1. Origins

1. Origins.

Modernism first took shape as a historical phenomenon between 1883 and 1914. Before the death of Wagner, the term ‘modern’ was used interchangeably with ‘new’, ‘recent’ and ‘contemporary’. In its Wagnerian usage it also denoted an embrace of a wide palette of music as a means of conveying narrative and extra-musical content, as opposed to ‘absolute’ music. Its use in the early and middle 19th century echoed the controversies of the 18th-century debate in which the ancients were contrasted with the moderns. Scepticism about the quality and value of the new in art and music pervaded the early and middle 19th century, indicating the lasting influence of 18th-century criticism and the controversies surrounding post-revolutionary Romanticism (whose aesthetic response to a perceived moment of dramatic historical change – as in the criticism of Friedrich Schlegel and the painting of Caspar David Friedrich – was inconsistent, at once anticipating the ambitions of Modernism and reinvigorating a re-examination of antiquity and the Middle Ages). Neo-classicism thrived until 1830 and evolved into an eclectic but dominant 19th-century historicism. Doubt was cast on the cultural and aesthetic potential of the present, particularly in the context of rising rates of literacy and the expansion of the audience well beyond the ranks of the 18th-century aristocracy. Wagner himself used the term ‘modern’ in 1849 as an epithet directed against Meyerbeer as a way of characterizing grand opera’s cheap concession to popular and philistine taste. Art was being debased by those who sought to celebrate and exploit the spiritually corrupt aspects of modern life, including trade, industry and journalistically manipulated public opinion.

From the mid-century, however, following Baudelaire’s defence of Wagner in 1861 and use of the word ‘modern’ in 1863 (The Painter of Modern Life), the term came to signify, in a positive sense, a revolutionary avant garde that rejected historical models and confronted directly the overwhelming character of the new in contemporary life by penetrating beyond the surface of modernity. The link between Baudelaire’s notion of the modern and Wagner’s ideas about the artwork of the future was forged in the frequent application of the term to describe the work not only of Wagner but of composers who were influenced by him in the generation of Mahler and Strauss. By the early 1890s, the word was used equally in assigning praise and blame with respect to post-Wagnerian music that experimented with form, tonality and orchestration in a manner evocative of the radical qualities of contemporary culture and society. In instrumental music the modern was associated with the tone poem and large-scale work evocative of ideas and emotions using massive forces and novel instrumental effects. By 1900, the word had ceased to denote, in a generic sense, the new.

Issues of terminology aside, Modernism, throughout the 20th century, retained its initial intellectual debt to Wagnerian ideas and conceits regarding the link between music and history. The art of music was perceived to need to anticipate and ultimately to reflect the logic of history. In Wagner’s view, the imperative of art was a dynamic originality rooted in the past but transcending it. The history of music developed progressively through time, rendering initially novel and forward-looking styles dominant, only to witness that dominance undermined and superseded by the next wave of prescient change as history moved forwards. Success with the established audience of one’s time was not a criterion of aesthetic merit or historical significance. Legitimate originality in art was inherently progressive, oppositional and critical. It pierced the surface of reigning tastes, undermined them and revealed hidden truths and profound historical currents. Art true to its own time, whether called modern or the artwork of the future, forged a leading edge in history; it constituted a prophetic force for change often rejected by contemporary critics and connoisseurs. Consonant with such Wagnerian ideals, the first generation of 20th-century Modernist composers readily embraced the historical relativism implicit in the motto inscribed on Joseph Maria Olbrich’s 1897 Secession building in Vienna: Der Zeit ihre Kunst: Der Kunst ihre Freiheit (‘To each age its art: to art, its freedom’). Music shared with the other arts not only the obligation to engage the historical uniqueness of modern life but the need to bring forward the subjective and uniquely insightful experience of the creative artist, whose perceptions and experiences were deemed decisive as the substance of the aesthetic realm. Music was understood as crucial to the notion of an organic and encompassing art experience whose impact extended beyond mere aesthetic appreciation.