<h2><SPAN name="IX" id="IX"></SPAN>IX</h2>
<h2><i>Musician, Critic, and Public</i></h2>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The newspapers and the public.</i></div>
<p><span class="dropcap">I</span> have been told that there are many people who read the newspapers on
the day after they have attended a concert or operatic representation
for the purpose of finding out whether or not the performance gave
them proper or sufficient enjoyment. It would not be becoming in me to
inquire too curiously into the truth of such a statement, and in view
of a denunciation spoken in the <SPAN href="#I">introductory chapter</SPAN> of this book, I
am not sure that it is not a piece of arrogance, or impudence, on my
part to undertake in any way to justify any critical writing on the
subject of music. Certain it is that some men who write about music
for the newspapers believe, or affect to believe, that criticism is
worthless, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></SPAN></span> I shall not escape the charge of inconsistency, if,
after I have condemned the blunders of literary men, who are laymen in
music, and separated the majority of professional writers on the art
into pedants and rhapsodists, I nevertheless venture to discuss the
nature and value of musical criticism. Yet, surely, there must be a
right and wrong in this as in every other thing, and just as surely
the present structure of society, which rests on the newspaper,
invites attention to the existing relationship between musician,
critic, and public as an important element in the question How to
Listen to Music.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Relationship between musician, critic, and public.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The need and value of conflict.</i></div>
<p>As a condition precedent to the discussion of this new element in the
case, I lay down the proposition that the relationship between the
three factors enumerated is so intimate and so strict that the world
over they rise and fall together; which means that where the people
dwell who have reached the highest plane of excellence, there also are
to be found the highest types of the musician and critic; and that in
the degree in which the three factors,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_299" id="Page_299"></SPAN></span> which united make up the sum
of musical activity, labor harmoniously, conscientiously, and
unselfishly, each striving to fulfil its mission, they advance music
and further themselves, each bearing off an equal share of the good
derived from the common effort. I have set the factors down in the
order which they ordinarily occupy in popular discussion and which
symbolizes their proper attitude toward each other and the highest
potency of their collaboration. In this collaboration, as in so many
others, it is conflict that brings life. Only by a surrender of their
functions, one to the other, could the three apparently dissonant yet
essentially harmonious factors be brought into a state of complacency;
but such complacency would mean stagnation. If the published judgment
on compositions and performances could always be that of the
exploiting musicians, that class, at least, would read the newspapers
with fewer heart-burnings; if the critics had a common mind and it
were followed in concert-room and opera-house, they, as well as the
musicians,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_300" id="Page_300"></SPAN></span> would have need of fewer words of displacency and more of
approbation; if, finally, it were to be brought to pass that for the
public nothing but amiable diversion should flow simultaneously from
platform, stage, and press, then for the public would the millennium
be come. A religious philosopher can transmute Adam's fall into a
blessing, and we can recognize the wisdom of that dispensation which
put enmity between the seed of Jubal, who was the "father of all such
as handle the harp and pipe," and the seed of Saul, who, I take it, is
the first critic of record (and a vigorous one, too, for he
accentuated his unfavorable opinion of a harper's harping with a
javelin thrust).</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The critic an Ishmaelite.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The critic not to be pitied.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>How he might extricate himself.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The public like to be flattered.</i></div>
<p>We are bound to recognize that between the three factors there is,
ever was, and ever shall be <i>in sæcula sæculorum</i> an irrepressible
conflict, and that in the nature of things the middle factor is the
Ishmaelite whose hand is raised against everybody and against whom
everybody's hand is raised. The complacency of the musician and the
indifference, not to say ignorance, of the public<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></SPAN></span> ordinarily combine
to make them allies, and the critic is, therefore, placed between two
millstones, where he is vigorously rasped on both sides, and whence,
being angular and hard of outer shell, he frequently requites the
treatment received with complete and energetic reciprocity. Is he
therefore to be pitied? Not a bit; for in this position he is
