig has a folk tune played by the clarinet surrounded by glissandi in the other instruments and a humorous too heavy bassoon line. following the Choral __somber, ponderous, homophonic__is a bright fugue in the Allegro with virtuosic passages and a rapidly increasing tempo at the conclusion. p.310

Back in October, Cowell had written to Denny about Schoenberg's arriving in Los Angeles and had asked her what they could do about it. Denny's response has not been located, but, obviously, something was done about it, because on March 7, 1935, Schoenberg came to San Francisco to conduct at a New Music Society concert. One of New Music's most spectacular events, it was to be held in San Francisco's brand new Veteran's Auditorium in the War Memorial Building, rented for the occasion at a cost of $136.00 (plus $6.00 for a piano).

Large yellow posters were distributed around the city announcing the performance of "Arnold Schonberg, Famous Austrian Composer Conducting a Chamber Orchestra [in a] Concert of His Own Compositions." The program was to include the complete Pierrot Lunaire (misspelled Luniare, as usual, on the program) with Rudolphine Radil as soloist and the Kammersymphonie (Opus 9) for fifteen solo instruments (Plate XLVIII).

All four major San Francisco newspapers gave it a generous amount of pre-concert publicity. Marie Hicks Davidson of the San Francisco Call led off, identifying Schoenberg as the "stormy petrel of the musical world [who] has caused more controversy among musicians than any other living composer." "While various works by this distinguished composer have been given here," she said, "this will be the most ambitious and most representative presentation of his works the West has yet heard."

Alexander Fried, who by now was the regular music critic for the San Francisco Examiner, was unusually excited about the coming event: "A year in which we welcome visits of both a Stravinsky and a Schoenberg is a year distinguished in our city's music history." "Our thanks for this concert," he added, "are earned by the new Music Society and its director, henry Cowell."

Alfreld Frankenstein, who had come from Chicago in December to succeed Fried at the Chronicle as music (and art) critic, presented an extensive summary of Schoenberg's evolution, referring to the "storms with which the 'Chamber Symphony' and other works of its era were greeted,"but pointing out that "Schoenberg's music is now beginning to win its audience . . . By a slow and general process, the music of this very modest, learned and profoundly original artist is winning its way."

By the day of the performance, Schoenberg had submitted to interviews. Marjory M. Fisher of the News was surprised to find him a "conformist to superstition. ... .'Not three on a match,' he had said." She also quoted him on conservatism: "Conservatism conserves only one's own lack of knowledge." At the last minute the program was changed, and Frankenstein that morning reported that the concert would start at 9 o'clock instead of 8:30 and that only seven of the twenty-one songs in Pierrot Lunaire would be presented; the chamber symphony would be performed twice.

Lou Harrison was one who missed the change in starting time. He recalls only that, for him, there seemed to be an inordinate wait at the concert:

It was quite some time, forty or forty-five minutes, because one of the important players was late. He had been playing in the opera next door at the opera house and he had to come through a subterranean tunnel to get to the chamber music stage. In the meantime, Henry had to jolly the audience along, as he put it. I've never forgotten that__he gave a kind of history of Schoenberg__very informative. And then the great event occurred, and it was really a marvelous concert. That was my first live hearing of parts of Pierrot Lunaire and certainly of the Chamber Symphony. It was very exciting indeed.

Alfred Frankenstein remembers that Schoenberg stayed at the same hotel__William Taylor Hotel__where he was living at the time:

I remember taking Schoenberg and his wife and child to and from the concert, shepherding them, and being kind of babysitter for them, while they were here. And then there was also something__I'm not sure what it was__happened during the concert. A rage came over him. he was in a terrible mood when we got through. I took him back to the hotel, and he was fit to be tied. pp313-314

Undoubtedly, Schoenberg's displeasure stemmed from a lack of ability in the musicians he was conducting. Gerald Strang remembers overhearing Schoenberg's disparaging comments about the musicianship of the performers: "He is extremely fussy and not at all satisfied with the abilities of some of the musicians. I later learned that this was characteristic of him__he was always fussy and meticulous in the nth degree." Strang, who had cut his honeymoon short in order to get back to San Francisco to hear Cowell's performance of Pierrot Lunaire in October 1930, found this was another incredible occasion."

"I got the job of trying to meet the Schoenbergs' personal complaints and requirements. If they didn't like the service at the hotel, or if it was a question of somebody finding a restaurant for them, I was the one who got the chance to do it."

I remember sitting through every single rehearsal, being amazed at Schoenberg's tremendous concern with every little detail. This kind of rehearsal, which was not unusual in Europe, was something we simply had never seen: the idea that every grade of dynamics had to be worked out and every attack, every phrasing, in every instrument, whether it was conspicuous or not, was the subject of this endless attention and care."

When the concert was over, the critics responded in curious ways. Between the lines, one could sense that they did not like the music, but they used up many paragraphs discussing it, explaining how it really was reminiscent of Wagner and Strauss. Recognizing the significance of the occasion, they thanked Cowell and the Society for sponsoring the concert but remained moot as to their own reactions. "Pierrot" may not be a completely effective masterpiece," said Fried, but "it certainly is an epochal achievement in the history of musical style."

