MUSIC
BEtsLIoz's Requiem was given its second performance of the year on December loth at the Albert Hall, whose rotundity is the only thing against it for a performance of this work. The brass bands of the Tuba mirum should, after all, summon the dead from the round earth's imagined corners, but Sir Thomas Beecham did not even imagine the corners and put them all on, or slightly above, the stage. He thus had them in better control, but a good deal of Berlioz's point was lost. That was a small matter, though, and the Tuba mirum is only the most spectacular of the movements and not at all typical of the rest of the work. Berlioz is the most unequal of all geniuses and lacks completely the taste for which French art is—according to mood—famous or notorious. Taste is often enough the special quality of the second-rank artist, of course, and we ilo not think of the word in connection with Beethoven, Michelangero or Dante, in all of whose works " errors of taste " could easily be found ; but we expect it in French art, which (to quote Sir Thomas Beecham), " if it includes but a limited number of absolute masterpieces, a deficiency it shares with its rivals of Germany and Italy, can point to an exceptionally large mass of excellent achievement of the second rank."
Berlioz stands, in this as in other respects, quite aside from the rest of French music ; he never aimed at less than the most magni- ficent, the grandest and most apocalyptic, and he sometimes brought it off and sometimes failed. The Requiem contains instances of both, but the general verdict has been that it is a great work with bad patches. What is remarkable is that, after more than a century, no two people would probably agree exactly as to which the bad patches were. I personally think the Sanctus flawlessly beautiful, with an ethereal and unearthly beauty unique of its kind in music ; but that is not at all the impression that it makes on everybody. On the other hand, I find Berlioz's experiment with flutes and trombones a very doubtful success, even if he only made it once ; and, repeated again and again, it becomes definitely irritating—to me, but not to others, I know. More performances will doubtless bring Berlioz's uncertain reputation finally to rest—at a guess rather higher than midway between the extravagant claims of his fanatical admirers and the uncomprehending abuse of his detractors. But shall we have the performances?
I yield to none in my admiration of Segovia as a performer, but not even he can persuade me that the guitar is a concert instrument, least of all when he plays the Bach Chaconne. The violin, for which the Chaconne was written, is a singing instrument ; it is, in fact, an instrumental compendium of soprano, mezzo-soprano and con- tralto with capabilities corresponding to all the varieties of tone and character in a woman's voice. Chords inevitably give the impression of great tension, of something heroic, as of one human being doing what is normally the work of at least two and sometimes more. The guitar, on the other hand, cannot sing at all, being plucked and not bowed ; its register is a good octave and a half below that of the violin, and chords are easy and natural to its structure, sounding— as they indeed should sound—like the accompaniment to a human voice, which, of course, in Segovia's concerts, never materialises. The Chaconne, then, loses its intensity, its melodic beauty and its soaring pitch, and becomes an interesting experiment. And the same seemed to me true of most of the arrangements of eighteenth-century keyboard or orchestral music played at the Wigmore Hall on Decem- ber nth. The sonata and studies written for the instrument were interesting, and the transcriptions from modern Spanish keyboard music attractive enough. But by the end of the evening I found myself thinking of the astounding ability of Larry Adler to play " classical music " on the mouth-organ. And having delivered myself of this (I am told) appalling blasphemy, I have no doubt said more
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