CURRENT LITERATURE
A MUSICAL CRITIC'S HOLIDAY. By Ernest Newman. (Cassel.) Ma. ERNEST NEWMAN'S new book resembles a long musical phrase in which one note is repeated louder and louder until the rest of the music is entirely obliterated. This is a pity, for Mr. Newman is perhaps the most scholarly and clear- sighted of our musical critics to-day. The thesis that he develops at so great a length and with such insistence is, roughly speaking, that there is no reason why contemporary criticism should be considered to err merely because it is contemporary. In making his point Mr. Newman proves that, contrary to general opinion, almost all the great com- posers of the past have been considered as such during their lifetimes, and that it did not need the lapse of a century to establish the reputation of a Wagner or a Beethoven. The former composer being the author's pet subject, he adduces an enormous amount of contemporary criticism favourable to Wagner to prove that the view taken by many that the composer was universally hated and ridiculed during his lifetime is a mistaken one. His proof is conclusive, but a single page would probably have been enough to convince us of the truth of his assertions. In the latter half of the book an extended passage on early seventeenth-century Italian music is of great interest. Mr. Newman's erudition
is immense. Here is someone who has given his life to a critical study of the music of the past and has therefore been able to form standards from the standpoint of which his judgment of present-day music must surely be
of the greatest value. •
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