STAGE AND SCREEN
MUSIC
Our New Laureate
THE award to Dr. Vaughan Williams of the first " Shakespeare Prize is a remarkable sign of the status achieved during the present generation by British music in foreign eyes. This new prize for excellence in one of the arts, endowed by a wealthy German merchant and associated with the name of our greatest poet, is given at its initiation not to a man of letters—the branch of art in which England has won the highest reputation— nor to a painter, who might at the moment have been easier to find than a poet, but to a musician. The gesture is the more remarkable coming from a country which, on the basis of two centuries of preLeminence in music, has tended to underrate the products of other countries and, in particular, had come, not without reason, to think of England as das Land ohne Musik. In justice to Germany, however, it must not be forgotten that this gesture is not unique. Strauss's generous acclamation of The Dream of Gerontius, after its failure at Birmingham, was an even more perspicacious action and a more important one, because at that time English music badly needed to be given a good conceit of itself.
By a happy, coincidence the Oxford Press has issued at this moment two additions to their " Musical Pilgrim " series, dealing with Vaughan Williams' music. In these two booklets Mr. Frank Howes analyses the composer's output of choral, symphonic and • dramatic works during the 'past ten years. Even allowing for the fact that the actual inception and com- position of these works covers a longer period, one's first reaction is one of astonishment at the quantity and variety of the composer's • output. A list that includes the exotic, Flps Campi, and the, •homely, popular. The Poisoned Kiss, the delicate Suite for Viola and the resplendent Job, the recondite Riders, to the Sea and the robust and bawdy Tudor Portraits argues_ a very vital and enquiring mind, that is not content to ruminate in fields already conquered. This restless exploration has' opened Vaughan Williams to the charge of eclecticisin, which is one of the chief dangers resulting froth the growth of erudition. But this is to miss the real pi:int, which is that beneath all this variety of manner and 'of matter there is a real unity created by a strong and original individuality. Whether he is writing a liturgical movement in a deliberately antique style or merely arranging a folk-song, there is always the stamp upon it of his own personality, as it were of his peculiar tone of voice.
That Vaughan Williams' music is not fully appreciated and therefore needs, though less .than Elgar's did in 1 ooz, the added halo of a foreign endorsement, is due largely to this very incalcUlability of his genius. No sooner has the public come to terms with one work than he perplexes it with some- thing that is on the face of it so utterly different that even his admirers sometimes have difficulty in finding their bearing in the strange surroundings. Mr. Howes quotes the case of an eminent musician who was disco'vered after a per- formance of the Mass in G Minor moaning piteously : " 0 play me ' 0 rest in the Lord ' ; play it as a cornet solo ; play it anyhow ; but play me 0 rest in the Lord ' after that." And Mr. Howes himself confesses to having failed,to come to terms with Sancta Civitas, as to which I must confess to being an exception among the listeners " who cannot get on with it." Indeed I am puzzled at this feeling of bafflement in the face of a composition which I, who confess to being perplexed at first by Flos ,Campi and the Pianoforte Concerto, immediately felt to be the composer's finest choral work up to that date.
But this is merely incidental, for Sancta Civitas lies outside the scope of Mr. Howes's lucid and musicianly commentaries, which with the help of musical illustrations and a style that is at once lively and learned really accomplishes that rare 'feat of getting down to the fundamentals of a composer's style and showing the reader, as far as words can show, why a piece of music, is good. Coming at a moment when Vaughan Williams is " in the news,". these booklets will reveal to his countrymen the breadth and depth of this addition to our national treasure, whoie worth hai been so conspicuously recognised, by this award from derinany.
DYNELEY HussEy.
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