performing one of the most significant and useful of his functions,
and disclosing one of his most precious virtues. While musician and
public must perforce remain in the positions in which they have been
placed with relation to each other it must be apparent at half a
glance that it would be the simplest matter in the world for the
critic to extricate himself from his predicament. He would only need
to take his cue from the public, measuring his commendation by the
intensity of their applause, his dispraise by their signs of
displeasure, and all would be well with him. We all know this to be
true, that people like to read that which flatters them by echoing
their own thoughts. The more delightfully it is put by the writer the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_302" id="Page_302"></SPAN></span>
more the reader is pleased, for has he not had the same idea? Are they
not his? Is not their appearance in a public print proof of the
shrewdness and soundness of his judgment? Ruskin knows this foible in
human nature and condemns it. You may read in "Sesame and Lilies:"</p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"Very ready we are to say of a book, 'How good this
is—that's exactly what I think!' But the right feeling is,
'How strange that is! I never thought of that before, and
yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall,
some day.' But whether thus submissively or not, at least be
sure that you go at the author to get at his meaning, not to
find yours. Judge it afterward if you think yourself
qualified to do so, but ascertain it first."</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The critic generally outspoken.</i></div>
<p>As a rule, however, the critic is not guilty of the wrong of speaking
out the thought of others, but publishes what there is of his own
mind, and this I laud in him as a virtue, which is praiseworthy in the
degree that it springs from loftiness of aim, depth of knowledge, and
sincerity and unselfishness of purpose.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Musician and Public.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The office of ignorance.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Popularity of Wagner's music not a sign of intelligent
appreciation.</i></div>
<p>Let us look a little into the views which our factors do and those
which they ought to entertain of each other.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_303" id="Page_303"></SPAN></span> The utterances of
musicians have long ago made it plain that as between the critic and
the public the greater measure of their respect and deference is given
to the public. The critic is bound to recognize this as entirely
natural; his right of protest does not accrue until he can show that
the deference is ignoble and injurious to good art. It is to the
public that the musician appeals for the substantial signs of what is
called success. This appeal to the jury instead of the judge is as
characteristic of the conscientious composer who is sincerely
convinced that he was sent into the world to widen the boundaries of
art, as it is of the mere time-server who aims only at tickling the
popular ear. The reason is obvious to a little close thinking:
Ignorance is at once a safeguard against and a promoter of
conservatism. This sounds like a paradox, but the rapid growth of
Wagner's music in the admiration of the people of the United States
might correctly be cited as a proof that the statement is true. Music
like the concert fragments from Wagner's lyric dramas is accepted<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_304" id="Page_304"></SPAN></span>
with promptitude and delight, because its elements are those which
appeal most directly and forcibly to our sense-perception and those
primitive tastes which are the most readily gratified by strong
outlines and vivid colors. Their vigorous rhythms, wealth of color,
and sonority would make these fragments far more impressive to a
savage than the suave beauty of a symphony by Haydn; yet do we not all
know that while whole-hearted, intelligent enjoyment of a Haydn
symphony is conditioned upon a considerable degree of culture, an
equally whole-hearted, intelligent appreciation of Wagner's music
presupposes a much wider range of sympathy, a much more extended view
of the capabilities of musical expression, a much keener discernment,
and a much profounder susceptibility to the effects of harmonic
progressions? And is the conclusion not inevitable, therefore, that on
the whole the ready acceptance of Wagner's music by a people is
evidence that they are not sufficiently cultured to feel the force of
that conservatism which made the triumph of Wag<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></SPAN></span>ner consequent on many
years of agitation in musical Germany?</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>"Ahead of one's time."</i></div>
<p>In one case the appeal is elemental; in the other spiritual. He who
wishes to be in advance of his time does wisely in going to the people
instead of the critics, just as the old fogy does whose music belongs
to the time when sensuous charm summed up its essence. There is a good
deal of ambiguity about the stereotyped phrase "ahead of one's time."
