Music
The Three Choirs at Gloucester.
SECS from the top of Birdlip Hill the landscape presents to the eye two conspicuous objects, a large red gasometer and, poor second, the tower of Gloucester Cathedral. The visitor to Gloucester finds that this first view gives with fair accuracy the ratio of beauty to ugliness in the city. Gloucester is not mean or squalid ; it is just dull and uninteresting, an ancient city spoilt by industrialism. It is in these surroundings that the Three Choirs Festival has been held during the past week, and, except for those who can attend under the ideal conditions of a country house-party, they are not favourable to the relaxation and social enjoyment that are so necessary in the intervals of the long programmes.
But the Festival has been well attended, and in spite of the absence of any new choral works, the programmes have been exceptionally interesting. The death of Elgar, who was so intimately connected with these Festivals during the whole of his life, naturally demanded special commemora- tion. The Kingdom was given the first place in the pro- granune, supplanting Elijah and allowing for the inAusion of two other works, Kodily's Psalmus Hungctricus and Vaughan Williams's Pastoral Symphony after the luncheon- interval. Elgar's death has involved another innovation of a practical kind. For many years past he had conducted his own works at these Festivals, thereby not only giving them a special lustre but relieving the conductor-in-chief, the organist of the Cathedral, of an important part of his heavy responsibility. This year, for the first time, the work is being shared by Mr. Stunsion (Gloucester), Sir Ivor Atkins (Worcester) and Dr. Percy Hull (Hereford), in the absence of any obvious successor to Elgar as composer-conductor. Herein is the chief problem of the future for these Festivals, and it can only be solved by bold innovation, since the genius of our time does not lie in the direction of the composition of large-scale oratorios, of which The Kingdom, now twenty-six years old, is the latest example.
Hearing this work again after a long interval, I was at once impressed by the great beauty of many of its pages and its weakness as a whole. The leading themes seem to be applied like superfluous decorations upon a building ; they do not grow inevitably out of the texture of the music. The treatment of the words, "In the name of Jesus Christ," is a conspicuous example of this process. Perhaps the composer himself was aware that he had worked out this particular vein and was falling back upon formulas to fill in the spaces on his vast canvas—which is probably the true explanation of his failure to complete his projected trilogy. Perhaps, too, he was instinctively aware, even in those Edwardian days, that the grand manner was passing and that a more compact style was in formation. Even he himself shed magnificence and grandeur in his later days when he wrote the Violoncello Concerto. Of this compact style the Psalmus Hungaricus is a line example and Dr. Dyson's St. Paul's Voyage to Melita a mediocre one. Kodily's music is the very reverse of Elgaes. It is terse and passionate as Elgar's was devout and discursive. Dr. Dyson's cantata, which was given on Tuesday evening, seemed to me an academic exercise. It is difficult to see why the account of St. Paul's shipwreck, one of the best pieces of narrative in the Bible, should have been chosen for musical setting. Music can add nothing to it and indeed detracts from it, making its prose seem "prosaic." Dr. Dyson has Provided a picturesque storm and has plastered his score with modernisms. But they remain modernisms, whereas Kodily's grinding harmonies 'seem the natural expression of his mind,
intelligible and undated.
The performances on this first day were well up to standard
so far as chorus and orchestra were concerned. Mr. Sumsion conducted The Kingdom with understanding, though he allowed some untidy leads (there was another bad one at the Opening of Kodily's work), and the choral singing was full- toned and well-balanced. Perhaps it was partly the fault of the acoustics, which blurred the already vague outlines of the Pastoral Symphony (conducted by Mr. Gordon Jacob in the absence of the composer), that Kodaly's music sounded less tierce than it should do. None of the soloists _I heard was really up to festival standard and some of them were a long way
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