MUSIC
IT has been a week of monsters, huge composite (and indeed synthetic) works which impose by their dimension if by nothing else. Mahkr's Eighth Symphony and Honegger's Pan of Arc at the Stake are separated in date by roughly forty years, and an eventful forty in the history of music ; but the same striving for spectacular effect, the same cultivation of the extremes of emotion and fundamentally the same synthetic character (though in a rather different sense) mark the two works. The Eighth Symphony of Mahler is a musical attempt to synthesise the Christianity of the Veni Creator Spiritus with the fundamentally pagan philosophy—pagan beneath a veneer of Christian symbolism—of Faust, Part 2. The two choral movements of which the symphony consists are linked thematically ; otherwise they are completely unrelated, and the result is really two cantatas rather than one symphony. In fact, the work is synthetic in form as well as in inspiration. Finally, Mahler's music, which ranges from post-Wagnerian commonplace through luscious operatic pastiche (Doctor Marianus) to concertante writing for solo instruments and groups of instruments, is a kind of compendium of styles recognisable chiefly by the extremes of emotional atmosphere which it expresses— either the simple-all-too-simple childish Viennese lollipop or the bogus titanic. There is hardly anything in between. In fact, if Meyerbeer had conceived the idea of writing a big work for Holly- wood based on the Dream of Gerontius and Der Rosenkavalier, he might have written something not unlike the Symphony of a Thousand. (The mandoline of the Mater Gloriosa must surely have been inspired by Raoul's viola d'amore in Les Huguenots.) Honegger is an entirely different character from Mahler, but con- sider how well an enthusiastic French critic's enumeration of the "variety in the choice of his materials" in pan of Arc would apply to the Eighth Symphony—and to Le Prophete : " V erbe scande, choral, murmures, cris, psalmodies, choeurs a bouche fermee, vocifera- lions parlies a chantees, vaix celestes, senorites tour a tour grondantes ou cristallines, cloches, bourdons a clochettes d'argent se succident a se melangent sans jamais rom pre l'iquilibre de l'ensemble." In pan of Arc at the Stake we have a hybrid work, half cantata and half radio drama, even including that famously unsuccessful cross between music and drama, the spoken word accompanied by " background " noises from the orchestra. (You listen to one or the other, and are irritated by whichever you try to ignore.) Then the plan of the eleven scenes, which might be intelligible with an accompanying film, absorbs a good deal of the listener's energy, if he means to understand what is happening. Scene 6 (The Kings or the Invention of Cards) is far too subtle and sophisticated an idea without further explanation, and seems to have the very flimsiest connection with Joan of Arc. Even Scene 4 (Pan Given up to the Beasts) needs some slight acquaintance with mediaeval bestiaries or the story of Renard to enable the listener to connect it with the rest of the work. A film— that, I feel, is the real solution, and much of the music sounded as though it were film music which had lost its way into the Albert Hall. The opening scene, for instance, with the howling dog and the heavenly voices, might be very effective cinema, a sort of French musical parallel to Henry V, though even this would not solve the unhappy combination of music with the speaking voice. "A symphony must be like the world : it must include everything," Mahler said to Sibelius. In his own Eighth Symphony it was the world of idealistic thought he tried to embrace, and Honegger in much the same way has tried to give a cross section of mediaeval life as it might have flashed through Joan's mind just before she died. Music is an unhappy medium for these vast imaginings, being both too vague (and hence the addition of the word) and,too precise, only able in the last resort to express ideas and emotions sui generis, except at the risk of losing caste. We thought at one time that we had been warned, but Honegger makes it plain that Expressionism is an endemic disease among musicians, and we must make up our
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