Newman, Ernest - Testament of Music (1963)

53
09 902
\'/^^v V^< V T
"
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was surely the greatest musical critic of his time and he was active from about 1905
until his death at the age of ninety-one in 1959. Uncompromising in his convictions,
forthright in expressing them (he was a master of English prose) , he brought to his published \vork (and for that matter to his conversation) an omnipresent wit. His
monumental four-volume Life of Richard Wagner is perhaps the greatest musical

biography of our time. The pieces chosen for
this
volume range
from
liis
earliest
days in
London through
the twenties, when for a brief period he ^brk Post, occupied a desk on the old with a few from the late years. His regular weekly columns in the London Sunday Times are not reprinted here, for examples of these have been collected elsewhere. representative selection from the volume might include the following: "Confessions of a Musical Critic" (1923); "The New-
New
man-Shaw Controversy over Richard

(1910 and 1914); "Wagner, Debussy and Musical Form'' (1918); "Igor Stravinsky and His Work" (1925); "Beethoven: The Last Phase" (1950); "Puccini" (1918); and "The Perfect AcStrauss'*
companist" (1918).
TESTAMENT OF MUSIC
ERNEST
NEWMAN
TESTAMENT OF MUSIC
Essays and Papers
by
ERNEST
NEWMAN
Van Thai
Edited by
Herbert
NEW YORK:
ALFRED
A.
KNOPF
Cox and ""Wyman Ltd Reading

*
.Mrs Emest Newman Printed, in Great Britain, by
CONTENTS
Chapter
Introduction
I
Page
xi
.
II
Confessions of a Musical Critic, 1923 . . , English Music and Musical Criticism (Contemporary Review], 1901 The Music of the Future (The Speaker), 1902
. .
43
62
III
Some Early non-Musical Writings From 'Form in the Novel', 1891

:
A note on George Meredith,
1903
67 74
78
83 88
Mr. Meredith and the Comic Spirit, 1903 The Novelist and the Musician, 1903 The Animal in Fiction, 1903
.
.
IV
Contributions to the Birmingham Post: The Prima Donna in Print, 1911
95
The
First English Performance the Golden West, 1911
of The Girl of
97
.
.
.
Mozart and
Verdi, 1913
Strauss, 1911
101
104
Strauss
Der Rosenkavalier, the new Covent Garden, 1913
Opera
at
107
.
V
VI
Schonberg's Five Orchestral Pieces, 1914
in
115
163
The Newman-Shaw Controversy concerning

Richard Strauss, 1910 and 1914
Contributions to the Nation:
The Case of Arnold Schonberg, 1912

Mahler's Seventh Symphony, 1913 Scriabine's Prometheus, 1913 Ariadne aufNaxos, 1913
.
.
166
170 174
179
VH
Contributions to the
Strauss's
New
Witness:
new Symphony,
vii
1915
. .
Chapter
Page
Boris Godounov,
.
.
Vin
1916 Granados and his Goyescas, 1916 Wagner, Debussy and Musical Form, 1918 Contributions to the New York Post:
.
.
183
192
196
The Speed of Music, 1924 Letter from a Lady, 1924 A Note on Puccini, 1924
205 209 211

.
EX
upon the Season at the Metropolitan Opera House, 1924 Igor Stravinsky and his Works, 1925 The Spirit of the Age (Fortnightly Review), 1930 Wolfs Instrumental Works (The Listener), 1940
Letters
.
Two Open
213
219
225
Beethoven: the Last Phase (Atlantic Monthly), 1950

Excerpts:
236 240
From the National Reformer: The Meaning of Science, 1892 The Coming Menace, 1892 A Note on Death, 1892 From the Free Review:
Ibsen, 1893
253
253
255
Kipling, 1893 Richard Le Gallienne's Religion of a Literary
256 258
258 259 260
Man, 1893
Mascagni and the Opera, 1894
Amiel, 1895 the Speaker
.
From
The Need for Banking Reform, 1901 The New School of British Music, 1902
Holbrooke, 1902 Richard Strauss, 1903
262 262
263
264
265
Wolf, 1904
From
the Weekly Critical Review: Music and Morals, 1903

.
.
.
266
.
.
. .
The Critic's Frailty, 1903 Shaw and Super-Shaw, 1903 From the Nation:
Opera in England, 1908
267 268
268
Chapter
Elgar, 1908
268
English, 1908
.
Opera and the

Feuersnot,
269
1910
. .
Nietzsche's Criticism of Wagner, 1910
270 270
271
Beethoven, 1912 Granville Bantock, 1912
272
1917
273
From
the
New
Witness:
On the Critic and Musical Criticism,

The Musician and
Beethoven, 1917
Bizet, 1917
Putting the Classics in their Place, 1918 Debussy, 1916, 1918

his
275
Environment, 1917
1916
. .
277 278
278
A School for Critics,

The
Russian Song, 1917 Moussorgsky, 1917
279 280 280

281
283 283
Rimsky-Korsakov, 1917
Scriabine, 1918
Glinka, 1917
Manfred (Schumann), 1918 The Valkyrie, 1918

Puccini, 1918
284 285 286 286 287 287 288 288
Salome, 1918 The Perfect Accompanist, 1918
Bandbox Opera, 1918

Nonsense Music, 1918
Tempo, 1918 The Unfinished in Music, 1918 The Small Poem in Music, 1918
290 290 290

291
From
Sir
the Musical Courier:
Hubert Parry, 1919

the Sunday Chronicle: Flogging, 1923
From
On
XI From
Index
List
292
1925
.
A Musical Critics Holiday,

Ernest
293
303
31*
of works by
Newman
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due to Cassell and Company to quote from A Musical Critic's Holiday.
Ltd., for permission
INTRODUCTION
NEWMAN
a
WAS a law unto himself. He was far more than

mastery lay in his complete understanding of
critic, his
music.
No other critic of the subject has left as renowned a name

of Wagner is never likely to be surpassed and with the outstanding biographies of all times. was endowed with an almost unerring judgment,
as he: his life
stands equal
Newman
and even the opinions given in his earliest writings changed less than those of other critics. His writings of over sixty years cover a revolutionary period in the history of music, for he saw the perfection of die gramophone, the disappearance of the pianoplayer and the advent of wireless and television. 'Among the elements', wrote Desmond Shawe-Taylor, 'that went to the making of Newman's powerful intellect, two are of
primary importance: a deep scepticism (he was a staunch agnostic of the old school) and a passion for accuracy. He was never prepared to accept something as true merely because it had not been questioned before, and he was never content with secondhand information when primary sources were available. His cast of mind was forensic and there is little doubt that he could have
made a formidable barrister or judge.'* Born on the 3Oth November, 1868,
at
Waterhouse
Street,
Everton, Lancaster, Newman was the son of a master tailor, Seth Roberts, and his wife Harriet. He was christened William, and
* The
Sunday Times.
educated at
St.
Saviours School where he
won the Bibby Scholar-
the University in 1886, ship to Liverpool University. Leaving Service Examination but, Civil Indian the for he intended sitting
owing to illness, was advised by his doctor that the climate of India would not suit him. He therefore became a bank clerk in
1889, a post he held over the next fourteen years, although he was writing continuously during the whole of this period. As 'Ernest Newman' he was a regular contributor to Bradlaugh's National Reformer (1889-93), and the Free Review (1893-97) as well as to his university magazine. He even wrote on banking all this time music was becoming of increasing subjects, but
interest to
him.
first married on 3rd February, 1894 to Kate Eleanor the Woollett, daughter of Henry Woollett, an artist. It was a happy marriage, but she died in 1918 and in the following year
He was
he married Vera Hands, the elder daughter of Arthur Hands of Birmingham, an equally successful match. There was no church ceremony to either marriage, for Newman, an ardent freethinker, never deviated from his dislike of the church. He was never gregarious, but a lone figure whose singleness of purpose was, as The Times said of him, that of 'an artist using criticism
as his
medium
9
.
When he became Musical Critic of the Manchester

1905, he threw over
all
Guardian in
- and became 'a new man in earnest'. A year later he joined the Birniingham Daily Post. He was for a while musical critic to the Observer, but in 1920 he joined the Sunday Times, to which paper he conthe traces of William Roberts
tributed until he retired in September 1958.
ment.
He was musically entirely self-taught, an astonishing achieveHe studied scores and every available book on the subject
'with an ardour with which schoolgirls used to read novels or schoolboys adventure stories*; and he further reveals that when
he was about twenty
'I had in simplicity the idea that it in another or two to have learned outpossible year all that mattered.* *I have never (read)', he wrote in wardly really his Confessions of a Musical Critic, 'and I do not suppose I knew
my
would be
that there
was such a thing
as musical criticism.'
Yet he was soon
most of us read an He book.* mastered the German ordinary language with equal and also studied Russian, Latin, Greek, French, Italian, facility, Swedish and Hebrew Spanish, Throughout his life he was never in any doubt about the importance of his work, and he was continually at pains to explain and drive home the essentials of musical criticism. As has already been said, he insisted that musical criticism must be literature above everything else, and not an attempt to repeat wrongly in one medium what has already been said rightly in another. The fundamentals of criticism were of the utmost interest to him. He complained that as *a plyer of the nefarious trade of criticism* he was disliked by artists because he was a critic, while the contemporaries of his earlier years were equally uncivil because he was always trying to demolish current criticism.
able to read a musical score with the ease that
!
'I
am
like
Wagner
Wotan, willing to write a tetralogy

of my
significance
criticism
destruction; yet there is no the upon nobility and the cosmic sel-immolation/'[' Eight years later he was to
my own
crystallize his theories in his
A Musical Critic's Holiday.
'Genuine
must always function in the past rather than the present. It is only from the past that aesthetic standards can come, and these are valid for any new form of the art. Let the critic leave the future alone. We do not know which of the speculative theories of our time will survive and be fruitful; but we can be pretty sure which of the music of our time will live/J Despite his appreciation of the remarkable changes that were
continually taking place in the musical world, his judgments were always very considered, and he never proclaimed that this or that unknown composer was the genius of the future. Not that * Alfred Knopf in an essay on Newman in the Saturday Review wrote,
'he defended the proposition that for a musician loss of hearing is greatly preferable to loss of sight; he always concluded that he could more greatly enjoy a score by reading it quietly in that remarkable one-room building at Tadworth than by hearing a performance which
except on the rarest occasions would fall short of the perfection always demanded/ f New Witness, August 1917.
JA
Musical Critics Holiday\ p.
u.
were in any way solely true of his time, since we need only look at 1961 and compare the choice of programme of the Promenade Concerts with that of 1960, or the opening concert at the Edinburgh Festival with that of previous years. He must have influenced many minds, for there had not existed, as far as contemporary opinion was concerned, a responsible musical literature until he and Shaw led the way. Newman sparred with his contemporary Edwin Evans, but he paid tribute to the Manchester Guardians music critic, Arthur
these changes
Johnstone,
who
died
on
the 8th
December
1904, at the early age
of forty-four, but as this century progressed a very considerable literature on music both critical and otherwise has been contributed by a number of outstanding writers. Cardus among others has had plenty to say of the function of the musical critic. 'The critic's responsibility', he has written, 'is not such a burden that he need wear a long face perpetually and not "enjoy a frisk" now and then. Nobody will be a penny the worse if he pronounces the most unjust verdict; he is not sentencing anyone to death. He will write his best and amuse his readers (and that primarily is what he is paid for) if he brings to his technical and cultural equipment some occasional flippancy or a willingness to laugh at himself.'* Of course, where regular critical
on concert or opera hampered by the time there

articles
are concerned, the critic

is
is
often
available to
all
him
to consider his
it
opinion
as
well as to write his notice with
the care
normally
while the space he is allowed is another problem. Newman had more time and opportunities to write at greater length, though he continually chafed at the space allowed him in
requires,
the Sunday Times; for as will be seen in this book, he contributed a great deal to the weeklies. the other hand, for many years he
On
was
Manchester Guardian and Birmingham Post, and in this capacity he was responsible for encouraging high standards in the provinces.
critic to the
The
Ernest
reader who has Newman would
not previously studied the writings of do well to have a nodding acquaintance
* Cardus:
Talking of Music, p. 271.
xiv
with
is
A Musical
Critic's
Holiday, in which, as
have akeady
said,
the
the
summing up of his art of musical criticism* and despite fact that Beecham said, 'Critics, like politicians, are frequently
accused of inconsistency when they change their opinions. . . . Ernest Newman has changed his about as much as any other man,
for which praise rather than
blame should be accorded him'.*]' Yet,
we know
that
Everybody knows he was responsible for the recognition of Wagner, though probably fewer are aware how far he consistently championed Berlioz, Wolf, Sibelius,J and Elgar.
that
Newman very rarely faltered.
The Shaw-Newman controversy over

from The Nation in
its
Strauss
is
reprinted here
- the earlier entirety for the first time letters over Elektra when it was first produced in this country in
1911, and then the correspondence three years later when the two of them battled again over the merits of the composer himself. A final word about the selection of material in this book. Throughout his long writing life Newman wrote on other subjects than music, especially in his early years, when he contributed a good many learned articles on philosophers and writers later, when he was writing for the popular press, boxing and crime particularly engaged his attention, especially the former he rarely missed a major contest if he could help it. It was intended to include a variety of such articles in this book, but with so much on music from which to make a choice, it is felt that this subject on which Newman has left such an influence, will be of more interest to readers. I have therefore chosen only a few extracts from his early writings with some further quotations which will be found in the last chapter of this book. As a young man he quickly showed his encyclopaedic knowledge. Thus he was interested in philosophy and he wrote upon Weissmann and
:
at
some considerable length on the then recently publishedjbwmd/s of Amiel. As a free-thinker, his earliest regular contributions
*A
good many
extracts
from
this
book
will
be found in the
last
chapter.
f A Mingled Chime, p. 99 (Grey Arrow edition). J Newman was honoured by die Finnish President
for his
work on
Sibelius.
xv
to Bradlaugh's National Reformer, while his papers on Ibsen and Turgenev are highly illuminating especially when
were
one
also considers
Newman's youth and
written. A few years later, he championed Conrad and Meredith, which proved that his critical perceptions were seldom in error.
the time they were
One
and
appreciates that there is a definite orbit to Newman's work that his criticisms are within his own inflexible circum-
never compromises, and although his style is often he was emphatic in the assertion of his opinions. A final word from Neville Cardus*: 'Only those who began to read and study Newman as young men can understand how
ference.
difficult,
He
much
and
is
owed
to
him
in this country, for his
work
is
enriching
fructifying an atmosphere and soil during an acrid time of provincial stuffiness and narrowness of vision. He was perhaps the first writer truly to Europeanize our music and our humane responses to music. He quickened our antennae, opened doors for
us.'
Herbert
Van Thai
* Newman:
in Fanfare for Ernest
Newman. Ed. van Thai,
p. 31.
xvi
CONFESSIONS OF A MUSICAL CRITIC

1923
apparently, were not invented in or he would certainly have shown them having one of the worst times possible in the worst circle possible in hell. Nobody loves the musical critic; and when I come to think of it I can't see any reason why people should. He is, in the
MUSICAL Dante's day,
CRITICS,
popular estimation, one of those objectionable fellows who profess to be able to tell you how to do everything without being able to do it himself. He could not write even a First symphony; but he can tell you what is wrong with the Ninth. He would not know a vocal cord if he saw it, and if you gave him one would
probably show his ignorance by trying to tie a parcel up with it; but he can tell Caruso what is wrong with his 'production'. Pachmann, Kreisler, Cortot, Casals, "Wood - he can put them all
in their places.
And yet, somehow or other, these creatures are read; indeed, they have a bigger clientele, when you think of it, than the people who call themselves 'artistes' (a spelling carefully adopted in many cases, one presumes, to indicate that they are not artists). I think it may be taken as an axiom that for every man or woman who goes to this concert or that, at least five hundred will read what some critic or other has to say about it. In a really civilized society, writers so widely read would be regarded as benefactors
Testament of Music
of the race; they would have wealth and honours showered upon them. As it is, they are treated as dogs, as pariahs, as criminals; and are mostly so badly paid that their continuing to exercise the functions of their profession can be attributed only to the reluctance of philanthropists to deprive the world of pearls of price, it. richly as the world deserves to me and ask me how they can come sometimes men Young
become musical
up
critics. I invariably try to persuade them to give the idea; there are at least fifty other forms of crime, I tell
them, that are more pleasant and more profitable, that require less that have fewer working hours intelligence and less application,
and longer holidays. The misguided young men generally persist in their inquiry, however; and then I have to tell them that I know nothing of how other men have become musical critics. I know a good many of them, but I cannot remember any of them ever talking about how he began. When I come to think of it, this strikes me as being suspicious almost sinister. It suggests that they are ashamed to be what they are, and are unwilling to let the world into the secret of their
first fell. I
think they are wrong in this; they ought to set forth, as a warning to the young, how they first came to tread the path of shame. It will be found, I am sure, that, in music as in morals, the first step on that path is so small a one that the unsuspecting person who takes it has not the slightest prevision of where it
will ultimately land him.
indeed, the cynical
Many a critic is so only by accident - as, public may already have suspected. The
for an honourable
young man may have been shaping nicely
and
lucrative career in business, in politics, or in sport; then one fine day something lured him down a side path, and he went on and
on pursuing the gleam till in the end he found himself changed, by some evil endtantment, into a musical critic. That, at any rate, was my experience; and I propose now to
the story of my ruin, not because I am so lost to shame as to be past blushing for it, but solely as a possible warning to others. I shall be compelled to inflict a few autobiographical details upon the reader, and indeed to use the first person singular more than I like. I have no desire to talk about myself, except in the
tell
Confessions of a Musical Critic

interests
life is
of science*
A critic
is
man who every day of his working
confidently giving his opinions upon art and artists. His do so may well be challenged. 'Who set thee up as a to right ruler and a judge over us?' may legitimately be asked of him. If
he
is a fool, or at any rate not ideally wise, he may not be able to do much harm - not nearly as much as is popularly supposed, for readers soon take a critic's measure - but he can inflict a
certainly
of unnecessary pain and arouse a good deal of unnecessary anger. At the best, most people hold, he can express only a personal point of view; what right has he to impose that point of view upon others? For most professions a course of careful preparation is needed nay, insisted on, in the interest of the public. What preparation does a critic get for such delicate and responsible work as judging? It is not enough that he shall be a musician. It is not merely as a practical musician that he is addressing the public; it is as a judge of music and musicians. To do the work efficiently he needs to be in the first place a very sensitive instrument, and in the second place to be able to play coolly upon that instrument as if it were something not inside but outside himself. It is not sufficient that he
good
deal
shall merely react in this
of the word. A man, for instance, may quite honestly think Bach a dullard, but that opinion does not throw much light on Bach, however much light it may throw on him. The plain man is at liberty to say 1 don't like Bach', just as he is
criticism in the proper sense
or that way to this or that music. Anyone can do that; but his opinions, interesting as they may be as an expression of his own personality, do not necessarily amount to
1 don't like apples'. The critic, however, is and righdy, to express something more than a mere expected,
at liberty to say
physiological or even psychological reaction. He is expected to be not a dogmatist, but a judge, and a just judge. But what training
does he get in the art of judging-supposing there to be such an None whatever, except what training he can give himself in the course of the exercise of his profession. Granted that his
art?
judgments are simply an expression of himself, ought we not to know just what that self is, and how it has come to be what it is?
4
If
Testament of Music
that, we might be able to account for many of his which we disagree, and so discount them. with judgments is who critic The trying to see a composer as he really is learns him - what kind of man he was, especiabout as much as possible influences he came under. Ought not the ally what were the early reader, if he wishes to understand why a critic thinks this or that, to know in particular what the influences were that have helped
we knew
to give his mind its special cast? The conscientious critic, indeed, sooner or later, asks questions of this kind about himself; and I
think he ought to
tell
the reader also something of what he has
learned about himself, not out of egoism, not because he thinks himself of any interest to the world qua critic Brown or critic
Jones or critic Robinson, but because he may be of interest to a few

inquiring people qua critic, as a case for psychological study. that spirit solely that I shall talk of myself.
It is
in
my family, so far as I have been able to delve had never before been stained by a musical critic. So little thought had my parents of their child sinking so low that did not even trouble to have me taught music. I have had they one music in lesson only my life, and that lasted no more than half an hour. It was, I often think, my good fortune to have
into them,
The
records of
parents
who
did not take the slightest interest in
development; they left me free to get my own culture where and how I liked, or not to get any at all. Few students of art, and particularly of music, can have grown up so completely alone. Most of them, even if they do not pass through a conservatoire, have at any rate a teacher and fellow-student to talk to. I had one
boyish friend, with whom I used to discuss literature, but my school .education was of the usual type, with no special reference
to art, and
my
intellectual
my association with my school-mates went no further than playing with them and fighting with them. Search my memory how I will I cannot discover how or when
I learned the
rudiments of music.
other.
instruction
book or
But
suppose it was from some fancy that, once having learned

I
the notes, reading music was as simple a process with me as reading a book. At first everything was done quite unsystemati-
found myself playing the piano, after a fashion, without learned anything of piano technique. having I have often wondered if one could draw up a balance sheet
cally. I
showing accurately the profit and loss of an education such as mine, an education without masters and without system. No doubt such a student benefits in some ways. He comes into contact with the great artists at first hand. He goes straight for the
greatest things; it is on these that his taste is nourished. He enjoys every work of art he takes up, because he takes up only those he
hopes to enjoy; and every

another.
work he enjoys sends him hotfoot after
With
few masters are

His exuberance
a master, even the most intelligent master (and veryreally intelligent), he is always being held back.
is
curbed.
He
is
told that he
must learn to walk
before he can run, and his early walks, under a master, condemn him to so much uninteresting country! He is kept at exercises
that bore him,
and
at 'pieces' that
may
indeed be suited to the
then stage of his technical development, but beyond which he
may have
he
travelled miles, intellectually
and temperamentally.
it is
If
drudgery with which enthusiasm may be chilled.

dislikes the
it
associated, his first
It is surely better for him to learn to love music by approaching from the wrong road than to hate it by approaching it from the
right one. It is surely better for him to play Tristan abominably before he has learned to finger a scale properly, but yet to get at the heart of the opera in his own way, than to spend hours at the
trifling Mozart sonata that he sees through in a of days, and so to conceive a prejudice against Mozart that couple
piano over a
may endure
for years.
some of its disadvantages may be. A however imperfectly, the combined experiences system sums up, of many others who have travelled the same road before us, who have looked back after they have arrived, and have seen what, after all, was the shortest way, all things considered, from the
education, obvious as
On the other hand, there is a good deal to be said for a systematic
Testament of Music
the goal, deceptively easy as one or starting point to native routes seemed at the moment. None of us is so
clever that he can afford to
two
alter-
wise or so
condemn the slowly built up experience

dislikes
system because it means and there is nothing youth chafes under so much as discipline, In ordinary life, many a man may perhaps be all the discipline. better for growing up wild; but not, perhaps, in art. Sooner or later, if he is at all conscientious and self-critical, he will realize - not that he, too, must go through the mill necessarily the
of
generations.
The youth
academic mill, but certainly some sort of mill. He will see that it has taken humanity hundreds of years of painful effort to discover a few stable truths, a few safe guiding principles, in art; he cannot, unless he is absurdly vain, hope to discover for himself all that it has taken generations to work out. Sooner or later he must go to
school.
m
which
what happened to me. I do not refer to piano-playing, have never regarded as indispensable to a musician, though even there I soon realized how impossible it is to learn to play the piano by just sitting down and hitting the keys with a score of Parsifal in front of you. I found I had to settle down and do a little sensible practice in order to be able to play even moderately badly. I may say, in parenthesis, that I never became more than a bad pianist. For one thing, I always grudged even the little time I spent in practising, for I felt that in the same time I could be learning some more music. I never had any ambition to play before others, and I was content to go on for a long time with the moderate technique that enabled me to play what I could of a work, my mind supplying, when I came to difficulty, what my fingers would not do. But it was not to piano-playing that I was referring when I spoke of my realizing, one fine day, that I would have to study music in the school way as well as in my own. I cannot remember the time when I could not read music as one reads a book* I suppose it was natural to me, for I had no lessons of any kind, and
This
is

I
cannot trace any stages in the process of learning. It seems to me that I was reading music, and playing it my own amateurish way, from early childhood. For some reason or other, I was most
interested as a boy, in vocal music, and particularly in opera. I lived in Liverpool at that time, and I used to get from one of the
public libraries
some
operatic scores in a series that I have never
come
across since. I
have often wondered
who
As well
as I recollect,
they belonged to the
first
published them. half of the
nineteenth century, and had
what I then thought were very Like most interesting prefaces. young people, I was not partito Mozart. He attracted seemed cold to me, in my cularly
ignorance
simple, even superficial. I liked many of his as an opera composer, I thought Gluck greatly but operatic arias, in those his superior days, and I would have been prepared to cut
- too
anyone's throat
who thought otherwise. Again, like most young people, I had unbounded faith in my own judgment, and I used to wonder how the writers who fell into ecstasies over Mozart could be so easily taken in. I suppose it
was because - once more
like
most young people -
was more
better
susceptible to ideas than to pure beauty. I supposed I liked Gluck and Wagner
and Schumann
than Mozart or Schubert because the former seemed to me to be dealing with a bigger order of humanity. Iphigenia, Tristan, the and Love cycle, seemed to the ardent girl in the Woman $ Life
humanitarian that I was in those unspoilt days, more truly human than Cherubino or Masetto or the Hurdy Gurdy Man. I liked Mozart and Schubert well enough in a way, but I put them with
Auber and Bellini and the other pretty tune-makers, somewhat in front of these. of course, though
Rossini and
IV
only as one gets older, I liinfc, that one learns to appreciate pure beauty in music, the beauty that begins and ends with itself, that is all-sufficient to itself. This would account for something
It is
that happens to us all in the long run - drawing nearer to Mozart as we grow older. That, at any rate, has been experience; I
my
Testament of Music
have shed a good many of my early enthusiasms, both in poetry and in music, while my delight in Mozart has gone on increasing since I first came completely under his spell some fifteen or
twenty years ago.
were all for the strenuous, the highlyin music. It was always the slow movement that charged poetic, transported me into what was then, and for a long time afterwards,
My
earliest
tastes
world - the world of Goethe's Faust and Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality ode, the world of brooding introspection and philosophic melancholy. I had no ears for the pure, simple beauty of a Mozart symphony; but I worked myself into frenzies of spiritual self-torture over the agonized adagio of
my
favourite
Beethoven's great 'Hammerclavier' sonata. are curiously constituted. This adagio was for me, as a
We
boy, the expression of the quintessence of human suffering: I always had a vision, when I played or read it, of Beethoven as a chained Prometheus, the eagle gnawing him. In the course of
when I had outgrown my youthful romanticism, all the German music of which it is the and adagio type lost of its over me. something power Artists who indulge themselves too much in images of suffering are like the people we meet with in ordinary life who insist on
many
years,
this
them both; we
telling us their ailments at great length. feel that it is something
We
get a little tired of of the same kind of
weakness, the same womanish craving for sympathy, that prompts the over-long story of the spiritual as of the bodily malaise. Paradoxically, it is those of us who are by nature the most
sensitive to suffering and the come to resent most, in time,
most inclined to brood over it who any excess of this kind of expression
in
artists.
suppose the explanation is that some self-protective instinct within us warns us at last that it is as bad for us to the
I
keep keep our bodily sores; perhaps, perilous morbidity that makes us torture, and at the same time delight, ourselves with the bittersweet of
spiritual sores in us open as it is to at bottom it is the same
Amfortas' terrible cry as makes

skin disease to keep
it difficult
for the sufferer
from
a
it
from
scratching himself,
though he knows
will
9 be worse for him in the long run. There are sores of the soul as of the body; and one day it happens to all of us who have overindulged ourselves in our youth in the morbidities of romanticism that we feel the need of a bracing mental and spiritual hygiene. There came a time when I felt myself reacting against the introspection and self-torture of the German romanticists; and
most intense expression of all this was, for me, the adagio of the Hammerdavier sonata, it was against that that I most consciously and most energetically revolted very much in the when we our that, way change political party, it is against the leader of our old party that we turn our sharpest arrows. Not, of course, that the adagio ever came to be abhorrent to me, or that it does not still move me. But I can no longer give myself up to it and what it stands for as I used to do; and I think Beethoven would have been greater had he kept more control of himself in moments like this. Bach is greater because, with the very rarest of exceptions, he universalizes his sorrow. Too often, with Beethoven and Liszt and Schumann and Chopin, we are over-conscious of the man himself. We see him straining under a load he cannot carry without an exhausting effort. In poignant things like the aria *Have mercy, oh Lord*, or the 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani' of the Matthew Passion, Bach does feel this suffering not as something not strain in the least. merely personal to him, as we do in many of the overwrought moments of Beethoven and Chopin and Tchaikovsky, but as the suffering of the cosmos itself- not the tears of a fretted individual,
since die
We
but the
tears that are in
of the present-day revolt against Beethoven and good is due to the revolt of a world that has been hardened Tchaikovsky
deal
mortal things.
adversity against the men who indulge themselves in their weaknesses, who scratch their sores in secret instead of giving
by
them
to the sunlight and fresh air to heal. When, a little while ago, I printed a letter I
had had from a

tried to account
well-known Englishman of letters, in which he
for his antipathy to anything in waltz rhythm by tracing it to some childish 'complex* or other - some occasion on which he
may have suffered while a waltz was going on - another and more
io
Testament of Music
expense
a little genial humour at the sceptical friend permitted himself of us both. But I see nothing improbable myself in the
explanation. There must be many such complexes in all of us. I am tempted to explain the extraordinary popularity of Scriabine among women by the curiously catlike quality of his
music, in which one cannot say where eroticism ends and spirithis liberation of certain centuries-long supin them. I fancy they get something of the pressed complexes
uality begins, or
by
same kind of pleasure from Scriabine's soft curves and insinuating harmonies that they get from scents and the sheen of satins and the subtle electricity of furs. The critic who wants to understand himself must try to trace his own complexes, if only to rescue himself from them when they are likely to bar the way to his sympathetic understanding of every kind of music.
I spoke of the unsystematic nature of my first musical education, and of my realization, long before I was out of my teens, of the need of supplementing my haphazard study of music as an art by a study of music as a science. I said I have had only one music lesson in my whole life, and that this lasted no more than half an hour. It must have been when I was about seventeen. At that time I was at the Liverpool College. As well as I remember, music was no part of the set educational course; indeed, it could not have been, or I should have had more than this one lesson. Yet I suppose music must have been taught in some way to someone or other, for there was a Mr. (perhaps Dr.) Richard Crowe there, who officiated at the organ in the college theatre on great occasions, and no doubt had
other duties in the place.

I have no clear recollection of him except that he was a little man, that he was irreverently referred to by us boys as Dicky Crowe, and that we did not thjnV much of him because he had nothing to do with our games. What his musical qualifications were I cannot say. To him I went one afternoon after school hours and had a short first lesson in harmony. I never repeated the
experiment, for the lesson was only a repetition of a disappointment and a disillusionment that I had already experienced in When I had decided that it was time I learned something private.
of the science and the technique of the art, I bought one or two text-books on harmony and counterpoint and settled down to them with something of the emotion Lord Carnarvon must have felt when he was breaking through the wall on the other side of which was the tomb of King Tutankhamen, with all its longhidden treasures. Try to imagine what Lord Carnarvon would feel like if, after getting into the last chamber, he found it as empty as Madame Humbert's safe, and you will have a faint idea of what I felt like when first I began the study of musical textbooks.
I
Remember that by this time I had dozens of scores in my head. knew most of them by heart - all the pianoforte sonatas and the
symphonies of Beethoven and the Forty-eight Preludes of Bach, many of Mozart's piano sonatas and piano duets, practically the whole of Wagner, Beethoven's Fidelio, all of Gluck's operas that are obtainable in modern editions (Orfeo, Armide, Paris and Helen, or forty Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia in Tauris, and Alceste], thirty other operas of all schools, including Der Freischutz, Fra Diavolo, William Tell, The Barber of Seville, Paisiello's Barber, and Cimarosa's II Matrimonio Segreto, one or two of the oratorios and a few of the clavier works of Handel, a few specimens of the older church music, such as Palestrina's 'Pope Marcellus' Mass and 'Stabat Mater', and the 'Stabat Mater' of Pergolesi (also the latter's little
opera La Serva Padrona), a few old English and Italian madrigals,
a
good deal of Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Chopin was very fond not only of Schumann's songs, but of his opera (I
Genoveva and the big ensemble works like Faust and Manfred), and a heap of other music of all sorts, all periods, all schools. For years I had been reading music daily, with the ardour with which schoolgirls used to read novelettes, or schoolboys adventure stories. When I was about twenty I had, in my simplicity, the idea that it would be possible, in another year or two, to have learned
I rarely went to virtually all the music that really mattered. concerts at that time. I never saw a musical journal, and I do not
12
Testament of Music
I knew that there was such a thing as musical criticism in the newspapers - in any case, newspapers hardly ever came schoolboy days. way in
suppose
my
my
The music
to
I lived
with was that of the
classics,
from Palestrina
knew next to Schumann. Of contemporary composers who had seized upon nothing, with the exception of Wagner, and whose from the were my daily first, operas imagination my bread. I had no musical friends. I had an old history or two of music, that gave me at any rate the great names and showed the development of the chief schools. I had the catalogues of the popular editions of Peters and Litolff, and in my innocence I thought that all I had to do to know all about the real music that had ever been written was to work steadily through the chief works of the best-known men in these catalogues. I gave myself three or four years to complete this task, and thought the allowance ample. I did not then know how much interesting music
I
know that contemporary were out works as a fountain spouts water pouring composers what a race it was to try to catch up with them in later years I did not then realize that of all students the student of music has the
lies
off the beaten track. I did not
heaviest task.
is literature may be interested in European but what he whole, redly knows of it comes down in the long run to a close knowledge of the books of his own
A man whose job
literature as a
country, a pretty fair knowledge of the books of one foreign country, and a smattering of the literature of the others. But in music there is no language bar, and the musical periods of the
various nations are part and parcel of each other. The student of music has to know the music of at least half a dozen countries as
as he knows the music of any one of them. But however much I did not know of music in my early youth, at any rate I knew something of it, and what I knew had been learned at first hand. I had grown up in the art unhampered by
well
theory.
You
with
all this
can perhaps dimly imagine my puzzlement when, music in my head - most of it first-rate - 1 began to
that
I
work
at the textbooks. I
number of things
found myself being solemnly taught a had learned for myself long ago - nay, I
13
had not learned them, for they were natural and self-evident; one might as well speak of having learned to move the eyelids or to
secrete bile.
Music was to me a living language: I spoke it and understood it one speaks and understands one's native tongue, not so much learning it as unconsciously absorbing it out of die air around. To my amazement I found myself being taught in the text-books things that it seemed simply incredible to me that anyone should need to 'learn*. I was Hke a man who has read Shakespeare through with complete understanding and enjoyment, and then
as
is
expected to listen dutifully while an elementary school teacher solemnly tells him that an English verb must agree with its noun in number. 'Of course it does', he would reply. 'What else could
it
first
do? You might as well tell me that in order to walk I must put one foot foremost, then the other. How else could I walk?'
VI
began to describe the perplexities in which I found myself when, after a long saturation in music itself, I began to study the theory of music as set forth in the text-books. My difficulty was twofold - I had to listen to things being not to explained to me that seemed so obvious and natural as it was told need explanation; and I was always being wrong to do
I
something or other that I knew the great masters made no scruple about doing. It took me a little time to realize that much of what was of taught in the text-books as essential for the right practice music had next to nothing to do with the art of composition. If it were necessary to know all about - or even anything about - die theory of harmony in order to understand music, then of trained theoconcert-going would be restricted to a handful no more knows music of lover The reticians in each town. plain the to dian the names of the chords he is listening plain lover of
poetry
knows
diat this
poem
this in sapphics.
name of the metre
But just as, is no bar
in alexandrines, this in alcaics, in the latter case, ignorance of the

is
to the enjoyment of the
rhythm of
14
the
Testament of Music
poem,
is
so, in the
former
case,
ignorance of the names of the
chords
no bar
is
composer
to the understanding saying through the chords.
of what
it is
that the
The man
in the seat next to
me
at Parsifal
may
not
know
chord of the diminished seventh from an ichthyosaurus, or a minor ninth from a pterodactyl; but when Wagner stabs him
with one of these chords his soul is hurt in the same way and to the same extent as mine is. He listens to Scriabine's Prometheus in
blissful ignorance that the composer is here working on a new harmonic system of his own, building his chord out of fourths placed one on top of the other; but the man does not need to know anything of this to understand what Scriabine is talking to
him about.
Indeed, in many cases the composer himself could not tell us the proper name of some of the new chords he is using. He only
knows
that
he
'feels like that'
that
he had something in him he
wanted
to say, and, without his volition, it said itself through these novel harmonies. He leaves it to the theoretician to name
them. Musical minds think in music as other minds do in prose or verse - music, to them, is a natural language. It has always been a difficulty to me to understand how people need to be taught music - it has always seemed to me as natural as speech. This may
grew up in the practice of music, where I years before I went on to the theory of it. When I found the text-books telling me that this was the way to resolve certain chords, or this the way to modulate from one key to another, I was astonished - not at the information, but at the fact that there were people interested in music who needed such information. It all seemed to me self-evident. But while a great deal of what the text-books told me struck me as superfluous, a great deal more struck me as nonsense. I found myself being 'forbidden' to do things that I had seen the great composers frequently doing. I was told, indeed, that sometimes even the great composers were naughty boys, who did not keep to the rules, but that no good boy who wanted to get on would follow their bad example - unless and until he
spent some
be, in part, because I
15
happened to
would
It
a great master himself, when, of course, he be allowed to do what he liked, subject to the censure of
become
the pedagogues.
was all very puzzling. I could not help thinking that Wagner and Bach must have known more about composition than
Macfarren or Rockstro or Prout,
chronology now.
am not sticking strictly to (I Prout's treatises did not appear till a few fancy the after in years period development that I am now describI him a cite as and soul's conflicts with the texting. type;
I
my
my
books lasted for many years.) It shocked me to learn that hardly one of Bach's fugues was and so that little did composers like Palestrina correctly written, know about the 'rules' of counterpoint that Rockstro could
hardly cite a single example from their works to 'rules' but had to write examples of his own!
illustrate
the
I was still young enough to have some respect for authority, and to believe what I saw in print. There must be something in what all these people say, I used to murmur to myself. Sometimes I felt sorry for Bach and Palestrina and the rest of them, who, poor fellows, had been born too soon to profit by the instruction of such masters as Macfarren and Prout. At other times I would wonder what one of these theorists would do if he had an innovating genius to teach - a Wagner, say. Would he tell him, as he tells me, to observe the rules, or would he grant him
that 'licence' which,
it
out?
And at what age

little
seems, only a master was allowed to take did a master qualify for a licence?
No doubt Beethoven and the rest of them began by observing

the rules as
boys, and only ventured to flout
them when
not be as possible for one master to break a rule with safety at sixteen as for another to break it at sixty? Suppose, then, that Macfarren had a genius of sixteen for a pupil. Would he recognize his genius at that age? It was all very well to wink at the peccadilloes of a composer whom the world for a hundred years had called a master; Macfarren could hardly say this or that passage should have been written otherwise without being laughed at. But might not some
they became
masters.
it
But would
boy of sixteen talk as sound musical sense in defiance of the 'rules'
i6
Testament of Music
as, say, the mature Bach or Beethoven? If he did, Macfarren handle him?
It
how would
was easy enough to spot a winner when the crowd was had been won but could Macfarren applauding him after the race before the race began? I remember spot a winner in his own ckss, how little perception Cherubini, when head of the Paris Conservatoire, had of die genius of the erratic young Berlioz; and I had
;
my doubts.
vn
I
was soon made to
realize,
however, the need for a more
solid
grounding in musical technique when I began to compose. Mr. opinion, has always been a much misunderstood Squeers, in
and unfairly disparaged man. His own spelling may not have been above suspicion, but there is a good deal to be said for his when he said, 'W-i-n-d-e-r, practical way of teaching spelling; and teaching his boys to was and he clean it', combining, go combine theory with practice. Like all ardent young men with music in them, I had an itch for composition. It was while I was under the staggering blow of my first acquaintance with harmonic theory that I began. As I have already told the reader, nearly half of what I read in the harmony text-books seemed to me to be disputed by the practice of the great masters, and nearly half the remainder seemed so obvious that I could not understand why people should need to be told such things; and as my reading, at this time, had mostly been among harmonic rather than contrapuntal music, I had as yet no idea of the difficulties of musical composition.
appeared to me, indeed, quite as easy as writing poetry or prose; you had something to say, and you just said it. There was,
It
my
of course, a good deal of difference between the things said by one composer and those said by another; that simply meant, as in poetry, that one composer was endowed by Providence with
better ideas than another.
At the age I was then,

convinced that my
sixteen or seventeen,
naturally was quite
own ideas were excellent. All I had to do, then,

on
paper.
was
to put the thoughts
17
where the trouble began. Then I realized that the understanding of an art was one thing, and the practice of it another. It is possible for any of us to lean back in his seat and explain why Carpentier is a good boxer, what harmony offerees goes to make that quick correlation between eye and brain and muscle. But to get a similar harmony of our own is quite another
that
is
And
matter.
The best way to realize that such a harmony is necessary is to put on the gloves with a boxer; our conceit in ourselves will not survive the first short round. The best way to realize that swimming
thing
is
aix art is
to
fall
we
very
much
into the water, or to go into it after somewant, and to scramble back to safety with
difficulty,
and without the thing
we went in for.
the
to put notes, I soon saw the

I tried
When
my
turbulent flood of musical ideas into
wisdom and
discipline.
A little while ago, in the course of a removal from one
meaning of musical
house to another, I happened to come across some long-forgotten manuscripts of that period, settings of poems by Swinburne, Rossetti, Blake, Herbert and other poets. Some of the ideas were perhaps not hopelessly bad, but the technique The clumsiness, the helplessness of it I had the good sense to realize, even then, tkat this sort of thing would never do.
! !
first initiation into a truth that I have, I am afraid, It was often annoyed other young composers since by insisting on - that 'ideas' in music, in the sense of thematic invention, and more a poetic or especially the invention of a theme to illustrate
my
and easiest part of musical composipictorial idea, are the smallest tion. This may seem an extreme statement, but every experienced
musician knows that
it is
no
exaggeration.
Thousands of second-rate composers can invent quite good themes, but they cannot make good compositions out of them. On the other hand, many of the greatest of the world's works are made out of fragments of material that in and by themselves are nothing, or even, superficially considered, worse than
nothing.
Composers
like Liszt
expressive illustrative
have a decided faculty for inventing themes, but they never succeed in building
18
Testament of Music
first-rate
long work. Rimsky-Korsakov is another composer gift of conceiving one enchanting tune after another; but when he tries to write an overture or a symphonic movement he can do little more than go on repeating his tunes. Beethoven and Bach, on the other hand, often perform their greatest marvels with bits of material that are in themselves quite insignificant. If we did not know the Fifth Symphony, and saw the two subjects of the first movement quoted in music type, we would feel merely a sort of pitying contempt for the composer.
up a
with the
The
first
subject in particular
as the
not even a tune,
second subject
would convey nothing to us; it is is. Yet out of these two
tiny fragments of wood and mud grows the gigantic tree of that wonderful first movement. Give Bach just three notes - say those of the opening phrase of the third Brandenburg Concerto, which strictly speaking, are - and he will only two notes (G, F sharp, G) go on spinning the most delightful fabrics of tone out of them until the dinner-bell
rings.
so bad an influence upon the young composers followed him, precisely because of his incomparable gift of inventing significant themes. His powers in this respect have perhaps not had full justice done to them; but anyone who
Wagner was
who
realize it for himself has only to run over in his mind the motives of the alone. There must be well over a leading 'Ring* hundred of them. Each of them hits off to a nicety the character or the force or the object of which it is the symbol* And many people are so absorbed in the pure expressiveness of the themes as themes that they do not realize that is not
wants to
Wagner
merely a great inventor, but,
like
Bach and Beethoven, a consum-
mate As
architect
later
and
builder.
composers found to their cost, a musical drama or a symphonic poem is not written when expressive themes have been hit upon for the salient moments of the And there
story.
are composers, such as Bach and Beethoven, who do not even need striking themes in order to build up, somehow or other, great palaces of sound that have the logic of a fine building and the expressiveness of a fine
poem.
19
vm
I
have
said that
my first studies in theoretical harmony
taught
at
me virtually nothing that I had not already learned practically

first
great compo5ers. Counterpoint, canon and fugue, however, are technical things that come to no man by the mere grace of God. As soon as I realized that the art of musical
hand from the
composition was not so simple a thing as the composing of poetry, and that a technique was necessary, I set myself to the acquiring of this technique. I may say at once that I very soon
gave up the idea of shining as a composer. Whether the surrender was to be attributed to modesty or to vanity I cannot say whether to the humble feeling that with so much splendid music in the world there was really no call for me or anyone else to
write inferior music, or to die proud feeling that since I could not produce anything first-rate I would not appear before my
fellow-men
Anyhow, for a few years had the sense to keep my efforts to composed I particularly them were Some of ambitious; myself. pretty remember a big work - big I mean, in that it ran to some hundreds 'Prometheus Unbound' - a of of score - based on
as a thirdI
or
fifth-rater.
during which
pages
Shelley's
of mystical blend of opera and symphony, inspired, I should now imagine, by Schumann's Manfred. But I am anticipating somewhat. This and sundry other masterpieces occupied some five years of my time, and during those five years I was working hard at the technique of music. On second thoughts, no doubt it was a rational humility that made me ultimately give up composing, and never succumb later to the temptation to attempt anything more in that line. I saw that, however important my music might be to myself as a kind of emotional catharsis, it was very ordinary stuff compared with the real thing of the real composers. "What I then felt about myself I now feel about a great many of the young composers of today. I am often accused of being 'unsympathetic' to these people and
sort
the charge indignantly. I am extremely So far from discouraging them, I them. sympathetic towards always encourage them to go on composing their songs and
their
works.
I repel
2o
Testament of Music
I assure them they will feel symphonies and concertos and operas. their of it out better when they get system. Writing music or emotional young man merely the poetry is to the average As this promotes a bath. Turkish equivalent of the
psychical healthy action
of the
skin,
composition promotes a healthy
action of the soul. Hygiene demands the elimination of the no less than of the physical toxins; but the process, spiritual not a matter of great highly beneficial to the subject, is
though
I
interest to the rest
of the world.
am,
poser;
all I
then, anything but unsympathetic to the average comthat I ought to take a object to is his assumption
in the average outpourings of his average soul. passionate interest This I cannot do. Frankly, I have no use for average composers, or
average
of any kind. A musical friend once startled me by I at the description at telling me I was a hero-worshipper. jibbed first; but in a little while I saw that he understood me better than
artists
understood myself. I reserve

first-rate things,
my
is
enthusiasms for first-rate
minds and
choose.
and it
in the
company of these, and

time if
I
these alone, that I
would spend
all
my
were
free to
There is too much great music in the world that I do not know as intimately as I should like for me to be willing to give up any more time than I can help to music that has not even a flavour of greatness about it.
soon, comparatively speaking, gave up the vain idea of being a composer, I worked hard at the study of musical I technique for critical purposes. In this, as in everything else,
But though
make-up preferred to study alone. I hardly know what it is in that has always rendered it difficult for me to put myself in the
my
hands of a 'master'. Perhaps
it is
an incurable native scepticism,
the impossibility of believing that the whole truth, on any subject, is with any one man or any one school or any one party.
It
the 'authorities'
study of musical theory for me to discover that were often at variance; I would find, for instance, one pundit declaring positively that the second subject of the Beethoven sonata began in a certain bar, and another pundit
took very
little
declaring,
with equal
positiveness, that it
began in quite another

bar. Little things
21
of
this
kind aroused
my
suspicions,
and con-
firmed
my natural distrust of authority.

way of
study has always been to get as many books as the possible on subject in hand, and make each of them supplement the deficiencies, or show up the fallacies of the others. In
counterpoint, canon, fugue and form I worked steadily for several years through text-books like those of Cherubini, Ouseley, Rockstro, Prout, Richter, Jadassohn, Higgs, Bridge, Stainer, Marx, and others; one of the works from which I derived great
My
was August Reissmann's Lehrbuch der musikalischen - an excellent treatise for its Komposition, in two large volumes time (1866)*. Frederick fliffe's useful analysis of Bach's '48' was not published, I think, at that time; I fancy it appeared some time in the eighteen-nineties. But I well remember the portentous seriousness with which I went over Bach again under Iliffe's
benefit
guidance; only the other day, hunting for some lost papers, I across a big, sprawling volume I had manufactured for myself by interleaving Iliffe's book with the preludes and fugues
came
of Bach. But, were not these theorists, but my and others of that Bach, Palestrina, Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart, I soon discovered how as Goethe great family. grey, says, is all The of essentials musical and musical theory. theory technique are very simple, easily taught and easily learned. The applied technique of the masters is always an individual affair, and to die study of this there is no end.
Pauer's edition
needless to say,
real teachers
from a torn-up copy of Ernst
When I began these garrulous Confessions, it was with the laudable intention of trying to account for myself, both to critic is generally so myself and to others. occupied with
explaining other people that it does not occur to him that he may stand in need of explanation himself, though it may be an agree-
of his job to explain his colleagues, to account for this one having such bad taste, say, where Schumann is concerned, or for that one having written such egregious nonsense about * Grove records three volumes (editor).
able part
22
Testament of Music
Brahms. It is true that the public, in its often justifiable irritation with us, explains us all in a rough-and-ready way; it puts our grumblings down to our livers. But that is really doing us an
injustice.
The
other day a very capable
young
artist
described critics as
'mostly disappointedmen, earning hardly enough to keep body and soul together'.! understand that great gratification was expressed in
critical circles at this
handsome recognition
that critics had souls,
singers and fiddlers deny. As for critics being disappointed men, I am afraid we must all plead after another. guilty. Our life is just one disappointment But the sin is not on our shoulders, but on the shoulders of those who disappoint us. In any case, our disappointments do not sour us. A more cheerful, kindly body of men I never met. Where
which
have
known some
else
with a joke
the the
would you find people persistently passing off their sufferings You do not find the man who has just writhed under surgeon's knife regarding the surgeon and his knife as two of funniest things on earth; but I have often seen two or three
!
enduring at the hands of a singer's larynx, as the Irishmen might say, more excruciating pain than any knife could inflict (and, remember, we never have chloroform for our
critics, after
operations), turn to each other with a smile that was most expressive of their appreciation of the joke of such a person getting
up in a public hall and calling herself a singer. Nor would the critics dream of saying anything unpleasant about her, in spite of her having paid for an advertisement. I assure the reader that the picture generally painted of critics 'artists' is a false one; have the patience of by disgruntled they the of a endurance and the sweetness of an angel. horse, Job,
get their reward in this world; but if there is any in the of things they will get it in the next; they scheme justice will be sent to some place where the singers cease from
They may not
troubling
and the
fiddlers are at rest.
No, it is not by our livers that we critics are to be explained; as a matter of fact, I think our livers are in particularly good fettle, owing to the fresh air and exercise we get sprinting from one hall
to another. But, after
all, it is
writing about music, not about
23
performers, that is, or at least should be, the critic's business; and since the oddities of critical judgment that we meet with every
day are to be accounted for by some idiosyncrasy of the critic, we ought to know as much as possible about the mental make-up and the bringing-up of the critic. Sometimes it is easy enough to
trace a critic's opinions to something that has happened to him when, for instance, we find a young man flagrantly unfair to
German music
is
because he had a bad time during the war.
But
it
in the earliest years of his life that a critic is really made, for better or for worse, and when we get to middle age we cannot help looking back and trying to see ourselves as if we were
someone else we were studying, trying to account for our present attitude towards music in terms of our earliest influences and
associations.
We do this as a matter of course in the case of composers; we

find out
where and
how they lived in their early manhood, with

and so on. But a
whom
critic does not, like a of a formal learning his business. process composer, go through There are no schools in which he can study, no masters at whose
they studied,
feet
he can
sit.
He learns - if he ever learns at all - by practising at
other people's expense an art he has never been taught. He begins with an unbounded, pathetic confidence in himself; he
ends with the most painful doubts about himself. I know that there is a school that regards criticism as purely a personal matter,
temperament upon a work of art, regardless of questions and tightness or wrongness of judgment. But enters into the tightness or wrongness of judgment assuredly is not merely a personal coltish kicking up of Criticism question. die heels in the meadows of art; it is an attempt to induce other - which implies a belief that people to see the thing as we see it one way of looking at the thing is essentially right, and the
the play of the
critic's
that Gerontius, for instance, is a opposite way, essentially wrong, not merely for Brown Woman The than work Samaria, of greater names. about know who all for but or Jones, anything
"The whole man thinks', said George Henry Lewes truly. Into each of our judgments upon music goes the whole man that life have made us. heredity, early training and
24
Testament of Music
Looking back on
my own case, I can see that the solitariness of

has had
its effects
my
earliest intellectual life
on me.
It
has
made
first musical me, for one thing, a poor party man. Having got culture by myself, without schools, without masters, without
my
even
friends, I
never formed any strong

I see
ties,
either personal or
most respected colleagues behaving indulgently, to say the least of it, towards poor work because it comes from a particular coterie, they seem to me merely a sort of trade unionist marching behind the banner of their union - a sad thing, perhaps, for artists to be doing. All the
clannish.
When
some of
my
this imperfect world, can only get certain big done things by acting together and sinking some of their purely
same, people, in
misfortune, no doubt, that I find personal predilections. It is it difficult to do this in matters of art. I dislike joining Societies,
my
because
I feel
absurdly enough, perhaps

details.
that
it
hampers
my
freedom ofjudgment on
When I look back upon my adolescence it seems to me that one of the strongest influences in my life was my love of sculpture - and architecture. I sometimes especially Greek sculpture
my early experiences among these arts my kter with impatience shapdessness of design or crudity of workmanin for music, ship sculpture and architecture are the two arts in which any deficiency or excess of substance, any ungainliness of line, or any failure of harmony is most quickly noticed and most
attribute to
intolerable.
Yet the influence may have been the other way round. Perhaps we were always inclined to confuse cause and effect in matters of
the
We
artist
spirit.
put certain
traits
of the
his hectic living, for example, artistic refinement to his having
or his occasional lack of spent so many years as a boy and as a young man in the theatre or in the company of theatrical
early
Wagner,
as
man and
as
people. The true explanation
may be that he haunted theatrical
society
25
and adopted a theatrical career in the first place because his inborn instinct for the hectic and the overblown, both in life and in art,
led
him
unconsciously to the theatre.
We
say that another
composer's work owes its sexless quality to the fact that he was brought up among prim women and became a choir-boy at an
early age, but it is equally probable that it was the passionless nature of his mental substance that sent him in the first place to
the
prim
ladies
and the choir
stalls.
the old problem of which came chicken? Does die 'influence* make the
It is
first - the egg or the man, or does the boy
and unconsciously select his own 'influence'? Perhaps the latter is the truer explanation. Probably none of us would ever have been moulded by life into our present mental shape if - to
instinctively
- we had not been that shape from our birth, and would never have come under this formative influence or that had not the unconscious desire of the soul to realize itself along its own lines made us turn in the direction where the influence was to be found. At the same time it is no doubt true that had we not come under the particular influence we should not have become so
put
it
paradoxically
completely ourselves.
No
doubt what
have sometimes thought was
my
early
education in sculpture and architecture shaping some of my views on music was really only an inborn love for clarity and
coherence and shapeliness seeking satisfaction in the outer as well as in the inner world. But all the same, the relative thoroughness
with which I pursued my studies in these arts, especially in sculpture, must have had a great influence on my later attitude towards music. The point would be of no importance, or even interest, to anyone but myself were it not that it helps, perhaps, to explain some features of me as a musical critic that have earned me a good deal of no doubt well-deserved dislike. I am not apologizing for myself; perhaps the offence is too
deep for apology
am trying to account for myself. It is often made a grievance against me that I am not sufficiently enthusiastic
1
over the works of the average young composer.
must plead
26
guilty.
Testament of Music
nature
Average work of any kind does not interest me; and in the of things the bulk of the work produced in any given
year can only be of average quality. I quite realize that without a vast amount of musical activity that is practically worthless in itself the world can never get the one or two great men who stand for their epoch, but for my part I am content to wait until the great men appear.
I should be thoroughly satisfied to pass the whole of the next five or ten years without hearing a single bar of the just ordinarily good music that will be produced in such terrific
quantity
during that time.

best of everything
as
My tastes are modest and simple: give me the

and you can keep the rest. Life is too short - and much too short - to waste any of it on I would walk ten miles to see Cleopatra
gets older it seems that do not matter. things
one
or Helen of Troy, but I protest against the notion that every plain Mary Ann or frumpish Elizabeth Jane I may pass in Totten-
ham Court Road is entitled to five minutes of my respectful gaze. In a word, I am not greatly interested in imperfected things:
world
heard.
there are already too many perfect or almost perfect things in die that, to sorrow, I shall die without having seen or
my
Anyway, I would rather give a day to brooding over some
specimen of perfect beauty that I have known all my life than to give five minutes to some specimen of the average that happens to have been produced yesterday.
It
may seem
contradictory of me to say that while I have
interest
whatsoever in the second-rate musical
no mind or second-
of today, I often find the second-rate in the past extremely interesting. But the contradiction is only a superficial one. At bottom my interest in the second-rate of the past comes from the same constitution of mind that makes me interested in only the first-rate of the present. I cannot see, nor can any living soul see, what is going to be the form taken by music under the next great man's hands. Out of the present turmoil something will come, but it may be any one of fifty possible things. When it does come the particular little men and little works that led up to it will be of interest to the historian, and all the others of them will matter nothing.
rate musical work
27
living a hundred years hence, I would no doubt be of the little men of today in relation to the great some studying man of 1950 with the same interest I now take in the study of, say, Lesueur in relation to Berlioz. Except in that relation
I
Were
Lesueur today has no life at all. It may be the good fortune of one or two ofthe little men of today to achieve a certain immortality in
relation to some great genius of the next generation, but not be here to study the connection.
I shall
XI
Leaving the long story of how I came to be the detestable thing I am, I propose to recount the steps by which I came to be the detested thing I am; in other words, how and why I drifted
into the nefarious trade
I
of musical
criticism.
was
really intended for the Indian Civil Service.

I
To
this end,
went for a time to the Liverpool College, I as believe it was then called, the or, Liverpool University Victorian University. The principal then was Sir Oliver Lodge, who is probably unaware that he had the honour of teaching me all I know about electricity and physics, which is not much, I to That it is so little, however, is a reflection not on regret say. Sir Oliver but on myself; for I dodged as many of the science
after leaving the
classes as I
could and spent the time in the University library,
mostly reading the Elizabethan poets and dramatists. English literature and art, indeed, were the only things that interested me at the University. The lectures on both these subjects were fascinating. I still have the liveliest recollections of the joy I used to get from Professor A. C. Bradley and Professor (later Sir Walter) Raleigh, and I think Sir Martin Conway used
also to lecture in my time. I remember also Professor Strong, the well-known Latinist - a rather bad-tempered man, I am afraid. I have forgotten his Latin classes, but I vividly remember his spleen one day when he discovered that some volume for which he had been vainly hunting in the library for a long time was in my
possession.
Those were happy,
irresponsible days.
The
future
had no
28
worries for me.
I
Testament of Music
had been given to understand that I was supposed
to be preparing for the Indian Civil Service examination, but the information conveyed very little to me. I was quite content to
let
the Indian Civil Service wait indefinitely for the honour of on reading books and studying receiving me, so long as I could go
music.
friend gave
recognized myself recently in the account an old me of a little conversation with his youngest son on
the subject of the choice of a career. The boy was of a charming, dreamy, artistic nature. His father thought it about time to
waken him to a sense of the stern realities of life, so he asked him if he had thought at all about what he would like to be. (The eldest son had gone into the army, the second into the navy.) The boy said he hadn't thought about the matter yet, but was prepared to give
it
his careful consideration.
A few days after, his father asked him if he had settled what he
He said he had; he would like to read. an excellent idea, and was delighted that die display of military ardour on the part of the two older
like to
would
after
do in
life.
His father thought
it
boys, the youngest son should so early display a preference for one of the learned professions. But he would like a little more
definite information: reading for
medicine, or what?
hension; he didn't just wanted to go through
what - the church, the bar, The boy hastened to correct this misapprewant to read for anything in particular; he
life
reading, poetry for preference.
That had been my own case, even at a later age than his. I should have been quite happy reading, if only grown-up people would have left me alone and not pestered me with tiresome talk
about examinations. However, Providence intervened to save India from me. health broke down a little while before the examination. heart was badly strained, and my doctor told me that even if I got through the examination the medical examiners would not pass me for an Eastern climate. So that settled it; I gave up India without a pang. I had never really wanted to go there, because I felt I should be cut off from my two greatest joys in life, books
My My
and music.
Somehow
or other,
got into a bank in Liverpool* There
29
spent a
good many years of
my
is
life,
learning a
little
about
simply
banking, but more about music and literature. beautiful combinations of circumstance that
By
one of those
it
make
a beneficent design in Nature, impossible to doubt that there banks are always built near cafes. This enables bank clerks to
which
economize time in passing from the serious business of life, is reading or playing dominoes in a cafe, to the minor interests of passbooks and produce warrants and bills of lading. From the first I had an instinct that for success in life it was I used necessary to form good habits. Guided by this sure instinct,
to
go every morning to a conveniently adjacent caf6 to read. I was the better able to do this inasmuch as I was an exceptionally fast worker, and could always catch up the lost hour or so in the office before lunch time. So ingrained did this habit become in me that to this day I am unhappy if I do not get my coffee every - something like Mr. Barry Pain's gardener morning at eleven
Edwards,
for
who used to suspend his arduous duties every morning what he called his elevenses. For some years my duties at the bank were 'out-telling', going round with bills for acceptance or what scope this delightful payments, etc. The reader will see
occupation offered to any clerk with a
taste for literature.
devices, only to the initiated, by in time which the going the round could be actually spent time curtailed, while the theoretically occupied by the round was could be made to run in the multiplied, and by which the round more desirable districts. By handing over to a junior colleague, for instance, some acceptance that would have taken me into the of die distant docks, and keeping for myself one that took
There were various
known
purlieus
me up
half an hour in at the Walker Islington way, I could get Art Gallery or the Picton Reading Room. And, of course, one could always read as one walked; in Liverpool streets alone, in those years, I must have read hundreds of volumes.
its perils. I Street-reading, though, has with Hegel, I banged wrestling in spirit
remember
that once,
my forehead against a next the for fortnight looking like a lamp-post, and went about of the unicorn. I had not thought much Hegelian philosophy
before that, and
I
thought
still less
of it
after.
3O
Testament of Music
xn
very often asked by young men how they can become musical critics. I almost invariably recommend them to give up the mad idea, for it is not a very pleasant life, and the same
I
am
amount of energy and

tion,
intelligence put into commerce, speculaor betting practising the confidence trick on guileless American visitors would bring fifty times the pecuniary reward. I used to laugh at the doctrine of metempsychosis until I became a musical critic. Now I believe firmly in it, as I often used to tell
dear old dog when his conduct had not been quite irrethat I had probably been a proachable. I used to explain to him led a life of sin and crime, had dog in some previous existence,
my
now working listening to singers who

and was
punishment in concert rooms, cannot sing, and to fiddlers who cannot fiddle; and I warned him that if he was not a better dog he might be made a musical critic in his next incarnation. Every time a young man asks me how he can make a start as a critic I look at him sadly. Here, I say to myself, is another poor soul whose conduct as a hyena or an armadillo did not come up
out
my
demanded by the too exacting gods. They are driven by the Fates, for nothing will induce them plainly being to give up the idea. I paint the profession in the blackest colours,
to the standard
but they
insist
it is
on
To them
operas,
in the rose-pink of their imagination. a blissful succession of free seats for concerts and
seeing
it
and liberty to pour out every day those words of wisdom for which, they are convinced, an expectant world has art, upon been waiting for generations. Poor fellows, they do not foresee the time when a batch of tickets draws from the critic more groans than a demand for income tax does, the time when he feels he would like to have a short heart-to-heart talk with Tubal Cain, or Orpheus, or whoever it was invented music, and tell him just what he thought of him.
But when the young man is quite resolved to become a critic, and only seeks me out to learn from me how he is to begin, I am reluctantly compelled to tell him that I do not know. All I can do is to tell him how I myself began. Perhaps
musical
31
way good any other, and better than most. It is this - to go on into business, practise writing as a sideline, and stay in business till your writing has brought you reputation enough to justify your trusting wholly to it for a living. I need not say that, in spite of the fun I often had in the bank, I was not really happy in business. I could study music and literature - apart from the hour or two I might snatch from my duties inside the bank, in the manner I have already described - only in the early morning and late at night, which meant very hard work. Often I would read from six or so in the morning until about half-past eight, and then curse the fate that tore me from my book and drove me to the office. But I can see now that there was a rough kindness in the Fates' treatment of me. Not being under the necessity of earning my living by literature, I could afford to write, when I did write, on a subject of my own choosing, and to take as long as I liked over the preparation for it. I had somehow made the acquaintance of Mr. - now the Right Honourable -John M. Robertson, man of letters, philosopher, economist and politician, to whom I owe more than to any other living individual for help and sympathy and guidance in my early days. I used to write on literature and music for one or two journals under his editorship. They had only small circulations, but they were read by a few people who took an interest in ideas. About 1895 Mr. Robertson was finishing a book on Buckle and his Critics that he had had on hand for some years. It occurred to him to publish it by subscription, and to this end he gave a copious summary of its contents in the Free Review. He knew that I had in manuscript a book on Gluck. This had begun as an essay some years before, and had grown into a book without my quite knowing how it had happened. Mr. Robertson generously suggested my giving him an outline of the work for publication along with that of Buckle and his Critics. This was done. A fair number of subscribers enrolled themselves. One, I remember, lived in Japan. There were not enough, however, to justify my undertaking the expense of publication. One morning, to my great surprise, I received a letter from Mr. Bertram Dobell, the well-known Charing Cross Road book-seller, the friend and
that
is
as
as
32
Testament of Music
publisher ofJames Thomson, and later the discoverer of Traherne. He had, it seems, read several of essays and had liked them.
my
The summary of Gluck and

he declared his
at that time
I am certain that no other publisher in England would have taken a work on such a subject. I had had a light on the state of affairs when the one big publisher to whom I had written about the book replied courteously that he would not even trouble me to send him the manuscript, as there was no sale for books on music in this country. The only thing I have to regret in connection with this affair was that I inadvertently caused the death of Sir Charles Hall6. Mr. Dobell had had the summary of the book reprinted, and copies of this I sent to a number of prominent people in the musical world who, I thought in my innocence, would be
Opera had taken his fancy, and to willingness publish the book. He did me a very
the
great service, for
copy each, got were very curious. The most unexpected people subscribed, and the most expected people did not. One well-known musical critic, who was said to be very well-to-do, replied that he could not subscribe (the price, I think, was five shillings), but he would review the book if it were sent to the for that purpose. I well remember posting a copy of the circular to Sir Charles Halle one afternoon. It must have reached him by the morning post next day, and before the afternoon he was dead. It was the first of many crimes with which my literary conscience is burdened.
I
delighted to put themselves down for, at any rate, one though I fondly hoped for more. Some of the replies
xm
am often accused of being unsympathetic towards 'the young composer*, whereas the truth is that I am unsympathetic only towards the young composer who has nothing of any moment to say. There is one for whom I always feel the however, person, the student greatest sympathy who, anxious to do young musical finds himself checked at every turn by research, original the difficulty of getting the material. This was own
I
necessary
case
was writing Gluck and the Opera. (I may add (tat the book was not published till I was about twentythough
I
when
my
33
five years earlier.)
seven,
it
had been written some four or
Gluck
me as powerfully in those days as Wagner and Brahms, and Wolf and others were to do in later years. Had I been Elgar free I would gladly have devoted my whole time to research in the Continental libraries. But not much research of that kind is
affected
possible to a
young man who
is
eleven and a half months of the year: me to visit the British Museum.
I
cooped up in business all day for it was impossible even for
could under the circumstances. I had a fair at my disposal in the Picton Library, LiverI and bought all the books and music I could. For biopool, information I graphical necessarily had to rely on the exhaustive volumes of such writers upon Gluck as Marx, Schmid,* Desnoiresdid the best
I
amount of material
and Reissmann; but I made as independent a study as I could of the music and literature of the period - German, Italian, French and English - and I tried to see die aesthetic of the opera as it appeared to the men of the eighteenth century, and to define Gluck's relation to this aesthetic. I have not glanced at the book for twenty years or more, and shall probably never do so until I happen to write on Gluck again. But I chanced a little while ago upon a critique of it, which I am sure sums it up
terresf
pretty accurately, by a German expert, Dr. Stephen Wortsmann,^ in a book surveying the whole field of Gluck literature, published
by
the Gluckgemeinde
a Gluck Society founded a few years
War, but now presumably extinct. Dr. Wortsmann points out, quite rightly, my indebtedness to Marx and the others in the matter of biographical detail, but - this amuses me - he says that 'the imagination of the author has painted some episodes, particularly in Gluck's early life, in such
before the
lively colours that the uninitiated reader . * . will come to the conclusion that he is dealing with an extraordinarily wellequipped Gluck expert. For none of his conjectures, however,
has
brought forward the least new evidence; he has means of his own combinations, conjured up pictures only, by
Newman
* Schmid's
Gluck
great
work on Gluck was

1875).
published in Leipzig in 1854.

