Influenced by Everything

Composers and writers were obsessed with establishing national identities through music in the early 20th century, in France and many Western countries. The disdain Cocteau’s writing¹ shows for German music and the “mudiness” of Russian influence in Debussy’s music is at once familiar and bizarre. Certainly many people experience national pride; one need look no further than the Olympics or World Cup. There are also vigorous strains of nationalism running through contemporary politics, with nationalistic groups claiming to have fundamentally united constituencies. But while modern equivalents of nation-building exist, cleanly cutting music into categories this way is an artificial endeavor. Ideas cannot exist in isolation, so Cocteau’s need to assign hierarchical values to national identities seems one of the more futile corners of the discourse of the period

Milhaud’s musings from “The Evolution of Modern Music in Paris and Vienna,” on the other hand, appear more genuine to the artistic experience.² Time and again composers are defined by their influences. Debussy was accused by his peers of being heavily inspired by Russia, for example, while Milhaud acknowledged influences of the past in his and other composers’ work in returning to Greek roots for a source of Frenchness. Even when indulging in nationalistic impulses, diverse roots nourish the new art. Milhaud refers to this inevitable shaping as a river, with new art always flowing from the old and always being explainable by its surroundings. This imagery is appealing in several ways. Just as a river receives water from many different sources, even other rivers, so too is composition in one tradition nourished by the works of others. Rivers also change over time, and in turn change their environment, much like musical practices shift. Composers are also often swept along in mass movements to include new ideas in their work. Of course, Milhaud still saw irreconcilable difference between the Paris and Vienna schools of his time, but his acknowledgement of the real way music comes about is refreshing.

The river analogy has some limitations–works of art may be related, but the complexity of the eddies in the river might outweigh the whole–but this understanding of creativity offers a healthy standard for composers, albeit a difficult-to-analyze landscape for musicologists. Branches of development in music, from sonata form to bitonality, can be collected into analytical categories not entirely unlike those Cocteau and others like him attempted to assemble in their time. But even the influences of an adversarial other leave inscrutable and indelible marks on the complex craft that is composition. Ravel synthesized this best in his speech on Contemporary Music.³ To him, sincerity of expression to one’s self was of most importance, whatever the nationality of the tools one used. The magic of art lies in how these disparate effects are combined.