[Dixielandjazz] Not all Classical Musicians hated the "new" music.

[Steve Barbone]

Below are excerpts from an early review of Will Marion Cook's Southern
Syncopated Orchestra by Swiss composer/conductor, Ernest Ansermet. (who you
may remember was a great friend of Igor Stravinsky) Long but worth the read.

Note the connection to European influences (paragraph 4) and his admiration
of Sydney Bechet. (last paragraph) And note the last sentence, written
almost 90 years ago, it was prescient.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


by ERNEST ANSERMET  (appeared in 1918 in the Swiss "Revue Romande")

The first thing that strikes one about the Southern Syncopated Orchestra is
the astonishing perfection, the superb taste and the fervor of its playing.
I couldn't tell whether these artists feel it is their duty to be sincere,
or whether they are driven by the idea that they have a "mission" to
fulfill, or whether they are convinced of the "nobility" of their task, or
have that holy audacity and that sacred "valor" which the musical code
requires of our European musicians, nor indeed whether they are animated by
any "idea" whatsoever. But I can see they have a very keen sense of the
music they love, and a pleasure in making it which they communicate to the
hearer with irresistible force a pleasure which pushes them to outdo
themselves all the time, to constantly enrich and refine their medium. They
play generally without written music, and even when they have it, the score
only serves to indicate the general line, for there are very few numbers I
have heard them execute twice with exactly the same effects. I imagine that,
knowing the voice attributed to them in the harmonic ensemble and conscious
of the role their instrument is to play, they can let themselves go, in a
certain direction and within certain limits, as their hearts' desire. They
are so entirely possessed by the music they play, that they can't stop
themselves from dancing inwardly to it in such a way that their playing is a
real show. When they indulge in one of their favorite effects, which is to
take up the refrain of a dance in a tempo suddenly twice as slow and with
redoubled intensity and figuration, a truly gripping thing takes place: it
seems as if a great wind is passing over a forest or as if a door is
suddenly opened on a wild orgy.


The musician who directs them and who is responsible for creating the
ensemble, Mr. Will Marion Cook, is, moreover a master in every respect, and
there is no orchestra leader I so delight in seeing conduct. As for the
music which makes up their repertory, it is purely vocal, -or for one voice,
a vocal quartet, or a choir accompanied by instruments -or again purely
instrumental; it bears the names of the composers (all unknown to our world)
or is simply marked Traditional. This traditional music is religious in
inspiration. It is the index of a whole mode of religion and of a veritable
religious art which merits a study of its own. The whole Old Testament is
related with a very touching realism and familiarity. There is much about
Moses, Gideon, the Jordan, and Pharaoh. In an immense unison, the voices
intone: Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land. Tell old Pharaoh: Let my
people go. And suddenly, there they are clapping their hands and beating
their feet with the joy of a schoolboy told that the teacher is sick: Good
news! Good news! Sweet Chariot's coming


Or else a singer gets up, I got a shoes [pronouncing the s to make it sound
nice], you got a shoes, all God's children got a shoes. When I get to
heaven, gonna put on my shoes, gonna walk all over God's heaven. And the
word heaven they pronounce in one syllable as he'm, which makes a long
resonance in their closed mouths, like a gong. Another time, a deep bass
points out the empty platform to one of his companions and invites him to
come and relate the battle of Jericho, and it's a terrible story which
begins, with the mighty deeds of King Joshua and all sorts of menacing fists
and martial treads; then hands are raised and then lowered, and the walls
come tumbling down. In a lower tone, but with such a tender accent, the
quarter also sings Give me your hand" or sometimes "Brother, give me your
hand. There is another very beautiful part in which a female voice sings the
ample sweeping melody (wavering between the major and minor) about those who
are going away toward the valley of the Jordan to cross the river, while the
choir scans with an ever more vehement motif, "Nobody was heard praying."


Of the nonanonymous works, some are related to a greater or lesser extent to
these religiously inspired works, others sing of the sweetness of Georgia
peaches, or of the perfume of flowers, or of country, mother, or sweetheart;
the instrumental works are rags or even European dances. Among the authors
some are Negroes, but these are the exceptions. Even though the author does
not have a European origin, the music does, for most ragtime, for example,
is founded on well-known motifs or on formulas peculiar to our art -there is
one on the Wedding March from Midsummer Night's Dream, another on
Rachmaninoff's celebrated Prelude, another on typical Debussy chords,
another simply on the major scale.


The aforementioned traditional music itself has its source as could
doubtless be easily rediscovered, in the songs the Negroes learned from the
English missionaries. Thus, all or nearly all, the music of the Southern
Syncopated Orchestra is in origin foreign to these Negroes. How is this
possible? Because it is not the material that makes Negro music, it is the
spirit. . . .


Nevertheless, some works in the repertory of the Southern Syncopated
Orchestra mark the passage from oral tradition to written tradition, or, if
you choose, from popular art to learned art. First we have a number for
choir choir, soprano, and orchestra, inspired by the traditional works, and
signed Dett. On a Biblical text, Listen to the Lambs, which Handel too has
treated in the Messiah, this musician has written a work which is very
simple yet very pure and has a beautiful rapturous quality. Or we have some
works of Will Marion Cook, including a very fine vocal scene entitled
Rainsong. Perhaps one of these days we shall see the Glinka of Negro music.
But I am inclined to think that the strongest manifestation of the racial
genius lies in the Blues.


The blues occurs when the Negro is sad, when he is far from his home, his
mother, or his sweetheart. Then he thinks of a motif or a preferred rhythm
and takes his trombone, or his violin, or his banjo, or his clarinet, or his
drum, or else he sings, or simply dances. And on the chosen motif, he plumbs
the depths of his imagination. This makes his sadness pass away‹it is the
Blues. 


There is in the Southern Syncopated Orchestra an extraordinary clarinet
virtuoso who is, so it seems, the first of his race to have composed
perfectly formed blues on the clarinet. I've heard two of them which he
elaborated at great length. They are admirable equally for their richness of
invention, their force of accent, and their daring novelty and unexpected
turns. These solos already show the germ of a new style. Their form is
gripping, abrupt, harsh, with a brusque and pitiless ending like that of
Bach's Second Brandenburg Concerto. I wish to set down the name of this
artist of genius; as for myself, I shall never forget it‹it is Sidney
Bechet. When one has tried so often to find in the past one of those figures
to whom we owe the creation of our art as we know it today‹those men of the
17th and 18th centuries, for example, who wrote the expressive works of
dance airs which cleared the way for Haydn and Mozart‹what a moving thing it
is to meet this black, fat boy with white teeth and narrow forehead, who is
very glad one likes what he does, but can say nothing of his art, except
that he follows his "own way"‹and then one considers that perhaps his "own
way" is the highway along which the whole world will swing tomorrow.