Week 81

 

Last week, we attempted to investigate the apparent hostility of the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference towards the Italian claims in the Adriatic, coming to a tentative conclusion that the Italian-American relations were defined in a negative direction by a combination of (arguably not unwarranted) ideological preconditions, which often found confirmation in the reports coming from the Adriatic region offering a good opportunity to highlight the poor conduct of the Italian forces, and by the insufficient or inadequate efforts made by the Italian authorities and Foreign Office to put the Italian aspirations in a better light.

This, paired with the laborious and painful negotiation efforts, had resulted in a climate of pronounced hostility, culminating in Wilson's public statement of April 23^rd 1919 and in the subsequent withdrawal of the Italian delegation. The US choice – which the other major leaders had attempted to prevent (Lloyd George said he believed he had been able to at least postpone the declaration until the 24^th so that, to add insult to injury, the Italian delegation was not expecting it and were caught scrambling for a proper reply in the afternoon, after they had agreed to suspend the publication of their first draft of "withdrawal statement" and to work on another extreme attempt for a conciliation), and came soon to be regarded as a diplomatic and political mistake – was in fact a much tamer version of the position Wilson had been advised to take by the six dissenting experts who had managed to reach him through Gen. Tasker Bliss, and behind the back of E. House (who was instead working on a compromise solution and had therefore encouraged a much more conciliatory report “from the experts” of the Inquiry). The memorandum (April 17^th 1919 – signed by Bowman, Lunt, Day, Johnson, Seymour and Young), which reached Wilson at the beginning of the crucial phase in the negotiations on the matter of Fiume, certainly made an impact on his decision (the President himself stated his “deep obligation” in a letter back to Bowman) to take a strong position in opposition to (this part of) the Italian claims.

Italy entered the war with a demand for loot. France and England surrendered to her demand. Of all the world's statesmen the President alone repudiated a war for spoils and proclaimed the just principles of an enduring peace [...] If Italy gets even nominal sovereignty over Fiume as the price of supporting the League of Nations, she has brought the League down to her level. It becomes a coalition to maintain an unjust settlement. The world will see that a big Power has profited by the old methods: secret treaties, shameless demands, selfish oppression. Never in his career did The President have presented to him such an opportunity to strike a death blow to the discredited methods of old-world diplomacy. [...] To the President is given the rare privilege of going down in history as the statesman who destroyed, by a clear-cut decision against an infamous arrangement the last vestige of the old order.

Wilson's actual statement showed an attempt to position the American opposition to the Italian revendications within its general political context – and even if the explanation was aimed at the public opinion, it was coherent with the arguments Wilson had frequently made use of in his private meetings and correspondence.

When Italy entered the war – the US President begun, after a brief introduction – she entered upon the basis of a definite, but private, understanding with Great Britain and France, now know as the Pact of London. Since that time the whole face of circumstances has been altered. Many other powers, great and small, have entered the struggle, with no knowledge of that private understanding. [This was and remained a contentious issue – and in fact the statement wasn't really accurate, unless Wilson's was thinking of another "great power"] The Austro-Hungarian Empire, then the enemy of Europe and at whose expense the Pact of London was to be kept in the event of victory, has gone to pieces and no longer exists. Not only that. The several parts of that Empire, it is now agreed by Italy and all her associates, are to be erected into independent states and associated in a League of Nations, not with those who were recently our enemies, but with Italy herself and the Powers that stood with Italy in the great war for liberty. We are to establish their liberty as well as our own. […]

The war was ended, moreover, by proposing to Germany an armistice and peace which should be founded on certain clearly defined principles which should set up a new order of right and justice. Upon those principles the peace with Germany has been conceived, not only, but formulated. Upon those principles it will be executed. We cannot ask the great body of Powers to propose and effect peace with Austria and establish a new basis of independence and right in the states which originally constituted the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the states of the Balkan Group on principles of another kind. We must apply the same principles to the settlement of Europe in those quarters that we have applied in the peace with Germany. […]

If those principles are to be adhered to, Fiume must serve as the outlet and inlet of the commerce, not of Italy, but of the lands to the north and north-east of that port: Hungary, Bohemia, Roumania and the states of the new Jugo-Slavic group. To assign Fiume to Italy would be to create the feeling that we had deliberately put the port upon which all these countries chiefly depend for their access to the Mediterranean in the hands of a Power of which it did not form an integral part and which sovereignty, if set up there, must inevitably seem foreign […] It is for that reason, no doubt, that Fiume was not included in the Pact of London, but there definitively assigned to the Croatians.

