MU SIC.

THE ART OF PRAISE.

HITHERTO the great musicians have in the main contrived to keep eulogists at arm's length during their lifetime. Indeed, in the ease of the greatest of the old masters, they may be said to have done so without any effort at all. We cannot say for certain whether Beethoven would have approved of the

formation of a Beethoven Society, for he never got the chance of expressing his opinion on the subject ; but we know pretty well what the composer who most resembled him amongst the moderns—Brahma—thought of "praise to the face." In the case of performers, as opposed to creative musicians, every

excuse and allowance must be made for their not unnatural desire to secure immediate recognition in every form. What- ever phonographs and gramophones may do in the future, the

art of the great singers and players of the past died with them. Such immortality as they have achieved is due to the favour of Sovereigns, an unhappy marriage, a passing refer- ence in a volume of reminiscences, an historic compliment.

Grassini's name is linked with that of Napoleon ; Catalani survives in her husband's famous definition of the star system, —" ma femme et ring ou six poupees" ; Malibran, who had wit as well as charm, intelligence as well as natural gifts, impressed her contemporaries by her mind as much as her voice. But how many musicians of to-day ever so much as heard of "the unique, the incomparable Banti " who bequeathed her larynx to her native town—an excellent motive for a ballade of Dead Queens of Song—or could say off band whether Pasta was a soprano or a contralto ? It must not be supposed that com- posers have been altogether free from this craving for instant recognition, though until recently the means of gratifying it have not been fully organised. In a volume of reminiscences

of Liszt published some years ago by a Hungarian compatriot there is an interesting passage in which Liszt speaks of Wagner as having for many years been practically starving while in sight of the land of El Dorado, and he adds, with a change of metaphor, that when fame came to him, not in drops but waves, it was not to be wondered at if he was intoxicated by the draught.

It is impossible, therefore, to view without misgiving the gradual extension of a system which, inevitable in the case

of performers who are constantly before the public, who challenge public opinion and depend upon its expression

in the Press for their professional advancement, cannot but exert an unsettling influence on all who are subjected to its blandishments. People like Sir Walter Scott, who wrote in

his private journal that he was as indifferent to the "pap of praise " as any man who ever wrote a line, are the exceptions

to the rule, which is that the appetite for adulation is never sated. Public performers are entitled to praise for good work, but there is a constant tendency to supplement this legitimate recognition in a variety of unnecessary ways. Hence the fulsome interviews with prima donnas, pianists, violinists ; the chronicling of their receptions at the ends of the earth ; descriptions of their home life, their pastimes,

their pets, and their upholstery. There is nothing new, it may be urged, in these excrescences on the legitimate recog- nition of the virtuoso. Great pianists were mobbed before Paderewski, and it must be nearly twenty years since the late Mr. Beatty-Kingston described the menu of Madame

Patti's servants' hall. This is true enough, though the means of gratifying the vanity of performers have been immensely multiplied by the developments—pictorial and otherwise---of modern journalism. But hitherto there has been, in the main, a readiness to abstain from Boswellising the really

great contemporary musicians in their lifetime ; and while regarding their works as a fair subject for criticism, musical writers have been content to apply the motto xpti TiAog Opeir to the man as a whole. There are moments when a note of eulogy is permissible, but the requirements of the case can be readily

met in a newspaper article or a review. It is a different matter altogether when a series of biographies is projected and started on the lines laid down in the following prospectus.

We quote from the editor's note appended to the advertise- ment of " Living Masters of Music," the first volume of which deals with Mr. Henry J. Wood,* the extremely popular and very able conductor of the Queen's Hall Symphony Concerts :—

" It seems evident that the years are bringing back to the Anglo-Saxon races that wider and more social interest in music which, half a century ago, seems to have dwindled to a languid, dilettante patronage of Italian Opera. Every year a larger number of the public become habitual concert-goers, and music seems to be entering upon a healthier and more democratic phase of its existence. With this revived interest comes a desire to know something more of the 'master-spirits of the musical world; not merely of the old classical composers, but of those living • Hntry J. Woo& By Bola Newman*. London John Igoe. Ds. &I.] personal "ties who are actually shaping the destinies of the art. Biographies of Bach, Handel, and Mendelssohn, for all their in- structive value, tell us nothing of the present day. The men who are making history in politics, warfare, or science have a strong grip on our interests and imaginations. Judging from the success of many recent memoirs, and the increasing number of series devoted to books on living celebrities, it seems as though contemporary biography, with its glow and actuality, exercised an endless fascination for the public. As far as I am aware, no English or American series has attempted to do for musicians what has been done for living men of letters, soldiers, statesmen, or scientists. It is to be hoped that the 'Living Masters of Music' series will supply this deficiency by giving the public just those details about the composers and executive artists whom they hear and see, as will enable them to realise their individual influence on contemporary music. The scope of these volumes is wider than that of any other musical series now before the British or American public, since it is intended to include repre- sentatives of every branch of musical activity, provided they are really central figures in their own sphere. The interpreting conductor—that latest phenomenon in the world of music—the virtuoso, the master-teacher—possibly even the great vocalist— will be represented in these volumes as well as the creative artist. The distinguishing feature of the books will be that touch of intimacy which gives to contemporary biography its greatest value and vitality. As far as possible, each volume will be con- fided to a writer who is actually acquainted with the personality and the work of the musician he is invited to depict. We are confident that such a series will have more interest for the musical public than those which deal exclusively with composers of the past."