(Ed.)
et Piccini (Paris
Die deutsche Gluck-Litcratur (Nuremberg 1914)
34
Testament of Music
it
which,
cannot be denied, have a good deal of probability, the reader must be warned, since mere against which, however, too positively/ Dr. Wortsmann thinks much hypotheses are stated
the second part of the book - dealing with Gluck as and with the eighteenth-century theory of the opera
better
artist,
the
of the two. I am sure if I were to re-read the book I should agree with him. I was so fired by my subject that I have not the least doubt I wrote about the incidents of Gluck's career as if I had personally been a witness of them. I was very young, very ardent, and Gluckdrunk. Gluck was more real to me than most of the people I rubbed shoulders with every day. The book was generously received by the English reviewers, and Mr. Dobell suggested that I should do a book on Wagner, which he would publish. I. gladly fell in with the suggestion. Here the material for the kind of book I then wanted to do was a young student in a town so remote easily accessible even to
from civilization as Liverpool. A Study of Wagner was a biggish book of some four hundred pages. It took me, with only the evenings in which to work at it after the tiring day's labour in the bank, a good three years to write, and it was published by Mr.
Dobell in 1899. This was the second of the great services this good old man did to a young author whom he as yet did not know personally. His constant kindness and thoughtfulness I shall never forget. In his capacity as second-hand bookseller he frequently came across literature that he thought might be useful to me in my studies, and this he always sent to me. He produced both the Gluck and
the
Wagner in handsome style. They had a fair and steady sale, and I hope he did not lose much over them. These were the last books of mine that he published. I issued various volumes through other publishers during the next few years - books asked for by them, so that I could not have offered them to Mr. Dobell.
Some
worked
thirteen or fourteen years after the Study of Wagner I at another big book on that composer, which was
published, under the tide of Wagner as Man and Artist, in 1914. 1 received a letter from Mr. Dobell, from I had not heard
whom
35
for
many years,
gently reproaching me for not having given him
an opportunity to publish this book also. I was touched by the generous old man's continued interest in me and his willingness to risk his money on me, and could only explain that even had I thought of asking him to make any further sacrifice on my behalf (for of course he had not the business organization of the bigger publishers) I was not free in this particular case. Thereupon he asked me to do for him a volume of literary essays (Nietzsche, Amiel, Meredith, and other subjects upon which I had already written in various magazines), and to prepare a new edition of Gluck and the Opera, which was now out of print. Before I could fulfill either task Mr. Dobell died. I have never forgotten his many kindnesses to me; it was he who gave me my first real
footing
on
the ladder.
XIV
to the
imagine there can be a few professions that are such a delight new hand and such a horror to the old hand as musical criticism. Someone in Dickens comments on the remarkable fact that no one ever sees a dead donkey. But there is a greater rarity
I
a musical critic of twenty years' standing who is about concerts. So rare is this phenomenon, indeed, that I have never yet come upon it. I know no middle-aged critics who would not prefer a good dinner to a bad concert any day. This weariness, this disillusion, does not, I think, take place in
even than
this
enthusiastic
anything like the same proportion in the other learned professions, of which I am not competent to except, perhaps, the Church, I have often asked a doctor or a inside from knowledge. speak dentist, in whose hands I happened to be for a moment, if he did
not get tired of his work. Each of them has assured me that his interest in it increased as he grew older. Even the burglar, I am
sure,
that
never conceives so profound a distaste for his profession he has to brace himself, by a supreme effort of the will, before he can go out to 'crack' another crib. But then the burglar's business offers just that perpetual touch of new adventure that is Send the same burglar out lacking from the musical critic's. with the window-catch night after night to 'crack' the same crib,
36
already slipped and everything else for him, and with nothing in the way
Testament of Music
made
ridiculously easy
of swag to show for his skill and toil at the end of it all but a brass farthing and a paste jewel or two, and it will not be long before he throws up pathetic hands to heaven and asks Providence why it made him a burglar. That is the trouble with musical criticism as a profession, which means, of course, a great deal of concert reporting. It involves a fearful amount of the most appalling monotony on earth, and it involves physical as well as mental pain for the poor critics. The dentist or die surgeon may feel sorry for you when he
is putting you through it, but his is a purely imaginative pain. But the average concert performer inflicts an actual positive, physical pain upon the critic. The plain man who reads this will know what it would feel like to have some unpleasantly rough
fabric passed over his bare skin a thousand times
an hour.
He can
perhaps dimly imagine, then, what a man with a sensitive musical ear suffers when a violinist or a singer plays or sings persistently out of tune during the greater part of an evening. There is, for the musical critic, only one more painful experience than to be hurt and irritated by this kind of thing, and that is not to be hurt or irritated by it. For in the latter case the horrified
reflection occurs to
him
that
he must be losing
his ear, that his
auditory nerve has become so brutalized by long ill-treatment that it no longer resents ugliness, much in the way that a man
has slipped away from virtue by slow stages may suddenly pull himself up one day and realize, to his horror, that he is doing something as a matter of course that a year ago he would have
who
blushed to find himself even contemplating. Let me not dwell further at the moment, however, on these more painful aspects of the musical critic's life. I may have
later. Here I wish to speak rather of in which is so years everything delightful and so seems In later doubts come to the everything easy. years critic. The magnanimous sometimes comes to him that thought he may be wrong; he finds in the air around him a hundred
occasion to recur to
first blissful
them
those
opinions
upon this,
he
intelligence,
that or the other, and, if he is a man of great will probably see that all these opinions cannot
37
be right, and that there is at least a probability that possibly Providence has chosen someone other than himself as the receptacle for the first truth and the final wisdom of things. This is an
awful feeling and, to do myself and
critic rarely gives
my
way
to
it.
But when he
does,
colleagues justice, the you may be sure
that
he
is
pretty old in the craft.
The younger members of it
never
I
feel like that.
think, 1905,
speak from experience. I began newspaper criticism in, I when I was invited by the Manchester Guardian to
succeed Arthur Johnstone - a cultured and brilliant man whose untimely death was a great loss to English musical criticism. Had it been suggested to me in those first bright days that I might
have been wrong on any
subject, I should
probably have had
serious doubts as to the sanity of the person making the sugextent I may have made an ass of gestion. Precisely to what I cannot now say, for that would mean re-reading myself
my
of that time, and I have always been curiously shy of my own older work. But without enduring that painful ordeal, I fancy I can see my then self in one or two of my younger col- brave, bright spirits who tweak the nose of an leagues of today a or Hugo Wolf with as much unconcern as they would Elgar
articles
of one was mine feel right way among the hundred wrong ways of criticism, and that I, by the special first moment my tiny grace of heaven, had been put upon it the feet could toddle. As we get older, the problems of criticism become more and more perplexing; we see men for whose we have die greatest respect thinking gifts and whose judgment die direct opposite from us on a certain subject, and we are
swat some too obtrusive In those days I used to
fly on the window pane. feel as, I suppose, these young friends
now -
that there certainly
bound
to ask ourselves why* In later years we spend a good deal of our time trying to understand not only a composer or a work, but also the critics who express such contradictory opinions
upon him or
it.
But
in youth
we do
not trouble
much
about
these things. It is all very simple: if the other people differ from us they are wrong, and that is all there is to it. The possibility
that
it is
we who may be wrong never occurs
to us. Often
now,
38
Testament of Music
I see a young critic confidently laying down the law on some subject on which he can have had only a limited experience, my mind runs on the words addressed by Cromwell to the
when
of the Scotch Kirk after Dunbar: 'By your hard and subtle words you have begotten prejudice in those who do too much in matters of conscience (wherein every soul has to answer
ministers
for itself in for
God) depend upon you. Your
own
guilt is too
much
you word of God,

Christ, think
to bear.
all
...
that
Is it
you
therefore infallibly agreeable to the say? I beseech you in the bowels of
it
possible that
you may be mistaken/
xv
I
its
spoke of the pains of the musical
critic's life.
pleasant side also, especially at
first.
But the life has Only a few weeks ago I
quoted elsewhere the remark of an old French musician to the youth he had enjoyed music as a mistress, while now it was merely a wife. all come to feel more or less like that about our art or, at all events, about that portion of it that is connected with our professional duties. Long experience has convinced me that the only way to find enduring happiness in music is to be an intelligent amateur of it - to retain it for ever, in fact, as a mistress. There was a celebrated old French nobleman
effect that in his
We
of the eighteenth century who used to spend every evening of his life in the salon of a middle-aged Parisian lady whose conversation had an especial charm for him. A friend suggested that as he was so fond of the lady's society the obviously sensible thing was to marry her. The old marquis held up his hands in horror. 'God forbid!' he said. 'Marry her? Where would I spend my
evenings?'
I
always
tell this
come to me to
advice to
ask
is
them
story as a warning to those young men who me how they can begin as musical critics. My
put the awful thought away from them at
once, before it gets the mastery of them. I tell them to do anything rather than make music their profession - to go into business and enjoy music in the evenings, to make commerce their wife and keep music for a mistress. Let them take a leaf from
39
the
the
book of our educationists. As everyone knows,
aim of the
British educational system is not to teach the young Briton either art or science, but to make him proficient in sport. But the
wise
this.
They know
men who run the system know better than to let the boy see that that would be the surest way to put him
life.
off sport for the rest of his
So they keep up the pretence that
the only reason for his being at school is that he names of the rivers of England that flow into the
may
learn the
Sea, or
how many angles of a triangle it takes
to
North make two right
angles :
but they frown upon cricket as a trap laid by Satan for the immortal soul of die boy, with the natural result that the boy loves cricket and hates geography and Euclid. If he were comthe school regulations to play cricket for so many hours each day, to show instead of his books his gloves and pads
pelled
by
whenever the master took

to learn
it
into his head to have an inspection,
heart the batting and bowling averages for the last to work out on paper the angle at which a ball and fifty years, with a given trajectory would be likely to fly off a bat that meets
by
it
at a certain
degree of inclination, the boy would
come
to hate
the sight of the school cricket professional as he now hates the sight of the mathematics master, and we should find him risking
a caning for playing truant to study the integral calculus in secret. The ancient Spartans had also evidently hit upon the great truth that the best way to make a thing sought after is to frown
upon it. In
their
Sparta the
wives and allowed to
penalties, I suppose,
young married men were kept apart from visit them only by stealth, severe on them if they were caught. inflicted being
For the young Spartan, in consequence, marriage remained a perpetual romance. For the critic music is a romance only when it has a touch of the clandestine about it. I shall never give a young man any other than my usual advice - to keep up his liking for music as the old Frenchman kept up his liking for the lady, by spending his evenings with her as a lover, not as a husband. At first, to be sure, the life of the musical critic has all the fascination of an engagement and none of the ennui of marriage. Concert-going is a glorious adventure. His ear is as yet vmwearied, his nerves fresh and quick to react. At almost every
40
Testament of Music
concert he hears something or somebody for the first time, and his brain plays upon the new experience with delight and a godlike sense of intellectual power; the universe seems to be unrolling
itself before
yet virgin
him simply that he may understand it. His pen is as - a virginity miraculously renewed with each fresh
first Tristan, his first Eroica, his first
Pachmann, on his part. He not only tastes a new vintage every day, he drinks he becomes the musical equivalent deep of it. A few years later the men of those melancholy professional 'tasters' of teas and
experience. His draws the burning
words from him without the
least effort
wines,
who
am
told,
merely
let
the sample roll over their
and estimate the quality of it, but tongues to get the savour never swallow any of it. They have long ago lost all stomach for the beverage; their one concern now is not to let their palate
be corrupted any more than it is already. But even the tea-taster is more fortunate than the critic. The former, as he ruefully spits out the mouthful he has been com-
'Good 'or 'Bad'. The pelled to sample professionally, simply says musical critic has to find fresh epithets each time for the
poor same work or the same performer for perhaps twenty or thirty over this matter, unhappy years. I have pondered long and deeply are there that conclusion the to and I have come only two ways is to abolish One him. be spared by which this martyrdom might in our words, and let us the present system of expressing opinions see the day, when, to I still hope to live express them by figures. instead of racking his brains to find yet another way (the two hundred and fiftieth) of saying that Madame Larynxia was in from her bad vibrato and a tendency to fairly good voice, apart hit each note anywhere but in the centre, and that her Isolde would not have been half bad but for the fact that she did not look the and had evidently not the faintest idea what part, could not act, in the was driving at, the critic will just 'mark' the lady Wagner IntoTone festival: a at an 13, competition adjudicator style of Effect General and nation 5, Phrasing 2, Rhythm 2, Interpretation
24,
and so on.
It
would
save
him
trouble, the
newspaper space,
and the reader time.
My alternative suggestion
is
that the newspapers should adopt
41
the 'circuit' system that is, I believe, in vogue in Wesleyan and critic would be allowed to remain more than other churches.
No
three years in any town. At the end of that time he would be drafted elsewhere. The readers in each town would thus get a
welcome change, while the critic, thinking out new ways of saying
instead
of having to be always
the old things, as he has when he addresses the same circle of readers year after year, would be able to work off on, say, Newport Pagnell, all die phrases, the
jokes and the epigrams he has elaborated in Ashby-De-la-Zouch, while the latter town, just beginning to weary of the too sustained brilliance of its own critic, would be toned up afresh by the coming of a new type of expert from Hayling Island.
Failing the general adoption of this system, we any rate an occasional interchange of pulpits.
might have
as
at
Why
should not
newspapers
now
and then have a
'guest* critic,
an opera
company
has a 'guest* tenor?
II
ENGLISH MUSIC AND MUSICAL CRITICISM

1901
(From the Contemporary Review)
we have had two and weekly press hardly took as much advantage as they might have done - of looking of English music, past and present, and critically into the question The deaths of Sir Arthur Sullivan* near future. in the its prospects afforded excellent opportunities for both and of her late Majesty such an examination of English music; for Sullivan, though now of diminishing importance if we look at his actual achievement, was historically useful as a basis for comparison of what went before and what is coming after him; and the termination of the late Queen's reign might have set us thinking to some purpose of the changes in the musical outlook of this country between 1837 and 1901. In neither case did the journalists light upon very much that was really illuminative. Sullivan was either superlast
occasions WITHIN
THE
twelve months or so
the daily
- of which
ficially
for writing decent little trivialities, or for not writing something better; but with cursed superficially one or two exceptions, the journalists quite failed to see how the
position once held
commended
by
Sullivan
had altogether
lost
whatever
may have had at one time, owing to the new developments of English music within the last ten, or even five years. Again, while every article on the late Queen referred to her fondness for music, no one was able to point to any real debt of English music to the Court during the last half-century for the
merit
it
Sullivan died 1900.
43
44
Testament of Music
as Sir Robert Stewart* could patronage of such composers with be consequences, good or bad, to native pregnant hardly of risk the tearing to tatters a theme that has now genius. At become somewhat threadbare, it seems necessary to point out
how
unduly dependent we still are upon the foreigner for our music and our musicians. Fortunately we are in a better position than fifteen or twenty years ago - not to speak of half a century music that was once greatly admired here has ago. Much foreign
commendable disrepute. Only the outcasts of musical each end of the social scale - now hanker after the society worst products of Italian opera. Mendelssohn's influence and
fallen into
at
following are becoming smaller year after year. The passion for oratorio is dying - whether of repletion or of lack of nourishment,
whether of too great a
satisfaction
of the appetite by the few
good oratorios, or the too little satisfaction afforded by the many bad ones, is comparatively unimportant. The gratifying fact is that people generally are seeing the evil, the absurdity and the vulgarity of the three main forces that have till now retarded the development of English music. But while so many people, considered merely as individuals, have now a more open mind than at any previous epoch for the doings of our own men, there is comparatively little organized effort to bring about what we all desire - a community that, in case of need, can rely on itself for its own musicians, its own performers, its own conductors, and
its
own musical literature.

The
unfortunate feature
is
is
that while the co-operation
of the
wealthier classes
classes lack
more necessary here than in any other art, these interest in the nobler and more advanced forms of
music.
The composer, it must never be forgotten, stands at an enormous disadvantage compared with all other artists, as
regards the first steps towards publicity. picture to an exhibition, or show it to as
see
it,
A painter can
send his
many
friends as care to
or even put
it
in a
eyes of any passer-by.

tunities
shop-window and so bring it tinder the sculptor has practically the same opporconductor and composer (1825-
of appeal and of advertising. A poet or a prose writer, even

Irish organist,
*
94).
Sir
Robert Stewart,
English Music and Musical Criticism

if it is frequently difficult for
45
him to get a book published, has of crowd a magazines and papers more or less at his always for ordinarily good work. Further, in the case of poet, of disposal and of sculptor, their mode of speech, as well as the painter, medium through which they speak, is on the ordinary level of men's every-day activities. To appreciate the best of poetry, of fiction, of painting, and of sculpture of course requires a certain a training of the brain and the sense organs; but man can go very far indeed in the enjoyment of all these forms of art without any
technical tuition. Nor is it necessary to write poetry oneself to understand poetry, or to be a painter in order to appreciate
pictures.
There are
some amount of
many things in music, however, for which technical preparation is necessary before they
can be properly understood; while we have even a fair knowledge of the actual products of the art one must either be able to play an
instrument, or, in the case of orchestral music, to read a score with a clear comprehension of how it sounds. Thus the young musician, to whatever country he may belong, is handicapped from the
start by this Hmiting of the circle of intelligent amateurs to which he can appeal. He has to encounter exceptional difficulties to which there is no parallel in the other arts, particularly if he
writes in the larger forms of music. Once die poet's or the a condition to reach the ear or eye - once the painter's work is in
poem is printed or the picture hung to come between the artist and the
nothing whatever public. No intermediary assistance is required by the latter. But die musician cannot bring to the public ear his symphony or his opera without the intervention of fifty or a hundred individuals. He is not his own be seen or heard without a number interpreter; his work cannot
there
is
of middlemen. Nor can these middlemen present the work to die of study and rehearsal, all of public without a certain amount which has to be paid for. When I say that an ordinary rehearsal in this country costs .50 or .60, and that in the case of a new and difficult work the conductor has either to chance a bad performance or run up a heavy expense for rehearsals, it will hardly be wondered at that our younger and poorer musicians so rarely get
a hearing.
46
Testament of Music
The
spirits
his path.
musician, then, has peculiar and very serious obstacles in Even if he works in the smaller fields, the same malignant
the
beset him. If he writes songs or piano pieces, for example, publisher only cares for the second or third-rate work,
because the vast majority of the people who buy it are necessarily, from the very nature of the case, only second or third-rate
singers
by
first, second, third and last, not of the the of nor composer, nor of his art in general, but simply of song, the popular applause. Under an accumulation of difficulties of this kind - and I have by no means mentioned them all - the young composer of much originality but little wealth very soon learns to curse the day he took to music. It is not every musician who can afford, like Glazunov, to print everything he writes; and perhaps, on the whole, it is as well that it should be so. But when one looks at the stuff that is performed and published in this country, and at the much better music that is neither published nor performed, one sees that the economic side of the question is really the most important side of all in the future of English music. No one who knows anything of what the younger men are doing, of the many fine things now hidden away in the desks of unknown men, can doubt that England is full of musical talent not only have more brains in the work than at any just now. previous time during the last thirty years, but they are much better brains. On the other hand, we have only to observe the
day, because the singer thinks,
if he attempts to become known, and players. say, his songs, through the medium of the popular vocalists of the he finds himself checked, and his best work passed over,
And
We
how it yearly grows more to listen willing sympathetically and appreciatively to new music. And, English finally, in musical circles the burden of most
average concert audience to see
of the conversation is that, although the new order of things has hardly been born as yet, the old order is decidedly dead. In a word, we have the men and the music crying out for the public, and die public prepared to welcome the music and the men. But there is no market. The sellers and the buyers have no opportunity to
reach each other.
What,
then,
is
the remedy?
How
are
we
to bring
more and

better
47
music to a hearing, and create a musical public as much interested in the latest work of Mr. Edward Elgar* as the poetical public is in the latest work of Mr. Stephen Phillips? I would suggest three courses, each of which would do something to make the bed of the English musician easier to him, would increase the output of music worth hearing, and would give our budding Wagners and Tchaikovskys a chance of survival, or which is
still
like
more important - would make it possible any other artists, by the sale of their art. In
for
them
first
to live,
the
place, let
point out how greatly English poetry has been benefited, during the last few years, by the action of one or two courageous publishers, who have dared to accept and print good work, and have made it profitable both to themselves and the poets. In literature, as in commerce, the fact that there is no market for a particular commodity is no reason why there should not be one.
me
It is possible
they must
strikingly
to make a market; if people do not want the article, be endowed with a new want. This is the breath of
that
it
commerce; and
may
be made to vivify literature has been
I refer. They very shown by the publishers to it had hitherto not a want in the created reading public skilfully felt; and, for the first time for many years in this country, there
whom
was a continuous output of high-class verse, and a public ready to buy and read it. Why should not something be done for music in the same manner? Why should not some enterprising publisher arise who will publish good English music in an attractive form and at a moderate price - music, that is, which the
amateur can enjoy by himself in his own home? I may be confronted with what I have already said as to publishers preferring the inferior stuff because most amateurs are only second or thirdrate singers and players. But good music is not necessarily very difficult; and the great need is that amateurs should have their standard of taste materially raised. This can only be done by familiarising them with good work. I speak from practical is experience and observation when I say that an average audience as willing to listen to good music as to bad; that it will endure as
readily a programme
made up of Tchaikovsky,
Liszt,
Wagner and
Elgar was knighted in 1904.
48
Testament of Music
Dvorak as one made up of selections from the comic operas. To put it somewhat cynically, if the people do not know die difference between good and bad music they
it is
may as well be given the
better for everyone else. good; recruited almost entirely from seen I have provincial audiences, listen the most with the man in die street, rapturous attention at concert after concert, to complex modern music of which they had never previously heard a single bar. They may not have understood it all, but they certainly enjoyed it, and did their best to understand it. Good music clearly appeals to them just as much as bad music. There is therefore no danger in giving them the good, since the appetite for it seems to grow with what if feeds on. And I think the enterprising publisher to whom I look forward would soon find that it is possible to make a public for the better kinds of music. The average amateur at present buys second-rate songs and piano pieces because these are thrust down his throat in every music-shop he enters. Let the counter be piled with something better, and I think he will buy that just as readily, while the superior amateur, when he wanted some new music, would probably take home with him something by an Englishman, instead of the latest thing of Grieg or Sinding. I would also recommend our public vocalists to sing artistic songs instead of detestable shop ballads, did I not know too well how futile that recommendation would be. The amateur must be familiarized at first hand with better music of the kind he is used to buy; and this can only be done by an intelligent and music-loving publisher. I may be told that the venture would prove a failure, and the publisher be ruined. I reply that it has not been so in the case of the modern publishers of high-class poetry; and the poetical public is really not half as large or enthusiastic as the musical
public.
no worse for them and much
In the second place,
we
need a decentralization of our English

city
musical
life.
At present, London is almost the only
where the
higher kinds of symphonic and operatic music can be persistently cultivated on a large scale. The result is, that nine out often of
our younger composers have only London to look to for a performance. There is painful overcrowding, and the infantile
49
very high in consequence. 'Back to the country* should be our motto here, as in social and economic matters
death-rate
is
generally.
societies,
A
but
few of the
we
institutions.
One
large towns have their own orchestral need fifty times the present number of these of the seminal factors in the development of
In a country with innumerable little states and little capitals, each with its own orchestra and opera, there was a magnificent field for the young musician. He was not dependent upon metropolis for fame and publicity. He had the choice of a round score of orchestras. The area of life was wider, and it was possible for more germs to
German music was the decentralized political system.
come
orchestra,
ply, a
little
to maturity. If each considerable English town had its own which could be trained, in the course of a few years, to
grapple with the most difficult modern music, we should multihundredfold the field of evolution. Of operas it is somespeak.
what premature to
When
such a country as
this
can do
more than support
high-class opera in
one
city for a
few
weeks in each year, any schemes for the improvement of such a state of affairs must be more or less visionary. But as far as orchestral and the higher vocal music are concerned, the multiplication of orchestras would make it possible for a young composer to be heard some ten years earlier than the present
system allows. Anyone who is convinced, as I am, that England now ready and able to produce first-class music of its own, must realize how much fine talent is annually destroyed by our dreadful narrowing of the channel through which composers have to reach the public. The third suggestion grows out of the preceding one. Literature in the past, and painting in the present, have owed a great deal to the wealthy patron. In our own day we have seen more than one artist's position secured by his pictures having the good luck to be
is
bought largely by some prominent art lover. There is, of course, a stimulus in this case which is absent from music. The purchaser has a chance of acquiring the early work of a comparatively unknown man, who may one day become famous, and of
the pictures a highly profitable commercial speculation. Unfortunately, the musician can hold
finding his expenditure
on
5O
Testament of Music
out his patron little inducement of this kind; no one who advances 50 towards the publishing of a young man's score is likely to
find
it come back to him, in later years, bringing a smiling five hundred per cent along with it. What the musical patron does for music will have to be done out of pure benevolence and love for the art. But if he is not hardened enough to despise a sentimental in comparison with a material reward, he could get a fair amount of pleasure, at the same time as a noble consciousness of having performed a supreme act of virtue, from a little judicious expendi-
ture
upon some promising young musician. This would only be of what the artistic patron does for painting. A - either for the good price paid for a picture purchaser's own - not to a collection or for adds
the equivalent
presentation
sister art,
public gallery
only
to a
young
artist's
fame, but keeps
him for the best part of a year.

is
In the case of the
the wealthy amateur's duty
not
done when he has paid his
work at a concert.
the musician
for
it
It is
five shillings to hear a new composer's his duty to see - if he likes the work - that
it
who wrote
shall get
some more
satisfying return
than mere applause, and that he shall be put in a position to produce more work of the same kind. In other words, wealthy England should now do what indigent Italy and Germany did in
the eighteenth century. need a race of artistically-minded who will their patrons, spend money at least not less lavishly on
his chaplain
We
music than they do on painting. If the rich man can afford to keep and his butler, surely he can afford to keep his musical composer, who has not been used to any such luxuries as the other two, and would be found to be, in comparison, extremely economical. I am well aware that the system of patronage gives rise to many evils, and that under such a system the musician would sometimes have to cloak the more prominent elements of his personality. But that would only be a minor evil compared with the state we are now in. The composer would at all events get some of his music published and performed, which is more than he can hope for under the present system. Patronage, with
its
defects,
their infancy;
years
worked wonders for Italian and German music in and it would probably do for English music in ten what it will take fifty to do without its help.
51
n
Here, then, are three plain, simple and practical proposals for want publishers to believe, and to act raising English music.
We
is
on
the belief, that there
money
to be
made by
issuing
good
as
well as bad songs and marches and waltzes. "We want orchestras all over the country, so that a composer will be able to send his
score for perusal to twenty conductors, as an author can send his manuscript round to twenty publishers, or a painter can send his picture to twenty exhibitions. Finally, we want the wealthy
a musician or two, help him to study the best to him music, help publish his work, at a price that will not kill off the demand for it at the commencement, and help him to have his work produced somewhere or other. These proposals, I
amateur to
select
not,
simple, and practical. They do means by which English music can be improved. A better system of musical education, a change in the manner of conducting examinations, a restriction of the output of worthless degrees to mere pianists and organists, the burning of a few academies, the assassination of a few semimoribund professors - along all these paths much good work might be done; and the man who will devote his life disinterestedly to any one of them may find himself immortalized in English musical history. But the three main points on which I have laid stress are the most important, because they go to the root of the economic question. The musician must live to be able to write at all; and to write well he must not have his existence an absolute burden to him. I would not, of course, for a moment advocate
venture to repeat, are of course, exhaust
all plain,
all
die
making musicians* lives even tolerably happy. If we once begin to do that there is an end to all great music. No mathematician could calculate, for instance, what the world would have lost had Chopin had his cold bath every morning, followed by a vigorous use of the Indian clubs, or had Wagner been supplied with safe cures for dyspepsia and erysipelas. *A reasonable quantity of fleas,' the American philosopher has told us, 'is good for a dog a reasonable keeps him from broodin' about bein* a dog*; and amount of ill-health, disappointment and worry probably
52
Testament of Music
and mental But long-continued downright economy of the musician. poverty is not good for any man who wishes to get out of his brain the best that is in it; and if there is any musical talent in England, it can only be brought out by making it possible for a composer to live by his music. Buckle long ago pointed out how the intellectual level of the Church is continually falling because
performs the
useful function in the physical
same
men can now find other and freer outlets for their ideas. If we want the emotional and intellectual level of music raised in England, we must be careful to make the musical career sufficendy attractive and sufficiently lucrative to the best men. At present, they struggle vainly for a few years, and then confess themselves beaten. Unless they can interest some wealthy man in them, or procure one of the public appointments open to men of the younger school in this country, there is nothing left for them but suicide, or the slower and more painful form of selfable
extinction
known
as "taking pupils
Even the conservative reader will possibly agree with me thus far on the abstract principles at issue; but he may ask whether the concrete side of the case justifies him in disturbing his mind over the matter at all - whether, within the lives of the next
generation
or two,
express
years, a
we are likely to
all
compensate us for
have a school of English music that will our trouble and sacrifices. I venture to
my sincere conviction that most of us will live to see this
English school in full vigour. To go no further back than five remarkable change has come over the spirit and the out-
look of young musical England. The men who were writing only fifteen years ago are still in no more than middle age, yet they are already hoary with antiquity in the artistic sense; while the little group that sprang into prominence some ten years ago, and won for a time the public ear by an unprecedented charm and daintiness of melody, is now trampled under foot by the stronger and hardier youngsters of the present day. A modern poet, with a taste for the cosmogonical epic, might write the history of English music during the last fifty years in a series of geological and biological pictures. begin, about half a century ago, with a little better than sheer chaos; the musical state of that
We
53
day was the primeval ooze, in which some tiny germs were life and air. Then came the epoch of the mammoth and mastodon, of the fabulous big men who had learned all that Germany could teach them, except to write interestingly. These were the great days of symphonies and cantatas and oratorios, and of fearful and wonderful musical criticism in the London Press. Some of the giant beasts of that day still survive, and are
struggling for
very useful for educational purposes,
like die
big skeletons in the
museums. It is said that their superior height enables them to look down with contempt upon the smaller musical organisms that now run round them, and occasionally into them; but they feel the cold somewhat acutely. This epoch was succeeded by that of
the
little
songbirds,
who
really sang
very prettily indeed for a
and of the artificial shepherds who did some quite charming tricks in the way of dancing. But their little throats soon became very tired, and their little ways began to pall on the public. They had, however, done one service to English music; they had substituted melody and grace for stodginess and boredom. Finally, there came the present school, who have done things of which their fellow-countrymen have no need to be ashamed. Men like Mr. Edward Elgar and Mr. Granville Bantock are of a type hitherto unknown in English music. They have a science that would turn the mammoths and the mastodons green with envy; but their technique is a native, not a foreign technique, and is used for native ends. Mr. Elgar worked his way up through a full of consciousness of himself in his now variety experiments to well-known Variations on an Original Theme, recognized at once by all competent observers as the most important piece of music till then produced by an P tig1ifiV>man. Mr. Bantock, after dallying for a long time with Oriental fantasies, producing some very beautiful music and some that was rather shattering to at last realized that he also was an Englishman, delicate persons and brought out - at Antwerp - a work which, it is to be hoped, is the basis for a career of sustained organic energy. I refer to his fine variations on the theme 'H.F.B.',* which share with Mr. Elgar's variations the post of honour in modern English music. * E. N. is referring to the Helena Variations dedicated to H.F.B. (Ed.)
time,
f
54
If
Testament of Music
produced no other original composers than Mr. Bantock we still need not despair of the future. Mr. and Elgar But no one who goes about looking for signs of the new life can doubt that it is pulsating everywhere round him. No longer do our young men ape the manners of other days and other lands; even the once gigantic influence of Wagner does not affect them so seriously as it did the neophytes of ten or fifteen years ago, who have all paid the penalty of following too closely the tail of that perilous comet. The present generation may admire and study its Brahms or its Tchaikovsky, but it does not imitate them. Here, for thefirst timeinmodern English music, welight upon the one real sign of grace - that our best music bears no trace of the mere echoing of foreign composers. In almost every composition of the older school we could say, from moment to
we had
moment,
this is
this is Schuman, this is Wagner, one is set upon the genealogical quest by the works of Mr. Bantock and Mr. Elgar to which I have just referred. In the symphonic poem 'The Skeleton in Armour of Mr. Josef Holbrooke - one of the most promising of the very young men 1 think we have a work that will bring joy into the heart of every musical patriot. Nothing so rich and strong has ever before been written by an English musician of twenty. But it would puzzle anyone to find wherein Mr. Holbrooke has imitated any foreign composer, past or present. The music is purely English, absolutely native and self-governing. In the field of the song, again, work is now being done that stands out in the sharpest contrast from even the good songs of five or ten years ago. For the first time in this century we are producing a type of musician that can do for the best English poetry what the Germans have done for Heine and Goethe - he can set it to music worthy of the words. I will not speak of the dreadful efforts of some of the mammoths and the mastodons; but we have only to compare the setting of some of Tennyson's lyrics by a good musician of a vanishing type, like Mr. Arthur Somervell, with their setting by Mr. R. H. Walthew, or Mr. F. C. Nicholls, to see how rapidly we are developing* In a little and scarce volume of songs by Mr. Nicholls, written to words of Tennyson, we have the finest
is
'This
Mendelssohn,
Brahms'.
No
55
flower of this
find such, perfect things as 'Tears, spirit. idle tears', or 'The Swallow', or 'As through the land at eve we went*, or 'Ask me no more* set to music that lifts us at once into
the true atmosphere, satisfies our sense of sheer musical beauty and yet never falls for a moment below the poetic level of the verse - this alone is enough to convince us that the real dawn has come at last. I can speak only of the music it falls to my own lot to hear or read, and I do not doubt that there are other works, as fine as some of those I have named, whose acquaintance I have unfortunately not been able to make. But the very fact that the limited experience of one individual has supplied him with so many specimens of genuinely English music - and that first-rate music - makes the situation all the more hopeful. The germs of the new life must be fairly numerous. At all events, with Mr. Elgar, Mr. Bantock, and Mr. Holbrooke doing original work in the orchestra and in the oratorio-form, with Mr. Walthew and Mr. Nicholls creating a new type of English song, and with hal-
new
To
a-dozen other musicians doing things that never entered the
of the previous generations, the oudook for a really school is the brightest possible. The most emotional part English of the life of the nation has been pent up for fifty years, through
consciousness
the lack of the right channel through which to pour itself. "We are now, I think, in somewhat the same condition as the Russia
of the
vast,
last
two or
three decades. Inside our hearts
and
souls
is
to sing, will
unexplored territory of passion. Like the Russians, we begin and find the floodgates opened to the accumulated experiences of a hundred years. Past generations of Englishmen
and deaths, the struggles of generations of sorely-tried Russians find expression in the pity and anguish of Tchaikovsky. Already our younger men are treading paths that were mere impenetrable wilds to all our previous musicians. It will not be long before we shall have an English school that will incarnate the life and very being of our race and culture, that will speak to us as Wagner does to the German, or Tchaikovsky to the Russian, with a sense of intimacy that no nation can experience in the music of another nation,
become
articulate in us, as the lives
and
tortures,
no matter how
fine or universal it
may
be.
56
Testament of Music
m
creative
perhaps, part of the logical evolution of things that our minds should, in the race to maturity, outstrip our critical minds, but it is not well to permit too great a gulf to be
It is,
fixed between them. Unfortunately, there seems a danger at present of our critics failing to keep pace with our artists. The
musicians are doing

to be
work
that demands,
and
is
justified in
judged by die same standard as high-class demanding, German or Russian music; but the critics as a whole would be
comparison between their work and that of our reputable literary critics. To put it concretely, while we are now producing composers whose work is as representative of modern English thought and feeling as the poetry of Tennyson or Browning or Mr. Stephen Phillips, or the fiction of Mr. Meredith, Mr. Hardy, and Mr. Moore, we have no musical critics who could stand in line with John Addington Symonds, Walter Pater, Mr. Archer, or Frederick Myers. Musical literature,
ill-advised to suggest a
indeed, scarcely exists as yet in this country. This is a defect that will need to be remedied before long, if we wish to create a
work our musicians can turn out. At or with one two present, exceptions, the musical writers produce can read that be with even languid interest by any man nothing who is accustomed to good critical literature. One of the causes of this dearth of decent musical literature is the fact that most of the professional critics are tied to mere concert-reporting. There are signs that the public is becoming rather tired of the daily or weekly column that tells it, for the thousandth time, that Paderewski played or Albani sang at this, that, or the other concert in London. Not once in fifty times do the London men give us an article on music or a musician, apart from some concert or opera. The practical effects of the slavery to the concert hall or the operahouse are just what might have been foretold. A musical critic, of course, does not necessarily attend every concert he criticizes; but the number of those he actually does attend is sufficient to wear his faculties out in the course of a few years. The finer the man's brain, the more critical it is by
public response to the best

instinct, the
57
more
baneful
is
the demoralising effect
of
the bondage. But worse than this is sitting in judgment, day after day,
week
after
week, year
after year,
on
afi
kinds of
artists
and
performers, for the benefit of a somewhat uncritical public that has not been trained to look to first principles. The journalists fall
of supposing that the slating or praising of mere the be-all and end-all of musical criticism, that performers they themselves are such models of constancy and equilibration that
into the error
is
their verdicts upon performers and performances amount to very much,* and that the really musical public cares two straws about the matter. But as long as a journal engages a musical gentleman just to report concerts and operas, so long will the standard of English musical criticism remain at its present low level. It is as if we had no higher notion - indeed no other notion - of poetical criticism than reporting the performances of elocutionists. Artists and singers are no doubt a necessary evil, and we need to be kept abreast of what is going on in the world of music, but to cultivate mere reporting at the expense of genuine criticism is to transpose the real values of things. One or two musical critics do
make
*
a gallant effort to
lift
plane; and one of them
at least
the discussion of the art to a higher - Mr. Runciman of the Saturday
is more boring than to read the interminable strictures - he himself or players having the most touching belief upon singers in his own standards of judgment, and the most pathetic ignorance that there is such a thing as the personal equation. little humorous relief, however, may be had by the simple process of comparing one thunderer with another. Look, for example, at these two specimens, propos of a piano appearing the same day in different newspapers, recital by Mr. Harold Bauer: - CRITIC No. r, 'Mr. Bauer was known
Nothing
to
London as an immature young pianist. He is now a finished artist, and

an unerring rhythmical instinct, and a which should place him amongst the great pianists,' 'The performance gave, on the whole, a good impression
power.
possesses a beautiful touch,
peculiar force
CRITIC No.
2,
of the young
from artistic maturity. Each of these pundits, I suppose, would be shocked at the suggestion that you cannot measure musical performances as you do doth or timber, by a measure of length that never alters and is the same for all men, for the simple reason that all the shortcomings of the
critic are necessarily
technical pianist's 9
He
is still,
however, a long
way
found in
his judgments.
58
Testament of Music
Review - deserves to be in somewhat better company. Mr Runciman, unfortunately, does not always do himselfjustice; at all events one feels that he could, if he chose, produce better work than we sometimes get from his pen. It is quite certain that a man of the same gifts as Mr. Runciman, who happened to be a literary or artistic instead of a musical critic, would have been stimulated by his environment to take his work much more seriously, and now have produced half-a-dozen volumes of real would
by
literature*
Mr. Runciman
flings his talents
away, conscious that
he
is
little
language
as the good addressing a relatively uncritical audience, just street arabs, permits himself the use of with boy, playing he would hesitate to use in the more refined circle of his
home. Mr. Runciman's case is, indeed, highly instructive. He is more sinned against than sinning, inasmuch as we are so glad to musical writing that we do not feel get really good, brainy, towards him when he perpetrates his sufficiently murderous worst eccentricities. But these will have to be weeded out of him before he gives us the best he is capable of. When he calls Robert Franz, for example, an intolerable dullard, or when he writes thus of C&ar Franck - 'He was an industrious schoolmaster and to nothing more; he had no invention nor any original impulses wrote he and to him drive invent; possesses any qualities nothing beyond a certain mastery of the technique that has been evolved a by the great and small composers preceding him, and certain that in individual clumsiness
perfectly
applying
technique'
when our best critic becomes
so wildly uncritical as
this,
we have
an unpleasant reminder that English musical criticism is really only in its infancy. For this is one of the marks of the immaturity of
the science, this thorough-going condemnation of things in the of the reasoned opinions of heap, this bland and blissful disregard other competent men, this refusal to accept anything but one's own nerves at any chance moment as the measure of things
this clean-sweeping, of time a critic course the In in criticism. carnivorous spirit reigns of one out comes to see that his is only many possible ways of become to dyslogistic about regarding an artist; and he hesitates
musical. It
is
only in the early days that
anything until he
is as
sure as
much careful self-analysis can make
him
59 not the outcome of mere prejudice, or insufficient knowledge, or a momentary fatigue of the faculties. It is all very well to say that the critic should record the impressions of a work upon his temperament. That may be what all criticism resolves itself into ultimately, but the temperament is not a Godthat his verdict
is
given, impeccable thing. It requires training and checking, like every other quality of the natural man; and it needs to remember
that there are other
temperaments in the world. Though the 'temperamental* probably not agree with me, it is easier to much wear the hair long and to scream out, with really an air of sybilline conviction, that two and two make five, than to sit down and patiently work it out that two and two make four.
critics will
The
is
present appeal to 'temperament' in English musical criticism too often the mere resort of critical innocence, the mere failure
literature.
to understand
and in
present,
what criticism has come to mean in the other arts So long as criticism is undifferentiated as at
from journalism, our musical writers are necessarily followers of that amateur organist of fiction who made up in expression for what he lacked in, technique. But it is the absurd
and antiquated system on which the 'musical column* of the ordinary paper is conducted a system that dates from the times when singers and players were vain enough to think they had a - that accounts for the fact right to tike whole of the public ear that so few of our most competent critics give us the best that is in them* They have not all round them, as the literary critics have, a mass of fine literature to serve as a criterion of their own work, and an ideal to strive after. The result is that the second and thirdrate men never say anything worth printing, and the first-rate
* In the front ranks of the musical critics stands the gentleman who, for some time past, has written the excellent notices in the Manchester Guardian; indeed, only Mr. Rundman's articles can compare with his
for all-round interest
at times to a
and stimulus, though he seems to
me to give way
temperamental asperity that is as uncritical as it is tannecessary. But he almost always gives us the impression of knowledge, sanity, and culture. It is characteristic of the low state of English musical criticism that a writer of his ability should be merely writing about concerts in a newspaper, instead of publishing lengthy and connected essays in book form. (Arthur Johnstone. (Ecu)).
6o
Testament of Music
men are content with that dubious sense of superiority felt by the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. Nor is this the only bad feature of the system that identifies
musical criticism with concert-reporting.
The
criticism
of music
that are unknown to any of the other presents special difficulties can read a play or a story through in an hour or two, and arts.
We
then be quite able to discuss its main features. But to be able to speak with authority on a complex piece of music, like a Strauss symphonic poem or a Wagner opera, we need either to have heard it half-a-dozen times, - or to have devoted hour after hour
of the score. If a critic has heard the same symphony very often, even if he has never seen the score, he is perhaps in a it. But on a work with which position to pass an opinion upon he is only imperfectly acquainted, and which he hears only at rare intervals, the critic, as a rule, should be far more chary of expressing an opinion than he is at present. And when it comes to passing judgment not merely upon a particular work but upon the whole of a man's work, it is no exaggeration to say that not
to a study
five
men in England today are competent to undertake such a task.
The
reporter of a daily paper hears, for example, Tchaikovsky's second symphony for the first time, or the Pathetic symphony for the fiftieth time; and he straightway delivers himself in the most
authoritative manner,
general virtues conscience would attempt to write an article, say, on Zola, without having read Zola through at least once, and perhaps two or three times. But the musical critic sits down to criticize Tchai-
and
defects.
of a column of criticism of Tchaikovsky's No literary critic who had half a
kovsky, or Brahms, or Berlioz, or Liszt, or Richard Strauss, without a real acquaintance with half of what the man has written. I am not exaggerating; it is a mere matter of time, and of pounds, shillings, and pence. Musical scores are so expensive
that
no one but
a millionaire can afford to
buy
musicians'
works
in a mass. Unless a
man
particular purpose, he is
studying a particular not likely to be possessed

is
composer for a of all his works.
And
if to this fact
demands more
the further one, that a musical score and closer attention than a poem or a novel, it will
we join
few
readily be seen that
critics
can possibly
know
the
whole of
61
of the big moderns. I venture to no three of our that critics say really know all the works of either or or Brahms, Liszt, or Berlioz, and that not one Tchaikovsky, all of them knows the works of the whole four.* This is evident, apart from a priori reasons, from the actual writings of our critics, where the positiveness of the judgment is often in inverse proportion to the right to form a judgment. I need not labour die point any further. It need only be said that the critic has a quite simple and honest course out of his difficulty to cease valuing his opinion more than Sainte-Beuve and Walter Pater would have valued theirs; to get away from the primitive
three
the music of even
two or
notion that art-criticism consists only in feminine approbation or disapprobation, instead of in the impassive study of the products of the human brain; to admit that he does not know the whole of
the
works of the man he
is
criticizing;
and to
lean, in cases
of
doubt, to the side of charity. Let him, if he thinks Tchaikovsky feminine, believes that somewhere, among, say, the operas of Tchaikovsky which he has never heard, the composer may
virile. If he thinks a Liszt and he has rhapsody vulgar every right to say so; but he showy,
possibly
show himself exceedingly
has
no
right to give his readers the impression that refinement
and nobility are nowhere to be found in Liszt's work. In a word, our critics will need to take their profession much more seriously than most of them do at present. The time is coming when an English school of music will appear before them for judgment, when they will have to separate carefully die wheat from the chaff. If the majority of them do not behave more seriously and more conscientiously in the presence of English music than they do towards foreign music, they will simply be obstacles in the way of the new school. Under the conditions of modern life, a new art-work is almost bound to move forward in two parallel columns. The creative men must have half the work of propaganda and the rougher half- done for them by the friendly arm of criticism. The artist will bring forth the fruit and flower; but the soil and the atmosphere must, in part, at least, be made by
* To
hear Liszt's Faust

is
Symphony,
it,
for example, at a concert once
every ten years,
not to know
in the critical sense.
62
the
critic. It is
Testament of Music
years
we may
surely not a pleasant reflection that in the next ten have a vigorous contemporary school of English
music, hampered and impeded sixty years behind the times.
by
a musical criticism fifty or
THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE,

(From The
Speaker)
1902
MR. HERBERT SPENCER has recently been making a complaint
that
must have awakened a responsive chord in the breast of many a fellow-sufferer. Our philosopher has found, to his sorrow, that it is easier to let a strain of music into the brain than to turn it
out; the tactless guest
fails
to understand
when it has outstayed its
and depress the host who was lingers foolish enough to open his doors to it. An experience of this kind must have fallen to the lot of all of us; our days and nights have been haunted by the incessant automatic reiteration of some piece of music that declines to quit our consciousness. Sometimes - most - it is the merest fragment of melody, aggravating prank of all whose beginning and whose end we cannot for the life of us remember; and we exhaust our grey matter in the vain attempt to find an answer to two questions, which, for the time being, concern our immortal soul more than all the problems of the over and the under world - (i) Who wrote this infernal strain? (2) In which of his infernal works does it occur? Perhaps it is something we have heard by chance, heard without even noticing that we have heard it, an unfamiliar phrase drunk in unconsciously at a concert, or from an organ in the street, or from a passing band, or born of any one of a thousand other contingencies. To attempt the tracking of this monster to its lair is the most exquisite penance of all; the labour of Sisyphus were luxurious ease to it. The curious thing is, that no other art but music afflicts its worshippers in this way. We do not find our consciousness
welcome, and
on
to irritate
63
haunted by a piece of architecture, a verse of poetry, a statue or a

a musical phrase will persist painting, to die extent to which never the brain sometimes for days together, within us, leaving
itself upon us, with almost ludicrous irresponsibility, even in some of the most serious moments of our life. There is a detachment of mental function here that is without a parallel
obtruding
elsewhere in the
arts.
Yet
points,
is
this possibility
of detachment has its compensations. It of course, to the fact that the musical manner of thinking
something more intensive, more esoteric, than any other mode of artistic cerebration - less dependent either for its beginning or
development upon anything coming from the external world. And herein lies the compensation of which I speak; for as this peculiarity of music enables the composer to work in commaterial world, so it permits parative independence of the outer our enjoying the rarest of his creations by means simply of the exercise of pure imagination. I put it to any lover of music whether his moments of supreme happiness have come when he has been actually listening to music or when he has been merely imagining it? Never, under the most favourable concatenation of circumstances, can we get an ideal performance of any work. Something is sure to be wrong the orchestra or the singer will the a little to be leave desired, very sight of our fellow-beings in an is us the same room with affliction, or, even when everything else is in its favour, the performance may be spoiled for us by our own brain or body being out of tune for that particular thing at that particular moment. But you have only to think of the skull in performances you can have beneath the dome of your
its
order to realize how infinitely superior they are to the best that can be given in any opera house or concert room. You can choose your own work; you can choose your own time and instruplace for imagining it; you are not dependent upon any it conceive can or material human; you ment, sung by the
faultless of orchestras, purest of voices, played by the most is the way to enjoy This of artists. phrased by the most perfect Walk through a the the ear, but music, not spirit.
vulgar by sombre wood or by a great
river
by by
night,
and
let
some of the
64
immortal music of the world
Testament of Music
float through your brain grave or - and or or noble sad will then be gracious, passionate you gay,
fidelity
one in spirit with the immortal soul who wrote it. Then, and only then, does the full meaning of his message really reach you. I shall be told that not everyone can do this - that not everyone can let the inner ear replace die outer to the extent of being able to conceive not merely the form but the colour of a great orchestral work, without any assistance from actual sound. It is sufficient for my purpose that some of us can do this, if not with absolute - for that is - at all events
well-nigh impossible
sufficiently
closely to let us surrender the actual performance without a sigh. If the majority of people cannot do it, that is their affair; I in
am
egoistic mood, and do not greatly care whether the common herd of men, who imbibe music through the fleshly ear, can or
cannot ever climb the supernal heights whereon we, the elect, are proud to stand. Theirs, perhaps, is the day, but the morrow is ours. In the first place, at the present rate of progress in the art,
only a matter of another decade or so for the best music to be almost unplayable - in the sense that composers are always aiming at bigger and richer effects, which can only be rightly rendered on the largest and most expert orchestras, after many rehearsals. This is possible only in towns that combine great wealth with an absorbing artistic curiosity - and such towns are exceedingly rare, in this country at all events. The time will thus come when ninty-nine per cent of the musical population will have no chance of hearing anything but the second-class work of the future. This is where the flite of the world of sound - will people who imagine music instead of merely hearing it undoubtedly triumph. They can have a perfectly ideal performance of any work they like by the simple process of learning the score by heart, and then letting the brain give its silent rendering of it - as they now do, say, with their favourite Beethoven symphony or Wagner overture. To say nothing of the joys of
it is
the present, surely the selfish pleasure
cultivating this faculty for to us in the future? going give But further, this mode of rendering music will not only add to the enjoyment of the amateur, but will immensely enlarge the
it is
it is
worth while
65
of the composer. Nowhere is the freedom of music from any dependence upon the real world shown more conresources
you want to remain intelligible, write prose or poetry and employ words that do not correspond with things; nor can you paint a picture with colours that do not exist - it is indeed, to
clusively than here.
You
cannot, for example, if
impossible, conjure up before the inner eye any colour but the real ones that are familiar to the outer eye. But in the ideal world of inward music the
composer will be hampered by no such limitations upon his fancy. I cannot imagine a material colour with which my experience has not presented me; but I can imagine a musical tone which no human ear has ever heard. So long as music is written to be merely played, so long will composers and auditors be limited by the mechanical imperfections of the orchestra; we cannot take the players above or below certain notes of the scale, nor can we get out of an instrument tones of equal value throughout the whole of its range. But this difficulty will vanish as soon as people begin to approach music through the spirit instead of through the flesh. A composer can then write what notes he likes, and although no horn or oboe or bassoon could be found to play them, we shall still be able to imagine what the notes would sound like on an ideal horn or oboe or bassoon. Thus at one stroke we shall free the composer from one of his greatest bugbears the necessity of considering the capacity of mechanical instruments and the aptitude of the players. There will, of course, be an ever-present danger to guard against. As composers conceive orchestral colours that do not as yet exist, the instrument makers will set their brains at work to invent improvements that
will permit the performer to realize the colour in actual sound. Nature, as in Mr. Whistler's story, will be always creeping up; and the composer must incessantly keep ahead of the possible.
He must
checkmate each
move of
the instrument
maker by
soaring into heights where mere actuality cannot breathe, until the happy day shall come when orchestral music shall no longer
be played but only conceived. Not until the musician writes only for ideal instruments will he be able to paint, in all the fulness of its glory, that ideal world in which it is his privilege
66
alone to
live.
is
Testament of Music
present he
medium
At present he is in the position of trying to live. At in the position of trying to render the illimitable in limited by the ridiculous shortcomings of brass and
"wood and catgut.
Ill
SOME EARLY NON-MUSICAL

WRITINGS
FROM FORM IN THE NOVEL,
William Roberts)
1891
(University College Magazine, written under his original name,
NOVEL stands
_L
the one side
it
mid-way between
touches the poetical drama,
Science and Art; on on the other, the
analytical domain of psychology, ethics, politics, sociology, and all that is included under the word 'philosophy*. The first com-
we
which is suggested, however, is with the drama. In each have a concrete picture of life, with well-defined characters acting and re-acting upon each other, and being acted upon by
parison
environment. Setting aside the difference in expression, the main difference between the novel and the drama lies in the
their
and of imagiWhile the drama stands mid-way between Music and Philosophy, the Novel stands mid-way between Philosophy and Poetry - using the word 'philosophy*, of course, not in its ordinary technical sense, but as including any rational treatment of the world and of man. While the drama tends on the one side to concentrate into objective thought, on the other rarify into Music, the Novel endeavours on the one side to exist in the ideal world of poetry, on the other to view life with the realistic eye of science. The characters of the novelist are not quite so ideal as those of the dramatist, while at the same time sufficiently ideal to justify their existence in a work of Art; they are not subjected to the same cold, anatomical analysis as in the pages of the psychologist, while at the same time exhibiting
preponderance of analytical
interest in the one,
native interest in the other.
67
68
secret places
Testament of Music
of their minds, the complete unveiling of which is denied to the dramatist. There is an ascending scale of ideality
from the novel, through the drama to the opera; and a motive, an occurrence, or a situation, which occurs with perfect propriety in one, would jar upon the imagination if introduced into another. Hence every attempt is made, in the more ideal Arts, to eliminate the familiar present. The drama usually deals with the men of by-gone ages, because the appearance upon the stage of the life of the present day would be so indelibly associated with conceptions,
the reverse of ideal, that the dramatist could not transport us into the super-organic sphere of Art. When present day life is
introduced upon tie stage, as in the social dramas of Ibsen, the play
loses in poetical
power and
gains in analytical. In the opera,
never steps upon the stage; the passionate contemporary of music ideality precludes the immediately real. In the novel we stand upon a much lower plane: if, in supreme moments, our heads touch heaven, our feet never leave the familiar earth. It is
life
in contemporary for his powers.

