VULGAR IS AS VULGAR DOES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 71, 1 November 1940, Page 6

VULGAR IS AS VULGAR DOES

Sir-Mr. L. D. Austin has expressed freely his abhorrence of what he describes as certain extreme types of modern music. He condemns them as vulgar illiteracies which appeal only to those whom an admirer of his has designated " half-asphyxiated morons." I do not wish to discuss whether such estimation of the music is correct or not; but I would like to ask your correspondent to explain why he considers vulgarity and illiteracy reprehensible in music but commendable in prose. Or, and this is a corollary of the foregoing, will Mr. Austin explain why we should punish a painter*for purloining paint, and reward a shearer for stealing sheep? b Mr. Austin may wonder why I put these questions to him. The explanation is that while condemning composers for being vulgar and illiterate, he himself expects to be applauded when, in his prose, he does not hesitate to follow their pernicious example. Perhaps he will say that he does nothing of the sort, but the evident zest with which he uses such vulgarities and illiteracies as " Sez you!", " Oh yeah!", "Mr. Editor, I never said no sich thing!", " Lady, you done*me wrong!’, etc., would make such an assertion contrary to common sense. So far as I am aware the influence of the majority of musical critics is negligible. But I am acquainted with only a very small percentage of the earth’s population, and maybe your correspondent numbers his admirers by the hundred thousand. Even if such be the case he has no justification for being unethical in his prose, though this results, I believe, from nothing more heinous than a very desperate attempt to be extremely modern. I am not concerned here with whether it is right or wrong for a composer or anyone else to be vulgar or illiterate. I wish only to stress the obvious fact that when a critic condemns in others what he praises in himself he is palpably ridiculous. In conclusion, I ask you to be so kind as to give me space for the following: If the critic who shrieks at the mote In the eye of his brother, could note The motes in his own, He’d leave writing alone, | And weep for the stuff that he wrote.

JOSEPH C.

McEVOY

‘Dunedin).