Music
A Lot of Past and a Little Present
Tim autumn season just ended has been as full of music- making. as any within memory. Yet, although in some weeks there were as many as six or seven, major orchestral concerts in London, there has been during all these months only one new work of any importance produced at Queen's Hall—and that by a composer who is dead. Such a tale Of Contemporary achievement, though it does not tell the whole Story,' is not 'very encouraging. In spite of all this enthusiasm for orchestral concerts—the Hall has Usually been well filled--:--there seems to be little sign of creative vitality among contemporary composers or of any great interest in What is being done. For, by way of exception, the concert at which Alban Berg's Violin Concerto was given it§ first public performance here was poorly attended.
It is not a healthy sign that the public should evince an interest' only in the established classics. I am not among those Who are unable to find fresh beauty in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, when it is' played as it was by the Vienna Orehestra under Weingartner, but it is hardly defensible that so well worn a SYmphOny should be given three times in one Week at • the same 'Hall. Nor is an interest in the unfaniffiar works Of Berlioz; Bruekner and Mahler, or the only too familiar ones of Richard Strauss; a substitute for a willingness toexplore the Present. In fact no contemporary Work could have bored the audience more than did Mahler's Das'Lied von der Erde " and Berlioz's " Romeo and Juliet," though the quality of the performances had something to do with 'this result.
I am not overlooking the fact that the E./3.C., which aponsorrO. Berg's Concerto, has also given in its concerts of.-conteriiporary music at Broadcasting House performances of, iiinonk other things, Vaughan Williams's latest work, "Dona nObis pacem," and a " "Fe Deum " by Kodaly, which dis- appointed adinirers of his " Psalinus Hungarieus." Dr. Vaughan Willianis's cantata may not be among his finest creations. .1t• is something of.,a hotch-potch, Made up of a number of fragments over many years. But it bears the umnistakable;s4k: of a genuine, creative imagination, and aingitlarly . in inits topicality. For it translated into terms of music. die feelingi'. Of the nation; eompounded of anxiety and hope, expressed in Mr. Baldwin's declaration DR rearmament—a singular instance of Prophetic 'instinct in art.
Of Berg's Concerto it is difficult, to write after one hearing. It is not easy music to. listen to, and my own perplexities were increased by the distracting titters of my neighbour, who was unable to control _his silly giggles whenever there was any unusual feature in the orchestration. He seemed to find the sound of muted brass as funny as one of Mr. Robey's most IcnoWing glances. The difficulty in listening to Berg's music lies in the fact that, having thrown aside the system of tonality which has served composers for some three hundred years and .more, his music is devoid of the landmarks to which we are accustomed. When all notes are of equal importance, it may seem that one is as good as another.. I hope I. shall not be accused of diehard obscurantism, when I complain of Berg's lack of melody. There can be no melody, as we have hitherto understood the word, when there is no central note from which melody may start and to which it may return—no sheet-anchor to hold the music in its place. That he may have created some new kind of melody is not impos- sible, but if so, it is too recondite for unaccustomed ears to perceive at once..
What Berg scents to me to have substituted for melody is a sense, of texture. No one who listened without prejudice to this Concerto could fail to perceive the extraordinary sensi- bility .of this music, its tingling nerves. It is, perhaps, a morbid condition, which, I feel in contrast to some of my colleagues, will not lead to any vital development in the future. For one thing, the emotional expressiveness of this kind of music seems limited within a very narrow range. It is doleful and pessimistic. Berg's Scherzo, presumably intended to express his joy in the friendship commemorated in this work, fails to convey any such idea. There is no relief from the all- pervading -gloom. Not from such music can we derive any feeling of optimism for the future of the art. •
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