Rightly apprehended, great geniuses do live for the future rather than
the present, but where the public have the vastness of appetite and
scantness of taste peculiar to the ostrich, there it is impossible for
a composer to be ahead of his time. It is only where the public are
advanced to the stage of intelligent discrimination that a Ninth
Symphony and a Nibelung Tetralogy are accepted slowly.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The charlatan.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Influencing the critics.</i></div>
<p>Why the charlatan should profess to despise the critic and to pay
homage only to the public scarcely needs an explanation. It is the
critic who stands between him and the public he would victimize. Much
of the disaffection be<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_306" id="Page_306"></SPAN></span>tween the concert-giver and the
concert-reviewer arises from the unwillingness of the latter to enlist
in a conspiracy to deceive and defraud the public. There is no need of
mincing phrases here. The critics of the newspaper press are besieged
daily with requests for notices of a complimentary character touching
persons who have no honest standing in art. They are fawned on,
truckled to, cajoled, subjected to the most seductive influences,
sometimes bribed with woman's smiles or manager's money—and why? To
win their influence in favor of good art, think you? No; to feed
vanity and greed. When a critic is found of sufficient self-respect
and character to resist all appeals and to be proof against all
temptations, who is quicker than the musician to cite against his
opinion the applause of the public over whose gullibility and
ignorance, perchance, he made merry with the critic while trying to
purchase his independence and honor?</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The public an elemental force.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Critic and public.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Schumann and popular approval.</i></div>
<p>It is only when musicians divide the question touching the rights and
merits of public and critic that they seem able<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_307" id="Page_307"></SPAN></span> to put a correct
estimate upon the value of popular approval. At the last the best of
them are willing, with Ferdinand Hiller, to look upon the public as an
elemental power like the weather, which must be taken as it chances to
come. With modern society resting upon the newspaper they might be
willing to view the critic in the same light; but this they will not
do so long as they adhere to the notion that criticism belongs of
right to the professional musician, and will eventually be handed over
to him. As for the critic, he may recognize the naturalness and
reasonableness of a final resort for judgment to the factor for whose
sake art is (<i>i.e.</i>, the public), but he is not bound to admit its
unfailing righteousness. Upon him, so he be worthy of his office,
weighs the duty of first determining whether the appeal is taken from
a lofty purpose or a low one, and whether or not the favored tribunal
is worthy to try the case. Those who show a willingness to accept low
ideals cannot exact high ones. The influence of their applause is a
thousand-fold more injuri<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_308" id="Page_308"></SPAN></span>ous to art than the strictures of the most
acrid critic. A musician of Schumann's mental and moral stature could
recognize this and make it the basis of some of his most forcible
aphorisms:</p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"'It pleased,' or 'It did not please,' say the people; as if
there were no higher purpose than to please the people."</p>
<p>"The most difficult thing in the world to endure is the
applause of fools!"</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Depreciation of the critic.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Value of public opinion.</i></div>
<p>The belief professed by many musicians—professed, not really
held—that the public can do no wrong, unquestionably grows out of a
depreciation of the critic rather than an appreciation of the critical
acumen of the masses. This depreciation is due more to the concrete
work of the critic (which is only too often deserving of condemnation)
than to a denial of the good offices of criticism. This much should be
said for the musician, who is more liable to be misunderstood and more
powerless against misrepresentation than any other artist. A line
should be drawn between mere expression of opinion and criticism. It
has been recognized for<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_309" id="Page_309"></SPAN></span> ages—you may find it plainly set forth in
Quintilian and Cicero—that in the long run the public are neither bad
judges nor good critics. The distinction suggests a thought about the
difference in value between a popular and a critical judgment. The
former is, in the nature of things, ill considered and fleeting. It is
the product of a momentary gratification or disappointment. In a much
greater degree than a judgment based on principle and precedent, such
as a critic's ought to be, it is a judgment swayed by that variable
thing called fashion—"<i>Qual piùm' al vento.</i>"</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Duties of the critic.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The musician's duty toward the critic.</i></div>
<p>But if this be so we ought plainly to understand the duties and
obligations of the critic; perhaps it is because there is much
misapprehension on this point that critics' writings have fallen under
their own condemnation. I conceive that the first, if not the sole,
office of the critic should be to guide public judgment. It is not for
him to instruct the musician in his art. If this were always borne in
mind by writers for the press it might help to soften the asperity
felt by the musician toward the critic; and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_310" id="Page_310"></SPAN></span> possibly the musician
might then be persuaded to perform his first office toward the critic,
which is to hold up his hands while he labors to steady and dignify
public opinion. No true artist would give up years of honorable esteem
to be the object for a moment of feverish idolatry. The public are
fickle. "The garlands they twine," says Schumann, "they always pull to
pieces again to offer them in another form to the next comer who
chances to know how to amuse them better." Are such garlands worth the
sacrifice of artistic honor? If it were possible for the critic to
withhold them and offer instead a modest sprig of enduring bay, would
