THE OLDEST TWENTIETH-CENTURY COMPOSER?

Chapter:

CHAPTER 7 Social Validation

Source:

MUSIC IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

Here is how Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (1903–69), the musical philosopher whom we met in chapter 6 as an advocate of Schoenberg and his pupils, managed to “salvage for history” a composer he admired, but one whose music failed to keep up with the pace of Viennese innovation. Perhaps significantly, the composer in question, Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) was, like Bartók, a member of one of the outlying non-Germanic populations within the old empire of which Vienna was the center and capital. “Where the evolutionary direction of Western music failed to be realized fully,” wrote Adorno,

as in some of the rural regions of southeastern Europe, tonal material could be used, until quite recently, without shame. One thinks of the magnificent art of Janáček: all its folkloristic tendencies clearly must be counted part of the most progressive dimension of European art music. The legitimation of such music from the periphery is based ultimately on the fact that a coherent and selective technical canon emerges from it. Truly exotic music, the material of which, even though it is familiar, is organized in a totally different way from that of the West, has a power of alienation which places it in the company of the avant-garde and not that of nationalistic reaction.¹⁸

Citation (MLA):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 7 Social Validation." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-007008.xml>.

Citation (APA):

Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 7 Social Validation. In Oxford University Press, Music in the Early Twentieth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 15 Mar. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-007008.xml

Citation (Chicago):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 7 Social Validation." In Music in the Early Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 15 Mar. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-007008.xml