The Paths of Composition in the Twentieth Century

We have spoken many times before about the dilemma of twentieth-century art. In the nineteenth century, every branch of art, in its own way, reached a point that twentieth-century artists felt could not be continued. Nevertheless, in defence of the twentieth-century avant-garde, one must acknowledge the role of Richard Wagner, one of the greatest innovators and culminators of the nineteenth century, who created this particular endpoint not only through his unfathomable dimensions, but also through the overcomplication of harmonic relationships, the endless prolongation of musical processes, the massive overdose of tension, and the almost painful parsimony of resolution. In doing so, he led the musical thinking of the preceding centuries into a forest from which—it seemed—there was no way out.

Wagner’s ability to generate almost endless tension, and to turn the very sensation of tension and resolution on its head, made it impossible for the generation after him to continue along this path. Nor did Mahler and his contemporaries offer the possibility of continuation, let alone of surpassing him, having written works of extraordinary length and spiritual depth for a vast orchestral apparatus. So entirely new musical languages were born—somewhat out of necessity. Languages so new that even today we musicians find it difficult to navigate the works composed at that time. This multitude of new paths, new compositional techniques and ways of thinking drove an ever-widening wedge between the creator and their audience.

Over the decades of the last century, a growing reluctance towards contemporary music developed among the public, which increasingly showed itself in the fact that ordinary listeners stopped attending concerts. Among composers, meanwhile, there was a growing tendency towards a schizoid withdrawal from reality, and a proud renunciation of the audience as an indispensable element of art. It would be unfair, however, to hold Wagner solely responsible for everything. To be fair, it must be said that every composer of the era began as a follower of Wagner, and the inability to continue was not necessarily a matter of principle, but rather a practical recognition of the inaccessibility of Wagner’s genius and sophistication, and especially of the impossibility of surpassing him.

So the composers of the twentieth century—particularly at the start of the century—clearly sought to set out on new paths. From a historical perspective, it is now clear that three paths were available. The first, and most drastic, breaks with the most defining aspect of the musical logic of previous centuries—namely, the relationship between the overtones and the fundamental—and transforms the logic of the attraction between sounds, derived from the laws of nature, into a constructed system of relationships based on equality. The best-known exponent of this is Arnold Schoenberg and the dodecaphony he employed. Dodecaphony is a compositional technique that treats the twelve notes of the tempered semitone scale as equal during the compositional process.

The second path is the turn towards folk music as part of the awakening of Eastern European national consciousness—whether this involves an already urbanised form of folk music or, in some cases, an exploration of a folk-music culture going back many centuries. For composers who chose this path, folk music serves as a source of inspiration and a musical cast of mind, providing conviction enough to find a new path. The third, and in fact the most obvious, path is very similar to the previous one, except that it is not a new source that provides the conviction, but the centuries-old music itself, which these composers wish to move beyond. This path is a kind of post-classicism, which we call neoclassicism in the case of composers from the first half of the century, and post-romanticism in the twenty-first.

All these terms are imprecise, for the essence of this way of thinking is nothing other than that it does not deny the musical logic of the preceding century—and in particular its most fundamental element, the aforementioned relationship between overtone and fundamental—while at the same time placing no restrictions on its means, its compositional imagination or its musical language. This path was followed by Bartók and Kodály, as well as Stravinsky and Prokofiev, among others, all of whom drew inspiration from both folklore and neoclassicism. I have spoken to you many times before about the relationship between the overtones and the fundamental. I have often explained the overtones that sound alongside the fundamental, and the consequences of their resonance, for the preservation of the overtone–fundamental relationship is a pivotal issue in the music history of the twentieth century.

The relationship between overtone and fundamental is nothing other than the fulfilment of the listener’s anticipation regarding the conclusion of a melody or a piece, or the completion of a phrase; when this is fulfilled, it brings a sense of relief; when it is not, it leaves a feeling of something missing. The musical process blends these two feelings almost imperceptibly; apart from the piece’s final, reassuring conclusion, almost every resolution carries within it a renewed anticipation, for when the overtone resolves to a fundamental, that fundamental behaves, after a brief pause—or even at the very moment of resolution—as a new overtone. It is like a family tree: the overtone, which can be seen as the child, longs for its mother, but the mother also longs for her own mother, and so on. This is what the history of European music is about.

The first approach, and its constructed system of equal-ranking tones—dodecaphony—deprives us of this point of reference, which is why it becomes so difficult to grasp. In what follows, I shall try to show, with a few examples, that some twentieth-century Hungarian composers never abandoned their attachment to the overtone–fundamental relationship, while another, dwindling group consistently adhered to the new system. We shall see that in the careers of most composers active in the second half of the twentieth century, one can recognise an enthusiastic, devoted experimentation with the new system, followed by a return—with varying degrees of detour—to post-classical or post-romantic thinking.

In recent decades, however, there has also been a strengthening of a musical cast of mind that regards the various linguistic tools of music history, its different eras, and our collective musical memory as a single potential toolkit. Accordingly, it does not shy away from regarding the toolkits of different periods and different musical languages as its own, all at once. Leading the way in this process are composers from nations—Poland, Hungary and the Baltic states, for example—for whom folklore remained, to some extent, a living tradition and the custodian of the cultural community even in the final third of the twentieth century. For artists of every era, strong folklore traditions make the question of one’s relationship with the community, and the audience that represents it, in a certain sense unavoidable.

I feel that in today’s world the only adequate way of thinking is to dare to accept that our language is a mixture of many languages, our culture a blend of many cultures, and to acknowledge that in our personal and collective memory lies an inexhaustible multitude of small gestures, fragments of memory, feelings and clichés. Our lives today are a series of almost endless déjà-vu moments in space and time; we think we recognise things we have already encountered, either directly or through several intermediaries. The modern person’s capacity for association—this almost endless series of mental connections—is the result of the linguistic and cultural parallels and divergences that exist within us. And it is precisely these associations that, in many ways, help us to understand and find our way through contemporary music.