Daily Worker music writer Carl Sands’ real name was Charles Seeger, father of legendary folk musician Pete Seeger and his musical siblings Mike and Peggy. Below Seeger writes a serial on I. For Revolutionary Music Criticism In Our Press, II. Proletarian Music Is A Historic Necessity, III. The Broad Scope Of Revolutionary Music Criticism, and IV. The Function of the Revolutionary Music Critic. Will be of real interest to students of music and musical criticism, as well as for musicians themselves. Wonderful.

‘For Revolutionary Music Criticism In Our Press.’ March 5, 1934.

The music criticism of the revolutionary press must be a revolutionary criticism. It must revolt against the music-critical system that is now supported by the capitalist press. It must not only seek to destroy but also to supplant this system, for it will in itself constitute an opposed system, different in many ways, with a different task to perform–a task which must of necessity involve a different method, viewpoint, scope, and aim. This task will be two-fold: first, to re-value the music of the past with a view to determining what of it may further and what retard the revolutionary movement; second, to aid in the growth of a new musical style that will express and further the revolutionary movement.

First of all, as to method a thing that bourgeois musical criticism never had, rarely sought and usually fled from: it will employ the method of dialectic materialism. Since this is the method of the other art criticisms in the revolutionary movement and of the revolutionary movement itself, a revolutionary music criticism will be an integral part of the movement as a whole. As is the case in these other criticisms, there will be some problems peculiar to the music-critical field. It will be the task of the music critic, however, to link up the problems of his field with the problems of the other special fields and with those of the whole collection of fields. These units will not be regarded as static things–as has been the tendency in bourgeois musical criticism–but as regions in which movement occurs through which movement, in fact, the region as such is defined. Music criticism, and hence music too, will be regarded primarily in their aspect as moving, changing, evolving things. Both will be regarded primarily as social functions, and hence as integral parts of social development as a whole. The fundamental characteristics of both will be regarded as determined by the same means as those that determine social development as a whole. Bourgeois musical criticism has sometimes given lip-service to this formulation but has invariably and promptly forgotten it and lost itself in biographical detail, thus giving undue importance to the “great man” theory of history and to the “inspiration” theory of musical work. A Marxian presentation of musical history will deal less in personalities than in the larger processes of art development and in the interrelation of these with history as a whole. A Marxian presentation of the nature of musical work will rely upon mystical short-cuts such as “inspiration” and “genius” and more upon the study of physiological dispositions, training, class origins and class-consciousness.

THE viewpoint of a revolutionary music-criticism will be that of the proletariat in the class struggle. Bourgeois musical criticism was conversant with the various geographical, patriotic and chauvinistic conflicts, but steadfastly ignored the class struggle and its economic and political basis, in spite of a vague and contradictory idealization of the folk and its music. It will be necessary to show clearly the economic background and class motivation of the lives and works of the great composers of the past, and of musical styles and practices generally–not only as they are presented to us by history but also as they are manifest in our own day. Here again will be a marked divergence from conventional practices. The bourgeois musical critic has not, in our day, ever been able to live in the present. To him, the present musical situation is “chaos.” So he seeks a refuge in history where, it appears, absolute, pure, transcendent beauty was produced by god-given geniuses. Musical values become static things: they existed in the past. But he finds himself living in a time when musical values are evidently changing. So he finds the time chaotic and not so nice as the old times surely must have been. To proletarian music-criticism there is no chaos. A crisis, yes: a crisis developing ever more intensely as an integral element in the general crisis of capitalist society. But the musical path is clear: a new musical style is in the making. History shows it is forming: revolutionary practice demands it. It is the music of the proletariat.

‘Proletarian Music Is A Historic Necessity.’ March 6, 1935.

