No. 493: The winners
Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were asked to concoct examples of 'opening sentence one- upmanship' in the style of a real or imagined critic of the arts.
Thackeray's notorious dictum—'He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob'—is all very well so far as it goes which is about as far as Weston-super-Mare. But what about he who meanly admires great things? What about the culture snob, that wily eclectic who by the study of other men's wisdom deems himself to be wise and by the pursuit of their visions to be no less than a saint? His position is highly ambiguous. The question (and a nice one) is, when does the cultured person become a culture snob? If this week's entries are any guide, the answer is plain : when the 'culture' of the person in question is seen to be hugely, irretrievably, more extensive than one's own. Witness T. Griffiths's critique en bain: Humming Schoenberg is a matter of the basic row, but more difficult than Palestrinian poly- phony. Humming in the bath this morning I was reminded by a dripping tap that Hindemith maintains that tonality is a scientific fact I
abandoned myself to Dallapiccola instead, which brings me to my point. ...
Erudition is not the only path to Parnassus, however, and David Wise presents us with an amiable alternative:
It must be almost forty years now since those golden left-bank days in Paris when I gave box- ing lessons to Ernie Hemingway, taught Ezra Provencal, and helped James Joyce with The Times crossword but, fortunately for posterity, we all live again in this latest volume of Gert- rude's memoirs.
For sheer impertinence perhaps Charles Lyall should take the critical biscuit:
Mr Torquil Parsley's lethargic rendering of Aguilar's Extasis reminded me of the period some twenty years ago when, given three months to live, I undertook a brisk translation of the forty cantos of Broglio's epic. Sniffing the sul- phurous fumes I selected Jaws of Hades as a not too sensational title.
While Martin Fagg earns an accolade for his earnest self-restraint :
It is easy to be guilty of facile exaggeration in these matters, but the passage of the years only reinforces my conviction that Wieland Wagner's first post-war production of Parsifal at Bayreuth must rank among the twenty most profound spiritual experiences of my life.
Three guineas to each of the above and a very honourable mention to Russell Lucas; music critic of the Autocar: In my more foolish days, I modified the mani- fold of a Hispano to produce, in response to throttle-speeds and gear-changes, a comprehen- sive musical capability, so that by double de- clutching, I could fill Belgravia with Le Sacre and contrive a programme of fin-de-siecle pieces by controlled carburisation.
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