not the musician be his debtor?</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The critic should steady public judgment.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Taste and judgment must be achieved.</i></div>
<p>Another thought. Conceding that the people are the elemental power
that Hiller says they are, who shall save them from the changeableness
and instability which they show with relation to music and her
votaries? Who shall bid the restless waves be still? We, in America,
are a new people, a vast hotch-potch of varied and contradictory
elements. We are engaged in conquering<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_311" id="Page_311"></SPAN></span> a continent; employed in a mad
scramble for material things; we give feverish hours to win the
comfort for our bodies that we take only seconds to enjoy; the moments
which we steal from our labors we give grudgingly to relaxation, and
that this relaxation may come quickly we ask that the agents which
produce it shall appeal violently to the faculties which are most
easily reached. Under these circumstances whence are to come the
intellectual poise, the refined taste, the quick and sure power of
analysis which must precede a correct estimate of the value of a
composition or its performance?</p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"A taste or judgment," said Shaftesbury, "does not come
ready formed with us into this world. Whatever principles or
materials of this kind we may possibly bring with us, a
legitimate and just taste can neither be begotten, made,
conceived, or produced without the antecedent labor and
pains of criticism."</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Comparative qualifications of critic and public.</i></div>
<p>Grant that this antecedent criticism is the province of the critic and
that he approaches even remotely a fulfilment of his mission in this
regard, and who shall venture to question the value and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_312" id="Page_312"></SPAN></span> the need of
criticism to the promotion of public opinion? In this work the critic
has a great advantage over the musician. The musician appeals to the
public with volatile and elusive sounds. When he gets past the
tympanum of the ear he works upon the emotions and the fancy. The
public have no time to let him do more; for the rest they are willing
to refer him to the critic, whose business it is continually to hear
music for the purpose of forming opinions about it and expressing
them. The critic has both the time and the obligation to analyze the
reasons why and the extent to which the faculties are stirred into
activity. Is it not plain, therefore, that the critic ought to be
better able to distinguish the good from the bad, the true from the
false, the sound from the meretricious, than the unindividualized
multitude, who are already satisfied when they have felt the ticklings
of pleasure?</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The critic's responsibilities.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Toward the musician.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Position and power of the newspaper.</i></div>
<p>But when we place so great a mission as the education of public taste
before the critic, we saddle him with a vast responsibility which is
quite evenly divided<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_313" id="Page_313"></SPAN></span> between the musician and the public. The
responsibility toward the musician is not that which we are accustomed
to hear harped on by the aggrieved ones on the day after a concert. It
is toward the musician only as a representative of art, and his just
claims can have nothing of selfishness in them. The abnormal
sensitiveness of the musician to criticism, though it may excite his
commiseration and even honest pity, should never count with the critic
in the performance of a plain duty. This sensitiveness is the product
of a low state in music as well as criticism, and in the face of
improvement in the two fields it will either disappear or fall under a
killing condemnation. The power of the press will here work for good.
The newspaper now fills the place in the musician's economy which a
century ago was filled in Europe by the courts and nobility. Its
support, indirect as well as direct, replaces the patronage which
erstwhile came from these powerful ones. The evils which flow from the
changed conditions are different in extent but not in kind from the
old. Too<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_314" id="Page_314"></SPAN></span> frequently for the good of art that support is purchased by
the same crookings of "the pregnant hinges of the knee" that were once
the price of royal or noble condescension. If the tone of the press at
times becomes arrogant, it is from the same causes that raised the
voices and curled the lips of the petty dukes and princes, to flatter
whose vanity great artists used to labor.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The musician should help to elevate the standard of
criticism.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>A critic must not necessarily be a musician.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Pedantry not wanted.</i></div>
<p>The musician knows as well as anyone how impossible it is to escape
the press, and it is, therefore, his plain duty to seek to raise the
standard of its utterances by conceding the rights of the critic and
encouraging honesty, fearlessness, impartiality, intelligence, and
sympathy wherever he finds them. To this end he must cast away many
antiquated and foolish prejudices. He must learn to confess with
Wagner, the arch-enemy of criticism, that "blame is much more useful
to the artist than praise," and that "the musician who goes to
destruction because he is faulted, deserves destruction." He must stop
the contention that only a musician is entitled to criticise a
musician, and without abat<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_315" id="Page_315"></SPAN></span>ing one jot of his requirements as to
knowledge, sympathy, liberality, broad-mindedness, candor, and
incorruptibility on the part of the critic, he must quit the foolish
claim that to pronounce upon the excellence of a ragout one must be
able to cook it; if he will not go farther he must, at least, go with
the elder D'Israeli to the extent of saying that "the talent of
judgment may exist separately from the power of execution." One need
not be a composer, but one must be able to feel with a composer before
he can discuss his productions as they ought to be discussed. Not all
the writers for the press are able to do this; many depend upon
effrontery and a copious use of technical phrases to carry them
through. The musician, alas! encourages this method whenever he gets a
