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intellectual refreshing and a powerful medium of emotional expression.

The existence of a better class of musical criticism, and musical literature generally, than we at present find in this country, is much to be desired, and would no doubt have its effect in promoting a more broad and comprehensive judgment in regard to musical art than at present exists in English society. As it is, our musical literature is very defective. Musicians are seldom good writers; and what is included under the head of musical criticism in this country must for the most part be classed under one of three heads: mere newspaper notices, in which the prejudices of the writer for or against certain artists give the only point to his writing (and this kind of thing unhappily subserves the needs of other journals than mere daily papers); extravagant effusions of the set of scribes whose business it is to recommend Wagner and the "new school;" and occasionally painstaking and honest judgments expressed in technical or conventional phraseology, and regarded (not unjustly) by the ordinary reader as simply dull. The system lately adopted of appending an analysis of the music to the programmes of classical concerts has been the occasion of the production of some very good critical writing, accompanied often by too much effusion (the besetting sin of musical writers), but it may be questioned whether these have influenced general culture much. Those who go to concerts with a head and heart capable of following and appreciating the composer's aim, do not need literary finger-posts, and those who are less enlightened are usually also less in earnest in their pursuit of the art, and do not care to take the trouble to read a book about the music at the time, or to file and study their analytical programmes afterwards.

A publication which would do something to spread, in a manner at once trustworthy and popular, the degree of knowledge of the details of the art which would enable hearers to do their own analytics, would be more to the purpose than the fugitive literature of programmes. The want of a book of this kind seems in process of being admirably supplied by the new Dictionary of Music and Musicians1 now appearing under the editorship of Mr. George Grove, who combines with a a genuine enthusiasm for his subject a faculty of accurate and laborious investigation and clear literary expression which peculiarly fit him to superintend such a publication, and render his own contributions to it of special interest and value. His article on Beethoven, though necessarily comparatively restricted, is one of the most valuable and, within its limits, complete and well-balanced specimens of musical biography that has been offered to English readers; biography combined with just so much of critical analysis as may assist the reader in forming a right estimate of the composer's place in the art, without transgressing the proper objects of a dictionary article. The amount and variety of

(1) The Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. I. A to Impromptu. Macmillan & Co. 21s.

Edited by George Grove, DC.L.

trustworthy information upon every subject connected with music which this work promises to render accessible to the public when complete, is very remarkable, and such as no work of the kind hitherto published in England can compare with. The appearance of a book of this kind on such a scale, and the fact that there is such a public for it as to render it worth undertaking, speak a good deal for the increased interest in music in the present day. There is only one feature in this excellent work that calls for a doubtful criticism: the presence in it of the element of musical partisanship, and of the special partialities and animosities of the group who represent the music militant of the modern school. This element is not so far very prominent; it is chiefly apparent in the contributions of one musician who, being a splendid and powerful pianoforte player, and a writer of extravagant critical effusions in very indifferent English, seems to suffer under an inverted reputation, his pianoforte playing being heard far too little and his writing seen a great deal too often. The short article on Hummel by this contributor, is simply a piece of temper directed against a composer whom he does not like, and even if a correct estimate of its subject (which may be questioned), that kind of tone is totally out of place in a dictionary. What kind of English the critics of this militant school are capable of one may realise in other articles by the same hand; how Chopin "appears to possess the secret to transmute and transfigure whatever he touches into some weird crystal, convincing in its conformation, transparent in its eccentricity" (which is certainly more than can be said of Mr. Dannreuther's own style). Berlioz, again, is "a colossus with few friends," "a marked individuality, original, puissant, bizarre, indolently one-sided," &c. This sort of thing really ought not to be allowed in a dictionary; and one is thankful to find the editor going at all events so far as to refrain from quoting some passages from this critic's essay on Beethoven in a leading magazine, because it is "not suited to the bald rigidity of a dictionary article," a somewhat mild way of characterizing what was in the main a piece of turgid extravagance. 1 The point is prominently mentioned here because the articles on Liszt and Wagner have not yet appeared, and if (as there is too much reason to fear) they have been confided to critics of this school, they may prove a permanent blot on the dictionary by committing it to ill-regulated enthusiasms which can only be of temporary acceptance. Of course to such an objection the stereotyped retort will be ready, that Beethoven was considered rude and inartistic in

(1) It was, if we remember right, in this article (Macmillan's Magazine, July, 1876) that a set of quotations from Beethoven's Sonatas were given in order to prove that Beethoven had anticipated and employed a certain modern trick of composition, called "metamorphosis of themes," whereby a single melodic idea is made to do duty for a whole symphony or concerto, squeezed into different shapes or cut up into sections. It would be worth while for any one interested in vagaries of musical criticism to refer to these quotations, as an example of the kind of assertion that the apostles of the Liszt-Wagner school are capable of, in their efforts to force Beethoven into the straitjacket of their own theories, and persuade the world that they are his legitimate suc

cessors.

his own day, and his now accepted works were met with hostile criticism; all of which merely means that because a large number of persons cannot separate their critical view from the prejudices of their day, therefore no one can: which is a non sequitur. It is quite possible for people who have enough of "dry light," and are not so muddle-headed as to confound the conditions of art with those of science, and imagine that progress is a necessary condition of the former as of the latter, not only to distinguish the radical variance between Wagner's art and Beethoven's, but to recognise clearly enough the point at which Beethoven as an artist passed his zenith and lost some of his balance and completeness of style; more than anywhere, perhaps, in that choral finale of the Ninth Symphony which has been foolishly set forth as the culmination of his genius, and the point to which it had always been tending, whereas in fact it is a grand but unequal and only partially satisfactory experiment, to which the next Symphony, if he had lived to write it, would probably have borne no relation whatever. A great deal of mischief has been done by the importation of special pleading of this kind into recent musical criticism, the real object of which, as of all criticism, ought to be to obtain a clear and balanced view of the whole subject, and of which the rule (especially in a dictionary) should be emphatically, Surtout, point de zèle.

