MUSIC.
THE GLOUCESTER FESTIVAL.
LAST week's meeting of the three choirs—held for the most part in what the late Madame Titiens, looking at the matter from the point of view of practical acoustics, called " the finest concert-room in Europe "—was in the main so thoroughly suc- cessful and enjoyable as to reduce the irksome duty of fault• finding, if not to an irreducible minimum, at least within a very reasonable compass. There were as usual too many brand-new works ; one at least of these was quite unworthy of inclusion in a festival programme ; and lastly, there was the abiding difficulty of inadequate accommodation where the performance of purely secular music is concerned. The Shire Hall at Gloucester only holds about 600 people; it is an ex- tremely resonant building into the bargain, and when—as hap- pened several times on the same evening last week—the entire resources of the modern orchestra are utilised by our powerful modern composers, the effect on the naked ear of the sensitive auditor is nothing short of inflammatory. Many of those who were present on the evening of Wednesday week felt as though they had assisted not merely at " the forging of the anchor," but the riveting of a boiler. There are only two ways out of the difficulty. Either Gloucester must capture a Carnegie and induce him to build a proper concert hall, or else the Shire Hall Concert must be abandoned. The prejudice to the claims of secular music to be included in the programme involved in such a step would be much less serious than is at first sight apparent. It is hardly too much to say that, short of ballet music, almost any sort of symphonic music is granted a hearing in our Cathedrals at festival time, provided the nomen- clature is not too flagrantly anomalous. Tschaikowsky's " Pathetic " Symphony, for instance, with its unbridled passion, its gorgeous barbaric pageantry, and its un- redeemed pessimism, utterly unsuited as it is for festival performance, has been given in more than one Cathedral elsewhere without any protest from the Church authori- ties. It would make, in short, very little difference to instrumental composers. The choice of choral and vocal music, on the other hand, would be considerably restricted, and the audience would have to resign themselves to the loss of such familiar favourites as the " Jewel Song"" from Faust, "Lend me your aid," "Sweet Bird," &c. This loss some of us could contemplate with equanimity. Then, of course, the secular cantatas would have to be eliminated. This, again, is a calamity which might be contemplated with perfect resigna- tion. At the same time, we readily admit that the loss of such pieces as the Meistersinger or Nozze di Figaro overtures, or of such a piece as Mr. Elgar's " Cockaigne," is not to be lightly regarded. The miscellaneous secular programme
given in a concert-room not only affords a much-needed relief to the succession of serious works, but, applause being impos- sible in the Cathedral, it affords a pleasant opportunity to the audience to testify audibly their appreciation of the skill and talent of composers, singers, players, and conductors. And it is human to applaud, even to encore, however much it may grieve pedants and prgeieux. On the whole, then, it is to be hoped that the problem will be solved on lines which will give fuller scope for the performance of secular works in suitable surroundings rather than in the direction of still further secularising the character of the works given in the Cathedral. The Gloucester programme, however, happily left few loop- holes for adverse criticism on this score. But it cannot be too resolutely maintained that the casting of a work in sym- phonic form is not an irrefragable argument in favour of its suitability for performance in a Cathedral or consecrated building. Of the three symphonies so given last week there was only one that from beginning to end never sounded out of place, and that was not Mozart's "Jupiter" nor Beethoven's Eroica, but Brahms's First Symphony in C Minor, a work instinct with the true spirit of Beethoven, yet lacking those strange freakish Beethovenish outbursts which ill consort with the atmosphere of a house of prayer and worship. The austere grandeur of Brahms's genius, the sombre, autumnal glory of his colouring, even the occasional harshnesses of his harmonies—precisely the very qualities which repel that section of the musical world which clamours for raw emotion, sensationalism, excitement, and luscious melody—go far to recommend the somewhat disputable proposition that all classical music is sacred. It would be more correct to say that much classical instrumental music can be played in church without violating the fitness of things or inducing in the hearer a frame of mind unsuited to the surroundings. Certainly in Brahms's C Minor Symphony there is not a bar which fails to satisfy these requirements. Its beauty is gracious and serene ; its grandeur is noble and self-possessed. The great melody in the last movement, as it was happily observed to the present writer, is as massive as the great pillars in the interior of Gloucester Cathedral.
