The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-03-06
Pr0Ietarian Music
Is A Historic
Necessity
By CARL SANDS

DROLETARIAN music is a historic
l necessity which will develop out
Of bourgeois music by carrying on
and adding to its progressive ten
denotes, and by disseminating re-
gressiye and decaying tendencies.
Proletarian music may have all the
worthwhile qualities Of bourgeois
music, and many more, but it must
and will express them by different
means: with changed content will
come changed technical forms. Pro-
letarian music will result from rev.
dictionary tendencies persisted in
over a considerable length Of time.
In these revolutionary tendencies
(Which may be listed among the
contradictions Of bourgeois music
the bourgeois musical critics are
now lost. To them the musical world
is chaotic. They do not see the
contradictory and self obstructive
nature of these tendencies. They
only sense the fact that something
is wrong. A few drastic attempts
have been made to set things to
rights. But they have failed. And it
is to be noted that these attempts
were all made by composers, not by
critics, who have invariably failed
to understand even the reason for
the attempts. The critics only sigh
or fume while they wait for a great
man, a messiah, fuehrer who will
lead them out of the chaos. 4.
But remember: from a proletarian
viewpoint, not only is there no
chaos but there is a clear path
Many have already set out upon it:
in Europe, Eisler, Wolpe, Szabo,
Anna, Shekhter, Shostakovitch,
Davidenko, Belly and many others;
in America, Schaeffer, Adohmyan,
Swift and Sands.
Naturally the work Of these men
may be expected at first to be cruder
in technique than the work of the
great bourgeois composers. The his
tory Of music shows that the young,
new style IS always crlder than the
old, dying style which it supplants.
The revolutionary critic will differ
from his bourgeois prototype, how
ever, by regarding technique as a
secondary matter to him content
must be the first desideratum in a
work Of art. He must assume, along
with the revolutionary composer,
that revolutionary content viii
eventually lead to the perfection Of
q revolutionary technique by means
of which it can be expressed. Form
and content, it is true, are inter-
dependent. Ideally, they should de-
yelop side by side. But it remains
fact: we have the content and
we have not yet the technique. The
content is given to us in hundred
years of revolutionary literature and
action. The music-revolutionary
/ tendencies that should have been
integrated with these have been
captured by the bourgeoisie and
/ withheld from the masses. The rev.
/ dictionary music critic must aid in
their recognition. their recapture
? anu Jl1Glt lQElLIll~AtAOli Will bAiS
I revolutionary movement. The icono-
elastic and revolutionary tendencies
in the present decaying art Of
| bourgeois music are, many of them
part of the continuity of this art
that belongs by right to the revo-
lutionary movement as a whole. AL
ready the masses, even in backward
America, show a prediction for
many of the newer resources OF
modern music. Their leaders, I'M
fortunately, are too often less pro-
/ gressive in taste and still try to
shield their lambs from the wolf Of
modernism. This gives us in music
the parallel of socialist and A. F
of L. misleading and choosing OF
the lesser evil"
Tomorrow: "The Aim Of Reyolu-