PROLETARIAN music is a historic necessity which will develop out of bourgeois music by carrying on and adding to its progressive tendencies, and by discontinuing regressive and decaying tendencies. Proletarian music may have all the worth-while qualities of bourgeois music, and many more, but it must and will express them by different means: with a changed content will come changed technical forms. Proletarian music will result from revolutionary 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-destructive 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, a fuehrer who will lead them out of the chaos.

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, Arma, Shekhter, Shostakovitch, Davidenko, Biely 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 history of music shows that the young, new style is always cruder than the old, dying style which it supplants. The revolutionary critic will differ from his bourgeois prototype, however, 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 a revolutionary content will eventually lead to the perfection of a revolutionary technique by means of which it can be expressed. Form and content, it is true, are interdependent. Ideally, they should develop side by side. But it remains a fact: we have the content and we have not yet the technique. The content is given to us in a 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 revolutionary music critic must aid in their recognition, their recapture and their identification with the revolutionary movement. The iconoclastic 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 revolutionary movement as a whole. Already the masses, even in backward America, show a predilection for many of the newer resources of “modern” music. Their leaders, unfortunately, are too often less progressive 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.”

‘The Broad Scope Of Revolutionary Music Criticism.’ March 7, 1934.

IN scope, a revolutionary music criticism will be much broader than its conventional bourgeois prototype, which has concerned itself almost exclusively with European and American concert music–and with only part of this music at that! One would suppose there never existed at all the great musics of Arabia, India, China, Japan and Indonesia. And as to primitive music, how many music critics know anything about it at all–even it’s very existence! The times are indeed auspicious for the inception of a proletarian music criticism. From no less an authority than Professor Johannes Wolf of Berlin we have support for the dictum that the whole history of music has to be re-written in the light of the knowledge given us of non-European music by the recent researches in Comparative Musicology.

The scope of a revolutionary music criticism is also enlarged by other than purely musical accretions. In the great cultures of antiquity and also in the great cultures of the modern Orient, it has been steadfastly held that music, both in form and in content, is intimately connected with philosophy, science, politics and the social order in general. Have we or have we not much to learn here? The question can only be answered after exhaustive research. Even our own science holds much for us that the present starvation support given to musicology cannot even estimate.

And lastly, but most important, the scope of music criticism will be widened to include the music activities and potentialities of the masses. In this operation musical criticism will have to make a complete Copernican twist. The focal point will no longer be the exploits of individuals, but mass movements, mass tendencies and mass achievements.

Outstanding personalities will develop. But they, as well as the rank and file musician, will develop from something more than mere accident. They will develop from inexorable social necessity. This and the class consciousness of it will be their inspiration. And the nearer we come to communism, the wider will be musical culture. There will be so many good musicians that exceptional talent may not stand out as far above its fellows as in the past. Abnormal as well as normal talent may well spend more time doing other things. live a more rounded life and so give less time to music, even as in the life of the average man and woman less time will be spent upon necessary economic labor and more upon cultural pursuits.

The aim of a revolutionary music criticism will be, then, two-fold: first, to help the proletariat discover its own sense of musical values and to translate. by means of language, to those who are undeveloped or only partially developed musically, the nature of musical values as they appear in music; second, to advance certain values and to check others, also by means of language, in actual music work itself. Bourgeois musical criticism has consistently obscured the fact that musical value is given primarily in music and only secondarily in language.

The true music critic is the composer: by division of labor, the performer also partakes, but to a lesser extent, of this function. When a man composes or plays a certain work he virtually answers the question “what, at this time, constitutes musical value?” He presents it then and there. The study and the discussion of it has already taken place in the studio. But the literary critic of music cannot present musical value itself. He can only present something about, usually round about, musical value, a much slighter and more equivocal achievement. Nevertheless, in spite of its obvious inferiority. qua criticism, this little is of paramount importance today on account of the fact that in our present social system we are all of us, even musicians, better equipped in the technique of language than in the technique of music. The revolutionary movement is conducted primarily in language and in action. Music. regarded from this viewpoint as part of the action, can and must be kept in line with the rest of the action. This will be done to no small extent by the language of music criticism.