Of the absolutely brand-new compositions brought forward last week the most satisfactory was the eight-part motet by Dr. Harford Lloyd, " The Righteous live for evermore," dedicated " in plant menu:niant Victories reginae." This proved to be a really admirable specimen of a cappella music, solid in structure, symmetrical in form, unaffected in sentiment, grateful to sing, and delightful to listen to. Writers of unaccompanied choral music for festival per- formance enjoy this great advantage over orchestral composers, that they rely for its execution entirely upon the local forces as opposed to the Metropolitan orchestra; and the sympathetic, intelligent, and—but for a slight fall in pitch—accurate rendering of Dr. Lloyd's motet given last week testified abundantly to the appreciative interest taken in his work by the West Country singers. And here we may parenthetically remark that the good example, set originally by Dr. Sinclair of Hereford, of dispensing with an imported contingent was followed with complete success at Gloucester. The Three Choirs Festival is now no longer a misnomer, as it undoubtedly was when from a quarter to a third of the chorus came from Yorkshire. But to return to the novelties, the oratorio " Emmaus," by Mr. Brewer, the conductor of the Festival, without being a re- markable work, showed the same qualities of sound musician- ship, sanity, and unaffected sentiment which have marked the composer's works on a smaller scale. Dr. Cowen's orchestral piece, " A Phantasy of Life and Love," main- tained without enhancing his repute as an elegant and dexterous rather than profound manipulator of the re- sources of the modern orchestra ; but the symphonic prelude of Mr. W. H. Bell hardly fulfilled the anticipations based on the clever compositions from his pen produced at the Crystal Palace. The composer seemed perpetually on the verge of saying something interesting or exciting, but the process of preparation continued practically to the very en& The development and treatment were far in advance of the themetic material, and, to take a journalistic parallel, might be compared to the achievement of an expert leader writer who contrives to beat a single idea out into a full " three- decker." Mr. Coleridge-Taylor's contribution proved most dis- invertebrate effusion of which little can be said save that it is unpretentious and soothing, a quality too often disregarded by modern climax-mongers. Mr. Elgar's " Cockaigne ' appointing. His Idyll" is a cleverly scored, amiaobvleer, but been already heard at one of the Philharmonic Concert, in London, but it was new to nineteen-twentieths of the Gloucester audience, provided the chief sensation at the Shire Hall Concert, and greatly augmented the interest already excited in one of the most remarkable personalities in the modern musical world. For Mr. Elgar, who is virtually Nu. taught and has been styled a Melchizedek amongst composers, inasmuch as no one can trace his musical parentage, has really something to say besides a brilliant and often fascinating way of saying it; be has ideas as well as style. " Cockaigne," no doubt, is a partial misnomer, for the country to which he transports us on his magic cloak is not the media3val fairyland where the houses were made of sugar, and the pavements of sugar, not the paese di Cuccagna, nor the realm that Belanger wrote of when he sang-
"Ivre de champagne Je bats is campagne Et vois de oocagne Le pays charmant."
It is, as we gather from his programme, simply London Town, to which, probably by a false analogy suggested by the word " Cockney," the phrase " Land of Cockaigne " was applied within the last century. The original Land of Cockaigne . was a land of gaiety, luxury, self. indulgence, material pleasure. There was no room in it for the element of strenuous endeavour, the vein of exalted sentiment which runs like a golden thread through the kaleidoscopic texture of Mr. Elgar's work. But we have no desire to quarrel with the composer for the faulty literary genealogy betrayed in his choice of a title. It would be mere pedantry to labour this point, for after all he has given us a glimpse of a fantastic fairyland, though it may not be the authentic Cockaigne. The " pro- gramme " is simple to commonplaceness. A young man and maiden take a walk through the streets, they go into a church, a military band passes, they go foith into the streets again. But it is translated into terms of sound and treated in a spirit of what, for want of a better phrase, we may call fantastic realism with a cleverness that is not merely astonishing but delightful. The combination of the sonata form with the, programme is in itself a considerable tour de force, while the orchestration is as brilliant as Richard Strauss's without his inhumanity. Certainly Mr. Elgar is to be envied, for in these latter days, when moat composers are fain to echo the complaint of the Greek poet a prinup, Oev; bur zeiror ZpOroy tam &NU, Moviiime gepcirme iota pere; is
;DI x54CZ61Y, he not only finds out "new paths" of his own, but triumphantly drives his "newly yoked chariot" along them.
English music had, beside the composers already mentioned, two other worthy representatives at Gloucester in Sir Hubert Parry, whose noble oratorio, Job, originally produced at Gloucester in 1892, was received last meek with signal success; and in Professor Stanford, whose vivid and dramatic setting of Mr. Henley's fine but somewhat thrasonical poem, The Last Post, proved one of the most attractive features at the Shire Hall Concert. Verdi's Requiem, which provoked Hans von Billow's historic recantation, made a great effect in the Cathedral on the Thursday; while the largestaudiences were, as usual, drawn by the Messiah, Eltjah, and the Hymn of Praise. In concluding this notice we must not omit to mention how largely the sound musicianship, the tact, and the judicious handling of his forces shown by Mr. Brewer, the excellent organist of Gloucester Cathedral, contributed to the success of a most enjoyable meeting. C. L. G.
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