Musical Amateurs
SIR,—In the course of his notice of the Edinburgh Festival in last week's Spectator Mr. Colin Mason refers to . . . " those strange products of the gramophone age for whom music, existing solely. as an instrument for comparing performances, never means Beethoven, Mozart or Wagner, but always X's Ninth, Y's Jupiter or Z's Master- singers." When I read this I gave vent to a loud " Hear-hear I" It is obvious that the English amateur regards music as a kind of sport in which performers matter far more than the music performed. This disease is by no means new. I well remember a distinguished conductor, who was staying with me some eighteen years ago, saying that the difference between the Continental and the English 'amateur's approach to music was this: tell a German, for example, that the Eroica was to be played at such-and-such a concert and he would answer, " I must go and hear it." Tell an Englishman the same thing and his • immediate response would be, " Who is conducting ? "
It is not as though our amateurs were capable of real critical judgment as such. During our talk on this subject I put the following query to this same conductor. " Suppose," I said, " that you had Queen's Hall filled with the cream of London's musical culture. Suppose further that each member of the audience were blindfolded, and that a classical symphony were to be directed by four eminent conductors such as Toscanint, Henry Wood, Koussevitsky and Beecham. What proportion of that audience could identify the conductor from listening to the performance alone ? " He thought for a moment and then replied, " I should think about two per cent." Personally I think he was wrong. Half of one per cent. would be my own estimate, and even that might prove to be over-generous.
It may amuse-our amateur musical intelligentsia to air their half- baked opinions on music and musicians in public (or in print). But if they think to convince any professional musician that they kr ow anything about music as music they are quite mistaken. Meanwhile,,, congratulations to Mr. Cohn Mason for his remarks which are as pertinent as they are much needed.—Yours faithfully, C. W. ORR.
Clevelands, Painswick.
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