Further, in the
life
that the great novelist finds the fullest field
drama the author is non-existent; in the novel he is omnipresent. While the atmosphere of the drama is homogeneous, that of the novel is heterogeneous. The characters of die drama exist in their own sphere, and any elucidation of motive, any expression of thought, or feeling, any criticism, must come from the characters themselves. In die novel, besides the world in which the characters live and move and have their being, there is die further world in which the author lives, and
the light of the latter is being constandy projected upon the former. The novel, in fact, is a prose drama plus another per- that of the author. sonality Obviously this enlarges the sphere
of the novel. Shakespeare, in his unfolding of a character, can use only of the thoughts of the character himself or of another personage of the drama; George Eliot, besides giving us the concrete embodiment of an idea, and its action and re-action in society, gives us also a side-light upon it from her own nature. She supplements the concrete by the abstract, the particular by
make
the universal.
Some Early Non-Musical Writings 69 Like considerations meet us when we look at the different media of expression in the novel and the drama. Verse, in its broadest sense as including rhythmical speech of any kind, is of a
prose, while rhythmical utterance highest form, as revealed in Music, is still more imaginative. Hence the creative powers of the artist are modified by the medium through which they find speech. In the musical drama
more imaginative nature than

its
in
through our insight into Lohengrin's nature we see with spirit turned inward with an introspective power that is eyes alone, denied to any artist working in a more concrete material. The distance between the characters of a novel and those of a poetical drama is less than that between the characters of the drama and
ether; in
ideality; such a character as for would an impossibility, even in be instance, Lohengrin, The flood of in which Poetry. light Wagner bathes the character is of a kind too a coarser impalpable to be transmitted
we
have characters of supreme
in the
those of the opera, because there is not the same wide difference media of speech, but a plainly perceptible gulf does exist
between them. While the idea undoubtedly determines the form, not too much to say that, in some degree, the form also determines the idea; and given a particular medium of artistic expression, that which is uttered through it will inevitably travel along certain lines of force, and as inevitably avoid others. Examining, then, the speech of poetry and the speech of prose, we find that while, as both expressing rational concepts, they meet on common ground, there is a residuum of force in each which tends away from this common centre. While the inner essence of words in poetry tends towards the imaginative sphere of music, the inner essence of words in prose tends towards the analytical sphere of science. In the one case the definite intellectual significit is
ance
is
submerged in the
course,
indefinitely imaginative; in the other,

intellectual. In
the imaginative tends to

actual
still
work, of
become lost in the these two elements
any
are combined; but
there exists the distinction, which, in its most pronounced form, is the basis of the variety of character in the novel and the
drama. While in the former the mind of the artist is pre-eminently analytical, in the latter it is pre-eminently imaginative. Such a
70
character as Lohengrin
is
Testament of Music
Desdemona
partly
impossible in poetry, such a character as impossible in the novel. The sphere of the latter is imaginative, partly philosophical, with a slight bias
is
towards the
its
latter.
Having thus
tentatively
marked out
the nature of the novel in
above deductively. What we wish to establish is this - that the novel depends upon a faculty of creation partly imaginative, human mind increases in analypartly analytical, and that as the tical power, the novel correspondingly gains in breadth and
depth.
for a moment as a whole. Here single parts, let us look at it the conclusion reached to confirm endeavour inductively may
we
'a progression from an indefinite, a definite, coherent heterogeneity, to incoherent homogeneity consequent on the integration of matter and the dissipation of
Evolution
is
defined as
motion*. As applied to the development of Art, this may be understood as a progression from that which is formless, in-
which is symmetrical, definite, and real, of parts, together with an increased by of each part upon ail the rest, and a wider union of dependence diverse elements, leading to a more direct and living effect. All early Art is static, all mature Art dynamic. The difference between a mass by Palestrina and an opera by Wagner, between a story by Malory and one by George Eliot, is the difference between Art
definite, unreal, to that
attended
a differentiation
that achieves
its
purpose in accordance with Euclid's definition
of a
straight line as the shortest distance
the Art that
from time to time

but at
last
between two points, and leaves the direct route to enter

its
upon
others,
achieves
purpose more truly, more
symmetrically, and more convincingly. This difference may be seen at a glance by comparing any piece of early Art, whether in Poetry, Painting, Music, the Dance, or Fiction, with a later product of the same genus. "The tales of primitive times,' says Mr. Herbert Spencer, 'like those with which the story-tellers of the East still daily amuse their listeners, are made up of successive occurrences that are not only in themselves unnatural, but have no natural connection; they are but so many separate adventures put together without necessary sequence. But in a good modern
Some Early Non-Musical Writings 71 work of imagination, the events are the proper products of the characters working under given conditions and cannot at will be
changed in
general
fictions
their order or
effect.
kind without injuring or destroying the Further, the characters themselves, which in early
play their respective parts without showing how their minds are modified by one another or by the events, are now presented to us as held together by complex moral relations, and as acting and re-acting upon one another's natures.'*
What
is this
is the principle involved in all these changes that the minds of early artists are
of Art?
It
comparatively simple
and homogeneous, those of later artists complex and heterogeneous. While the former deal with few facts, diverge very little from the straight path, and pay more attention to tie parts than to the whole, the latter deal with many diverse orders of facts, make wide circuits from the uniform path, and combine irregularity of parts with a greater concentration of the whole. This principle may be observed by anyone who will listen to a child's
comments on a picture. All its attention is directed first on one point, then on another; there is a total absence of the power to combine all these detached representations into one synthetic
representation. With a growth in synthetic power, many diverse ideas are gathered into one; and in the history of the nations, the
novel has developed simultaneously with die development of
power to entertain many ideas, and to realize them as all - to look bearing upon one central idea beyond the immediate
this
idea itself to ideas as yet existing only potentially. While this holds true of the novel as a whole, it also holds true
of each of
its
parts.
Concurrently with an advance in that re-
presentative faculty which shows itself in a wider and more complex plot, there is an advance in that representative faculty which shows itself in a deeper insight into individual character. The Morte D'Arthur differs from Daniel Deronda both in its depth of insight into individual character, and in its breadth of com-
The novel, in its - a similar well as development, grows vertically us in Music, where the growth of melody, phenomenon meeting
bination
among
the characters as a whole.

laterally as
* First
Principles,
pp. 326-7.
72
the horizontal,
vertical.
is
Testament of Music
accompanied by a growth in harmony, the
While
power
simultaneous growth in synthetic and analytic shows itself both in the drama and the novel, it is in the
this
latter that its results are
important.
The
poetic insight into char-
less
more imaginative, and In that intense circumstances. dependent upon objective flood of emotion which, by its nervous discharge throughout the
acter differs
from the
novelistic in being
ordinary excitement, and in its highest is music the poet sees all more is of character life in epitome. His reading subjective than that of die novelist. The latter interprets humanity more through the environment than does the dramatist. In fact, poetry with an
undue preponderance of analysis almost ceases to be poetry, as the Sordello of Browning, which almost approaches die novel. And in dramatic art, Hamlet is more of the nature of the novel than Romeo and Juliet or Cymbeline. While growth in synthetic power leads, on the one hand, into art like that of Victor Hugo, of Goethe, of Wagner, it leads, on the other hand, into thought such as that of Kant, of Spencer, or of Comte. In this latter form, it touches upon that particular faculty of the mind concerned in
novel production. have seen then, that for the production of a novel there is required a mind partly imaginative, partly analytical, that the novelist must have something of the poet's insight into character, but must deal with his men and women upon a lower and less ideal plane; and that, beyond the faculty of insight into individual
the experience ganglia of the entire system, concentrates into a moment - a phenomenon which in its lowest
of years form is
We
character,
he must have the faculty of synthesis.
One
other point
claims a few words of treatment.
We have been told that the novel should be carried on chiefly

by means of conversations, and that the nearer it approaches the conversational and recedes from the descriptive the more perfect does it become. If this were so, there would apparently be no
necessity for the novel at all; everything
performed by it could be equally well performed by another form of Art - the prose drama. But the novel, as we have endeavoured to show, is
Some Early Non-Musical Writings

less
73
something ideality, and something more than the drama in range and purpose. It is of a more intimate and more contemporary nature than the drama, and this mainly because it admits of interests and forces other than human. In a word, it is in the treatment of the environment that the novel
surpasses the
than the drama in
drama.
It is
precisely here that the novelist holds
himself aloof from the purely imaginative realm of the dramatist. He directs upon the thoughts and actions of men a glance that
goes beyond them and their immediate circle of human interests; he shows the life of humanity as bound up with the life of nature.
It is
unnecessary to demonstrate here how in this, as in so many other matters, the novel is the peculiar production of our later
ages,
have thrown us more into contact with the outer world, and shown the organic and the inorganic worlds in close inter-relation. Here it is sufficient to point out that it is this conception of the union between human forces and forces other than human that differentiates the novelist from all other artists, and that makes his work more interesting, more vital, and more contemporary. set out with a definition of Form as the objectivation of the of a purely psychical, the rendering concrete and assimilable mental hierarchy of facts and relations, and we have endeavoured to show, briefly, that the novel, viewed from its subjective side, as a concentrated picture of life in the mind of the novelist, has in it certain latent qualities, sources of origin and motives; that these
where
science, art,
and
social life
We
latent qualities, in
becoming
concrete, seek a
mode of expression
which, in the nature of the words employed, in the conceptions of character revealed, and in the union of all single representations
one synthetic representation, is the true objective correlate of the inward idea itself; and that in this mode of expression alone can the novel, as a specific manner of looking at life, find its adequate revelation. It is not implied, of course, that every with piece of literature usually designated a novel must comply these conditions. But of the true novel - that is, a study of man in relation to other men and other things - these conditions do hold. The genuine novel, in fact, should be a problem in spiritual dynamics, in which the forces A, B, and C, are living men and
into
74
Testament of Music
setting out from different at different goals. In their passage across the earth
women, with varying momenta,

points,
aiming they meet, and then proceed, in deflected paths, and with diminished velocities, to goals newly determined for them. In the
beginning of the book the novelist presents us with the human forces and the lines along which they act; he shows us their
meeting and their contest; and in resolution of all the forces.
his final
pages he gives us the
A NOTE ON GEORGE MEREDITH,

(From the Weekly
Critical
1903
Review)
AMONG THE many fine criticisms scattered about in Oscar Wilde's dialogue The Decay of Lying, there is one on George Meredith, which though illuminative like all Wilde's judgments, somewhat misses, I think, the real cause of one of our grievances
against the novelist. in his style; what we
style ever
We are all agreed in disliking certain elements

!
do not agree about, is why Mr. Meredith's came to have such irritating blemishes. 'Ah Meredith !' says Vivian in the dialogue. 'Who can define him? His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered Whatever he is, he is not a realist. everything but language. . Or rather I would say that he is a child of realism who is not on speaking terms with his father. By deliberate choice he had made
.
.
himself a romanticist. He has refused to bow the knee to Baal, and after all, even if the man's fine spirit did not revolt against the
noisy assertions of realism, his style would be quite sufficient of itself to keep life at a respectful distance.'
With
some
the
last
dictum
we
will
all
agree.
We
might have had
difficulty in extracting Mr. Meredith's philosophy of fiction from the novels themselves; but he has expounded his in one manifesto or another; and there are principles pretty fully
some of us who rather prefer his philosophy to his fiction. Like Mr. Hardy, he sometimes gives us the impression of an acute
Some Early Non-Musical Writings 75 observer and brilliant critic who has wandered into the novelform by mistake. 'The Savour of Truth, the right use of the bis own words - are senses, Reality's infinite sweetness - to
quote not by any means writ large over most of his works: nor is his the fiction which is the summary of actual life, the within and without of us ... philosophy's elect handmaiden.' He sees life through too much of a mirage for that. His invariably preposterous patronage of the poor and humble in his fiction, his habit of treating them with humorous condescension, his failure
to see the lives
of all
these people as they themselves see
it
this
alone
would show
his limitations as the philosopher
he cannot see of human life phenomena sanely, but that he cannot make vital fiction of what he sees and knows. For this reason, perhaps, his poetry often gives us the impression of being more essential, more inevitable, than his prose; and even in his fiction his finest moments are those in which the pure imagination has been left
fiction. It is not, I suppose, that
of reality in these and other
free to soar into its

It
own ideal atmosphere. not seem may very illuminative to say that he is too imaginative to be a convincing realist even in his own sense of the word. Nevertheless, an examination of some of the mental qualities
underlying his style
may throw a little fresh light on the formula.

makes
his
When I
slave
say that
life
it is
treatment of
Air. Meredith's imagination that unconvincing, I mean that he is so

is
much
the
of a verbal faculty that
always getting unmanageable at
the slightest suggestion from his fancy, as to be incapable of producing life as he has seen it. The imaginative mind fastens upon each impression as it appears, and gives it out again coloured by the reflection upon it of light from other impressions. But this faculty of spontaneous co-ordination needs to be held in check by a higher nervous centre; and in Mr. Meredith this superior
decidedly lacking. Not only is his verbal faculty extremely opulent in itself, but it is always liable to be overcharged by die influx of irrelevant suggestions from his imaginacontrol
is
tion, that
groups together, in one lightning flash, things that are sometimes only distantly related. Hence both the final obscurity of the idea and the oddity of its expression. The nervous hastening
j6
effect
Testament of Music
of the dissevered images to meet, may produce merely the of a mild mannerism, or it may be wild enough to set the reader raging furiously. Mr. Meredith's ladies, for instance, never walk, they always swim. Mrs. Doria swims to Richard Feverel; Mrs. Mount swims 'wave-like to the sofa*. Here the novelist's imagination has been seduced a step further by the 'swim'. The addition of the absurd 'wave-like' is clearly due to
the irresponsible association suggested by the swimming. These however, are not very distressing aberrations of style, though objurgation is surely pardonable over such confused concepts as Hippias Feverel's 'somnolent door', or the fish that comes to 'the gasping surface', or Caroline sitting 'with her hands joined in pale dejection', or Dahlia 'eyeing' Edward 'a faint sweetness'. The worst comes when he is not merely correlating one or two images but indulging in a lengthy simile or series of similes. Take, as an example, the opening page of The Egoist: 'Who, says the notable humorist, in allusion to this book, 'who can studiously travel through sheets of leaves now capable of a stretch from the Lizard to the least few pulmonary strips and shreds of leagues dancing on their toes for cold, explorers tell us, and catching breath by good luck, like dogs at bones about a table, on the edge of the Pole?' Note the beginning of the sentence and the end of it. Mr. Meredith started out with the intention ofemphasizing the length of the book to which he is referring. The book is so
long that the leaves would stretch from the Lizard to the Pole, he meant to say. But having once thought of the Pole, his uncontrollable imagination flies off on its own account, fastens on the idea of cold that is associated with the Pole, enlarges on this, drags in two or three comparisons and similes, complicates the notion of cold by the adjective 'pulmonary' - meaningless as he
makes the thing that has been said instead of so involved, that the dazed reader either and long wonders what on earth all this has to do with the 'sheets of leaves' with which he started, or staggers blindly under the weight of the end of the sentence and forgets all about the beginning. When Mr. Meredith wishes to convey to us an idea of a woman in the days before she became man-like, he tells us,
uses
it
- and
finally
'the Pole' so
Some Early Non-Musical Writings 77 Yet was there an opening day when nothing of us moustached
*
her/
When she does become somewhat masculine, we are 'amazed', as well we may be - 'by the flowering up of that hard rough jaw
from the tender blooming promise of
a petticoat*.
And
so
we
reach the distorted, tormented style of One of our Conquerors and the latest works, where we have such charming experiments with
our tongue as this: 'The word "Impostor" has smacked her on both cheeks from her own mouth;' or this: 'She called on bellmotion of the head to toll forth the utter night-cap negative/ by which Mr. Meredith only means to say that the lady shook her head emphatically* A long course of this kind of thing would
almost prompt us to characterize Mr. Meredith, in his own chastened and elegant phrase, as 'a fantastical planguncula, enlivened by the wanton tempers of a nursery chit*. Where the
'derangement of epitaphs' does not go far as in some of the passages I have quoted, the effect of Mr. Meredith's style may be admired even in spite of a certain flavour of the artificial. In One of our Conquerors we are told that 'Skepsey toned his assent to the
wind upon
diminishing thinness where a suspicion of the negative begins to a distant horn'. Here not only are the images all one growing naturally out of the other, but the congruous,
total impression
Why,
qualities
is dear and homogeneous. could Mr. Meredith not have kept the imaginative then, of his style within proper bounds? Why need he ever
have degenerated into this froth of inexpressive verbalism, these painful and far-fetched similes, this indirectness, this lack of unity between the purpose with which he begins a sentence, and the image with which he ends it? Partly, as I have said, because the
imaginative faculty in him, though vivid and far-darting in some respects, is in others flaccid and ill-co-ordinated - it lacks
control of a higher vision, and tends to run riot on its own account - and partly because, contrary to Oscar Wilde's opinion, he has mastered language so completely that the tongue is not
only the perfect minister of the brain, but even at times an have one of the worst manifestations independent sovereign. of this verbal opulence in the empty cackle of certain of Mr.
We
78
Meredith's great
Testament of Music
ladies. Here the temptation to talk for the mere of talking has proved irresistible to him, with the pleasure effect we all know to our sorrow. On the other hand, wherever he happens to hit upon a character whose very essence is volubility, as in the case of Roy in Harry Richmond, we have the best side of his verbal gift. Even the crusty old Squire becomes positively superb when Mr. Meredith has a chance to let himself speak through him; and for sheer magnificence of eruption there are few things in literature to compare with the final scene between Roy and Squire Beltham, where the old man pours out his scalding invective like a stream of lava. Truly it is not mastery of language that Mr. Meredith lacks, as Oscar Wilde thought. If in his latest works, and particularly in his latest poetry, he has become increasingly obscure, it is not because the mere means of expression have failed him. The verbal faculty in him still is, as it
always has been, equal to any task the brain can
set
it. It
seems to
me more
leads
reasonable to suppose that

astray.
it is
him
We all know from our own experience how a
just this faculty
which
suggest a mood and a phrase, how a tone or a chord can suggest a piece of music. In Mr. Meredith we have this phenomenon in a quite abnormal degree. The organs of thought are sometimes absolutely unable to keep pace with the images that start up from the organs of speech. What goes on in die phrase and the paragraph is only the counterpart of what goes on in the novel as a whole. With this verbal sense continually reacting on too exuberant imagination, and stimulating it to all
word can
kinds of irresponsible fantasias, it is inevitable that his fiction should often fall short of the ideal reality after which he aspires.
MR. MEREDITH
AND THE COMIC

Critical
SPIRIT, 1903
(From the Weekly
IT
Review)
critic if all writers
WOULD
greatly lessen the labour
of the
of
fiction,
drama, and music were compelled by law to produce at
Some Early Non-Musical Writings 79 least one book explanatory of their philosophy and their objects. Notice how helpful Wagner's prose works are to any one who wants to understand the man and his music, and imagine, if you can, the world discussing Wagner with no other material before it than the music dramas themselves, and you will realize how
necessary
it is
of self-defensive exposition. A complete treatise by Shakespeare on the drama, or one by Beethoven on the symphony, might possibly be of no more final critical value than die multitudinous efforts of Wagner's pen; but think of the light it would throw upon the practice of its author, and of the enormous assistance it would be to the critic! Looked at in this way, Mr. George
Meredith's comparatively little known Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit has an interest quite apart from the one its
that every artist should occasionally enter the field
author intended
it
to have.
it
It
may
not
tell
us
much
about the
Comic
It is
Spirit,
but
incidentally
tells
us a
good
deal about
Mr.
Meredith.
notoriously hard to
make
valid distinctions in psychology
among phenomena that lie very dose to one another, and whose edges here and there overlap. Satire, Irony, Humour and the
Comic are all tenants of the same house, and it is not easy to say where the rule of one ends and that of the others begins. Between the first two and the last two the dividing line is fairly obvious on the whole; but in the marking off of the Humorous from the Comic each of us apparently goes upon a system of his own. Here is Mr. Meredith's system. 'You may estimate your capacity for Comic perception by being able to detect the ridicule of them you love, without loving them less and more by being able to see yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes, and accepting the If you detect the correction their image of you proposes. . chilled kindliness is and ridicule, by it, you are slipping your into the grasp of Satire. If instead of falling foul of the ridiculous person with a satiric rod, to make him writhe and shriek aloud, you prefer to sting him under a semi-caress, by which he shall in
:
his anguish
be rendered dubious whether indeed anything has hurt him, you are an engine of Irony. If you laugh all round him, tumble him, roll him about, deal him a smack, and drop a tear on
8o
Testament of Music
him,
is
own
his likeness to as
spare him as little
you
shun, pity
spirit
of Humour that
you and yours to your neighbour, him as much as you expose, it is moving you. The Comic, which is
the perceptive, is the governing spirit, awakening and giving aim to these powers of laughter, but it is not to be confounded with
them: it enfolds a thinner form of them differing from satire in not sharply driving into the quivering sensibilities, and from humour in not comforting them and tucking them up, or indicating a broader than the range of this bustling world to them.*
Mr. Meredith, the brain is laughs through the mind, for the mind always uppermost: directs it; and it might be called the humour of the mind The test of true Comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter/ The distinctions are excellent; and if that between the Humorous and the Comic is not absolutely convincing, it is only because we are in the region where an objectively true distinction is an impossibility. But let us accept Mr. Meredith's definition, and let us further subscribe to his dogma that one test of the civilization of a country is 'the flourishing of the Comic idea and Comedy'; and then let us take the specimens he himself puts before us as genuine samples of the Comic. *At a dinner-party/ he says 'one of the guests, who happens to
In
Comedy,
in fact, according to
'It
have enrolled himself in a Burial Company, politely entreats the

others to inscribe their
names
advantages accruing
them
as shareholders, expatiating on the in the event of their very possible
speedy death, the salubrity of the site, the aptitude of the soil for a quick consumption of their remains, etc. ; and they drink sadness from the incongruous man, and conceive indigestion, not seeing him in a sharply defined light, that would bid them taste the
comic of him/ That
is,
they take
him
humorously. But who would take him
seriously instead of seriously, even at a
British dinner-table? Surely all but the very dullest of us would see the comedy in such a situation as this; it is not particularly
delicate or elusive
comedy
in any case, and for
Mr. Meredith
either (i) to fancy that the average man could not detect it, or (2) to believe that its detection implies a gift for 'thoughtful laughter',
is
to give us a hint that his
own
comic perceptions are a
little
Some Early Non-Musical Writings 81 with So his next of the failure to sec the singular. example general comic in ordinary life. 'It is mentioned that a newly elected member of our parliament celebrates his arrival at eminence by the publication of a book on cab-fares, dedicated to a beloved female relative deceased, and the comment on it (by the diners) is
word "Indeed"/ Again the wonder is not so much at the mental processes of the diners as those of Mr. Meredith. Even the Comic Spirit, one thinks, if he were hovering over the table at that particular moment, would scarcely condescend to stretch the corners of his mouth, be it ever so imperceptibly, over so thin
the
a suggestion of the Comic as lies in this. Take the third case: *A certain French
Duke
Pasquier died,
some years back, at a very advanced age. ... An argument arose, and was warmly sustained, upon the excessive selfishness of those who, in a world of trouble and calls to action, husband their strength for the sake of living on. Can it be possible, the argument
ran, for a truly generous heart to continue beating
up
to the age
treating
of a hundred? this theme, and

.
imagine a master of the particularly the argument on
Now,
Comic
it.
Imagine an
comedy of *The Centenarian', with choric praises of heroical early death, and the same of a stubborn vitality, and the poet laughing at the chorus ; and the grand question for contention
Aristophanic
in dialogue, as to the exact age when a man should die, to the identical minute, that he may preserve the respect of his fellows,
followed by a systematic attempt to make an accurate measurement in parallel lines, with a tough ropeyarn by one party, and a string of yawns by the other, of the veteran's power of enduring
and our capacity for enduring him, with tremendous pulling sides/ Does it really argue an insensibility to Comedy 'which', as Mr. Meredith says, 'is the genius of thoughtful - if one finds oneself unable to laughter* grow enthusiastic over this idea and the it is suggested, might be built comedy which, out of it? The interesting point of the matter is that a good deal of the
life
on both
Comic in Mr. Meredith's own novels is perilously like the Comic

in these
that
somewhat
is
bloodless specimens. It
is
not without reason
he
forever lauding
women, and
claiming that
Comedy
82
Testament of Music
societies
It is
only thrives in
where the
with the men.
not precisely clear
women are on the equality how he arrives at this
proposition, if we take the Comic in its broadest meaning. But if we understand it in his own somewhat limited sense the connection becomes obvious. His own perceptions of the Comic are those
of the women; they are feminine both in their strength and their weakness, in their subtle refinement and their occasional bordering on the puerile. In the three examples I have cited of what Mr.
Meredith regards as peculiarly Comic, in a number of the epigrams in Richard Feverel, in page after page of the conversations of its society ladies, we see a kind of delusion as to what is really comic or humorous - a brain of extraordinary delicacy standing aloof from the current of the things, and seeing much in it that rouses philosophic kughter, and yet rarely being able to tune its laugh deep enough. It is rarely male laughter, or if it is, it is the thin laughter of a valetudinarian or the cachinnation of an old man. He has, of course, another humour than this - rich, happy, full-chested, redolent at once of earth and spirit. But he is a being compact of contradictions; and nowhere is this more evident than in the contrast between his masculine and his feminine
laughter.
The
strange thing
is
that,
while almost
all
the critical
portions of his Essay on Comedy which are informed with sane - are the and feeling ripe judgment product of his masculine the more and the illustrations by which moods, speculative parts, he supports them, too plainly belong to that side of him wherein he is most like some of the grand dames of his own creation forever straining after the humorous and never attaining it. To the outsider, indeed, there is at times nothing so comic as Mr.
evident admiration for these distressing ladies. Comic Spirit is overhead, observing us 'Man's future incessantly. upon earth does not attract it; their and in the present does; and whenever they honesty shapeliness
Meredith's
own
He
has told us that the
wax
out of proportion, overblown,
affected, pretentious,
bom-
bastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in
idolatries,
drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning short-sightedly, plotting dementedly . * . the Spirit
83
overhead will look humanely malign and cast an oblique light on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is the Comic Spirit/ Well he must have looked 'humanely malign'
upon
number of the novelist's own feminine essays in which can hardly be traced to 'the genius of thoughtful laughter'. Fortunately this aspect of him is not the complete Meredith; and it is his own more genuine humour that has taught us to look tolerantly on him and his characters whenever they call too vociferously for those 'volleys of silvery laughter* that are the sign of the Comic Spirit.
a goodly
the Comic,
THE NOVELIST AND THE MUSICIAN,

(From the Weekly
Critical
1903
Review)
WHEN
TOLSTOI wrote that egregious tract The Kreutzer Sonata, he gave expression to the views of many a half-informed psychologist on die subject of the connection between music and sex. He was not very convincing; indeed, he traced much more accurately, the influence of the feminine jealousy upon love and marriage than the influence of music. But he was listened to
because a great
many worthy people
feel
dimly that the roots of
music and of sex-feeling are closely intertwined, if not, indeed, merely one. Tolstoi was somewhat unfortunate in his choice of
musical examples, for the Kreutzer Sonata would hardly be looked
upon by most musicians
as the
kind of work that would goad
people to a life of crime. 'Ought it to be played/ says the Russian novelist in tones of horror, 'in drawing rooms, in the midst of
ladies in
dresses, or at concerts, where the piece is and then followed by another piece? Such finished, applauded, works should only be played on certain important occasions, and in cases only where it is necessary that certain actions be provoked in correspondence with the music. But to provoke an energy which corresponds neither with the time nor the place, and which expands itself in nothing, cannot but have injurious
low-necked
84
9
Testament of Music
The hero of the work must indeed have been an extremely young man, to have been so painfully disturbed by a of classical commonplace like the Kreutzer Sonata; and he piece must have been stirred to his very depths when, later in the evening, his wife and the violinist played together *a passionate piece by (I forget what composer) a piece so passionate that it reached the point of pornography', which, with all due respect
effects.
excitable
to the great Rtissian, is pure nonsense. Music as music, can never positively suggest the pornographic; suggestion only comes in with words, as in the song, or with words combined with action,
as in opera - say the garden scene in Tristan. Play the whole of the love-duet in Tristan to a man ignorant of the story, and keep
from him all knowledge of the words and all sight of the action, and he would not detect in it one thousandth part of the sexsuggestion that we are conscious of in the theatre. It is amazing
upon the supposed suggestiveof music, when it is unspeakably feeble in this respect compared with either poetry, prose, or painting. One easily sees, of course, die reason why the musician is so often made the victim of pretentious pseudo-psychological fiction. The author of The Green Carnation makes one of his characters remark how curious it is that while the sinner takes no interest at all in the doings of the saint, the saint is always very much interested in the doings of the sinner. For saint read the general unaesthetic public, and for sinner read the artist especially the musician and you have the key to the mystery. The artist
ness
that novelists should harp for ever
looks
down upon the common herd; but the common herd looks to the artist with admiration for his talent and up envy of his eman-
cipated moral sense. revelation of artistic
What makes
life
people read so greedily any

is
particularly if the revelation
at all
scandalous
feeling of half curiosity, half that sends the man awe, average loafing round the stage door at a A musical that novel had not something spicy in it pantomime. would be more or less a fraud; and to do our novelists justice, they have rarely erred in this respect. Whether their fiction will
is
at
bottom the same
stand any critical examination into another question.
its
psychological veracity
is
Some Early Non-Musical Writings 85 Take Mr. George Moore, for example, whose Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa were hailed as most fascinating contributions to the vexed problem of the connection between music, sex and religion. The subject of nuns and convents is one which I must yield to Mr. Moore in knowledge, but I appeal to anyone who knows anything of music to say whether Mr. Moore has thrown any new light either on it or its relation to sex. That Mr. Moore is extremely susceptible to music I have no doubt. There are some particularly beautiful passages in Evelyn Innes in which he describes the effect of music and singing. But these are purely literary effects, the felicitous achievements in descriptions of a man with a gift for analysing his own sensations. Mr. Moore, one feels, could have described a sunset or a cab accident with equal veracity. What one cannot feel is that Mr. Moore has the really musical brain or temperament, or that he really has any insight into the psychology of the musician. Apart from mere descriptions of musical sensation, nothing that Mr. Moore says concerning music betrays any special knowledge of it. Just as he makes
Asher, in Paris, talk literary shop to Evelyn, stringing together a lot of platitudes about Balzac, so he makes Mr. Lines
talk musical shop.
Owen
'From the twelth to the
he remarks to music as moderns do. Now we watch the effect of a chord, a combination of notes heard at the same moment, the top note of which is the tune, but the older writers used their skill in divining musical phrases which could be followed simultaneously, each one going logically its own way irrespective of some temporary clashing. They considered their music horizontally, as the parts went on; we consider it vertically, each chord producing its impression in turn. To them all the parts were of equal importance. Their music was a purely decorative interweaving of melodies. Now we have a tune with accompanying parts/ Well, all this is one of the merest commonplaces of the text-books. There has never yet been a student of counterpoint who has not been told, in precisely the same words, that we consider our music vertically, whereas the ancients considered theirs horizontally. This would hold true, indeed, of a later date than the fifteenth
Owen
fifteenth century/ Asher, 'writers did not consider their
86
Testament of Music
century. But the guileless Asher is so struck by these platitudes that he turns round to Evelyn, awe-struck, with the remark:
'What
a wonderful
knowledge of music your
father has, Miss
Innes !', which makes one sorry for him. In Sister Teresa, again, Evelyn 'took a score by Brahms from the heap. "In Haendel there are beautiful proportions", she said, 'it is beautiful, like
eighteenth-century architecture, but here I can discover neither proportions nor design.' Evelyn's musical education must have
been somewhat neglected, in spite of her advantages in possessing a father with a wonderful knowledge of music. Most people can see proportion and design in Brahms if they can see nothing else; some people can see nothing else. But Evelyn also remembered that C&ar Franck's music affected her in much the same way. Her father ought not to have allowed her to call him 'Caesar Francks*. But perhaps he was too much occupied with the horizontal music of the twelfth century to notice little things like
this.
'Shrugging her shoulders, she said "When I listen I always hear something beautiful, only I don't listen." This is much too
'
cryptic for the average intelligence, like the epigram
of M.
Daveau in Mr. Moore's Mildred Lawson, when he was asked if he liked classical music. - 'There is no music except classical music.' Mr. Moore is not quite so bad as the kdy novelist - 1 think it was Mrs. Alexander - who described her hero as across the
leaning
and talking in a thorough-bass nor as the late Mr. Hamerton, who once spoke of the choristers chanting the Dead March in Saul; nor as Mr. George Augustus Sala, who said that he had looked through several biographical dictionaries and found there were about a dozen musicians named Kreutzer, but could not discover which of them had written Kreutzer's sonata. But he comes perilously near, at times, to creating the impression of the stumbling amateur in a field that is not his own. This, however, is a minor grievance. The most serious flaw in the two books is that while Mr. Moore's one object is to show the intimate connection between music, sex, and religion, his
table
;
in this respect lacks all vraisemblance. For him, as for Evelyn, the sentiment seems to hold good that the human
work
87
animal finds in the opposite sex the greater part of his and her mental life; and he fathers on Owen Asher the superficial theory that 'the arts arose out of sex; that when man ceased to capture women he cut a reed and blew a tune to win her, and that it was not until he had won her that he began to take an. interest in the
tune for its
but
it is
own sake". This is absurd enough as a reading of life; extremely primitive as a piece of musical psychology.
Supposing it were as true as it is really false, however, Mr. Moore's whole conception and portraiture of a musical character are still altogether imperfect. For nowhere, from cover to cover of the two books, is it shown that the rise, progress, decline and fall of Evelyn's soul are in any way due to the fact of her being a musician. A genuine study of the musical temperament would leave no doubt to the influence of music upon a given character's thoughts and life; he would be what he was because he was a musician, because, in the great crises of his life, his actions were consciously or unconsciously shaped by the fact that he looked at the world through the eyes of a musician. In Consuelo, for example, even such a character as the Anzoleto ofthe first hundred
plainly a musical being before everything else; and when Porpora dissects him one feels that he is laying bare for us an
pages
is
Cut the music out of a character like this, and the whole portrait would fall to pieces. But cut the music out of Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa, and the story would flow on
eternal musical type.
almost unaffected, for the simple reason that everything that happens to Evelyn is quite independent of the fact that she is a
musician.
We feel indeed that her life might have been different had she not been an opera singer; but we also feel that her life might have taken precisely the same course had she adopted some profession quite apart from music, so long as it brought her into plentiful contact with men. Looked at in this way, Mr. Moore's books are not studies of a musician at all. In Consuelo, in Balzac's fine Gambara, in Mr. Stanley Makower's Mirror of Music, we see that the characters are what they are precisely because they are musical. One feels about Evelyn that she is what she is not because she is musical, but merely because she is sexuaL There was no need to make her a
88
Testament of Music
musician; Mr. Moore's scheme would have worked equally well if he had made her a poetess or a painter, so long as he made her
similarly sensual. It is sex that controls Evelyn's life, not music. with a perpetual tendency to She is simply an erotic
woman
incandescence. Allowing for the social distinctions, the descriptions of her sensations and adventures would hold equally true of the debauched dressmaker or the lascivious laundress. There is
still room for a modern study of the musical temperament, the kind of thing Mr. Joseph Conrad would do if he were a musician. It must be written from the inside, not from the outside, by a man who really knows how an artist's life of thought and feeling and
action
is
shaped for
him by
at
and nerves. Mr. Moore

story-tellers, gives
the musical constitution of his brain any rate, to say nothing of the minor
us a picture falling far short of this; it bears the same relation to the real thing as the popular notion of stage life bears to the actuality. The one attempt at imaginative reconstruction
is
just as fantastic as the other.
THE ANIMAL IN FICTION,

(From the Weekly
Critical
1903
Review)
DECLINE and fall of Mr. Kipling's talent as exhibited in his latest book ofJust So Stories sets one thinking again of the qualities
THE
of that portion of his fiction Just So Stories are indeed a diswith the solitary exception of that perfectly appointment, delicious story of 'The Cat that Walked'. This is Mr. Kipling in his best manner, with all his irritating faults kept in the background, and all his better qualities in the happiest equipoise. But the rest of the stories are mere bungling. One wonders for what kind of reader he can have meant them. They certainly do not appeal to the adult who knows what a good animal storyought to be; and one can imagine the bewilderment of the child-mind at a good half of Mr. Kipling's flashiest points. For
of his
earlier fiction,
and
especially
that deals with animals.
The
the stories as a
Some Early Non-Musical Writings whole - and this is

full
89
their great defect
- are
flashy,
of abortive strain after all kinds of effects that do not off*. 'come This, of course, is quite in keeping with everything Mr. Kipling has done. Now and again he has achieved considerable verisimilitude in his fiction; one or two of his short stories would put him almost by the side of Maupassant. But as a whole
tawdry,
his
work
is
flawed by his constant tendency to pose, to talk big,
to assume an air
law on
all topics,
of patronizing omniscience, to lay down the from animals to soldiers, from babies to inter-
national politics. In the latter sphere alone, things have not
gone
altogether well with England since Mr. Kipling appointed himself adviser-in-chief to the Anglo-Saxon race. He does not
of human nature; nor - popular does he understand more than a opinion notwithstanding
understand
more than
little
little
corner of animal nature.
a reputathe unthinking as a great master of animal fiction, just as his Soldiers Three and his Barrack-Room Ballads were taken to be photographs of the soldier as he really is. Perhaps, on
I
am well aware that the two Jungle Books gave him

among
tion
the whole, the soldier-studies, though even there "The Absentminded Beggar* showed how Mr. Kipling's vision had becomed
thickened as time went on.
The
earlier stories
had some touches
of humanism, some sense of the music - cheap and vulgar though it may often be that is in the soldier as in the rest of us; but 'The Absent-minded Beggar', set in the congenial surroundings of the Daily Mail, revealed the organ-grinder pure and simple. The Jungle stories, again, were never convincing for
a moment or two at a time. They were neither pure nor pure fantasies. There was, of course, as in all Mr. Kipling's work, an assumption of a far profounder acquaintance with the subject than the mere layman could ever hope to obtain; but even the mere layman could see that this assumption was not justified by the result. Some of the notes rang so falsely that the least delicate ear could detect that the instrument was out of tune. Thus at the very commencement of the first story, Mr. Kipling tells us that 'the Law of the Jungle . . . forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill*.
more than
realities
po
Testament of Music
c
he goes on to say, is that Man-killing arrival of white men on elephants, the or sooner later, means, with guns, and hundreds ofbrown men with gongs and rockets and
The
real reason for this,
torches.
Then everybody
in the jungle suffers*. This
is
possible. It
animal psychology, but it is not may or may not be starkly unreal. But then Mr. Kipling adds, 'The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most
the real
defenceless
of
all
touch him* - one

art.
sees at
living things, and once that this
it is
is
unsportsman-like to
bad psychology and bad
most
In the attempt to show that he has penetrated into the innerrecesses of the consciousness of the Jungle, Mr. Kipling has
simply become clumsily absurd. This fatal invraisemblance runs through almost all the stories. Compare any of them with the superb animal stories of Mr. Ernest Seton Thompson, or the equally faithful studies of animals in such a book as Mr. W. J. Long's School of the Woods, and you will see how flashy, how theatrical, how untrue, are almost all Mr. Kipling's stories. The complaint is not that they are not real - Hke Mr. Seton Thompson's Biography of a Grizzly, for - but they are not consistently fanciful. "We do not example sniff at the fairy tale because it is not a realistic novel; but what we do have a right to expect is that it shall be consistent within its one sphere. Mr. Kipling's story of "The Cat that Walked' is pure fantasy, but it is real within the limits of the fantastic. The majority of his other animal stories are not in any respect; they have neither the reality of life nor that of art. One seldom feels that he has really understood any animal, that he had taken sufficient pains to find out how a particular animal would express his views on the world if he could utter them in language. The great value of Mr. Seton Thompson's stories is that not one of diem could be told of any other animal than the one round which it is written; you could not tell the bear story of the wolf, nor the partridge story of the rabbit. Here each animal has its
own world of thought and feeling and instinct, its own character, its own individuality. But in the Jungle Books you could, for
three-fourths
without at
all
of the time, substitute one animal for another interfering with the general course of the stories.
Some Early Non-Musical Writings 91 Two or three of the animals are consistent studies, shaped, as it were, from the life; but the majority of them are pasteboard figures. They are simply the clumsily jerked puppets of a bad
dramatist.
To
see the point
more
clearly,
achieves a real delineation and again
melodramatically.
Take
first
at Mr. Kipling when he when he simply swaggers 'Quiquern', the story of the two
look
lost for some time, in a period of Esquimaux dogs food. of The two dogs were ultimately discovered, great scarcity fat, well-looking, and quite restored to their proper minds; but coupled to each other in an extraordinary fashion. When the blade leader ran off, you remember, his harness was still on him. He must have met Kotuko the dog and played or fought with him, for his shoulder-loop had caught in die plaited-copper wire of Kotuko's collar, and had drawn tight, so that neither dog could get at the trace to gnaw it apart, but each was fastened
who were
side-long to his neighbour's neck. They are separated, after having lived together for some weeks, and having been forced by
their common bond and common necessities to hunt round for food together. As soon as they have properly greeted their master, 'these two, who had been forced to sleep and eat and hunt together for the past few weeks, flew at each other's throat, and there was a beautiful battle in the snow-house*. Now this, one feels, is truthful; this is real dog. It is just what dogs would do, and what would be done by no animal but dogs. The little stroke is both good fun and good psychology. But whatever fun there may be in Mr. Kipling's treatment of some of the other animals, there is certainly very little psychology. His crocodile, his panther are all seen from the outside, not from the inside. The limits of the preposterous are reached in the tiger, Shere Khan - a fragment of pure transpontine melodrama. He is the villain of the piece; it is our old friend, the heavy tragedian, transplanted in to the animal world; he scowls incessantly,
now
cringes before the strong and bullies the weak, receives every and then a knockdown blow from the nice good hero, and
generally comports himself as impossibly as his human counterhis intentions wholly part. His thoughts are altogether evil,
92
vile
Testament of Music
when he
- he might be one of Mr. Kipling's pro-Boer aversions - and is finally done to death the gallery cheers with virtuous
the stage villain is run over by the delight, just as it does when which he tried to throw the heroine. before train very railway
And
all
the one thing, like the other,
is
written for the gallery.
It is
hopelessly theatrical, hopelessly unconvincing either as as of the imagination. In fact, Mr. painting of life or a pure effort
Kipling fails here, just as he fails in his human fiction, because of that fatal tendency in him to assume a knowledge he does not of his artistic nature that he shall patronize possess. It is a necessity
something or somebody; and the result is that, except at its best, work has always this nauseating oracular tone. It came out in the scene where the clearly in The Light that Failed, particularly talked shop with an imposspalpably unreal war-correspondents in his treatment of the soldier, who, ible swagger. It comes out Mr. Kipling sees, as indeed he sees everything, though a glass that distorts the real picture. For him the sociological problem of the soldier begins and ends with a few platitudes and a great deal of rant; he is capable, as we know, of lauding in bad verse the dirty work of the soldier at the same time that he bespatters with
his
contumely the saner heads who would fain save the nations from the necessity of putting men to such work. All this comes from
Mr. Kipling not seeing things face to face, but through the medium of a disordered temperament and ill-trained intelligence. It is thus that he does his best, from a safe distant, to goad two nations into bloody war, and then (see The Times of 27th Februarywith the vinous platitudes of last) offers artificial verses, reeking the philosopher in the street, as his contribution to the work of making grass grow again in the wilderness he did his best to
He goes through life slapping the universe on the back. of all he took under his wing the Indian army; then it was that pathetic myth Tommy Atkins; then it was the foreign and colonial policy of Imperialism; now it is the enemy whose name at one time was anathema to him. He so rarely does good work, work that will last, because of this habit of confusing the inside and the outside of every question and the other habit of ascending the tripod upon every possible
spread.
First
93
occasion. Finally, -when he conies to write about the animal, he is as unconvincing as usual because he will look down at the
animal, or over his head, instead of trying to see into him. Just as Atkins on the shoulder, and signifies to the mob his lofty approbation of its insensate foreign hatreds, so does he patronize die python and condescend to the hippopotamus* One need not have been in the jungle to see the lack both of truth and
he pats
Tommy
have the final of artistry that this attitude must lead to. result of it in the Just So Stories, where all is pose, all swagger, all
bounce. If the animals could talk, one asks oneself, would their conduct and their witticisms savour invariably of the music hall?
We
Then one
thinks
of the
real
humour, the
real observations, the
real feeling, the real understanding of Mr. Seton Thompson's animal stories, and one sees that Mr. Kipling has only been playing the low comedian in the nursery. But after all has he not
played that role on other and larger stages than this?
IV
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE BIRMINGHAM POST

THE PRIMA DONNA IN PRINT,*
1911
O OME DAY
book will have to be written on the psychology
donna; and the author of it will have to find the solution of one problem that becomes more insistent with each book that is written by, or by authority of, a singer - how is it that these people, who are so interesting and occasionally so subtle in their art are so utterly uninteresting and inexpressibly simple the moment they take a pen in their hand? The lives of most of them could apparently be compressed into a single
sentence: they
w5 of the prima
they sang, they Royalties to write in their autograph albums, and they died. Are certain great singers intellectually uninteresting by a law of Nature, or does their life make them so, or do they only pretend to be so? Intelsing,
were born, they learned to
made money and bought diamonds, they got
lectually uninteresting
tediousness
AlbanTs book certainly is. Its ardessness. For those who care equalled only by about such things there are any number of details of the operas and oratorios Madame Albani sang in in this year or that, the presents that were made to her, the flowers that were hurled at her, the poems that were written about her, the great audiences that gathered to hear her, what the newspapers of thirty or forty years ago said about her, and so on and so on. For those who do not
is its
Madame
care a brass farthing for
all this historical d6bris,
what
is
there?
Forty Years of Song.
By Emma Albani. (Mills & Boon.)

95
105. 6d. net.
96
Testament of Music
What, indeed! Madame Albani must have met hundreds of remarkable people in her time. Upon not one of them has she an original or even an ordinarily perspicacious reflection to make. She meets Brahms, for example, in Vienna, and can only record that 'his room was full of old furniture and precious things, and he had a very high desk at which he always wrote standing'. A sharp child could have noticed as much. These singers seem to move about in a world peopled only with amiable shadows and simulacra. Are they deficient by the visitation of God in the faculty of observation and criticism, or is the faculty slowly killed in them by their 'successes' and the adulation that these bring with them? Some half-dozen honeyed adjectives suffice for them
whom they have met. Royal personof course, always 'most gracious'; lesser people - but still ages are, great people in comparison with the ordinary run of us - are
to characterize everyone
always 'most kind'.
The prima donna seems
to
swim
in a sea
of happiness; the
very courteous to her, the great of this world give her diamonds and lend her their houses for the summer, and, crowning joy of all, monarchs and princesses write their names with their very own hands in her autograph book This may seem incredible to a sceptical reader; but the number of facsimiles of the awe-inspiring documents that Madame Albani
is
!
public admires her, everyone
reproduces in her book puts
it
beyond dispute by anyone honestly
that she can even isolate them from the events of concert and operatic life and lump them into one dazzling chapter with the golden tide 'Singing Before Royalty' much as some rich diamond broker in Amsterdam will toy negligently with a handful of jewels each of them worth a
open of this kind
to conviction.
Madame Albani has had so many experiences
common
prince's ransom. Even greater monarchs than those of Europe have not disdained to show Madame Albani honour. Did not that
acute critic of singing,

her,
King Kalakua of the Sandwich Islands, and was she not, as might be compliment expected Very gratified by his kindness/ and did he not decorate her with the Sandwich Islands Order of Merit? There can have been nothing
quite equal in pathos to this touching scene since the historic
day
Birmingham Post
97
King rubbed noses The heart of the Majesty King Kalakua and to the Chinese Ambassador who went to sleep and snored audibly, to the scandal of everyone, at a concert at Buckingham Palace; they seem the only real, natural human beings in all these mellifluous saccharine pages. The book reveals a sweet and rather simple nature, and will no doubt give pleasure to some ofMadame
together and swore eternal fidelity to each other. bored reviewer goes out to his Serene
count.
Albani's personal friends; but as a piece of literature it does not The authoress has nothing helpful to say even about
when
Tartarin of Tarascon and the African
singing
nothing but the old cliches about using, not abusing, the
voice, and taking care of your tissues between concerts; and though she mentions that she has read books and seen pictures and enjoyed scenery, she has nothing even mildly interesting to say on any one of these topics. Madame Albani would have been better advised to have left with us simply a memory of her as one of the finest singers of her day. As it is she tells us nothing about herself that we did not know already, except a number of things that most of us do not think worth knowing.
THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST,

(First
1911
English Performance)
Girl of the
Ax COVENT GARDEN tonight Puccini's new opera, The

Golden West, was given for the first time in England.*
rather
mostly poor Puccini, though there is charm in some of the music, and the mingling of sentimentality and melodrama in the story will probably endear it to a certain section of the operatic public. The plot will be familiar to a number of people from the drama by David Belasco, on which the opera is founded, and to others from a condensed version of the play that went the round of the music halls some time ago. The music hall, indeed, is the proper place for it, for romantic balderdash of this kind is not to be taken * 30th May, 1911
It is
98
too seriously. In a mining
camp
Testament of Music in California in the days of the
gold fever (about 1850) there is a certain Minnie, who, by her beauty and her virtue, has enslaved the hearts of all the miners. She keeps a tavern known as the 'Polka*, where these rough
fellows gather nightly for the card-playing, singing, quarrelling, and occasional pistol-shooting that presumably form die evening recreations of aU miners - at all events, of all stage miners. see
We
them hard at it in the first act of the opera. Of course, one of them cheats at cards, and, of course, the others want to shoot him at sight. He is merely condemned, however, to wear the two of spades pinned to his chest for the rest of his life, and to be shot if he removes it - a touch of melodrama that would delight the
heart of any boy scout. Of course, the miners have another row after that, and, course, Minnie enters at the nick of time and pacifies them.
course, they are all in love
of
Of
with
will
her,
marry him. Everything,
it
be
seen,
and each hopes that she will is running on the most
approved shilling-shocker lines. Of course there is a bill displayed in the tavern, offering a reward for the head of a certain Ramarrez, the head of a gang of daring gold thieves. Of course Ramarrez
come
has really enters, disguised, and calling himself Dick Johnson. after the barrel, in which the miners their and
He
keep
gold,
which they leave in charge of Minnie when they go out. (Everyone knows that this is what all proper miners do). But he and Minnie recognize each other. Ttey had met under romantic circumstances some time before, and, of course, fallen in love. Of course Johnson repents him of his felonious purpose when he is left alone with Minnie, and instead of making off with the gold, he yields to her charm, and promises to visit her later on in her cabin, which is a little way removed from the tavern. In the second act, which takes place in this cabin, they, of course, have a love scene. Minnie gives up her bed to Johnson. When he has retired behind the curtain Ranee, the Sheriff enters. He is even more in love than the rest of them with Minnie, but she has repulsed him and greatly irritated him by her obvious for Of preference course, Ranee tells her that her handJohnson. some young dandy of a Johnson is really Ramarrez; he has
Birmingham Post
99
obtained this information from that gentleman's mistress, Nina Micheltorena - for Ramarrez is regrettably pluralistic in his attachments. After Ranee's departure, Minnie, of course, rounds
on Johnson, who, of course, explains that he has been driven into life of larceny by circumstances over which he had no control. Like the hero of fiction he is, he goes out into the darkness and is promptly shot by Ranee, who has had his suspicion^ and has been hanging round die cabin to see what would turn up. Desperately wounded, Johnson staggers back into the cabin, whereupon, of course, Minnie passes a bill of indemnity in his favour and loves
a
as much as ever. She assists him up a ladder into the loft, where she bids him hide. Ranee, of course, rushes in, after having allowed an interval to elapse, for all this kdder-dimbing to go on, and demands his prey. Minnie has almost fooled him into going, when, of course, he happens to stand beneath the very place in the loft where Johnson happens to be, and, of course, a drop of the
him
wounded man's blood happens

either to shoot
to
fall
Ofcourse he has poorJohnson down in next to no time, meaning

Sheridan
upon
his
hand.
Ranee to
him or to take him to be hung by what Mr. Mark would call 'the b-hoys'. Minnie, of course, challenges a game of cards. If he wins, he is to have both her and
go away and keep his mouth shut. Of Minnie, and the second by would never do to let either of them win two out of
is
Johnson; if he loses, he
course, the
first
to
round
is
won by
Ranee;
it
three straight off. Then, just as things are beginning to look black for Johnson, Minnie, with the guile of her sex, pretends to faint,
makes Ranee jump up and get her a
restorative,
and while he
is
away substitutes for the cards in her hand a much better set which she has had the foresight to place in her stocking. The
baffled
made by Minnie throwing her arms round who had fainted some time before.
In the third act Johnson
is
Ranee goes out looking very glum, and a nice 'curtain' is the neck of Johnson,
captured by the b-hoys, and
realistic
preparations are made for lynching him. Of course, Minnie comes injust in time to forestall the swinging and the revolver peppering,
and, of course, succeeds in so working upon the affections of these rude sons of toil that, Ranee's rage notwithstanding,
ioo
Testament of Music
of course, she goes away they give her Johnson, with to begin a new life elsewhere. Altogether it is a subject that would bring tears to the eyes of the most hardened scullery
wench.
whom
And
as the story
is,
so
is
the music;
it is
largely a blend
of
naive sentimentality and
raw melodrama. Of the old Puccini, the man of talent who wrote Tosca, La Boheme, and Madame Butterfly, there is hardly a trace until the final scene, where Minnie's music
reaches a height of refined expression that contrasts markedly with the crudity of the earlier music. For crude it mostly is, as we listen, for example, to the melody of the duet between Minnie and Ramarrez in the second act - a tune fit only for the barrel organs we wonder what has become of the Puccini who used to weave such delicate spells round us. Hardly anywhere does he succeed in achieving the least continuity of style; the score seems to live from hand to mouth. To discuss it in detail is impossible; it has not sufficient individuality for that. It is mostly a stream of facile, disconnected commonplace, with a few exciting moments. The first two acts are rather dull; the third, with its galloping horses and yelling men, and all the paraphernalia of a lynching, is effective in a kind of raw operatic way. But the whole work gives one the impression of a lapse into the spirit of the stupid old Italian opera, with the stupidities slightly disguised in modern
dress.
Mile. Destinn turned all her intelligence on to the part of Minnie, with the sole result of making us wish she had something more worthy of her to sing. Her voice is a little too white to be a fully expressive dramatic instrument, and tonight she looked
rather too matronly for the part; but one could never be in doubt as to her brains or her musical feeling. M. Gilly
any was
admirable
Bassi
as the sinister, saturnine Ranee. The Johnson of Signor was disappointing; he seems to be an ineffective actor with a poor voice. The other parts were all capably done, and the opera was well staged. Signor Campanini, the conductor, and the orchestra were excellent. There was a fair amount of enthusiasm, and Puccini had to appear after each act; but a good deal of the applause came from one part of the house, and it is hard to say
Birmingham Post
101
how much
of it was meant for Mile. Destinn.
An
unprejudiced
observer, used to these first-night demonstrations and knowing how to discount them, eould have little hesitation in saying that
the opera
fell
very
flat.
MOZART AND
STRAUSS,
1911
TODAY'S PROGRAMME* at the London Festival was originally made to suit Richard Strauss, who was expected to conduct the concert. As he excels in Mozart, a symphony and a concerto by that composer were put down for performance, the remainder of the programme being devoted to Strauss himself. He has been too unwell to come to England, however, so that the conducting of today's concert fell to Sir Henry Wood. Truth to tell, a good many of us found Mozart a little meagre after the strong fare we have had lately. The pianoforte concerto, excellently played as it was by Mr. Harold Bauer and the orchestra, seemed emptier than usual; and Heaven knows how empty some of these instrumental works of Mozart can be The G Minor Symphony has more Eingeweide in it, but, even here, one sometimes felt that we were merely listening to the nursery prattle of a bright child. It would be a good thing if the critics were now and then to try to see an old work precisely as it would strike them if it were a new one. How interesting it would be, for example, if someone were to apply the same critical rigour to these two works of Mozart as was done in today's papers to the three new compositions produced at last night's concert It seems to be infinitely more difficult to make a great reputation in music now than it was a hundred and fifty years ago. Mozart is a myth, a legend; and the average musician no more thinks of revising the traditional notion of him tK^ri a savage thinks of questioning the divinity ofMumboJumbo. So everybody today tried to look very interested, very knowing, and very happy everybody, that is, except a few of * 26th
! !
May
Testament of Music
my
critical colleagues,
who
turned the
Queen's Hall into a
of course, to lament the passing of of a good deal of his work - and to cry that something has gone out of music that will never return. It may be so; but, on the other hand, a great deal has come in that Mozart never dreamt of; and modern music has gained infinitely more than it has lost. One needed only to pass to the Strauss Burleske for piano and orchestra to realize this. It is very early Strauss; but already there is a difference between this and the Mozart concerto comparable to that between a grown man and a pretty child. The later works in the programme - the Also Sprach Zarathustra and the selection from Salome of course accentuated this difference in stature and intelligence. The splendid orchestral playing in these two works made every point of them telL They, no doubt, annoyed some people considerably; others of us they filled with a kind of awe before the enormous possibilities of psychological expression that music has developed during the last half-century. In the Mozart symphony and concerto - to hark back to these once more for the purpose of comparison - one seemed to be little more than playing with life, or even playing at playing at it; some of it told us no more of ourselves than the pattern on the wall paper does. In the Zarathustra and Salome we
dormitory for a time. It is the correct thing

at all events
Mozart - or
are dissected alive.
It is
not merely portraiture, such
as
we get, for
example, in Wagner; it is an absolute laying bare of the very nerves and their most secret processes. I was particularly struck with this today in the Salome selections, partly, no doubt, because there was no stage action to distract us. I have never realized before
the full wonder of this music - the 'Dance of the Seven Veils' and the final scene - its appalling truth to life, its pitiless revelation of
what madness of sensation the nervous modern brain and body are capable. Music, perhaps, will soon be the one art in which a man can show us to ourselves as we really are, without fear of
The Pathetic Symphony sometimes preaches would send anyone to Siberia who ventured to put it into speech. In this Salome music there is more told us of the
censor or of police.
an anarchism
that
horror of our bodies and souls than in
all
the ravings of saints or
satyrs,
Birmingham Post
of pathology. And the proof that
it
103
it is
or in
is
all
the manuals
great art
clarified
the sense of joyousness

all
understanding of life that it is
gives us the business
that sense
of
of all
tragic art
great art, again, it floods us with pity. feel revolted at this final scene of Salome I cannot can anyone in To me, spite of its horror, it is supremely pityimagine. be as But that it may, he must be a dullard who is not moving.
to give. Like
How
shaken to his bones by the drastic truth of it. Today

Sir
it
was not
only magnificently played by but magnificently sung by Madame Aino Ackt6, the young Finnish soprano, who took the part of Salome at the first English performance of the opera last year. It was an experience one
to have missed. Madame Ackte, who is evidently an extraordinary personality, stopped just short of the line that divides platform acting from that of the theatre; but, on the right side of the line, she gave us a Salome so complete that one still wonders at the consummate art of it. Her voice was superb in its power and in the delicacy of its inflections. Incidentally, one got some new ideas upon the theory and practice of theatrical makewas up. No facial expression that I have ever seen upon the stage of Madame comparable in its variety and suggestiveness to that Ackt today; there was simply nothing like it in any performance of the opera in the theatre. Her face, no doubt, is an exceptionally mobile and expressive one; but certainly the greater part of the effect today came from the fact that the natural lines and tints of the cheek and mouth and eyes were not overlaid and impeded by hard for the stage cosmetics, through which it must surely be as life in the lines of the face as it to to instantaneous thought leap would be for a violinist to play sensitively with gloves on. it was a great Altogether, once the Mozart was off the board, afternoon. Sir Henry Wood gave an extraordinarily lucid and mistake in impressive performance of the Zarathustra; the solitary it was toning down the opening of the Science fugue so excessively
Henry Wood and the orchestra,
would be sorry
that for a
few
bars
it
was almost
inaudible. In the Burleske,
Mr.
Bauer, besides playing with great technical brilliance, gave admirable point to die somewhat hard and audacious humour of
the work.
IO4
Testament of Music
VERDI,
So FAR
as
1913
performances of his music are concerned, the centenary of the birth of Verdi, on Friday last, passed practically without recognition in England. This country, indeed, with its deplorable
inefficiency in almost all matters musical,
is
worse equipped than
any other under the sun for celebrating centenaries adequately; one is tempted to say that England visits its spite on the heads of
great musicians for refusing to be
this
all
commemoration honours after they are dead.

well
born here by refusing them It is characteristic of of Verdi's that is at work the land that oratorio-ridden only
known
knows
here
is
the Requiem.
The ordinary Englishman,
singularly litde of Verdi, and nothing at all of the Verdi. get an occasional performance of the operas of greater Trovatore (1853), La his middle period - Rigoletto (1851),
indeed,
We
Maschera (1859); but these no more represent the real Verdi than the Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser represent the real Wagner. Even Aida (1871), which is
Traviata (1853),
in
and Un Ballo
decidedly popular, does not show him at anything like his best. The true Verdi lover is even a litde annoyed by it at times he does not mind the roughly effective and slightly comic methods and the stereotyped Italian tricks of the earlier operas, for he knows
;
that a cub cannot
walk or tumble in any way but that of a cub, and the rest of them are just the awkward but fascinating sprawlings of a cub of an uncommonly vigorous breed. But in Aida Verdi has lost a good deal of his old manner without having fully acquired his newer one; and the opera, to my thinking, falls between two stools. Yet, when all is said, had Verdi's career closed with Aida we should have been struck by the length of the road he had travelled since the Nabucco of 1842. (He had written a couple of operas before that, but they are not
and
Trovatore
or accessible. The Nabucco is still extremely Verdi himself, indeed, then nearing his sixtieth year, regarded Aida as the end of his activities; he retired to his estate, living all day, as he says in one of his letters, *in the fields and the
generally
interesting.)
known
woods, among the peasants and animals, footed ones, who are the best of all*.
especially the litde four-
Birmingham Post 105 But he had another thirty years of life before him, to be filled with a slow crescendo of astonishing achievement. In 1874 he gave the world the beautiful Manzoni Requiem. Thirteen years later he made everyone marvel at his Otello, an opera of great intellectual power, in which his musical genius has taken a flight for which not even Aida and the Requiem had prepared us. And in 1893 came the most dazzling wonder of all - the Falstaff. The wonder was not that after writing lurid tragedies all his life he
should turn to
comedy
order of things. Here in England
in his old age, for that is in the natural we often rail at our young
composers for being so tragically minded, and exhort them to

leave the problems of the cosmos alone for a while and write a little comic music. But after all, perhaps, nature is banking them in the right way. There is comedy and comedy, of course; comic music of the ordinary stage type any decent musician could write
But for the richer sort of comedy, in which the smile is more searching than the laugh, and the humour and the humanity
blindfold.
lie
even deeper than
tears,
man needs
to wait
till
he has
at
any
rate a toe or
in the grave. Garrick used to say that anyone could act in tragedy, but that to do comedy well was the very
two
devil. And so our young men are, no doubt, doing the right thing in going about swathed in sackcloth and powdered with ashes. In this dismal garb they will gradually get rid of their tiresome
thirty years or so the best of them will be sitting in slippered ease and chuckling in their music over the fun of life. Wagner had his first idea of die Meistersinger when he was
growing
pains;
and in
and kindly nature kept him from writing the opera until he was nearly fifty. It was in accordance with the nature of things, then, that Verdi
thirty-two, but wise
him of his tragic bile before he could give himself to up pure joy in sunlight and laughter; but the amazing, almost incredible thing is that at nearly eighty years of age he should
should purge
be so rich in physical and mental vigour as to be able to carry through without a single lapse so gay and sunny a work as Falstaff- an opera that is a pure delight from first to last. It and the
still
Meistersinger stand in a class by themselves though I myself would be inclined to grant admittance to this circle to Hugo
io6
Testament of Music
Wolf *s beautiful opera The
Corregidor. Falstaff, of course, is much than the in texture Meistersinger, and for that reason lighter would probably make a better model for the comic opera of the
There is no real need, perhaps, for the music of comedy to be so fat and polyphonic as Wagner makes it. That Titan of necessity used the instrument that had come to his hand from those of his great forerunners - an instrument that was never a light one, and that has become heavier and heavier by successive accretions of technique, till in the hands of men like Strauss and
future.
Roger
it is
almost comically unwieldy. Verdi, like the Latins in
general, was satisfied with a lighter and swifter style of expression; and this clarity we have at its rarest in the incomparable Falstaff. Apart from the delicacy of its texture, and the virtual avoidance of the leading motive system, there is little in the opera that is
specifically Italian.
Our
folk-song enthusiasts will have
it
that in
some undefined and indefinable way the music of each country

should be recognizably 'national', whereas the truth is that the greater the music is the less distinctively is it French or German or Italian or anything else. Falstaffis not nearly so Italian' in style as,
say, II Trovatore; a
it
German or an Englishman might have written had he had Verdi's grace and wit. As he grew older, indeed, Verdi seems to have recognized the fallacy of 'nationalism* in art, and to have seen that nothing mattered but the personality of the artist. 'I wish,' he writes to a correspondent in 1875, 'that a young when he at sits his desk, would not bother his head composer, about being a melodist, or a harmonist, or an idealist or a musicof-the-futureist, or what the devil all these pedantries are called. Melody and harmony in the hands of an artist are only a tool for the making of music; and a day will come when people will no longer talk of melody, of harmony, of a German school and an Italian school, of the past and the present, and so on; and then we shall enter into the kingdom of art.' This reminds us perhaps of Hugo Wolf's dictum that what the composer has to do is to
write not
German music or French music or Russian music, but music. If Verdi seems simply pronouncedly 'Italian* in the it is because northern Protestantism and southern Requiem, Catholicism have come to hold divergent opinions as to the
Bkmingham Post
107
and the forms of religion. In the greatest Verdi of all, the Verdi of Otello and Falstajf, the typical Italian stigmata are barely visible. When, I wonder, will these two works become part of the ordinary English repertory? Even on the Continent they are not given quite as often as one would expect. Otello, written
essence
originally for Tamagno, is a little cruel to the average tenor; while both this opera and Fabtaffcdl for performers who are subtle actors
well as fine singers. In England, therefore, we shall still, in all probability, have to derive our knowledge of the later Verdi from
as
the
Requiem
alone.
DER ROSENKAVALIER,
WHEN PLAYED precisely as it is written,
four hours long and rather broad. add, with a wink and a grin, that it
is
1913
is
the Rosenkavalier
about
The man
in the street
also a bit thick.
might But even in
Germany, I believe, it is not given now precisely in accordance with the stage directions in the score, and at Covent Garden last night the action and situations of the opera were still further toned down. As it was originally planned, neither Hugo von Hofmannsthal (the librettist) nor Strauss could be absolved from the charge of making a skilful use of indelicate situations for the benefit of the box office. The play, as a play, is a good one only
in the sense that it is better than the usual stuff that is thought good enough for opera; but much of what is good in it is not new, and
and much of what is new in it is not good. The scene is laid in the Vienna of the eighteenth century. The first act shows a boy of seventeen, Octavian, in the bedroom of his middle-aged mistress the Princess von Werdenberg, whose husband is away hunting.
The time is
is
apparently next morning. In the original, the Princess
supposed to be reclining in bed in a night gown; in the censored version she sits in a chair in what might be either a dressing gown
or an opera cloak. In time a cousin of the Princess arrives - a certain
middle-aged, coarse-mannered, coarser-minded Baron Ochs
von
io8
Testament of Music
He has come to marry one Sophia, the young a of parvenu merchant, Herr von FaninaL He has never daughter seen the lady, but neither her father nor Ochs takes love into his calculations. The former's one desire is to marry his daughter into to add another pearl to his already nobility; Ochs' only wish is
Lerchenau.
unable to escape from long list of feminine acquisitions. Octavian, the room, has had to disguise himself in women's clothing; the Princess passes him off as her maidservant, Mariandel. With the
pretty Mariandel,
immediate
of course, Ochs at once falls in love. His is to find a Rose-bearer - a young object, however, used to take a silver rose from who of good family gentleman bridegroom to bride. The Princess recommends to him one Rofrano, who is, of course, Octavian. This transaction arranged, the Princess holds her levee; the apartment fills with a curious crowd of suitors, beggars, musicians, etc., and after the exit of the Baron and the crowd there is a touching scene between the Princess and Octavian. He swears eternal fidelity, but she proleave her for a younger and phesies that sooner or later he will
prettier
woman.
In the second act Octavian brings the rose to
Sophia, and the pair at once fall in love with each other. Ochs angers both Sophia and Octavian by the brutal coarseness of his wooing, and the boy wounds the burly braggart in the arm. At the end of the act he is lying alone on his chair slightly fuddled with wine, when a letter is brought him from the supposed Mariandel, making the appointment for the t6te-i-t8te he had asked for in the Princess's room. He is in high glee, but refuses to reward the bearer of the letter - an Italian adventuress Amin^4; who forthwith vows vengeance. The scene of the third act isSt^ room in an Inn - part supper-room and part bedroom. Octavian appears in woman's clothes and she and her accomplices fool the Baron to the top of his bent: conspirators concealed under trapdoors and in cupboards pop out their heads at times and make him believe his brain is going, and Amina and a number of children pass themselves off as an abandoned family of his. First the commissary of Police arrives, then the Princess. It ends with the Baron retiring in confusion, and the Princess sacrificing her own happiness for that of the young lovers.
It is
Birmingham Post 109 a mixed piece of work, sometimes interesting, sometimes
very stupid and thick fingered. The Baron is an amalgam of Tony Lumpkin, Bob Acres, Count Almaviva and Don Juan, but with
him TeutonicaUy coarsened to the texture of a sausage. Octavian is a modern Cherubino, and the Princess a modern Countess Almaviva. The primitive humour of the last act is very tiresome. The scene at the Princess's levee is like a
everything in
succession of music hall 'turns' ;
and there is a touch of pantomime,
again, in each of the episodes in which a little negro servant of the princess takes part. And as the play, so the music. It is a bewilder-
ing packet of all-sorts. One might sum it all up as being one-third worthy of Richard Strauss, one-third worthy of Johann Strauss and Lehdr, and the remainder only worthy of the waste paper .basket. great deal of it is in that vein of clever bluffing that Strauss has become far too addicted to of late. For a good hour and a half of the time he is simply chattering away without anything definite to say; with his harmonic cleverness and his consummate orchestral technique he can 'spoof ' the unsuspecting
listener into believing

it is
something really musical is going on
when
not.
music given to Sophia is mostly quite uninteresting. The waltzes are the salvation of the opera; but these, in a sense, are a ready made article, a kind of pre-digested food. It is not at all
difficult to
The
hundred
good
write a taking waltz; and there must be at least five today capable of writing waltz tunes as as those of nine-tenths of Strauss. Just as, after Bach and
men in Europe
it is possible to make quite a decent show with the transmitted musical technique, even if you have no very striking ideas of your own, so it is possible for any good musician to make
Brahms,
an excellent show with some variety or other of the captivating waltz-dishes that have already been served up for us time without number by Viennese operetta writers. If only we could hear a
Johann
Strauss or
I
Lehdr waltz scored for the Richard Strauss
orchestra,
fancy we should not be able to make such distinction
and one of Richard Strauss's. The 'Rosenkavalier* waltzes, however are, it must be admitted, very jolly things of their kind. A visible and audible purr of contentment went
it
between
no
opera
Testament of Music
time they sang out; if the whole through the audience each could have been couched in this idiom it would have
a very pleasant after-dinner entertainment. But the work achieves no unity of style; it is by turns Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss the earlier, Richard Strauss the later, Johann
made
not been able to weave a new and for himself as Wagner did in the idiom homogeneous comedy
Strauss,
and Mozart.
He has
Meistersinger.
And yet, on the whole, nobody but

the work; and in
its
Strauss could
it is
have written
greater moments
it
two towering
Princess
things in
inexpressibly fine. The are the affecting scene between the
and Octavian
at the
end of the
first
act
in
which the
music breathes the very subtlest essence of wisdom, tenderness, - and the trio for the three women's voices and a life's
philosophy
at the finish
of the opera. This has been growing on me continuthan eighteen months; but last night it sounded more ously for more glorious and more masterly than I could have anticipated. The obvious comparison is with the famous quintet in the more than holds his own in the comMeistersinger, and Strauss warmth of blood, such boldness of flight, and such parison. Such
power of endurance
musician.
are
beyond the scope of any other

is
living
The
entrance of the Rosenkavalier in the second act
also a
Haying piece of work, though I have come to like the dissonant harmonies less and less; they are too obviously manufactured.
One came away wishing that Strauss would now separate himself from the theatre, that has done him so much harm as well as good
during his ten years' association with
purely orchestral
it, and concentrate upon would call out all the best that some is in him, and the form of which would force him to think concentratedly, because there would be no stage action to keep us uncritically occupied while he was merely cleverly mat-Icing time in the orchestra. He may yet do a work of this kind. If he
work
that
ever does,
it
will
be a masterpiece.
Birmingham Post
SCHONBERG'S FIVE ORCHESTRAL

1914
in PIECES,
ARNOLD SCHONBERG - one of the advanced composers of our day who make people like Richard Strauss seem quite old-fashioned made his first appearance in London at a Queen's Hall concert on Saturday afternoon, when he conducted a performance of his
It may be remembered that when these works were played at a Queen's Hall promenade concert in September 1912, they seemed so destitute of meaning and so full of discords that the audience laughed audibly all through the - which is a very performance, and hissed vigorously at the end
Five Orchestral Pieces.
unusual thing for an English audience to do, even when it is not was evidently apprehensive that somepleased. The management and hurt thing of the same sort might happen again on Saturday
programme there appeared the following diplomatically worded note: 'Herr Arnold Schonberg has promised his co-operation at today's concert on condition that
Schonberg's feelings, for in the
is during the performance of his Orchestral Pieces perfect silence maintained.* In other words, 'Don't shoot the composer; he is doing his best/ It was hardly to be expected that the audience
would
was a
been behind
in any case be so rude to Schonberg to his face as it had his back; but as events turned out, although there
and then, the music was actually was evidently not applauded with some warmth. The applause and politeness to Schonberg merely a matter of good nature himself; for though he was greeted cordially when he came on the much alive and alert, the first platform, smiling and looking very
faint hiss
or
titter
now
of the five Pieces was received practically in silence, the applause commencing after the second piece and increasing to the end. It was not universal, of course, and in volume was nothing like what was lavished on Tchaikovsky's Circus - and sawdust - piano concerto in B flat minor and its performer; but it was fully
evident that the audience, though often puzzled,
was decidedly
impressed. It was dear, indeed, that we were now really hearing the music for the first time. Perhaps it had been better rehearsed; and of
H2
how it
effects
Testament of Music
course the composer knew, as no one eke could know, exactly ought to be made to sound. Certainly I cannot imagine a
between two performances of music, and the of them, than there was between Saturday's performance of this Schonberg work and that fifteen months ago. Only the
greater difference
composer, I imagine, can show them to us as they are really meant to be. They have a new orchestral feeling and technique, to which the score is only an imperfect guide. note prefixed by
- to the effect that the Schonberg to one of the movements conductor is not to concern himself with bringing out this or
that voice, that seems to
him important, or
to soften
what seems
to
him
all
and
the precise degree of force indicated in his part - 1 thought at first a little affected. But the music, when properly given, justifies what Schonberg says of it. The various timbres are blended in the
discords, for all this is allowed for in the orchestration, the conductor has to do is to see that each player employs
most cunning way imaginable. Discords that on paper look unendurable and meaningless are tinted in such a way that one feels only a vague and often most alluring effect of atmosphere and distance. This is not absolutely new, of course, in orchestral music, but Schonberg's vision of the things to be done in this line, and his skill in doing them, go beyond those of any other composer I know. The third piece is quite remarkable in this respect; it does not contain a single phrase that can be called a 'theme* in the ordinary significance of that term, and is a sort of shimmering, gently heaving sea of tone. It is impressionism pure and simple, and impressionism is bound to bulk more and more largely in die music of the future. It will be a little hard for us to adapt ourselves to it at first, for the very vagueness of the picture in die composer's mind, and the absence from the music of all
literary
or materialistically pictorial sign-posts, often destroy
all
have been accustomed to between the and ours. Others of these Five Orchestral composer's imagination Pieces are not impressionistic in the same way as No. 3, though what at present seems their lack of definite thematic working and dear outline is apt to make us sum them all up under the same term. There is thematic repetition in the First, but here, too, the
the connecting links
we
Birmingham Post
orchestral colour
113
main
effect
comes from the harmonic and
and
the sense of driving energy conveyed by the rhythmic motion. But always we come back to the harmonic problem. What
distinguishes all Schonberg's music since the Three Piano Pieces of Op. ii from his earlier work is the apparently deliberate throwing over of the century-old distinction between consonance and dissonance. Hitherto, though we have become more tolerant each decade of discords that our predecessors would have winced under, they have justified themselves to us by standing in some sort of logical relation to a central idea of consonance. Schonberg
upsets all this.
He treats
dissonance as a tonal language, complete
satisfying in itself, owing no allegiance, or even lip-service to consonance, either at the beginning, in the middle, or at the
and
end of the work.

