REVIVAL OF MUSIC IN BRITAIN

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 275, 16 August 1919, Page 8

REVIVAL OF MUSIC IN BRITAIN

— ft rGREAT OPPORTUNITIES FOR NATIVfc GENIUS The exclusion of enemy aliens and tho absorption of most A Iked and friendly aliens in duties at henio have given British performprs the chance of a lifetime (writes the London correspondent - of the New York "Evening Post'"). Frit" Krcisler, Karl Flesch, Ferruccio Busoni, Jacques Thibaud—these names have ltot bsen appearing on our programme since the beginning of the war. In concertos nowadays the soloists are Albert Summons, i)aisy Kennedy, Marjorie Hay. ward, Arthur Beckwith, "William Murdoch, and others whose opportunity of making a reputation-.has no longer been handicapped by foreign competition. Wo are not aware whether Arthur Nikiscn is dead or alive, but we have gained a new conductor of the first rank in Allied Coates. In opera compulsory preference for home products has led to the,, discovery of a new tenor m Tliomasi Burke, I'he personnel of the leading-, London orchestras to-day is very different from 'what it was before the war. War service so depleted their ranks that it was no longer nossiblo to resist tho innovation of admitting women. At the' Queen's Hall Sir Henry Wood has now, 1 believe, a majority of women among his strings. Of the quality of their playing there is no complaint,'but some hearers attribute partly to the infusion of women the evident inability of tho Queen's Hall strings to-hold t'heir own against the brass in tutti passages. The controversy as to whether it is patriotic to play German music has raged in England ns well as America, thought it has not been marked by such sensational incidents. At first a few managements thought they nould be responding t3 a popular demand by ban' ieliing the works of Qerman composers altogether from I'neir programmes, but they soon _ found that they had made a mistake. Tho. public would not stand being deprived of its favourites. Then an attempt was'mado to discriminate between "Hun" music—' that is to say, the music of men w J h<) flourished during the. period of Kaiser Wilhelm ll—and the writing of men who had lived and died before ' this troubler of Europe was thought of. Ingenious attempts were made to provo that the composers one. wanted 6till to hear were not really German after all. Beethoven—well, there was no getting rid of the fact that he was born at Bonn, but .then he was not a "von" but a . "van, said therefore he might .be set down as a Dutchman. Handel lived so , long in England that lie might really be counted ns much one of ourselves as | though lie had written "Rule Briton-' i nia!" Bach was undoubtedly a native of Eisenach, but then his family came originally from Italy. Haydn and Mozart and Schubert had their home in Austria, but Austrin, although,an enemy country, was not exactly a "Him" country. Dvorak was a Czech, so he was not even an Austrian any more than an Irishman is an Englishman. Wagner was something of a problem. The most adroit casuistry could not explain away his being a Gerine.u and a modern German of the "Deulschland ulx?r alles" type. But somebody was clever enough to discover passages in his writings in which he was not very complimentary Ito the German ; .authorities 60 this critical attitude of his could !be counted to him for righteousness. Anyway, the London music-lov-ing public was determined not to giva up its Wagner, even if he had belonged to a race of cannibals, so, after n very short-lived policy of exclusion, tho performance of his music was restored, and there has bee,n a full Wagner right once a week at the recent series of tho Promenades, just as aforetime. A concession, however, has ten made to the ultra patriots by the translation of- his title sinto English. We no longer go to hear the "Vorspicl" to "Die Meistersinger," but the "Prelude" to "The Mastersiugers." This process of All- - of the ti'tleo/af Germa.ii works has not been carried so far as to affect I the names of the composers. o have I not yet seen announcements of the perj formance of Brook's Christmas Oratorio, or of Weaver's overture to Oberoji, or of Winegrower's Merry Overture; nor decs any pianist offer to play a fantasia by Dalehill or a sonata by Bumblebee. The recent holding of a swsckmhJ Beethoven festival at the Queon's Hall has led to a temporary recrudescence ot violent protests against auy. artistic, ns well ns commercial, traffic with the enemy. Boyd Cable, still squeezing out his "grapes of wrath," has been writing to express his indignation at such an outrage. "Let tho newspapers," he savs, "refuse to advertise Hun concerts,'let. British musicians refuse to play. Hun music am! let the British public- ie*uso to have it!" This.would be protectionism with a vengeance. It -would also amount to a very drastic levy upon capital, for a player who has mastered rt Beethoven concerto, let us say, possesses therein n valuable business asset, and the refusal to a-Dow him to ninke any profit frgm his ability to play it would be as much confiscation a 1; any plank in the most extreme Socialist platform. A solemn warning against tho danger of out music being "Bochitied" has also Von addressed to us bv one of the principals of the Russian Ballet, but Ernest Newuian has'followed him up with a reply which leaves about as little of him as Mr. Asquith has left of Lord French. There aie s s'.ages during a war when popular passion will approve anathemas and interdicts that would never be countenanced in iionnai periods, but the time for this sort of thing is past now. > The vicissitudes of international polities have hail a curious influence on Rus^ si an music in EnglatidN-During the hot fit, early in the war, of enthusiasm for everything Russian—when even mer- , chants' clerks and commercial travellers were setting themselves seriously to study the Russian language-there was a ragt for Russian music. All-Russian concern drew large crowds, and names hitherto unknown became household words beforo one had learned how to pronounce them. , That, too, was only a passing spasm, and I to-dav a Russian composer can hardlvread his title clear until he has prov»d that lie has nothing to do with the Soviet,