chance; nine times out of ten, when an opportunity to review a
composition falls to him, he approaches it on its technical side. Yet
music is of all the arts in the world the last that a mere pedant
should discuss.</p>
<p>But if not a mere pedant, then neither a mere sentimentalist.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_316" id="Page_316"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Intelligence versus emotionalism.</i></div>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"If I had to choose between the merits of two classes of
hearers, one of whom had an intelligent appreciation of
music without feeling emotion; the other an emotional
feeling without an intelligent analysis, I should
unhesitatingly decide in favor of the intelligent
non-emotionalist. And for these reasons: The verdict of the
intelligent non-emotionalist would be valuable as far as it
goes, but that of the untrained emotionalist is not of the
smallest value; his blame and his praise are equally
unfounded and empty."</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Personal equation.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Exact criticism.</i></div>
<p>So writes Dr. Stainer, and it is his emotionalist against whom I
uttered a warning in the <SPAN href="#I">introductory chapter</SPAN> of this book, when I
called him a rhapsodist and described his motive to be primarily a
desire to present himself as a person of unusually exquisite
sensibilities. Frequently the rhapsodic style is adopted to conceal a
want of knowledge, and, I fancy, sometimes also because ill-equipped
critics have persuaded themselves that criticism being worthless, what
the public need to read is a fantastic account of how music affects
them. Now, it is true that what is chiefly valuable in criticism is
what a man qualified to think and feel tells us he did think and feel
under the inspira<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_317" id="Page_317"></SPAN></span>tion of a performance; but when carried too far, or
restricted too much, this conception of a critic's province lifts
personal equation into dangerous prominence in the critical activity,
and depreciates the elements of criticism, which are not matters of
opinion or taste at all, but questions of fact, as exactly
demonstrable as a problem in mathematics. In musical performance these
elements belong to the technics of the art. Granted that the critic
has a correct ear, a thing which he must have if he aspire to be a
critic at all, and the possession of which is as easily proved as that
of a dollar-bill in his pocket, the questions of justness of
intonation in a singer or instrumentalist, balance of tone in an
orchestra, correctness of phrasing, and many other things, are mere
determinations of fact; the faculties which recognize their existence
or discover their absence might exist in a person who is not "moved by
concord of sweet sounds" at all, and whose taste is of the lowest
type. It was the acoustician Euler, I believe, who said that he could
construct a so<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_318" id="Page_318"></SPAN></span>nata according to the laws of mathematics—figure one
out, that is.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The Rhapsodists.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>An English exemplar.</i></div>
<p>Because music is in its nature such a mystery, because so little of
its philosophy, so little of its science is popularly known, there has
grown up the tribe of rhapsodical writers whose influence is most
pernicious. I have a case in mind at which I have already hinted in
this book—that of a certain English gentleman who has gained
considerable eminence because of the loveliness of the subject on
which he writes and his deftness in putting words together. On many
points he is qualified to speak, and on these he generally speaks
entertainingly. He frequently blunders in details, but it is only when
he writes in the manner exemplified in the following excerpt from his
book called "My Musical Memories," that he does mischief. The reverend
gentleman, talking about violins, has reached one that once belonged
to Ernst. This, he says, he sees occasionally, but he never hears it
more except</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Ernst's violin.</i></div>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"In the night ... under the stars, when the moon is low and
I see the dark ridges of the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_319" id="Page_319"></SPAN></span> clover hills, and rabbits and
hares, black against the paler sky, pausing to feed or
crouching to listen to the voices of the night....</p>
<p>"By the sea, when the cold mists rise, and hollow murmurs,
like the low wail of lost spirits, rush along the beach....</p>
<p>"In some still valley in the South, in midsummer. The
slate-colored moth on the rock flashes suddenly into crimson
and takes wing; the bright lizard darts timorously, and the
singing of the grasshopper—"</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Mischievous writing.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Musical sensibility and sanity.</i></div>
<p>Well, the reader, if he has a liking for such things, may himself go
on for quantity. This is intended, I fancy, for poetical hyperbole,
but as a matter of fact it is something else, and worse. Mr. Haweis
does not hear Ernst's violin under any such improbable conditions; if
he thinks he does he is a proper subject for medical inquiry. Neither
does his effort at fine writing help us to appreciate the tone of the
instrument. He did not intend that it should, but he probably did
intend to make the reader marvel at the exquisite sensibility of his
soul to music. This is mischievous, for it tends to make the
injudicious think that they are lacking in musical appreciation,
unless they, too,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_320" id="Page_320"></SPAN></span> can see visions and hear voices and dream fantastic
dreams when music is sounding. When such writing is popular it is
difficult to make men and women believe that they may be just as
susceptible to the influence of music as the child Mozart was to the
sound of a trumpet, yet listen to it without once feeling the need of
taking leave of their senses or wandering away from sanity. Moreover,
when Mr. Haweis says that he sees but does not hear Ernst's violin
more, he speaks most undeserved dispraise of one of the best violin
players alive, for Ernst's violin now belongs to and is played by Lady
Hallé—she that was Madame Norman-Neruda.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>A place for rhapsody.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Intelligent rhapsody.</i></div>
<p>Is there, then, no place for rhapsodic writing in musical criticism?