him,
that,
It is amazing how far we can already go with how strangely beautiful and moving much of this music is,
is a mere jumble of discordant it is frankly impossible for the most advanced musician But parts. to see a coherent idea running through a great deal of this music. I do not say the coherent idea is not there, but simply that at present its coherence and its veracity are not always evident.
judged by the eye alone,
Time
alone can
show whether
it
is
our harmonic sense that
thinks too slowly, or Schonberg's harmonic sense that thinks a little too rapidly for the rest of the world.
V
CONTROVERSY CONCERNING
STRAUSS
1910
THE NEWMAN-SHAW
AND
1914
From
the Nation
*~r*HEBEECHAM SEASON at Covent Garden in 1910 was one of

the most exciting in the history ofmusic. The repertoire was chosen JL from Delius' Village Romeo and Juliet, Ivanhoe (Sullivan) Tristan and Isolde, Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers, Carmen, Hansel and Gretel, I/Enfant Prodigue, and Elektra. And it was the last named that caused more discussion than any opera for years 9 and with
the exception of the death of King Edward was the event of the year. Nothing had been heard of the 'greatest living composer for the last
jive years
when
his
Sinfbrda Domestica had been performed and was a
comparative failure. 9 ' Strauss s share ofthis work' wroteBeecham, *takenasawhole, ishismost
Here he has thefullest opportunity ofworking ofgrotesque and weirdfantasy of which he remains the greatest master in music. On the side ofpathos and tenderness he rises to a fairly a unity satisfactory height and in spite of inequalities of style realizes which is lacking in his other stage works. The almost entire absence of charm and romance makes it unique, and if it is reported truly that Gluck in his austerity thought more of his muses than the Graces, then Strauss might here be fairly said to have shown a preference for the tunes. The public was undoubtedly impressed and startled, and to I was obliged to extend satisfy the demand for the future performances
characteristic achievement.
that vein
my
Season .*
* Beecham:
A Mingled Chime, p. 129.
n6
As
to the
Testament of Music
opening performance* the excitement of musical London were offered for seats, and a packed
rose to fever-pitch; fantastic prices
King and Queen and other members of the and royal family, many leading musicians greeted the performance with immense enthusiasm. The amount of space devoted by the press to the performance both on the following day (a Sunday] and on the Monday morning, was greater than ever before. Rarely had there been such wonderaudience, that included the
ful notices of an operatic event in London, in which all elements, singing and playing, combined to make a completely unified whole. The Elektra
ofEdyth Walker was

9
'a
triumph of well-calculated
restraint, as
well as
of bodily endurance, wrote The Times; 'Nothing could have surpassed the almost superhuman energy of this richly endowed artist, whether as
9
singer or actress, said the Telegraph; while the Observer commented that 'incredible as it may seem to those who know the score, it was
possible for
Mme
note, to vocalize perfectly the
Walker, never a hair's breadth from the centre of the most trying and strenuous passages . The
Klytemnestra ofMildenburg earned similar praise, The Times suggesting that her interpretation was 'so vivid a picture of decadence that while she
was on the stage it was possible to forget all about the music. Frances Rose, an American soprano, was Chrysothemis and Hermann Weidemann, the Viennese baritone, Orest. The orchestral playing under Beecham was thought to be the finest heard in the Opera House since Nikisch had last conducted there; and at the end of the evening the ovations continuedfor minutes on end, and Beecham was presented with a laurel wreath*^
Judging from the tone of a number of last Monday's articles, our musical critics, as a whole, are still a little doubtful as to the
propriety of saying what they must really feel about Strauss. They cannot possibly like a great part of what hear, but at the back
they
of their heads is the thought that, as Wagner was abused by the critics of his own day for extravagances that time has shown to be
no extravagances * f
at
all,
so time
may show that

at
Strauss
was
right
Saturday, ipth February, 1910. Rosenthal: Two Centuries of
Opera
Covent Garden, $.346.
The Newman-Shaw Controversy Concerning Strauss 117 and that the critics who objected to them were wrong. So a number of the prudent gentlemen stay the flood of ridicule that is almost on their lips, and, instead, talk darkly of the future showing what it will show, and utter other
in his extravagances,
safe commonplaces. All the while there is no real comparison between the Wagnerian case and the Straussian. All new music, from the mere fact that it is new, is apt to be misunderstood, and an idiom may seem wild or incoherent merely because we are not yet accustomed to it. But because the human ear has sometimes disliked a new thing and afterwards liked it, it does not follow that
will some day like everything that today it cordially dislikes. There are other things to be considered, and one of these is the fact that nowadays we are much better placed than our fathers were for judging new music accurately. They had, for the most part, to listen to it without the slightest previous knowledge of it, and to express an opinion upon it probably after one hearing of the work. In these days we can generally study the score of the work long before we hear it. To talk of hearing Elektra for the first time on Saturday last is nonsensical. The vocal score has been at our service for twelve months or more, and it was open to any critic to have it by heart before he went into Covent Garden on Saturday. piano arrangement, it is true, does not tell us all about a complex modern work; but it tells us a great deal, and with that knowledge we can listen to a first performance on the stage in a better state of preparation than the Wagnerian critics could do at a tenth performance. All this critical timidity, then, is not very
it
Anyone who had taken the trouble to study the score of Elektra could easily gather from Saturday's performance whether the parts he had marked out as requiring elucidation sounded as bad as he had expected them to do, or better. And, after the performance, he should be quite able to relieve posterity of the trouble of making up his mind for him on nine points out often. Anyhow, it would be better to make the attempt. All but the Strauss fanatics will admit that, though he is
creditable.
undoubtedly the greatest living musician, there is a strong strain of foolishness and ugliness in him, that he is lacking in the sensitive
feeling for the balance
of a large work that some other great
118
artists
Testament of Music
have, and that consequently there is not one large work of from Don Quixote onward, that is not marred by some folly his, or some foolery. If it were not for this strain of coarseness and thoughtlessness in him, he would never have taken up so crude a perversion of the old Greek story as that of Hugo von HofinannsthaL One does not in the least object to a modern poet looking at ancient figures through modern eyes, so long as he can see them convincingly and make them live for us. But to make a play a study of human madness, and then to lay such excessive stress upon the
merely physical concomitants of madness, is to ask us to tune our notions of dramatic terror and horror down to too low a pitch.
Strauss,
of
superficial, side
course, revels in this physical, and therefore more of the madness, with the result that, instead of
impressing
have us, he generally either bores us or amuses us. only to look at a pathological study of human morbidity such as Dostoievsky gives us in Crime and Punishment, so fine, so unobtrusively true to life, and then listen to the vulgar din by which
realize the difference
We
convey to us that a woman's brain is distraught, to between a man of genius and one who, for the moment, has become merely a man of talent. For the real complaint against the excited music in Elektra is that it mostly does not excite you at all; you are rather sorry, in fact, that the composer should take so much trouble to be a failure. For he is so
Strauss tries to
violent that, as a rule, you cannot believe in the least in his violence. He has the besetting Teutonic sin of over-statement, of
being unable to see that the half is often greater than the whole; and all this blacking of his face and waving of his arms, and howling 'bolly-golly black-man - boo!' at us leaves us quite
to smile and wish he wouldn't do it. One could easily name a hundred passages in ancient and modern music that thrill us far more horribly, and with far simpler means, than all the cktter that breaks out when Orestes, for
unmoved, except
example,
stories
is murdering Aegistheus. The mere recollection of the of ghosts in the churchyard, or of his own fears when, as a child, he was left alone in a dark room, might have told Strauss that horror and the creeping of the flesh are not necessarily associated with noise and fury. His orchestra doth protest too much.
The Newman-Shaw Controversy Concerning Strauss 119 Nor do we need to wait for posterity to tell us that much of the music is as abominably ugly as it is noisy. Here a good deal of the talk about complexity is wide of the mark. The real term for it is incoherence, discontinuity of thinking. 'The three angles of a
two right angles' sounds absurdly simple, but really represents a good deal of complex cerebral working; so does the G minor fugue of Bach. But 'the man in the moon is the daughter of Aunt Martha's tom-cat,' though it sounds very
triangle are equal to
complex
is
incoherent nonsense; and so
is
good
deal
Elektra.
Unfortunately, while we have obvious ways of testing the sense or nonsense of the remark about the man in the moon, it is not so easy to test the sense or nonsense of a passage of music; and so a good deal of quite confused thinking gets the credit for being
hyper-subtle thinking. What awestruck worshippers call complexity in Elektra would often be more correctly described as
impudence
at its best
and incompetence
at
its
worst.
more normally lyrical pages in Elektra,
there are very

Strauss.
worthy even of a smaller musician than
As for the few of them The first solo of
Chrysothemis, for example, is merely agreeable commonplace; the theme of triumph in the finale is so cheap that it must have
been picked up on the rubbish-heap of Italian or French opera. Nothing marks so clearly the degeneration of the musician in Strauss from what he was fifteen years ago than the average melodic writing in Elektra. What saves die opera is, first of all, the wonderful beauty of parts of the scene between Elektra and Orestes, especially when, ceasing to be a maniac and becoming a normal woman, she pours out her soul in love for her brother. There is grandeur again spasmodic, of course, but none the less unescapable at a hundred and then points in the score. It may last merely a moment or two, flicker off into ugliness or commonplace, but while it is there we are mastered by it. Elektra's cry of 'Agamemnon', whenever it
occurs, always holds us in this
like a
way.
Strauss in Elektra, indeed,
is
huge volcano spluttering forth a vast amount of dirt and murk, through which every now and then, when the filming ceases and a breath of dear air blows away the smoke, we see the grand and strong original outlines of the mountain. And when
I2O
Testament of Music
whelming. We may detest the score
Strauss puts forth his
whole mental
strength, it is indeed overas a whole for its violence
no other man, past or present, could have written - the monologue of Elektra just mentioned, for example, or the wailing themes
that dominate the section preceding it, or the tense, fateful gloom of the finish of the opera. The result of it all is to give far more
and frequent
ugliness,
but the fine things in it are of the kind that
pain to Strauss's admirers than it can possibly do to those who have always disliked him. In spite of the pathetic way in which he
wastes himself, playing now the fool, now the swashbuckler, now the trickster, you cannot be in doubt that you are listening to a man who is head and shoulders above all other living composers.
One still dings
to the
hope
that the future has in store for
us a purified Strauss, clothed and in his right mind, who will help us to forget the present Strauss - a saddening mixture of genius,
ranter, child and charlatan. As it is, one would hardly venture to prophesy more than a few short years of life for Ekktra, for the public will not long continue to spend an hour and three-quarters in the theatre for about half an hour's enjoyment.
May I, as an old critic of music, and as a member of the has not yet heard Elektra, make an appeal to Mr. who public Ernest Newman to give us something about that work a little less
Sir,
ridiculous
and idiotic than his article in your last issue? I am sorry and apparently uncivil epithets as 'ridiculous and idiotic' ; but what else am I to call an article which informs us, first, that Strauss does not know the difference between music and 'abominable ugliness and noise' ; and, second, that he is the greatest living musician of the greatest school of music the world has produced? I submit that this is ridiculous, inasmuch as it makes us laugh at Mr. Newman, and idiotic because it unhesitatingly places the judgment of the writer above that of one whom he admits to be a greater authority than himself, thus assuming absolute
to use disparaging
knowledge in the matter. This is precisely what 'idiotic' means. Pray do not let me be misunderstood as objecting to Mr.
The Newman-Shaw Controversy Concerning

as
Strauss
121
Newman describing how Etektra affected him. He has not, perhaps,

right to say that it seemed ugly and nonsensical to him (noise, applied to music, can only mean nonsense, because in any other sense, all music is noise) as Haydn had to say similar things
much
of Beethoven's music, because Haydn was himself an eminent still, he is perfectly in order in telling us honestly how ill Elektra pleased him, and not pretending he liked it lest his come to be regarded later on as we now regard should opinion his early opinion of Wagner. But he should by this time have been cured by experience and reflection of the trick that makes - the trick, English criticism so dull and insolent namely of that that does not him is everything asserting please wrong, not but Mr. Newman, confessing that he ethically. only technically did not enjoy, and could not see the sense of a good deal of Elektra, is a respectable, if pathetic, figure; but Mr. Newman - well, will treating Strauss as a moral and musical delinquent, is Mr. Newman himself supply the missing word, for really I cannot find one that is both adequate and considerate? When my Candida was performed for the first time in Paris, the late Catulle Mend&s was one of its critics. It affected him very much as Elektra affected Mr. Newman. But he did not immediately proceed, English fashion, to demonstrate that I am a perverse and
composer;
probably impotent imbecile (London criticism has not stopped short of this), and to imply that if I had submitted my play to his
revision he could have shown me how to make it perfect. He wrote to this effect: 'I have seen this pky. I am aware of the author's reputation, and of the fact that reputations are not to be had for nothing. I find that the play has a certain air of being a remarkable work and of having something in it which I cannot precisely seize; but I do not like it, and I cannot pretend that it gave me any sensation except one of being incommoded.' Now that is what I call thoughtful and well-bred criticism, in contradistinction to ridiculous and idiotic criticism as practised in
England. Mr.
Newman has no right to say that Elektra is absolutely

Strauss
and objectionably ugly, because it is not ugly to

admirers. He has no right to say that because such a statement implies that Strauss
it is
and to his
that
incoherent nonsense,
is
mad, and
122
Hofinannsthal and Mr. Beecham, with the
Testament of Music
artists who are executare who and the the music, managers producing it, are insulting antics of a lunatic as serious the them ing the public by offering
art.
He has no right to imply that he knows more about
Strauss's
business technically than Strauss himself. These restrictions are no hardship to him; for nobody wants him to say any of these
things: they are not criticism; they are not good manners nor good sense; and they take up the space that is available in the
Nation for criticism proper; and criticism proper can be as severe as the critic likes to make it. There is no reason why Mr. Newman
if he is unlucky all possible emphasis - that he finds Strauss's music able to to be say truly enough disagreeable and cacophonous; that he is unable to follow its
should not say with
harmonic syntax; that the composer's mannerisms worry him; and that, for his taste, there is too much restless detail, and that the music is over-scored (too many notes, as the Emperor said to Mozart). He may, if he likes, go on to denounce the attractiveness of Strauss's music as a public danger, like the attraction of morphia; and to diagnose the cases of Strauss and Hofinannsthal as psychopathic or neurasthenic, or whatever the appropriate scientific slang may be, and descant generally on the degeneracy of the age in the manner of Dr. Nordau. Such diagnoses, when supported by an appeal to the symptoms made with real critical power and ingenuity, might be interesting and worth discussing. But this lazy petulance which has disgraced English journalism in the forms of anti-Wagnerism, anti-Ibsenism, and, long before
that,
anti-Handelism (now
remembered only by
Fielding's
contemptuous reference to it in Tom Jones); this infatuated attempt of writers of modest local standing to talk de haut en bos to
men of European
lunatics,
is
reputation,
and
to dismiss
them
as intrusive
an intolerable thing, an exploded thing, a foolish thing, a parochial boorish thing, a thing that should be dropped by all good critics and discouraged by all good editors as bad form, bad manners, bad sense, bad journalism, bad politics, and bad religion. Though Mr. Newman is not the only offender, I purposely select his article as the occasion of a much needed protest, because his writings on music are distinguished enough to make him
Strauss
123
worth powder and
shot. I
can stand almost anything from Mr.

as Strauss's governess;
Newman except his

has sufficient sense
posing
of humour
to see the absurdity
and I hope he of it himself,

this yell
now
that he has provoked a quite friendly colleague to of remonstrance.
Yours,
G. Bernard Shaw.
10 Adelphi Terrace,
ist
W.C.
March, 1910.
m
- A lady once asked Mr. Shaw to dine with her. Mr. Shaw's answer was, 'Certainly not: what have I done to provoke this attack on my well-known morals?' or words to that effect. The lady's telegram in reply was as effective as it was quiet: 'Know
Sir,
nothing about your morals, but hope they are better than your manners/ 1, too, hope so; for Mr. Shaw's manners, judging from
of things he knows nothing about - for he confesses that he has not yet heard Elektra - and to control his bad temper and his vanity to a degree that will save him from too gross a parody of the case he is attacking - one does not expect, of course, too much from the man who has written about Shakespeare and other people as Mr. Shaw has done. I nowhere said that Strauss did not know the difference between abominable ugliness and noise, or
he is 'the greatest living musician of the greatest school of music the world has produced'. Mr. Shaw plainly does not know the difference between what he reads and what he dreams. To say that a man at times writes ugly music does not imply that at otter times he cannot write beautiful music; and to say that Strauss's large and wonderful previous output, plus the wonderful of living compassages of Elektra, prove him to be the greatest
that
of his, are getting almost as bad as his logic. If I were to his 'appeal' to me in a spirit similar to his own, I to respond should appeal to him not to talk so dogmatically and offensively
this letter
posers (the 'greatest school of music, Mr. Shaw's own hectic imagination)
etc., etc.,' is
is
the product of not inconsistent with the
124
Testament of Music
opinion that in recent years Strauss has sometimes done vulgar
and stupid and ugly things. I hope this is clear, even to Mr. Shaw. I shall be happy to discuss Elektra with Mr. Shaw when he knows something about it; and to discuss the general problem of aesthetic judgment with him when be shows some appreciation of the real difficulties of it. For a man who is always at such pains to inform the world that he is cleverer than most people, he really
may be permitted to copy his own style of adverb. It is wrong for me to object to some of Strauss's music, even after careful study of it; but it is quite right of Mr. Shaw to say I am wrong, while confessing that he himself has not heard Elektral But Mr. Shaw's logic was always peculiar. Look at some of the delightful deductions he draws from my article. I said that there was a lot of incoherent and discontinuous
talks
very foolishly
- if I
Mr. Shaw
to
thinking in the opera. From this plain ground the industrious raises the following wonderful crop, which he puts
my
credit: (i) Strauss is
lunatic, (3)
mad, Mr. Beecham and the
(2)
Elektra
is
the antics of a
singers
and the orchestra are
insulting die public by performing it. Prodigious logician! does he do it? Mr. Shaw's ingenious theory is that I don't like some of Strauss's music because I can't follow it - his 'harmonic
is not but too mind, my poor transparent; and a to as some of Strauss's later themes musician, general objection, and his combinations of them is that they are so ridiculously easy
How
syntax', for example. that they are opaque to
My objection to passages of this kind
to write.
But perhaps I
am taking Mr. Shaw and his outburst too

letter
seriously. I
quite agree with him that his
- so
rich in
know-
ledge, so admirable in reasoning, so perfect in taste, so urbane in - should teach the musical critics style ! something even if only in
the way that the language and the antics of the drunken helots were held to be useful for teaching the Spartan youths the advantages of sobriety. Yours etc.
Ernest
Newman.
I2th March.

IV
Strauss
125
our good fortune to have produced in Professor Gilbert Murray a writer and scholar able to raise the Electra of Euripides from the dead and make it a living possession for us. Thanks to him, we know the poem as if it were an English one. But nothing Professor Murray can do can ever make us feel quite as the Electra of Euripides felt about her mother's neglect to bury her father properly after murdering him. A heroine who feels that to commit murder, even husband murder, is a thing that might happen to anybody, but that to deny the victim a proper funeral is an outrage so unspeakable that it becomes her plain filial duty to murder her mother in expiation, is outside that touch of nature that makes all the ages akin: she is really too early-Victorian. To us she is more unnatural than Clytemnestra of Aegistheus; and, in the end, we pity them and secretly shrink from their slayers. What Hofinannsthal and Strauss have done is to take Clytemnestra and Aegistheus, and by identifying them with everything that is evil and cruel, with all that needs must hate the highest when it sees it, with hideous domination and coercion of the higher by the baser, with the murderous rage in which the
Sir,
It is
of orgiastic pleasure turns on its slaves in the of its disappointment and the sleepless horror and misery of its neurasthenia, to so rouse in us an overwhelming flood of wrath against it and ruthless resolution to destroy it, that Electra's vengeance becomes holy to us; and we come to understand how even the gendest of us could wield the axe of Orestes or twist our firm fingers in the black hair of Clytemnestra to drag back her head and leave her throat open to the stroke. That was a task hardly possible to an ancient Greek, and not easy even to us who are face to face with the America of the Thaw case, and the European plutocracy of which that case was only a trifling symptom. And that is the task which Hofinannsthal and Strauss have achieved. Not even in the third scene of Das RheingoU, or in the Klingsor scenes in Parsifal, is there such an atmosphere of malignant and cancerous evil as we get here. And that the power with which it is done is not the power of the evil
lust for a lifetime
torture
126
itself,
Testament of Music
but of the passion that detests and must and finally can
destroy that evil, is rejoice in its horror.
what makes the work

this,
great,
and makes us
Whoever
understands
however vaguely,
will understand
Strauss's music, and why on Saturday night the crowded house burst into frenzied shoutings, not merely of applause, but of strenuous assent and affirmation, as the curtain fell. That the power
of conceiving
technical skill
it should occur in the same individual as the and natural faculty needed to achieve its complete and overwhelming expression in music, is a stroke of the rarest good fortune that can befall a generation of men. I have often said, when asked to state the case against the fools and money changers who are trying to drive us into a war with Germany, that the case consists of the single word, Beethoven. Today, I should say with equal confidence, Strauss. That we should make war on Strauss and the heroic warfare and aspiration that he represents is treason to humanity. In this music drama Strauss has done for us just what he has done for his own countrymen: he has said for us, with an utterly satisfying force, what all the noblest powers of life within us are clamouring to have said, in protest against and defiance of the omnipresent villainies of our civilization; and this is the highest achievement of the highest art. It was interesting to compare our conductor, the gallant
Beecham, bringing out the points in Strauss's orchestration, until sometimes the music sounded like a concerto for six drums, with Strauss himself bringing out the meaning and achieving the purpose of his score so that we forgot that there was an orchestra there at all, and could hear nothing but the conflict and storm of passion. Human emotion is a complex thing: there are moments when our feeling is so deep and our ecstasy so exalted that the primeval monsters from whom we are evolved wake within us and utter the strange tormented cries of their ancient struggles with the Life Force. All this is in Elektra; and under the baton of Strauss the voices of these epochs are kept as distinct in their unity as the parts in a Bach motet. Such colossal counterpoint is a counterpoint of all the ages; not even Beethoven in his last great Mass comprehended so much. The feat is beyond all verbal
The Newman-Shaw Controversy Concerning Strauss 127 it must be heard and felt; and even then, it seems, description: you must watch and pray, lest your God should forget you, and leave you to hear only 'abominable ugliness and noise*, and, on
remonstrance, lead
you
to explain
handsomely that Strauss
is
'vulgar, and stupid, and ugly* only 'sometimes', and that this art of his is so 'ridiculously easy* that nothing but your self-
own
respect
prevents you from achieving

it.
a European reputation
by
condescending to practise
Elektra that I
So much has been said of the triumphs of our English
owe it to Germany
noble beauty and power of

Strauss's
singers in to profess admiration of the Frau Fassbender's Elektra. Even if
my
the wretched thing poor Mr. Newman would still be worth a visit to Covent Garden to mistook see her wonderful death dance, which was the climax of one of the most perfect examples yet seen in London of how, by beautiful and eloquent gesture, movement, and bearing, a fine artist can make not only her voice, but her body, as much a part of a great music drama as any instrument in the score. The other German artists, notably Frau Bahr-Mildenburg, showed great power and
work were
it for, it
accomplishment; but they have received fuller acknowledgment, whereas we should not have gathered from the reports that Frau Fassbender*s performance was so extraordinary as it actually was. A deaf man could have watched her with as little sense of privation as a blind man could have listened to her. To those of us who are neither deaf nor blind nor anti-Straussian critics (which is the
same thing), she was a superb Elektra. Whatever may be the merits of the
article
which gave
rise
to
the present correspondence, it is beyond question that it left the readers of the Nation without the smallest hint that the occasion
was one of any

their while to
special importance,
or that
it
was
at all
worth
spend time and money in supporting Mr. Beecham*s
historic
splendid enterprise, and being present on what was, in fact, a moment in the history of art in England, such as may not
occur again within our lifetime. Many persons may have been, and possibly were, prevented by that article from seizing their opportunity, not because Mr. Newman does not happen to like
Strauss's music,
but because he
belittled the situation
by so
128
Testament of Music
miscalculating its importance that he did not think it worth even the effort of criticizing it, and dismissed it in a notice in which
nothing was studied except his deliberate contemptuous insolence to the composer. It would have been an additional insult to Strauss to have waited to hear Elektra before protesting, on the
grounds of international courtesy and artistic good faith, such treatment of the man who shares with Rodin the against enthusiastic gratitude and admiration of the European republic, one and indivisible, of those who understand the highest art.
plainest
that I have heard Elektra, I have a new duty to the of the Nation, and that is to take upon me the work Mr. Newman should have done, and put them in possession of the
But
now
readers
facts.
And now,
Ernest, 'Tnffnoch einmaY
Yours etc. G. Bernard Shaw.
iyth March, 1910.
Sir,
- Mr. Shaw's second letter makes argument with him more
possible than the first did. He himself aptly described that as a yell; and discussion with Mr. Shaw while he is merely yelling is too much like arguing with a locomotive whistle in foil blast.
But now
get
that Mr. Shaw's manner has lost something of its blend of the patronizing pedagogue and the swaggering bully, we can
more
directly to the real matter in hand.

it
My offence,
Elektra in
first
seems,
is
a triple one.
(i)
wrote an
article
upon
my own way and from my own standpoint, instead of finding out the way and the standpoint of Mr. Shaw, and
writing accordingly. This, I own, was unpardonable, and I apologize for it. (2) I took a wrong view of Strauss and Elektra.
(3) In expressing tins view, I necessarily made use of language that was not always complimentary to Strauss. Let us first look
at
No. 2. Mr. Shaw has now heard

I
good. know that this enough; but I am still
and he pronounces it very authoritative announcement ought to be so perverse as to maintain that parts of
Elektra,
Elektra are
The Newman-Shaw Controversy Concerning Strauss 129 and other I of a failure. that it very ugly, parts repeat there are abundant signs in it of the development of the bad elements that have spoiled so much of Strauss's work during the last few years - ugly, slap-dash vocal writing, which he attempts to carry through by means of orchestral bravado, a crude pictorial-
ism, ineffective violence simulating strength, a general coarsening of the tissue of the music, a steady deterioration in invention, an enthusiastic especially on the melody side. Mr. Shaw performs
fantasia
the
upon von HofmannsthaTs drama, which, to my mind and mind of many others, is - beauty of diction apart - a most un-
a pleasant specimen of that crudity and physical violence that certain school of modern German artists mistake for intellectual and
emotional power. In setting this violence to music, Strauss tries to out-Herod Herod. I should not blame him so much for this, if the things were only well done. In Salome the subject is a trifle una marvellous study of the pleasant, but Strauss has given us
diseased
woman's mind.
My complaint against Elektra
is
that
he
frequently fobs us off with the merest make-believe. The music am speaking, of course, of the bad parts of it now) does not (I itself cut to the roots of the characters as that of Salome does;
Strauss tries to bluff us partly by the tumult of his orchestration and partly by the easy pathos of the theatre. I have no objection to Mr. Shaw being bluffed in this way; but I am not going to be bluffed myself by means so transparent. Mr. Shaw, in his desto men, actually tells perate attempt to justify the ways of Shaw us that *on Saturday night the crowded house burst into frenzied assent and shoutings, not merely of applause, but of strenuous affirmation, as the curtain fell'. The spectacle of Mr. Shaw bringing up the opinion of a British audience on a point of art as
a support for his
come
to this?
own is delicious. Oh, Bernard, Bernard, has it May not that applause be accounted for in another
curious feature of these Elektra performances has been many advanced musicians, real admirers of Strauss, have been chilled by the work, the general public has been enthusiastic over it. I take this to be due, roughly speaking, to two
way? One
that while
causes.
Some
people have been swept off their feet
by
the
first
excitement of the thing; others have been astonished and delighted
130
to find that, so far
Testament of Music
recondite as they
from the Strauss idiom being so advanced and had been led to believe, many of the tunes, such as that of Chrysothemis and that of the final triumph, are of the most friendly and accommodating commonplace. I ask Mr. Shaw to look at the latter theme, on p. 238 of the score, and tell me honestly whether it is not banality itself. It is fit only for thirdrate French or Italian opera; you can hear the same kind of tune on the band in the park any Saturday. And, thinking that a theme of this kind is utterly unworthy of Strauss, I have every right to the 'impudence' of the say so. I have a right, again, to speak of the belief that great music is into me bamboozle to attempt
going on in the orchestra when I know that it is only the big drum banging, or some trick of orchestration sending a shudder under my skin. I have a right to speak of 'incompetence' when a composer makes a tremendous show of rising to the supremest all his mouthing and his heights of a situation, and, in spite of
violence,
falls as far
below
it
as Strauss does in the ineffective
noise that accompanies Elektra's digging-up of the axe, or the
murder of Aegisthus. (Technical incompetence I never urged a I to say against Strauss, as Mr. Shaw seems to think.) have right
that pages such as 36-40, or 53-56 (there are many others like them) are an unblushing evasion of the problem of thinking
coherently and continuously in music.
hold, in a word, that much oElektra is merely frigid intellectual calculation simulating a white heat of emotion. I find that Mr. Shaw once expressed,
I
he
apropos of Marlowe, the very point I would make here Marlowe, with the superstitious says, is 'itching to frighten other people terrors and cruelties in which he does not himself believe, and
:
wallowing in blood, violence, muscularity of expression, and

strenuous animal passion, as only literary
men do when
they
become thoroughly depraved by

I
solitary
work, sedentary
cowardice, and starvation of the sympathetic centres'. Precisely. would explain the bogus passion and bogus hysterics of a good
deal of Strauss's later music in the
at us,
same way.
He
drives furiously
his stupendous enormous cerebral technique; but at heart he is cold, for aU the whipping and spurring. He reminds me, in moments like these, of die beggars
with
all his
energy and
Strauss
131
who simulate epilepsy in the streets, producing the foaming at the

mouth by chewing
sympathetic and
I have no objection to the Mr. Shaw believing the fit to be a real he must not lose his temper because, having
a piece of soap.
trustful
one; but really learned some of the tricks of the trade, the soap.
I assure
him that I can
see
And now for No.

some of my
(Mr.
for 'writers
3.
criticism
Mr. Shaw heatedly objected to the tone of of Strauss. It was 'neither good manners'
authority
Shaw is our leading

;
on manners)
'nor
good
sense*
of modest local standing to talk de haut en bos to men of European reputation' it was an 'intolerable thing, an exploded thing, a parochial, boorish thing', and Heaven only knows what
else. Very good; but who is this purist who yells so deafeningly for moderation in criticism? Let us look for a moment at a few
passages of Mr. Shaw's own that he appears to have forgotten. He has lately called Schubert a mere confectioner. He once called
Marlowe a
fool
'the fellow
was a
fool'.
Unless
he once called Shakespeare an idiot - though I will accept Mr. Shaw's correction here if I am wrong. But he certainly wrote that Cymbeline 'is for the most part stagey trash of the lowest melodramatic order, in parts abominably written,
greatly at fault,
my memory is
throughout thought by
offensive,
intellectually vulgar, modern intellectual
and, judged
standards,
in
point of
foolish,
vulgar,
and exasperating beyond all tolerance'. Again, the same poor Shakespeare, 'in his efforts to be a social philosopher', can only 'rise for an instant to the level of a sixth-rate Kingsley*; but Mr. Shaw cannot stand 'his moral platitudes, his jingo claptraps, his tavern pleasantries, his bombast and drivel, his incapacity for following up the scraps of philosophy he stole so aptly', nor 'his usual incapacity for pursuing any idea*. He tells us frankly that his own Caesar and Cleopatra is an improvement on Shakespeare. In fact, says Mr. Shaw, 'with the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter
indecent,
Scott,
whom
can despise so entirely
as I despise
Shakespeare
when I measure my mind against his'. Some unkind people might

say that this was a case of a writer of modest standing talking to a man of European reputation de haut en bos. Shakespeare's
132
Testament of Music
and if I say nothing about the reputation, I fancy, is European; modest local standing, it is solely because I hesitate to incur the
responsibility of mentioning the same sentence.
I
modesty and Mr. Bernard Shaw in

this
that all these dicta of his upon of his drama, and that a based were study upon Shakespeare while blaming Shakespeare for many things he praised him for
is
know that he will say to
But that is exactly my attitude towards Strauss. If, then, it right for Mr. Shaw, it cannot be wrong for me; if it is wrong for me, it cannot be right for him. At all events, if he is going to
others.
out to prove the contrary he will need a better equipment than a penful of scurrilous impertinence and a disgracefully bad
set
memory
for his
own past.
Yours
etc.
Ernest
Newman
22nd March,
1910.
VI
- Mr. Shaw, by talking at such length about von HofinannsthaTs drama, has switched this discussion on to a side track; and 'H.W.M.V article* in last week's Nation, acute and illuminative as it is on the literary points it touches, shows the necessity of
Sir,
bringing the discussion back to its starting-point. To myself and hundreds of other people there is a good deal that is crude and melodramatic in von HofmaDnsthaTs play. He is not content, for example, with having Aegistheus slaughtered at one window, but must needs have the poor man chased to another window and
the agony prolonged there - for all the world, as one American critic put it, like a bullock in a Chicago stock-yard. But if other
people like this and similar melodramatic effects, I am quite concern is not with the drama, but content that they should. the real with music. Surely the question is not 'What kind of a drama has von Hofinannsthal written?* but 'What kind of music
My
* Meredith wrote on Elektra as

1910.
a play in the Nation for 26th March,
The Newman-Shaiv Controversy Concerning Strauss 133 It is the music alone that will save the opera or damn it, as history abundantly proves. Fifty composers have set Goethe's Faust to music ; but the greatness of the drama has not sufficed to save forty-five of these works from destruction. And if Smith writes another Faust tomorrow, the literary critics may rhapsodize as they please about Goethe's genius; but if Smith's music is not good his work will not have the ghost of a chance of keeping
has Strauss written?' the stage.
The
My
article,
indeed,
Elektra question, then, is purely a musical one. was entitled 'Strauss and his Elektra : it was
Strauss the musician that I mostly fell foul of;
and it was for daring
to speak in that way of Strauss as a musician that Mr. Shaw got are we not all more likely to so absurdly angry with me.
Now
come, to
that
we make sure we are all talking about the same thing? Let me put my own position in a nutshell. No one admires the
some kind of agreement on the matter
if
do. But it seems to me indissome years now his musical faculty has been deteriorating. The first sure signs of this were to be seen in certain parts of the Symphonia Domestica. La Elektra I hold it to be most marked. It takes four main forms, (i) Instead of getting to the very
bulk of Strauss's
work more than I
putable that for
of a situation in his music, as he used to do, he is inclined to the mere externals of it; hence the facile and foolish pictorialism of such things as the 'slippery blood' motive in Elektra or the orchestral delineations of Klytemnestra's jewels, the sacrificial procession, and so on. He sometimes does wonders of virtuosity in this way with the orchestra, but it is all as far from real music as a pianist's or violinist's display of technique for technique's sake can be. (2) He is degenerating into a bad and careless builder. Mr. Shaw may object to the phrase, but I repeat
heart
illustrate
it is ridiculously easy to put a score together as Strauss now does for pages at a time - flinging out a leading motive of three or four bars' length, and then padding unblushingly for twenty or
that
thirty bars until another salient

is
motive can be introduced.
(2)
He
often downright ugly. There were some shocking examples of this in the Symphonia Domestica. In Elektra I do not know who
would not call the opening scene ugly; even Mr. Kalisch, the most loyal Straussian in England, wrote that a second hearing did
134
Testament of Music
not
alter his view that the music was 'needlessly ugly*. (4) His thematic invention is sometimes positively wretched now. This may not be so evident to one who hears Elektra for the first time, with all the excitement of the stage action and the orchestration
it will be when he knows the music better. Thus *H.W.M.' speaks of being carried off his feet as the opera swept to its end. I venture to say that when he has played through the final scene a hundred times, as I have done during the past twelve months, he will be appalled at the banality of the bulk of it; even the theme of the 'recognition* is spoiled. He will hardly know whether to kugh or cry - laugh at the barrel-organ jingle of some of the themes, or cry that a man like Strauss should have sunk so - let is even worse in low. The solo of
to distract him, as
Chrysothemis
parts
anyone,
for example, play or sing pages 45 and 50-51 half a dozen times, and say if a tune like this is fit for anything but musical comedy
or the music-halls.
It is
thus not a case, as
Mr. Shaw imagines, of
Strauss's art rushing ahead and myself being too slow to follow, but of his art worsening in quality and declining to call five
my
not a case of the Wagner of Lohengrin into die Wagner of Tristan, and so thinking far ahead developing of his old admirers, but of the Wagner of Tristan being smitten with a withered hand and degenerating every now and then into the melodic banalities of Rienzi. There is great stuff in Elektra shillings a sovereign. It is
the recognition scene, for instance, and a score or two of isolated pages here and there; but there is much that is mere orchestral
bunkum - if I may use

commonplace.
that
word - and much
that
is
downright
are they who are most conscious of these things? the non-Straussians, but those who of old took Strauss for their leader He began as a genius, as Billow said of Mendelssohn,
And who
!
Not
and
is
ending
as
a talent. If Mr.
for Strauss he should have
done
worth fighting
for;
but to sing
Shaw was dying to strike a blow it years ago, when Strauss was his praises now, when he has lost
half the power, the originality, the resource, the fund of genuine feeling that made him so great, reminds me of the people in Mark
Twain's story
who valorously broke their night's rest, as they thought, to see the sunrise on die Rigi, and only discovered when
Strauss
135
the other people in the hotel were laughing at them that they had overslept themselves, and it was the sunset they were watching.
Yours
30th March, 1910.
etc.
Ernest
Newman.
vn
Sir,
-Just a
last
word with Mr. Newman.
make no apology
for bullying him: the result has justified me. I leave it to your readers to say whether I have not wakened him up beneficially,
well as put a very different complexion on the case of Strauss and Elektra. The anti-Strauss campaign was so scandalous that it
as
was dear somebody had to be bullied; and I picked out Mr. Newman because he was much better able to take care of himself than any of the rest. Most of them I could not have attacked at all: as well strike a child or intimidate an idiot. I will now repeat my amusing performance of knocking Mr. Newman down flat with a single touch. He asks me, concerning a certain theme in Elektra to look at it honestly and tell him whether it is not banality itself. Certainly it is. And now will Mr. Newman turn to the hackneyed little 'half close* out of which Handel made the 'Hallelujah Chorus', and tell me honestly whether it is not - and was not even in Handel's own time - ten
times as banal as the Chrysothemis motif? Strange how these men of genius will pick up a commonplace out of the gutter and take
away our breath with, it; and how,

masterful,
as
they
grow
older and
more
any trumpery
diatonic run, or such intervals
of the
common chord as have served the turn of thousands of postboys,

dead and
alive, will serve their turn,
too
Fancy
like
trying that
for
worn-out banality gambit on an old hand
me
Now
ment
to myself,
to Strauss
Mr. Newman's final plea, with its implicit compliwhich I quite appreciate. That plea is that he did only as I did to Shakespeare. Proud as I am to be Mr.
the cases are not alike. If the day should
Newman's exemplar,
136
ever
Testament of Music
dawn
in England
on a
Strauss
made
into an idol;
on an
outrageous attribution to him of omniscience and infallibility; on a universal respect for his reputation accompanied by an ignor-
ance of his works so gross that the most grotesque mutilations and travesties of his scores will pass without protest as faithful
performances of them; on essays written to show how Klytemnestra was redeemed by her sweet womanly love for Aegistheus,
and Elektra a model of filial piety to all middle-class daughters; on a generation of young musicians taught that they must copy all Strauss's progressions and rhythms and instrumentation, and all the rest of it if they wished to do high-class work; in short, on all the follies of Bardolatry transferred to Strauss, then I shall give Mr* Newman leave to say his worst of Strauss, were it only for Strauss's own sake. But that day has not yet dawned. The current
humbug is
composer.
all
is
the other way.
that Strauss
I
The geese are in full cackle to prove one of themselves instead of the greatest living
the duffers
made war on
who
idolized Shakespeare.
took the side of the duffers who are trying to the persuade public that Strauss is an imposter making an offensive noise with an orchestra of marrow-bones and cleavers. It is not enough to say that I scoffed, and that therefore I have no right to complain of other people scoffing. Any fool can scoff. The serious matter is which side you scoff at. Scoffing at pretentious dufferdom is a public duty; scoffing at an advancing torchbearer is a deadly sin. The men who praised Shakespeare in my time were mostly the men who would have stoned him had they been his contemporaries. To praise him saved them the trouble of thinking; got them the credit of correct and profound opinions and enabled them to pass as men of taste when they explained that Ibsen was an obscene dullard. To expose these humbugs and to rescue the
Mr.
Newman
real Shakespeare
It
from them, it was necessary to shatter their idol. has taken the iconoclasm of three generations of Bible smashers
literature to us, after three hundred years of the volume into which it was bound as a fetish and a regarding talisman; and it will take as many generations of Shakespeare smashers before we can read the pkys of Shakespeare with as free
to restore
Hebrew
minds
as
we read the Nation.
The Newman-Shaw Controversy Concerning Strauss Besides, what I said about Shakespeare, startling
the ignoramuses,
criticism was
137
as it
was
to
all
really the classical criticism of him. That formulated by Dr. Johnson in what is still the greatest
I
was
essay
on Shakespeare yet written.
did not read
it
until
long after
my
campaign against Bardolatry in the Saturday Review ; and I was gratified, though not at all surprised, to find how exactly I had
Yours,
etc.
restated Johnson's conclusions.
G. Bernard
Shaw
(On
this: that
the broader issue raised here, is not the trouble precisely Mr. Shaw appears to daim for himself the possession of
a perfect criterion for distinguishing 'duffers' and 'torchbearers* and for naming other persons qualified to perform the same task of discrimination? Ed., the Nation). [2nd April, 1910.]
vm
Sir,
- As Mr. Shaw has
said his last
word
controversy,
may now
I
say mine?
I should
in this pleasant little not like to lose this
opportunity of thanking Mr.

the difference between
speare.
Shaw
my
criticism
for his lucid explanation of of Strauss and his of Shake-
The thing is now simplicity itself. Artists, it seems, fall into two categories - the 'duffers' and die 'torchbearers'. You can be as
rude
as
latter.
you like to the former, but must be very polite to the But how to know which is which? How to know whether
That
also, is simplicity itself:
we should bless a given artist for a torchbearer or damn him for a

duffer?
find out
on which
as
side
Mr.
Shaw is, and

necessity
bless
or
damn accordingly. 'Any fool',

side
is
he wisely
says, 'can scoff; the serious
matter is which side you scoff at.*
The
of being on the right
when in doubt, write or wire to Air. Shaw.

'Infallibility',
sel-evident; therefore, (Telegraphic address:

9
London.) 'He knows about it all;
HE KNOWS; HE KNOWS.
And now, just a word on what he calls his amusing performance of knocking me down with a single touch. He has looked at the passage in Elektra to which I drew his attention, and he agrees
138
Testament of Music
me that it is banality itself. But, he says, 'strange how these men of genius will pick up a commonplace out of the gutter and take away our breath with it* - instancing Handel. I am sure that on reflection Mr. Shaw will see how confused his thinking is here. What he has in his mind is the way in which a great comwith
poser will sometimes take an apparently insignificant germtheme and work it up into wonderful music; as Beethoven does, for example, with the very plain theme of four bars' length that
opens the Eighth Symphony, or the mere

the basis
G and E flat that form

Fifth
of most of the
first
movement of the
it is
No
Symphony.
musician here
would dream of
itself for
way; it is only bulb that will some day modest). It is give us the glory of form and scent and colour of the flower. I blush to have to point out to Mr. Shaw that the melody to which
like the unprepossessing
I
being 'banal* (which
quarrelling not, by the
with the theme
drew
his attention
it is
is
not a theme of this kind at
all. It is
not a
a long melodic passage, meant to speak for germ-theme; itself there and then. It is, in fact, intended for a piece of portraiture - Elektra, according to the stage directions,
'like
dancing about
that
it is
a Maenad'.
And the objections to it are two - first,
wretchedly cheap melody, such as no other great musician in history has ever written at the height of his career; and second,
that
it is
hopelessly inappropriate
and
It is
ineffective as a piece
of
or
characterization. This a
Maenad!
only Salvation
Sal,
Jump-to-Glory-Jane. But note that Mr. Shaw, in the act of trying to palliate the banality of the theme, admits that it is banal; these great geniuses,
he
have a way of turning to gold what they pick out of the So the theme was picked up in the gutter, was it? And the gutter. man who makes this incautious admission is the same man who a few weeks ago cursed me by all his false gods for saying that Strauss must have picked it up on a rubbish heap Or is there some superiority of the gutter over the rubbish-heap that only
cries,
!
Mr. Shaw's
previous
subtle brain can distinguish? It
is
as I hinted in a
gilding on the button takes Mr. gets furious with those of us who, having fingered the button a hundred times to his once, are more
letter.
The cheap
Shaw
in;
and so he
Strauss
139
conscious of the impudent brass of which it is really made. Anyhow the fact remains that on the solitary point on which Mr.
sublime generalities and deigned - which I have been vainly he agrees with me. I have, trying to get him to do all along therefore, every reason to hope that when his knowledge of the score is a little more profound than I suspect it to be at present, he
has
his
Shaw
come down from
to discuss the actual music ofElektra
will agree
with
my indictment of Strauss on the other counts.

Yours,
etc.
Ernest
Newman.
5th April, 1910.
THE STRANGE CASE OF RICHARD

STRAUSS,
being the
1914
THE FURTHER CONTROVERSY BETWEEN ERNEST NEWMAN and BERNARD SHAW

From
the Nation
FOR SOME of us
the sitting out of Strauss's
new
ballet at
Drury
Lane the other evening was like attending the funeral of a lost leader. For apparently Strauss is now quite dead so far as music is concerned. Hanslick used to say that in England - he might with equal truth have said the whole artistic world over it is difficult to win a reputation and impossible to lose one. Strauss may congratulate himself on this trait of canine fidelity in the public. The music of The Legend ofJoseph is bad enough to ruin any man's reputation but his; had one of the younger German composers written it, everyone would have been talking contemptuously of the German vein being exhausted. Whether it is or is not, it is hard to of say. Threatened nations, like threatened men, have a way
living long. It
as his
is
nearly forty years
now since Tchaikovsky gave it

to the
opinion that
German music had come
end of
its
140
resources. Well, since then
Testament of Music
we
have seen Brahms - the Brahms
Tchaikovsky could never understand taking more and more confidently his place in the great Teutonic line; and we have seen Richard Strauss - the Strauss whom we used to know as a man of genius - enriching music with a new vocabulary, a
whom
idiom, and a new psychology. German music may yet renew its youth, perhaps in the person of some composer sealed of the tribe of Schonberg. But one vein of German music is - the post-Lisztian-Wagnerian vein; and in certainly used up
new
is
exhausting that, Strauss has evidently exhausted himself also. He now one of the dullest and at the same time one of the most
pretentious composers in Germany. It is not pleasant to have to say things like this of a
man who
- of
was once our leader. The obvious riposte from the
Straussians
whom
degeneration
is that the there are probably a few still may be in the critic rather than in the composer.
surviving
Mr. Bernard Shaw
suggested, when he and I were exchanging Elektra over three or four years ago,* that I failed compliments to see the true inwardness of that work because I could not follow Strauss's new harmonic language; whereby Mr. Shaw simply demonstrated his comical ignorance of Strauss, of modern
no more
music, and of me. Strauss's harmonic idiom in Elektra presented difficulties to any ordinarily good musician than a page
of average German prose does to a linguist; while in the works that have followed Elektra - especially Ariadne auf Naxos, the Festliches Praeludium, andJoseph - the harmony is for the most part
relatively as simple as Mozart's. Our complaint against the present Strauss is not that he is a wild pioneer hustling us against our will
along an unknown and terrifying road that may lead anywhere, but a tired and disillusioned mediocrity lagging behind his fellows and behind us and beckoning us back to the road that leads nowhere. can forgive anything in an artist but commonStrauss is now place. virtually nothing but commonplace. In
We
of dating
Salome, Elektra, and the Rosenkavalier there are quarters-of-an-hour genius; in Ariadne auf Naxos there are moments of
genius not quite so dazzling ; in Joseph there is not a page of genius,
February-April 1910 (the previous correspondence).
The Newman-Shatv Controversy Concerning
Strauss
141
or even of a talent beyond that of a good hundred composers whom one could name.
save Joseph, if it can be saved, is the splendour of the dtcor, the beauty of the dancing, and, it may be, the quality of the old story and the suggestiveness of the action. It is true that
the authors of the scenario, with a typically Teutonic childishness, have tried to overlay the simple story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife with a bastard sort ofsymbolism; but on the stage the symbolism does not carry, even to those who have taken the trouble to
What will
wade through Count Kessler's super-solemn preface

All that the authors
to the score.
and composer have done is to exploit the naked story for every penny that it is worth, and by transporting it from Egypt to the Venice of the sixteenth century, to give it an almost insolent magnificence of colour. Ten years ago Strauss would probably have treated the subject ironically, as Relding did in Joseph Andrews. Today he talks pseudo-philosophy about it with Count Kessler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. At one point, and one only, have the German authors added a really effective touch to the story. The greater part of the first scene is a mere quasidramatic excuse for dancing; the temptation scene is just what one might have expected it to be; the final scene, with the angel leading Joseph away, is a combination of the last Act of Gounod's Faust and the British Christmas card. But the ballet of the women venting their rage and horror on Joseph after the catastrophe a kind of outward projection of the despair and frenzy of Potiphar's
wife after her repulse
point where
it
- not only
intensifies the action just at
the
might have been in danger of thinning out, but has inspired Mr. Fokine to one of his most expressive pieces of mimetic invention. The Russians, indeed, have done their part of the work magnificently. It is only Strauss who has failed us. It is no question of failing to see his meaning or disagreeing with his bent, as in the case of some of the real leaders of the musical thought of the day. One's objection to The Legend of Joseph is very simple look where one will, the score is a mass of unredeemed banalities. The writing is the merest journalese of music, the self-satisfied, pktitudinous orotundity of the leading article and the party
:
142
speech. The opening theme, of it, are simply the eleventh-fold
Testament of Music
and
all
the subsequent developments chewing of a ten-times masti-
standing dish. The paradoxical tonalities of the first dance promise well for a moment, but the interest of the dance is exhausted in less than a dozen bars. The music for
cated
German
the boxers the
is
simply the usual late-Straussian bluff; the noises in
moments of great dramatic intensity are simply the usual lateStraussian bluster; the affected theme of Joseph is simply the thirdrate attempt of a dull mind to invent something 'characteristic'; the finale is imposing only in virtue of its piling-up of orchestral colour, not of any value in the ideas themselves. Even Strauss's technique seems to have deserted him; from the mere point of view of effect the new work is a perpetual disappointment. He has
obviously written himself out, whether for good or only for the moment remains to be seen. It is pitiable to think that all that is
left
of the
futilitarian
man who wrote Don Quixote is the platitudinarian and who has written The Legend ofJoseph.
THE STRANGE CASE OF ERNEST

To
Sir,
NEWMAN
the Editor of the Nation
Newman opportunely reminds you that when Richard Strauss's Elektra was produced in London by the enterprise of Sir Joseph Beecham, he encouraged that public-spirited gentleman by assuring the public, in effect, that Elektra was despicable trash, and that it was just like the impudence of an
inferior person
- Mr.
from Germany
stuff.
to attempt to
Ernest Newman, with such
Whereupon,
contradicted
impose on him, Mr.

assures
Newman with extreme flatness. And now Mr. Newman
us that Elektra contains 'quarters-of-an-hour of dazzling genius'. He adds that Joseph, which has now succeeded to Elektra, is bad
enough to ruin any man's reputation; that Strauss is now one of the dullest and, at the same time, one of the most pretentious composers in Germany; that he is a tired and disillusioned mediocrity; not to mention that he is now quite dead as far as music
The Newman-Shaw Controversy Concerning Strauss 143 after which it is worth that he is a concerned; hardly adding and that of the score mass is a futilitarian, Joseph platitudinarian of unredeemed banalities, the merest journalese of music, the eleventh-fold chewing of a ten-times masticated German standing dish, the third-rate attempt of a dull mind to invent something characteristic, an attempt baffled by the fact that even Strauss's technique seems to have deserted him. As before, I flatly contradict Mr. Newman. He kept paying out all that ill-mannered nonsense about Wagner after even the Daily it is said, with at last, Telegraph (remonstrated by Royalty) had it. I contradicted him and now he thinks Wagner, flatly; dropped on the whole, rather a great composer. He paid it out about Elektra. I contradicted him flatly, with the result recorded above. He will say it about Strauss's next masterpiece. I will contradict him flatly (in fact, I do so now in advance), with the same sequel; for Mr. Newman's erroneousness is almost certain enough to be accepted as a law of nature; and his death-bed repentances may be as confidently looked forward to as the revivals of Peter Pan. But from the point of view of journalism, they are open to exception. How many people realize that a whole generation of the English people was deprived of the enjoyment of Wagner's music solely because the critics went on about Wagner exactly as Mr. Newman is now going on about Strauss, and as he formerly went on about Wagner until the grossness of his error was too much even for English editors? The extent to which we are kept out of our inheritance of contemporary culture by mere inconsiderate offensiveness in the mask of criticism is appalling. If Mr. Newman does not like Strauss's music, nobody wants him to pretend that he does. If he is bored by simple diatonic themes such as all the great composers abound in shamelessly, and is so weary of his business that he has no appetite for anything but the very interesting technical experiments of what he calls 'composers sealed of the tribe of Schonberg', let him say so by all means. But do not let him suppose that his weariness justifies him in libellous insolence seasoned assailing Strauss or anyone else with A with disgusting metaphors. gentleman may say that the opening theme ofJoseph has done service before in "The Minstrel
is
144
5
Testament of Music
',
Boy many
in one
of the
entractes in Bizet's Carmen,
and probably
in
other compositions besides, just as Handel's *O thou that tellest' had done duty in 'God Save the King !' He may poke a litde
good-humored fun at Strauss over it if he does that sort of thing amusingly, and does not forget Strauss's dignity and his own. But to call the theme the eleventh-fold chewing of a ten-times
masticated
German
It is
standing dish
is
obscenity. laboriously and intentionally offensive; and the fact that it is addressed to a foreign visitor of great distinction and of extraordinarily attractive personality, who has impressed Europe as a
not amusing,
as obscenities
not criticism but simple sometimes are. It is
genius of the
past errors
pleasanter.
first order, by an English journalist who has some of judgment to apologize for does not make it any
Since The Times set the example, paragraphs of the news of a hundred years ago have become familiar in our older newspapers. If the Nation could devise some means of printing the opinions which Mr. Newman will have some years hence, instead of his first impressions, your readers would be spared the irritation of being told, at the moment when a masterpiece is that it is not worth and being performed, hearing, learning after the performances are over that it contains quarters-o-an-hour of
dazzling genius.
ist July, 1914.
- Yours,
etc.,
G. Bernard Shaw
(Mr. Newman can (and no doubt will) defend his own taste in - Ed., music. But we see nothing obscene in his metaphors.
Nation.)
m
THE SAD CASE OF BERNARD SHAW
To
Sir,
It
was a voluptuous joy to
me
to find I
had drawn Mr.
again; but his angry letter about Strauss and myself mainly myself- was a disappointment to me. Mr. Shaw is going
Shaw

off sadly as a controversialist.
his
shall
Strauss
145
He
has lost his
punch along with
temper; and now he is obviously losing his memory, as I show. In my article on The Legend ofJoseph I referred to Mr. Shaw's comical ignorance of Strauss, of modern music, and of me. I must apologize. Comic isn't the word: I should have said
tragic.
Mr. Shaw's misunderstanding of Strauss and his position in modern music need not detain us long. He objects to my speaking
as I
did of
'a
foreign visitor
of
great distinction
and of extra-
ordinarily attractive personality'. Strauss's personality which I know nothing at first hand - has nothing to do
- about with the
matter.
his
The fact that Strauss happens to be in this country when work comes up for criticism has nothing to do with the matter.
And that Strauss is now *of great distinction* I deny. He is not, on the basis of his present work, a distinguished musician at all. He is simply a distinguished financier who deals in music.
Mr. Shaw calls The Legend ofJoseph a masterpiece. I call it a mass of banalities, a re-hash of die stalest German ideas and most conventional German formulas. To hear Mr. Shaw talk, anyone would think I was the only person in Europe with the temerity to suggest that Strauss is now writing a good deal of poor music. I invite Mr. Shaw to read the press of England and Germany, passim, on the subject of The Legend ofJoseph, and to have a few conversations about it with some leading English and Continental musicians, as I have done. If Mr. Shaw likes commonplace, or if he dabbles so superficially in modern music as to mistake a wellworn platitude for a stroke of originality, that is his affair. It does not concern the rest of us, and all his bellowing will not move us. I wish Mr. Shaw would make up his mind as to what sort of
am in music. During the Elektra affair his first was an old fogey who could not keep pace with the rapid developments of Strauss's harmony. I had to point out to him that my complaint against Strauss was not that he was too advanced - for indeed he is as simple as Mozart in comparison with some other modern composers - but that of late years he has written an appalling amount of music that is mere commoncall it what you will. place, bluff, bluster, make-believe, padding,
person
I really
view was
that I
146
Testament of Music
is
not in front of us now, but behind us. Mr. Shaw's latest me is as a sort of musical rou6 whose wearied nerves can of view respond to nothing but extreme and unnatural titillations. He imagines me to be 'bored by simple diatonic themes such as all the great composers abound in shamelessly', and 'so weary of my business* that I have 'no appetite for anything but the very interesting technical experiments* of 'composers sealed of the
He
tribe
of Schonberg'. It may cheer Mr. Shaw up to know that I am not a bit like that. I am perfectly well and happy, and enjoy-
ing good music of all sorts and schools, old and new. I have not the slightest objection to diatonic music if it is good any more than I object to a story told in words of one syllable if the words are put together by a man who has something of his
own
to say. I pass
by with
a smile
Mr. Shaw's reference
to
Schonberg. evidently does not understand what my original sentence meant, because he as evidently does not know his
He
Schonberg. If he did, he would know that there is another Schonberg than the one who indulges in 'interesting technical
experiments'.
Mr. Shaw imagines that I have recanted over Elektra. I must disabuse him of that notion. If he will refresh his memory, he will see that from the beginning I admired certain parts of it. I can assure him that those are still the only parts I admire. My opinion of the work as a whole remains unchanged: quite recently I
wrote of it, after hearing yet another performance, that three people seem to have had a hand in the score a man of genius, a man of talent, and a fool. Mr. Shaw's discovery is only another of
his mare's nests.
And now, Mr. Shaw having had his say about me, let me have word or two with him. He declares that Joseph is a masterpiece, and that I wiH some day recognize it to be such, when I have
a
It will be remembered that Mr. of me over Elektra before he had heard the opera. There is no need for him to admit that he does not know The Legend ofJoseph: I can prove it. He was at a rehearsal of the ballet, but for all that he does not know the music, or he would not have made the howler to which I am about to draw attention. 'A
corrected
my 'first impressions'.
foul
Shaw
fell
The Newman-Shaw Controversy Concerning Strauss 147 he some i.e., says gentleman', person other than myself- 'may say that the opening theme ofJoseph has done service before in "The Minstrel Boy". A gentleman might, but a musician would not. I puzzled for a good hour over Mr. Shaw's strange saying. Had he quite lost his reason, and would he be telling us next that the opening phrase of Tristan is the same as 'God Save the King'? And then a light dawned on me. There is a theme in Joseph that bears, in its first few notes, a superficial resemblance to the tune of 'The Minstrel Boy' but it is not the opening theme. I have not my score of Joseph with me where I am writing this, but the theme occurs, I think, in the middle of the second page. Now this is instructive. No man who had played or read through even the first couple of pages of the score could possibly have said that the
;
'Minstrel
Boy' melody is
'the
opening theme'. Mr.

as usual,
Shaw plainly
does not
know the work; he is,
merely dogmatizing on
a matter he imperfectly understands. And the cocksure amateur who thus publicly demonstrates his ignorance of Joseph has the assurance to talk of 'first impressions' of a work which, before
my
writing about it, I had played through at least a dozen times in the course of a month, and of which I had heard two rehearsals
and one public performance Mr. Shaw on Joseph and myself is only a joke and a sore shame. Mr. Shaw on Wagner and myself is a perverter of the truth. According to him, I 'kept paying out all that ill-mannered nonsense about Wagner after even the Daily Telegraph (remonstrated with at last, it is said, by Royalty) had dropped it. I contradicted him flatly; and now he thinks Wagner, on the whole, rather a
!
great composer.' This is definite enough: Mr. Shaw charges me with being a one-time ill-mannered disparager of Wagner as a
is
when a controversialist possessing the public ear so lost to literary decency as to attempt to put into circulation so gross a falsehood as this concerning me, I refuse to mince
musician.
Now
my
words with him. I simply give Mr. Shaw the lie direct, Wagner as a composer has always been one of the three supreme gods to me. Mr. Shaw has in mind my Study of Wagner, which was published in 1899. At that time I was less near Bach and Beethoven than I am now, and I wrote about Wagner's musical gifts in terms of
148
Testament of Music
almost idolatrous admiration. I could easily fill a couple of columns of the Nation with quotations to prove this, but I will
content myself with referring the reader to pages 42, 47, 48, 249, 250, 257ff., 289, 29ifE, 296ff., 305, 3i2ff., 3I7&, 355, 357^., 364fE, 379, 384, 392 and 393. So great was my admiration for
Wagner's music, indeed, that a reviewer of my book thought

his
it
duty to abate
it
little.
'Far
from disparaging (Wagner's)
he wrote, '[Mr. Newman] proclaims that it has gift', "never been equalled among men", an estimate which quite takes my breath away, as if someone had said that Watts was a greater draughtsman than Mantegna.' I had 'fallen under the spell of Wagner's music', he went on to say, 'and therefore had an intellectual rather than a musical quarrel with him'. Where and when did this review appear, Mr. Shaw may ask. In the Daily
musical
of 9th June, 1899. And the writer of it? None other than Bernard Shaw So that the very man who is now trying George to spread the malicious fiction that I have only arrived at my present stage of Wagner appreciation through an earlier stage of
Chronicle
!
depreciation is the same man who, had his breath taken away by what he thought my excessive admkation for Wagner Not content with this primary mendacity, Mr. Shaw adds that 'a whole generation of the English people was deprived of the enjoyment of Wagner's music because the critics went on about Wagner exactly as Mr. Newman is now going on about Strauss, and as he formerly went on about Wagner, until the grossness of his error was too much even for English editors'. Again I give Mr. Shaw the lie direct. If he objects to my handling Kim thus roughly, let him give the readers of the Nation some proof of his charge
'ill-mannered'
Wagner
fifteen years ago,
that
ever 'went
on about Wagner'
in such a
way
as to turn
English people against him; and let him name the 'English editors* for whom the grossness of my imaginary error became in time 'too much'. - Yours, etc.,
Ernest
Newman.
National Liberal Club, London.

7th July, 1914.
The Neivman-Shaw Controversy Concerning

IV
Strauss
149

To
Sir,
NEWMAN
- 1 should
warned them
Newman's
perhaps apologize to your readers for not having my first thanks for rescuing them from Mr. misdirection would be a demonstration by him that I
that
liar.
am
an abandoned
had
better rectify the omission
by
explaining how it is done. When a barrister is pleading for the
conviction of an educated
forger or swindler, or when the judge is summing up (which usually comes to the same thing), they invariably lay great stress on the prisoner's amazing cleverness, on the excellent education
he received from
his parents, on the hopes that were built on his on what he might have done but for the fetal early promise, which enables the judge to finish with the traditional perversity 'Instead of which you go about stealing ducks'. Mr. Newman never neglects this old and trite method of securing a conviction. But he goes further than any judge has ever gone. When you say to a judge, 'You put X away for ten years, though he was as
honest a
he does not say, *You lie; nobody could have spoken more highly of than I did at the trial.* He
as yourself',
man
stands to his guns.
Not so Mr. Newman. If,

shall)
a year hence,
Strauss,
I accuse
say: to the Nation of If turn throat. you your dastardly 27th June, page 488, column I, line i, you will find that I described Strauss as a composer of dazzling genius.' And if (as is not
him
(as I
lie
very likely
of having abused
he will
'You
in
at all probable) I cite Mr. Newman as one of Strauss's admirers, he will exclaim: "The mendacity of Mr. Shaw is a public scandal. If you turn to the Nation of 27th June, 1914, page 487, column 2, last line but five, you will find Strauss denounced as a tired and
disillusioned mediocrity in
an
article
signed Ernest
Newman (nun
as
qui vous park) ; and
nobody knows it better than Mr. Shaw,

it
he
protested angrily against
at the time.'
Let
it rest
at that. Strauss, according to
Mr. Newman,
is
a tired
Testament of Music
and disillusioned mediocrity of dazzling genius. It is a fine day but the weather is extremely rainy and tempestuous. The fact that in our old controversy in the Daily Chronicle I that Wagner was a greater quoted Mr. Newman's implication
;
musician than Sebastian Bach (for instance) needs no further Newman has raked up that controversy to explanation. But Mr.
prove that in those days he was an enthusiastic champion of Wagner, and I his opponent. If he did not mean this, the rakingup is an irrelevance. Yet his quotation makes it dear that the So he was controversy was about his 'quarrel* with Wagner. mouth of own he has Out then. my quarrelling with Wagner
proved my good faith.

greatness against
On that occasion I was defending Wagner's
Mr. Newman's disparagements of it exactly as I am now defending Strauss's greatness against Mr. Newman's truth of the matter; and disparagements of it. This is the essential if Mr. Newman is ashamed of having been on the wrong side then as he is on the wrong side now, the fault is not mine. I did, and am doing, my best to convert him. I admit frankly, however, that my opinion ofJoseph was based on half an orchestral rehearsal and two performances, all three
conducted by Strauss, the last one (the second public performance) a triumph of conducting and of response to it from the band. I have since heard another performance; and, though at some points I missed Strauss's conducting, I "was confirmed
beyond redemption in my opinion that Joseph is a magnificent piece of work, and that any lover of music among your readers who has been prevented from hearing it by Mr. Newman has been very cruelly deprived of one of the rare opportunities of a
lifetime.
He
objects to a judgment based on such experiences. declares that his opinion is based on a dozen performis not a ances by himself. As Mr. walking orchestra, I
Mr.
Newman
own
Newman
presume he played Joseph on the piano, unless, indeed, his theory of the excessive simplicity of Strauss's harmony led him to resort to the accordion. Now, I am bound, in all candour and fair dealing, to confess at once that if I had pkyed Joseph twelve times on the piano and judged the work thereby, it is only too
The Newman-Shaw Controversy Concerning Strauss probable that my opinion would have been the same
151
as
Mr.
conclude that Mr. Newman's accomplishments as a melancholy resemblance to bear an executant my own. And I
Newman's.
thought,
somehow,
that
he was a
fine player.
Another
illusion
gone!
I must apologize for having misled Mr. Newman by calling 'The Minstrel Boy* theme the opening theme. Let me indicate its position more exactly by saying that the work begins with it. It
is
recognizable as a
it is
rhythm before
the end of the third bar,
repeated several times before it passes, by though ible gravitation, into the actual notes of the old tune.
a professional
critic,
an
irresist-
When I was
we used to describe a theme so situated as the do not know what Mr. Newman calls it; but, at all events, he now knows where it is. I accept Mr. Newman's explanation that when he alluded to Schonberg he did not mean Schonberg, but another composer of the same name. But I had rather not accept his invitation *to read the press of England and Germany, passim, on the subject of The Legend of Joseph and to have a few conversations with some leading and Continental musicians, as Mr. Newman has done'. If English I had done that in the days of the Wagner controversy, I should have arrived at the same conclusions as to Wagner that Mr. Newman has arrived at as to Strauss. I am glad to know now, on
opening theme.
I
his
own authority, how he has been led into his

is
errors.
My own
of music and say what I think of it. I recommend this method to Mr. Newman as, on the whole simpler, and more satisfactory in its results, than the one he recommends to me. Mr. Newman's memory betrays him as to Elektra. I did not criticize that work before I had heard it. I criticized Mr. Newman years before it was composed; but that is not quite the same thing. Mr. Newman now says he knows nothing at first hand of Strauss personally, and that Strauss's personality has nothing to do with the matter. I confess I did not understand this: I thought that calling a man *a tired and disillusioned mediocrity' with 'a dull mind' was meant as a personal criticism. I seem to be always misunderstanding Mr. Newman. I am very sorry.
plan
to listen to a piece
152
*I
Testament of Music
wish', says Mr. as to what sort
Newman, Mr. Shaw would make up

of person
I
his
mind
really am in music/
have.
Sans rancune
G. Bernard Shaw.
I4th July, 1914-
THE QUITE MELANCHOLY CASE OF
BERNARD SHAW
To
Sir,
- In
my former letter I deplored the failure of Mr.

