{"id":6415,"date":"2021-12-20T10:09:30","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T16:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=6415"},"modified":"2021-12-20T10:32:35","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T16:32:35","slug":"edgard-varese-and-william-grant-still-a-mentorship-gone-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2021\/12\/20\/edgard-varese-and-william-grant-still-a-mentorship-gone-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Edgard Var\u00e9se and William Grant Still – A Mentorship Gone Wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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William Grant Still<\/p><\/div>\n

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Edgard Var\u00e9se<\/p><\/div>\n

William Grant Still\u2019s feelings on the importance of musical form could not possibly be made clearer than in his 1950 essay, <\/span>The Structure of Music<\/span><\/i>. He describes in detail the importance of learning the rules of musical form, and how laying out the form of a piece is integral to his composition process. However, most striking about this essay was the way that Still opens and closes by thoroughly berating composers who reject traditional musical form in favor of a modern, atonal sound.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey believe that in order to compose, one need only find a few bizarre harmonies, string them together without thought of melody, form or sequence, and emerge with a \u2018composition\u2019 that would bring them acclaim.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIndeed, it is hard to detect the actual themes, since the members of this school actually scorn what we know as melody.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cTheir occasional consonant intervals are weak because of bad handling; their vaunted counterpoint is incorrect, disjointed and muddled.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

These strong words left me with one particular question for Still. <\/span>Who hurt you?<\/span><\/i> In her introduction to Still\u2019s essay within the collection <\/span>Readings in Black American Music<\/span><\/i>, Eileen Southern mentions that he had gone through a phase of writing \u201cexperimental music\u201d before deciding to go in a different direction. In all of his admonitions against composers who abandoned form, was Still merely repeating what critics had said about his compositions from this experimental phase? In the beginning of his essay, he insists that \u201cfaulty form is immediately apparent\u201d to a trained listener, and that an untrained listener \u201cwill wonder why he has not been able to retain a coherent impression of what has been performed.\u201d This sounds to me like evidence taken from personal experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

William Grant Still did indeed compose at least two works that were on the edgy side for his time, namely <\/span>From the Land of Dreams <\/span><\/i>in 1924 and <\/span>Levee Land <\/span><\/i>in 1925. Both works were performed and immediately withdrawn after puzzled reviews from critics. He received feedback that called his compositions \u201ccurious noises,\u201d \u201cunprofitable to compose or listen to,\u201d and \u201ca slavish imitation of the noises which Edgard Var\u00e9se calls compositions.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Edgard Var\u00e9se was a French-American composer who worked closely with Still as one of his mentors, even called one of his most influential teachers by several sources. His music, or as he called it, \u201corganized sound,\u201d fits all too perfectly into the category of music criticized by Still in 1950. In the 1920s, when he was working with Still, he was producing works like this:<\/span><\/p>\n