MUSICAL EXTREMISTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 556, 17 February 1950, Page 20

MUSICAL EXTREMISTS

Sir,-L. D. Austin’s letter is splendid. When Mendelssohn wrote his "Midsummer Night’s Dream" overture, his mind must have been lit up by what we call "genius," which no one lacking that gift can command, no matter how hard they try. Modern extremist music needs none, Anyone who takes the trouble to write the number of notes on music paper (watching clefssand instrumental range) could do it as well as anyone; they could not do it worse. It is not music: it needs a different noun. There is more. The richest era of beautiful music corresponded roughly with the great evangelical revival of last century. Something of the purity, sanity, and sweetness which the Gospel inculcates breathed ‘in the world’s atmosphere; and I. venture to,,say .that it (generally speaking) influenced the noblest in art, Now the evangel is being shut out; something else is taking its place; something sinister and ugly; and it is influencing (generally speaking) "modern -art." Someone has drawn attention to "modernist" pictures as manifesting some definite psychological principles of "black magic." Some of Picasso’s work is wonderfully like Australian aboriginal "gods" recenfly discovered. Some sculptures exhibited last year in Glasgow are definitely akin to certain heathen "gods, "4 of sinister aspect. The upsurge. of jazz this (wherever it started) brings into civilisation the music of the African jungle, where its accompaniments are unspeakable. And I venture the opinion that the modern musical atrocities of ugliness have drawn their "inspiration" (whether. consciously or not), wy = source the very opposite of the Gospel; from some influence the nether regions. They should be sent back there.

SCHUBERT-FAN

(Auckland)

Sir,-It seems to me that the musical watchword of L. D. Austin, who so nonchalantly dismisses. "Shostakovich and Co.," is "Nothing new, nothing new. Nothing later than Brahms!" and that he appafently includes in the "and Co." such composers as Ravel, Stravinsky, Bloch, Britten, Prokofeff, Hinde-mith-to name only~a few. He quotes "H.J.F." as saying "Beethoven, Wagner and -others’ were incomprehensible ‘to many in their day,’ and then defines the "many" as being the musically illiterate, This is true enough, but the "many" also includes that group with which adventurous creative artists of every age have to contend-the Philistines, people whose watchword is "Nothing new, nothing new," people who accused Whistler of throwing a pot of paint in the public’s face, who thought James Joyce a mad trickster and Rimbaud an idiot. Alas, one cannot do much about Philistines; they are armourplated. But I’m certain "Shostakovich and Co." don’t care.a fig. for the musically illiterate or, for that matter, for L. D. Austin and Co,

ELDON F.

KAYE

(Wanganui).