I
Shaw's
memory.
have
now
to lament the failure
least it is to
some such failure that I may omitted to read my letter to the end. I accused him, having you will remember, of having told two fibs about myself, and I gave him the choice of either justifying them or withdrawing. He has done neither. Has he read what I said to him and about him, or does he think that by keeping silence on these points he will
having got
cause the public and myself to forget them? I can assure him that him in a corner from which all the dialectical into escape I not to walk and let him out. Not I But will going away slip likely! return to this anon. It is no use our continuing to bandy words
his eyesight; at perhaps attribute his
of
genuity in the world will not enable hi
am
over Joseph. Mr.

it is
Shaw
says
it is
'magnificent', 'a masterpiece*. I
say pktitudinous Teutonic tosh that any decently schooled German musician could have turned out, and that the more
thoughtful of
I
Obviously can prove to me that the work is a masterpiece. Let us then leave it for the next five or ten years to show who has blundered. Today I want to have a little fun with Mr. Shaw's to desperate
score a point off me here
will pray that they may never turn out. cannot prove this to Mr. Shaw, any more than he
them
attempts
and
there.
The Newman-Shaw Controversy Concerning Strauss 153 1. According to him, I have said that 'Strauss is a tired and disillusioned mediocrity of dazzling genius'. 'It is a fine day' runs comment Mr. Shaw's 'but the weather is extremely rainy and tempestuous.' It apparently does not occur to Mr. Shaw that though it is rainy today there may have been fine moments last
Tuesday. It is surely possible for a man to write a work that has some pages of genius in it, and four years kter to write another that shows no genius whatever. I hope this is clear even to Mr.
Shaw.
Mr. Shaw would fain persuade your readers that I formed my opinion of Joseph from 'the press of England and Germany', and from 'conversations with some leading musicians'. I cannot believe he is so stupid as not to have seen the plain meaning of what I said - not that I had derived my opinion from anyone, but that if Mr. Shaw would take the trouble to look into the matter he would find that I was not the only person with a
2.
supreme contempt for Joseph.
Mr. Shaw objected to my speaking as I did ofJoseph, seeing work was by 'a foreign visitor of extraordinarily attractive personality'. I rejoined that the attractiveness or repulsiveness of Strauss's personality had nothing to do with the question of whether his music was good or bad; and now Mr. Shaw plaintively says he thought that Veiling a man a tired and disillusioned mediocrity with a dull mind was meant as a personal criticism'. Cannot Mr. Shaw see that if a critic has never spoken to Strauss in his life, what he says about Kim can only be an artistic, not a personal criticism? What in the name of reason has 'attractive personality', in the sense in which Mr. Shaw originally used the words, to do with the matter? I believe that Strauss as an artist - as - is at a thinker, let us tired, disillusioned, and medi3.
that the
say present ocre; but he may still refrain from beating his wife, or forging a friend's name, or drinking his soup from a sponge.
4.
Mr. Shaw would have your readers believe that no idea of Joseph can be had from the piano score, even after a dozen readings of it. If that is so, I shall sue Strauss for having got sixteen shillings out of me under false pretences; for if the pianoforte score is not intended to give people an idea of the music,
Testament of Music
why is it published? As a matter of fact, such a score tells us a good

makes us familiar, for one thing, with the thematic contours of the work; and we can then listen more intelligently to an orchestral performance. I am told that Mr. Shaw was once
deal;
it
a musical
critic. It
people days did Mr.
whom
seems incredible, but I am assured it is so by have found truthful in other matters. In those
it
Shaw
before he heard
and
ever study the piano score of a criticized it? If he did - and
new work
it
certainly
was
duty to do so he ought to know better than to talk the is now retailing. If he did not, then he must he nonsense cheap have criticized new works on the basis of a single performance that is, he trusted to those 'first impressions' which he censured
his
me, wrongly
I pass
over
as it happens, for trusting to in the case ofJoseph. in charitable silence Mr. Shaw's grotesque attempt
make out that when he spoke of a certain theme as the 'opening theme* he did not mean the theme that opens the work, but a that occurs some time kter. I leave him to totally different theme God. 'I do not know what Mr. Newman calls it', he says; 'but at all events he now knows where it is.' This to me, after I had shown him where it is Is all this display of damp fireworks intended to make the public and myself forget that I have a crow to pluck with Mr. Shaw over Wagner? I wish to draw him back, gently but firmly,
to
!
to his first letter. He accused me of 'paying out ill-mannered nonsense' about Wagner years ago, 'after even the Daily Telegraph
(remonstrated with at last, it is said, by Royalty), had dropped it'. I challenged him to prove this. He makes only a passing reference
- a reference that in its turn is deliberately dishonest, as I shall show in these columns if Mr. Shaw provokes me to pursue the subject. He knows perfectly well that my arguments in A Study of Wagner (1899) were directed against Wagner the
to the matter
metaphysician,
Wagner the historian, and half-a-dozen other minor Wagners - not against Wagner the musician. But that it was Wagner the composer whom he accused me of disparaging is dear from his own words - 'and now he' 'thinks (i.e., myself)
whole'
is
Wagner on
the whole, rather a great composer' (the 'on the merely another gratuitous impertinence). It was
Strauss
155
Wagner the composer against whom the Daily Telegraph used to fulminate; nor can we imagine 'Royalty* intervening on behalf of "Wagner the metaphysician. Mr. Shaw will excuse me, then, if
on his either producing his evidence for his charge against me, or apologizing for having fibbed about me. His other libel was that I ran down Wagner the composer 'until the grossness of (my) error was too much even for English editors'. This charge he must either publicly prove or publicly withdraw. Once more I ask him for the names of those editors. Nay, sorry as I am for Mr. Shaw, I will set him an easier task. According to him, I pursued my career of crime against Wagner
I insist
for
some time before
damning Mr. Shaw cannot name the editors who protested, and the articles that were refused, surely he can cite the articles that were printed? But he may save "himself the trouble of research. There were no such articles, there were no such editors. Will Mr. Shaw climb down, or must I bring him down?
If
the editors revolted. Presumably, then, the articles that caused the revolt are in print somewhere.
Ernest
Newman,
ipth July, 1914VI

To
Sir,
NEWMAN
I cannot leave Mr. Newman maddened by an imaginary injustice. He believes that your readers may infer from my first letter that he was once dismissed from the staff of a newspaper for abusing a Wagner after our editors had discovered that Wagner was very an such drawn has considerable composer. If anyone actually Mr. that even not do have mistaken me. I suggest inference,
- Allow
me
one word more.
to be soured and
they
for though I ought to have dismissed him; tTiinV that his judgments of his greatest contemporaries are on the whole erroneous, and his critical manners towards them hardly
Newman's
editors
156
those of one gentleman to another, yet he
is
Testament of Music
too clever and enter-
taining to be dispensed with; and when great men are in question, the advocatus diaboli is useful: indeed I have myself taken that
brief in the case

literary
of Shakespeare with
much
benefit to English
mankind.
of paternal interest in Mr. Newman's of the delightful toy symphonies of Stravinsky, championship and the very useful and sometimes exquisite experiments and novelties of Scriabine and of that school generally which was encouraged by the success of Debussy's scale of whole tones, long
Further, I take a sort
organ builders, but strange to the musical public. It is that Mr. Newman should have got into a state natural perhaps of taste in which Strauss's procedure seems so hackneyed that he
familiar to
Joseph; turn
writes as if you could take the double bass part from die score of it into a figured bass by writing six-four, four-tothree, six-three, etc.,
and hand it to any bandmaster or up accordingly and reproduce the harmonic effect of the entire work. Mind: I do not say that Mr. Newman has said this in so many words (he will be rude to me again if I do); but if he does not mean this, I respectfully submit that he does not mean anything. The truth that he overlooks in his craving for
under
it;
church organist to
fill
more
Stravinsky
is
that the greatest artists always belong to the

is
old school; and that the simplicity which
common to Handel's
is
Hailstone Chorus and the exordium of Strauss's Zarathustra the result, not of ignorance or resourcelessness, but of the
straight-
forwardness of the great man who, having something to say, says it in the most familiarly intelligible language, unlike the
smaller
man who,
having
little
secures interest
by a
curious
or nothing to say, very properly way of saying it. Thus you have
Wagner and Strauss denounced as madmen, even by eminent musicians, whilst their personal mannerisms were still strange, and then denounced by the
Handel, Mozart, Beethoven,
amateurs of strangeness as platitudinous, sententious, and even by such exceptionally hardy and fanatical amateurs of as
strangeness
Mr. Newman, mediocre.

good sense, including the sense of humour, of your readers. I should not have begun the controversy
I now leave the verdict to the
Strauss
157
(on express provocation from Mr. Newman, who must not complain if he has got more than he bargained for) but for my strong sense of the vast public mischief done by our campaigns of stupid abuse against supreme geniuses like Wagner, Ibsen and Rodin, with the result that whole generations are robbed of their birthright of culture by the misleading and intimidation of the entrepreneurs whose business it is to supply the public demand for the highest art. My sole object was to make it clear to your readers that Mr. Newman's remarks about Strauss need not deter them from attending performances of his music, nor entrepreneurs from venturing their capital upon it, nor public-spirited gentlemen like Sir Joseph Beecham from devoting their fortunes to it. But, of course, I note Mr. Newman's denial to "Wagner of all the qualities that distinguished him from eminent musicians like his contemporaries, Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley and Dr. Stainer (not to mention men still living). To Mr. Newman's mind, this is a handsome adoiowledgment of Wagner's position as a comit the To extremest my mind, represents length to which poser. now that no one, without making anti-Wagnerism can safely go
himself publicly ridiculous, can question Wagner's technical ability. In short, there is a difference between Mr. Newman's
mind and mine; and

alter that difference,
as
nothing that
we
can say or write will
must remain content with having given the readers of the Nation, and incidentally one another, a piece of our minds on the subject. Mr. Newman's last letter proves, especially in his references to pianoforte scores and opening themes, that the more delicate nuances of controversy, however entertaining to the bystanders (for whose sake I hope he will excuse my little attempts) are apt to escape him. I propose, therefore, that we drop it. If he will cease asking me for die name of that imaginary editor who did not dismiss him, I, on my side, will not press him for the names of the hundred composers who could easily have composed Joseph and magnanimously refrained, though we should all dearly like to know them. And so I leave the last word with Mr.
we
Newman. - Yours,
etc.,
G. Bernard Shaw.
158
P.S.
Testament of Music
by a rather jolly article of Mr. Newman's in. the Birmingham Post, that his hundred men in buckram have now more than doubled their numbers. By the time this appears
I see
they
will
no doubt have run

of his
into four figures; but that will not affect
my estimate
critical
powers.
vn
THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

To
Sir,
- As Mr. Shaw is kind enough to leave me with the last word a right that I think would have been mine in any case - 1
repay his courtesy by talking more about him than about myself. I propose today to analyse his technique of controversy.
shall
But first of all let me set Mr. Shaw's mind at rest on one point, and apologize in connection with another. Mr. Shaw rightly
opines that I gave him 'expressive provocation* to begin this controversy. I did indeed, and of malice aforethought. For three years I have been trying to decoy Mr. Shaw into another argu-
have written on Strauss I have said to draw him'; but Mr. Shaw has refused to be drawn. When Joseph came along I saw a special opportunity and made a special effort. I knew this was the poorest long work that Strauss has ever written. I know I had only to say so in picturesque language to goad Mr. Shaw into committing himself irrevocably
article I
ment. After each
myself: 'This will
to the opinion that it is a masterpiece; but to make quite sure I baited the trap with an almost too obvious hint to Mr. Shaw that it was his bounden duty to contradict me. The bait took: the
unwary Mr. Shaw rushed into the trap and here we are. On one point, I admit, he has me; I might have expected, indeed, that his eagle eye would detect the one weak spot in my armour. I was rash enough to say that some two hundred Euro:
pean composers could

place as Joseph.
But on
easily have written a work so reflection I see that I was
common-
wrong. Not one
Strauss
I
159
of them could.
fault. I
am not like some people

two hundred.
could name:
injustice I
when
recognize that I
have done anyone a gross
admit
my
apologize to the
great
And now let me display the anatomy of Mr.

His
first
Shaw's technique.
dodge is to turn a blind eye to every awkward and dilemma that is presented to him. He reminds every question me of Montaigne's story of the two Greek wrestlers. One of them was not much good at wrestling, but was a great rhetorician; and each time his antagonist threw him he volubly demonstrated to the spectators that he really had not been thrown at all. I point out to Mr. Shaw that a theme incautiously called by him 'the opening theme* does not, in fact, appear until some time after the opening. Does Mr. Shaw admit that he has blundered? Not a bit of it! Even before he has risen from the mat he assures the spectators that while in one sense the theme is not the 'opening theme' because it does not open the work, in a higher, subtler
sense
it is
the opening theme, inasmuch as the music passes into
it
by 'an irresistible gravitation'. with Tuesday afternoon; for

the calendar
it is
dear that
Mr. Shaw's week, I suppose, begins on an enlightened consideration of the whole of Monday and Tuesday
morning are merely 'irresistible gravitations' into Tuesday afternoon. And when I chuckle, as many other musicians have done,
over his delicious conundrum of 'When is an opening theme not an opening theme?' Mr. Shaw gravely tells the spectators that 'the more delicate nuances of controversy' are 'apt to escape me'. The rhetorician, in fact, has only been 'downed' by his opponent's ignorance of the more delicate nuances of wrestling.
Mr. Shaw's other most
familiar trick
is
to paint a gross carica-
and then argue, not against the tell Mr. Shaw, for example, that plenty of musicians besides myself despise Jteep/*. Whereupon Mr. Shaw appeals to the crowd: 'You see, ladies and gentlemen, this abandoned person actually confesses that he derived his opinion of Joseph from other people.' The only exercise I have had throughout this controversy has been chasing round after Mr. Shaw, putting my foot through one after another of his imaginary
ture of his adversary's opinions, man, but against the caricature. I
portraits
of me, and substituting a genuine photograph for
it. I
!<5o
Testament of Music
so far as to say that this inveterate practice of his is it seems to derive ultimately primarily conscious and purposive; from a congenital inability to see what is plain before him without first running round the corner and standing on his head. But
would not go
for seeing truth from an angle that copious natural faculty it has been developed by the dire necessity of distorts hopelessly himself, at any cost, from the difficulties into
this
extricating
his
which
many
controversies land
him -
controversies often
mania for lecturing professional people begun by he is in which on subjects only an amateur. (The amateur is writ remarks on Scriabine and Debussy.) latest large over Mr. Shaw's In the end it is hard to say where the natural unconscious impulse ceases and the conscious exploitation of it begins. Always there is the unblushing attempt to be the interpreter not only of his own views but of Iris opponent's; always die opponent's views are grotesquely manipulated to suit Mr. Shaw's purposes; always from this welter of absurdity is drawn the inference that Mr. Shaw wants. 'Joseph contains a lot of diatonic music', runs one of his
his incurable
preposterous syllogisms. 'Mr. Newman dislikes Joseph; therefore Mr. Newman dislikes diatonic music'. Which is like saying that
I never, never,
never eat
fruit,
because
Mr. Shaw has seen
me
decline to have a rotten apple forced
down my
throat. 'Elektra
me music of an advanced harmonic idiom', was a former syllogism of Mr. Shaw's: 'Mr. Newman does not like some parts
seems to
is,
ofElektra; therefore Mr. Newman, plodding old fogey that he does not like advanced harmonic idioms.' Then the tune
changes. "When Strauss writes another work, so obvious in idea that die brain of a musical rabbit could grasp the bulk of it, Mr.
Shaw
o
elaborates
an
antithetical syllogism: 'Joseph
is
simple and
rather old-fashioned music;
Joseph; old-fashioned music.'
Newman does not think much therefore Mr. Newman is a furious foe of simple and
Mr.
The next
misrepresentation follows as a
matter of course. *If Mr. Newman detests simple music of the "old school", he must necessarily lust after the "strange" music of
the
"new
school."
Now
Stravinsky, in
my
opinion, writes
strange music; therefore Mr. Newman's god is Stravinsky/ This is the ktest caricature through which I have to put an aveng-
The Newman-Shaw Controversy Concerning Strauss 161 ing foot. In all my life I have not written ten sentences about
Stravinsky.
article
What
of mine on
admits having my time leader Strauss should have lost our confidence by degenerating into a platitudinarian, I said that 'in works like Joseph he has no message that can interest us; and so we turn to younger
like Stravinsky, who, though we cannot always see eye to with us the that them, yet give eye impression they are personalthat have of their own to say that is worth ities, they something
has in his mind is clearly a recent Strauss in the Birmingham Post, which he read. After expressing regret that our oneAir.
Shaw
men
saying, that they thoroughly well
know how
to say
it,
and
that
something big may some day come of one of them/ Observe the extreme caution of the phrasing. I have not given my artistic
conscience into Stravinsky's keeping; he
is
simply a young
composer who, though he sometimes puzzles me, always interests me - a composer who, in my opinion, is worth keeping one's eye on. How does Mr. Shaw translate this guarded declaration for your readers? 'You have Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Strauss denounced as madmen, even by eminent miifticiians, whilst their personal mannerisms were still strange, and then denounced by the amateurs of strangeness as platitudinous, sententious, and even by such exceptionally hardy and fanatical 9 amateurs of strangeness as Mr. Newman, mediocre. 1 will not ask Mr. Shaw where I have 'denounced' the eminent old musicians he mentions; he is not good at giving this authority for his charges. I merely ask the reader to glance once more at my own remark about Stravinsky, and to try to discover, if he can, what ground there is in it for Mr. Shaw's description of me as a 'hardy and fanatical amateur of strangeness'. Mr. Shaw is really incorrigible. I beg anyone who may do me the honour to be interested in my opinions on music to get them direct from me, not from Mr. Shaw, who is simply not to be trusted in these matters. For the last time I would remind your readers that Mr. Shaw, in spite of many appeals from me, has neither substantiated nor withdrawn the statement he made concerning me in connection with. Wagner. With touching solicitude, he hopes I will not complain if I have 'got more than I bargained for*. My only
Testament of Music
end of this controversy is that diminished it leaves opinion of Mr. Shaw's grievously etc., honour. of Yours, sense Ernest Newman.
complaint,
my only regret,
at the
me with a
3rd August,
VI
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NATION

1912-1913
THE CASE OF ARNOLD SCHONBERG,

IS not often that
1912
it
Queen's Hall last Tuesday permitted themselves that luxury after the performance of the five orchestral pieces of Schonberg. Another third of the audience was only not hissing because it was laughing, and the remaining third seemed too puzzled either to laugh or to hiss; so that on the whole it does not look as if Schonberg has so far made many friends in London. It will be remembered that a few months ago an audience was in a similar state of bewilderment
at
IT not like; but a good third of the people
an English audience
hisses the
music
does
three pianoforte pieces that form In Vienna, it is said, the performance of the five orchestral pieces caused a riot. London, at any rate, stopped short of that on Tuesday, outraged as its susceptibilities evidently were. Nevertheless I take leave to suggest that Schonberg is not the
after
Mr. Buhlig had played the
Schonberg's opus u.
madman that he is generally supposed to be. The he has a following in Germany goes for little, for there is always a certain number of people there on the look-out for a new banner to fight under. But he is believed in by musicians, such as Busoni, whose competence no one will dispute. The book on Schonberg that has just been issued in Munich - written by a number of his pupils - is, if a little too uncritical in its admiration,
mere
fool or
fact that
163
164
at all events the
Testament of Music
work of men of undoubted
musical attainments.
What,
life,
then,
is
the truth of the matter?
On Tuesday night I tried the experiment, for the first time in my

of listening to a complex modern work without any previous knowledge of the score; and from the muddle of my own impressions I can readily understand how the music must have struck the average man in the audience. But I know some others of Schon- for berg's works thoroughly example, the String Quartet in F minor and the six sharp (op. 10), songs of op. 8, as "well as his and brilliant, thoughtful, extremely suggestive book on harmony; and I remember that while my first impressions of some of this music were very much the same as those of Tuesday, I saw a good deal more in it at the twentieth reading of it than at the first. Schonberg can write very expressively at times. But he is curiously unequal. I have come to admire and like, almost throughout, songs such as the 'Sehnsucht' and 'Voll jener Siisse', by which I was repelled at first; but I do not think I shall ever come to like the 'Drei Klavierstiicke' of op. n, or the ending of the third movement of the F sharp minor quartet, or certain things in the five orchestral pieces. The truth is that Schonberg has visions of in music for which neither he nor anyone else has as possibilities
yet been able to find the right idiom. It is unquestionable that modern harmony can expand almost indefinitely. The problem
is
how to keep it still coherent and logical as it grows more subtle and complex. It must, like prose or poetry, talk sense, and, like painting, it must be recognizably veracious. The trouble is that you cannot test the truth of music, as you can test the truth of poetry, or painting, or sculpture, by comparing it with any external original. Who, then, is to say what is right or wrong,
false
is
or true? If a composer like Schonberg tells us that his music the honest transcript of emotions really felt, who has the right to sneer at it simply because it conveys no emotion at all to him?
The very
fact that the material
eternally fixed, as
of musical expression is not words and colours are, but alters from one
is enough to make us cautious in our condemnation of any new idiom. May it not be that the new composer sees a logic in certain tonal relations that to the rest of
generation to another,
Nation
but the coherence of which
165
us
seem chaos
at present,
may
be
enough to us all some day? All we can do is to go by the safest steps we have, reasoning from the known to the unknown. Schonberg's harmony owes its
clear
complexity, in the main, to three causes. He builds up chords with notes that seem to be hopelessly dissonant. He passes abruptly
from one chord to another that is apparently unrelated to it. And he writes a seemingly reckless sort of counterpoint, regardless of the dissonances made by the clashing of the parts at certain points. Now my own experience is that a good deal of his harmony that sounds repulsive or incoherent at first becomes lucid and enjoyable with further experience of it. This merely means that he is here thinking a little in advance of most of us. But in other cases I am afraid he is merely experimenting. In his Erwartung, for example, he has chords composed of eleven and twelve notes. I give one of
natural,
these as a curiosity, going from the bass upwards, the notes are natural (an octave higher), natural, sharp, F sharp,
F natural,
A sharp, C sharp,
natural,
G natural, C natural, and

tell
E flat.
If the
composer himself were to
me that this chord was
the one inevitable expression of something in his soul at the moment, thrown out instantaneously in the white heat of his
him. The thing is a of to add or subtract a if we were piece pure manufacture; and couple of notes I am confident that Schonberg himself would not notice the change. So with some of his counterpoint. As Richter said once when he was asked to admire the polyphony of the Works of Peace section in Ein Heldenleben - 'anyone can make any number of themes go together, so long as he doesn't care what it sounds like*. The many-voiced modern orchestra admits of a most elaborate contrapuntal texture; and so accommodating and
vision, I should politely decline to believe
tolerant
is
the
modern ear that it will accept almost anything

I,
that
does not sound utterly horrible. But

that
for one, decline to believe

is
much of Schonberg's
counterpoint
anything more than a
deliberate piecing together of themes that have no vital imaginative connection with each other. You cannot add to or take away
Eine kleine single part in the tissue of, say, Mozart's from the extracts Nachtmusik or Wagner's Tristan. I have seen
from a
166
score of Schonberg's orchestral
Testament of Music
poem, Pelleas and Melisande; and I add half-a-dozen new counterpoints to his without the hearer being a penny the worse off. On the other hand, the harmonic crudity that the ear resents at first in some of his work disappears when we know the music and think of it not as a succession of chords but as the combination of various counterpoints; we can then even take pleasure in the dissonances. My own experience of Schonberg, then, leads me to the conclusion that he is a man of undoubted gifts who, in his later work, is aiming at the transcription of new shades of emotion into a musical language that he has not yet succeeded in making logical and lucid. Perhaps this is to write him down as a failure. For genuine
will undertake to
outwardly a vision veritably seen, and it may be that Schonberg's him many fumblings prove simply to be lacking in imagination and vision of the right fire and intensity. But whether he succeeds or not in doing what he is now trying to do, it will have to be done some day by some one. The next vital development of music will be along the lines of the best of Schonberg.
imagination,
projecting
always makes
its
own language;
MAHLER'S SEVENTH SYMPHONY,

MAHLER
is still
1913
and judging from Symphony, which was excellently given by Sir Henry Wood at the Queen's Hall on Saturday last, he is still less understood. That he has a great following in Germany is not in itself a very impressive recommenvery
little
known
in England,
some of
the criticisms of his Seventh
dation, for there are so

call
the true Messiah
many circles in Germany each burning to
its
own and no one

is
musician
may do
there he
certain
else's, that whatever a of a following of some sort.
Mahler, however, numbers
among his adherents a great many not only of the merely 'advanced' but of the steadier heads of modern Germany. It is at least arguable that his nine Symphonies
repre-
Nation
167
sent on
whole the most significant body of work done in the form since Brahms; while even symphonic people who are not yet on the intellectual or musical level of the Symphonies are as a rule sensitive to the beauty and the power of his songs.
the
It
will not do, as several critics tried last

as
Monday,
to dismiss
him
We have so often seen him - as in die Symphonia Domestica - using
a merely clever manipulator of enormous orchestral masses. Richard Strauss has redly a great deal to answer for!
an orchestra the size of which was out of all proportion to the value of the ideas he was expressing, that it has become almost a fixed principle widi many people to assume that every work demanding an orchestra of no must necessarily be another case of more cry than wool. The truth is that under certain circumstances an orchestra of no is quite a reasonable combination; it certainly did not seem to me to be excessive in die Symphony of Mahler, for die simple reason that I never felt that splashes of
colour were being laid on to hide a deficiency of ideas* What struck me was rather the exquisite balance between the means and
the end, the perfect certainty both of Mahler's taking and of his style. One can hardly imagine a composer more sure of himself
in latitudes not accessible to ordinary feet; and this combined sense of bigness and certainty is one of the rarest impressions in the concert room, and die surest sign of our being in the presence
of a master. The smaller men give it us occasionally; among die men whose normal association is with die greater and graver things, perhaps only Bach and Wagner can be counted upon for
it at all
times.
One needs to hear only a chance phrase ofWagner's

room, quite
dissociated
fills
in the concert
from its Context, to
realize
how
We
the ardour of his thinking
every vein of every phrase.

the
had an
illustration
of
diis at
commencement of
last
Saturday's concert. Plunged as preparation into the Waldweben
we were
without a moment's
could
fail
to
from Siegfried, no one, surely, be conscious that he was in die presence of a master
whose merest word constrained us to listen, such pregnancy, such concentration, such power to call up associations far wider than itself, were diere in die smallest dieme. I, for one, always felt diis I do not largeness of brain and of hand in Mahler's symphony;
Testament of Music a could read see, indeed, single time through the anyone of With all his ambition and his it. conscious score without being
i68
how
erroneously called his megalomania, there is never a trace in him of the fumbling that does so much to spoil our
is
fervour, and
what
enjoyment of the real greatness of Bruckner's ideas never a sign of struggle with problems either of thought or of technique. Or is the composer's just one sign, perhaps. I am not sure whether it a little during the final relaxes or our own that imagination movement; no doubt both find the strain an abnormal one. The Seventh Symphony, it may be frankly confessed, is too long: probably no composer of purely instrumental music can hope to sustain die interest at the same high level for an hour and twenty
minutes.
But apart from
this natural slackening
of the tension
I cannot, for my part, see any sign in the work of a mind aiming at an expression beyond its natural powers. The Symphony seems to me extraordinarily rich in ideas and firm in texture, and the work all through of a great man. Mahler must be a hard nut to crack for the amiable gentlemen who are obsessed by the theory of a 'national' consciousness that must somehow create for itself a 'national' school of music; and he is correspondingly comforting to those who hold that art is not a matter of nationality but of personal temperament and and that, other things being equal, the finest art is experience, likely to come from a crossing of races and of cultures. Mahler was apparently halfJewish and half Bohemian; the blend of Skv and Semite in him, in itself a rich one, was further enriched by a world-wide culture, not only in music but in art and philosophy for his brain was as eager as his blood. The soul of him burned the body out, indeed, at the age of fifty-one. Yet with all this crossing of inner forces and outer influences in him, there could not be a style less obviously or consciously composite than Mahler's; at no point in it do you feel that any of the elements of it have been merely 'lifted' without being assimilated. Even the most intrepid of hunters-out of 'national' characteristics in music would blanch at the task of deciding which feature of Mahler's music was Jewish, for example, which Slavonic, and which German. What has evidently happened is that each of the currents in him has
during the finale,
Nation
169
raised the others to a
other music in the
new power. The one traceable affinity to Seventh Symphony is to be found in some of
movement,
that are
the waltz-like melodies of the third
un-
mistakably children of that 'Viennese spirit' to which Schubert gave such delightful expression. But they are living children, not
mere imitative waxwork figures. They are,
in a sense,
Vienna and
Schubert, but they are also unmistakably Mahler. But the Symphony is throughout, I should say, the product of a mind of
unusual distinction.
The charge of megalomania seems to me quite unjustifiable. can nowhere see any of the signs - so sadly plentiful in some other music of more ambition than achievement - of the frog swelling himself to the size of the ox, and bursting in the process. The themes are of peculiar pregnancy; they have personality of
I
their own, independently of the uses to which they are put in the course of their development; they are not merely figures but
characters,
themes.
detail;
which is more than can be said of many symphonic The colouring is amazingly sure both in the mass and in Mahler is one of the few men who can make us feel that a
melody has not merely been invented in the abstract and then scored for this instrument or that, but that melodic line and colour were conceived simultaneously and are inextricably inter-
None of us can say how much of the elevating effect of theme with which the symphony opens is due to the contour of it and how much to the veiled yet eloquent tone of the tenor horn; one can no more think of the two factors in separation than one can imagine the melody of the prelude to the third act of Tristan in any other colour than that of the cor anglais. The surety of Mahler's colour sense, and at the same time the perfect fusion of the colour with the idea, is shown again by the way he uses the guitars and the mandolines in the fourth movement. So far from their giving us the impression of being dragged in for mere effect by a composer who was at the end of his resources on normal lines, these instruments seem here the most natural thing in the world, so perfectly do they fuse with the rest of the orchestra, and so essential are dxey to die ideas at this point. But behind all this certainty of style and of technique is an imagination
blended.
the fine
Testament of Music
of a very unusual kind, vivid, ardent, and vast, and with the power of turning everything that passes through it into natural music. He gives us none of the clues to his vision that the writers of avowed programme music do; but he is clear enough for all that, and to minds that can enter into his with imaginative sympathy he is one of the subtlest forces in modern music.
SCRIABINE'S PROMETHEUS, 1913

WITH THE
London
that
curious ignorance of everything that goes on outside is so characteristic of the Londoner, the device of
giving Scriabine's Prometheus twice at the same concert last Saturday was announced as an innovation so far as England is
concerned.
not unknown to Manchester, however, and I the occasion of the first performance of Debussy's UAprh-midi d'un Faune in Liverpool some years ago, the work was repeated in the second half of the concert. It is a pity, indeed, that the practice of playing big new works twice at the same concert is not more prevalent. Last week at Queen's Hall we had an interesting sidelight on the relations between the critics and the public. Concert-givers and theatrical managers
It is
remember
that
on
pretend that the disparaging articles of the critics works do more than anything to kill their chances.
upon new The critic

all;
knows
if the
that his
words
influence the public very slightly, if at
man in the street has so much faith in the critic's judgment,

disapproves, but
he ought obviously not only to

the
critic
admires.
lessness
No amount
stay away from things of which fly post haste to the things the critic of ridicule of musical comedy for its brain-
and unoriginality manages to keep the public away from and no amount of enthusiasm over a great work of a new it; suffices to inspire the public with any faith in it. On Saturday type the public gave itself away; probably not more than half of the people who heard the first performance of Prometheus remained
Nation
171
They went out with their noses in the air and a look of outraged virtue - and this before a single critic had delivered himself of a judgment on the work One could foresee that Prometheus would be a poser to the plain music lover, whose education has stopped short at Wagner and Strauss. But in truth it is often a difficult problem even for those of us who believe that music can no more cease its evolution with Wagner and Strauss than with Bach and Beethoven, and who
for the second.
!
keep our ears always astrain for any authentic new note that may be borne to us on the wind. It is absurd for any of us to dogmatize about a work that aims at carrying the idiom and the vision of music to a point as far beyond Strauss as Strauss is beyond
Tchaikovsky; the more confidently any critic tries to sweep it off the board as the mere effusion of a musical lunatic, the more certainly he writes himself down as a superficial duffer, intrepidly denying the existence of things simply because he cannot see them. I do not contend that everything in Prometheus is clear even at a second hearing, or that there may not be a good deal in it to
reconcile us. But I do urge with an imagination it mostly talks in a perfectly lucid language of things that have never been expressed in music
which no number of hearings would

that to a listener
before.
The
linking of Scriabine's
name with
is
that
of Schonberg
is
gratuitous error.
music would
some
extent obviously
his really a better composer than Schonberg is to his but to us lead sometimes style imagine; a man of idiom It is the one. a calculated
who was
he consciously determined from the first that however Scriabine might write, he would not write like other composers. has developed as naturally as Beethoven or Wagner or Strauss, in the past, and gradually beginning, as they did, with his roots own as his whole personaof his individual a style evolving highly be Whatever thought of his later style, there may lity developed. is no affectation in it on the musical side, and there is no fumbling.
certainty
What struck some of us in the Prometheus was the almost infallible

of the adaptation of the means to the end throughout; and of his a composer who is at once master of his ideas only the brain as this. so however, Whether, surely technique can work
172
as a
Testament of Music
whole
is
evolving harmoniously, whether
it
may
not be
developing a strain of excessive idealism, losing itself somewhat in the void of the thought that lies in the far beyond of the other
of music, and failing to see its vision not merely with theoto find the firm sophical but with musical clearness, failing make the vision as real to us as it is alone can that line enclosing to him - on these points one cannot be wholly sure. The truth probably is that certain parts of Prometheus - as of still later works of Scriabine such as the recently published - will never be quite dear to us because pianoforte sonata they were never quite dear to the composer, either because he has not thought his way exactly enough through the subtleties he is envisaging, or because music's means of expression are not yet equal to the task he imposes on them. I cheerfully present these parts of Prometheus to the ordinary objector to the work, for him to make what capital he likes out of them. But to the rest - and
side
much the greater part - 1 firmly pin my faith. Prometheus is the one work I have ever heard that seems to me to approach the new territory that music will some day make its own. It is in
that
essence the
most immaterial of the
arts;
but circumstances have
forced
first
to develop so far upon more or less material lines. It of all had to win for itself, by means of rather rigid rhythms
it
and formal
large scale.
and - mainly under Wagner - substituted for the set design the modelling of the tissue of music upon the forms and vicissitudes of the emotions themselves. But music of this kind needed an obvious and detailed 'poetic purpose* - the plot of the opera or the story of the symphonic poem -just as much as the older music needed the material scaffolding of sonata or fugue. Clearly music will be able to dispense with even this 'poetic* support in the and to us of future, yet speak quite plainly mysteries as far the or surpassing operatic symphonic-poem subject in subtlety and remoteness as music in general surpasses words in general; it is all a matter of how lucidly and logically a composer can think in this tenuous atmosphere, what body he can give to his visions, and how far we can think and see along with him, A rough
of coherent thinking upon a Then the purely human impulse surged up within it,
designs, the faculty
Nation
173
analogy to this progress and more refined may be
of music to immaterialities ever more had in the theories men have held upon matter. To the first philosophers, matter was solid substance; to the later ones, a bundle of atoms; to those still later, a play of
electrons.
Always the immaterial mystery encroaches upon the
material fact, or upon the mystery a shade more material. It is surely evident that the true home of music is among these
ultimate immaterialities of thought, because it is the only one of the arts that can everhope toexpress them. That homeitwill one day
win.
best
To my mind we have nowhere come so near to it as in the of this music of Scriabine's. I care nothing for the theosophy that is tacked on to it by the composer and the annotators, and think that this is as likely as not to confuse or prejudice the hearer.
But listening to
it solely as music, only a congenitally unimaginative dullard, I fancy, or a musician sodden with the futile teaching
here
of the text-books and the Conservatoires, could help feeling that is music that comes as near as is at present possible to being the pure voice of Nature and the soul themselves. One needs no programme note to have the picture flashed upon one's brain of the soul of man slowly yearning into conscious being out of a primal undifierentiated world, torn by the conflict of emotions, violently purging itself of its grossnesses, and ultimately winning
its
the light. this is done, not on the familiar 'poetic* lines of the symphonic poem, but a stage further behind the veil, as it were;
way to And all
wind that blows through the music is not the current stage and concert room formula, but the veritable wind of the cosmos itself; the cries of desire and passion and ecstasy are a sort of not merely of quintessential sublimation of all the yearning, No amount inanimate. animate and all but of nature, humanity, of criticism of the work in details can diminish the wonder of
the
such an achievement as
this. Its thematic texture may not always be distinguished, and the piano part may, as I believe, be mostly an error; but the fact remains that here is an imagination of extraof ordinary subtlety and scope, and a most remarkable faculty
musical expression. The only fear is lest the theosophist in Scriabine should overpower the artist in him.
174
Testament of Music
ARIADNE AUF NAXOS,
1913
ARIADNE AUF NAXOS has been a failure in Germany. So far as the music of it is concerned, there is little doubt that it will be a failure in England also. For the play preliminary to the opera there is more hope - at any rate when done in the style we were treated to at His Majesty's Theatre last Thursday - because of its naked and unashamed exploitation of the current English comedy humour. The whole thing was so bad that Sir Herbert Tree would
almost certainly make a fortune by taking it on a long provincial tour. Sir Herbert is a patriot pur sang. He scorns the foreign joke: if he is to keep company with Moli&re, the flimsy Frenchman must get rid of his alien graces and tune himself to the key of the
English musical comedy comedian. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme in its ktest English dress and with its latest English acting might well be taken, by any casual and unlettered visitor who strolled into the theatre while the performance was on, for
the latest transplantation
from the
Gaiety. It
is
true that Molifcre's
wit and humour would out even through such a translation and such acting - all the coarsening in the world cannot quite kill it: but a Frenchman would be hard put to it to recognize some of
these clumsy caricatures for the finespun characters that Molifcre drew, while an Englishman will recognize them all as types made
familiar to
him by
years. After the first
the comic English stage of the last fifteen bad joke or two that has been foisted upon
the original and upon Hofmannsthal we could anticipate most of the others. might have foreseen that Jourdain would threaten
We
Nicole with a slap over the jaw, that when Jourdain was told the ' f title of the new opera he would ask Arry ?' and be told in reply *Adne', that as his song had something to do with a lamb there
would be
characters
references to
is
ham and damn, and

is
so on.
One of
at
the
is
asked
by Jourdain what he
can't stand
getting at:
another
informed that
M. Jourdain
slow music
- or rather - so the acting. adaptation from the Dorante of Mr. Apart Philip Merivale and the little bit of work Miss Neilson-Terry and Mr. Creighton had to do as Dorimfene and the Composer respectively, there was not a single
any
price.
And
as the translation
Nation
175
hardly even a single voice that had the least suggestion in style it of the breeding and the elegance of the old French comedy. Jourdain, it is true, has neither breeding nor elegance in the usual senses of the words: but he is not the clumsy clown Sir Herbert Tree made of him. He is the most lovable noodle in all dramatic literature: his little vanities are never objectionable, whereas the vanities that Sir Herbert Tree puts upon him hurt one as horribly as the clothes he dressed him in - they were a quite needless riot of colour-cacophony. The rest of the play had to live up to the awful standard of over-emphasis set by those appalling clothes or was it that Sir Herbert Tree wore them so ill? In the true musical comedy vein, an elaborate finger-post was set up in front of each joke, the adapter and the actor presumably having always in their minds the least intelligent member of the audience, and being determined that he shall miss nothing for want of having it pointed out to him. Even the farewell sentences that Hofinannsthal puts into Jourdain's mouth when, at the end of the opera, he finds that his tided guests have slipped away in the darkness, could not be left to carry their own point, as they
certainly ought to anyone who is mentally qualified for admission to a theatre. 1 wish*, says Jourdain, 1 had been born a Count or a
Marquis, and had been endowed with that certain something with which they know how to give the Great Air to everything they do/ As if this were not enough, Sir Herbert Tree, or Mr. Somerset Maugham, or both of them, must needs add 'even when they are rude'; and curiously enough it was just these words, and the excessive emphasis and the knowing look with which they were uttered, that established the most confidential relations between the actor and the audience. But however skilfully the wine ofMoli&re's wit may be doctored
to suit a theatrical palate brought up on vinegar or beer, nothing can save such a work as Ariadne aufNaxos. The libretto and the music are surely the poorest things ever put forth by two men of world-wide reputation. The unfortunate thing about the combination of Hofinannsthal and Strauss is that it too often brings out
the worst qualities of both

writers, Hofinannsthal
is
of them. Like so many other German apt to mistake brutality for strength, and
Testament of Music
and in Strauss he has a musician who, with horseplay for humour; all bis genius, has in him a certain strain both of rawness and of
stupidity.
written
The ^Egistheus episode in Elektra as Hofinannsthal has most composers as too it, would have been rejected by
effect: Strauss applies
crude a piece of melodramatic

force of his orchestra to
making
still
the whole rawer head and still
bloodier bones of it.

as in
And no one but a composer whose humour,
Bin Heldenleben, had a touch of the cackle of the village or the bladder-banging of the village green in it, would have idiot set himselfwith such gusto to underlining in his music all the puerilities
of the inn scene in Der Rosenkavalier. The humour of Ariadne in aufNaxos is inane beyond words. There is some sprighdiness it is to bebut the music of the quartet of buffoons, nothing come enthusiastic over: while the coloratura aria of Zerbinetta is
mostly tedium
itself.
The whole of the comedy,
indeed, could be cut out of the
some day a concert opera without our missing it: perhaps version ofthe work will be arranged, consisting solely of Ariadne's arrival of Bacchus. opening lament and the music that follows the There would be little of the greater Strauss in this, but it would be interesting enough for a while. The music of the opera as a whole makes it even more certain than in certain parts of Der
Rosenkavalier that the
bloom
it.
and the
vitality
out of
has gone off Strauss's imagination Occasionally there is a great note of
human
opening scene that no other living composer could sound; but for the rest it bears the same relation to Strauss's really fine music as ordinarily comof journalism bears to great literature. The small orchestra
feeling
especially in Ariadne's
petent
as
thirty-six players that
he uses makes it hard for him to dazzle us, with old, purely technical cleverness; and the essential of his ideas is unmistakable now that they are of some poverty seen without their gorgeous trappings. But he is still dever enough to keep on talking volubly and persuading us to listen even when he has nothing very urgent to say: a good deal of the Bacchus music, for example, is simply the machine-made rhetoric of the
of
skilled old oratorical
hand.
One of the most
distressing features
of the score
is
the added
it
Nation
177
idiom withproof out having been able to discover a new one. His melodic sense which is as much as to say his power of creating in music - has come to a standstill. He is apparently conscious of it himself, and tries to atone for the failure of it in two ways - by harmonic eccentricities that cannot blind us to the poverty of the ideas underlying them, and that are becoming as manneristic as certain formulae ofDebussy and by an affectation ofMozartian simplicity and limpidity of melody. His attempts at the imitation of Mozart invariably end, both here and in Der Rosenkavalier, in a banality of cadence that destroys whatever illusion they may have begun by creating. In any case there is no path to be opened out into the future by imitating Mozart; if a new idiom is to come, with Strauss or with another, it will have to be as the natural efflorescence of all his best ways of thought and of ours. At
affords us that Strauss has exhausted his old
;
a rudderless boat in a stormy sea. present Strauss is drifting like He has no impulse strong enough and sincere enough to carry him a work at the one white heat: he wastes himself in
through
weakness
experiment, in imitation, and in bluff. The full measure of his may be seen in the incidental music of Moli&re's play.
thing in
it is
The one good
that accompanies the fencing scene.
the brilliant piece of characterization The arietta and the duet
could have been written by dozens of other men. The rest of the incidental music is either ordinary or stupid. He is a sore disfuture of appointment now to those of us who once felt that the music lay with him more than with any other composer of our
work he has done, and day. When one thinks of the splendid then sees him clowning clumsily in company with Hofmannsthal, or writing music as dull as it is meretricious to accompany the of a pair of trousers, one serving of a dinner or the putting on feels somewhat as the more decent-minded of Noah's sons felt on
a famous occasion.
VII
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NEW WITNESS

1915-1918
STRAUSS'S
NEW SYMPHONY,
1915
IS rather disturbing to those of us who have been led by writers to believe that Germany is economically almost at her last gasp to find that her musical life seems to be going on very much as usual. In France, music has virtually stopped; the Paris opera houses, I believe, do nothing more than
ITcertain
just 'carry on*
till
better times shall come.
The production of an
in Paris at present is unthinkable. Berlin, important however, has just had the first preformance of Strauss's new work, the Alpine Symphony, and has taken the production, even in war
time, as a matter of course; nor did it shrink from the expense of bringing the Dresden orchestra to Berlin to perform the work. It has been suggested to me that all the musical activity of Germany - the numerous concerts and during the past twelve months the many productions of new works - has operatic performances, been simply so much 'window-dressing' on the part of the authorities,
new work
who are anxious to give both resident neutrals and their own
people the impression that Germany is unmoved by all the assaults of the Allied armies upon her. It may be so, but none of us over here has information sufficient to warrant an opinion
either
way.
is
The only long account I have yet seen of the Alpine Symphony that written by Dr. Edgar Istel - an able German critic and
179
i8o
historian
Testament of Music
- in die
Berliner Morgenpost
of 29th October, the
morrow of the production. For the first time in many years, a new Strauss work has been performed without attracting the
of the leading papers of the civilized world. It is true that Dr. Istel speaks of the presence in the audience of 'many famous - by which he foreign conductors and musical critics' probably means that Turkey and Bulgaria had sent the flower of their musical culture to Berlin. It is, of course, impossible for any of us to procure a score of the new work, owing to that curious kink in our legislators that makes them keep German music out of this country while letting German incendiary bombs in. I do not profess to follow their reasoning, but we have to bow to their decision. Such information as I have about the Alpine Symphony at present is derived almost entirely from Dr. Istel's long article, which, on the face ofit, seems trustworthy enough. The work is in one movement, lasting a full three-quarters of an hour. It is, of
critics
course, scored for a very large orchestra, the composer 'at least* a hundred and twenty-one players, among
demanding
whom are to
what
force
be twenty horns.
We
all
know from
experience
attaches to Strauss's 'at least'; like Salome and Elektra, the new work, if it is to get any performances at all, will have to be
content with
much fewer
instruments than a hundred and
twenty-one. Strauss has not only employed once more our old friend the wind-machine of Don Quixote - how, indeed, could one describe the Alps without a wind-machine ! The only wonder
is
that Strauss has
not used an ice-cream freezer
as
well ! - but has
introduced a thunder-machine.
still
Were the mad King of Bavaria he would no doubt complete the realism by taking the roof off and letting the snow in on the audience, as he is said to have let some tons of rain fall on the actors during the storm in
alive,
the Valkyrie.
Dr. Istel sums up at the commencement of his article that the new
symphony
conclusion
is
is
'one of the best of Strauss's works, though the not on the same height as the rest, and some curtail-
ment would do the work no harm*. Later on, however, it peeps out that the critic is not too favourably impressed by it. He
praises
its
general painting of the Alpine Stimmung, and especially
New Witness
181
what seems to be a remarkable representation of a waterfall in music. But he shies at Strauss's excessive devotion to a detailed programme. Everyone knows Beethoven's mot as to his Pastoral
Symphony being 'more an expression of emotion than painting*. Symphony is apparently more painting than emotion. There is a remark in Beethoven's sketch book to the effect that any one who knew country life would understand
Strauss's Alpine
the Pastoral without any finger-posts in the score. The score of the Alpine Symphony seems to be so full of finger-posts that I suspect before the tourist has had time to read the name on one of them
he will be bumping into another. Here are the

itinerary: 'Night: Sunrise:
stages
of the
The
ascent:
Entry into tie wood:
Wandering by the brook: By
the waterfall:
A vision (or scenery;

:
we
cannot be certain, without knowledge of the score, of the
precise meaning ofErscheinung in this connection) In the flowery meadows: Losing one's way in bramble and thicket: On the
vision: glacier: Dangerous prospects (views): On the summit: Mists creep up : The sun sets gradually An elegy : Calm before the storm: Thunder and tempest: The descent: Sunset: All sound dies away: Night.' It would have only been a step further into
:
the arms of the American symphonist who described in music a day in the country the first movement representing the journey to the scene of the picnic, and the finale, which depicted the homeward journey, being simply the first movement played
backwards.
However, the symphony may be no more dependent on signposts of the objectionable kind than other works of which the composers have not been as frank as Strauss in exposing their
programmatic basis. The only thing in the work that can really matter is not the programme but the music. If this is bad, the programmewill not save it; if it is good,itwill take the programme up into itself and reanimate it. It is interesting to see, by the way,
how the passion for musical illustration has grown upon Strauss in recent years. There is no rational objection to illustration per se in music; it would be folly to condemn a practice that has been
followed, in one form or another, by perhaps four-fifths of the world's composers. It is no more absurd of Strauss to try to
1 82
Testament of Music
suggest the cracking of whips in Elektra than it was for Mozart to suggest the criss-cross of duelling swords in Dem Giovanni, or for
Elgar to suggest the tinkling of the thirty pieces of silver in The Apostles, or for Mendelssohn to suggest the hee-haw of the donkey in the Midsummer Night's Dream overture. The
question, in each case,
is
only whether the realism is visibly foisted upon the music and remains an unassimilated excrescence upon it, or is taken up into and dissolved in the pure being of the music. The less 'external' the realism is, of course, the better; we may object to the wind-machine - except in humorous music like that of Don
Quixote
- but we cannot reasonably
object to those suggestions
of blinding or shimmering light in which Ravel and Stravinsky excel. A list of the natural phenomena that have been more or
less successfully
translated into tone
would
surprise,
by
its
very
length, the old-fashioned aesthetician who regards the sphere of music as touching at no point the spheres of the other arts. The truth seems to be that everything that music can do in the
way of painting, even by a mere

legitimate if
only
is
it
tour deforce of orchestration, is be embodied in an art-form of which the
a simultaneous appeal to eye and ear. It is for this reason that a hundred things are right in opera that would be in a and a thousand wrong symphony, things right in a ballet
very essence
that
would be dubious in an opera. Strauss's flirtation with the quasi-ballet form in The Legend of Joseph may have been prompted a that the field for by feeling descriptive music is wide enough,
but that it is irrational to expect full freedom for a composer of this bent in the purely instrumental, non-representative forms, in
which the imagination has

to
to
slow to recognize the possibilities of a form that would differ as greatly from ballet as ballet does from the union of music and the cinematoopera The brain of a Fokine exercised the of the graph.
me strange that composers should still be so
do the work of the eye. But it seems
upon
possibilities
cinematograph would certainly open out a whole new field of beautiful suggestion. One ventures even to say, in advance of all of the that little harm could be done to such a score, knowledge
work as the Alpine Symphony by playing it to

of panoramic
scenes,
the accompaniment
while the appeal of
many
portions of
it
New Wimess
183
might actually be deepened. But in the last resort, the one question still is the quality of die music. Dr. Istel apparently holds no very of from the brilliance and suggestiveness of it, apart high opinion the orchestration. The themes seem to be shorter than the general-a necessity, indeed, if a closely woven ity of Strauss's melodies texture is aimed at. But Strauss has never been symphonic
particularly
successful
in
the
thematic matter of this kind, as was
management of fragmentary shown rather painfully in the
Symphonia Domestica. It will presumably be a long time before the Alpine Symphony is given in England; but one hopes the time is not far distant when it will be possible to procure a score of it without 'trading with the enemy'.
BORIS GODOUNOV,
1916
MANCHESTER SHOULD be grateful to Sir Thomas Beechaxn for its month of opera in general, and for its introduction to Boris
Godounov in
is
particular.
One's admiration for that

:
work increases
each time one sees it or plays through it there are times when one
inclined to say that die discovery of it is the most important event in the musical history of Western Europe during the last decade. Sir Thomas Beecham is giving the opera in French. He
have no alternative at present, for the English tranlsation does not always fit the music very well, we have no English Boris, and in M. Bouilliez, who apparendy does not sing in
may
English,
have a Boris who, though lacking Chaliapin's extraordinary plasticity of face, is not only a fine singer but a capable actor. Still, I am afraid Boris Godounov will never disclose
its full
we
dear to
secret to the British public until it is sung in English. It was last Friday, ifor example, that only those already
me
who
knew
the opera
spectator
who
incomprehensible
the full pathos of the Idiot's song. To die stands outside die opera and listens to it sung in an tongue, Moussorgsky's Idiot is simply the
felt
1 84
Testament of Music
in his
English village idiot, with the tin kettle on his head and the straw mouth - a figure half silly, half comic. To anyone who
knows or can hear the words, the character is what Moussorgsky meant it to be - a symbol of some of the saddest elements in Russian life and history. And I for my part - 1 cannot say whether saw it in the same way - felt all the other that the
evening people Russian music and the French speech were here incompatible, and that precisely because the music is so very Russian. That is to
say, the
Russia that
music and the characters so distinctly suggest the map of I cannot help wondering all the time why they are be that it French. It would be may objected talking equally anomalous were they to talk English; but that is not so. English being our ordinary medium of expression, it sets up in us no foreign connotations whatever music is sung to it; whereas any
other language does. And as the connotations set up by Bom Godounov are, for the most part, so purely Russian, I have an uncomfortable feeling of disharmony the whole evening. Many
people would have the same feeling if they were to hear PelUas Mtlisande sung in German.
et
For some years I have been arguing against the fallacies that lurk in the cry of 'national music'. It may be thought, then, that in declaring Boris Godounov to be, for the most part, purely
surrendering some of my own contentions. That is nor so, however. The case ofBoris Godounov is really an argument in my favour. The main objection to making music an expression of 'the national spirit* is that it simply cannot be done, there being
Russian, I
am
no such thing nowadays as a 'national spirit' in art or literature. nation is made up of many intellectual and moral types, no one of
which has the right to regard itself as 'the* nation. When some of us express this view we are asked the naive question, 'But could
as Die Meistersinger have been written by anyone but The answer - an answer, I think, not lacking in com- is 'Yes' and 'No'. The prehensiveness Meistersinger might easily have been written by a non-German of genius who happened to have absorbed, and been absorbed into, the great German tradi-
such a work
a German?'
Fleming Beethoven was, or the Hungarian Liszt, or the Croatian Haydn, or the Jewish Mahler and Mendelssohn, or
tion, as the
New Witness
whatever he
185
Wolf. But the the Hungarian-Jewish Joachim, or the Styrian who written could not have been except by someone Meistersinger
had become German in

originally count for
this sense,
may have been
become harder
in the ethnic sense. Tradition, sympathy, environment more than mere race in art. 'National music* will on, and will and harder to write as time
goes
for the simple reason that travel and the easy eventually disappear, the music of every nation and access to scores performances of German or Frenchman or mere a not each will make of composer
a citizen of the world. The village pump may be Englishman, but or Pelltas or a more immediate cultural influence than Tristan In the influence. an durable so or intense Boris, but it will not be so man the music in said by seventeenth century a very little thing Worcester of an inhabitant, say, next door counted for more with music by someone in Paris or thati a stupendous thing said in but that kind of world is gone, never to return.
Leipzig; and more In future the language of music will become more 'national*. it reasons that once made cosmopolitan for the very dialect in speech: the only means we like is music in 'Nationalism'
have of detecting
rhythm.
difficult
it,
indeed,
Where
to
these
9
by some peculiarity of melody do not lie on the sur&ce of the music it is

is
or
'place
any music with

I
certainty.
peculiarities
in- music originated, imagine, has done - a community shut off from other communities to be could that persist expected hardly developed certain oddities oddities the same conditions of isolation. How these under except determine. In language some of them may began it is difficult to the organs of have been due to a peculiar racial formation of district a whole for that the main reason I speech; but imagine unconaccent or burr is, in the main, merely
And national much as dialects have
adopting a certain come into existence. scious imitation of a variety that has somehow
some years Thus even grown-up English people who have lived or American an into in America or Scotland unconsciously drop
contend that a natScotch way of speaking. No one, surely, will flick at the end of the tad. ot ional' trait in music, such as the little into being forthe sole reason that there aHungarian melody, came that was something in thenatureof the race that made it imperative
j 86
it
Testament of Music
should write melodies just in that way or die. I take it that what has happened is that at some time or other someone has hit upon
this
melodic turn,
it
has
commended itself to
other musicians, and
has gradually become stereotyped like the inflections of the spoken language, or like the dress of the district. Or the melodic turn
may
of
have been motived in the
first
place
by some
peculiarity
rhythm or cadence in the popular poetry of the district; or, again, it may have been determined by the steps of some local dance. The
oddities
of a
particular scale are clearly due, in
many cases,
to the
limited resources
of primitive instruments. Let
us assume, for
example, that the flute used in a given district has only four holes. From such a flute only a limited scale could be produced by the
constant hearing of such a scale would accustom the inhabitants of the district to thinking in terms of it;
ordinary person.
The
and so
their melodies
would come
a
to exhibit the peculiarities
of
deal of primitive music. I do not contend that all primitive scales are the result of such a process as this, but it is, at any rate, a conceivable process for some ofthem.
omission that
we notice in
good
essential thing to note is that the oddities of 'national music* must all be capable of some such explanation. There must have been real causes for them; to attribute them to the spontaneous ebullition of a 'national character* is simply to use words that have no relation to reality. Once the oddity had become established it would exercise as rigid a sway over the inhabitants of that district as the syntax of their language and as long as the community kept
;
The
very much to itself, as primitive communities necessarily did, nothing could break the tyranny of the mode but a revolution from the inside. But a revolution from the inside, in view of the
conservatism of
all islanded communities, would be difficult. Children would be so accustomed to the 'national' trait from their
birth that it would remain a part of their thinking for the whole of their lives, something no more to be questioned than the genders
of nouns or the
unconscious
So strong would be the 'pull* peculiarity that people would impose it even upon melodies that were originally conceived without it. A communal mannerism is thus as tyrannical as an individual mannerism. How strong the influence of tradition can be in these
inflections
of
verbs.
of the
New Witness
187
matters
shown by an anecdote that is told of Remenyi, the violinist with whom Brahms toured in his adolescent Hungarian knows the typical turn at the end of a days. Everyone Hungarian melody the note above the tonic, the tonic, a double
is
well
appogbeing
giatura, the tonic again, the note below the tonic, and finally the tonic. This turn had bitten so deeply into Remenyi's musical
he used to terminate the theme of the slow movement of the Kreutzer Sonata with it, thus converting it at once into a Hungarian tune. It is peculiarities of musical dialect of this kind that people generally have in mind when they speak of national music. It is by means of such local turns that they are enabled to
that
recognize this melody as Hungarian, that as Russian, a third as Norwegian, a fourth as Irish; and so definite are the associations thus set up that by the use of these oddities of dialect dever
musicians of other nations can write 'Hungarian' or 'Norwegian' tunes that no one can distinguish from genuine products of the country.
'Nationalism* in music
is
in the last resort dialect in music.
As
can only be quite sure of it when historical and said, other circumstances have combined to fasten upon the melody or the rhythm of a country or a district a certain formula which, every time that we hear it, shall remind us of the map of the place. Yet, paradoxically, this due is not a certain one. Precisely because the 'nationalism' is embedded in a formula, any dever person of another nation can use that formula just as he can don a foreign costume. It would not be difficult to dte examples of music of all sorts that had one national stamp and quite another national origin. The adherents of the nationalist theory, indeed, cannot come to
have
we
the most dementary agreement

case
among
themselves as to
what
nationalism in music is. Let us look for a moment at the instructive
We should never achieve,
only a few months ago that Mr. Evans* patriotic soul writhed within him at the thought that Englishmen were writing German music instead of English music.
It is
of Mr. Edwin Evans.
he
said,
the
Emandpation of Music in
i88
Testament of Music
England so long as people over here persisted in writing in an 'obsolescent [German] vocabulary that was never at any time a national medium of expression for English ideas. I once wrote', he continued, 'that an Englishman writing German music was as inexpressive as a Japanese in a bowler hat, and I am of the same opinion still/ That was the Mr. Evans of October, 1915. Now for the Mr. Evans of May, 1916. From a letter of Mr. Evans to the
me through my press-cutting he has been in controversy with Mr. people, of anti-nationalism whose he repudiates. Mr. Turner, charge
New
Statesman, that has reached
I
gather that
Evans, it seems, has written two 'Proses Lyriques' in French because 'they just happened to suggest themselves to me in French*. These have been set to music by Mr. Goossens. I do not
the works, but apparently they are in a French idiom, and apparendy Mr. Turner bis pounced on that fact. Mr. Evans' reply to him is instructive. 'The texts being French, I venture to suggest that Mr. Goossens was indubitably right in giving them a French setting/ He protests against another critic having also objected to 'the Frenchness of the music', which Mr. Evans holds is the right thing under the circumstances. I will not say much about the adaptable quality in Mr. Evans' him that allows to patriotism regard it as a crime in one Englishman to write German music, and a virtue in another to write French music. I will only remark on the instructive admission that an Englishman, if he is clever enough, can write 'French
know
music' at will. After this delightful little exhibition the less, surely, that is said about nationalism in music the better. If Mr. Goossens'
music to the 'Proses Lyriques' is really 'French', then on the nationalist principle it must be unnatural music a Chinaman, in kilts. If it is as Mr. Evans would no doubt music, say, good
contend, then nationalism obviously has not counted. What Mr. Goossens has done, apparendy, is to make use of an idiom or an atmosphere that has become fashionable on the other side of the
few years. He has flavoured his song and no one, from the mere taste of it, could tell whether it had been made in Paris or in Peckham. Wherever it was made, it is French songs just as Worcester sauce
Channel during the
last
according to the recipe,
New Witness
sauce if
it
189
would be Worcester
were made, from the same in-
gredients in Wigan. Music of this kind is, in the larger acceptation of the term, dialect music. The composer talks with an assumed
he puts on a costume; and if he looks the part, and talks the part, I for one will have nothing to say against him in the name of nationalism. Better far that Mr. Goossens, or anyone else,
accent;
should write good music in the French, the Russian or the
Kamschatkan style than that he should write commonplace music in the English style. The sole question is, not whether a musician shall derive his style from the parish pump or from an imported vintage, but whether, having derived it from one or the other, or from both, it is a style worth listening to, a style in which he can express himself easily and fully. And this, of course, implies the further and the vital question - has he a self that is worth expressing? The strong point in Moussorgsky's admittedly Russian style is not that it is Russian, but that it is Moussorgsky's. He talks an idealized dialect for a great part of his time; but this kind of dialect happens to be the medium for his particular kind of thought. With Moussorgsky it is not a costume that he has put on for the moment, but his very skin. That is why he never wearies us, as other practitioners of nationalism do: with him we are never conscious of theory, of artifice. We feel that he, at any rate, was God-guided when he made his idiom or a large part of it out of the folk songs of his district. For this idiom suited admirably most of the emotions he had to express, most of the scenes he had to of depict. That it did not suit them all is evident from portions Bom Godounov, as even partisans of the nationalist theory are
compelled to admit. It stands to reason that precisely in so far as an idiom is penetrated with 'nationalism', it is unsuited to a milieu that lies outside the national. The folk-song theory, even with regard to Moussorgsky, breaks down as soon as we leave a are told that certain sections of Boris Godounov special milieu. the music of Boris' death scene, the love scene between Dmitri and Marina, Boris' aria in the second act, the hustling of the two
We
Jesuit priests, as well as die people's
the
first
scene of the fourth act, and
welcome to the pretender in some of the Doume scene -
ipo
Testament of Music
originally
composed for an opera based on Flaubert's and afterwards Salammbti, adapted to the present work. Now, are of these scenes some precisely those in which the Russian element in the music is most pronounced, and rightly so; it is as
were
right that a Russian crowd should sing like Russians as that the scene painter should give them a Russian landscape to sing in. But just because this music suits the Russian characters and the
Russian setting so well, I cannot for the life of me see how it could have suited the characters and the setting of SalammbS. I cannot imagine Salammbo and Hamilcar and Matho in Russian furs and talking with a Russian accent. Even in Boris Godounov as
we now have it,

