Shorter Notices
THESE small essays, plainly yet elegantly written, tell the ordinary music-lover pretty well all that he can want to know about the slightly less well-known of the great com- posers of opera—Monteverdi, Gluck, Weber, Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Gounod, Bizet, Mussorgsky and one prime favourite, Puccini. The facts are presented in pleasant and easily digestible form, there are nice touches of wit and the author's judgement is unfailingly sound. He faces Mussorgsky's dipsomania more frankly than many bio- graphers have done, and he, probably wisely, refrains from the temptation to psycho-analyse Rossini, content to attribute his premature retirement from " business " to his natural indolence and a well-lined purse. It is not •possible to make Weber a very sympathetic or interesting character, and the fact that modern operatic audienCes in this country are not acquainted even with Der Freischatz has really relegated poor Weber to the class of composers—Monte- verdi and Gluck virtually belong to them, alas ! too—whose names are more honoured than their works performed. Puccini, alone of Mr. Hussey's composers, belongs to the opposite class, more performed than honoured ; and it is perhaps not over- imaginative to find in the essay devoted to him a hint of the boredom and irritation induced in any music critic by frequent and enforced attendance at third-rate perform- ances of Tosca, Butterfly and Bohetne. In any case, Puccini " needs no introduction,"
and the many who buy this book will buy it for the skill and unpretentiousness with which the little-known composers and their works are intioduced. They can take their choice of two different Puccini operas most nights of the week, if they are Londoners. M. C. The Art of Living. By Saul Steinberg. (Hamish Hamilton. 21s.)
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