New-York tribune., 1921-03-20

SioW do bSio1c anu Will u ucUA&S-tt
intensity and figr~ation, an extraoz-
dinarily thrilling thing happens: it
seems as though a great wind were
passing through a forest or that
great doors had beer brusqueiy
opened upon some immense orgy
M. Ansermet pays remarkable
tribute to Will Marion Cook, the
colored composer and director who
organized this ensemble. Cook is,
the Frenchman asserts, master in
every respect.
AS SUCH. there is no conductor
who gives me as much pleasure to
watch. =
Beyond Conventional Musician
1t is impossible, he continues, for
the conventionally and accidentally
trained musician to play or to APP
preciate the infinite variety and sub
tlety of ragtime and jazz. In the
jazz band every instrument is
transformed, every musical value is
revalued The total effect is the
release Of formidable scale, which
runs from a most refined sorority,
recalling the orchestra Of Ravel. to
that terrifying tumult in which
handclaps and cries mingle with the
unleashed fury of the instruments.
To this Continental authority the
Cook orchestra represented a per-
feet type of what is known as pop
ular art"-art which is still in the
stage of oral tradition. Even
though some of the music may be
actually written down, it is not
thereby fixed, and can be fully real
lied, completely effective, only in the
performance of it.
M. Ansermet is especially enthu-
siastic about the talent of the clar-
inetist of the organization, d talent,
he thinks, that rises almost to
genius. Sydney Beckett is his name.
He claims to be the first of his race
to compose "blues" of a finished
form directly upon his instrument.
Becket's "blues," in the opinion of !
Ernest Ansermet, who studied
them both during an orchestra re-
hearsal as we'll as during several
public performances, were admira-
bic in sstheir richness of invention,
their strength of accent, their dar-
ing novelty and surprise. Even in
their primitive form, already they
suggested the idea of a new style.
In form they were striking, abrupt,
harsh, with the ending as sudden
and pitiless as that of Bach's Sec
ond concerto 'Brandenbourgeoise.'
May Be Futures Music
"When so often we have searched
in the past history of music for one
of those figures to whom we owe
the advent of our art, to those mu-
,sicians of the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries who out of the
popular airs created truly express
sive works a~d thus paved the way
in which Haydn and Mozart are not
the innovators, but the first great
milestones-what strange expert
ence to meet this negro boy with his
white teeth and nxrrow forehead.
who is so pleased that we like what
he has done, and yet VITO cannot talk
about his own compositions except
to say that he works in hm own way.
When one stops to think that his
own way may perhaps be The great
way into which the music of to-
morrow may plunge!"
| This iconoclastic conclusion, COM
ing with all the authority of a dis
tinguished and thorough technician
in modern music, suggests all sorts
of interesting possibilities. It con-
tradicts fatty the derogatory opia-
ions of jazz expressed by some Of
our painfully cultured compatr;ots.
1t should be remembered that Id.
Ansermet holds no brief for any
jazz but the genuine. He does not
care, any more than the rest of us.
for the standardized, commercial.
second-rate commodity. But he sug-
eests that our composers, instead
of living on the shadow of a
shadow" musically speaking, might
look around them at the vast and
almost inexhaustible treasury OF ma
tive popular music that has
grown up all around US. Instead
Of deriving inspiration from second
hand European sources, they might
study and analyze this as vet ,.r-
explained expression of great Ames-
lean cities.
Europe May Adopt II
II our serious composers, through
excess Of culture, refuse to lars
this task and continue TO sneer ID
Jazz, we may discover that jazE
will furnish ia El1rny,oav ;, ,,,,4<.;, ~, s