Music Ho

by Constant Lambert

Preface:

This book makes no attempt to be an ordnance survey of modern music or a study of modern composers as individual artists. Many composers of merit are not mentioned in it at all, and in the case of others attention has unfortunately been focused upon their lesser works. The task of docketing the outstanding figures of modern music has been ably done by other writers, and as for the purely technical questions raised by unusual combinations of sound I am of the opinion that craft-analysis like craftsmanship itself is of interest mainly as a preliminary. Avoiding both the pigeon-hole and the blackboard I have tried to trace a connecting line between the apparently diverse and contradictory manifestations of contemporary music.

The theme of the book is modern music in relation to the other arts and in relation to the social and mechanical background of modern life. It is a study of movements rather than musicians and individual works are cited not so much on their own account as for being examples of a particular tendency. When absolutely necessary technical arguments are introduced, but there are few technical terms and no music-type illustrations.[12]

The book as a whole is meant to be a non-technical presentation of the position the composer (and, for that matter, the listener) finds himself in today, though in order to establish this position clearly it is occasionally necessary to hark back a bit, as in the section devoted to nationalism.

I hope that this brief study, though inevitably one-sided and incomplete, may lead the way to a broader and more 'humane' critical attitude towards an art which though the most instinctive and physical of all the arts tends more and more to be treated as the intellectual preserve of the specialist.

My thanks are due to Lord Berners, Mr. Cecil Gray and Messrs. J. and W. Chester for the loan of music.

--C. L., December 1933

Contents:

Preface

PART I: PRE-WAR PIONEERS
(a) The Revolutionary Situation
(b) Impressionism and Disruption
(c) Debussy as Key-figure
(d) Music and the Naughty 'Nineties

PART II: POST-WAR PASTICHEURS
(a) The Age of Pastiche
(b) Diaghileff and Stravinsky as Time Travellers
(c) Surrealism and Neo-Classicism
(d) 'Toute r?action est vraie'
(e) Synthetic Melody
(f) Abstraction in Music
(g) Eric Satie and his Musique d'ameublement

PART III: NATIONALISM AND THE EXOTIC
(a) Nationalism and Democracy
(b) The Russian Nationalists
(c) The Conflict between Nationalism and Form
(d) Nationalism and the Modern Scene
(e) The Cult of the Exotic
(f) Exoticism and 'Low Life'
(g) The Spirit of Jazz
(h) Symphonic Jazz

PART IV: THE MECHANICAL STIMULUS
(a) The Apalling Popularity of Music
(b) Mechanical Romanticism
(c) Craft for Craft's Sake
(d) Mechanical Music and the Cinema
(e) The Disappearing Middlebrow

PART V: ESCAPE OR SUBMISSION
(a) A Psychological Cul-de-sac
(b) Sch?nberg and Official revolution
(c) Sibelius and the Integration of Form
(d) The Symphonic Problem
(e) Sibelius and the Music of the Future
?
Index

All: The music, ho!
Enter Mardian the Eunuch
Cleopatra: Let it alone; let's to billiards.
--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Genres: Music, Art, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published April 1, 1934

About the author

Constant Lambert was a British composer, conductor, and author, best known as the founding music director of the Royal Ballet. A key figure in the establishment of English ballet, he worked closely with Dame Ninette de Valois and Sir Frederick Ashton. His most famous composition, The Rio Grande (1927), blends jazz influences with classical choral and orchestral elements and remains widely performed. Other notable works include the ballet Horoscope (1938) and the choral masque Summer’s Last Will and Testament (1936).
A prodigious talent from a young age, Lambert studied at the Royal College of Music under Ralph Vaughan Williams and quickly gained recognition, receiving a commission from Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes at just 20 years old. His compositions often incorporated jazz, a style he championed for its rhythmic and harmonic complexity. His interest extended beyond music to literature and visual arts, as reflected in his influential book Music Ho! (1934), a critical study of modern music.
Despite his early success, Lambert’s compositional output declined as he focused on conducting, particularly with the Vic-Wells Ballet (later the Royal Ballet). His personal life was tumultuous, marked by affairs, heavy drinking, and health struggles, including undiagnosed diabetes. He died in 1951 at the age of 45. His legacy endures through his contributions to British ballet and his innovative fusion of classical and jazz elements in composition.

Reviews

[Stuart Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly readable and occasional witty exposition of the state of music in the mid 1930s. Many Giants of musical composition are consigned to the historical dustbin. Schools of likeminded groups of compositional style are criticised for writing for each other and with the absence of true originality of soul. And we conclude that Sibelius was one of the most original voices of his time.
Difficult to disagree with much of the content. Would love to dig Mr Lambert up and ask him to write a few sequels.

[Derek Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dense and at times hard-to-follow read, but Lambert's thoughts are certainly worth studying. He's wonderfully opinionated and clearly very well informed. Interesting take-downs of Stravinsky and Hindemith.

[JimBee]

An absolutely essential work for students of post-romantic western music. Written nearly one hundred years ago, it is still mostly valid (sadly). Also, surprisingly funny.

[Leonardo]

...hay dos nuevas innovaciones identificadas por Constant Lambert. La primera, en una aparente paradoja (pero realmente en una profunda necesidad dialéctica), este mismo cambio hacia la duración como el principal principio estructural permitió a Satie escapar de la temporalidad, hacia la eternidad
atemporal:

"Con su abstención de las formas usuales de desarrollo y con su inusual utilización de lo que podría llamarse recapitulaciones interrumpidas y solapadas que, por así decirlo, hacen que las piezas se plieguen sobre sí mismas, suprime por completo el elemento del argumento retórico e incluso logra suprimir tanto como es posible nuestro sentido del tiempo. No sentimos que el significado emocional de una frase dependa de su posición al principio o al fin de una sección determinada."

¿No es esta estructura la de la parataxis, la de la constelación atemporal reemplazando el desarrollo lineal temporal? Donde hay parataxis, el paralaje, su contrapartida dialéctica, no se encuentra lejos:

"El hábito de Satie de escribir sus composiciones en grupos de tres no era solo un manierismo. Se producía en su arte del desarrollo dramático, y era parte de sus perspectivas peculiarmente escultóricas de la música. Cuando pasamos de la primera a la segunda Gymnopédie […] no sentimos que estemos pasando de un objeto a otro. Es como si nos moviéramos lentamente alrededor de una escultura y la examináramos desde diferentes puntos de vista […] No importa en qué dirección caminas alrededor de la estatua y no importa en qué orden interpretas las tres Gymnopédies" (Pág.119).


Viviendo en el Final de los Tiempos Pág.392

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written, witty, but overall not that interesting of a book for me. First of all, I read this because I was curious not about his subject matter - which is contemporary classical music ( this book was written in the 30s) but more to the fact that he's the father of Kit Lambert, the manager of The Who. On the other hand you do get the flavor of intellectual life of the Boho London set of the time. Not on a street level, but due to Lambert's opinions on composers like Hindemith and Stravinsky. It seems he has mixed feelings about a lot of his contemporary composers. But I did listen to some of Lambert's music. It's OK, but.... not my thing.