comes to
there are scenes in
which the
nationalist theory
grief. qualities in Moussorgsky's idiom that make it so congruous with Russia make it incongruous with lands that are non-Russian - which is why the music of the Polish girl,
The very
Marina, is relatively unsatisfactory. Here again, of two things one. If only a Russian can write Russian music, then by parity of reasoning only a Pole can write Polish music, and therefore
Moussorgsky is bound to fail when he tries to put Polish music in the mouth of Marina. Or else, if this Polish music is a success, and
a Russian has
made
it so,
then surely a Pole or a Bohemian or a
Breton could equally well write successful Russian music, and the whole theory of the inevitableness of nationalism falls to the ground. As a matter of fact, most people agree that Marina's music is anything but a success, and that she is anything but a living character. Here the national idiom that Moussorgsky tries to exploit is merely costume, and a costume that sits ill on him. As Mrs. Newmarch says, 'He (Moussorgsky) who penetrates so deeply into the psychology of his own people, finds no better characterization of the Polish temperament than the use of the polacca or mazurka rhythms. . . . The method becomes monotonous. Marina's solo takes this form, and again in the duet by the
are pursued by the eternal mazurka rhythm.' But Moussorgsky had no choice. If you write in an idiom that is free
fountain
we
from
dialect,
you can make
all
essentially the
same speech, and yet the same tongue as lago and yet
your characters talk what is differentiate them - as Othello

is
different,
or the Cornish
New Witness
191
Tristan talks the same tongue as the Irish Isolde and yet is different. But once you begin to use dialect as a differentiating feature, you
are compelled to use it to the end; and if you tell us to recognize a Russian character by his singing Russian music, you are obviously bound to make a Polish character recognizable by giving her
Polish music to sing - which, in the very terms of the case, you, if you claim as a Russian to be alone qualified to speak for Russia,
must admit that only a Pole can do. The very strength of the folk song element in Moussorgsky, then, is also a weakness on occasion. There are other sections of the opera in which the dialect that is so effective in the case of the
by Moussorgsky 's own inappropriate. The more complex the

chorus
is,
practice,
admitted to be
character, the less 'Russian'
does speak. The method serves the for the the the drunken monk; crowd, child, nurse, admirably it does not serve for Boris, who talks a language as removed from
does
it
become, the
less dialect
it
that
of the chorus
folk-song.
as the
language of Tristan
is
from
that
of a
German
of a
Moussorgsky we
dialect
Is not the truth of it all that in simply this have the chance association in a man of genius
popular life No musician ever observed a crowd so keenly as Moussorgsky of course, that a Russian crowd has more individudity, (it may be,
idiom with an unequalled faculty for describing -just the life with which dialect is most congruous?
more colour, than a Western crowd), and for the expression of this crowd in music he found within himself an idiom that, in its
of certain formulae, had in itself something of the psychology of the crowd - the same limited range of ideas, the same tendency to the repetitive. Wherever this reiteration of formulae within a narrow psychological range is justified - as in
curious reiteration
his
mob
music, his death music, his child music
Moussorgsky^
wholly adequate instrument of expression. But a sure instinct withheld him in the greater solo parts of Boris from vising
dialect is a
this dialect
idiom in circumstances in which

false.
it
would have been
psychologically
192
Testament of Music
GRANADOS AND
THE DEATH of Granados
artistic
HIS GOYESCAS, 1916
in the Sussex* was the greatest loss the world of Europe has sustained by reason of the War - and in saying this I have not forgotten the name of Rupert Brooke. The news of his death, and the excitement caused by it, were probably the first intimations most people had that Spain had an important school of music of its own. A few professional musicians knew something of the work of Albeniz, who figured in the
as musical Spain; but hardly anyone in England, except a star pianist or two and the people who came into contact with them, knew even the name of Granados. I
ordinary music-lover's eye
myself am ashamed to confess to a very limited acquaintance with his music - an acquaintance, however, that shall be speedily extended. It was about three years ago that I met with the first set of his pianoforte Goyescas - a year or so, I should think, after their publication. Rarely has any new experience of mine in music been at once so immediately and so durably pleasurable. Many of us had begun to feel, with regret, that the days of great writing for the piano were over. At that time we knew nothing of Medtner, who has specialized upon the piano as truly as Chopin did, and who has developed a virile idiom and a system of pianoforte
own. Scriabine was becoming too Debussy had already shown that he had written himself out; we were tired of his pompous affectations of originality in his piano works, and equally so of the glittering futilities of Ravel. For these two - the Old Pretender and the Young Pretender - we had no further use; Granados came to us like a godsend. Here was a mind unmistakably original, that talked to us most fascinatingly of people and places we had never seen before yet it was an originality that never lost itself in experiment, was always master of an orderly and logical speech, always realized infallibly in tone its own vision. Granados instantaneously exercises the subtle power over us that never fails to be exercised * Granados lost his life when the Sussex was on
sonorities that are quite his
insubstantial to satisfy us.
torpedoed
returning
from the U.S.A. on 24th March, 1916.
New Witness
193
own day are at once romantic by new territories of thought and not classic and only glimpsing new wings yet not feeling but subduing them, giving passion
the rare minds that even in their
launching
it
so far that
it
loses itself in the void,
putting forth the
maximum of energy of gesture and of eloquent facial play without for a moment ceasing to be graceful and beautiful. In none of the music of Granados that I know is there even the suspicion of a
grimace, a shout, or a convulsion. All is smooth and strong and supple, the play of the big muscles just showing grandly through the velvet skin.
The most original mind must, of course, have had a progenitor. Granados derives ultimately from Chopin - that source as fecund for certain forms of life in modern music as the classical stream
Granados has expanded all the typical Chopin elements - the richly savorous harmonies, the melodic line that is at once tense and flexible - now making straight for its point like some irresistible projectile, now diverting itself with all sorts of caressing - the proud, nervous rhythms, the sense of ancestry arabesques and breeding, of an old and very refined civilization flowering to its very best in a last great scion. The texture of Granados* music, like that of Chopin's, is of the kind that makes you want to run your fingers over it, as over some exquisite velvet; the flavour of
itself.
something for the tongue almost, as well as the ear. An exceedingly adventurous harmonist, he never writes a chord or a sequence that does not both sound well and talk continuous sense; to play through some of his pages is like a joyous wading knee-deep through beds of gorgeous flowers always with a sure way through, and the clearest of light and air around us. I do not think there is any modern piano music that, for pure beauty and fullness of sound, can compare with his. Both Debussy and Ravel have exploited with extraordinary success some of the cooler or
it is
more metallic resonances of the piano; Scriabine has shown of what dusiveness it is capable; Medtner has blended both the thickness and the fluidity of its resonance - some of his music
reminds us of a sturdy crag covered with glowing rock plants; but Granados* texture has almost every quality. His main bias,
however,
is
towards an organ-like richness.
know no other piano
194
Testament of Music
music that so constantly has the resonance of four-hand writing. Yet it is all playable, though much of it is, of course, very difficult. A first-rate pianist himself, Granados solves with ease the most terrifying of the problems set to pianistic mankind by Providence's regrettable oversight in endowing it with only two hands. His writing is almost invariably that of the practical artist; it is only now and then that he is a little thoughtless, not so much as regards - he could have piano technique as in the matter of notation simplified the reading of page 22 of the first set of the Goyescas, for example, by writing it with the key-signature of E flat or G flat instead of in the open key with a perfect hail-storm of accidentals. He obtains superb effects of organ sonority by writing massed chords high up in the right hand, with rich harmonies sweeping up in arpeggios from the deep bass of the piano right to the treble. But he has every device at his fingers'ends. At times the harmony will be skeletonized down to its bare essentials but it is always just the essentials, for he has an infallible instinct for getting the richest possible effect with the fewest possible notes, simply by the feeling for the different sonorities of the same chord in different spacings. An excellent illustration of this faculty of his is to be seen in the passage commencing at bar of the second of the first set of 29 Goyescas. At the end of the first of the second set, again - 'El Amor y la Muerte' - he symbolizes the death of the majo with a couple of funeral-bell effects that are as
;
cunningly calculated for the piano as the bell effects in Bam Godounov are for the orchestra. But the fascinations of the Granados piano technique are endless: one would like to talk about it by the column.
composers have played at taking pictures as the starting-point for their ideas; but in the case of Granados there has been not merely a stimulus of the musician by the painter but a complete penetration. Granados has made Goya's majo and maja part of his own flesh and blood; and he seems to have re-created not only a type but a period and a milieu. How completely these figures had taken
As everyone now knows, the Goyescas are based on certain etchings of Goya. Never before has an artist so profoundly entered into and coloured the soul of a musician. Other
New Witness
is
195
the fact that they almost wholly his musical thinking during the last few years of his life. engrossed rise to two curious phenomena that are surely This obsession gave
possession of him
shown by
unique in the history of music. The first set of Goyescas (1912) consisted of four pieces, each of them descriptive of some episode in the life of the majo and the maja - the 'compliments' of the majo, the conversation of the pair through the grill, the fandango in die lantern-lighted barn, and the maja's outpouring of her soul
gaiety, pride, the sensuous joy of the dance, a noble and refined melancholy. It all seems to be born out of the South, as the music of Sibelius is born out of the mysterious lakes and forests of Finland. The Goyescas are not in any sense programme music. In their genesis and their development they are obedient only to the laws of music, not those of the picture; but all the same they create a singularly definite impression of certain beings in a certain environment. They were so real to Granados him self that he had to return to them, as one returns to a living household, in the second set of the Goyescas. The first of these - 'El Amor y la Muerte* - is a masterly fresh working of some of the old themes: they are taken now as accepted symbols, and made to play new parts, live out a new drama, like the leading-motives in the third act of a Wagner is opera. Again there is no programme, yet the logic, one feels, a came further of Then both that of music and that strange poetry. evolution of these ideas. Granados had a series of dramatic an opera episodes written upon the etchings, the whole forming that embodies the main scenes of these. To this opera he transferred bodily the greater part of the music of the pianoforte Goyescas. This was the work produced in New York a few months ago; Granados was on his way home again when the German assassin slew him, at the age of forty-eight. I have not seen the work on the was not a success, and I am not surprised. stage, but I understand it It is perhaps unfair to judge it in the English version, which is on the maddeningly inept, the verbal accents persistently falling the composer's syncopations especially wrong notes and giving a preposterous rag-time air. But even from my own limited
to the nightingale in the garden. feeling surges across these pages
A strange and beautiful world of
196
Testament of Music
knowledge of Spanish I should say that the fitting of words to the music has been a failure, and was bound to be so. These superb instrumental melodies and rhythms are only coarsened and lose most of their resiliency by being passed through the thicker medium of speech. The style, again, seems to me too purely orchestral music; and I feel that the very pianistic to make good that is so admirable in the piano and colour of rhythm unity works - silhouetting the types and painting the milieu as it does must inevitably make for monotony in a stage setting. But the operatic work is still splendid stuff to play through at home; and here and there not only do the words give a new precision to the piano phrases, enabling us henceforth to play these with greater
understanding, but
we
get the impression that in the pianoforte
Goyescas Granados must have
worked upon an unformulated but
- in the fairly definite scenario, and at one or two points nightingale scene, the final love-duet, and the death of the majo probably even conceived the music to actual words of his own.
WAGNER, DEBUSSY, AND MUSICAL

FORM,
1918
So FAR as I have observed, none of the English articles called forth by the death of Debussy - not even the ablest of them, such as that
of Mrs. Newmarch in the Contemporary Review and that of Mr
Edwin Evans in the Fortnightly Review - have addressed themselves seriously enough to what will surely be one of the vital questions
for the musical historian of the future, the question of Debussy's By 'form*, of course, I do not mean mere pattern, still less the ready-made suits, the musical reach-me-downs, that are sold
form.
in the conservatoires and given away with the text-books as 'form'. I mean simply the art of saying what you want to say, and
indeed
all
there
is
to be said
on the given subject, fluently, lucidly,
and, above all, coherently andcontinuously. The difficulties of doing
197 of the work A brilliant and Franz and other exquisite miniaturists, will have it that mere size has nothing to do with the value of the work of art. But surely, though the cameo may be as perfect in its way as the cathedral, its way is a smaller way. The problems of symmetry, of the balance between the detail and the embracing whole, become much more difficult as the work of art spreads itself out further in space or in time; and
obviously increase with the scale American critic, enthusiastic for Grieg
this will
New Witness
humanity tacitly agrees to think the Gdtterddmmerung or Goethe's Faust, with all their imperfections, greater than a flawless nocturne
or
lyric.
In the reaction of composers and critics during the last decade or two against the grandiloquences of German music, there has
sense,
been a tendency to lose sight of the fact that form, in the higher is as vital a concern of the modern musician as it was of the
what logic is to thinking we simply cannot For one reason and another, the greater German musicians of the last two or three centuries have given special attention to the problem of filling extended works through and through with this logic. They have not always
classic.
Form is
to art
it.
get far
without
succeeded, for coherency on a large scale is far more difficult to achieve in music than in any other art. It is relatively easy when the problem is simply the filling of a mould or the endless repeti-
of a decorative pattern, as in much of the work of Bach. It becomes harder when this pattern-working has to be combined with dramatic or pseudo-dramatic psychology, as in Beethoven, Wagner, and the modern symphonists, for here two very selfwilled horses have to be run in harness. The result is that perfectly designed musical works on a large scale are exceedingly rare there are only a symphony or two of Beethoven and an opera or two of Wagner, together with an odd movement or an operatic act here and there. I venture to think that the supreme master of form in music is not Beethoven or Wagner but Hugo Wol Nowhere but in Wolf do I find, in work after work, the perfect adaptation of means to end, not a note too few, not a note too many, the idiom and the mode of treatment always varying with the emotional subject, the music always working itself out from
tion
198
the
first
Testament of Music
the control of a logical factdty doubt as to its aim and never swerved from the straight pursuit of it. To some people this praise may seem excessive; I can only say that this is my own conviction after some fifteen years' study ofWolf. But Wolf's marvellous achievements were all on the small scale of the song: a composer who could realize the same formal perfection in the symphony or the opera would be the greatest master of musical form that the
bar to the
last as if tinder
that was never in the
least
world has ever

It is
seen.
on
perhaps because of an instinctive feeling that musical logic the grand scale is so exceedingly difficult that mankind
extends to imperfect musical works a tolerance it would never dream of giving to, say, a piece of architecture of the same size
and the same incoherence. Boris Godounov, for example, is not even a badly constructed building. It cannot even be called a building at all: it is merely a collection of fragments that the architect has dumped down near each other on die same plot of earth, lacking even the ability to give them a factitious air of coherence by joining the outer walls of one to those of another, and running a corridor through here and there. Nothing was more symptomatic of the lack of balance and basis in English musical criticism than the assumption by so many of our critics, in 1913 and 1914, that this and other Russian operas had made an end of Wagner and his theories and ideals - that here was a new
musical value that annulled, as Nietzsche
values.
would
is
say, all previous
The
truth
is that,
so far as
form
concerned,
Wagner
began where Moussorgsky and the others left off. They would no doubt have despised his kter form; but they would have despised it because they were incapable of grasping it. He was speaking a language the subtleties of which they could not understand: he was away among the subjunctives of the irregular verbs while they were pluming themselves, like children, on being able to join a noun and the present indicative of a verb in exercise one. So little had they of the root of musical logic in them that they could not even distinguish between genuine logic and choplogic. For them, as for a good many composers and critics of our own day, 'working-out' was merely a 'German' device, mostly
New Witness
199
employed by Germans to give an appearance of 'development* to their ideas, and in any case unsuitable for any but 'German* music. There would have been the less to say in reply to this, narrow of view as it is, had the Russian composers of the midcentury succeeded in making a formal instrument for their own music even approximately as good for 'development* as that of the Germans. But they never managed to do so. The 'Invincible Five' mostly showed an invincible feeble-mindedness wherever form was concerned. Their operas, their symphonies, their symphonic poems, their chamber music, are little more than beautiful pearls badly strung. In comparison with Beethoven and Wagner these men are no more than gifted children, visited with beautiful and charming intuitions, but incapable of the subtler
co-ordinations,
I
and quickly
tiring at their play.
better to recognize frankly that the constructive sense of Debussy also, so far as the larger forms are concerned, was no more than that of a child, than to hint vaguely,
it
think
would be much
as
Mrs.
Newmarch and Mr. Evans and some smaller writers have
done, that a work like Pelleas and Melisande, if it does not actually supersede the Wagnerian structure, at all events presents a structure comparable to it in its own way in value. For my own part, much as I admire the imaginative qualities of the best parts of
have never been able to see it, so far as regards its form, as anything but a confession of artistic bankruptcy. Perhaps I am harder to please than Mr. Evans; but with the best will in the world I cannot see in the opera the invariably infallible touch that he apparently sees in it. Debussy, he says, achieves his end (of of die characters in all the 'letting his music reflect the moods
Pelleas, I
fluctuations indicated
by
the text') 'with unfailing subtlety
by the
no more than a couple of chords simplest means, sometimes by in the sureness with which they lies merit intrinsic whose only are instances of this.' Well, I there On selected. were every page
an<l so &* from open the vocal score at random at pages 244-7; either the method being subtle or the touch infallible, I cannot see of intelligence anything in either of them but what any musician could achieve with one hand tied behind his back. If the touch were infallible, not a note could be altered without ruining the
20O
tissue;
Testament of Music
and
could easily alter the vocal recitative in many ways, but substitute other chords in the orchestra for those of Debussy,
we
who did not know the score by heart die substitutions. It is curious, and quite being able to detect amusing, that the school of criticism that is never tired of girding at Brahms for his padding should not have a word of condemnawithout even a Debussyite
tion for padding so egregious and so easy as this. Debussy has signally failed to achieve a consistent style for Pelleas andMelisande.
The work is not musically one in the sense that Tristan is; it is no more than a collection of beautiful musical fragments held
by Maeterlinck's poem. Debussy has not solved the of problem operatic form; he has merely evaded it, bluffing his way through when the eternal difficulties became too great for him. He reminds us of the Scottish preacher who used to say: 'Now we come, my brethren, to a deeficult passage; and having looked it boldly in the face, we will pass on/
together
Not being a believer in rooted and inalterable race-characteristics,

I
am
not going to say that there
is
something in 'the French
genius' that hinders it structures in music. It
from
is
erecting large
and
solidly built
the fact, however, that the French musicians have never shown much capacity for architecture on the
great scale, especially in purely instrumental music. Couperin
and
Rameau may match Bach himself in some of their

tures;
clavier minia-
but they have nothing to set beside the vast imaginings of his organ works. French music has nothing to compare with the mighty formal structures of Beethoven, Wagner, or even Strauss. Berlioz had grandiose visions, but was rarely able to realize them. (C&ar Franck I regard as a Belgian who worked in France.) In our own day we have seen the French composers insisting, to excess, as I cannot help thinking, on ideals that they
Bach in
regard as characteristically French. They pride themselves on their devil's advocate might make out a case super-modernity.
against
them
as
They cry 'Back
being excessively old-fashioned in some respects. to Rameau', forgetful that Rameau was Rameau
New Witness
201
because he 'went back* to nobody, but expressed himself in terms of his age. For two hundred years at least, music has been
labouring anxiously to master the art of weaving great continuous tissues. It has longed to express all the fullness of Hfe and thought
:
and it has known instinctively that such expression is only possible in the larger forms, where the thought can gather itself up page by page until at last it becomes a mighty river of life. By turning
on this development the French are deliberately their capacity for expression. It is with their music as restricting we all love that admirable French prose, with their prose.
their backs
How
the clarity of it, the certainty ofit, the absence of sprawling effort in
it;
how we tire at breathedness; how we long

and yet
times of
for a
its
calm
poise,
its
short-
majestic surge in it, a a wider a more broader sweep, arc, ringing chest note, something of the music of the madder elements of the volleying winds in the
more
of the earth! It is tradition - a tradition, certainly, of good taste, but none the less harmful that keeps French prose so limited in rhythm. It is tradition in its most harmful form that has latterly kept French music so thin-chested in its emotional expression and so miniature in the matter of form. The composers have been trying to live up to a 'French* ideal. In other words, they have been slaves where they thought themselves particularly free. They saw only the German menace: they did not see that an artist is equally a bondsman whether his chains are forged abroad or at home. French criticism, and the English criticism that has taken its cue from France, has been much to blame for accepting the theories of a little ctnacle of French musicians without proper critical examination. Criticism has its academics as composition has: and a critic who prides himself on repeating none but the very latest aesthetic formulae may be essentially as petrified an academic as any teacher of the art of composition according to Brahms or
great spaces
Parry.
itself,
The
English public
last
is
academic nature of
during the
much of the
few
just beginning to realize the truly criticism that has taken upon
older Russian years, to popularize the 1860 through men of the of Instead 'nationalist' composers. seeing them to see the eyes of 1910, it lazily preferred through the eyes
2O2
Testament of Music
of 1860; the propaganda on behalf of Moussorgsky and the rest of them has been, in large part, merely a rechaufft of that of Stassov and Cui - much as if Wagner were now becoming known here for the first time, and the propagandists were serving up to us selected opinions of Liszt and Billow. But the English public has not yet realized that much of the critical theory that is now being used to buttress up the weaknesses of the modern French music is almost equally old-fashioned. I have read a great many French and Franco-English attacks on 'German form'. I have hardly seen one among them that indicated that the writer had brought his knowledge of German form up-to-date. The general stock-in-trade had been a few easy gibes at Brahms - as if Brahms were fully representative of German form Even so acute a critic as Mr. Edwin Evans has not always been free of the clich. In his
!
excellent
little
speech at the French concert in Steinway Hall a

said something, if
fortnight ago, he
my memory serves me well,
searching for someit had in music, new, always been the something personal thing music that it was too content with established of German failing forms - accepted moulds into which the thought could be poured with the minimum of trouble. (I am not, of course, attempting to reproduce anything like Mr. Evans* actual words. I am only
to the effect that while the French
mind was
phrasing his argument, a fortnight after, as I understood it.) But it has been precisely in Germany that the most serious efforts have
been made, during the last hundred years, to break up the established moulds and create new ones. The revolution wrought by Beethoven in the symphony in his middle period was itself a very great one and in his last quarters we see him making a titanic effort to achieve yet another form. It is singularly unfortunate
;
that the theorists, in discussing modern symphonic form, should mostly get no further than Brahms, who merely extracted a few
tissue of the middle period, and the completely ignored pregnant prophecies of Beethoven's later
formulae from the Beethoven
works.
Later there came the complete smashing of all German moulds by Wagner - a revolution in form to which there is no parallel
whatever in the music of France.
And
with Wagner,
as
with
Beethoven, criticism
average
years
Wagner
203 Haifa century behind the times. The biography is extremely copious for the earlier
is still
New Witness
and ill-informed as to the later. No biographer except Glasenapp seems to be aware that in his last years Wagner thought seriously of writing a symphony - but not a symphony in the older style. Here, as in the opera, he wanted to create a new form. His symphony would have been in one movement; and in place of the conventional system of theme-contrast he would haved aimed at a continuous melodic web. That is undoubtedly the model for the symphony of the future. Wagner had in him by instinct what Debussy never had - the desire for flawless logic in music. How clear-eyed he was in this matter we may see from a passage in one of his letters to Frau Wesendonck on the subject of Tristan. His 'most delicate and profound art* (of which he has been made conscious by his work on that opera) is 'that of
transition*.
He knows
proceed, like
should
grow
that a long musical discourse should other discourse, step by step, that each bar any out of the one that precedes it, and into organically
the one that follows
second act of Tristan
most
delicate
and
and he points with justifiable pride to the as his 'highest achievement in the art of the gradual transition*. 'The beginning of this
it;
scene portrays the most intense emotions of abounding life: the end, tie holiest and deepest longing for death. There are the
pillars;
I have woven a bond that leads from one pillar to the other. This, then, is the secret of my musical form - a form which, I boldly assert, embraces every detail with such harmony and clearness of development as
now see, my child, how
hitherto has never been conceived.*
In face of facts like these, it really will not do to try to make out that the French, qua French, are all agog for contemporaneousness in music while the Germans, qua Germans, are content to lumber along, ass-like, with the century-old burdens upon their backs. Neither Beethoven nor Wagner succeeded in realizing the new form of which he dreamt; but at least they both had a sense that new forms were necessary. Debussy and his fellows have laboured under the delusion that form could be repkced by style,
that the
one thing to be sought
after
was justesse of expression.
204
Testament of Music
Debussy in particular came, in his latter years, to a condition in -which expansion of wing was rendered impossible by his incessant
anxiety as to the sheen of his feathers. That the capacity for more extended tissue-weaving was not quite atrophied in him seems to me evident from the ballet Jeux - the finest work, I think, of his he did not oftener trust himself for a long flight last period. of this kind I cannot say; one wearies, in most of his other works
Why
of this period, of the tiny

little
fluttering
of the wings in the
restricted
home-built cage, the perpetual preoccupation with the effect of the moment, the inability of the thought or the emotion to get into a decently long stride. It remains as true today as it ever
that the supreme art of composition is the art of transition. It need not be in the future the same kind of transition as in the past. The older technique of coherence, the product in part of musical lyricism, in part of the instinct for decorative pattern-weaving, 'will not serve for a music that, like Debussy's La Mer, leans more towards impressionist painting. But this kind of music will never be the equal of the older music until it achieves an equivalent technique of transition: we cannot endure for ever an art that resembles a series of lovely miniatures roughly pasted together to look like a big picture. And French music will not achieve such a technique as this until it realizes that 'style' is no more a French than a German or an Italian or an English monopoly, and that style without substance is hardly more than the grin without the
was
cat.
VIII
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NEW YORK POST

1924-1925
THE SPEED OF MUSIC,
1924
ONE
the younger English musical critics, who has a comprehensive distaste for most composers except Mozart,
OF
astonished
me
little
while ago by writing
this: 'All
fast.
musicians play Mozart, in
my opinion, much too
modern The habit
produced by modern music of listening to blocks of sound makes one unconsciously liable to dash through Mozart and pass over all the exquisite detail. In order to fasten and sharpen our attention, it is necessary to play Mozart more slowly than it was customary even to play him in his own day.'
I find myself unable to agree, just as I was unable to with the two ladies on a London bus whose conversation I agree the other day. We were going down Regent hear to happened Street, and one of the ladies remarked how interesting the shop
With this
windows were. 'Yes', said the other, 'but they don't give you time to see them properly. They ought to run the buses slowly down Regent Street', regardless, I suppose, of the mere men who have no great interest in the shop windows, but are possessed only with a base utilitarian desire to get from one spot to another as
quickly as possible.
not be at all surstrangers to me. But I should of aunts maiden the were that to learn young they prised friend the musical critic. They, like him, evidently thought that
The ladies were
my
205
Testament of Music
when you had a good thing you could not linger too long over it. But I confess I cannot see how we should gain by playing Mozart,
or any other composer, on the principle of the slow motion in this way, a little more might, it is true, be made, pictures. conscious of the detail; but is detail, in itself, of such great
We
It
account?
but to
insist
has to be there, and always is there in the finest work; overmuch on it is to destroy the picture as a whole.
to have the
We merely substitute a lower intellectual interest for a higher one.

It is interesting
manoeuvres of a couple of boxers
slowed down by the cinema to such an extent that every detail of blow, is made dear; but is there the movement, of
every
thrill
every
is
in this that there
in the real thing?
We have, I think, to be particularly careful in this matter of the

tempo of the older music, because speed is merely
a relative, not an
absolute conception. All agreed-on measurements, whether of time or space, imply a fixed standard. If there is no fixed standard,
the same term will have different meanings for different people
or different epochs. nothing can be the twentieth century idea of speed is very different from that of the eighteenth century. As everything in the modern world goes faster than it used to do in the old, what our ancestors would
Now
more
certain than that
probably have regarded
as scorching
seems to us
car
little
more than
and the aeroplane have a crawl. The railway train, the motor been regarded as a have made what a hundred years ago would to us of today dizzy speed, to us, quite a sober one. It appears ever have been run over positively incredible that people should
by a horse-drawn cab. Only a paralytic could achieve that feat nowadays; but we have only to look back a few years to realize that the most agile of us had then to put on the same speed to get out of the way of
the horse-cab as
mobile.
have to escape the rush of the autoseemed the same speed. In truth it was very at twice the different. skip out of the way of the automobile the avoid to to work used we that horse-cab; at least, up speed, street is in the else because but it seems no fester, everything
we now
it
Or
rather
We
correspondingly
fester.
Apply
these considerations to music,
and you
see at
once that
New York Post 207 our notions of the tempo of the older works have to be revised. What may have seemed a breakneck pace to a musician of the eighteenth century is probably only a canter to us. I am not urging that all old music should be taken prestissimo, but only that it should be translated, as it were, into the modern speedContributions to the
all
language. Mozart's or Haydn's normal pace, could we now discover would, I conjecture, be found too humdrum for us today;
it,
it
would seem like jogging along in a growler' while the rest of the town was whizzing past us in Rolls Royces. And for old music of which the very essence is speed, music that was intended by the
composer to convey in its own day a sense of gay adventure, with the pulse accelerated beyond the normal, we should surely adopt a tempo that is to the average speed-sense of today what the - that is original tempo was to the average speed-sense ofthat day to say, a tempo rather faster than our forefathers would have
thought proper. This need involve no sensation of hurrying, so long as the technique of the performers is clean enough to define everything
as sharply at the quicker
tempo as at the slower; and the technique

orchestra
is
of a
first-class
modern
certainly equal to this.
The
Pardy from lack of technique, partly from ordinary human disabilities, they cannot move with the speed this new conception of the older music demands of them. Our singers may be better than those of a century or two ago in some respects; their musical sense is bound to have been deepened and enriched by the remarkable emotional developments of music since Beethoven. But the average of agility among them is are many old certainly lower than it was a century ago. There Italian operas that would probably be successful today in a II Signor thoroughly competent production works like Rossini's
singers are in a different case.
Bruschino, for instance.

it would be difficult to get a cast together that could sing kind of music at the pace and with the elasticity it demands. Even with the best technique, the average human larynx cannot
But
this
were made hope to achieve the agility of the average violin. We few a years ago, when Sir very conscious of this in England
208
Testament of Music
is
Thomas Beecham, who
an exceptionally
brilliant
Mozart
conductor, used to try to play the more animated numbers of the Mozart operas at a speed corresponding to our modern notions of he could get whatever he wanted, vivacity. From the orchestra
and the
effect there
was
exhilarating
beyond
description.
But the
they had to do with the knotty conpoor sonants of the English language, could not keep pace with him and the orchestra; they were like a cart-horse harnessed to a racer.
singers, struggling as
the same thing with the quintet of Carmen; he gave us a pace so sprightly that I have never been able to tolerate the quintet under any other conductor. But again the singers, hustled as they were, acted as a sort of brake on die wheel. I sometimes suspect that music en masse is becoming slower than it was in the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth. One of the things that puzzle us most in reading die criticisms of that - Stendhal's may be taken as typical - is the Italian view period that Mozart was 'too learned'. Music, it seems to us, could
Sir
Thomas Beecham used to do
in the second act
hardly go more nimbly
on
its
feet
than Mozart's operatic did.
But we have only to compare it with Cimarosa's to see what the people of that day had in their minds. The Germans were too harmonic for a purely melodic race, as the Italians were then. Now music that is largely harmonic is always bound to be, in the
main, less agile than music that is predominandy melodic. Mozart's wider range of harmony had the effect of slowing his
music down relatively to that of the Italians, who were satisfied with fewer chords, that gave the melody more freedom. A movement like the ensemble in Cimarosa's delicious litde - one of the fastest things, opera-ballet, Le Astuzie Femminili - was surely, in all music beyond the powers of any German musician of the day, even Mozart. It is, indeed, to the Italian opera of the generation from Cimarosa to Rossini that we have to go if we want an idea of what sheer pace in music meajis. And the joy in and by and for itself, which can be as exhilarating in music as in motoring, will never come back into music until someone simplifies it harmonically. We poor mortals cannot have everything at once. If we want the intoxicating spin of the blood
209 comes with fifty miles an hour, we must give up the thought of enjoying the scenery. If we want the exhilaration of a pace like Cimarosa's or Rossini's, or Mozart's in some of his ravishing symphonic finales, we must surrender the delights of harmonic
that
New York Post
introspection.
Perhaps one of these days another Rossini will come, a healthy, joyous animal who will bother as little about modern problems of
harmonic expression as Rossini bothered about the problems of Beethoven. If he does come, he will sweep the modern world as his predecessor swept the old; for to the man of today even more
than to his grandfather, speed qua speed,
attraction.
is
irresistible in its
Meanwhile,
let us see to it that
Mozart and Rossini and

at a
the other light-footed ones of the past
go
pace appropriate to
our altered modern conceptions of speed.
LETTER FROM A LADY,
1924
I
IN COMMON, I suppose, with the rest of my colleagues received the following letter from Mme. Lucrezia Bori:
have
'Dear
Sir,
- Pardon
me
for
effrontery. We Spanish women are not in the habit of writing
my
seeming but innocent
to newspapers, especially to take exception to criticism of our one more than I respects the musical professional work.
No
When I sing badly or act within their province to tell both me and badly, certainly the public so, provided they explain in simple language where and why I sang or acted badly and just how I should correct
critics
in their duties to the public.

it is
my faults.
'However,
regarding my not a Joan
critics
costumes, reserve the right (even though I am of Arc) to cross swords with them. Some of these
I
when my kind
musical
critics
take
me
to task
took serious exception to my costumes as Giulietta, the Venetian courtesan, in the second act of The Tales of Hoffmann. I don't think I am mistaken in assuming that they all belong to the more serious or sterner sex. Such being the case, as a woman
2io
I
Testament of Music
may be permitted to
toilette.
question their authority as arbiters of the
feminine
no malice, I am prepared 'Consequently, to show that I bear to give a nice little tea party in honour of the musical critic of course), who will submit to me the best original
(male,
sketch of a smart eighteenth-century Venetian courtesan's evening frock suitable to the scene in question.
*Of course, he must be honour bound

without the
pathetic or sweetheart.
to create this design
or unsym- may I even say without the knowledge? - of his wife

aid, direct or indirect, sympathetic
'Naturally, the musical critics eligible in the contest,
of fashion journals are not
LUCREZIA SORT
Nothing, I am sure, could have been further from Mme. Bori's thoughts than obtaining publicity. I must apologize, therefore, for inflicting upon her something so repugnant to her as a singer, and can only justify myself on the ground that her letter raises a question of some interest to opera-goers.
Let me, by the way, say that if critics there who were so abandoned as to 'take serious exception* to Mme. Bori's costume as Giulietta, I was not one of them. I am glad to say I did not notice it, which is a tribute to her singing, for it is my experience that a musical critic's preoccupation with a singer's costume varies inversely with his interest in her vocal art. I remember a French Tosca who, in the second act, wore a frock so tight and so
diaphanous that when I came to write my notice on the performance I found, to my astonishment, that I had not the faintest recollection of how she had sung, or, indeed, if she had sung at all. I confess my total inability to design a dress for a Venetian
courtesan, not to
ought to regard
do not know whether we critics of aquaintance on our with such as a on morals or a tribute to reflection our subjects part our charm. But there have been occasions when even I, a mere specimen of what Mme. Bori flatteringly calls *the more serious or sterner sex', have ventured to have an opinion of my own as
mention that
I
Mme.
Bori's assumption
New York Post
211
of some detail or other in an opera singer's I have never been able to understand how rough and appearance. Russian women peasant starving always manage to look as if they had stepped straight out of a beauty parlour -judging from the evidence of the forest scene in Boris Godounov - or how
to the appropriateness
Manon,
for
all
those
in Puccini's opera, managed to tramp the rough prairie weary miles in satin shoes without either hurting her
feet or
damaging the shoes; or
how Wotan
and Fricka, in the
second scene of the Rhinegold, sometimes manage to have gold ornaments about them before the existence of gold is known to the gods - a point, by the way, upon which Wagner once expressed himself strongly in a letter to Hans Richter.
And while we are reforming opera from the sartorial standpoint, why should we not take oratorio in hand? Could anything
be more absurd than Elijah in evening dress, or the Daughter of Zion in a transformation? Would not oratorio singers put more realism into their work if they were properly garbed? For my part, if I had the power I would insist on all oratorios being sung in the costume of the period - with a possible exception in the case of the Creation.
A NOTE ON PUCCINI,
THE NEWS of Puccini's
melancholy
interest in
1924
death
would be
received with especially
York, where, no doubt, his new opera, Turandot, would have been produced as soon as possible. There seems, however, to be a little uncertainty as to whether the opera is quite finished. It would be a great pity if it were not; for it would have been interesting to see whether the new promise of
his latest published
fulfilled.
New
work -
the three one-act operas
- was being
Puccini was evidently changing in the triptych; he was shedding a lot of his sentimental grossness and acquiring a fresh lightness and quickness of touch. One is inclined to believe that he
deliberately experimented in the one-act form to cure himself ofhis
tendency to prolixity and overemphasis. In the old days he would
212
certainly
Testament of Music
have made full-length operas of both II Tabarro and Suor the big scene of each - in the one case the revenge, Angelica, with - drawn in the other the revelation of the death of the nun's child out with the same deliberateness, the same slow, calculated piling of effect on effect, horror on horror, as in the second and third acts of Tosca. The one-act form not only forced concision on him but gave a new intensity to his expression: and of course he had few years. developed greatly as a musician in the last His method of harrowing us in the crucial scene of Suor as in the final scene of Tosca - the Angelica is precisely the same one of the slow, heavy phrase. But in the maddening reiteration later work the obsession motive, as we may call it, is at once it had to be, indeed, to simpler, more direct and more poignant,
permit of our enduring its being repeated so very many more times than the corresponding phrase in Tosca is. There were always two strains contending for mastery in him. There was the Puccini who dipped his thumb into the paint and drew with the thick of it, and the Puccini who was a masterly
miniaturist.
his
The two
Puccinis are to be found side
by
side in all
works, but most of them show a decided predominance of the one or the other. Tosca is almost throughout gross, thick-fingered, from the rank thick-lipped, while Madam Butterfly, apart
sentimentality of the love music, is the Puccini of the lighter touch. There are beauties and poignancies so exquisite in Madam
Butterfly that
chamber music. We have always to distinPuccini the dramatist and Puccini the musician. between guish His knowledge of stage effect has become a commonplace of criticism. But his musical art is generally at its grossest when he is
they belong rather to
planning these theatrical knock-down blows. The musician that musicians prefer to think of is the Puccini of the more delicate
we can hardly savour them properly in the theatre;
moments of La Boheme and Madam

Gianni
It
Butterfly,
and, above
all,
of
Schicchi.
work, more than anything else, that made us feel that a new Puccini was beginning to realize himself. His Bohemians are all charmingly handled; but, to say nothing of the pathos of their darker moments, there is about them even in their gayer
was
this last
New York Post

is
213
with comedy. moments in the comic the we spirit both But in Gianni Schicchi genuine get from derives Puccini that been said has It in the music. play and his in Verdi from the and early Massenet in his lighter moods this himself he But put moods of sentimentality and brutality. That distinction out of court when he gave us Gianni Schicchi. comes from a truly Italian, not a French, tradition. delightful work The finest flower of this tradition is Verdi's incomparable Gianni Schicchi comes a good second to it. Here, as in Fabtaffi but of comedy, easy on we get the authentic musical language Falstaff, to the ear. And that suave and of accent, the lips, polished always in him is a orientation new of conscious was Puccini himself Italian of idiom familiar the of opera shown by his treatment about Florence and in the appeal of Gianni the in song lyricism Schicchi's daughter to him. Puccini here plays all the accustomed all Italian tricks on us, but without any desire to take us in; he is had He outgrown the while smiling at them and us and himself. these little personal and racial nonsensicalities, but he still turns a and caresses them even while he kindly and tolerant eye on them, not only is ridiculing them. At sixty, seemingly, Puccini was at about the same age, did as Verdi but developing, changing must wait for Turandot winning his way into a clearer air. as a musician between in him on went further to see what
a wistfulness that
hardly consistent
We
changes
sixty
and
sixty-five.
TWO OPEN LETTERS UPON THE SEASON

AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE PERFORMANCES FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE VISITING CRITIC AND THE
MANAGEMENT,
1924
Dear Newman, - By this time you must be pretty well fed up on from persons more or less associated with literary communications old New York. You must at least be little in our musical activities
that seems to be epidemic in impressed with the itch for writing
214
our musical
circles. I
Testament of Music
think, therefore, that you can understand in adding to the accumulating contents of your hesitancy waste-basket.
my
my dear boy, as we were both born under the Union I am quite an old, while you are a new, importation though Jack, into this land of liberty and free speech, perhaps you will indulge me as a former (may I say?) neighbour, as we started life with the Irish Sea between us. You, perhaps, know that I am associated with an institution known as the Metropolitan Opera Company in a certain nonWell,
descript capacity. I don't
know exactly what I am in the institumost dignified

tide
tion
publicity secretary seems the
in
vulgar parlance, press agent.

status thus being established, you may take me in a Pickwickian sense or otherwise, when I tell you frankly - but
My
understand
me not officially - that you have certainly spanked us
since you arrived in America to record your of impressions operatic and other musical events in New York. I would be the last one to say that, from time to time, your 'observations' on some of our performances have been unreasonable. But, my dear old man, there have been times when - let me - I think say it frankly you have been hardly fair to the opera in its serious and honest endeavours to provide our management very exigent public with the best that physical conditions and
good and hard
available
It is
human
I
a long time since I
elements can in these days furnish. have seen any operatic performances in
England, and
am
not in a position, personally, to compare
operatic productions in the British capital with those of the Metropolitan. I cannot, personally, pass upon the dramatic judgment
effectiveness
recent years. I
ians
of the Italian operas given in Covent Garden in do not know whether the caperings of the Bohem-
when Puccini's opera is given there are more veristic than the
play-acting of our artists; or whether your Andrea Cheniers sing to the audience instead of addressing the Revolutionary
Tribunal. I do
know, however, that the spaces of the MetroHouse politan Opera certainly are larger than those of Covent Garden, and that in these Italian operas and others, if the singers
New York Post

strict
215
requirements of the in the artistic stage management, gallery and in the back people
do not to some extent diverge from the

little
of the house would hear very

paid their
of the voices for which they
good money to hear. However, old man, all this is merely en passant, and I am sure you will take it in the spirit in which is it written. Even though you do not spank us and find fault with things that I am sure you would easily pass over if you knew all the difficulties latter days have brought (even in America) to the production of opera, to meet the present demand in New York - to the organizing of a season of twenty-four weeks in which we are compelled to give seven, eight and nine performances a week - never repeating an
opera
on
where
subscription nights (for unlike European opera houses, subscribers are willing to hear the same opera half a dozen
times, here
our subscribers would
raise
a howl if they were
compelled to hear any opera a second time) I am quite sure you would be less caustic in some of your comments on our evening
you could spare the time to drop into my 'how the wheels go round*. I am certain that the * last thing you would find would be Anarchy*. I have had the honour to be on Mr. Gatti-Casazza's staff for fourteen years. If he is an 'Anarch' then Anarchy is Heaven's first Law*
entertainments if
office
and
see
Finally, in order to square myself, let me add that while I think you have occasionally given the Metropolitan Opera a bit of a
tough deal, I am quite with you on the transitory quality of the jazz craze and the illusion as to the value of so-called 'national* opera and music. After all there are only two kinds of music
good music and bad music. The one doesn't. And there you are
!
survives
and the other
Fraternally yours,
William J. Guard.
*
to express oneself,
My Dear Guard, - I suppose that, however clearly one may try

somebody or other is sure to misunderstand one.
Perhaps, therefore, I ought not to be surprised at your reading into recent innocent remarks on the subject of opera in
my
New
2i6
Testament of Music
invidious comparison between the Metropolitan Opera House and Covent Garden. A glance at my articles, however, will show you that no such comparison was made or intended. It would be impossible, for you cannot compare the existent with the non-existent. International opera - that is to of the
say,
York an
opera
kind that
we now
is
Covent Garden latter place.
get at the Metropolitan and used to get at virtually extinct, for economic reasons, in the
great season in London was in the months that preceded the war in 1914. In that year we had a short season that was an attempt, tinder
last
The
very
difficult circumstances,
to revive an old institution in a
The season, in spite of one or two striking a success. We had no more international was not performances, in London till the summer of this opera year, when a season was
greatly changed world.
patched up to meet a contingency that had suddenly had a few pretty good performances of the Ring and Salome and Ariadne in Naxos, some first-rate performances of the Rosenkavalier, and a few mixed performances of the staler Italian operas. The 'grand season* in London seems to be a dead institution. The London public in the past did not mind paying high prices to hear the stars; but it refoses now to pay star prices and not get the stars - who, indeed, do not appear to exist now.
hastily arisen.
We
You will see, then, that my criticism of the Metropolitan way of giving opera was not prompted in the least by any vainglorious feeling that we have a better way in London. As a matter of fact,
public opinion in England
is slowly but steadily moving away from foreign opera towards opera in English. The desire is becoming intense to have a genuinely national opera, on the lines of the big Continental cities - opera sung not by birds of passage, in all sorts of languages that the people do not understand, and at
prices that a heavily taxed people cannot pay, but by English or English-speaking singers. The British company that Sir Thomas
Beecham ran during

be done in
this
the
war showed
way. Few of the
us in England what could singers had voices that would
permit them to rank
as stars in the big international theatres; but dint of their by constantly playing together under a man of genius who was competent to supervise every factor of opera, we
New York Post 217 not of but of of ensemble an action, merely singing psychogot logy, of scenery, of production, that made the performances extraordinarily interesting and enjoyable. Opera became something that a man of intelligence could listen to with his whole intelligence, not merely with his ears. But unfortunately Sir Thomas Beecham could not continue his good work. His company was wrecked; and we are now trying to rebuild the ship and re-man the crew. I go into all this because I should not like either you or my New York readers in general to think I had been guilty of the crude impertinence of coming here as a guest and arrogantly telling New York it is inferior to London. Quite the contrary. We have nothing in London just now as good as the Metropolitan. My argument was that, with its human material and its financial resources, the Metropolitan could easily be very much better than it is. If I say that I have been somewhat disappointed
in the singing as a whole, purely qua singing, that is hardly a disparagement of the Metropolitan. Of those I had not already heard I had perhaps been led to expect too much from report. The
plain truth is that as regards great opera singers the whole world is rather in a backwater at present; but that is not the fault of the
Metropolitan- though everyone who knows anything ofthe singers of today could mention one or two who would be an improve-
New York. of the Metropolitan performances was, in the main, this - that they seem to indicate a lack either of the power or of the will, on the part of those in authority, to impose that authority upon the singers, to rid some of these people of the quaint notion that nothing matters in the opera of the evening but themselves and their voices, and to make them realize that they are only parts of a dramatic whole. I went into this question in some detail in my previous articles, and I will not inflict it upon my readers again. I would only say that not only do you not refute me, but you actually agree with me. You do not attempt to deny the truth of my criticisms; you only say, in effect, that things are as they are because of the difficulty of making them any different. May I remind you that qui s excuse, s accuse?
ment on some of those we
are hearing this season in
My
criticism
2i8
Testament of Music
You do
not deny, for example, that
mit that first and greatest sin against operatic stepping their dramatic characters to face the house (in some cases even to
approach the footlights) and addressing die audience
directly.
some of your singers comart out of
Your excuse is that tie Metropolitan is so large that only thus can they make themselves heard. You are surely not serious. If there were anything in what you say, we should find the whole company, in every opera, lining up to the footlights to sing. But many of the singers manage to make themselves heard perfectly without coming out of the dramatic picture; and if these can do so, why cannot the others? The plain truth is that they could, but
They care little for dramatic truth; they are vain of their and want applause; to get it they will stop at no inartistic trick; and instead of having their errors pointed out to them and being bidden to correct them by those in presumed authority over
will not.
voices
them, they are, if we may take your letter at its face value, actually encouraged in them. I have sat and wondered how some of the things I saw and heard were made possible. Now I know.
The only
other feature of your letter that
calls
my part
is
your appeal ad misericordiam.

difficulties
You
for a reply on ask us to take into
account your internal
and
troubles.
With
all
possible
Neither the press nor the public has anything to do with the private difficulties of an artist or an artistic institution. The press and the public are concerned solely with results. You yourself would be the first to refuse to take a workman's difficulties into consideration when purchasing the product
sympathy,
we cannot.
you were asked to buy a pair of which were badly fitted to the uppers, you would reject them even though you were assured that the trouble came from the shoemaker having injured his hands at baseball. If you were viewing an exhibition of pictures, you would not regard it as any excuse for a piece of bad colouring that the artist's wife had left him. If, at a recital, a pianist pedalled badly, you would not, on being told that he suffered from an ingrowing toe-nail, declare that his pedalling was ideal.
of his work;
if,
for example,
shoes the soles of
Ernest
Newman
New York Post
219
IVOR STRAVINSKY AND HIS WORKS,

IT
1925
WOULD be interesting to be born again about the middle of the next century, to see what the historians of music make of the case
any composer attracted such of so little vital achievement. At the age of forty-two and a half he has to his credit - what? Some youthful works of no great importance. Two small works of genius, L'Oiseau de Feu (1910) and Petrouchka (1911). An uneven but often remarkable opera, The Nightingale (1914), that forms the basis of the orchestral piece of the same name. A work still more remarkable at its best, but also still more uneven, Le Sacre du Printemps (1912). Since 1914, mostly a succession of failures and half-successes: Mavra, L'Histoire du Soldat, and a number of small instrumental pieces and songs with an occasional charming little thing like Renard and an interesting work like Les
Noces, that, however,
is
of Stravinsky. Never, surely, has universal attention on the strength
too purely Russian to capture the musical
world
as
a whole.
Since Le Sacre du Printemps and The Nightingale, in fact, he has done next to nothing that, had it appeared under any signature but his, would have drawn the general attention to him. And all this at an age when Mozart and Schubert and Chopin and Mendelssohn and Purcell and Weber were dead, when Schumann's work was finished, when Hugo Wolf's work was finished, when Strauss had to his credit such permanent contributions to the world's repertory as Don Juan, Tod und Verklaerung, Till EulenDon Quixote, Ein Heldenieben, Salome, and a spiegel, Zarathustra, number of songs and sm.a1.ler works; an age when Beethoven had written seven of his symphonies, Fidelio, the Leonora No 3, Coriolan and Egmont overtures, all five of his piano concertos, his violin concerto, all his quartets but the last five, all his trios, and all his piano sonatas except the last five or six; an age when Bach had written a large number of works that are still very much alive, including the first set of the '48*, the *St. John Passion' (he was forty-four 'when the 'St. Matthew' was written), and die
Brandenburg Concertos. I am not making any comparison between Stravinsky and these
220
Testament of Music
other composers. I am only pointing out with what a meagre quantity of notable work (for a man of his age) he has managed to
focus the attention of the
so long.
whole musical world upon himself for
What is the secret of it? Le Sacre du Printemps, surely; and not so much that work itself as the controversy tint has raged over it.
out with an extraordinary piece of good luck. It was first produced in Paris, and there was almost a riot in the theatre.
It started
Those of us who know Paris know that this really meant nothing. Li no town in the world do people make so much fuss about so little where art is concerned. In London or New York or Dresden, if a work that is out of the common is given for the first time, people either like it or dislike it, but they do not break out into physical violence over it either way. But in Paris, the most
conventional city in the world, there
tradition
is
a venerable tradition that
must be made war upon.
There is nothing so conventional as youth; it says and does the same things at the same age in every epoch. In Paris the young artists who are the unconscious victims of this hoary convention
are always looking for some new convention to protest against. In the early years of this century almost the whole world was beginning to weary a little of die music of the great classical period of about 1700 to 1900 (not one person in a million knows
anything of the magnificent music of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries), and longing for something new, somefew people in Paris decided thing less romantic, less emotional. that Stravinsky was the new man, and Le Sacre du Printemps the beginning of the new era. It was to them what Victor Hugo's Cromwell was to the generation of 1830. The who were
people thought it necessary, in face of the shouts that were being raised for it, to shout even more loudly against it. So there was a charming scene that night in the Theatre des Champs - were broken; and the Sacre heads or at rate hats Elys&s; any was launched with a reclame that falls to the lot of few works. Then the inevitable happened. There is always a certain number of people who make a point of being in what they regard as the
shocked
at the Sacre
van.
The
Sacre
became
their slogan.
European
critics
who would
New York Post
221
have laboured in vain to get much of a hearing for themselves by writing about music in general made quite a reputation for themselves for a time by taking Stravinsky under their protection. They assured the world, without any false modesty, that they were the pioneers, the men with the future-piercing vision, and anyone who did not say what they said was a reactionary. That made it easier still. Few people can stand being called reactionaries; it hurts their self-esteem. They never think of inquiring into the meaning of the word, or its applicability to the case in point: they see the cat jumping, and the herd instinct prompts them to jump with it. So quite a pretty legend grew up around the Sacre in every country that had not heard it, or, having heard it once or twice in 1913 or 1914, had forgotten it during the long years of the war. The legend was that this was the most remarkable work our generation had heard, or was likely to hear unless Stravinsky himself happened to surpass it: there had at last been what Nietzsche would call a transvaluation of values. Such a legend could exist only so long as the Sacre was neither published nor performed. As soon as it became generally accessible and audible it began to be recognized that it was a work of very mixed quality. It was absurd to talk of only the future being
able to grasp it; there was nothing in it to puzzle any musician. It was simply the Stravinsky ofPetrouchka developing a step further, with all the former Stravinsky's excellencies and limitations. His musical gift is really a rather small one. Left to himself he can
invent comparatively little that is vital, as we can see in the new piano concerto. For his best thematic material he has always been
largely dependent upon Russian folk-song or popular song, as in L'Oiseau de Feu and Petrouchka, where the best tunes are not his own. His limitations are many. His qualities are few but remark-
He has brought a new psychology into music - the psychology of the primitive soul. He has created a texture entirely his own; and we can never weary of admiring the superb certainty
able.
of his orchestration.
How then does the Sacre stand today? The novelty of it has worn off. A good deal of its first effect was purely physical it was impossible to sit unmoved under that torrent of sound; the mere
:
222
Testament of Music
noise hi certain parts set up a profound disturbance in us. But this effect could not last: the time was bound to come when we were
by the sound purely as sound, but sat the value of what was being said. and examined through it calmly Perhaps one-third of the work, we now see, is first-rate: the voice of the primitive world itself, harsh, powerful, menacing, speaks through this music. But a great deal of the music has all the familiar faults of the Russian nationalist school - the shortbreathed phrase, the limited mental outlook, the endless, tiresome repetition of the same little figures. The section entitled 'Augures Printaniers: Danses des Adolescents', begins magni- what - but it soon ficently power there is in the mere rhythm usual Russian into the That incessant triviality. lapses repetition of the same figure is the mark of the savage or the child in music. The whole evolution of music in Europe has meant getting away from this kind of thing, and learning how to talk connectedly and organically in tones; and the clock will certainly not be put back by Stravinsky and his primitive methods. Several of my friends were disappointed with the performance we had of Le Sacre du Printemps the other evening. I ventured to suggest to them that it was not that the performance was not as good as some previous one they had heard, but that the work
no longer
to be shaken
!
in fact, unconsciously This is an discovering frequent commonplace. experience I have more than once gone through in connection with myself other music ; it takes us a little time to realize that we have hitherto
itself impressed
its
them
less
- that they were,
we naturally assume, when the first disillusionment comes, when the accustomed thrill fails to arrive, that it is the performance that is at fault. I never had much opinion
overestimated a work, and so
myself of the section entitled 'Rhondes Printani&res' (after, that is first few bars of the sostenuto e pesante, the rhythmic effect of which is superb). But though the later handling of the
to say, the
theme made no appeal to me,

if not impressed, at
as music, in the score, I
used to be,
any
rate
thoroughly shaken, by
the effect of it
the effect
in the concert room.
The other evening, however, I was not even shaken;

had been from the
first
a purely physical one, and
my
nerves
New York Post
223
reason; but if that means the passing from the repertory of the work as a whole we shall all be sorry, for there is some splendid stuff in it. But what has become of the Stravinsky who wrote the Sacre in
decline to respond to it any longer. I fancy that as time goes good deal of the Sacre will cease to move us for the same
on
1912?
certo
To
is
pass from the best parts of this to the to feel that in declining from the ranks of
piano congenius he has not
new
remained a
mediocrity.
even, like Mendelssohn or Strauss in similar circumstances, talent, but has overshot the mark and become a
IX
THE
SPIRIT
OF THE AGE
(From the
Fortnightly Review, 1930)
TO DESCRIBE,
acteristics
as I
am
expected to do, 'the general char-
and tendency* of the music of the day in a single
short article is a difficult, if not impossible task, for the international field is wide, the tendencies are manifold, and the general
situation changes every
few
years.
Moreover,
it is
anything but
easy to make some of the technical points clear without the liberal use of the musical quotations. This article, however, is intended not for the expert but for the general reader, to I will
whom
can the change that has come over the face of music during the last two decades or so, and the reasons for the change. But I feel that I am writing this article a mere matter of three hundred years too soon. An eminent German musician, Alfred Lorenz, who has devoted himself particularly to investigating the laws that control both the course of musical history and the operations of the individual musical mind, has given us
explain as best I
the soundest reasons for believing that a radical change in the orientation of music comes about at the end of every three
Every student knows that a face-about of this kind happened at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries, when the polyphonic style that had been the goal of musical endeavour for some three hundred years was rejected in favour of a homophonic style, that found its first outlet in the Florentine opera. On Lorenz's theory, another revolution was due about 1900; and it is from approximately the beginning of the new
centuries.
22$
226
Testament of Music
century that the change dates of which the whole musical world is now feeling the effects. It is quite an error to attribute this change
to the war.
The main forces had been at work long before the war; they were rooted in the very nature of the art, were basic elements in the great secular cycle and the contribution of the war
;
and the subsequent peace to the disturbance was really so slight that the historian of a hundred years hence, surveying the field and trying to trace the laws that underlay the course of events,
will probably dismiss these influences in half-a-dozen lines. man can foresee the future of music even for a generation.
No
can learn something by a study of the past, for, on the principle that Nature never does a thing merely once, we may
But
we
anticipate that, mutatis mutandis, history will repeat itself, and that both the theories of the present time and the works written in
little enduring value, but will that the music and the mere historical curiosities be the mostly of 1600 are now. I shall of the Florentine Camerata speculations return to this point at the end of my article.
conformity with them will have
An
art, like
mum
of
a civilization or a community, develops its maxiefficiency by the suppression of certain internal forces
of others, and collapses when the suppressed forces who are working under the same general influences and are inspired by the same general ideals come to a tacit agreement to concentrate on certain elements and to pass over others. It is the law of the line of least resistance; the problems to be solved by any given artistic genre are so many and so complex that the human mind instinctively simplifies its problem by ignoring everything but the essentials of it. It took Europe at least two centuries of concentrated effort to develop the art of polyphony to the perfection it had attained by the end of the sixteenth century. But polyphony had not annihilated the other main elements of music; it had only driven them underground, and the time was bound to come when they would force tixeir way upward and disrupt the musical polity that had kept
for the benefit
can no longer be held under. Artists
The Spirit of the Age 227 them in subjection. This point needs to be grasped at the outset if we are to understand the meaning and the reason of the musical revolution of today. Vocal polyphony attained its marvellous solidity and complexity of texture at the expense of certain other
The life of music, like life in general, is a constant struggle between opposing principles; and musical history in future will probably be written from this standpoint. Music is perpetually distracted by the fight of two basic elements
elements of music.
for mastery.
We may call them, roughly, the song element and the

The former
tries
formal element.
correlatives in
to realize itself by
point-to-point expression of human emotions
words.
The
latter
aims at
means of a have their the organization of the

that
musical mass into designs that exist in virtue of their own inner life. Each element, if it is not checked, will tyrannize over the other. On the one hand we will get 'poetic' music that is so intent
on following emotional suggestion that the inner structure of the the symphonic poems of Liszt may serve as illustrations. On the other hand we get music that is a model of - as in the case next to formal organization but
work becomes weak:
expresses
nothing
of an academic symphony or fugue.

