Tradition in Perspective

Abstract

THE CONCEPT of is dialectical and ambivalent as any concept that demands, and allows of, interpretation, for such interpretation may start at different and possibly opposite points of departure. These in turn depend on the system of values chosen by the respective observers so that the term tradition will take on positive or negative shadings, as the case may be. Consider, for instance, Gustav Mahler's sneering pronouncement Tradition ist Schlamperei (tradition is slovenliness). By this he meant to castigate the laziness of those of his subordinates at the Vienna Opera House who would resist his perfectionist drive, claiming that things had been done in a certain way as long as anyone could remember and a had been established. To change it would amount to sacrilege. Now what Mahler wanted, as we are told, was to make the rendition of the operatic works that came under his direction as closely correspond as he could to what he understood to be the intentions of their creators, given the resources of his institute. If means faithfulness to values established in the past and recognized as being still vital, Mahler was certainly not against it. What he fought were habits that had superimposed themselves like barnacles upon those values under the name of tradition through generations of thoughtless and selfish performers. Tradition, then, is the continuity of ideas expressed through the repetition of procedures. If we apply the term to the creative aspect of music, it designates adherence to compositional procedures of the past, especially of the immediate past. It is the continuation of things created in the past, but still alive in the present. If stylistic elements of a farther distant past are taken up, as for instance in some phases of neoclassicism, an antitraditional attitude is frequently the motivating factor, and a rupture of traditional continuity is usually the result.