Words on Music
Composers on Music: An Anthology of Coin- posers' Writings. Edited by Sam Morgen- stern. (Faber. 32s. 6d.) tr is a truism that writing about music is a difficult art since it calls for qualities that are 'seldom found together. Music is itself a language with its own laws and syntax; no one i likely to have better insight into that language than the com- poser. Yet—precisely because he is a musician— the composer will not often be comparably expert in verbal communication; and insight that is in- communicable is critically invalid (in both senses). None the less, the creative mind is seldom critically negligible, and great artists are never nincompoops. Casual remarks uttered by com- posers may be unexpectedly illuminating, so that any anthology Of composers' writings is bound to fascinate. There is, for instance, something strangely moving in overhearing C. P. E. Bach as he reproves Dr. Burney for making rash state- ments about Handel, occasioned in part by his ignorance of Bach's father's music: while one is better informed and wiser for reading Glinka's , first-hand account of Field's piano-playing. Many such incidental illuminations crop up in the pages of Mr. Morgenstern's anthology, along with the (to musicians) familiar prefatorial pas- sages from earlier composers and the classic state- ments such as Berlioz's marvellous account of his own art. The weakness of the book lies in its too rigid distInction between music and life. For instance: while no two people would agree exactly as to which remarks of Chopin are most musically revealing, everyone who has read his letters would surely agree that he is not adequately represented by a few mildly facetious comments on the condi- tions of music-making in various parts of Europe. Though he may not be an intellectual (as the editor rather patronisingly observes), he had an 'almost frightening degree of self-knowledge; and what Chopin has to say about himself is more important for us today than the fact that, in judg- ing his contemporaries, he was often wrong. It is no less preposterous to assert that 'Schubert had very little to say about music,' restricting him to a page and a bit. Don't his remarks about the composition of the Win/erre/se concern music? Are not even the unconscious fantasies of his Dream profoundly relevant, helping us to under- stand him and therefore to listen to his music? Perhaps what is needed is another anthology, consisting of composers' remarks about them- selves, to complen4ent this anthology which for the most part assembles composers', opinions -of other composers. Certainly this anthology gives me an uneasy feeling that the most important things are left out. Even if one restricts oneself to comments directly concerned with music there are some odd omissions. For instance, Mr. Morgenstern dismisses Bach's 'ornate prefaces' as unworthy of quotation. I should have thought Bach's dedication of his Orgelbiiehlein to the glory of God and the instruction of his neigh- bour contained the theme for a long essay, or a small book, on the nature of Bach's art. •
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