Musical Forms and Textures: A Reference Guide by Norman Demuth

Review by: Donald Mitchell

Tempo, New Series, No. 32 (Summer, 1954), p. 37
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/943204 .
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 BOOK GUIDE
MUSICAL FORMS AND
TEXTURES
A REFERENCE GUIDE
by Norman Demuth
(Rockliff 8/6)
Mr. Demuth describes his book in a sentence
which does not inspire one with confidence in
the clarity of his thought: " This little book
does not pretend to be anything more than its
title implies, but (sic) it is not a substitute for
close and detailed study." Mr. Demuth uses
' but ' where he means ' and.' In the context
of a dictionary, however slight, the quality of
the style is intimately related to the quality
of the all-important definitions. A bad style
will reflect, more often than not, imprecise
thinking. It is true that Mr. Demuth's oft-
commented upon but seemingly never-
improving style is not, on this occasion, at its
worst; but it is by no means good enough in
a book that pretends to be a reference guide.
On a small scale, Mr. Demuth's defective
style exposes itself in such statements as:
" The term Chamber Orchestra is thought to
be more dignified than Small " (p. 3);
"
Extemporisation-The art of playing ' without
thinking,' so to speak . . ."
(p.40); music
cannot in every case portray (sic) with any cer-
tainty " (p.44). Similar examples could be
culled from almost every other page. The
damage done by loose writing is plainly evident
when one considers the first paragraph of a
definition, from which, in fact, it is impossible
to extract a precise meaning. The paragraph
reads (p. 30):" Ballet de Cour-This represents
the final development of the Mascerade, the
two running parallel to each other until the
time of Louis XIV, at whose death the genre
faded quickly away. It is difficult to dis-
tinguish between the two, but in general it
may be said that the Ballet de Cour was part
of the Mascerade. It was popular with Henri II,
Henri III and Henri IV and Louis XIII; the
last-named composed complete Ballets, includ-
ing the music." The mind of the reader
staggers at the sheer complexity of Mr.
Demuth's carelessness. One feverishly
wonders how, when two developments are
"running parallel," one of them nevertheless
(or " in general "), is part of the other. It
hardly surprises one that "it is difficult to
distinguish between the two "; this point, at
the very least, the reader gathers from Mr.
Demuth's slapdashery. Into the category of
singular statements fall such fruitless offerings
as " Schoenberg initiated his own particular
Sprechgesang [Mr. Demuth really means
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37
Sprechstimme]. . . It is most clearly demon-
strated in Alban Berg's Wozzeck"(p.66). How
pleased Schoenberg would have been by the
latter part of that sentence! How absurdly
wrong the statement is! Mr. Demuth is, as
it happens, always quoting Schoenberg,
though his acquaintance with Schoenberg's
music seems to be tenuous. Otherwise, in
his severely inadequate account of 'Melo-
drama' (p.64) he would surely have men-
tioned Pierrot lunaire as the most outstanding
and influential of modern works in this field?
Who knows or cares about Richard Strauss's
Enoch Arden? A more amusing instance of an
enthusiasm that leads Mr. Demuth completely
to overlook the facts is the quotation of
Schoenberg's Jacob's Ladder in a list of
oratorios to which the reader's attention is
drawn (p.79), " some of which," Mr.
Demuth solemnly admits, "are . . . not
easily available." He might have added, in
the case of Jacob's Ladder, that Schoenberg did
not finish the music, and that not a page of it,
to date, has been published; only the libretto
is in print. This kind of thing-perhaps
to make one suspect Mr.
unfairly-tends
Demuth's contemporary enthusiasm as
pure snobbishness. Schoenberg's Ode to
Napoleon (p.63) is not " for orator and
orchestra " but for narrator (Sprechstimme),
male chorus and orchestra, while Walton's
cantata is not " In Honour of the City " but
" In Honour of the City of London " (p.62).
The list of inaccuracies and irrelevancies could
be extended indefinitely. Irresponsibility
infects definitions both large and small. In
the definition of the ' Concerto for Solo
Instrument with Orchestral Accompaniment,'
for example, we learn that " this became
established with Haydn and Mozart, particu-
larly with the former (my italics); and there-
after, Mozart is not again mentioned. So
much for Mozart's contribution to the
concerto as far as this reference guide is
concerned! If Mr. Demuth knew his Mozart
concertos better, it would have saved him
mis-defining 'Romance ' (ch. 46) as a piece,
" often of the salon variety," written "for
players of moderate ability". What about the
slow movement of the D minor Concerto,
K.466? His definition of 'Pastorale' (p. 59)
uncovers the term's archaic origins, but fails
to deal with contemporary developments.
When all is said and done, " Musical Forms
and Textures" is not a very distinguished little
book; the imposing reference guide to Mr.
Demuth which appears on the work's title-
page led one to expect something better.
D.M.