Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Dramatis Personae
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction: Edward J. Dent – Another Kind of Genius
- 1 The Ribston Pippin 1876–1895
- 2 The Bumptious Undergraduate 1895–1899
- 3 The Accidental Scholar 1899–1901
- 4 The Travelling Fellow 1902–1906
- 5 The Wanderer 1906–1907
- 6 The New Spirit 1907–1910
- 7 The Impresario 1910–1914
- 8 The Pacifist 1914–1918
- 9 The Journalist 1919–1922
- 10 The International Musician 1922–1926
- 11 The Professor 1926–1931
- 12 The Juggler 1931–1934
- 13 The Beleaguered Diplomat 1935–1936
- 14 The Colonial Doctor 1936–1939
- 15 Titurel 1939–1945
- 16 Tityvillus 1946–1957
- Afterword
- Appendix: Dent’s Ulcer
- Select Bibliography
- Index
10 - The International Musician 1922–1926
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Dramatis Personae
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction: Edward J. Dent – Another Kind of Genius
- 1 The Ribston Pippin 1876–1895
- 2 The Bumptious Undergraduate 1895–1899
- 3 The Accidental Scholar 1899–1901
- 4 The Travelling Fellow 1902–1906
- 5 The Wanderer 1906–1907
- 6 The New Spirit 1907–1910
- 7 The Impresario 1910–1914
- 8 The Pacifist 1914–1918
- 9 The Journalist 1919–1922
- 10 The International Musician 1922–1926
- 11 The Professor 1926–1931
- 12 The Juggler 1931–1934
- 13 The Beleaguered Diplomat 1935–1936
- 14 The Colonial Doctor 1936–1939
- 15 Titurel 1939–1945
- 16 Tityvillus 1946–1957
- Afterword
- Appendix: Dent’s Ulcer
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The name of the English Professor of musicology Edward J. Dent … the first President of the ISCM, is linked to memories of the ‘heroic period of the ISCM’ … Dent, without doubt, held the whole thing together.
It was the first really international festival on a large scale devoted solely to contemporary music, and the first in which performers from countries recently at war sat down to play together in one and the same work.
1922–1923
The history of the founding of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) / Internationale Gesellschaft fur neue Musik (IGNM) has been well documented, but its sudden burst into life in August 1922 was neither spontaneous nor entirely calculated; rather an opportunity recognised and seized to give contemporary music a forum and an internationalist outlook. Previous fragmented efforts included the various festivals which had captured Dent's attention that summer, the high point being the festival of contemporary chamber music at Salzburg from 7 to 10 August, organised by the Schoenberg circles in Vienna, largely the brain-child of composer Rudolf Reti, who had enlisted Dent's friend Egon Wellesz in a Vienna coffee-house the winter before. Reti was an idealist, an enthusiast, who wanted a ‘celebration’ (Feier) of contemporary music rather than simply another festival. His idea was to expand the Schoenberg circle by inviting like-minded contemporary musicians – ‘composers, interpreters, critics, etc.’ – from all lands, even the USA, in an internationalist spirit, a contrast to the current strong nationalist tendencies Dent had been documenting. His gushing enthusiasm and verbosity were later unkindly compared by Dent to ‘a dribbling tap’, but he carried the tricky project through. Having no money, and with inflation in Austria nearly as bad as in Germany, they persuaded Viennese bookseller-cum-concert agent Hugo Heller and Emil Hertzka of Universal Edition to underwrite the event, very much in their business interests as the main publishers of contemporary music. Younger composers in Vienna had felt stifled; music was dominated by the conservative critics Joseph Marx and Julius Korngold – the latter, as Dent remarked, ‘would recognize no modern composer except his own son’, a Dentish exaggeration, but close. The Schoenberg private contemporary concerts – Privataufführungen – had been set up in direct response to such local obstructions, but now the composers involved wanted to expand the remit of these.
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- Edward J. DentA Life of Words and Music, pp. 327 - 366Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2023