Yes, decidedly. It may, indeed, at times be the best, because the
truest, writing. One would convey but a sorry idea of a composition
were he to confine himself to a technical description of it—the
number of its measures, its intervals, modulations, speed, and rhythm.
Such a description would only be comprehensible to the trained
musician, and to him<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_321" id="Page_321"></SPAN></span> would picture the body merely, not the soul. One
might as well hope to tell of the beauty of a statue by reciting its
dimensions. But knowledge as well as sympathy must speak out of the
words, so that they may realize Schumann's lovely conception when he
said that the best criticism is that which leaves after it an
impression on the reader like that which the music made on the hearer.
Read Dr. John Brown's account of one of Hallé's recitals, reprinted
from "The Scotsman," in the collection of essays entitled "Spare
Hours," if you would see how aptly a sweetly sane mind and a warm
heart can rhapsodize without the help of technical knowledge:</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Dr. Brown and Beethoven.</i></div>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"Beethoven (Dr. Brown is speaking of the Sonata in D, op.
10, No. 3) begins with a trouble, a wandering and groping in
the dark, a strange emergence of order out of chaos, a wild,
rich confusion and misrule. Wilful and passionate, often
harsh, and, as it were, thick with gloom; then comes, as if
'it stole upon the air,' the burden of the theme, the still,
sad music—<i>Largo e mesto</i>—so human, so sorrowful, and yet
the sorrow overcome, not by gladness but by something
better, like the sea, after a dark night of tempest, falling
asleep in the young light of morning, and 'whispering how<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_322" id="Page_322"></SPAN></span>
meek and gentle it can be.' This likeness to the sea, its
immensity, its uncertainty, its wild, strong glory and play,
its peace, its solitude, its unsearchableness, its
prevailing sadness, comes more into our minds with this
great and deep master's works than any other."</p>
</div>
<p>That is Beethoven.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Apollo and the critic—a fable.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The critic's duty to admire.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>A mediator between musician and public.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Essential virtues.</i></div>
<p>Once upon a time—it is an ancient fable—a critic picked out all the
faults of a great poet and presented them to Apollo. The god received
the gift graciously and set a bag of wheat before the critic with the
command that he separate the chaff from the kernels. The critic did
the work with alacrity, and turning to Apollo for his reward, received
the chaff. Nothing could show us more appositely than this what
criticism should not be. A critic's duty is to separate excellence
from defect, as Dr. Crotch says; to admire as well as to find fault.
In the proportion that defects are apparent he should increase his
efforts to discover beauties. Much flows out of this conception of his
duty. Holding it the critic will bring besides all needful knowledge a
fulness of love into his work. "Where<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_323" id="Page_323"></SPAN></span> sympathy is lacking, correct
judgment is also lacking," said Mendelssohn. The critic should be the
mediator between the musician and the public. For all new works he
should do what the symphonists of the Liszt school attempt to do by
means of programmes; he should excite curiosity, arouse interest, and
pave the way to popular comprehension. But for the old he should not
fail to encourage reverence and admiration. To do both these things he
must know his duty to the past, the present, and the future, and
adjust each duty to the other. Such adjustment is only possible if he
knows the music of the past and present, and is quick to perceive the
bent and outcome of novel strivings. He should be catholic in taste,
outspoken in judgment, unalterable in allegiance to his ideals,
unswervable in integrity.</p>
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