MUSIC
MR. HOLST'S NEW SYMPHONY
AT QUEEN'S HALL, OCTOBER 29th.
Fon most of us The Planets and The Hymn of Jesus were an enlivening experience in music. Their manner was new ; and still more, their technique was new. A careful scrutineer might separate each stylistic strand and show how one had been drawn from here and another from there in the fabric of contemporary music. But no ! even when our enthusiasm had been tempered by a reflective familiarity with these works, we could not admit that we had been gulled by a miserable 'Pastiche. The composer moved in his medium with such freedom, and manipulated it with so much precision, that the synthesis was assuredly perfect, and so completely was the style identified with the man that it could be described with accuracy in one word, " Holstian."
Mr. Hoist's technique is maturing. In later works we see that it has become niore flexible, and, like fine steel, it can take a sharper and ever sharper edge. It is- even' richer in resource, and it has shed most of those distracting fripperies, the negligible property of Strauss and Dukas, and the stock-in-trade of Mr. Hoist's detractors. We have seen the danger of this increasing facility in the Ode to Death where there is more than one stretch of barren yet indisputably clever music-making, and in The Evening Watch where a rich choral idiom struggles to flower on most arid ground. Beside these earlier works the Choral Symphony is a technical tour de force. One's first dazzled impression is that it is a consummation of the Hoistian method—a technical, not a creative consummation. Surely it is enough that the composer has made a libretto from the pages of Keats, three-fourths of it pure poetry, and set it, for the most part, without giving offence, or raising a doubt in the listener's mind. We shall not look askance at such a feat, even when it seems plain that cerebration has tamed and bridled inspiration, and ridden at each obstacle with an eye to the safest jump.
The text may not gain anything from its musical setting, that could hardly be expected, but it loses little or nothing. Mr. Hoist has already solved the problem of setting words intelligibly, notably in The Perfect Fool, by making the vocal line follow the actual inflections of the speaking voice. It is his scrupulous regard for just accentuation, carried sometimes to the point of self-effacement, which makes the slow movement of the symphony a thing of clear, placid beauty. By no stretch of the fancy can one imagine a choral setting of the " Ode on a Grecian Urn " ; it is music in, itself, too rare for the sensual ear. And yet the Ode is preserved unspoilt, elevated on slender columns of sound, as though it and they were one- , for all time, a veritable Parthenon of tone.
Each movement is noteworthy in some way ; the Ode, above all, for its chaste orchestration and the chilly vacillations of its harmonies ; the " Invocation to Pan " for its sombre, rhythmical monotone ; the Bacchanal for its wild, quickening dance measure, and the crashing shouts that come from the choir ; the Finale for a magnificent main tune, which, alas ! peters out into a laboured and commonplace climax. The Scherzo alone is dis.sappointing. It must be sung at a speed that turns the words into a meaningless gabble, and, surely, the poem " Ever let the Fancy roam," was unfortunately chosen for the purpose. Its abrupt metre is exaggerated and broken into small flying fragments by the music. Perhaps for this reason we shall value the agile and frolicsome thing all the more in its alternative version for orchestra alone.
C. H.
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