Admits Propagandistic Aim

And here it must be noted that another important deviation from conventional practice occurs. Revolutionary music criticism, since it is furthering a revolutionary music as a weapon in the class struggle, will admit its propagandist nature. Bourgeois criticism has consistently deplored the view of art and of art criticism as propaganda. We must assert and prove that art and art-criticism have always been propaganda. The musical lap-dog of this or that patroness or manager may say in his ivory tower built of stocks, bonds and mortgages: “There may or may not be a class struggle; but music is free and entirely unconnected with politics, economics and classes.”

But this is just as much propaganda for the tottering capitalist structure which strives to save itself by suppressing consciousness of the struggle in which it is going down, as is propaganda against it, the simple mass song as “The Scottsboro Boys Shall Not Die,” the “Comintern” or the “Red Wedding.” Dante, Goethe and Beethoven, all wrote propaganda, as have all great artists of the past. Bourgeois critics have been hypocritical in excluding proletarian work because of its propaganda nature while at the same time accepting bourgeois propaganda as “pure beauty” or “true art.” Art without propaganda is so much the less art: propaganda without art is so much the less propaganda.

‘The Function of the Revolutionary Music Critic.’ March 8, 1934.

WHAT about the revolutionary music critic himself? Hitherto, musical critics have been, on the whole, literary men who knew something about music. They have accustomed us to a special type of lay criticism constituting a view of music from the outside. Their increasing efforts at inside, technical criticism have been conspicuously futile. In the revolutionary movement we do not have to waste man-power in perpetuating a special class of lay critics of music. As everyone knows who has done musical work with mass organizations, the proletariat is capable of excellent lay criticism.

Lay criticism of music will also be given by revolutionary writers generally, though they most of them will need to spend more than a little time deepening their knowledge of the subject. What we need for a revolutionary music-critical profession is not men who are primarily adept at something else and only secondarily at music, but men who are primarily musicians who know something about writing. Such men will not only recognize and appraise new values in revolutionary music, but they will, as living workers in that music, be able correctly to fudge which of the values in the old music are best to preserve. But their greatest strength will be where their bourgeois prototype was weakest. The bourgeois critic is always quick to call attention to defects. It is easy. But beyond that he can usually do nothing. This also is easy. He never could prove his adverse judgments in the crucial test of showing how the defect could be remedied. The revolutionary critic, on the other hand, must attempt this: he must be required to attempt it. He must be as adept at constructive as at destructive criticism. In other words, like the old Negro preacher, he cannot get by if he only “argufy and sputify”–he must also “show wherein.”

Music lovers and musicians in the revolutionary movement or sympathetic to it! Help us to get away from the overclouding of music-critical issues now going on in the endless and unprofitable hair-splitting over personalities and trivialities of bourgeois musical life. Demand in the revolutionary press, instead of the irresponsible impressionism of personal opinion with which we are now surfeited, four things:

(1) A Marxist interpretation of all musical activity, whether bourgeois or proletarian;

(2) A proletarian viewpoint, giving at least as much space to the emerging proletarian art as to the decaying bourgeois;

(3) A breadth of view that sees something more than the careerists on the stage of Carnegie Hall;

(4) Good, sound, revolutionary music-critical propaganda. Demand, if the critic give destructive criticism of proletarian art, that he give also constructive criticism: that he get down to brass tacks and neither give, in language, minute prescription for the remedy of the defects, or else show in a concrete musical way what he can do. Demand that he live in the present, a worker for music as a weapon in the class struggle, with his eyes directed, not always backward, but forward!

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n055-mar-05-1934-DW-LOC.pdf

PDF of issue 2: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n056-mar-06-1934-DW-LOC.pdf

PDF of issue 3: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n054-mar-03-1934-DW-LOC.pdf

PDF of issue 4: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n058-mar-08-1934-DW-LOC.pdf