THREE COMPOSERS.

Evening Star, Issue 21745, 13 June 1934, Page 8

THREE COMPOSERS.

The six-day festival of his works which was given to the late Frederick Delius in his sixty-eighth year in the Queen’s Hall, London, has been described as a tribute without exact parallel in the history of British music. Something equally without precedent in that history, it is to be presumed, is the death of three composers of the eminence of Sir Edward Elgar, Delius, and Mr Gustav Holst within four months. It might be doubted whether three composers of their rank had been contemporaries in England for a hundred and fifty years. “ The greatest English composer—the greatest composer we have ever had, with the possible exception of Henry Purcell,” was a description of Elgar. There have been admirers of Delius who have not hesitated to claim that supreme distinction for their hero, though it was only slowly that his music won high esteem in England. Of a nature singularly retiring, he was the last man to blow his own trumpet, and some years ago Sydney Grew wrote: “In Germany Delius is accepted as a master. Here in England opinion is divided, those who do not know his works disputing the judgments of those who do.” His* biographer, Mr Philip Heseltine, indicates another reason for long neglect when he writes: “ The modern spirit in music is impatient, restless, and impetuous, for it is the spirit of an age of disintegration. . . . Serenity seems to have

forsaken music for a while. , . , But it is one of the essential qualities of the great art of all ages, and its presence in every work of Delius is one of the surest tokens of his immortality.” Mr Heseltlne has no doubt, from the persistence with which he performed his works, that Sir Thomas Beecham, himself a man of genius, “ set more store by Delius than by any other living composer.” Whether he was right or wrong in that, supposing the judgment to have been rightly attributed to him, is not a matter that can be profitably argued. Musicians are not to be graded, like potatoes. The process is inapplicable to arts, which have room for many kinds of excellencies. How far the experts can differ among themselves has been shown by their varying appraisements of Gustav Holst’s chief work, ‘ The ■ Planets.’ Audiences, we are told, have almost invariably' shown the greatest delight in the suite. Dr Vaughan Williams admired parts of it highly, but his best and worst were the opposites of those of Mr .Percy A. Scholes, who thought the ending of one part “ perhaps the most ethereal ever achieved.” Mr Heseltine thought the whole “ a piece of plagiaristic and pretentious bombast.” and Mr Samuel Langford, the esteemed critic of the ‘ Manchester Guardian,’ thought it

misconceived. Elgar was English to the core. Holst was almost completely English, his Swedish ancestors having emigrated to England in the eighteenth century. Delius was only a littlo more English than Handel. He was born in Bradford, and his Dutch father had beep naturalised. Two of these composers have died in the fullness of years; they would nob have written much more. That does not prevent a sense of acute bereavement in the fact that their three lives should have ended so nearly together.