Lectures on Modern Music

Lectures on Modern Music Synopsis

Excerpt from Lectures on Modern Music: Delivered, Under the Auspices of the Rice Institute Lectureship in Music, January 27, 28, and 29, 1925

The harmony of modern music, especially 1ts dissonance, is, of course, the chief stumbling block. That is natural and unavoidable, and the difficulties which it presents should not be under-estimated nor, on the other hand, ex aggerated. The obstacle is obviously of a technical nature; it IS a question of language, a matter of vocabulary and syntax and is therefore to be mastered like any linguistic problem' - by the processes of mental and aural assimila tion. To learn to speak a new language is difficult; but It IS relatively easy to learn to understand it. So it is with modern harmony. At a first hearing, Stravinsky's Sacred Rites of Spring seems a mere uncoordinated mass of sound. But listen to it again and again' and gradually the sense of confusion disappears. Little by little the catch ing quality of its themes and the electric force of the rhythms emerge, and the music becomes a thing so full of life and power that you marvel at your previous bewilder ment.

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