I
cannot pursue
is
this principle
here in
all its
ramifications.
My
merely to show how the principle operated in present purpose musical history three hundred years ago. The vocal polyphonists
achieved their marvels of weaving and structure by ignoring, in the main, the 'poetic' side of the musical impulse. The Florentine
sense
reformers revolted against polyphony because, as they said, the of the words was lost in it. sing words at all, they asked, unless you mean the sense of them to be caught; and how
Why
can you catch their sense, or even their essential accent and rhythm, when four or five voices are singing different words at the same time? The words, and the inner life of the words, had necessarily been sacrificed in order to obtain a musical mass that
with
of laws of its own the skilled weaving of part the part, entrancing pky of contrary rhythms co-operating to the one architectural end. The Florentines threw all this overexisted in virtue
board to concentrate on the rights of the words and what was meant by the words ; their ideal was a melodic line that 'expressed*
228
Testament of Music
the words supported on simple harmonies that gave an added emotional intensity to both the words and the melodic curves
and accents and dynamics generally. Their immediate success showed that their reform was not peculiar to them, but was in the air of the time; a long-suppressed element in music was deter-
mined
to
come
into
its
own again.
m
The revolution of 1900 was also the revolt of certain suppressed elements against others that had had power too long in their own hands. The revolters attacked both the ideals and the language of
art. The two, indeed, were part and parcel of each neither could be undermined without the other collapsing. other; Instinctively obeying that law of the line of least resistance to
the current
which I have called attention, composers for many generations had put aside many of the theoretic possibilities of die musical
language in order to make a thoroughly serviceable instrument of the remainder. There are twelve notes in the scale - the seven diatonic ones that make up the octave (the final note of the octave not being counted separately), and five chromatic notes. The basis
of the composers' thinking was diatonic; there are a few fundamental chords that form the plasm out of which the whole of music, as we knew it until yesterday, was evolved; even chromaticism in its subtlest form (Wagner's Tristan is the great historical landmark in this respect) is only a subtilization of the diatonic, the chromatic harmonies being derived from the diatonic by greater and greater sophistication of the fundamental relations between the original seven notes and their five dependents. On this foundation was built, in the course of generations, a language and an art that seemed to be equal to the expression of musical idea that the mind of man could conceive. any But its very perfection bore within it the seeds of its decay. About the end of the nineteenth century it was visibly crumbling, both internally and externally. The language had become so complete and so perfect that it was too easily manipulated; and the great men of die romantic movement had sunk so many wells
The
Spirit
of the Age
229
into the depths of emotion that any number of small men could now, with the minimum of individual effort, pump up something
examined too critically, was a very fair imitation of the real thing. Emotional expression in music had become too easy; the more adventurous minds turned with contempt from it, seeking for an expression that would give them the thrill that comes only from conflict with a substance that has to be subdued before it can be worked in with any pleasure. Simultaneously the old tissue of the language of the art was breaking up. There was really no reason, in the nature of things, why the twelve notes of the scale should for ever live together under the constitution, so to speak, that had been imposed on them. Was not another constitution possible? The great classical and romantic composers must have had intuitions of some of these other possibilities, but
that, if not
they refrained from exploring them; for their instinct told them that an artist will not get very far if he ventures on the experiment
of making a new language as he goes along. If the mind is to easily, it must take a great number of things for granted. But some of the smaller minds, which are always more inclined to the speculative than the great instinctive minds, were long ago questioning the finality of the accepted relationships between the notes of the scale; and it was only a matter of time before some man of genius would show the possibility of other relationships.
work
the whole-tone scale about 1840; Liszt sketches it as a curiosity in a letter of 1860. In the process of time, Debussy took it up and worked it systematically; and with the coming of
Glinka hit
upon
the whole-tone scale a
new
chemical factor was introduced into
the musical language that was to lead to the gradual disintegration of it as musicians had hitherto conceived it.
Let
two
here explain, for the benefit of the lay reader, that the crucial divisions of the scale in the older system - known as
me
tonality
tonic,
- are at the fifth and the fourth. These divisions determine
dominant, and subdominant harmony, and therefore, of course, all the chromatic subtilizations of these. Abolish this traditional division of the language of music into three main tonal relations - those of tonic, dominant, and sub-dominant - and the fabric already begins to crumble. The whole-tone scale does
230
abolish this distinction, for
Testament of Music
of five B and to full-tone intervals plus two C), but six full tones, the scale now being C, D, E, F sharp, G of simply C. The old harmonic society, that was based on sharp, A sharp, the clearly-defined relations of a king-chord, two prime-minister chords, and some dependent people-chords, has thus been undermined. The next step was inevitable. Kingship and aristocracy went by the board; the scale was completely democratized; each note was declared to be as good as any other note, to be as capable of performing the same functions; the old tonality had given place
half-tones (E to F,
now the octave is not made up
to atonality.
rv
Thus it came about old with both feet, as
that the
it
new musical world kicked out the

it
were;
would have nothing
to
do with
the too-easy expressional methods ofits predecessor, and it aimed at a new one on its abolishing the old musical language and setting throne. In theory the revolution was a complete success, for every thoughtful musician was becoming doubtful of the too facile
emotionalism into which the art was in danger of degenerating, and sighed for an expansion of the musical language that might be expected to bring with it an expansion of musical thought and a sorely needed aeration of some portions of it. In practice, however, things were not so easy as the enthusiasts had imagined they
would
I
be.
have sketched the development in the broad, as it will probably appear to the historian of the future. Looked at in detail, however, it is complicated by all kinds of cross-currents. There is really no such thing as 'modernism' in the sense of a common policy, a
common
The
aim, a
common
language
among
the
new
composers.
revolt against the past has taken various forms in different men and in different environments; nor has the same man, with
one or two exceptions, pursued the one consistent course throughout. What we see is many varieties of attempts, some of them instinctive and convulsive, some of them almost wholly speculative, to revive a decaying art by the infusion of new blood into its veins, or by giving its flaccid muscles a new tone and its stiff
The
Spirit
of the Age
23 1
joints a
new articulation.
A good deal of what
is
done
is
purely
and deliberately negative; the composers have no very clear idea of what it is they want to say, but are bent merely on doing something directly opposite to what the nineteenth century did. As I have tried to indicate, the older art was all of a piece; to
this fact it
owed both
its
excellencies
and
its
defects. All the ele-
ments of the
melody was tonal harmony in turn could not develop beyond the limits allowed it by that type of melody; the rhythm was not only correlative to these types of harmony and melody but was planned to assist a certain type of structural design, and was in turn limited by the possibilities of range of the standard types of
design.
art ran in easy harness with each other. The type of conditioned by the basic nature of the harmony; the
With
a musical language the principles, the vocabulary,
and the grammar of which were universally accepted, composers

could build without the necessity of having to be always making new bricks; with the result that building became too easy. The
new
spirit
was declared on the

nineteenth century
attacked the old fabric mercilessly at every point. War facile emotionalism into which die art of the
rapidly drifting; a more cynical, more sceptical generation laughed at the soul-searchings of its fathers, and, priding itself on its superior hardness, took a wild delight in substituting the roughest dissonances for the melting chromaticism
was
of later nineteenth century harmony. In its passion for exploring the sotd, the older art had concentrated over-much on the Eterary side of music. The new art, accordingly, partly out of sheer bravado, partly out of a fundamental misunderstanding of the complex nature of music for there is no sound musical aesthetic as yet swore it would throw 'literature* on the rubbish heap and devote itself purely and simply to 'music', Le., the spinning and weaving of notes by and for themselves alone. There was a general tendency, in theory at any rate, to regard words not as
concepts to be re-expressed in musical ideas, but merely as vocables to eke out a 'purely musical* line of melody ; while some
contempt for the delusions under which such crftins as Schubert and Schumann and Brahms and Hugo Wolf had laboured by choosing for their vocal music texts
brights spirits
showed
their
232
Testament of Music
with a ridiculous meaning or no meaning at all; in one case a number of cuttings from the newspapers of the day were chosen. The older music having expressed too well the over-refinements of a dying civilization, resort was had by some of the revolters to the plainer or wilder or more brutal spirit of their own 'folk*, or to the crudities of primitive races. The great thing was to prevent music from 'thinking* too much; for the dubious new aesthetic 9 held that 'music per se had nothing to do with anything 'outside itself', and particularly with those problems of the soul with which the older composers had tortured themselves and their listeners, and which were now held to be the province of literature
alone. (Stravinsky's objection to Beethoven, for example, is that he is 'too philosophical'.) And while these and other attacks were
being delivered on the inner

attacks equally ruthless
it
spiritual substance
of the old music,
and systematic were launched against its was all of an organic piece, it could be reformed only by a drastic dissolution of its principles of unity, a liberation of each of its elements and a development of them separately along new lines. Exigencies of structure had formerly led to 'themes* being cut more or less to pattern. This was to be abolished; no longer would the composer's idea hobble along in the chains imposed on it by the four or eight-bar phrase that had come from the dance or the song. Melody was to be 'free', not clamped down to a conventional harmonic base; hence the new vogue of unaccompanied suites for single instruments, in which the arabesque fancy of the composer could have unfettered play. Tonality was to give way to atonality or to polytonality - which latter may be roughly defined as writing in two or more keys at once. An end was to be made of the standardised devices of the past for getting design and structure the repetitions, the sequences, the 'developments', and so on. The new music was to have not only a vocabulary but an articulation of its own.
methods. Since
These principles were worked out with the most rigour in Central Europe, among the pupils and adherents of the Schon-
The
Spirit
of the Age
233
berg School. The theory is perfect in its thoroughness and the best expression of it is to be exquisite in its symmetry; perhaps Erwin Stein on 'Neue Formprinzipien' that an found in essay by
will be as valuable to future historians as the manifesti
of the
Florentines are to us.
The only
trouble
is
that music cannot live
by theory alone.
for
It is easy enough to draw up, on paper, a scheme a new in the manner; difficulty is to get men of composing to it, and it is the men of genius who from conform to genius
time to time transform the face of music. These pestilential fellows go a way of their own, and have a way of making the rank and file follow; and I cannot see any man of genius of the future going to school to Schonberg or Erwin Stein or any other theorist. The
master's path and methods will be determined for him by the substance and the chemistry of his own spiritual constitution. And indeed the evolution of the new art is already following, in
the broad, the course that could have been predicted for it from a study of similar revolutions in the past. The pioneers will
certainly not enter the Promised Land; they will be to the musicians of a century or so hence the fascinating historical curiosities that Peri and Cacdni and Gagliano are to us. Already, indeed, a
score of names that proudly decorated the banner of 'progress' no more than ten years ago are so discredited that to come across them now in a treatise of that period brings a smile to the face. The lesson of history is plain. In the first pkce, no great composer ever uses the whole of the theoretic possibilities of the day; and composers who insist on trying to do so are doomed to quick exhaustion and ultimate sterility. A compromise will have to be found between the exaggerated claims of the new language and the established rights of the old, so much of the former being
added to the latter as it can comfortably assimilate. There are abundant signs of this process already; all over Europe the wild men often or fifteen years ago are cutting their daws and trim-
ming
their hair.
In the second place, the next big and relatively stable development of the art will take a form that no theorist can accurately
The men of 1600 were confident that they had swept polyphony from the earth; they would have been very astonished
forecast.
234
Testament of Music
could they have revisited the glimpses of the moon a century later and found polyphony in vogue once more. They thought they were founding music drama on the lines of the ancient Greek tragedy; what really flowered from their noble efforts was Italian opera a very different thing. They could not foresee that vocal music as they conceived it would have to mark time for a long worked out a new language period while instrumental music and methods of its own; and that it would not be until the greatest
master of instrumental music, two centuries
that branch
later,
had endowed
that the greatest master of the music drama, half a century later still, could gather into the one focus all the forces that had been unconsciously pressing
art
of the
with a
new life,
towards a common goal through all these generations. There are ^rmlar surprises in store for any of us who survive another century or so; we can be sure of nothing except that whatever form evolution may ultimately take, it will be one that nobody
can
at present foresee.
The
theoreticians imagine that they are
shaping the music of the future. They flatter themselves; the next great man will take a course determined for him by his own
constitution,
and will
act as if the theoreticians
had never
lived.
The theory of opera had been worked out fully and symmetrically on paper, by all sorts of writers in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries; in the very year of Wagner's birth, one Mosel published a treatise in which the theoretic ground was
surveyed in the most thorough and painstaking way. But if Wagner had died in boyhood, we should still, in all probability,
be very much where the world was in 1813 in the matter of music drama. The vital and wholly personal contribution of Wagner was the infusion of the Beethoven system of thematic development into the veins of vocal music; and no theorist could have foreseen the possibility of the final results of that. The thing had to be created before it could be conceived.
VI
permit myself only one prophecy music in the immediate future will become
I will
that instrumental
far less speculative,
The
Spirit
of the Age
235
and opera much more so. Wagner, who knew as much about the life of music as most men, used to point out that pure instrumental music could not possibly allow itself such licences as dramatic music; a harmonic combination or transition, the audacity and seeming unreason of which would be explained and the words and the action of an opera, would, he said, justified by merely puzzle the listener in a symphony. That is as true now as it was half a century ago. Already we see signs of the unconscious application of it to the new music. Opera, particularly in Germany, is experimenting in the boldest fashion, and with great
inner
success;
while few purely instrumental 'modernist' works are
on the head. A harmonic of the kind we get in Alban Berg's Wozzeck would be to a great extent meaningless in a symphony; but meaning is given it by the stage action and the words. Opera can experiment with life' in a way and to an extent that absolute music cannot; and the audacity with which the new German opera is getting to grips with life will in time endow the musical side of opera with new resources. Meanwhile absolute music will have to go more
being produced that strike the nail
texture
slowly, for the reason that Wagner stated so clearly, until opera has at last provided it with a new kind of nourishment that it can
without injury to itself. A new development of instrumental music, in turn, will permit of a new blood transfusion into the veins of opera, as in the case of Beethoven and Wagner; and so ad infinitum.
assimilate
But though a study of the laws that have operated in the past gives us some warrant for forecasting the very broadest lines of the next development, none of us can see even the next ten years in anything like detail. We must rid ourselves of the flattering
notion that our theorizing is going to determine matters one way or the other^Qurs is the much more modest task of the spectator, interested in the marvellous new game that is being played for our
the vast field of history, and eagerly awaiting the of the next really significant figure, who will give the coming a turn which not all the speculation in the world will help game
benefit
on
us to
forecast.*!:
236
Testament of Music
WOLF'S INSTRUMENTAL
WORKS
1940
(From the
Listener)
WHATEVER MAY be true of other nations, it seems to be a law of German music that the best songs are possible only to composers who are capable of fine work on a larger scale than die song. It may be objected that Robert Franz managed to write a number of good songs without having the smallest claim to be considered a composer on the larger scale. I still think, however, that the proposition holds good in the main. Franz, excellent as some of his songs are
in their way,
we
was not a giant even in his own sphere. For the rest, have only to recaE the names of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Strauss, Mahler and Reger to see that a genius for turning out the best songs implies a genius for working also in other and larger forms. How then does this rule work in the case of Hugo Wolf, whose
commanding genius as a Lieder composer is beyond dispute? Ought he not to have a name for himself also as a composer of
instrumental works, or of operas, or of both? did he produce so little in these two genres, and do such specimens as he did produce warrant the belief that had a longer life been granted him
Why
he would have helped to make history as an opera composer or a symphonist? To answer these questions is not easy; we have to take into consideration not only the nature of the genius of the man as revealed in his songs but the peculiar drcumstances of his
life.
Severe Self-Criticism
Wolf's published instrumental works are only three in number: a string quartet in minor, written between 1877 aad 1880, a
Wolfs
Instrumental
Works
237
symphonic poem for orchestra, Penthesilea (1883), and the Italian Serenade, which we possess in two forms, as a work for small
and in Wolf's later arrangement of it for string The reader will not resent being reminded that "Wolf quartet. was born in 1860 and died in 1903. In the summer of 1897, his mind having given way, he had to be placed in an institution. He was discharged, supposedly cured, in January 1898. He remained at liberty until October of that year, when he was taken to the Lower Austrian Asylum in Vienna, where he died four-and-aquarter years later. His working life thus ended when he was no
orchestra (1893-4),
more than
thirty-seven.
As a boy he tried his hand at not only songs but instrumental works in various genres - piano pieces, music for strings, a concerto for piano and violin, and even a symphony. It is noticeable that practically all these works were left unfinished; in the case of the symphony, which dates from 1876, he worked for a while at the first movement, the scherzo and the finale in turns, but in the end completed none of them; and the reason for this I take to be
that faculty for self-criticism, that capacity for being perfectly honest with himself, that was one of the basic features of his
artistic constitution. It is at
once strange and pathetic that
this rare
faculty did not desert him even when his mental life in general was already in process of decay. During the early part of his first
internment he sketched some
new
matter for his Penthesilea.
While
at liberty in 1898
he played the symphonic
poem one day
to a friend; when he came to the added section he stopped, appalled at the commonplace of it, and would have burned the
manuscript then and there had not his friend dissuaded him. I take it that not only did this habit of self-criticism cause him
to leave so
many
unfinished, but
it
instrumental works projected in his early days made him excessively, needlessly, doubtful
about the two or three works he actually completed.

find
it difficult
We of today
more
to share those doubts.
The
Penthesilea is a
than creditable
his first
- in the largely the result of over-eagerness technical handling of the orchestra, the thinking throughout is
arily inexpertness
young man of twenty-three making the orchestra. Though there is necesswith experiment
work
-
for a
23 8
Testament of Music
undeniably orchestral; the music has not been conceived in terms of the piano and then 'scored'. On the face of it, here was a work
of the richest promise for Wolf's future as an orchestral composer. The string quartet of three or four years earlier is an even more remarkable achievement; it shows a ripeness of mind and a sureness of craftsmanship which it is hard to associate with a boy of nineteen. "Why then did not Wolf continue along these paths? Why did he let the instrumental side of his genius lie completely fallow in the ten years* interval between the composition of Penthesika and that of the Italian Serenade? Once more it seems to me that the explanation is to be sought in his exceptional honesty with himself. Remarkable as the symphonic poem and the quartet are in many ways, they do not
break absolutely fresh ground in the way or to the extent that Wolf's songs do. We can truly say of the more striking of the two works, the quartet, that it short-circuits most of the German chamber music of the half-century before its birth, going back both in spirit and in texture to the later chamber music of Beethoven, and that it has no reason to feel embarrassed even in that august company. But Wolf himself, I imagine, must have said to himself in later years that it was not sufficient to work in the shadow even of such giants as Beethoven and Goethe. In the Lied, Wolf had opened out not only a new world of thought and feeling but created a new musical language for the expression of it. He was probably dear-eyed enough to see that as yet he had not managed to give as purely personal a substance and colour to his instrumental thinking; and so, I conjecture, he decided to wait until what he desired came to him of its own accord, as it had done in the case of the song. For some four years from about the end of 1887 he kept pouring out one a-maring lyric after another. Then came a longish spell of relative quiescence in which his mind ran mostly on opera, and then, between 1896 and 1897, a brief return to the song. But all through these years of mastery he seems to have made no further attempt to find himself in purely instrumental music. Perhaps he felt that when the time was ripe, instrumental music would find him as the song had done; and for that time he was content to wait.
Wolfs
It is
Instrumental
Works
239
perhaps significant that even the Italian Serenade is an uncompleted work. Wolf had originally intended it to be in three movements; but he never got any further than a sketch of some twenty-eight bars for the slow movement and one of about forty bars for the finale, which was to be a tarantella. He must have known that in the Serenade he had created a miniature masterpiece in an idiom of his own; and no doubt he abandoned the work because his faculty for self-criticism told him that the other movement did not promise to be so completely individual. The Serenade, in its orchestral form, is scored for strings (with
a solo viola),
two
flutes,
and two horns.
It yields its full
did not already know it we should be perfectly content with it as a string quartet. In either
version
it
two clarinets, two bassoons charm only in this form; but if we with its orchestral colour and fragrance
oboes,
two
it is
a peculiarly tricky piece to perform, because of the

I
difficulty
of fin ding exactly the right tempi.
myself have heard
times, but never once as I know it to be in itself. It is generally either over-weighted by too slow or trivialized by too fast a tempo.
many
240
Testament of Music
BEETHOVEN: THE LAST PHASE

(The Atlantic Monthly, 1950)
THE OBJECT of the
series of which this article forms a part is the of some great thinker or man of action in a period of crisis study that made an obvious dividing line in his life. To achieve anything of this kind in the case of a composer, however, is peculiarly difficult, by reason, to put it paradoxically, of the immaterial nature of the material in which the musical creator works. Music is simply air in motion; and though the sound-symbols written down by the composer at a particular time may have taken the form and colour they did because of some volcanic experience of his in the outer world, or of some psychological
change within himself at that or some earlier time, it is always dangerous to try to read into the notes an expression of the experience. In the case of the poet or the prose writer there is as a rule no such difficulty; what we know him to have experienced is plainly visible in, or inferable from, something he has said, even if it be only in his letters. But in the case of the composer we have to be very cautious in arguing from his life to his work, or vice
versa: that
way
psychological dilettantism
lies,
the superficial
blending of romantic biography with sentimental aesthetic of which musical criticism presents us with too many dubious
examples.
the best of reasons for believing that a certain of eye and ear on the road to Damascus led to a Saul experience transmuted into a Paul; but only the sentimentalist ignorant being of the profounder psychological processes of a composer can persuade himself that Mathilde Wesendonk 'inspired* Wagner to write Tristan and Isolde. A view of the matter more consistent with modern psychics would be not that Wagner wrote Tristan
We may have
Beethoven: the Last Phase
24.1
because he was in love with the lady, but that he was in love with the lady simply and solely because he was afire just then with
Tristan]
something of the glory that transfigured tie universe for
him while he was under that influence happened to catch the golden head of Frau Wesendonk and surround it with an aureole; but when the artistic fire within him had died down he
soon saw that pretty head for the quite commonplace thing it really was, and the aureole faded in the light of common day. In the same way, knowing as much as we now do about the subconscious functioning of the musical master minds, we must beware of attributing, as the romantic biographers have been prone to do, too direct an influence upon Beethoven's music of
brought upon him nephew, and so on. Some impress upon him, of course, these things must have made; but may it not be arguable that the - -which peculiar quality of the music of Beethoven's final phase is the special subject for inquiry in the present article would have been very much the same had the circumstances of his worldly life been quite different? May not the change in him that finds such marvellous expression in the music of his last few years be traceable to something in his very being as an artist that had been
his deafness, his frustrations in love, the cares
by
his
developing in him according to its own kws for many years, independently of, even if to some extent parallel with, the circumstances of his outer life? The reader will be familiar with the traditional division of Beetsilently
hoven's lifework into three
ing if some
artist
It would indeed be astonish'styles*. such division were not observable. The work of every
of great brain power who has had a fairly long life shows as first period of struggle between his dawning and a transmitted routine, a second period in individuality which he achieves a happy compromise between the two, a coma plete solution of all his problems of expression and form, and third period in which an expansion of his imagination and subtilization of his craftsmanship draw him on into regions hardly explored until then, in which new and more difficult
a matter of course a
problems
i
call for
new
solutions.
It is
A process of this sort is obvious in Beethoven's case.
true
242
that the
Testament of Music
works of his
the
critics
final
enigma
that
that has baffled the
period are still, to a large extent, an most ardent of his students: true also
come down to actualities they differ from which works mark the passage from the first and which from the second to the third. On style to the second one point, however, everyone is agreed - that in the works unmistakably of his third period, of which the last two piano sonatas and the last five quartets (with the Great Fugue) constitute a definite unity, a territory with a spiritual climate and a flora and fauna entirely its own, we are confronted with what seems to be virtually a new Beethoven: such music had never been heard in the world before, and we may doubt whether its like
when
each other as to
will ever be heard again. All who have fallen under its spell agree that here music explores the profoundest depths of the spirit and soars to the loftiest mystical heights. But I would join issue with
the doctrine that this 'third' style can be marked off at all sharply, either in chronology or in substance, from the two that preceded it. On the contrary and this is the thesis I shall try to establish the third period seems to be merely the full realization of impulses and the sublimation of technical procedures that had been sub-
conscious controlling forces in Beethoven's musical nature from the beginning. Undoubtedly the works of the last period point
'crisis* in his mental life; but that crisis, I would urge, came about neither through any pressure on him from the outer world nor from a conscious quest on his part for new expressions
to a
and new forms.
For a thesis of this kind to have any real validity it must be demonstrated in terms of the man's music alone, without any resort for support to romantic biography - with its arbitrary
tracing
of musical effects to nonmusical causes - or to the equally arbitrary reading of poetic 'programmes' into purely instrumental works. It must be shown - or at all events some evidence must be tabled - that certain procedures of melody, of rhythm, of phrase structure, of form, and so on, which are regarded as peculiar

to the
243
works of Beethoven's last phase are to be found also in abundance in earlier works of his, thus suggesting the lifelong in him of essentially the same moods, the same idioms, persistence a partiality for the same psychological adventures.
This necessitates
my saying a preparatory word or two
on
the
subject of what I have elsewhere called a composer's fingerprints basic formulae of expression, personal to him, that recur constantly in a man's music, though sometimes in shapes so subtilized by the circumstances of the moment that they may escape our detection
for a long time. The scepticism in some quarters as to the existence of these fingerprints in composition, or of their value to criticism,
would be less confident if the sceptics were aware how searchingly and with what illuminative results, the same phenomenon has
been studied in poetry and prose for something like a century. The dominant style-elements of many writers from Cicero onwards have been brought to light by style-analysis. mile Hennequin demonstrated long ago Flaubert's unconscious
tendency to follow a certain pattern of construction, from
to phrase,
word
to paragraph, from paragraph to chapter, from chapter to book; while in a brilliant essay he laid bare the verbal elements that constitute the us dues to the thinking, of Victor Hugo. style, and therefore give
from phrase
to sentence,
from sentence
More
recently Alphonse
Le
Dd
has
shown
in minute detail
Hugo's unconscious proneness to certain rhythmical patterns in both his poetry and his prose. W. F.Jackson Knight has subjected Virgil's accentual symmetries to a similar analysis; and more than
one writer has demonstrated the curious ways in which a verbal image in Shakespeare will not only beget a cognate image but call up from the depths of his subconscious, by some strange unforeseen compulsion of its own, a side-line of thought which had certainly not been part of the poet's conscious purpose when he
began.
Undoubtedly there
ible biases
exist in the
composer
also definite irresist-
towards certain basic formulae personal to him. In some cases the finger-print exists as a mere tic or mannerism of speech, occurring on every page he writes but not bound up in his
subconscious with any particular psychological
state. It is
the
244
easiest
Testament of Music
matter in the world to show the existence of a harmless tic of this sort in Puccini. Weber has a marked bias towards a certain formula of melodic structure, and in his case it often stands in the
way of
truth of dramatic expression, for the composer's unconscious use of it on all sorts of occasions is apt to give much the same musical physiognomy to dramatic characters differing very
much from each other in themselves and in their milieu.

As a
rule these basic individual formulae
of speech
persist
throughout a composer's lifetime; but occasionally one makes a is to say, the time fleeting appearance fairly late in his career that of its taking possession of him, and the duration of its spell over
him, can be more or less definitely fixed. Frank Walker has recently drawn our attention to a case in point in connection with Hugo Wolf, a certain melodic-rhythmical formula being so a particular brief specifically associated with his work during 'if an unknown song of his were as Mr. Walker that, says, period discovered in which this "fingerprint" occurred, we should be able at once to surmise the year, and almost the month, of its composition.' Our Greek scholars, we may remind ourselves, long ago employed this method of 'stylometry', as it has come to be
called in literary circles - in which, as Professor Grube has put it, 'special attention is paid to the frequency of certain expressions
and
particles
which any writer
uses all but unconsciously*
to
determine the chronological order of the composition of Plato's Dialogues; for 'some turns of phrase that occur in the early works
gradually disappear, and vice versa
9 .
m
the composers whose work I have studied from the stylometric point of view, I have found Beethoven the easiest to the unconscious inclination tosystematize, the one in
Of all
whom
wards typical mdodic-rhythmical formulae is most marked - a fact which of itself, considering the towering greatness of the man, should dispose of the innocent notion in some quarters that to demonstrate these biases in a composer is to lower him in some way in our estimation. There is probably some subtle organic
245
reason for the formation
and
fixation
of these unconscious
biases
in an artist; possibly they represent a subsurface effort at economy on the part of the artistic faculty, the establishment of broad, smooth, chartered highways, as it were, in his thinking that
enable
him the better to concentrate on the intellectual adventures
he will seek to find on the road. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that Beethoven shows an irresistible tendency to express essentially the same moods and conflicts of moods, in much the same way from the beginning of his career to the end. This statement can be proved only by
plentiful citations,
which are impossible in the present article. I reader to accept the statement provisionally as the ask can only which the present article part of the working hypothesis upon Pirro and Schweitzer have know that will no doubt proceeds. He of proved conclusively that Bach has a sort of musical 'language* his own, in virtue of which he more or less unconsciously employs, in
one work
after another, the
same musical symbol to
or define the same external image. To prove a similar psychical process in the case of the purely instrumental music of a composer is necessarily more difficult, but I believe it can be done in Beethoven's case. He has a certain
express the same
mood
rhythmic type-formula, for example, for impressive statements

in four-four time,
and another for similar statements in three-four in this work or that, but basically the modified time: the type is ad hoc formula remains the same. The critics have all seen in
certain
the final quartets and piano sonatas an call joy, or contentment, or expression of something that we may But I tTiinlr the essential point has remained unperceived -
movements of
ecstasy. that in his musical 'language* various types ofjoy or happiness are associated by him with definite type-constructions of
inseparably
notes. His use
of the
trill
for certain expressions
of mystical
the subject of a whole long essay. ecstasy could alone be made The point towards which I am working - with some difficulty because of my inability to make use here of musical citations is
fundamentally nothing new, for Beethoven, in the are only the approincomparable works of his last phase, which
that there
is
fondissement
of psychological dements and the
subtilization
of
246
technical procedures that
Testament of Music
had constituted the substance of
his
music from the beginning. These last great works of his are the product not of a crisis in his actual life but rather of his emergence from an internal crisis that had been piling up steadily within the artist in him for many years. What then was the nature of that
crisis?
In his latter years, when he was completely deaf, friends used to write out what they had to say to him, while he, of course, replied viva voce. The 'Conversation Books' that have survived
therefore record only his interlocutor's remarks, leaving us to guess as best as we can at Beethoven's. It is rather like overhearing
only one side of a telephone conversation, and necessarily the full tenor of the talk often evades us. But there is a page in a Conversation Book of the winter of 1823 that seems to have a bearing on the subject that is now engaging us. Schindler has said to him,
'Do you remember how I had to play you a few years ago the Op. 14? Now it is all dear.' His next remark, in answer to something Beethoven had said, is of no importance to our inquiry. But after that we find him writing 'Two principles also in the middle movement ofthe Path&ique' ; and after having, one
sonata
surmises, gained the composer's assent to this, Schindler continues,
'Thousands don't grasp that.' Schindler seems to have been drawing the Master's attention to
a recurrent feature that had struck
him
in his music
that
of a
system of thought and construction based primarily upon 'two principles' posed in apposition; and Beethoven agreed with him, for Schindler tells us elsewhere, apropos of die piano sonata Op. 14, No. 2, that 'in the second sonata this dialogue and its import
are more pregnandy expressed, and the apposition of the two main voices (ie., the two 'principles') is more palpable than in the first. Beethoven called these two principles "die pleading and the
"
'
resisting
Though Schindler did not realize it, he was on die way towards a perception that is vital now for the full understanding of Beethoven's mind and work. certain principle of polarity can be
seen to underlie
thinking, a tendency to conceive and can trace this tendency from manipulate things in antitheses.
all this
We

its cell
247
It reveals itself first
form
to
its full
organic growth.
in a bias towards an antithesis within the
narrow
limits
of all of a
in phrase, then
antithesis within the sentence, then in the dramatic antithesis of leading themes indicative of a conflict of - and so on to the total work as a psychological 'principles*
an
purposeful antithesis of movements. And my thesis here is that in the wonderful music of his final phase he merely transplants to another psychical plane his lifelong And impulse to achieve a balanced unity in terms of this
polarity.
the great dividing line, came not through the stresses of his outer life but from the natural evolution ofhis innermost being
the
crisis,
as
The whole of his more significant work had been one after another, in the most protean forms, to balance attempt forces in the world of ideas and emotions which he felt to be
an
artist.
locked in an inveterate struggle; and all he does now, in the last phase, is to transfer the polar conflict from the outer to the inner world; the drama is henceforth wholly internal.
IV
At this point it becomes necessary to say a word about Bettina von Arnim, the remarkable girl who made Beethoven's acquaintance in Vienna in 1810. For the authenticity of two of the composer's letters to her few would now go bail; but I see no reason to doubt the essential veracity of the account she gave Goethe of Beethoven's conversation with her. She makes him speak of his sense of loneliness in the world of men 'I have not a single friend I must live alone in myself. But well I know that God is nearer to me than to the others of my craft; I consort with him without fear; I have always recognized and understood him, and I have no fear for my music - it can meet no evil fate. To grasp it is to be freed from all the misery that others drag about with them.' (This, be it observed, in 1810, more than a decade before the composition of the great works to which this description by Beethoven himself of the inmost nature of his music is peculiarly applicable.) 'When I open my eyes I must sigh,' Bettina makes him say, *. for I must despise the world which has no inkling of
:
. .
248
the fact that music
is
Testament of Music
a higher revelation than all
wisdom and
philosophy;
it is
the wine which inspires one to new engenderings,
and I am die Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes diem spiritually drunken. When they have become sober again they have fished up all manner of things which they can bring with diem to dry land/ To realize die full truth of this self-analysis we have to go to the works of his last phase, not to those he had produced by - for by that time he had 1810, when he was only forty got no
flat
symphony, the fifth piano concerto, the E major quartet, Op. 74, and the F minor quartet, Op. 95. Several of die mightiest works of all, among them the Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, the Hammerklavier sonata, Op. io<5, the last two piano sonatas, and the last five quartets, were still in the womb of time. As regards Bettina, then, we must decide either that Beethoven really did talk to her, half reminisfurther than the sixth
cendy, half prophetically, very much as she represents him as having done, or, if she were romancing, diat this young woman of twenty-five had an insight into the essential but as yet imperfecdy revealed Beethoven that placed her head and shoulders above not only all critics of her day and his but most of those of
the next half-century.
For it was undoubtedly as an outpouring of bacchic exultation Beethoven regarded some of the music of his middle phase, with the more reflective moments of a work figuring as a reaction against this mood, an antithesis or counterpoise to it. In 1818, at the time when he was engaged on the mighty Hammerklavier sonata, we find him not only making sketches for the Ninth Symphony but laying out the ground plan for a tenth, the principle of which was to be the contrast of 'a Bacchus festival (allegro) 'and *a devout canticle (adagio) ... the text to be a Greek mythos'. The specifically dionysiac mood had found its most exuberant expression for the time being in the wild finale of the Seventh Symphony (1812), and was to work itself out later in the Hammerklavier sonata and the second and final movements of the Ninth Symphony. With the completion of this and of the Missa Solemnis, in 1823, Beethoven rang the curtain down on a
that
249
the two cardinal principles of his artistic being) struggle (between no is there to which parallel in the life of any other composer: we
have evidence in plenty of the titanic strain under which not only his imagination but his physical powers laboured in the effort to within him. say all that was But the Greeks knew not only the dionysiac frenzy but the no
valued aftermath of this - what they called the dionysiac silence, when the spirit of the worshipper, at once exhausted, in a new illumination, that of purged, and refreshed, luxuriated ecstatic quietude* It is in this inner field of the dionysiac silence
less
works of Beethoven's latest phase live and move and have their being. The old polarity of 'two principles* still survives in them as the basic pattern of his thinking. How deeply rooted that pattern was in his artistic nature can be seen by a comparison of the Piano Sonata quasi una fantasia in E flat major, Op. 27, No. i, which dates from 1801, and the Sonata in A major, Op. 101, which belongs to 1816. Paul Bekker has pointed out that the principle of construction is the same in both works - because the imaginative principle underlying them is the same. As Bekker remarks, if Beethoven does not expressly characterize the later sonata, as he has done the earlier one, as 'quasi una fantasia', that is only because for him this was too self-evident
that the
to call for mention. La their mood-sequences, their moodantitheses, the polarity of the 'two principles' that are played off
in the greater depth, the greater inwardness of the feeling in the later work, which comes from a period in which Beethoven was well on his way towards the
is
against each other, the difference between them
two
sonatas are the same.
The
vital
him in his final phase. was a purely internal one, arising from an organic change in the nature of the artist, not from anything in the outer life of the man; and, like all great changes, it proceeded slowly. It was a psychical metamorphosis in him which may be compared
dionysiac silence that possessed
The
crisis
to a geological 'shift', a slow subsidence which, while leaving the basic rock structure as it was, brings with it a new surface conformation, a new climate, a new flora and fauna. The climate
of Beethoven's mind decidedly changed. The old extremes of
Testament of Music
kind between the fast and the slow movements of the final as there is between those of the great works of his middle quartets is still operative, but the poles are not so far period. The polarity old: the antitheses are now less violent, less apart now as of the nature of nuances of one pervading in rather obvious, emotion. The interaction of the contending forces no longer takes
place
exist - there temperature no longer
is
no such
difference
of that
on
the external but
on an internal
lit,
plane.
He
does not need
now,
for his pattern ofopposition and reconciliation,
of tension and
release, the
starkly opposed 'subjects' boldly defined, brightly of tie older kind, still less the concretization of the spiritual struggle in human characters such as Egmont, Coriolanus, LeonoraPizarro. The drama is now played out entirely in the composer's
own rapt,
self-absorbed soul.
final
works in terms of 'expanded' or 'modified' 'sonata form', Variation form,' and all the other quaint old formulae of nineteenth-century pedagogy will some day have to be abandoned. Beethoven no longer thinks
The old academic attempts to 'analyse' the
in terms
of
these forms, superficially as his procedures
may
resemble them here and there. He now spins outward in all directions from the centre of the insulating web he has woven
round his spirit; it is this procedure, infinite in its possibilities, that accounts for the great lengths to which some of his ktest movements run. Wagner, in a conversation with his intimates at
Wahnfiied, drew attention to the capacity for endless proliferation from the nuclear cell of a movement. 'You see,' he said, 'Beethoven, if he had liked, could have stopped here, or here, or here/ That is true; but Wagner might have gone further and
the composer could in many cases equally well pointed out that have begun here, or here, or here. The 'subjects' of the opening of the E flat and A minor quartets, for instance, allegro movements are not 'subjects' in the old technical sense of that term, begetters
of the form and texture that follow; rather do they strike us, from their very beginning, as moments in a train of thought that had already been going on for some time in the subconscious of the composer before he decided to take up pen and paper: what is on the page may begin at this point, but what was in the mind
251
at its first
of Beethoven had begun long before then; the 'theme',

statement,
is
only a milestone on a road that stretches as far back as it does forward. The incomparable slow movements, again, are not Variations on a theme* but long-drawn-out variations on a mood; Beet-
hoven's texture and procedure are quite different here
from what
they are
when he
by means of currents of his thought throughout a whole work, and show the predominance now of this, now of that aspect ofjoy the quiet
joy that almost immobilizes motion, innocent joy that finds expression in one dance form or another, artless spontaneous joy that springs into physical being out of its own innermost nature, a profounder joy that needs for the uncoiling of its deep-lying in the profoundest spring a previous coiling of forces rooted tenebrae of the soul, and so on. And always there is the polarity that was the very basis of Beethoven's thinking, because it was the basis of his nature. He saw the world, without and within him, as a series of antinomies that had somehow to be resolved; but the and the latest resides great distinction between the earlier works
in the fact that in the latter the contending forces now operate reference entirely in the innermost being of the man, requiring no
writing variations for variation's sake. And stylometric analysis we can trace the underlying
is
to externalities.
Of all the mystics of art,
the Beethoven of the
last
few years
is
the greatest: one has to go back to the thirteenth century Persian the poet Rumi to find his parallel, and we can only be grateful for
tremendous inner change, whatever its hidden origins may have been, that took place in him in his final years. But he was hardly more than fifty-six when he died; and inevitably we ask ourselves what his next phase might have been. Is a 'next phase* conceivable? He could hardly have travelled further along the we may ask ourmystical road than he had done already; and selves whether, on the other hand, it was within the bounds of human possibility for him to have gone back once more to the
outer world. Has any born mystic ever
made
that
backward
journey
after
... he on honey-dew hath, fed
252
Testament of Music
And drunk
Must we not be
the milk of Paradise?
driven, after the contemplation of these most marvellous of musical works, to agree with Hugo Wolf's dark oracular saying that no man is taken away until he has done his
work?
X
EXCERPTS
From
the National Reformer, 1892
FROM THE MEANING OF SCIENCE

What is
science?
We
are familiar with the definition
of it
as
- knowledge of a high degree of generali'organized, knowledge'

zation. This being so, it is the extremity of ignorance to assert that science is only concerned with objective description of
things,
or - a
still
greater folly
that
its
province
lies
only in the
of mankind. The very essence of science is that it is not concerned with facts in themselves, but with facts in their implications with other facts. It ever presses on from the - that is, the particular to the general, from the many to die one is of to it tends the unification of which that constantly goal All is value far it contributes in science of so as knowledge. only the of it due to the towards and is this end, working pursuit
material amelioration
impulsion offerees not in the least material, but wholly spiritual. It is not the achievement of some immediate, palpable result that impels the scientist to his -work; it is the mysterious prompting within him towards philosophy, towards a deeper and more imaginative comprehension of the universe.
THE COMING MENACE

a frequent source of consolation to many good Christians to to their cherished belief that Free-thought sustains utterance give a severe blow by the death of this or that prominent Freethinker.
It is
253
254
Testament of Music
is
a deep-seated idea in the heads of these worthy people that, somehow or other, the mass of Freethinkers are very immoral, deluded, unthinking people, only held together by a
There
some admittedly great man; and removed from their midst, the bond of unity between them must be shaken, if not actually broken. Thus after Mr. Bradlaugh's death there was a jubilant crowing from every and an equally jubilant braying from every religious journal, that 'Freethought had received its death-blow in England', pulpit, and that soon the sword of the Lord and of Gideon would everywhere prevail. But crowing and braying, rationally considered,
common
that
blind admiration for

is
when he
are merely the effect of muscular contractions in the vocal systems of animals not usually thought the epitomes of wisdom, and,
indeed, are not casually connected with any intellectual stimulus whatever. One hardly looks to these organisms for wisdom, any-
looks to a Christian journalist or a Christian accurate an for weighing of social or moral forces. Freepreacher thinkers are not likely to be alarmed by the crowing and braying
more than one
They know that great as is the loss of any foremost not man, irreparable. Freethought still lives, and would continue to live and thrive, even though every Freethinker in the world were to die tomorrow. For Freethought is not a creed but an attitude - an advanced intellectual attitude towards die current
on this
point.
it is
conceptions of society. As such, it must and will exist all at times and in all places; in the most elementary society there are Freethinkers, men who are a step in advance of the ideas of those
around them. So long as men are born into the world with minds of different calibre, so long will there be Freethinkers, whatever
name they may choose to call themselves by. The real danger to Freethought lies elsewhere, and is a danger that will only make itself apparent as the movement advances. Old as Freethought is in England, measured by the number of
years
it has existed, it is only young as measured by its strength and stature relative to the remainder of society. It only needs a backward glance at the history of similar movements to see how much of an advantage is enclosed within this seeming disadvantage. During the period in which a new movement is, numerically
Excerpts
255
in a minority, there
is
bond of union between the have become a is more more There always moving force, in activity, majority. the party of opposition that is endeavouring to wrest a place of vantage from the holders, than there is in the holders themselves.
speaking, a
members
that can rarely be maintained after they
the most powerful of all factors in binding men have suffered together, to be willing to die together together. To for the common cause, is to animate men for the time being into an impregnable brotherhood. Individual differences are lost sight of; unconsciously men obey the physiological law that a complex life can only be maintained by all the parts working harmoniously to one end. Men are tried by fire, and all the baser metal is burned out of them; the nobler metal is melted into one conquering golden stream. The history of all great moral or social movements teaches us how, in such a time as this, men are fused into one, to the effacement of all individual differences, and the achievement of their end is due to this very self-abnegation; and it teaches the further fact that when the minority become a majority, along with the disappearance of the need for selfPersecution
is
restraint there
goes a disappearance of that submergence of self

factor
which was the most potent
of success.
A NOTE ON DEATH
To
a
man who
cares
more
for truth, whatever
may
be
its
a falsehood that brings along with it shapes of hollow and deceptive beauty, there is nothing in the inexorableness of science that can sadden or embitter him. And the more he adopts that stern heroic way of looking upon the
emotional
issues, t^ a<n for
immense and
materialism the
all
living things that has foolishly
been called
more his spirit is chastened and his heart strengthhe looks ened; through everything through matter and mind, the and the through organic inorganic to the marvellous moving
of the universe, and becomes a grander being, in proportion as he abandons his own petty claims to the lordship of
forces
256
creation,
Testament of Music
and he sees himself to be what he really is, and nothing a mere part of the whole great scheme of things. Mr. more Ruskin has snarled and screamed at what, with the customary presumption of the religious man, he is pleased to call 'the pride of Science**; and the devotees of Christ strive, or strive to strive, not always with any measure of success, after 'humility of spirit', saying with Tennyson that this whole weak race of venomous works is not worthy to live. Yet to a quiet observer it would rather appear that these humble Christians, with their exaltation of man above all other living things - him for whom the sun was made to give a light by day and the moon by night - and then contemptuous closing of the eyes to what they call 'dead matter*, are much prouder and more presumptuous beings than the scientist who sees in man only one link in the whole great chain of creation, and who is content to humbly take his place among other existences, knowing that he is allied with them and born of
them.
From
the Free Review, 1893-1895
IBSEN
Realist as
he
is,
his later choice
of subjects, he
according to his conventional classification, in is at heart an idealist of the most
pronounced kind. He began as an idealist of the most pronounced kind. He began as an Idealist, writing works such as the early poems, The Comedy of Love, Brand, and Peer Gynt, in which the idealism is unmistakable; and through even the Social Dramas, with their apparent realism, this ideal element still of persists; while in the Master Builder, if the allegorical reading
that
pky be
correct, Ibsen himself indicated his irradicable
idealism.
*The
Stones of Venice.
Excerpts
'He is everywhere alone, even among other men. He is always the thought is of more value the introspective thinker, to than the reality which has given it birth. He seeks reality merely to
whom
fertilize his
is
own inner life of feeling and intellect;
as
soon
as this
end accomplished, reality has lost its importance in his eyes' And he consoles himself for the changing phantas(said Jaeger). all external things with the reflection that thought is magoria of
at least eternal;
Spring and
summer and autumn may
die,
but the
- his earliest play, written when he was about - the notion of Will pkys a leading part in the twenty-one evolution of drama; the reason of 'Cateline V failure was that his own strength of will was not assisted by the weaker men around
memory of them endures.

Even in
Cateline
him; individually he could have achieved something by the very of his willing to achieve it, but he was held in check by the inertia of his surroundings. Brand is simply the outcome of the innate and inflexible Puritanism of his nature. 'Will* is preached to the fullest; and Ibsen has every opportunity of stating the case for individualism, with all the added persuasiveness of a moving poetical presentafact
tion.
And
fail
Brand
thing.
yet Ibsen fails his own crest, to so speak, by making in his work, and die without having achieved any-
misfortune, indeed, of a poet attempting any social evangel by means of confining with mere words, is that he himself
The
is
almost certain to complicate the issues so greatly as to diminish the force of his own preaching. Dramatic necessities are
and will not be bandied about at the will of social and it was only to be expected that when Ibsen came to theory; incarnate his individualism in imaginative literature he should become at times contradictory, at times inconclusive, and at times absolutely self-damaging. But monadeist as Ibsen is, and whatever may be his shortcomings in moral philosophy, he is certainly not the immoral satyr he is popularly supposed to be.
inexorable,
The judicial
critic,
indeed,
moral doctrine of repression.
errs less
compelled to sum up that Ibsen's on the side of indulgence than on the side
is
258
Testament of Music
Hedda Gabler, which is such a thorn in the side of the sentimental or didactic critic, is of intense interest to the student of
psychical morbidity.
KIPLING
in flashes, making up a concentrated brilliancy for what he appears to lack in the sustention of energy. And as the flashes are short in duration, they are correspondingly intense.
He works
His best work, indeed, has always been the description of abnormal states of mind, plainly done under the momentary stimulus need not go into the quesof abnormal cerebral disturbance. tion of how far all genius is allied to madness, but we can safely
We
that the exceptional brilliancy of insight into certain can only be psychical states that Mr. Kipling displays at rimes, made possible by a correspondent weakening of mental power in other directions. His very excellences inevitably bear with them
assert
their correlative defects.
To work at so high a rate of cerebration
simply means, in most men, a concentration of energy in one field and a withdrawal of it from another. Almost alone among modern artists stood Wagner in his power of lengthy sustention of abnormal cerebration. Mr. Kipling would be almost more
than human if he had had at once this brilliancy of insight into the
abnormal and the faculty of wise, dispassionate observation of life.
RICHARD LE GALLffiNNE'S RELIGION OF A LITERARY MAN

Economy is all very well up to a certain point, but the devil cannot possibly be dispensed with. The old theologians hung all the evil of the world upon his shoulders, which was convenient and simple, and then dodged the inevitable question, 'But who
that you must have faith, and Mr. Le Gallienne, leaving the devil out of the universe, is hard put to it to solve the old problem of how evil comes into the universe at all. This, of course, has always been the crux of Theism; and after eighteen centuries of
made
the devil?*
by
telling
you
that these things are a mystery.
Excerpts
259
it
of today cannot answer the question was answered by Cicero, by Maximus of Tyre, as God was good, by the Stoics generally. The argument was that some and subserved evil was only apparently evil, good purpose, could we but know it - which was not explaining the existence
Christian ethic, die Theist
otherwise than
of evil, but denying
its
existence.
MASCAGNI AND THE OPERA

Ever since
men began
to theorize
upon
the musical drama,
problem has been that of the relation between their respective spheres, and the manner in and music, poetry which they can be most efficiently blended.
their favourite
would be hard to find a parallel to the extraordinary popuRusticana has enjoyed from the first. larity which Cavalleria
It
to be due to Mascagni's popularity among the people seems in his music that repel the connoisseur. those qualities precisely The Siciliana in the overture is a meeting-place for both orders
of mind; but
after that the critical
and
uncritical part
company.
that has spent time on the Old Italian Opera does not with their compreserve a lively recollection of these choruses,
liberal monplace melody, their good, thumping rhythm, their has Mr. to Oscar Wilde, of the obvious, which, according supply Besant. alter and Providence been exhausted by
Who
at Everywhere it was recognized that Mascagni was not merely musician, like Gounod, but a musician born for the stage, a$ Gounod was not.
260
Testament of Music
at Cavalleria Rusticana
from the point of view of 9 us of Mascagni by L Arnica Fritz and I experience given Rtmtzau, we have all the more warrant for saying that a great part
Looking back
the
new
of his first work was due to the harmonizing of Signor Verga's sombre art with Mascagni's own dramatic feeling, and the skilful way in which the librettists had turned the prose story into an opera-text. The irrelation and loose articulation of I Rantzau is incredible to anyone who has not taken the trouble to study the score carefully. One of the most important motives in the whole opera does not appear in the overture at all, though the overture is nothing more than a potpourri of the themes of the opera, in the style of Oberon and Wagner's earliest works. (1894)
of the
success
AMDBL
It is
it
should
the voice of Geneva speaking; and the strange thing is that come from the mouth of a man who is at other times
Schopenhauer, Hegel, Stoic, Epicurean and Oriental quietist. The dualism of Amiel's nature was his destruction; he cannot harmonize everything within him, and yet tortures
partly
himself because of his
failure,
ultimately seeking a fictitious
harmonization by strangling philosophy in the arms of religion. Geneva is at the bottom of him, suggesting dark problems of sin, and evil, and death, and salvation. And since he cannot attain the inward peace he strives for, and since he cannot flout God in the face, and show him the cardinal blunder he has made in the clumsy creation of mankind, he takes a thin ascetic comfort in the Christian theory of the innate perversity of man, ad radicale Bose of Kant. This in turn troubles him, for how is it to be harmonized
with the general beneficence of the scheme of things? Finally he takes refuge from the questioning spectres that haunt him, in the Christian doctrine of die forgiveness of sins. This is indeed the pressing problem to Amiel. 'The best measure of the profundity of any religious doctrine*, he says, *is given by its conception of sin, and the cure of sin.' Is then die Christian doctrine so perfect a
Excerpts
261
thing in this respect? Was there ever a more grossly immoral doctrine than this of the forgiveness of sins, a doctrine more based
on selfishness, on cowardice, disregard for others, callousness at the evil inflicted so that the individual soul hut makes its peace with God? It is the most striking proof of the innate incapacity of the to think honestly upon moral questions, that such religious mind
a doctrine as this should ever be regarded as the be-all and the endall of moral obligation. Of all the specious lies that have ever
worst.
blinded humanity to the real issues of ethics, this is surely the It is an immoral doctrine because it avoids the real question
of obligation; it shifts the moral centre of gravity from man to the skies; and such a displacement as this is regarded, even by thinking men, as compatible with notions ofjustice not merely human but
divine.
between Buddhism and Christianity, between absorption and duty, and between hope and fear. He hugs his cross to his breast in obedience to the will of God, and he never perceives that such a doctrine as this bears only on death, not on life. Practically, it is identical with the fundamental axiom of Schopenhauer, that the supreme happiness is in the negation of
Thus
Amid hovers
the will to live. After long attempts to reconcile his philosophy
them drift apart, taking up the Towards end, when his disease is religion. definitely him a on to death of hurrying pathetic suffering, he hovers and for a between obedience revolt moment, even breaks out into Stoicism, and then brings this round in a curve to resignation to
and
his religion,
Amiel
finally lets
with
the supposed beneficent ordering of things.
Such was the complex and contradictory being called Amid, whose epitaph might be *He died through a confusion of ideals'. With hirn synthesis became a vice and psychology a snare, for through a wrong application of them he lost his hold on the
reality
of things. He himself looked back with regret upon his wasted life, and thought sadly of the tragic withering of the (1895) promise he had shown in youth.
262
Testament of Music
From
the Speaker, 1901-1904
THE NEED FOR BANKING REFORM

(9th February, 1901)
disputable theory of at as see to that, economics, present constituted and easy as they might for the much as half do not do banks our worked, one the of the hand, we oscillate country. general good
Without committing oneself to any

it is
On
between over-trading and depression, between undue expansion of credit and undue restriction of it; on the other hand, our normal practice is to place credit at the disposal of those whp make absolutely no good social use of it - who use it simply for
Stock Exchange and other gambling - while we deny it to the honest worker if he happens to be poor as well Banks, of course, would sooner lend ^10,000 to a mere Stock Exchange speculator on marketable stock, with a good margin, than lend jioo to a small trader on the contents of his
- "liquid" is the shop, because the security is easily realizable other. in the and not -.in one case the And, sp long banking term
bank$ are nan simply for the benefit of the shareholders, this kind of thing cannot be altered. But is it good for the community that its funds or its credit should be put to such purposes as
as
this?
THE NEW SCHOOL OF BRITISH MUSIC

Frederick C. Nicholls
(iM January,, 1902}

The tendency of
tfce
modern young men, almost without
exception, i$ toward? the orchestra and the larger foiros of music. For the piano a gseat ua$ny of them have an umnitigated contempt. Modern music is, of CQUCSQ* developing in every
Excerpts
direction; but the greatest progress has
263
been made in our sense of
owing to our having, in the present-day orchestra a huge paint-box with which we can be incessantly experimenting. Hence the young composer, when he sits down to write
musical colour,
throbbing with the gorgeous tints of Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Richard Strauss. The piano, or the single voice with piano accompaniment, is a medium too pale, too cold, too virginal for his incandescent thoughts. He feels,
music of his own, has
his brain
when restricted to
were asked to do
these,
his
much as a scene-painter would feel if he work with a child's paint-box and a tiny
is a rare thing to find an Englishman the for well now. Mr. Elgar and Mr. Wallace fight writing piano
camel's-hair brush. It
shy of it; Mr. Bantock and Mr. Coleridge Taylor essay it with only partial success; Mr. Percy Pitt writes for it as if it were an orchestra; Mr. Holbrooke knew how to write for it delightfully
one time, but is fast forgetting the art, seduced by the more glowing colour of the orchestra. Erskine AUon knew the piano and wrote well for it, but he is dead; and I can think of no present Englishman, with the sole exception of Mr. Nicholls, whose piano writing really conveys the soul and the idiom of the
at
instrument.
I
have two
sonatas, a quintet, a big
symphonic
poem
for
the piano, and, in addition to some odd sheaves of pieces, a little volume of thirteen waltzes, and another containing a series of ton^-pictures based on Heine's Florentine Nights. It is of the two
last-named collections that I more particularly wish to speak. I am convinced that any intelligent musician into whose hands these tiny
volumes came would at once recognize in them the work of an artist of rare distinction and originality.
HOLBROOKE
(i5th February, 1902)
but I myself feel that Mr. Holbrooke's four symphonic poems will one day be recognized as something
I
may be wrong,
264
absolutely
Testament of Music
in English or in any other music. They have an are his and his alone. They are not atmosphere, a psychology, that and this psychology are not in Wagner, imitated; this
new
atmosphere - to or Tchaikovsky, or Richard Strauss. Morbidity employ a much-abused word has never been made so truly beautiful as
here.
The boy who could

its
write that exquisite ending to The
Raven, with
supreme nobility of conception, its rare pathos of could bring the very heart into one's throat at speech; in Armour; who could give after passage of The Skeleton passage mournful the life to intense more an even beauty of Ulalume, has of great and lovely store world's the to surely added something
who
things.
RICHARD STRAUSS
(nth
April, 1903)
Programme music
is
definite stimulus than abstract music;
simply music written under a more and every song, every opera,
from the same every oratorio that has been penned comes the as symphonic poem. On the one psychological fountain-head
side stand
such abstract tonal expressions as the sonata and the into which fugue; on the other side are all the musical utterances a more definite idea of some kind or other enters, and of which
programme music is only the most fully developed instrumental form. To condemn programme music in the mass as a sin against
the aesthetics of music
is
What we
can justly condemn
to analyse the art only superficially. is the vain attempt to represent in
music what is really unrepresentable in sound; as soon as programme music goes to this extreme it becomes absurd. But we are finding out every day how many fresh things can be said in
music,
the gready the representative, as distinguished from evolution this and art is of the developing; merely expressive, side of an epithet is really not to be cut short by the haphazard use that has come to be looked upon as opprobrious. You cannot put
how
Excerpts
265
the forces that
the
dock back simply by reasoning wrongly about

the pendulum.
. .
move
Don Quixote, one of the most human and most musical works in existence. . . .
at the
same time
No setting of a poem or of a libretto is a success that does not take up the subject and transform it by re-thinking it in terms of music. Judge Also sprach Zarathustra by this standard
and
it
comes
out, I think, triumphantly.
WOLF
(ipth
November, 1904)
regular, square-cut phrases and rhythms of Penthesika seem hardly to have come from the same hand that
set,
The
later
on achieved such marvellous flexibility and variety of musical speech. The explanation, I suppose, is that Wolf was never at his best except when he had a poem to work over line by line. Look at the song "Die Spinnerin," composed in 1878, when he was eighteen, and you will see that it is years more mature in
and technique than the Penthesilea of 1883. Apart from some spasmodic efforts, it was really the Morike poems, in the early part of 1888, that set free all the flood of music that was in him, just as a spark liberates the dormant energies of gunpowder. Then the real Wolf began to live. He was a vocal writer, pure and
feeling
simple, with every gift the genuine vocal writer ought to have; and there was no poem, of whatever form or whatever content,
266
that could keep
Testament of Music
its secret from him. But the poem itselflyric or - was a prime necessity if his imagination was to drama or elegy be stirred to its depths. Opera gave him the same opportunities as the song, and Der Comgidor is a continuous feast of delight; but it
is
probable he would never have done anything remarkable in the purely instrumental forms.
From
the Weekly Critical Review, 1903
MUSIC AND MORALS

this proneness of some people to take art as do life, to be annoyed at a paradoxical pky of they Oscar Wilde, to be rendered unhappy by die Pathetic Symphony, to be paralysed in action by Turgeniev or James Thompson? Is it not just a sign that they have failed to take the thing in as art, that they have half dragged it out of its own sphere and half thrust it into a sphere whose standards of value, or right or wrong, by no means concern it? Let us note in the first pkce that people of this kind are sometimes inconsistent even in their fellings. I myself know a man who can drench himself without a moment's pang of discomfort in the pessimism of music, but is seriously disturbed at the touch of pessimism in poetry and fiction. He can listen to the Pathetic Symphony or to other music of that kind with unmitigated artistic enjoyment; but it is almost impossible for him to read Turgeniev or Dostoievsky or Leopardi, and he seeks intellectual nutriment in the facile optimism of Dickens. There must be hundreds like him, all, in their one-sidedness and
Whence comes
seriously as
inconsistency, proving that this tendency to look upon art as reality is due to a confusion, temporary or permanent, between
the organs of practical and those of aesthetic life - for if it is possible for them to be morally and philosophically detached
with regard to
fiction or poetry.
. . .
Excerpts
267
La Rochefoucauld was
secret joy
we
feel at the
the cynically right overtaken misfortune has that thought
when he spoke of
- taking the statement, of course, with the liberal we all know have to be made. Civilized man, which reservations the savage in that he reserves the delight from differs however, his aesthetic for of malignity moments, instead of seeking them in actual life at the expense of actual people. It is of the essence of
other people
tragic satisfaction that
it
shall
own
sterile circle
.
.
and give our
never be allowed to step beyond its real life a bias in this or that
direction.
THE
CRITIC'S FRAILTY
The fact is that the critic is even more painfully the product of his epoch than the composer. He is blinded by die dust of the he cannot see problems and fights that are raging round him, and individuals but antagonists. . . only principles,
.
Think of all the criticism that has been written upon music, from that of Bach to that of Wagner, and try to discover how much of it would stand a chance of being read if it were brought out again now It is solacing to remember that they do not reprint everything a critic has written, as they do with composers that there are no Breitfcopf and Hartels to being out & Y & Z, including of the celebrated critics editions gesammelte the work that anyone would be proud of and the work that anyone would be ashamed to own - which is the inconsiderate way they have with Bach and Mozart and Mendelssohn and Beethoven. Indeed, when I reflect upon some of the more than usually foolish things I have done in the way of criticism, my only consolation is that few as are the people who read me now, there will be fewer still to do so a hundred years hence.
!
268
Testament of Music
SHAW AND SUPER-SHAW

The
trouble with
Man
and Superman
is
is
that
Mr. Shaw
is
here serious to a degree that
with him. He will not as it stands, but he must needs try let us take his amusing comedy a to drag us into agreement with preface of doubtful and an of still more doubtful epilogue (the "Revolutionist's Handbook") Shaw the humorist is more impressive argumentation. Frankly, tha" super-Shaw the philosopher; and in saying this I have no desire to do injustice to his obvious seriousness of purpose. Undoubtedly he is in deadly earnest; undoubtedly he feels most the pain and misery and bestial stupidity of mankind.
really rare
bitterly
From
the Nation, 1908-1912
OPERA IN ENGLAND
have a capacity English singers, given the proper environment, and the question for opera at least equal to that of any other race; was always presenting itself whether better use could not be made of the talent the country undoubtedly possesses, and whether could not be done to bring more of it into the light of
something
day.
(1908)
ELGAR
Each section of the Enigma variations is a gem, but the work remains a collection of unrelated pictures, not an organic whole.
The symphony is [the first], indeed, remarkable for the unity of

impression
it
gives, in spite
of the wide emotional
field it covers.
Excerpts
269
Besides this use
of a central theme throughout the work, subsione movement recur in others, and the melody from themes diary a note-for-note reproduction - of course, in is of the adagio of that of the scherzo* Here, perhaps, the different phrasing
is
intention
better than the achievement. I take
it
that
it is
really
the scherzo that has been evolved from the adagio, not vice versa. It is more likely that Elgar should have written the noble and
movement, and then whipped the theme up into of a scherzo, than that he should have written the theme in its rather inexpressive quick form, and then discovered that in a
beautiful slow
that
it would make highly expressive music. Here, of tissue not the does the unity quite compensate us for perhaps, theme inferior to what a scherzo Elgar could no doubt getting
slower form
have written under other circumstances. The gradual metamorphosis of the scherzo into the adagio is, however, admirable
in every
perhaps the solitary exception being a theme in C sharp minor in the scherzo. What may be called the central theme of the work,
way, emotionally and technically. The thematic material of the symphony is refined and expressive almost throughout,
melody that begins and ends it, is one of those rare things that seem to have more and more meaning in them each time we sing
the
them
to ourselves.
(1908)
OPERA AND THE ENGLISH

English are probably the most extraprdinary people under the sun; instead of listening to music for ourselves and enjoying it, we prefer to read what someone else has to say about it.
We
How
otherwise can
lished
explain the fact that so many books are puband apparently with enough success to induce publishers
we
authors to continue in the business
of whom the
- upon all kinds of composers average Englishman knows nothing, and can never
so long as the present conditions continue?
(1908)
know anything
2jo
Testament of Music
FEUERSNOT
to perfection Strauss's power of adapting his for transformation the musical idiom to subject in hand a faculty
The opera shows

style that
he shares only with Wagner and Hugo Wolf. It contains some of the loveliest music he has written, music, such as that of the children, with a sweetness and a tenderness in it that remainder of his work, in one only peep out here and there, in the or two of the songs. One wishes, indeed, that he would let us see more of this side of him - stop his contortions and jugglery and
of
about something that grimacing, and talk to us in plain language in conversation the he said must 'Music matters. progress/ really other day, 'until it can depict even a teaspoon/ It is pretty safe to
however gifted he may be, who predict the ending of a composer, the line of the perfected orchestral sees 'progress* mainly along
suggestion of materialities. Greater complexity of tissue does not necessarily mean greater of meaning, as anyone can see by comparing the Symphonic*
depth
Domestica with Tod und Verklarung, or some of die wilder parts ofElektra with Feuersnot. The latter work, in fact, occupies somewhat the same place in Strauss's operatic development as Don the orchestral works. In both genres he has Quixote does
among
since
we keep the cruder elements of his nature in check. In Feuersnot his of his in Strauss all that best have is ideas, power of fertility minimum the with architecture characterization, his magnificent
of extravagance and
ugliness.
done amazing
things,
but he has been
less
and
less
able to
(1910)
NIETZSCHE'S CRITICISM OF WAGNER

What, indeed, does the whole of Nietzsche's polemic come to but this - that Wagner's music gave him disagreeable sensations, for which he tried to account in terms of a world philosophy?
With, characteristic complacency he
calls his
own
cravings 'the
Excerpts
271
plentitude
of life', and Wagner's

smiles.
'the denial, the loathing
of life*.
he needed music as a medicine against his melancholy; it was for this he turned, with a sigh of relief, to the nimble, sunny, clean-built art of the South. We would not deprive him, or any other sick man, of his medicine but is his dyspepsia a reason why we, with sounder stomachs and cleaner nerves, should not eat the food that agrees with us? Here and there Nietzsche scores a good point. He is refreshingly breezy on some of Wagner's obvious weaknesses, his theories of redemption and of woman the redeemer; and his hyper-sensitive invalid's nose is keen for a whiff of the tinder-ripe or die over-ripe in Wagner's art, such as the 'brutality* of the Tannhauser overture. Some of his criticisms upon the texture of the music anticipate Debussy's well-known gibes. But he makes some amateurish
The bystander
He
confesses that
blindly insists that Wagner is only a miniaturist he has no eye for the grand architecture and the multiplied; strands of thought in the operas. He rails like a Conserfar-flung vatoire academic against Wagner's supposed asymmetry of rhythm and his 'endless melody', unable to see that these do not represent formlessness, but merely a more subtilized manipulation of form, just as in a modern painting balance and unity of design are secured without the Primitives* resort to mathematical squareness, or as Swinburne's metres imply a finer sense of rhythm than those of Pope. There is a good deal in the pamphlets of what looks like hard hitting, but die blows fell, not on Wagner, but on a stuffed scarecrow of Nietzsche's own diat he mistakes for
blunders.
He
Wagner.
It is always interesting reading, though; for Nietzsche's active imagination keeps springing a new image in almost every line, and his quick, nervous style gives one a new opinion of the
German
disagree
language. There
is
something
vital in a
man we
can
with and yet enjoy so hugely*
(1910)
BEETHOVEN
To
lives,
the psychologist Beethoven's is one of the most interesting in spite of - or perhaps because of - die feet that it is
It
almost devoid of outer incident.
does not stand in die limelight
272
like
Testament of Music
Wagner's,
does not come down to the footlights and bawl its
of us cannot help but hear; it story at us till the least concerned has not even the romantic garnishings of the lives of men like and Liszt. Beethoven, for the greater part of his career,
Chopin
rarely
out of Vienna; and for a composer - and such a composer in such a time he was fairly well treated by the Fates, his work being appreciated to an extent that is really surprising, and his material lot being felicity itself in comparison with that of Mozart or that of Schubert. Yet his life was on the whole the
moved
of music, even when one remembers tragic in the history the poverty and misery and the too-early deaths of the composers the pitiful endings of Schumann and Hugo Wolf. just named, and
most
No
other musician has had to face so awful a

for
trial as
life.
deafness
that
during practically two-thirds of his working
What
meant It must have been heart-rending for his friends to see such a sight as Beethoven playing the piano and frequently drawing no sound at all from the keys, so lightly did he touch them in the more while he himself was unconscious of the expressive passages,
silence, the rapture
Mm we can, with all our sympathy, only dimly guess.
written
on his
face
showing that
his spiritual,
if
but listening to the divinest strains; Beethoven himself, except in moments of forgetfulness like these, of that perpetually lamed sense must have been somethe
not
his physical ear,
was
anguish
is not that thing beyond our power of imagination. The wonder he should have thought of suicide so early as 1802, but that he
failed to carry the idea
unto execution.
GRANVDXE BANTOCK
for a argues no small imaginative and technical power a in interested us be to to able piece of deeply keep composer
It
unaccompanied choral music for something
like forty minutes.
*
There
indeed,
no more expressive than Mr. Bantock's.

is
choral writing in Europe today,
Excerpts
273
I can think of none, since Bach, whose choral music talks so gravely and wisely of the profounder issues of life and death. Mr. Bantock's Omar Khayyam is particularly rich in music of this
type;
(1912)
From
the
New
Witness, 1916-1918
ON THE CRITIC AND MUSICAL CRITICISM

Had Samuel Butler been alive in the great days of the Greek drama, had he been critic, say of the Athens Daily Mail, and had he said there, as he does in one of his books, that Aeschylus was an old humbug whom the world rates far above his merits, that he probably bribed the dramatic critics of his rime to say the best they could for him, and that we can account for his getting his plays produced only on the supposition that he married the daughter of a theatrical manager - had Butler said these things then and there, Aeschylus would have spluttered with rage at the insolence of the critic, and would have had something very nasty to say about the
uselessness
of criticism, except when practised by
'creative artists
its
Time blunts the edge of many an effect in music that seemed to own generation the last word in poignancy: if the celebrated
monologue in Gluck's Iphigenia in Tauris seems to us a little bloodWagner and Strauss, how can we be expected to thrill to it now at secondhand, through the recorded thrill of some journalist of Gluck's time? But the journalist of that time did good service in pointing out the feature in the aria that might have escaped the casual listener; and if musical criticism is good enough to be of some slight use in its own day it has perhaps fulfilled its function. It is a common grievance of the musical critic that he generally has to do his work with one eye on the dock. Perhaps that is just as well, after all; it may keep him from the too fond vanity of fixing both eyes on eternity.
less after
274
. .
Testament of Music
Pater's
famous rhapsody upon the Mona Lisa has the very . with the picture; to many artists it means slightest connection it would probably have meant nothing at all to nothing at all Leonardo: one does not need to have seen the picture to enjoy Pater's words about it, and when, after having read those words a hundred times, we stand once more before the picture, the
words never recur to
us,
or do so only in proportion as
we lack
the painter's eye for the painting. Pater might conceivably have been wrought to the same ecstasy by a poor picture, in which case
his
dithyramb upon it would have been no less fine as mere literature, just as a love lyric loses nothing in beauty for the world at
large from the fact that the maiden who inspired it was more fair in the poet's imagination than in reality. Pater's passage is hardly
is
of the picture itself into another medium: it the literary expression of a mood in himself that this simply particular picture had the good fortune to evoke: the picture merely made visible something that was already written in him
at all a transposition
in invisible ink.
Had it been a
shade
less
would have been
as insufferable as the
well done, the rhapsody conventional rhapsody of
the feminine scribe
upon music.
always makes us doubt another man's sanity to find that he has read into a given page of music a series of images quite different from our own. . . .
...
it
his
the critic surely is that he shall paint with in and the the portrait shall be unmistakably that eye object, of die sitter.
The first precept for
Really musical people, for instance, can never see anything

erotic in die
while these
music of Tristan as half-musical people generally do ; people can never see what it is in the music of Tristan that makes it, to the musician, so glorious an experience
latter
to live through.
(191?)
Excerpts
275
PUTTING THE CLASSICS IN THEIR PLACE
We have never had a real iconoclast in music. We have, it

in abundance,
is
true,
young Mozart or Wagner; but
musicians
who dislike Bach or Beethoven or

repugnance
is
their
purely temperamental matter that we take no would really do us good for a genuine iconockst to arise among us - one who would break graven images impartially and
rationally, because
so obviously a notice of it. It
he thought graven images bad for our

criterion for
it,
souls,
and
who would have some sort of workable
knowit
ing a veritable graven image when he saw with a piece of individual sculpture.
We
and not confusing

critics
are always
complaining of the lack of real originality
among composers; but
how many
great test of the critic is supposed to be his scent for the right or die wrong thing in new music. I should say that a greater test is his scent for the real or the
critics are really original?
The
sham thing in the old music. It is really less difficult to see a modern composer as he really is than to see a classic as he really is
;
the classic comes to us in such a cloud of transmitted adoration

that
none of
us,
do what
we
will,
searchlight upon him that we do upon
can turn the same critical Strauss or Debussy. Let us
few years ago Strauss take a couple of specific instances. - a 'Festal Prelude* for the work a short orchestral produced
opening of a
Virtually the
new
it:
it
concert
room
in Vienna or somewhere.
it
whole of the
I
British press 'turned
down*,
it
as the
vernacular has
myself not merely turned
down
but
was a truly wretched piece of hack-work. But there is an early Beethoven Rondino for wind that Sir Henry Wood is very fond of giving, no doubt for the chances it affords to good wind players to show what is in them. 'Autolycus* candidly calls the Rondino a dull work. So it is. If one of our young British composers were to produce such a work at Queen's Hall, the critics would with one accord say things about him that would make his ears tingle for a month after. Yet very few of us say, the morning after a concert, that we think the Rondino dull; and if we do drop a hint to that effect, it is in a half-apologetic way, as
stamped on it,
for
276
if we
Testament of Music
great
knew we were doing the wrong thing in supposing a man as Beethoven could ever be third-rate.
*
*
is
that so
*
not even given the dog's
The young composer of today
privilege of a first mistake: the classic can get the majority of us to accept almost every one of his mistakes as a Delphian oracle.
me,
Gott in Himmel, how dull Bach sometimes is Yet let anyone show if he can, the book in which Bach's occasional faults of dull!
ness
and over-statement
are frankly laid bare.
*
Is
*
a relatively unknown British ten years, that is of so fine a
it
it
there
one
orchestral
work by
last
composer, given during the

quality that
were the public to hear

a
once, they could clamour to hear
twenty times, instead of hundred times?
Music in the newspapers should be the affair of experts who it not as a matter of mere performance but as a matter of culture, who will interest the public in new good music as the
will treat
literary expert interests it in new good books. young poets be if it were not for the
Where would our publicity given to their work
in the best critical reviews? Per contra, what would become of a volume of songs by an English Wolf or of piano works by another
Albeniz or Granados if it were issued in this country? There are not five newspapers in Britain in which it would be reviewed at
the length and with the care and authority that a volume of poems by a new poet of genius would. How can it be expected, with the
musical portion of the Press mishandled as it is at present, that the majority of music-lovers should know what is going on in
music, that they should be interested in new ideas, and that they should be stimulated by criticism to buy new music and test it for themselves? English musk suffers not from a variety of diseases
disease only - the lack of a cultured public; and the biggest force in supplying the culture in a free and independent and progressive form must be, as it is in literature and the
but from one central
other
arts,
a truly
critical Press.
277 Beethoven meeting Paer after a performance of the latter's opera Eleanora, said to him, *I like your opera: I think I will set it to music*. That was perhaps not very nice, at the moment, for Paer; but as the result was Fidelia and in the sequel, the Leonora No. 3 Overture, the world has given Beethoven a full indemnity.
Excerpts
Many of
Chopin's melodies are obviously so

feet.
much more
violinistic thanpianistic that one wonders
why Chopin himself did
not perceive that
*
Paganini
if
would probably not have understood a page of the Brahms has written upon a well-known theme of his, and would have protested against what would no doubt have seemed to him an impertinent desecration. But Brahms was right. He shows us nothing in the theme that was not latent in it all the time, though Paganini had not the wit to see it.
variations that
(1918)
DEBUSSY
as containing something pathetinot to cally childlike, say childish, in his make-up. The prose is often that of a smart schoolboy I think I have said once before, somewhere or other, that his gibes at Wagner remind me of an urchin who scribbles an obscenity on a public monument and then walks away whistling for pure pride and joy in his own
!
Debussy has always struck me
smartness.
(1916)
The
vented
first
paradox of Debussy
is
that his very originality pre-
perhaps he might have been and the second paradox is that for so thoroughly independent a thinker he was strangely dependent upon the thought of others - more dependent upon others than other geniuses have been who were, on the surface, rather
as great as
him from being
had he been
slightly less original;
less "original
than he.
(1918)
278
Testament of Music
THE MUSICIAN AND

If I
HIS
ENVIRONMENT
development,
I
were to attempt to
trace
my own
should
find that the thinking and feeling part of me was made up, before I was twenty-five, of not only the usual English influences but of
very powerful influences from Greek sculpture, from English and French and German philosophy, strong tinctures of Renaissance art and of French literature, particularly of the eighteenth century and of the Romantic period, and of course the music of all nations and all periods. The mind cannot be parcelled off into watertight
compartments. ... I think I can trace what
in musical feeling I
take to be one of
my dominant traits
passion for what I call, for want of a better for closeness and coherence and the inevitable musical term, logic, of musical thought to two great culture influences in continuity
my
do with music - an early acquired habit of reading hard in philosophy, and the most intense love for sculpture, the art in which form speaks most lucidly and most concisely. (191?)
my early life that have seemingly nothing to
A SCHOOL FOR CRITICS

hardly five decent musical critics in Europe, while there are at least five thousand decent fiddlers, would seem to show that the good critic is a type a thousand times
feet that there are
The
as rare as the
good
fiddler.
The
his
trouble with a critic is that he has to be his own pupil and own master, and that by the time he has learned enough of the
is
business to be able to teach himself he
either ripe for die grave
or unresponsive to music from too
much hearing of it.
of music is that its very language alters from generation to generation; and much of the misunderstanding that fells to the lot of men like Wagner is due to their speaking in
peculiarity
The
Excerpts
polysyllables,
279
as it were, to a certain number of good people who can think only in words of one syllable, or to people who might be able to follow Mrs. Hemans but would be confused by Shelley.
modern music drama and the modern symphonic poem; he also founded, unknown to himself and his contemporaries, modern musical criticism. That so little has as yet been built on his foundation is our fault not his.
Wagner not only founded
the
(1916)
BEETHOVEN
Fate seems to have shaped him with the conscious and deliberate hand of an artist bending a mass of inchoate material to the realization of a vision of his own. It pruned him as a horticulturist prunes a tree, destroying a dozen shoots that one may bear the richer fruit. We can only dimly speculate on what would have become of him had disease not laid her ugly and terrible hand on him at the beginning.
Music shows us the soul of things
at first
hand.
as truly a
The Eroica or
the
C-minor Symphony
is
reading of
earth as anything that Shakespeare or Wordsworth could give us.
Wagner was
voyant
I
right: there like Beethoven's.
is
no music
that suggests the clair-
fancy
we have, by a sort of paradox,
another evidence of the
- a genius that was clairvoyant nature of Beethoven's genius a which the medium power beyond himself through simply
delivered
tions.
its oracles - in the very slowness of some of his concepHis sketch-books show us that his themes were, as a rule,
arrived at
by a
series
of experiments:
as first set
down
often incredibly commonplace;
then they are altered
they are by a touch
280
Testament of Music
here and a touch there, until, after a score of hackings and which we now know them. ings, they take the shape in
hew-
(191?)
BIZET
Carmen had to be written; no one else could have done it, and would obviously have been incomplete without it: yet Bizet would probably never have repeated that success, and there a few months is a species of philosophic beauty in his death within
the world
of it.
*
It
attention
(The Fair Maid of Perth) manages to hold the sympathetic of the musician almost as much in the theatre as it does
in the study.
The
explanation
lies,
slenderly-built genius that undoubtedly infuses a
no doubt, in the pure if good deal of it.