And the reason why the line of the Pact of London swept about many of the islands of the eastern coast of the Adriatic and around the portion of the Dalmatian coast which lies most open to that sea was not only that here and there on those islands and here and there on that coast there are bodies of people of Italian blood and connection, but also, and no doubt, chiefly, because it was felt that it was necessary for Italy to have a foothold amidst the channels of the eastern Adriatic in order that she might make her own coasts safe against the naval aggression of Austria-Hungary. But Austria-Hungary no longer exists. […]

In brief, every question associated with this settlement wears a new aspect – a new aspect given by the very victory for right for which Italy has made the supreme sacrifice of blood and treasure. […] And on the north and north-east her natural frontiers are completely restored […] Her ancient unity is restored. […] It is within her choice to be surrounded by friends; to exhibit to the newly liberated peoples across the Adriatic that nobles quality of greatness, magnanimity, friendly generosity, the preference of justice over interest.

The nations associated with her, the nations that know nothing of the Pact of London […] now unite with her older associates in urging her to assume a leadership which cannot be mistaken in the new order of Europe.

America is Italy's friend. Her people are drawn, millions strong, from Italy's own fair countryside. She is linked in blood as well as in affection with the Italian people. […] And America was privileged, by the generous commission of her associates in the war, to initiate the peace we are about to consummate – to initiate it upon terms she had herself formulated, and in which I was her spokesman. The compulsion is upon her to square every decision she takes a part in with those principles. She can do nothing else. She trusts Italy, and in her trust believes Italy will ask nothing of her that cannot be made unmistakably consistent with these sacred obligations. Interest in not now in question, but the rights of the peoples, of states new and old, of liberated peoples and of peoples whose rulers have never accounted them worthy of right […]

These, and these only, are the principles for which America has fought. These, and these only, are the principles upon which she can consent to make peace. Only upon these principles, she hopes and believes, will the people of Italy ask her to make peace.

For some reason I didn't see this thread. Anyways here goes:

Going to start talking about the artistic legacy of Lou Harrison.

Some background on Harrison (1917-2003), his legacy, and his works:

Harrison was born and Portland, and spent his formative years and early career in and around San Francisco. Generally speaking, the academic view on his musical legacy is fracture. Some call him "the godfather of World music", "The Santa Claus of New Music", or a footnote as "some guy who was a West Coast experimentalist". [1] [2] [3] The validity of these labels is certainly disputable, partially because Harrison's legacy is extremely confusing. There seems to be a significant split in the reception and knowledge of his works for Gamelan, and his works for Western instruments. What I do know for certain is that at least three major post-minimalist composers have some sort of established relationship and involvement in Harrison's legacy.

Lou's legacy is further complicated by being an openly-gay man since the 1940's, and by "pretty" "tonalist" output being a major part of his body of works. When I use the word "tonalist" to describe Harrison's output, I don't mean that he made significant use of functional harrmony as in the classical and romantic traditions of functional harmony. I simply mean that often-times his style is described as diametrically opposed to 12-tone serialism. However, we should keep in mind that this label is certainly not the most accurate: Harrison studied with Schoenberg at UCLA, and many of his pieces contain tone rows, more tone rows, and serial techniques , even in his works that otherwise sound "tonal" [4] Despite the clear skill in the output (to show my bias a little bit), Harrison and other tonalists were sort of dismissed from the academic world of theory and composing for thornier post-tonal output (such as the New Complexity). [5]

In the coming weeks, I'm going to help recreate a context in which we can observe Lou's earlier output, and talk about some of his earlier interactions with Gamelan music. Special guest appearances from Henry Cowell, Stravinsky, Virgil Thomson, Colin McPhee, and Benjamin Britten.

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[1] Alves, Bill; Campbell, Brett. Lou Harrison: American Musical Maverick. Indiana University Press: 2017. Back cover. This tends to be more of an outlier of an opinion, although the closer you get to the field of ethnomusicology, the more likely Harrison's name is to pop up. I have reasons to doubt the validity of this claim in that Harrison was a friend and a major source for both major books on Harrison. The other one being Leta Miller and Fred Lieberman's Composing a World: Lou Harrison, Musical Wayfarer (University of Illinois Press, 1995)

[2] Summer, Claude J. ed. The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance & Musical Theater. Cleis Press: Jersey City. 2004.

[3] Hubbs, Nadine. The Queer Composition of America's Sound. University of California Press: Berkeley. 2001. Notably here, Harrison is classified as a "non-tonal" queer experimentalist among the ranks of Harry Partch, John Cage, and Henry Cowell. IMO, this is not an apt summation of Harrison's output, which shows a lot of affinity for the queer tonalist movement "headed" by Copland and Thomson at around the same time. Notably, This piece by Harrison is not an outlier in his output. Indeed, the same two chords that open this piece appear in a piece by Thomson at around 20:10, albeit at at a faster tempo.

[4] Pacifika Rondo's "Hatred of the Filthy Bomb" is based on a 12-note serial tone row. The Cello melody in "air" for Cello and Harp is based on a tone row. The Harpsichord sonata sees inversion and displacement of the main theme into the left hand, and also features interval control: a compositional method that involves limiting yourself to certain melodic and harmonic intervals.

[5] Hubbs, 170.