MUSIC.
THE GLOUCESTER FESTIVAL.
THE programmes of the provincial Festivals are always of the nature of a compromise between the claims of those who hear too little and those who hear too much music. The difficulty of selection, again, is further aggravated by the fact that while the former like to listen to what they know, the latter clamour to hear some new thing. The claim of the former• class, especially in a provincial centre, must in the main predominate. They represent the big battalions on which the financial success of these meetings chiefly depends, and their tastes are fairly constant. But once you get into the ranks of the educated amateurs the difficulty of conciliating divergent demands becomes acute. Some would be best content with a liberal infusion of the " three B's,"— Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms ; others would like to re- place all oratorios, old and new, with the works of Elgar ; a third section hanker after Strauss and Debussy; and a fourth, no longer in the mid-current of the neoterising stream, still cling to Wagner. When all these divers claims are taken into account, it will be admitted that the compromise effected at Gloucester was judicious enough. Deference was shown to the predominant partner by the retention of Elijah and The Messiah, and to the classicists by the inclusion of Beethoven's Violin Concerto and a motet by Bach. Verdi's Requiem, at once theatrical yet sincere, and a fine specimen of the middle period of its composer•, was a wise choice, for it is neither too hackneyed to please the novelty-hunters, nor too difficult to satisfy the old guard. Brahma was con- spicuously absent ; but he bad his turn three years ago with the Deutsches Requiem. Sir Edward Elgar was handsomely
represented by his two oratorios, The Apostles and The King- dom. The votaries of Strauss and Wagner came off worst, for Richard the Younger was overlooked altogether, while his
namesake only figured in the opening service in the Cathedral on Sunday, the 8th, when, by an eccentric choice, the Kaiser-
marsch was played by the band as a concluding voluntary during the collection. The Kaisermarsch is essentially a great national piece d'occasion, exultantly, and even thrasonically, patriotic in its temper ; and while its performance in a concert- room is perfectly justifiable, we are old-fashioned enough to think that it sounded singularly inappropriate amid the sur- roundings in which it was heard . at Gloucester last week. In other respects the music performed at the opening service was happily chosen. Sir Charles Stanford's setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis has a serene distinction of melody, while the orchestration is a model of discretion, com- bining scholarship with warmth and delicacy with adequate volume. The two anthems, " 0 Lord, Thou art my God " and " 0 Give Thanks," were by previous organists of Gloucester Cathedral, Dr. Harford Lloyd and Mr. Lee Williams re- spectively, and are both excellent specimens of modern English church music, unaffected in expression, sound in workmanship, and grateful alike to singers and listeners. An orchestral prelude by Dr. Hathaway, "In te, Domine, Speravi," owed perhaps more to the fine quality of the orchestra than to its intrinsic excellence, but the composer has at least the merit of express- ing emotion without lapsing into extravagance:
Of the works brought to a hearing for the first time at Gloucester, by far the most ambitious and elaborate was Mr. Granville Bantock's cantata, Christ in the Wilderness, the words to which are chiefly taken from Isaiah am., liii., and lx. Mr. Bantock is a prolific and accomplished composer, mainly of orchestral works laid out on a grandiose scale, and his Omar Khayyam—though hardly in keeping with FitzGerald's own somewhat austere taste in music as revealed in his letters—met with a very favourable reception at the last Birmingham Festival. We regret that in the present instance we can congratulate him neither on the choice nor the handling of his subject. To begin with, the subject of the Wilderness must always remain closely associated at Gloucester with the noble anthem of its most distinguished organist, Samuel Sebastian Wesley, and any British composer who challenges comparisons with that version must have a double dose of self-confidence. Secondly, Mr. Bantock has achieved repute in fields of composition widely sundered from those which be has now invaded. Geographically, no doubt, he can claim to be in sympathy with his theme, for he has always shown a marked predilection for Oriental subjects. But it is the secular, the exotic and romantic side of Orientalism that appeals to his imagination, not its spiritual depth or ascetic fervour. Tales of far Cashmere and silken Samarcand, the pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan, the pomp and pageantry of Babylon the Great, —here Mr. Bantock is in his element, and can paint tone-pictures reproducing the barbaric gorgeousness of the East cleverly enough. Bat at best the result is a tertiary deposit which has come down from Felicien. David, the pioneer in this field, through a host of other European composers who, in default of a strong individuality of their own, have disguised themselves in exotic raiment, and paid