(191?)
THE RUSSIAN SONG

. . .
the wonderful 'Savielina* of Moussorgsky - one of the most
extraordinary songs ever written. The words are the composer's own. He was looking out of the window in a house in the country
one day when he saw the village idiot - poor, ugly, ragged, God's fool but an offence in the eyes of men - begging a disdainful village beauty for a moment of love, A wave of Dostoevskian
pity pity surged through Moussorgsky song welled up in him. It is in five-four time, with five crochets - never more and never less - in each bar. In the whole of two hundred and twenty-five crochets there is not a breathing
- that marvellous Russian

this
and
space marked for the singer. He has to snatch a little breath when he can: the song is thus exceedingly difficult to sing, which is no
doubt one of the reasons
why we never hear it.
If we can forget
Excerpts
281
singer,
the
poor
we
can only admire the intentions that
lie at
the
root of the song and the persistence with which Moussorgsky holds to them. The unchanging rhythm and the absence of any
pause in the vocal
the breathless eagerness
melody suggest, as no other devices could do, of die poor idiot: he begins with a
is obsessed by it, has not the art to vary it, soul in it, and at the finish stops as incoiiincoherent out his pours as he had begun; the breath and nerve drawn out of sequendy him. That is all, and he is physically done - a candle that has spluttered out in the socket. The whole thing is something unique
stammered phrase,
in the literature
of the song.
(191?)
MOUSSORGSKY
Moussorgsky was the great folk-composer of Russia; he saw, as no composer has done before or since, into the very hearts of his simple countrymen, and out of the songs and dances of these
unsophisticated beings he
theirs
made a musical language that is

the Nth by sympathetic
at
once
and
his
theirs raised to
genius.
*
ability to
The supreme
one's
instance in
modern music of this
make
own
technique
a technique never
and still less by any theoretician, before their time - are Wagner and Wolf. Debussy and Stravinsky have done the same thing but on a smaller scale* One of the Russians of the midnineteenth century had the capacity for it all-round, though Moussorgsky struck out a melodic and harmonic idiom of his own, and Rimsky-Korsakov an orchestral idiom of his own.
practician,
dreamed of by any
The Dargomijsky ideal of opera as a reproduction in music of the accents and inflections of the speaking voice is nothing but the amateurism of a man who is only half a musician. * *
His (Moussorgsky*s) own field in music was a very narrow one. He cultivated it to perhaps the utmost perfection to which it
282
Testament of Music
possible to bring
it; but he no doubt felt himself the was and of narrowness it, always being tempted to leap the fences.
would be
His nature was at bottom extraordinarily original. Where his imagination and his technique enabled him to realize that original-
But he had many impulses to originality that never succeeded in getting past die purely ratiocinative side of him, never became an unconscious part of the
ity to the full, the results are wonderful.
blood and bone of his thinking. Some of his work stands midway between these two extremes of inspired unconsciousness and
uninspired deliberation.
may almost say that Moussorgsky was a Russian Synge. studied the simple Russian peasant as Synge studied die peasant of the West of Ireland, assimilated the peasants' language
We
He
till it became the very blood and bone of his own thinking, and he drew the peasant from life and to life in a language applicable to him and no one else. He had Synge's contempt for all that is ready-made in art, for the facile effects of the standardized emotions and the transmitted speech. He would have called this, like Synge, 'town writing*. He would have said with Synge, that 'before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal'. He might not have agreed that 'when men lose their poetic feeling for ordinary life, and cannot write poetry of ordinary things, then exalted poetry is likely to lose its strength of exaltation, in the way men cease to build beautiful churches when they have
lost happiness in building shops'.
strikes us,
Khovantchina, in spite of many pages that we can never forget, on the whole, as litde more than a watering-down of
Boris.
Moussorgsky is the only case known in musical history of a composer with a dear enough consciousness of himself to know
how far genius can be trusted unassisted.
Excerpts
283
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Rimsky-Korsakov
musical history.
is
one of the most
baffling
problems in
One rarely comes across anything in his work that

of course, in his orchestration - and yet him and interested in him. If he is not a a talent of the first order.
except, suggests genius one is always attracted to

genius,
he
is
at
any
rate
I make bold to say that it was precisely because RimskyKorsakov tried to think too hard like Moussorgsky and the other nationalists of his day that he found such difficulty in discovering his real self- that had he been born in an epoch that was less the slave of a fixed idea he would have been a greater composer.
if
if
if
Rimsky-Korsakov's nature was a subtler and

gift
far
more adven-
turous one than Moussorgsky's, but he was without Moussorgsky's
- the
gift
of genius - for finding
at
once his right orientation.
Rimsky-Korsakov does wonders with the folk-song in Le Nuit de Mai; here is a purely Russian popular subject, and die virtuoso in him made it possible for him to limn every one of his characters
in the traditional popular idiom.
Rimsky-Korsakov had dreams of a musical logic that should flow through and unite organically all the parts of an opera. In Le Cog d'Or these dreams were largely realized; in Iv an the Terrible he is for ever pursuing them and for ever losing them.
SCRIABINE
Scriabine in his score,
if,
is
always naif enough to let us see, by the indications what it was in his mind to say; and it is not our fault
comparing the indications with the music,
we are occasionally
284
Testament of Music
more disappointed with the latter than we should have been had the composer been content to leave it to speak for itself. When he writes, for example, 'Monstrueux et Terrifiant' over a clear little
no more monstrous and no more terrifying than a white mouse, we cannot help being a little more severe on the theme than we otherwise would be. The score of this third symtheme
that
is
phony of his
is besprinkled with markings that over-describe the music just as grossly Scriabine may have felt in these themes all the horror, the despair or the sublimity with which he labels them; but for the unprepossessed listener there is hardly one of them
:
that, judging it
by specimens of the horrible, the despairing or the sublime in other men's music, can be said to answer to its label.
(1918)
GLINKA
Glinka has become largely a myth. He was never a really great composer, and he is of scarcely any significance in the history of
any music but Russian music. He is not big enough in any way to be a world figure; and the greater music ofWestern Europe in the last eighty years would have been precisely what it is now had he never lived; but a lucky coincidence of certain qualities in himself and of certain needs in the Russian musical life of his day enabled him to set a movement going that would have been impossible to a composer ten times as big as he in a country with a more
developed music.
A sensible nation, like a sensible man, talks as little as possible

about
its
past
Lifefor the Tsar is merely fluent commonplace, that will never stand the ghost of a chance, let the propagandists of all things Russians work their fountain pens to the hardest, of imposing
itself upon
not
know
the experienced operatic public of our own epoch. I do what a great interpreter like Chaliapin could make of
Excerpts
285
the character of Soussanine, but as Soussanine appears in Glinka's score I can see nothing very striking about him.
Glinka never evolved a purely Russian style Russian folk-song, for the simple reason that he never succeeded in evolving any style whatever of his own. His operas are a mixture of half-a-
- fragments of genuine folk-song, essays of his own in the folk style, the commonest tags of the Franco-Italian opera, whiffs of German Romanticism, coquettings with Orientalisms, and - but only occasionally - strokes of real and striking individozen
styles
duality.
if
if
if
can nowhere see genius in Glinka.
Russian and Ludmilla, like

incongruities.
A Life for
the Tsar,
is
medley of
(191?)
MANFRED (SCHUMANN)
is
Musicians will always be eager to hear the Manfred music, for among the very best that Schumann wrote. This phase of him
it
is
hardly
where the only Schumann the Schumann of the early song and piano pieces. The greater Schumann is to be found in some of the works
at all in England,
is
known
amateur knows
the
of his
last fruitful period,
before his mental trouble had seriously
affected
him.
if
Schumann had little dramatic sense; but he had lyricism and he had philosophy, and wherever, in his later larger works, he gets an opportunity for one of these he is astoundingly modern.
In Manfred he (Schumann) is than Byron is. And he is helped
much more of our own day

by the haphazard nature of his
286
Testament of Music
In Faust and Genoveva his liability to cooperation with the poet. dramatic of cover the whole range expression keeps him somewith the emptiest of platitudes. after times plodding on page page,
In Manfred he could select; and he has chosen virtually nothing from tie drama that could not call out the whole face of his
genius.
(1918)
THE VALKYRIE
struck me in The Valkyrie, after not having heard the looked at the score of it for four or five years, was the or opera ease and confidence of its style. The Wagnerian mannersuperb
What
isms, the Wagnerian longueurs,
were unmistakably there; but they seemed very trifling things. The dominant impression was of a medium of musical speech that was equal to any demand that might be made upon it, a style that, as it were, is ready to go anywhere and do anything, to be realistically descriptive, atmospherically suggestive, philosophical, or purely emotional, and to keep all four orders of expression in constant interflow. There is no music of the present day that has anything like this universality of scope; for the satisfaction of the various sides of our imagination we have to go to various composers. When the man comes who
can
sum up all the musical thinking as Wagner summed up that of his own day, the man who shall be master of the whole field of modern feeling and modern style, we shall have then, but not till then, something as wonderful in its own genre as Tristan and The Mastersingers and The Ring are in theirs. (1918)
PUCCINI
course, ever achieves such popularity, and such enduring popularity, among art lovers of all kinds without there being excellent reasons for it. Puccini's genius is a very limited
artist,
No
of
one, but he has always made the very most of it. His operas are to so.me extent a mere bundle of tricks: but no one else has ever
performed the same
tricks nearly so well.
Excerpts
287
of The Girl of the Golden West is largely due to the fact that there he aimed at making the general tissue of the music more organic throughout, instead of relying upon his power to bluff us through the less vital portions of the work by means of
failure
The
those delightful irrelevant
little
orchestral garrulities that in
us too constantly and too agreeably interested for us to have either the time or die inclination to be
Manon and La Boheme keep

critical. Puccini's
music has none of the philosophical pity of nor of the wistful pity of Pelleas and Melisande, but for Parsifal blubbering, whimpering pity there is no music to compare with it. We weep with his little people because there is nothing so infectious as tears - even the tears of weak self-pity. Both La Boheme and Madam Butterfly are masterpieces in the
miniature
style.
(1918)
SALOME
Had Wilde not been
convicted and sent to gaol for practising
a nasty vice, it is pretty safe to say that no one would ever have thought of reading nastiness into Salome just as no one would have thought of reading nastiness into Parsifal but for the fact that
9
the friendship of Wagner and King Ludvig was the friendship of
two men. ...

Artists
having died out in religion,

art
should ask themselves betimes whether the heresy hunt it should be allowed to be revived in
will tolerate their art being pronounced malodorous simply because it smells evil to some poor fool with a (1918) polypus in his nose.
- whether they
THE PERFECT ACCOMPANIST

The perfect accompanist, could we evolve him, would be very ideal musician. The wider any musician's knowledge is, the better; but roughly speaking we cannot expect any more of
much our
the singer or the pianist or the violinist than that he should be
288
thoroughly conversant with his that has been written for it.
Testament of Music
own branch of art and the music
accompaniment is purely for the pianoforte is obviously for the woodwind in octaves (with that strange mixture of fullness and hollowness that we sometimes get when clarinet, say, and bassoon are doubled at the octave) with horn chords in between. The intelligent accompanist will not need to have all this set
for him on his copy. He will enter imaginatively into the mind of the composer, who, though he himself may not have
In Ippolitov-Ivanov's song, 'Far on the road we two journeyed - for so we may truly call it, although the together*, the 'scoring*
down
been conscious of it, must have been possessed by the some such combination of timbres in the orchestra*
memory of
(1918)
BANDBOX OPERA
have long dreamed of the possibility, or at least the deskability of the country being studded with bandbox opera houses. Not in the life-time of any of us now living, I am afraid, shall we see full-sized opera houses in even half-a-dozen of the larger
I
towns.
that
... the average English music lover knows next to nothing of most delightful guise, the Optra Cotnique. (1918)
NONSENSE MUSIC
Music has talked such admirable sense for so long that I wish a composer or two of genius would arise who would make it talk equally admirable nonsense. For really, for so human an art, music has been preternaturally serious: whereas our shelves are covered with masterpieces in the serious genre, the works of genuine and enduring musical humour could probably be counted on the fingers of both hands. There has been plenty of music written to humorous subjects, but it has mostly not been
Excerpts
289
humorous music - not music, that is to say, that we could recognize as humorous apart from its subject. And so far there has been practically no nonsense music, by which I do not mean the mere piling up of absurdity, but that blend of sense and absurdity that we get in Carroll, in Lear, and in Gilbert at his best
die world obviously seen upside down, but still recognizable as the world, and almost as rational seen standing on its head as
standing
on
its feet.
Satie has, I should say, a good deal of the right sort of topsyturvy imagination for the nonsense worker, without the musical
ability to realize
it.
of the Embryons Desstchts, Satie marks When, 9 a passage 'Comme un rossignol qui aurait mal aux dents the joke remains a merely verbal one. These Embryons Dess6ch6s however, contain some of his best fooling. They may be described as days
in the Holothurie
in the
life
of certain
inhabitants
of the deep.
We
really
seem to
('whom the ignorant call the seacucumber'), theEdriophthalma ('Crustaceans with sessile eyes, that is to say without stalks and immovable; naturally very sad, these
from the world, in holes dug in the and the cliffs'), Podophthalma ('Crustaceans whose eyes are on movable stalks; they are adroit and indefatigable hunters, etc/). We see the Holothuria taking his promenade in the rain, and gluing himself with a sigh of satisfaction to a rock; and we quiver with him when the bit of moss tickles him ('ne mefaites pas rire bien de mousse: vous me chatouillez"). Best of all is the musical description of the sombre meeting of the Edriophthalma tribe, where a pere de famille addresses them in mournful tones; and they all weep to the strains of what Satie describes as 'citation de la c6Ubre mazurka de Schubert but that is, of course, a delightful burlesque of the slow section of Chopin's Funeral March. Here there is something for us to go upon. The nonsense has the basis of sense that all good nonsense must have. The trouble with Satie is that as a rule he is not musician enough to stand musical sense on its head, in the Carroll or Lear style, and keep it still recognizable. What he too
crustaceans live in retirement
9
get to
know
the Holothuria
often gives us
is
not pure nonsense, but merely damned nonsense.

(1918)
290
Testament of Music
TEMPO
Wagner's marking for Elizabeth's Prayer is crotchet = 60, quickening to 66 and then to 72, with a filial return to 60. 1 think it will be found in practice, that comparatively few Elizabeths
keep within these
figures.
(1918)
THE UNFINISHED IN MUSIC
We have, in Hugo Wolf

left it;
's
last
opera Manuel Venegas, the case of
a dead composer's incomplete manuscript being published as he and I know nothing more pathetic than this fragment. It
ends abruptly in a casual bar with an unresolved discord; and so helpless are we in the face of the unfinished music that, so far from
it is
our imagination being able to surmise the remainder of the scene, incompetent to give, for the mere resolution of the discord, a suggestion so plausible that any musician would accept it as being
the probable truth.
(1918)
THE SMALL POEM IN MUSIC

"What
is
the shortest complete musical
work that has
ever been
written? So far as I know, it is one of Theodore Streicher's four settings of the Spruche und Gedichte, of Richard Dehmel. As so
often happens, the very new tiling has been done for the first time by a composer not of the first class. This little opus of
of four songs if we can call them songs: in music would be a better tide for them. The perhaps aphorisms fourth is of average length; but the first runs only to eight bars,
Streicher's consists
Excerpts
291
no more than four bars which last I take to be the record in musical brevity. One or two of
the third to nine bars and the second to
the little pieces are not wholly unsuccessful, though we always have the feeling that it was hardly worth while setting so much
apparatus to work to say so little; it suggests a man taking half-anhour to get a string of his violin in tune and then publicly playing
a semiquaver on it; for few as the notes are in the smallest of these works, the Leitspruch, they seem rather many for the impression that is finally left on us. The collection as a whole does not destroy our belief in the possibility of musical song reduced to the
nutshell;
it
only makes us wish that some

at the genre.
man of genius would

(1918)
try his
hand
From
the Musical Courier, 1919
SIR
HUBERT PARRY
When a composer dies it is customary for concert societies to devote a whole memorial concert to his works. Within the last few years there have died Scriabine, Reger, Debussy, and Granados. From the works of any of these men an interesting orchestral or choral evening could be made up. Even Saint-Saens
fill out an evening. But what survives on the world-stage of Parry's music? The Blest Pair of Sirens alone. All the orchestral works, all the other choral works have vanished, except from the smaller provincial concert-rooms. Of his many songs, not one has taken any real hold upon either singers or public. As a composer he has already ceased to be for the simple reason that as a composer he never was. Parry's music is not an artist's picture of the emotions with which it deals; it is only a guide book to the emotions, a conscientiously constructed chart to them, done by a plodding
could
cartographer without the visionary inner eye.
292
Testament of Music
From
the Sunday Chronicle, 1923
ON FLOGGING
mental reason
people
If flogging really does act as a deterrent, I see no good sentiwhy it should not be administered. Are not the
who
object to
it
little
inconsistent?
Do they not show a
certain lack
of imagination? They can enter shudderingly into the feelings of a man who is getting the lash. But surely, to anyone with a lively imagination, die thought of what some criminals must suffer during a long imprisonment is just as dreadful?
Stinie Morrison, it
is
would,
pity.
case,
If,
- as a caged beast evident, suffered intensely in a that moves us to no doubt, but all the same way in the social interest, we are to stifle our pity in the one
so in the other?
a deterrent (remember, I am not saying not), there are many criminals who perhaps
is
why should we not do

it is
Indeed, if flogging
whether
or
is
some of those who get it. Why flog some poor wretch who, perhaps in desperation, inflicts a bodily wound on the man he is robbing of a few pounds - a wound from which the man soon recovers - and not flog a Bottomley or a Jabez Balfour, whose cold-blooded depredations may possibly condemn thousands to years of misery, or drive some to suicide? But the real argument of the advocates of flogging is that it deters certain criminals from committing certain crimes. I really cannot see, on these lines, why it should not be equally efficacious with other criminals and other crimes. If flogging were made the penalty for other crimes, would not an eminent financier think twice before he falsified a balance-sheet if there were a chance of his getting flogged when he was found out? The criminal who uses violence is often a blunted being, with
better deserve a flogging than
a physical organization as insensitive as his mental or moral organization, with a hide so tough that an ordinary hiding is wasted on him; whereas the eminent financier is probably a man of refinement and culture, soft tissued as the result of soft living, a man whom the very thought of a flogging would probably
keep honest in the moment of greatest temptation.
XI
FROM A MUSICAL
HOLIDAY
1925
CRITIC'S
say a man of had known but one Aeschylus's day, Europe language for the last three thousand years - would find litde difficulty in deciding whether Hamlet was a great work or not. The man ofHerrick's time would find no difficulty in taking his bearings in the lyrical poetry of today. But what would a man of the twelfth century who knew (apart from folk-songs and dances) no music but plainsong and the first experiments in organum have been able to make of a mass by Palestrina or a madrigal by Gesualdo? What would Peri or Caccini, or any other of the Florentine reformers, or even Monteverdi himself, have been able to make of Tristan had he been brought to life about 1870 and suddenly set down in a German opera house? Would the composer of Sumer is icumen in, had he been reanimated in Leipzig in the early eighteenth century, have been able to follow the complex figuration of a Bach chorale prelude? What would John Bull have been able to make of one of the late Beethoven quartets, or even of the Eroicd? Would Corelli have been able to make head or tail of Bek Bartok's second violin sonata? Would the composer of any of the old German chorales be able to find his way about in a song like Hugo Wolf's Auf dem griinen Balkon? What would a great sixteendi-century contrapuntist like Byrd make of Schonberg's
MAN
OF
Chaucer's day
- we might even
Pierrot Lunairel
293
294
Testament of Music
We know that almost every harmonic innovation has puzzled, and perhaps shocked, some contemporary listener or other. But the shocked ones have mostly been pedagogues and theorists, whose freedom of assimilation was hampered by their belief that the 'laws* of their schools and their text-books were rooted in Nature itself. But whatever a few people of this kind may have said about the harmonic innovations, these presented no difficulty
to the average
influences
ears
man who, having escaped the petrifying intellectual of an academic musical education, listened with his
imagination alone. Unfortunately the musical nothing about these people what, indeed, is there
and
his
histories tell us
to tell about them? - while the historians go on making an absurd fuss over some pedant or some ignoramus whose inanities
happen to have been recorded in
print.
The plain man, knowing nothing of harmonic analysis or the laws' of harmonic combination and progression, is as a rule
happily ignorant whether a
new
texture
is
new
or not, or in
he knows is whether it pleases him or respects not, whether it does or does not carry on the composer's thought logically. There are tens of thousands of unschooled hearers, for instance, who have no notion that the harmony of Scriabine's Prometheus and of other late works of his is largely based on a
it is
what
new;
all
chord-system of superimposed fourths. But it is not necessary for them to know this, any more than it is necessary for the lover of a simple song to know that some of its harmonies are tonic, some dominant, some sub-dominant, and all the rest of it. All that is
as expressed in the
required is that he shall be able to follow the composer's thoughts harmonies.
Vocal music has gone stepwise from the simplest folksong to of and from the most wrought songs Hugo Wolf, primitive piece of 'imitation' to the intricate voice-weaving of
the subtly
From
A Musical Critic's Holiday
295
the madrigal. Instrumental music has gone stepwise from the primitive dance tune, with its simple balance of parts, to the
fugue of Bach and the symphony of Beethoven, Brahms, Franck
and Elgar. Opera has progressed stepwise from the Euridice of Peri, or those still earlier quasi-dramatic tentatives of the sixteenth
century with which modern research has made us acquainted, to the opera of Verdi, of Wagner, of Strauss, of Moussorgsky, of Debussy. In none of these instances has progress consisted of
anything but putting old material to
new
uses,
expanding
it
and adapting
it
as
was
necessary.
No
critic
who
thinly at
all
about
his
work can
it.
feel
anything
but depression
after
twenty years or so at
There has never yet been a composer so greatly in advance of time that only an initiate here and there - one or two out of a vast population of cultivated musicians and music lovers - could understand him.
his
Is it not part of the business of the critic to distinguish between the works that are masterpieces and those that are not, and to
make
it
dear that a given work
is
to be put in the one or the
other class?
The
he
is
see the thing as

is this
chief object of the critic is surely to get other people to he sees it; in other words, to get us to believe that
right in calling this
work good and the other bad. And how
agree
appeal of his judgment to ours to succeed unless he and we on certain standards of goodness, or tightness, that are
independent of our
own litde subjectivities?
296
The
critic
artist
Testament of Music can be, to a large extent, a law unto himself. The
.
cannot*
truth
*
that the
*
are mostly 'too
The
is
modern composers
complicated', resorting to ingenuities and piquancies and audacities because they know that if they were to talk simply about
simple things their poverty of idea would be found out. Still, there are works that are recognized as excellent, even at a first
critics and public: for example, Gade's first 'which symphony, pleased at its first performance in Leipzig, and goes on pleasing everywhere*. I am pulled up with a jerk; my blood runs cold. Cade's first symphony ! Where is that symphony now? as Hans
hearing,
by both
Breitmann might ask. I begin to ask myself whether our good Lobe's judgment is quite so infallible as he thought, especially when I find him, in this same chapter, hinting that the bigger
works of Schumann were among those

as
that indiscreet admirers
too 'deep' to be understood all at once. Well, Schuregarded mann's symphonies may not be in the very front rank of their
genre, but at any rate they are still alive, which is more than can be said, I am afraid, for the Number One of the estimable Gade.
It is all very well to say that the difference between good music and bad music is that the former is sincerely felt and the latter is not; but what is 'sincere' in this connection? Is it not probable that Ethelbert Nevin was as sincerely moved when he wrote The Rosary as Wagner was when he wrote Tristan'?
which we put a critic of the past is this - did he see sub age specie aeternitatis? Did he pierce through all the little of the things day that did not matter and get to the heart of the things that really did? This is the test, we may depend upon
The
test to
his
own
it,
to
which each
critic
of today will be put
who may
have the
curiosity to
make
research into contemporary critical opinion.
From

only in art but in politics
Every new movement, not

social affairs,
297 and in
throws up a large number of not very intelligent people who are infected by the excitement around them and stimulated by it to a self-expression that may be excellent as a safety-valve for themselves, but does not add very much to the world's store of wisdom.
Nowhere
uniformity
does history repeat
itself
as in this eternal resurgence
with such monotonous of the romantic in art.
Theophile Gautier's Histoire du Romanticisme has

others, that
it
this
value
shows us how a movement of revolt among in later to one who had taken a prominent part in appeared years it. Gautier himself has to admit that in the trail of the half-dozen artists of the time who really mattered came an army of litde people of whom their contemporaries and they themselves took a view. Even Petrus Borel - a fourth-rate much too
one - inspired the young Gautier with 'exceeding awe'; he treated Borel, he says, 'with an amount of respect quite unusual between young fellows of nearly an age ... I thought him remarkably clever, and had concluded that he would be the particular great man of our company. He was slowly
mind
flattering if ever there was
elaborating the Rhapsodies in mysterious secrecy, intending that they should suddenly blaze forth like lightning, or at least dazzle
the outstanding bourgeoisie', the Borels we have always with us; who does not recognize a hundred specimens of the type in the
music of today? They are always about to blaze; always, like Mr. Snodgrass, taking off their coats and announcing that they are going to begin. And an admiring world waits expectantly; but die coat never gets any lower than the shoulders, tie blaze never becomes more than the spluttering of a squib.
Is
rate
any age capable of distinguishing between its own firstcomposers and its second- and third-rate? Have not past
298
Testament of Music
in this respect? And is our generations blundered badly in the eyes of our successors? likely to be any better
own luck
*
of the
in
case
What
are
we
to
make, for
instance,
of Telemann,
Holland's
book, Voyage Musical au essay Pays du POSS& Telemann's vogue was infinitely greater than that of his contemporary Bach. Yet Bach today is - Bach; and Tele-
that has been set forth so fully for us on 'A Forgotten Master', in his
M. Romain
mann
is
forgotten except
by an
historian here
and
there.
been thus in every age, the
glib talent being acclaimed
Has it and the
seminal genius being ignored or opposed?
Mr. Bernard Shaw has had some devastating things said about him in his time. Suppose some historian, fifty or a hundred years hence, were to dig out a few of these and attempt to prove from them that Mr. Shaw met with nothing but misunderstanding and vilification during his lifetime; would not that be a sad perversion of the real fact, which is that Mr. Shaw is recognized all the world over as one of the half-dozen most vital minds of our time?
high time someone undertook a genuine history of musical opinion. What has hitherto passed for this seems mostly to have been written by children for children.
It is
In recent years the great object of sympathy, among recently dead composers, has been Hugo Wolf. The legend is already well established that it was left to the decade that followed his premature death to atone for the scandalous neglect of his con-
Only the other day a newspaper correspondent, combating my views that history records no case of a great
temporaries.
musical genius being so far ahead of his time that his contemporaries could not do him justice, confronted me with Hugo Wolf.
'One can confidently
assert',
he
said, 'that practically
nothing but
From

in his
299
nonsense was written about him

appreciative articles lifetime by several people,
own
day/ History,
howand
his
ever, does not support this confident assertion. Excellent
on Wolf's music were written during
Schalk, Michael Haberlandt,
Edmund
including Emil Kauffman, Josef Hellmer, Karl Hallwachs,
Paul Muller, Karl Crunsky, and O. E. Nodnagel. It may be said that these were mostly members of the Wolf circle. Precisely; but
their they had become members of the Wolf circle through enthusiasm for his music. And if it be asked why Wolf's music
headway during his lifetime, the answer is few people could, in the circumstances of the case, have any acquaintance with it. Few of the German singers who knew anything about the songs cared to sing them; we all know what singers are. The songs were difficult, and the average
made
so
little
general
that comparatively
not seeing sufficient opportunities for applause in them, could hardly be induced even to study them. The accompaniments are often so difficult that even today the ordinary amateur can make little of them.
singer,
Criticism has practically nothing to reproach itself for with those who have regard to Gesualdo. He has always been seen by
studied him (except Burney) steadily and whole. His case certainly will not support the theory that there are geniuses so far ahead of their own or the next century that many generations have to
go by before they can be
rightly judged*
How, indeed, could or can the few 'make'

let
a composer? Music,
me repeat, is an art that people enjoy in masses. They pay their
money to be interested and pleased, and if they are not interested and pleased, nothing will make them go through the same
criticism is powerless either to experience again. Professional if a make or rnar reputation; people like a man's music, not all the unfavourable criticism in the world will keep them away from it; if they do not like it, not all the favourable criticism in the
300
Testament of Music
world will send them to it after one or two unrefreshing experiences of it. Indeed, the plain man reads very little musical criticism; and as the critics invariably disagree with each other, 'criticism' cannot claim either the credit of making an audience for a new composer or the discredit of keeping audiences away from him.
Genius of a kind, or at any rate a decided talent, cannot be denied to Gesualdo; but it is impossible to see more than average talent in the work of most of the monodists of the first generation
When the men of greater talent got to work, they the texture of their music; a Carissimi could not or simplified would not work in the experimental harmonic idiom of a
after 1600.
Saraceni. May we not be sure that something of the kind will happen again? The minor men of today are experimenting with all die ardour of their predecessors ofthe sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
They
are producing, like these,
more harmonies than
they
quite know what to do
with.
By slight effort of the historical imagination we can place ourselves at the point of view of the sixteenth-century musician, and realize that the prospects of atonality or quarter-tones cannot
be more exciting to us than the prospects of chromaticism were to them. Yet the great masters did ninety-nine hundredths of their work in sublime disregard of what was felt at the time to be the new spirit. And it is easy to see why this was so. We can imagine
a Palestrina saying to himself: 'Yes, this
is
extremely interesting,
and some day something may come of it. But at present it is not for me. If my musical faculty is to function freely, I must be content with the normal language of music; I must not try to build with materials of which I do not fully understand the use, and which, indeed, I shall have, in part, to make as I go along/ And we may be pretty certain what would have happened had there been musical journalism in those days. Palestrina would have been derided as a conservative, a reactionary. Extravagant praise
From
301
would have been poured out on
the experimenters in chromatiit be 'in to the air', and fearing to be stigmatized as cism, and, feeling
old-fashioned, the feebler heads among the younger men would have launched out into extravagances of which they themselves could see neither the first reason not the ultimate end, but that would at least have earned for them the praise of being thoroughly 'progressive*. Progress there certainly would come in time from these experiments, in the sense that a new language would be made for music. But little music - music, that is to
great say, recognized as great by posterity - could have come out of it at the time. The theoretical future might be with the experimenters; the practical future was with the immovable 'conservatives', who,
masters of a material and a technique that they thoroughly understood, built fabrics that all the revolutions of time cannot
shake from their foundations. The phenomenon is not a chance one. It obeys a law; and we may be sure that the law is operative
today. Criticism need have no fear of stultifying itself in the eyes of future generations if it tests contemporary musical activity in the light of this law.
If the age makes a mistake at all, it is in the direction not of failure to recognize the truly vital minds but to over-estimate
the minds of only partial vitality, such as a Telemann or a Spohr. Of a thousand men who are writing music in any country in any
given decade, not more than half-a-dozen are likely to receive much attention from posterity; and the critic who says that the vast
in a
majority of the new and original works of today will be forgotten few years need not fear being proved to be wrong a century or so hence.
The people who
disliked
Wagner
it set
in 1870 or 1880 mostly did
so not because his music
was
intellectually
beyond them, but
up unpleasant emotional or moral reactions. It was not a matter of the novelty of the sensation but of the disagreeableness of it; there are anti-Wagnerians in
because, having got into them,
3O2
to plenty today, musicians
Testament of Music
is musically no more Giovanni is, but who see difficult, but a long erotic convulsion, and who turn away
whom
than
Tristan
complex, no more
nothing in
it
Don
from
it
for their soul's health. 'The
whole man
thinks'
is as
true
in music as in ordinary psychology; music sets up different reactions in each of us according to our physical and mental and moral chemistry. But the extremes of musical temperament in a each other out, and we are left, as I have population cancel of plain, sensible, instructed musicargued already, with a body Mr. Arnold Bennett would catholic. lovers whose taste is fairly
no doubt call them
call these
people the passionate few.
should prefer to
the intelligent average.
We can see that Stravinsky stands head and shoulders above all
his imitators
and hangers-on; and we can hazard our soul's salvation on the wager that, even though a good deal of his work should become for future ages only what much of Monteverdi's is for ours - evidences of an interesting stage in musical develop-
- posterity rather than creations eternally valuable as art or L'Histoire du will confirm our judgment that Le Sacre Printemps same in the du Soldat is to similar efforts of the day genre as
ment
Monteverdi's Orfeo was to the average dilettante essay of the time in the new Florentine 'drama with music'.
INDEX
A
Aeschylus, 273 Alda (Verdi), 104 Albeniz, Pedro, 192, 276 Alexander, Mrs., 86 Allen, Erskine, 263
Beethoven, Ludwig van,
8, 9, II, 15,
16, 18, 64, 79, 121, 126, 138, 147,
156, 161, 171, 181, 184, 197, 199, 200, 202, 203, 207, 209, 219, 232, 234, 235, 238, 240-52, 267, 271-2,
Alpine Symphony Also Sprach Zaratkustra (Strauss), 156, 219, 265 Amico Fritz L* (Mascagni), 259 Amiel, Journals o xvi, 35. 260-1 Andrea Chenier (Giordano), 214 The (Elgar), 182
(Strauss),
179-83
275, 276, 277, 279-80, 295 Bekker, Paul, 249 Bellini, Vincenzo, 7 Bennett, Arnold, 302 Berliner Morgenpost, 180
Berlioz, Hector, xv, 16, 27, 60, 61, 200 Birmingham Daily Post, xii, xiv, 158,
161
Apostles,
Apres-midi d'un Faune,
(Debussy),
170
Archer, William, 56* Ariadne aufNaxos (Strauss), 140, 174-7,
216 Arnim, Bettina von, 247, 248 Astuzie Femininili, Le (Cimarosa), 208
Auber, Daniel, 7
Bket, Georges, 280 Boheme, La (Puccini), 212, 214, 287 Borel, Petrus, 297 Bori, Lucrezia, Mme, 209-10 Bottomley, Horatio, 292
Bourgeois Gentilhomme,
174-
Le
(Moli^re),
Bouilliez, Auguste, 183 Boris Godounov (Moussorgsky),
183-
Bach, J.
, *5, *5 18, 21, 109, S., 3, 9, 119, 126, 147, 150, 167, 171, 197, 219, 267, 273, 275, 276, 295, 298
91, 194, 198, 211 Bradkugh, Charles, editor National
Bradley, Prof.
Balfour, Jabez, 292 Ballo in Maschera, Un (Verdi), 104
27 Brahms, Johannes, 22, 33, 54,
Reformer, xii, 254 C.,
<*o,
61,
86, 109, 140, 167, 187, 201, 202,
Bantock, Granville, 263, 272-3
Sir, 53,
54, 55,
Barber of Seville, The (Paisiello), Barber of Seville, The (Rossini),
n n
231, 236, 277, 295 Brand (Ibsen), 256, 257 Brooke, Rupert, 192
Bridge, Sir
P.,
21
Barrack-Room Ballads (Kipling), 89 Bartok, Bella, 293 Bauer, Harold, S7~ Beecham, Sir Joseph, 142, 157 Beecham, Sir Thomas, xv, 115* 122,
124, 126, 127, 183, 208, 216,
Browning, Robert, 56 Bruckner, Anton, 168

Buhlig, Richard, 163 Bule, John, 293 Billow, Hans von, 134, 202 Busoni, Ferruceio, 163
303
217
304
Butler, Samuel, 273
Index
Cui, C&ar, 202
Byrd, William, 293 Byron, Lord, 285
Cymbeline (Shakespeare), 72, 131
Daily Chronicle, 148, 150

Caccini, Giulio, 233, 293
Caesar and Cleopatra (Shaw), 131 Candida (Shaw), 121
Daily Telegraph, 143, 147, 154, 155 Daniel Deronda (Eliot), 71
Carmen
(Bizet), 115, 144, 208,
280
Dargomijsky, Alexander, 281 Debussy, Claude, 156, i<5o, 170, 177,

192, 193, 196, 199, 203, 204, 229,
Carpentier (the boxer), 17 Cardus, Neville, xiv

Carroll, Lewis, 289
271, 275, 277-8, 281, 291, 295
Caruso, Enrico, i
Casals, Pablo, I
Decay of Lying, The (Wilde), 74 Dehmel, Richard, 290-1

Desnoirestcrres, Gustav, 33
Cateline (Ibsen), 257 Cavalleria Rusticana (Mascagni),
Dickens, Charles, 266
259-
Dobell, Bertram, 31, 32, 34, 35
60
Chaliapin, Feodor, 183, 284
Cherubim, Luigi, 16, 21 Chopin, Frederic, 9, n, 51, 192, 193, 219, 272, 289 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 243
Cimarosa, Domenica, 208, 209
Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel, 263
Don Giovanni (Mozart), 182, 302 Don Juan (Strauss), 219 Don Quixote (Strauss), 118, 142, 180,
182, 219, 265, 270 Dostoievsky, 118, 266, 280 Dvofdk, Antonin, 48
Comedy of Love (Ibsen), 256 Comte, Auguste, 72

Egoist,
Edinburgh Festival, xiv The (Meredith), 76
(New-
man), xii, 37-41 Conrad, Joseph, xvi, 88

Consuelo (Sands), 87 Conway, Sir Martin, 27 Coq d'Or, Le (Rimsky-Korsakov), 283
Corregidor,
Bin Heldenleben (Strauss), 165, 176, 219 Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (Mozart), 165
Eleanora (Paer), 277 Elcctra (Euripides), 125
Elektra (Strauss), xv, 115, 116, 117,
118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126,
The (Wolf), 106, 266
127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133,

134* 135,
*3<5,
Cortot, Alfred, i
137. 138, 139, 140,
Covent Garden Opera House, 214,

216
Creighton, 174
142, 143, 145, 146, 151, i<So, 176,
180, 182, 270

Eliot,
George, 68, 70
Couperin, Francois, 200 Crime and Punishment (Dostoievsky), 118
Elgar, Sir
Edward, xv,
33, 37, 47, 53,
54, 55. 182, 263, 268-9,
294 290
Elizabeth's prayer (Tannhauser),
Crome, Richard, 10
Cromwell (Hugo), 220
Enfant Prodigue,
V (Debussy), 115
Cromwell, Oliver, quoted, 38 Crunsky, Karl, 299
Enigma Variations, 268 Eroica Symphony (Beethoven), 40, 279

Erwartung (Sdhonbcrg), 165
Index
Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the
305
Girl of the Golden West, The (Puccini),
Spirit (Meredith),
Comic
79
287
Glascnapp, Karl, 203 Glazunov, Alexander, 46
Glinka, Michael, 229, 284-5
Euridice (Peri), 295
Evans, Edwin, xiv, 187, 188, 196, 199,
202
Evelyn Innes (Moore), 85, 87
Gluck, Christoph, 7, II, 31-32, 33, 34, 115, 273 Gluck and the Opera (Newman), 32-33,
Fair
Maid of Perth (Bizet), 280

213
Falstaff'(Verdi), 105, 106, 107,
Fanfare for Ernest Newman (Van Thai)
xvin.
Fassbender, Zdenka, 127 Faust (Goethe), 8, 133, 197
34,35 Genoveva (Schumann), n, 286 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 21, 72, 133, 238, 247
Goossens, Eugene, Jnn, 188
Faust (Gounod), 141 Faust (Schumann), 11* 286

Faust Symphony (Liszt), 6m. Festliches Praeludium (Strauss), 140
Feuersnot (Strauss), 270 Fidelio (Beethoven),
Fifth
Gotterdammerung (Wagner), 197 Goya, Francisco Josfcde, 194

Goyescas (Granados), 192-6
Granados, Enrique, 192-6, 276, 291 Green Carnation, The (Hichens), 84

Grieg, Edvard, 48, 197
n
(SchSnbcrg),
Guard, W.J., 215

Guardian, The,sec Manchester Guardian
Symphony (Beethoven), 18
Orchestral
Pieces
Five
111-13
Flaubert, G., 243
Florentine Nights (Heine), 263
H
Haberlandt, Michael, 299
Halle*, Sir Charles,
Flying Dutchman (Wagner), 104 Fokine, Michael, 141, 182
32
Fra Diavolo (Auber), Franck, C&ar, 58, 86, 200, 295

Franz, Robert, 58, 197, 236 Free Review, xii
Freischutz,
Hallelujah Chorus (Handel), 135, 156
Hallwadhs, Earl, 299 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 72, 293 Hammerckvier Sonata (Beethoven),
8,
Der (Weber),
9
Handel, II, 135, 122, 138, 156, 161 Hands, Vera, adi Hansel and Gretel (Humperdinck), 115 Hanslick, Eduard, 139
G
Gade, Niels, 296 Gagliano, Marco, 233 Gambana (Balzac), 87 Garrick, David, 105
Gatti-Casazza, Giulio, 215
Gautier, Theophile, 297 Gerontius (Elgar), 23
Hardy, Thomas, 56, 74 Harry Richmond (Meredith), 78 Haydn, Joseph, 121, 207 Hedda Gabkr (Ibsen), 258 Heine, Hcinrich, 54 Helena Variations (Bantock), 53
Hcllmer, Edmund, 299
Gesualdo, Don Carlo, 293, 299, 300 Gianni Schicchi (Puccini), 212, 213
Gilbert,
Hemans, Mrs., 279

Hcnnequin,
"femile,
W.
S.,
289
243
306
Histoire du Soldat,
Index
V (Stravinsky), 219,
Le
Gallienne, Richard, 259
302 Holbrooke, Joseph (Josef), 55, 263-4 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 107, 118,
122, 125, 129, 132, 141, 174* 175
Edward, 289 Legend of Joseph, The

Lear,
(Strauss), 139,
140, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 182
Homer, 131 Hugo, Victor,
72, 243
Lehar, Franz, 109 Lehrbuch der Musikalischen ^Composition
(Reissmann), 21
Ibsen, Henrik, 68, 122, 136, 157, 256-8
Iliffe,
Frederick, 21
Leopardi, Count Giacomo, 266 Lesueur, Jean Francois, 27

(Glinka), 284-5 Life for the Tsar, Light that Failed, The (Kipling), 92 Liszt, Franz, 9, 17, 47, 60, 61, 140, 184,
Intimations
of Immortality
(Words-
worth), 8
Istel,
Dr. Edgar, 179, 180, 183
Iphigenia in Tauris (Gluck), 273 Italian Serenade (Wolf), 237-8. 239
202, 227, 229, 272
Ivan the Terrible (Rimsky-Korsakov), 283 Ivanhoe (Sullivan), 115
Musical editions of, 12 Lodge, Sir Oliver, 27 Lohengrin (Wagner), 69, 134 Lorenz, Alfred, 225 Ludvig, King, of Bavaria, 287
litolflf,
Jeux (Debussy), 204 Joachim, Joseph, 185 Johnson, Dr., 137

Johnstone, Arthur, xiv, 37, 5911. Joseph Andrews (Fielding), 141
Just So Stones (Kipling), 88, 93
M
Macfarren, Sir G. Alexander, 15, 16 Madam Butterfly (Puccini), 212, 287
Mahler, Gustav, 166-70, 184, 236
Malory, Sir T., 70 Man and Superman (Shaw), 268

Manchester Guardian,
xii, xiv, 37,
Jadassohn, Salamon, 21
59n.
Kant, Immanuel, 72
Kalisch, Alfred, 133
Manfred (Schumann), n, 19, 285-6 Manon Lescaut (Puccini), 211, 287 Mantegna, Andrea, 148 Manuel Venegas (Wolf), 290
Kauffinan, Emil, 299

Kesslcr, Count, 140
Khovantchina (Moussorgsky), 282 Kipling, Rudyard, 88-93, 258
Marlowe, Christopher, 130, 131 Marx, Joseph, 21, 33 Mascagni, 259-60

Massenet, Jules, 213 Master Builder (Ibsen),
Meistersinger,
Knight,
W. F.Jackson,
xiii n.
243
Knopf, Alfred,
The (Wagner), 105, 106,
Kreisler, Fritz, i
no,
184, 286
Passion,
Kreutzer Sonata, The (Tolstoi), 83-84,
Matthew
The (Bach), 9
187
Matrimonio Segreto, II (Cimarosa), Maugham, Somerset, 175
Maupassant,
Guy de,
89
Le Du, Alphonse, 243
Mavra (Stravinsky), 219
Index
Medtner, Nicholas, 192, 193
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,
Felix,
30?
New
II,
Statesman, the, 188
Nicholls, F. C., 54, 55, 262-3
44, 54, 134, 182, 184, 219, 223, 267
Nietzsche,
F., 35,
Mendes, Catulle, 121

Meredith, George, xvi, 35, 56, 74-83 Meredith, H. W., 132, 134
Merivale, Philip, 174
Nightingale,
221, 270, 271 The (Stravinsky), 219
Nikisch, Arthur, 116 Noces Les (Stravinsky), 219
Mer, La (Debussy), 204 Metropolitan Opera House, N.Y.,
Nodnagel, O. E., 299 Nordau, Dr. Max, 122 Nuit de Mai (Rimsky-Korsakov), 283
213-18
Midsummer
ssohn),
Night's
Dream (MendelOberon (Weber), 260

Observer, xii
182
Mildenburg, Barh-, Anna, no", 127 Mirror of Music (Makower), 87

Moliere, 174, 175
Oiseau de Feu,
9
,
219, 221
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem, 159 Monteverdi, Claudio, 293, 302
Omar Khayyam (Bantock), 273 One of Our Conquerors (Meredith),

77 Opera Comiaue, 288
Oratorios,
Moore, George,
56, 85, 86, 87, 88
Morrison, Stinie, 292 Morte D'Arthur (Malory), 71 Mosel, Ignaz, 234
how the singers
should be
dressed, 211
Moussorgsky, Modeste, 183-91, 202, 280-3, 295 Mozart, W. A., 5, 7, n, 21, no, 122,
140, 145, 156, 161, 177, 182, 205,
206*,
Ordeal of Richard Feverel (Meredith), 82

Orfeo (Monteverdi), 302
Otello (Verdi), 105, 107 Ouseley, Sir Frederick Gore, 21, 157
207, 208, 209, 219, 267, 272,
275
Muller, Paul, 299
Pachmann, Vladimir,
Paganini, N., 277
Palestrina,
i,
40
Murray, Prof.
xiiin.,
Gilbert, 125
Musical Critics Holiday,
A (Newman),
Giovanni
Pierluigi,
n,
12,
xv
15, 21, 70, 293,
300
201, 291
6, 14, 125,
Myers, Frederick, 56
Parry,
Sk Hubert,
(Wagner),
N
Nabucco (Verdi), 104
Nation, the (references in text), xv, 122, 127, 128, 132, 136, 144, 148,
149, 157 National Reformer, xvi
Parsifal
Pastoral
Pater,
287 Symphony (Beethoven), 181 Walter, 56, 61, 274
Pauer, Ernst, editions of, 21 Peer Gynt (Ibsen),
PelUas and Mtlisande (Debussy), 184,

185, 199,
287
Neilson-Terry, Phyllis, 174
PelUas andMAisande (Schonberg), 166

Penthesilea
Neue Formprinzpien (Erwin Stein), 23 3

Nevin, Ethelbert, 296 Newmarch, Mrs. Rosa, 190, 196, 199
(Wolf), 237, 238, 265 Petrouchka (Stravinsky), 219, 221
Pergolesi, Giovanni,
New
Witness, xiiin.
Peri, Jacopo, 233, 295
308
Peters, musical editions of, 12
Phillips, Stephen, 47, 56 Pierrot Lunaire (Schonberg), 293
Index
S
Sacre du Printemps,
Le
(Stravinsky),
219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 3O2
Percy, 263 Pope, Alexander, 271

Pitt,
Sainte-Beuve, C. A., 61
Saint-Sacns,
Sala,
C, 291
Promenade Concerts, xiv

Prometheus
(Scriabine),
14,
George Augustus, 86
(Strauss), 129, 140, 180, 216,
170-3,
Salome
294
Prometheus Unbound (Shelley), 19 Prout, Ebenezer, 15, 21
Puccini,
Purcell,
219, 287
Satie,
.,
289
xiii n,
Saturday Review,
57-58, 137
Giacomo, 211-13, 286-7 Henry, 219
Savielina (Moussorgsky),
280
Schalk, Josef, 299
Scamio, Anton, 33 Schonberg, Arnold, 111-13, 140, 143,

Raleigh,
Sk
Walter, 27
146, 151, 163, 164, 165, 166, 171,
200 Rantzau, I(Mascagni), 260 Ravel, Maurice, 182, 192, 193 Reger, M., 236, 291 Reissmann, August, 33 Remenyi, Eduard, 187 Renaud (Stravinsky), 219 Requiem (Verdi), 104, 105, 106
Rameau, J.
Phillippe,
232-3
School of the
Woods (Long), 90
Schindler, 246
Schubert, Franz, 7,
231, 236, 272
n,
131, 169, 219,
Schumann, Robert,
Schweitzer, Dr., 245
Scott,
7, 9,
n,
12, 21,
54, 219, 231, 236, 272, 285-^5,
296
Rheingold, Das (Wagner), 125, 211 Richter, Hans, 21, 165, 211
Sk Walter,
131
Scriabine, Alexander, 10, 156, 160,
Rienzi (Wagner), 134

Rigoletto (Verdi),
170-3, 192, 193, 283-4, 291

Shakespeare, W., 68, 79, 123, 131, 132, 135, 136, 137, 156, 243, 279
104
Rknsky-Korsakov, Nicholas, 18, 283 Ring of the Nibelung (Wagner), 18, 216, 286
Robertson, John M., 31
Rockstro, William, 15, 21
Shaw, George Bernard, xv, 115-62, 268, 297

Shawe-Taylor, Desmond, xi Shelley, P. B., 279
Sibelius, Jan, xv,
Rodin, Auguste, 128, 157 Rolland, Remain, 298 Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 72 Rosary, The (Nevin), 296 Rose, Frances, 116
Rosenkavalier,
195
Siegfried (Wagner),
167
Signor Bruschino, II (Rossini), 207
Shading, Christian, 48 Sinfonia Domestica (Strauss), 115, 133,

167, 183,
Der
(Strauss),
107-10,
270
(Moore), 85, 86, 87
54,
140, 176, 177,
216
Sister Teresa
Rossini, Gioacchino, 7, 209
Skeleton in
Armour (Holbrooke),
89
Rumi, Jalal Al-Din, 251 Runciman, John, 57-58, 59

Ruskin, John, 256 Russian andLudmilla (Glinka), 285
264
Soldiers Three (Kipling),
Somervell, Arthur, 54
Sordello (Browning),
72
Index
Spencer, Herbert, 62, 70
Times, The, xii, 144
309
Todund Verklaerung (Strauss), 219, 270
Tolstoi, Leo, 83
Die (Wolf), 265 Spohr, Louis, 301 Stainer, Sir John, 21, 157 Stassov, V., 202
Spinnerin,
Stein,
Tom Jones (Relding),
122
Erwin, 233 Stendhal (Henri Beyle), 208 Stewart, Sir Robert, 44

Strauss, Richard, 60, 106", 107-10,
Tosca (Puccini), 212 Traherne, Thomas, 32

Tabarro, II (Puccini), 212
in,
Tree, Sir Herbert, 174, 175 Trovatore, H (Verdi), 104, 106

Tristan (Wagner), 5, 40, 84, I34> *47,
115, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123,
125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135,
I3<5,
165, 169, 185, 203, 228, 240, 241,
137, 139,
14-8,
274, 293, 296, 302
140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145,

149, 150, 151, 153,
156",
Turandot (Puccini), 211, 213
157, 158,
161, 167, 171, 175-7, 179-83, 200,
Turgeniev, I., 266 Turner, W.J., 188
223, 236, 263, 264-5, 273, 275, 295

Strauss, Johann, 109,
Twain, Mark, 134-5
no
Stravinsky, Igor, 156, 160, 161, 183, 219-23, 232, 281, 302
U
Ulalume (Holbrooke), 264
Theodore, 290 Strong, Professor, 27 (Newman), 34, Study of Wagner, 147, 154
Streicher,
V
Valkyrie (Wagner), 180, 286 Variations on an Original Theme (Elgar),
Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 43
53
Sumer
is
icumen
in,
293
Sunday Times, xi, xii Suor Angelica (Puccini), 212

Swinburne, A. C,, 271
Verdi, Giuseppe, 104-7, 213, 295 Victoria, Queen, 43

Village
Romeo and Juliet,
(Delius),
115
Virgil, 243
Symonds, John Addington, 56 Synge,J. M., 282
Voyage
Musical au
Pays du
Passl
(Rolland), 298
Tales of Hoffmann (Offenbach), 209 Talking of Music (Cardus) xiv n.
W
Wagner,
xiii,
xv, 7,
n,
12, 18, 21,
Tamagno,
Francesco, 107
Tannhauser (Wagner), 104, 271 Tchaikovsky, Peter (Piotr), 9, 47, 54,

55, 60, 61,
24-25, 33, 34, 40, 47, 51, 54, 55, 60, 64, 69, 70, 72, 79, 104, 105, 106,
HO,
I5<5,
117, 121, 122, 126, 134, 140,
in,
139, 140, 171* 263,
143, 147, 148, 150, 151, 154, 155,

157, 161, 167, 171, 172, 195,
264 Telemann, 298, 301

Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 56, 256 Thompson, Ernest Seton, 90, 93 Thompson, James, 266
Till Eulenspiegel (Strauss),
197, 198, 199, 200, 202, 203, 211,
234, ^35, 240, 250, 258, 260, 263,
264, 267, 270, 271, 272, 273, 275,

277, 279, 281, 286, 287, 290, 295,
219
296,301
Index
Wagner as Man and Artist (Newman), 34 Walker, Edyth, 116 Walker, Frank, 244 Walthew, R. H., 54, 55 Watts, G. F., 148 Weber, Carl, Maria von, 219 Weidemann, Hermann, 116 Weismann, August, xv Wesendonck, Frau Matnilde, 203,
240, 241 Whistler, J. M., 65 Wilde, Oscar, 74, 77, 78, 266, 287
William Tell (Rossini), Wolf, Hugo, xv, 33, 37, 106, 185, 197, 198, 219, 231, 236-9, 244, 252, 265-6, 270, 272, 276, 281, 293, 294,
298, 299
Wood,
Sir
Henry J.,
I,
166, 275
Woolett, Eleanor, xii Wordsworth, William, 279 Wozzeck (Alban Berg), 235 Wreckers, The (Smyth), 115
2
Zola, Emile, 60
WORKS BY ERNEST NEWMAN

ORIGINAL
1895
1 899
WORKS
'Gluck and the Opera.'
A study in Musical History.
"A Study of Wagner/

'Wagner.'
'Richard Strauss.'
'Musical Studies.*
'Elgar.'
1904
1904
1905
With a Personal Note by A* Kalisch.
1906
1907
1908
'Hugo Wolf/
'Richard Strauss.'
1914
1919
'Wagner as Man and Artist' *A Musical Modey.*

'The Piano-Player and
'Solo Singing.*
Its
(revised 1924).
1920
1923
Music.*
1925
'A Musical
Critic's Holiday.'
1927
1928 1931
The Unconscious Beethoven.'

'What
'Fact
to
Read on the Evolution of Music.'
1934
and Fiction about Wagner.' A Criticism of 'The Truth about Wagner' by P. D. Hume and W. L. Root The Man Liszt* A study of the tragi-comedy of a soul divided against
itself.
1933-47
life of Richard Wagner.' 4 vols.
1940
1943
'Wagner' (Novello's Biographies of Great Musicians).

'Opera Nights.'
1949
1954
*Wagner Nights.* 'More Opera Nights.*

'From the World of Music*
(3 Vols).
i95<5-38
TRANSLATIONS
1906
1911
[N.E. 1925]
'J.
S.
'On Conducting' by Felix Weingartncr. Bach' by Albert Schweitzer.

Libretti:
1912
ff.
Wagner
Ring,' Tristan,'
The Hying Dutchman/ The Mastersingers,' 'Parsifal*

311
Tannhauser,'
The
1929
'Beethoven the Creator' by R. Rolland.
Works by Ernest Newman
WORKS EDITED AND WITH INTRODUCTIONS

1909
1911
'Handel/
by R. A.
Streatfield.
1912
1926
1928
'Brahms/ by J. A. Fuller Maidand. 'The Life of Mozart,' by Edward Holmes. Intro. E. N. (Everyman's library.) Edited. The New library of Music (Methuen).
'Thirty Years Musical Recollections/ by Henry Chorley. Edited by E. 'Franz Schubert's Letters/ by F. P. Schubert. Foreword by E. N.
N.
1929
1930
1932
by Hector Berlioz. Introduction by E. N. Moulin Eckart, translated by C. Alison Phillips. Introduction by E. N. Introduction and Analytical Notes to the Musical Works of Sibelius
'Evenings in the Orchestra/
'Cosima Wagner/ by
Du
(Sibelius Society).
1932
1933
'Memoirs of Hector
Berlioz,' edited, annotated
and
translation revised
by
E.
N. (New York).
Introduction and Analytical Notes to the Songs of Hugo

Society).
Wolf (Wolf
Introduction to Novello's Edition of Brahm's 'German Requiem.*
1946
1950
Introduction to Ethel Smyth's 'Impressions That Remain/ Introduction to R. W. S. Mendl's The Soul of Music.*
(New York).
PHOTO: ALFRED
A.
KNOPF
Ernest
was born
Newman
broke
in 1868. Educated at Liverpool
College and Liverpool University, he was intended for the Indian Civil Service, but
when
his health
down he went
in-
stead into business in Liverpool, carrying

literary work concurrentIn 1905 he became music critic of the Manchester Guardian and subsequently of the Birmingham Post. From 1920 he acted
on musical and
ly.
as
music critic for the London Sunday Times. During his long career Mr. New-
man
his
wrote, translated, and edited numerous books, the most celebrated of which is
The Life
monumental four-volume biography, of Richard Wagner (1933, 1937,
1941, 1946).
He
died in 1959.

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53

monumental four-volume Life of Richard Wagner is perhaps the greatest musical

man-Shaw Controversy over Richard

Cox and ""Wyman Ltd Reading

.Mrs Emest Newman Printed, in Great Britain, by

Some Early non-Musical Writings From 'Form in the Novel', 1891

A note on George Meredith,

Contributions to the Birmingham Post: The Prima Donna in Print, 1911

First English Performance the Golden West, 1911

Der Rosenkavalier, the new Covent Garden, 1913

Schonberg's Five Orchestral Pieces, 1914

The Newman-Shaw Controversy concerning

The Case of Arnold Schonberg, 1912

205 209 211

Beethoven: the Last Phase (Atlantic Monthly), 1950

Kipling, 1893 Richard Le Gallienne's Religion of a Literary

the Weekly Critical Review: Music and Morals, 1903

Opera and the

Nietzsche's Criticism of Wagner, 1910

Beethoven, 1912 Granville Bantock, 1912

On the Critic and Musical Criticism,

Putting the Classics in their Place, 1918 Debussy, 1916, 1918

A School for Critics,

Russian Song, 1917 Moussorgsky, 1917

279 280 280

Manfred (Schumann), 1918 The Valkyrie, 1918

284 285 286 286 287 287 288 288

Salome, 1918 The Perfect Accompanist, 1918

Bandbox Opera, 1918

290 290 290

the Musical Courier:

Hubert Parry, 1919

A Musical Critics Holiday,

WAS a law unto himself. He was far more than

No other critic of the subject has left as renowned a name

as he: his life

made a formidable barrister or judge.'* Born on the 3Oth November, 1868,

Saviours School where he

won the Bibby Scholar-

When he became Musical Critic of the Manchester

he was about twenty

was such a thing

Yet he was soon

Wotan, willing to write a tetralogy

crystallize his theories in his

A Musical Critic's Holiday.

Musical Critics Holiday\ p.

1904, at the early age

on concert or opera hampered by the time there

are concerned, the critic

well as to write his notice with

reader who has Newman would

not previously studied the writings of do well to have a nodding acquaintance

Talking of Music, p. 271.

blame should be accorded him'.*]' Yet,

Newman very rarely faltered.

The Shaw-Newman controversy over

Newman's youth and

the time they were