THE LAST QUARTETS [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Srn,—Mr.
Maine is shocked by my metaphors, as I intended him to be. On the one hand there is the critic, pontifical but vague, condemning with one sweep the later Quartets, as an artist's dotages, and obfuscating a public he is supposed to illuminate : on the other an ignorant amateur, picking out the themes, finding them thoroughly enjoyable, even—more shocking still—playing them to his little girl to dance to, and
trying to get people to listen to them without working them- selves up into a state of mystified awe._ _ ;
Mr. Maine has conceded me the Andante of Op: 181 ; then, he says, the mists descend, or rather Beethoven ascends aboVe the clouds. To show that I am really serious, I will make an offer. I take you, Sir, to be (if I may say so) a normal man of artistic interests. I will ask you to listen to the playing of the next movement to this Andante—the Scherzo— by 'a quartet that I will engage for the purpose, and abide by your judgment as to whether it is reasonably enjoyable music or a clouded misfire.
If you concede this movement, as I am sure you will, I suppose logically I should take Mr. Maine through all the last Quartets, movement by movement, leaving him in the last ditch with the Grosse Fuge. But I will not trespass further upon your time : one movement, the Scherzo, will, I maintain, explode Mr. Maine's whole thesis: —I am, Sir, &c.,
61 Ashton Street, Liverpool.
PATRICK ABERCROMBIE.
[This correspondence is now closed.--ED. Spectator.]
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