Copland, Sessions, and Modern Music: The Rise of the Composer-Critic in America

Abstract

The American periodical Modern Music began publication in 1924 as a literary outlet for the ideas and opinions of composers and, in the words of its editor Minna Lederman, to provide news of all important developments in music, distilled by the critical rather than the reportorial mind.1 For twenty-three years its pages recorded a vital era of musical life and made a substantial contribution to the acceptance of new music. Moreover, conceived as an antidote to the indifferent press of the day, Modern Music produced an unforeseen side effect that had a profound influence on American music in the twentieth century: the development of the American composer-critic. The composer-critic made an early appearance in the periodical's life. The first few issues were dominated by European writers on the European scene and a few American writers who echoed similar international concerns. Then, in the second volume, Aaron Copland wrote a brief article about George Antheil that heralded a change in the periodical's focus from a vague, postwar internationalism to the American scene.2 Copland argued that contemporary music can be estimated from this vantage point, and there are enough people in the United States who can effect a counterweight to Europeans.3 He was confident and evidently convincing, because his subsequent writings, augmented and complemented by those of Roger Sessions, initiated in that journal a flowering of composers who developed strong identities as music critics. The present study focuses on the first decade of the Copland-Sessions contribution to Modern Music, an analysis of which reveals its fundamental importance both to the rise of the composer-critic in America and to the practice of music criticism. Differing in background, training, and emphasis in composition, Copland and Sessions balanced each other in presenting a view of the scene: for every specialized analysis by the former there was a philosophical discussion by the latter. Depending on the subject at hand, they