MUSIC Now that the season of Promenade Concerts is over
it is time to face the fact that in their present form these concerts are a complete anachronism. Neither the orchestras nor the conductors concerned are to blame. It is simply a physical impossibility to achieve the standard of performance necessary if the concerts arc to fulfil their original purpose as an educational series. Unfortunately, the public
will make no move of their own ; they continue to applaud indis- criminately and automatically—the leader of the violins, the piano- shifter, the conductor, even an occasional composer or two. But the quality of the music performed, and of the performance, does not seem to affect their reaction very noticeably.
I was present at parts of twenty-five out of the forty-nine pro- gianunes, and I heard one or two good performances, and quite a number of very poor ones ; but the large majority were neither. They were simply routine performances, distinctly below the average of performances given during the rest of the year. Now routine is the arch enemy of all and every kind of artistic experience, and it is, of course, the unsleeping, unresting foe of all professional musicians. So much can be taken for granted. But as soon as any set of circum- stances makes the victory of routine over a performer's spiritual and physical vitality not merely probable but quite inevitable, those circumstances must be changed for the sake of everyone—the musicians, the public and Frau Musica herself.
I believe that such circumstances exist in the case of the Proms. It has been an unusually hot and dry summer, of course, which has made the purely physital side of their work even harder for the orchestral players and the conductor( But the root of the whole evil lies in the size of the programmes. This has long been a standing joke among professional musicians of all kinds, but it is time that it was no longer treated as a joke. The spiritless, lifeless routine performance of huge quantities of music lowers the standard of the players, not simply during the weeks of the Proms. but generally ; and those of the public who attend few if any other concerts during the year get a wrong conzeption of music, as of something soporific or stupefying, a jog-trot of sound interrupted by more or less inexplic- able explosions. From the point of view of the public there is a vicious circle, and their lack of discrimination (or low standard) will never disappear as long as their standards are formed at the Proms.
I do not know what are the arguments against cutting the pro- grammes. But I do know that in any other country—and in this country at any other time of the year—a programme such as that of September 15th would be considered a monstrosity. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which is in every sense large enough to make a programme by itself, was preceded that night by the third Branden- burg Concerto and followed by Vaughan-Williams' Serenade to Music and thre:: pieces from The Mastersingers. There is no human being, performer or listener, who can give that programme more than a fraction of the attention that it deserves, and while the public is gorged in this way it seems to me that the Proms. do a definite disservice to the cause of music.
MARTIN COOPER.
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