We should like to have heard the opinion of the late Sir Leslie Stephen on the canons of contemporary biography as enunciated in the foregoing prospectus. The multiplication of books on any subject is no proof of their necessity or their utility, while the " touch of intimacy " which, in the view of the writer, lends such works their greatest value and vitality is precisely what many people believe to constitute their weakness and danger. If Lives of the living are to be written by personal friends, anything approaching genuine criticism is ruled out in advance. This Mrs. Newmarch, the editor of the series in question, freely admits in her introduction to the volume before us. She says :—

" In undertaking a book upon our greatest English conductor, which is frankly eulogistic in tone and has for its object the vindication of his phenomenal success, it is an encouragement to feel that practically the entire public will be on my side. Those who are likely to prove hostile critics may be divided into two classes. A small minority of grudging natures like to read into the old maxim, De nortuis nil nisi bonum, a corrupt and ungenerous interpretation Of the living never say anything good.' For- tunately these ungracious and illiberal spirits, who call nothing great or good for fear of being mistaken, are a negligible quantity. There remains, however, another class, whose sympathies honestly lie with past methods of conducting, and who see in the inter- pretative, the virtuoso and the tempo rubato conductor a force as dangerous to their musical system as a comet might be to the order of the universe."

Mrs. Newmarch overlooks the possibility of there being a third class of hostile critics—hostile, that is, to the publication of frankly eulogistic biographies of the living—who hold that eminent musicians are fed full enough with the "pap of praise " already, and who sincerely regret to see writers like herself who have already done good service in the cause of musical enlightenment adopting such disputable means of proclaiming their hero-worship. Mrs. Newmarch in another outburst of candour declares that she most probably has " no claim whatever" to the "special gifts of tact and an im- partial temper " needed in writing of living celebrities. We regret to say that the admission is to a great extent justified by the manifest partisanship betrayed in her pages. Mr. Wood is "the democratic force in music." The Richter Concerts, on the other hand, did not exert a widespread influence "because their atmosphere was charged, like that of some Church services, with a kind of sacerdotal dignity, an aroma of cultured superiority, which kept aloof the deserving poor." Mr. Wood, again, " is a great teacher, though not of the intellectual and pedantic order like Hans von Billow." Scorn is poured on the " cultured bores " who would " check any spontaneous emotional thrill in the 'rendering of Mozart's music lest it should disturb their anaemic ideal of this master "; on "the dry, semi-sacred, stolidly Protestant ideals which were Handel's legacy to the country of his adoption " ; and on the grumblers " who desired to make those concerts [at the Queen's Hall] the dumping ground for the refuse of some particular school or clique."

The danger of the " frankly eulogistic " tone in biography is that it is almost 'invariably combined with an equally fiank

disparagement of the hero's critics, even though they are a small and "negligible quantity." We cannot conceive any more effective way of increasing or exasperating that minority than the publication of such a volume as this, in which the comparative—or superlative—method is so freely adopted as to render it difficult for adequate justice to be done to any other native musician who may be included in the Belies. No doubt the achievements of the conductor are in a sense as evanescent as those of the singer or player, and there may be to that extent some excuse for forestalling the verdict usually passed at the close of an artist's career. But to write a book about a man who is barely thirty-four, and whose career, properly considered, only began in 1895, strikes us as slightly premature. The method seems to us susceptible of an arithmetical reductio ad absurdum. If Mr. Henry J. Wood needs a biography on the strength of a nine- years' career, why should not the process be repeated when he is forty-three, fifty-two, sixty-one, and seventy ? Sir August Manus (whose name, we notice, does not figure in the prospectus) was not far short of eighty when he retired from the active pursuit of his profession. The spectacle of these recurrent biographies adds a new terror to the life of the modern musical celebrity, and we sincerely condole with Mr. Henry Wood, whose conspicuous talents and great services have already been so liberally recognised at home and abroad, on being subjected to a treatment which has never done a man good either in his lifetime or after it.

C. L. G.