The Role of Tradition

I'm afraid I just missed, by a couple of years, the centenary of an important literary essay: "Tradition and the Individual Talent" by T. S. Eliot (first published in 1919). Here is a summary of Eliot's thinking from Wikipedia:

For Eliot, the term "tradition" is imbued with a special and complex character. It represents a "simultaneous order," by which Eliot means a historical timelessness – a fusion of past and present – and, at the same time, a sense of present temporality. A poet must embody "the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer," while, simultaneously, expressing their contemporary environment. Eliot challenges the common perception that a poet's greatness and individuality lie in their departure from their predecessors; he argues that "the most individual parts of his [the poet's] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." Eliot claims that this "historical sense" is not only a resemblance to traditional works but an awareness and understanding of their relation to his poetry.

This fidelity to tradition, however, does not require the great poet to forfeit novelty in an act of surrender to repetition. Rather, Eliot has a much more dynamic and progressive conception of the poetic process: novelty is possible only through tapping into tradition.

I seem to wander back and forth between honoring, respecting and being influenced by tradition and seeking to strike out into fresh territory, assuming I can find some! I think Eliot is capturing an important truth though--one can only innovate in relation to tradition. The "fresh territory" is only known as such if you know the familiar territory, i.e. tradition. One does not, if one is a real composer, set out to copy the "Moonlight" Sonata of Beethoven, but it is resonating in the back of one's consciousness.

This view was disdained by the composers of high modernism and even by someone like Steve Reich in his early years when he thought of music by people like Brahms as being like those old paintings covered in brown varnish (and dust). But later on we find Reich setting the Hebrew psalms, so he was really looking for a much older tradition. It has been pointed out that every great artist, in some sense, actually creates his predecessors. When we listen to Bach, we also have resonating in the back of our mind, all the ways Bach has influenced later composers. Composers like Stravinsky tend to make us hear people like Bach or Gesualdo differently.

Stravinsky, by the way, pursued a policy throughout his life, of denying the role tradition played in his composition. It took an 1,800 page book by Richard Taruskin to uncover all the ways that the Russian traditions influenced Stravinsky.

So, tradition. In the wider world of society in general I think of traditions as being like the keel of a sailboat. They function to lend stability and prevent the vessel from overturning. We seem to be in a real battle between traditions and progressivism right now, but they both have a role, each to correct the other.

I am working on a new piece for piano right now and have to find creative ways to acknowledge tradition. This is in some ways hard for me as, being a guitarist, I did not grow up playing the piano repertoire. On the other hand, for the very same reason, I can approach tradition with a fresh perspective.

Here are a couple of piano pieces. First, the "Moonlight" Sonata of Beethoven:

And next, Palais de Mari (1986) by Morton Feldman: