ARTHUR JOHNSTONE.
LA.NDASHIRE music recently sustained a severe loss by the premature deaths—they both died at forty-three, and within a year of each other—of Alfred Rodewald, the founder and conductor of the Liverpool Orchestral Society, and Arthur Johnstone, the musical critic of the Manchester Guardian. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that presented by the two men in physique or temperament,— Johnstone being slight, small, rather saturnine in appearance, and reserved in manner ; while Rodewald was a genial giant with an eminently forthcoming disposition. Yet in spite of superficial differences, the two men were not only excel- lent friends, but were united by their common love of the art they served so well. They were at one in com- bining a deep veneration for Bach with a most sensitive appreciation of any composer, no matter how outré or anarchical, who honestly endeavoured to enlarge the horizons of the art. And they both cordially detested insincerity, charlatanry, claptrap, and vulgarity. Rodewald, as became a man with a greater gift for friendship, was more catholic in his tastes, less uncompromising in his dislikes ; but in the main they saw eye to eye in matters musical, and the work of the one was complementary to that of the other, Rodewald educating his audiences by the performance of programmes chosen in accordance with the principle enunciated by Johnstone when he wrote: "Music is an art of expression, and all thoroughly and richly expressive music is good music, no matter what the informing emotion or underlying idea." And if Johnstone exercised the role of critic somewhat too consistently in the spirit of the gadfly, it must be admitted that he had great excuse in his antecedents, and considerable provocation in the state of British public opinion even in so musical a centre as Manchester.
Arthur Johnstone, who was born in 1861, was the son of an Anglican clergyman, and was educated at a high Anglican school and a high Anglican College—Hadley and Keble—but his nature refused to take the colour of his surroundings ; its bent was ingrainedly secular and artistic, and he became by reaction anti-clerical, though, as his biographers correctly note,* he "continued to appreciate the value of religion, chiefly through art and music." He was out of sympathy with the .public-school spirit, none of his numerous accomplishments being such as could ensure him 'imminence in the playing- fields; while his genuine passion for art and beauty, coupled with a certain eccentricity in attire, probably caused him to be confounded by the unobservant with the votaries of pseudo- aestheticism. He tried for the Indian Civil Service and failed, because "lie made no serious attempt to succeed," the prospect of an examination with him proving to be the reverse of an incentive te work. He had to earn his living, however, and, leaving Oxford without taking a degree, supported himself by teaching for a few years, until a small legacy enabled him to realise a long-cherished ambition and study music at a foreign conservatorium. He . worked hard for a year at Cologne,—long enough to enable him to realise that he could never hope to achieve anything great as a player or composer, to convince him that the career .of music teacher was intolerable drudgery, and to bring * Musical Criticisms. By Arthur Johnstone. With a Memoir of the Author by Henry Reece and Oliver Elton. Manchester; at the University Press. I
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the beginning," where he foregathered with Farmer and impressed Jowett—by his skill as a conjurer, which was certainly remarkable. For six months he acted as tutor in the family of a Russian Prince in Podolia—the neigh- bourhood was a " paradise of gypsies," who appealed in every way to Johnstone's antinomian instincts—and then studied Russian seriously at Odessa until he was driven home by want of funds, though he contrived to pay a visit both to Bayrenth and the Passion Play at Oberammergau on his way home. In 1890 he accepted a Mastership in Modern Languages at the Edinburgh Academy, which he held until he left Edinburgh for Manchester in January, 1896, to join the staff of the Manchester Guardian., and Manchester was his home until his death after a short illness in December, 1904.
One cannot expect the foregoing brief sketch to make it clear wherein consisted Johnstone's peculiar fitness for the calling in which he did his best work. But it may be at once asserted that to a technical equipment possessed by few musical critics he added a gift of incisive literary expression and a fearlessness surpassed by none. His contempt for charlatanry and sentimentality and his sardonic wit occasion- ally prompted him to use phrases which gave more pain than he realised or intended. But he never descended to the truculence which has disfigured the criticism of some of his colleagues, and vigorously protested against on- slaughts on certain composers by writers "who attacked without regard either for the facts of the case or even for common decency." Even where he was out of sympathy with the methods employed by a composer or his animating purpose, he never failed to recognise high aims and earnest endeavour. As his biographers most truly say, "he thought instinctively more about ideas and purposes than about persons, so that he sometimes ignored persons and therefore dissatisfied them." It was characteristic of the man that some of his friendships began in controversy, even in a quarrel. Having himself fought and suffered for his unorthodoxy, he had an instinctive sympathy with the spirit of revolt, with the untrammelled expression of individuality. In literature it was the same : "be had a swift preference even as a boy for all that was fresh, vehement, and strange in modern drama and fiction." His sympathy with anarchical tendencies, however, was more aesthetic than political ; he associated with Russian refugees, and enrolled himself among the Friends of Russian Freedom, but held that "a paternal Government was required in Russia, and that his countrymen as a whole were to blame for their harsh judgment of a civilisation merely because it ran counter to their own political ideals." So in music his frank admiration for the primitive and barbaric element in Dvorik and Tchaikovsky did not blind him to the rodomontade, the lack of dignity and of deep intellectuality, by which their works were often marred. His profoundest admiration, his most unstinted praise, were reserved for Bach, as may be gathered from the following really noble tribute :—
" Bach represents by far the greatest stimulating influence that has ever existed in the musical world. His stupendous industry, resulting in a body of first-rate work that may bo reckoned among the greatest wonders of the world (it is not possible for a modern to know it nil); his awe-inspiring union of very great talent with very great character ; the completeness of his human nature and the absolute purity of his life and art—these things unite to make of Bach's personality something truly august, something that administers a quietus to the ordinary critical, fault-finding spirit. Glancing over the huge library of his collected works and knowing the glories that a few of them contain, one is fain to say, 'There were giants in the earth in those days.' Yet 'giant' is scarcely the word. For the astounding sinew and sturdiness of the man were quite secondary in the composition of his character to that quality, in virtue of which he worked on throughout ,a long life as though in perpetual consciousness of something higher than ordinary human judgment ; not waiting for full appreciation, which did not come till about a century after his death (very much as in Shakespeare's case), but perfectly realising the great ethical ideal of Marcus Aurelius—the good man producing good works, just as the vine produces grapes. No greater praise can be bestowed on Handel than to say that in his very best moments he is almost worthy of Bach, as, for example, in the choral section The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all,' or in the tenor of the recitative He looked for some to have pity on Him, but there was no man ; neither found He any to comfort Him.'"