Frankenstein was one who had difficulty hiding his disappointment. When the Chamber Symphony was played at the beginning and at the end of the concert, he found that "some of the large, rugged sonority of the composition was lost in the large spaces of the hall, but all the amazing intricacies and subtleties of its construction were admirably apparent in the composer's own meticulous conducting". As for the "Song of the Wood-Dove" from Gurrelieder, added to the program at the last minute, Frankenstein thought that "with the piano, as we heard it last night, it loses a great deal, although it was very beautifully sung by Rudolphine Radil."

Although Marie Hicks Davidson reported that the audience cheered, and Raisch Stoll, in the Argonaut, spoke of the "storm of applause" after the Kammersymphonie was played, they were probably referring to the response by New Music members. As Strang realistically put it, the concert was received with "enthusiastic indifference." "There were a few of us, of course," he says, "who were amazed and delighted, but there were a lot of people to whom it Henry's good publicity, the New Music Society must have very nearly broken even on it. There were a lot of people there." In fact, Frankenstein says, nearly all the 2,000 seats were filled.

After the performance, the devoted gathered at Olive Cowell's new house in Forest Hills for a reception. Mrs. Cowell remembers that

Schoenberg was a very proper person and said nothing at the reception, even though the concert wasn't too professionally conducted. Some of these fancy people who always wanted to promote the latest thing wondered what Olive Cowell was doing, entertaining Schoenberg in her home. They sent their chauffeurs out during the day to find the house. When the people arrived that night they discovered something__a modern composer in a modern house!"

The Society was in the news again later in the month when Frankenstein saluted Cowell in a lengthy article in the Chronicle on the occasion of the Society's tenth anniversary year. Although new to San Francisco, Frankenstein was, of course, no stranger to New Music, having been a member and a subscriber since the early years. After discussing the founding of the Society, listing some of the issues in New Music , and the recordings, he concluded with this assessment of New Music's value:

Not every piece of music published, performed or recorded by the New Music Society is an eternal masterpiece. Some of the works it has sponsored are obviously experimental for experiment's sake. A program in front of me lists, for instance, a "Prelude in Black and White," by the Boston conductor, Nicholas [sic] Slonimsky, in which the right hand plays exclusively on the white keys of the piano and the left hand exclusively on the black. But that is exactly as it should be. Experiment is what the society is for, the testing, outlet and release of ideas that otherwise would not get a hearing. It has taken up and sponsored an amazing variety of individuals, from the retiring, middle-aged Old American, Charles lves, to the much publicized George Antheil, and a long list of new young talents that need to find an audience in order to find themselves. It is not too much to say that if there is hope for the creative future of music in America, the New Music Society of California is one of the principal reasons for that hope. pp314-315

Letter to Freddy , the one song in English, is a whimsical setting of a Gertrude Stein text, completed in January 1935 in San Francisco. In keeping with the homey text, Bowles has a simple oom-pah-pah setting and adds a few grace notes when Stein suggests that Freddy come to Paris (see Example 151). p.319

The biographical notes for the three composers represented [July '35 issue of New Music ] were brief. Those on Rudhyar referred to his books__"Art as Release of Power" and "The Rebirth of Hindu Music"__as well as his musical works and the statement that "the mystical and psychological emphasis of the philosophy he teaches is reflected in his music and his approach to the meaning of musical tone." p325-326

Written in Carmel in 1929 and dedicated to Malya Contento, whom Rudhyar married in June 1930, the work is a series of five piano pieces__short in length (one to three pages) but large in gesture, written frequently in three staves to accommodate the wide-ranging improvisational style. They are replete with majestic octaves and massive tone clusters. The cadence to the final section employs four staves (Example 152). p 326

In this issue Cowell concluded the 1934-35 year with one of his most powerful demonstrations of radical independence. At a time when much of American music was moving toward conservatism with leanings toward folk orientation, a feeling for the land, and a simple style, Cowell was still publishing the complex, dissonant, iconoclastic styles with which he had begun eight years earlier. New Music may have aged, but neither it nor Cowell had lost momentum. The 1934-35 season was one of the most productive of all: four issues of New Music , three editions in the Orchestra Series, four recordings, and four Society concerts.

There was evidence, during that anniversary year, of a growing awareness of New Music both at home and abroad. On March 19 the Academy of Arts in Honolulu was the setting for a phonograph recital during which NMQR recordings of music by Weiss, Crawford, Becker, Chavez, and Riegger were played. In May, a concert at the Sala Borromini in Rome featured six compositions published in New Music : piano music by Strang, Ardevol, and Garcia Caturla, and songs by Green and Roldan. By July, music dealers throughout the United States were beginning to stock New Music , Cowell wrote to Ives that month telling him that he was having "very good luck with placing NM on consignment with large dealers . . . and many other smaller dealers." He ended his letter jubilantly: "i have heard from L[yon] and H[ealy] in Chicago, that they have sold five copies over the counter during the last month." p.327