the penalty which invariably attends the self-denationalises, even when he is a Lafcadio Hearn. This cult of pseudo- Orientalism has reached our shores last of all, and inasmuch as it accords less with our national genius than that of any other European race, it is devoutly to be hoped that the fashion will not spread. It has unquestionably been largely encouraged by the exemplum vitiis imitabile of Tschaikowsky and Dvorak; but the Russian and Bohemian music is genuinely semi-Oriental, and there is a world of difference between the naiveté of the orchestral embroidery in Dvorgk's Requiem and the studied sumptuousness of Mr. Bantock's score. For the rest, his musical characterisation is curiously uncon- vincing. His desert is almost as richly upholstered as his heaven, and the soprano aria to which the magnificent strophes beginning " The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them " are set is so entirely lacking in dignity
or exaltation as to be positively grotesque. It might have come straight out of the score of a musical comedy com-
posed by Mr. Ivan Caryl!. Or, as one of the audience remarked, it reminded him of Carmen, a Carmen that was extremely sacculare. Setting aside the question of appropriateness, no fault can be found with the score on the ground of elaborate- ness or richness of orchestration. Mr. Bantock reminds us of Rubinstein's remark that modern composers paint with all the colours in their palette. But his studious avoidance of the obvious becomes an obsession, and provokes the usual Nemesis. Where the votaries of the recondite try. to be simple, they reveal the poverty of their invention and lapse
into banality. We do not deny that the work is clever, or that it has occasionally a certain sonorous impressive-
ness. But viewed in relation to the text, it constantly strikes a jarring note. Even the reminiscences—as that of the Yenusberg music on p. 81 of the pianoforte score—are inappropriate, and the cruelly sharp curve which the com- poser takes in the last few bars to wrench the finale into the key of F is as gratuitous as the unhappy ending of a modern novel. We may add that by comparison with Mr. Bantock's work, Glazounov's Sixth Symphony, which was given on the same morning, was conspicuous for its sanity and sobriety. Sir Hubert Parry's Symphonia Sacra, " The Love that Casteth out Fear," performed on the following day, has been roughly handled in some quarters on the score of its alleged dreariness. That, however, was only to be expected. If the latest conception of oratorio is the right one, sustained dignity, austerity, and elevation are clearly out of place in sacred music.
The miscellaneous concert in the Shire Hall was too long and too noisy,—the inevitable result of a crowded programme and the employment of a full band in a small room. But the
performance was not without its attractions. Mr. Reed's Cali- ban, a fantastic Scherzo for orchestra, is a very promising piece
of work. Himself a first-rate orchestral player, Mr. Reed knows how to show off the band, but there is much more than mere instrumental millinery in his score. The monstrous element in Caliban is cleverly indicated, but without eclipsing the human interest. Dr. Brewer's charming Elizabethan Idylls were finely sung by Mr. Coates. Mr. Plunket Greene aroused enthusiasm in Sir Charles Stanford's Sea-Songsthe words were printed in the programme without any mention of Mr. Newbolt's authorship—and Mischa Elman played Beethoven's Concerto with such wonderful fire and precision as to atone for his slightly defiant bearing.
As generally happens on these occasions, the preparation of the standard works was sacrificed to that of the novelties : hence the performances of Elijah and The Messiah hardly rose above the level of adequateness. But the chorus—drawn, as of late years, exclusively from the three counties, and of excellent quality, especially in the sopranos—distinguished itself greatly in the other works, notably in The Apostles and The Kingdom, which were most impressively given under the composer's direction. A regrettable, but inevitable, feature of the Festival was the absence of the veteran singers associated with the meetings of the Three Choirs for the last thirty years or more ; but their successors, though in some instances more remarkable for their musicianship than their voices, have fairly earned their promotion. Of the newcomers, Mr. Gervase Elwes deserves special recognition. It is a real pleasure to hear a tenor whose style is so distinguished. The band was very good indeed; and lastly, the weather was memorable for a wealth of sunshine hard to parallel even in the unclouded annals of the Gloucester Festival. C. L. G.
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