by JAMES GOODFRIEND, Music Editor
ARTS AND CRAFTS NY art-music, painting, sculpture, fiction, what have you- exhibits, in any of its manifestations, two facets: the art of it and the craft of it. Craft is the technique of putting the thing--whatever it is--together. Given some intelligence, and a bent in that direction, one can learn a craft. It takes a little time and it involves a certain amount of patient plodding (what seems electrifyingly quick to us may still be patient plodding to a Mozart or a Michelangelo), but gradually one acquires the technique to make the stone, the notes, the words, or the paint follow one's will rather than resisting it. The appreciation of craft is also something that can be learned. We catch on quickly to the technical expertise of a pianist or violinist, and we can be overwhelmed at the sheer physical accomplishment of Michelangelo's deco ration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling with out having any real idea at all of its true artistic stature.
The art of art lies in the conception. Conception is first of all a general thing, an overview, a vision of the whole. But it is also what determines how the details go and how they go together. Craft, for example, provides the musical technique needed to modulate from G Minor to F Major, but not the impetus to do so. The where, when, how, and why of it are matters of artistic conception.
It may be a debatable point, but the probability is that the art of art is not something that can be learned to any degree. One is born with a certain capacity for it and, training or no, one is limit ed by that capacity. Years of mastering craft will enable one to realize to the fullest whatever artistic abilities one has, but that is all. Understanding the art of art (as opposed to the craft of it) is also probably something the degree of which is an accident of birth. It was Mozart's tragedy that the art of what he did was thoroughly understood by only a handful of his contemporaries, and that his craftsmanship, though unquestionably of the highest order, was not so superior to that of other composers of his time and place that the general musical public could accurately perceive his stature through it. Among their contemporaries, great artists are best understood by other great artists, though one still does not have to write a symphony in order to understand a symphony. We all comprehend a far larger vocabulary of words than we actually use in speech, and our ability to understand art is correspondingly greater than our ability to create it.
Were that not the case, everything would be art and everyone an artist- or nothing and nobody.
Through history, the art of art and the craft of it have been fused in varying degrees. Though every age produces artists whose craft is greater than their artistic vision, or vice versa, there has been a definite change in attitude across the centuries. In the Middle Ages, artists thought of themselves as mere crafts men. We have no idea who composed various Gregorian or Ambrosian chants, for artistic paternity was not something composers then claimed for themselves.
The Renaissance brought with it a certain personal pride in workmanship (still craft), but also perhaps the first recognition of the importance of artistic conception rather than execution. Nevertheless, artists still filled a function: portraits were painted on commission, mu sic written for specific occasions, buildings designed for particular uses, all specified by those who paid the bills.
Craftsmanship was vital; if a man couldn't draw, he had no business being a painter.
One does not have to go through a whole history of the arts (a mere glance will suffice) to see a movement of ascendency in the importance of artistic conception and a corresponding downgrading of mere craftsmanship. The change was so apparent that, by the end of the nineteenth century, craftsmanship could no longer be taken for granted in artistic creation, and it came to be prized in itself--as a completely separate thing whenever and wherever it came to light.
Museums today collect examples of commercial art and industrial design not because there is any aesthetic message to be found in them, but for the evident craftsmanship.
In our time a few strange phenomena (in addition to the above) have resulted from this centuries--old swing in relative importance. In the visual arts particularly, it has gotten increasingly difficult to distinguish among the profound artist, the ordinary talent, the incompetent, and the charlatan. For the level of craft in a pop art or abstract expressionist painting is not high, and whether or not the con ception is great is something exceedingly hard to be sure of at first, second, or even third look. And much of the work of op art seems to be only craft, decorated space with only a frame to distinguish it from the pure and explicitly stated craft of wallpaper design.
THE repercussions in music have been many, but one in particular I find fascinating. It is that those works that may ultimately be considered masterpieces of the century are not produced exclusively by those we consider to be the great composers of the century. In other words, a lesser composer may produce in a lifetime a single work that embodies an overwhelmingly great conception, and though his craftsmanship may not be equal to the task, the overall vision (in our view) is sufficient to carry everything else before it. I think of a friend's description of Peter Warlock as "probably the best composer for voice and piano who didn't know anything about com posing for voice-or for piano." After many years of reflecting on it, I still consider Warlock's The Curlew to be one of the masterpieces of our time. Perhaps (as explanation) he had the soul of a great artist but only in this single work was he able to muster sufficient craft to approximate his conception. Then again, perhaps he simply had only a single great work in him. That is something one could probably never say of a composer of any earlier time. I feel similarly about Maurice Durufle's Requiem, a "great" work from a composer one would hardly dare crown with the same adjective.
I find the converse to be equally true: Bartok and Stravinsky are (once mature) wonderfully consistent in craftsmanship, but not every work is a masterpiece-in the sense that one could say about Mozart and Beethoven that once a certain technical and aesthetic maturity had been reached, virtually everything that followed was a masterpiece, wonderfully varied though they might be. But that was in an age when things were more in balance. Will the pendulum swing the other way now, or have we reached the end of art as we have known it?
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Also see:
ROCK & RICHES--The (economic) facts of life in the business of pop music, ALLAN PARACHINI