Music: Lessons at 67

• Share

Aging Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, 67, took to the pages of Paris' literary monthly, La Table Ronde, with some of the lessons of his musical life.

"If you want to fill a concert hall," wrote Furtwängler, who does most of his conducting in Germany nowadays, "it is more than ever the works of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven that you must play. A work by Debussy sends the box-office receipts down, and ... a poster which displays nothing but the names of living composers is a sure promise of an empty concert hall . . . There must be a reason."

Furtwängler's notion of the reason: "Tonal music [i.e., the music of the classics, from Beethoven to Home Sweet Home] meets certain deep-rooted biological requirements in human nature . . .

Like life itself, it is a succession of ten sion and relaxation . . . whereas atonal music offers no relaxation. In atonal music we find tensions ... an infinite mobility ... a deep disquietude . . . The listener is seized for a moment, but afterward he wonders what he has really heard." Then why have composers been writing atonal music for 40 years? And why do they keep on writing it? Furtwängler: "It cannot be denied that modern man finds in this music an echo of his own feelings . . . Atonal music expresses something of the enigmatic times in which we live." What will the upshot be? Furtwängler: "We must let matters ripen . . . The final decision will rest with human nature .