Nor was his attitude to Beethoven less wanting in reverence
"It is, beyond question, the most austere of all musical works— a product of Beethoven's quite inexorable mood. At the period when it was written the composer had become a sort of suffering Prometheus. Even apart from his deafness, it is wonderful that Beethoven's persistent ill-fortune, his isolated and unhappy life, should not have discouraged him and checked the flow of his creative energy. But that the mightiest of his compositions should have been produced when he was stone-deaf—that is surely one of the most perfectly amazing among well-authenticated facts! So far as we know, there never was any other case in which deaf- ness failed to cut a person off altogether from the world of music. With Beethoven it only brought a gradual change of style. As the charm that music has for the ear faded away he became more and more absorbed, aloof, austere, and spiritual. The warm human feeling of his middle-period compositions gave way to a style of such unearthly grandeur and sublimity as are oppressive to ordinary mortals. Of that unearthly grandeur there is no more typical example than the Missa Solennis.' Not only in regard to the composition but even in regard to a performance the ordinary language of criticism is at fault. Who ever heard a satisfactory' performance of the Mises Solennis' ? A spirit of sacrifice is demanded of the performers ; for the music is written from beginning to end with an utter want of consideration for the weak- nesses and limitations of the human voice. Of course that would be intolerable in an ordinary composer. Handers combination of German structural solidity with Italian courtesy, sense of style, and delight in rich vocal rhetoric is the ideal thing. By com- parison with the reasonable and tactful Handel, Beethoven is a kind of monster, from the singer's point of view, but a monster of such genius that his terrible requirements must occasionally be met. The quartet was best in the astonishing Dona nobis pacem' section, where the composer seems to represent humanity as endeavouring to take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence, protesting against all the oppression that is done under the sun, and sending up to the throne of God so instant a clamour for the gift of peace as may be heard amid the very din of strife. For that prayer for peace sounds against the sullen rolling of drums and menacing clangour of trumpets, the voices having now a mighty unanimity, now the wail of this or that forlorn victim. One looks in vain through the temple of musical art for anything to match that tremendous conception marking the final phase of the Mina Solennis.' " One merit of Johnstone's criticisms, as may be readily understood from the above extracts, was that they appealed not merely to musical, but to non-musical readers. He seldom wrote a notice without introducing some happy literary or artistic parallel or starting some interesting psychological problem. His tone was often peremptory, and at times recalled the schoolmaster,—we well remember one notice of a work of Tchaikovsky which he prefaced with a long and some- what irritable disquisition on the right spelling of his second name, which so often incorrectly figured as Iltitch in concert programmes. In the words of his biographers, "he was too angry to be precious," but there was never any fumbling in
his phrases, no resort to euphemism in his censure or to effusiveness in his praise. He knew his mind, and spoke it with perfect lucidity and unfaltering directness. He early signalised himself by his whole-hearted enthusiasm for the works of Richard Strauss and Elgar, but he never disfigured his championship of the new idols by any "brutal detraction" —to quote his own phrase—of their contemporaries.
Of Johnstone's interesting personality and his many and curious accomplishments a full and sympathetic account will be found in the admirably written memoir—quite a master- piece of its kind—which Messrs. Elton and Reece have prefixed to this collection of his writings. Indeed, the only criticisms we are inclined to offer are that in emphasising his services as a Bach propagandist they have, no doubt uninten- tionally, overlooked the efforts of his predecessors and con- temporaries ; and further, that no mention is made of the keen sense of humour—all the more engaging in a man of an eminently serious bent—which now and then emerged in his criticisms. He was not a man of many friends; but in congenial surroundings he could make himself delightful even to a chance acquaintance. Here, however, we are con- cerned less with the man than with his work as an educator and interpreter, and may close our notice by saying that few writers on music have exerted a more stimulating or salutary influence. Whether you agreed with him or not, he compelled you to listen to him by the sincerity of his views and the vividness of their presentation. His biographers complain, not without good reason, that far too little notice was taken of him in the London Press at the time of his death. The contents of this volume will certainly remove any excuse for the continuance of such neglect. C. L. G.
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