Novelist as a Vocation(16)

Nevertheless, more than a half century has passed since the Beatles and Beach Boys came on the scene. It is hard for anyone today to comprehend how powerful the impact of their music was for those of us who experienced it when it was first released.

Naturally, those sounds influenced so many of the musicians who came after. Now everyone takes the music of the Beatles and the Beach Boys for granted. If a fifteen-year-old boy were to hear the same music for the first time today, he might find it amazing, but it is doubtful it would strike him as “unprecedented” in the same dramatic way.

The same thing could be said of The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. When the work was first performed in Paris in 1913, pandemonium broke out—the audience simply couldn’t handle that degree of novelty. The music was so unconventional it staggered them. As the number of performances mounted, however, the chaos subsided, so that today The Rite of Spring is a popular staple in the classical repertoire. Today we shake our heads in wonder at what could have caused such a ruckus a century ago. Why was the audience so shaken by its “originality”? We can only imagine.

Examples like these might lead us to assume that “originality” is bound to fade with the passage of time, but that is not necessarily the case. Although its initial impact may lessen, it often happens that a work of great quality, if Lady Luck smiles on it, is elevated to the status of “classic” (or semiclassic) once people have become accustomed to it. Once this takes place, respect and admiration for the work becomes even more widespread. Although The Rite of Spring may not disconcert modern listeners as it did its original audience, it still feels fresh, and it packs a punch that transcends the historical moment. In fact, the response to Stravinsky’s work is internalized as an important touchstone, a resource for the appreciation of music as a whole. It feeds the love of music and contributes to our basic standards of evaluation. One could even make the extreme claim that the depth of a person’s musical sensibility can be measured in part by whether or not he or she has listened to The Rite of Spring. It may be impossible to measure, but that it has a significant impact on listeners at that level is indisputable.

Gustav Mahler’s music presents a slightly different case. It was not properly understood by the people of his time. Most of them—even his contemporaries in the music world—took it to be unpleasant, ugly, loosely constructed, and circuitous. From today’s perspective, Mahler can be credited with having undertaken a “deconstruction” of the established symphonic format, but no one looked at his work that way back then. Instead, his fellow musicians belittled his achievement as retrograde and decidedly unhip. He owed his musical reputation, in fact, not to his creative work but to his excellence as a conductor. Most of his music was forgotten in the period following his death. Orchestras didn’t enjoy performing his works, nor did audiences enjoy listening to them. It was only thanks to a handful of stalwart disciples and devotees, whose determination somehow managed to keep the fire burning, that they continued to be performed at all.

Nevertheless, the popularity of Mahler’s music soared dramatically in the 1960s, and his works remain a staple of concert programs. Many people, myself included, find his symphonies thrilling and deeply moving. In short, we have reached back over the years to unearth what we might call Mahler’s originality. Such things do happen. Schubert’s marvelous piano sonatas, to offer another example, were rarely performed during his lifetime. Only in the latter half of the twentieth century did they find an appreciative audience.

Thelonious Monk is another musician of arresting originality. We—at least those of us interested in jazz—listen to him frequently, so the shock of what he does has largely worn off. We just think, “Ah, it’s Monk,” and leave it at that. Yet the originality of his music is clear to anyone who hears it. Its structure and tonal color are totally unlike his contemporaries’. His melodies are unique and played in his own distinctive style. We cannot help responding. For many years, critics didn’t give his music proper recognition, but thanks to a small group of avid supporters, people gradually caught on, and today he is widely listened to. In such fashion did the work of Thelonious Monk become an unmistakable and integral part of our internal system of musical cognition. In other words, a classic.



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The same patterns characterize the realms of art and literature. Art lovers were shocked, on occasion even repulsed, when they first beheld the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. I doubt many still feel that way. To the contrary, their art is now found to be deeply moving, invigorating, even psychically healing. That’s not because it has lost its originality with time; rather, that originality has become one with our perception, so that, naturally, it has become a part of us, a reference point, as it were.

Similarly, the literary styles of Natsume Sōseki and Ernest Hemingway are now celebrated. Yet both were criticized, at times even ridiculed, by their contemporaries. Not a few of their readers (many of whom belonged to the cultural elite at the time) were turned off. Today, however, their styles function as a kind of standard. It is my impression, in fact, that if Sōseki and Hemingway had never developed those styles, the literature that we read today in the West and in Japan would be somewhat different. Taking it a step further, I think it’s arguable that their styles have become part of the mental landscapes of Japanese and English readers.