MUSIC
Political Symphonies
LAST week's Promenade programmes were unusually rich in interest. Among the novelties were two new symphonies by Benjamin Britten and Alan Bush, both of whcm profess more or less extreme political views on the left flank. Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem, composed two years ago in America, where he sought refuge from the distractions of England at war, is a memorial to those who died fighting for the republican cause in Spain. Bush's Symphony in C major, written fn 1939, is avowedly an attempt to give expression to the composer's political and sociological creed.
But a composer's politics have very little to do with his art. He may, as Bush seems to have done, derive the impulse to create from his enthusiasm for a given political idea, but the quality of that idea will have no more influence on the quality of his music than his taste in ties or cigarettes. It was not Napoleon who made the Eroica great, as Beethoven soon discovered when it became apparent that his hero was in reality no saviour of mankind, but an ambitious tyrant. Bush's communism is, in fact, no more nor less relevant to his standing as a composer than was Elgar's imperialism.
This necessarily compressed, and perhaps obvious, generalisation is requisite in order to clear away the prejudice, pro or con, that the political views of the composer might create. The suspicion of bias on my own part will, perhaps, be finally removed by the ex- pression of the opinion that Britten's work is rather a good one, and Bush's on the whole a bad one. Of course, Britten has chosen a theme which, once it is translated into music, loses all extraneous associations; it is one of the perennial and one of the most human themes—the commemoration of lost friends and the contemplation of death. It is also a tremendous theme, lending itself both to grandeur and to lyrical pathos. I do not think that Britten has quite achieved either of these qualities to the degree that would make his Requiem a memorable achievement. Hence that niggardly, qualifying " rather." There is great ingenuity in his musical design and enormous cleverness in his orchestral resource. The music is, therefore, continuously interesting and exciting. But there never appears the great and beautiful musical idea that would raise the whole thing out of the class of the clever into the sublime.
Bush's Symphony arouses no such expectation of apotheosis. It is long and dreary and muddled. Indeed were its proclaimed pro- gramme not of a different nature, I should suspect it of portraying the state of mind of the British Communist in the period between the signing of the Soviet-German pact and the events of last summer. In its course there are some beautiful moments when the composer gets away from the thick and turgid harmonies he seems to like so much. I confess that I preferred the movement, which I have subsequently been told purports to portray the effete and in- effectual bourgeoise—of which confession admirers of the symphony may make what capital they can. For admirers there were, con-
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