A difficulty, perhaps, in the way of influencing opinion by musical criticism lies in the fact that music is such a difficult thing to write about intelligibly to those who do not already know a good deal. This is the real answer to the question addressed to the present writer the other day, "Why are musical criticisms always so uninteresting?" It is certain that they are seldom written in good literary style, and yet so absorbing and entrancing an art is music, that to the lovers of it almost any piece of criticism is more or less interesting, which gives them any new fact or suggests any new idea, in however jejune a form. On the other hand, those who have no practical acquaintance with the art are repelled and annoyed by what seems to them an unmeaning and cabalistic phraseology, a phraseology which has grown up insensibly around the art, and cannot now be dispensed with or altered, any more than the accepted form of notation, also a growth of time and circumstance. If we say of a particular composition that "in the Allegretto a beautiful and mysterious effect is produced by the entry in the major key of the second subject of the movement a broad and simple melody played by the clarionets and bassoons in octaves, and supported by an undulating arpeggio accompaniment in triplets by the violins, while at the same time the characteristic rhythm of the first subject is restlessly kept up by the heavy pulsation of the pizzicato of the violoncelli and basses," -we should be saying what to the unmusical reader would probably be mere jargon. But the sentence, as a general description of the character and effect of the passage, would be quite intelligible to any one who knew musical phraseology, and any one well acquainted with Beethoven's symphonies will know at once what

passage is described. 1 It is a pity that there is so much that must be called jargon connected with the art, but it must be accepted as an existing fact, and if musical and unmusical people wish to understand each other, the latter must study the language of the former. One particular usefulness of the Dictionary we have been mentioning may be in furnishing every one with a compendious and full illustration of the meaning of musical terms, as well as with concentrated and intelligible essays upon important points in the forms and the science of musical composition. It may safely be said that more will be done to promote an intelligent comprehension of music by this kind of practical information, than by big reflections upon the moral lessons of Beethoven's works, and how he delivers messages of ethical teaching and of religious love and resignation, &c., &c. All this, as far as there is any ground for such reflections, we can best feel in silence for ourselves, while from their categorical declaration in print we are disposed to shrink, responding in the spirit of Jacques's criticism of the Duke's sentimentalities-"We think of as many matters as he; but we give God thanks, and make no boast of them."

H. HEATHCOTE STATHAM, in Fortnightly Review.

THE CRITIC ON THE HEARTH.

It has often struck me that the relation of two important members of the social body to one another has never been sufficiently considered, or treated of, so far as I know, either by the philosopher or the poet. I allude to that which exists between the omnibus driver and his conductor. Cultivating literature as I do upon a little oatmeal, and driving, when in a position to be driven at all, in that humble vehicle, the 'bus, I have had, perhaps, exceptional opportunities for observing their mutual position and behaviour; and it is very peculiar. When the 'bus is empty, they are sympathetic and friendly to one another, almost to tenderness; but when there is much traffic, a tone of severity is observable upon the side of the conductor. 'What are yer a-driving on for? Will nothing suit but to break a party's neck?' Wake up, will yer, or do yer want the Bayswater to pass us?' are inquiries he will make in the most peremptory manner. Or he will concentrate contempt in the laconic but withering observation: 'Now then, stoopid!' When we consider that the driver is after all the driver-that the

(1) One of the most interesting and piquant pieces of contemporary musical criticism is embodied in Mr. Browning's admirable bit of grotesque," Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," though many people have probably read it without the least idea that they were going through a dissertation as to the real value and meaning of the fugue form as elaborated by Bach and his school. The reader who knows the meaning will like it none the less; indeed. it may be doubted whether any non-musical reader would make out what the poet was driving at.

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'bus is under his guidance and management, and may he said pro tem. to be his own-indeed, in case of collision or other serious extremity, he calls it so: What the infernal regions are yer banging into my 'bus for?' &c., &c.,-I say, this being his exalted position, the injurious language of the man on the step is, to say the least of it, disrespectful.

On the other hand, it is the conductor who fills the 'bus, and even entices into it, by lures and wiles, persons who are not voluntarily going his way at all. It is he who advertises its presence to the passersby, and spares neither lung nor limb in attracting passengers. If the driver is lord and king, yet the conductor has a good deal to do with the administration: just as the Mikado of Japan, who sits above the thunder and is almost divine, is understood to be assisted and even 'conducted' by the Tycoon. The connection between those potentates is perhaps the most exact reproduction of that between the 'bus driver and his cad; but even in England there is a pretty close parallel to it in the mutual relation of the author and the professional critic.

While the former is in his spring-time, the analogy is indeed almost complete. For example, however much he may have plagiarised, the book does belong to the author; he calls it, with pardonable pride (and especially if any one runs it down), 'my book.' He has written it, and probably paid pretty handsomely for getting it published. Even the right of translation, if you will look at the bottom of the title-page, is somewhat superfluously reserved to him. Yet nothing can exceed the patronage which he suffers at the hands of the critic, and is compelled to submit to in sullen silence. When the book-trade is slack-that is, in the summer season--the pair get on together pretty amicably. This book,' says the critic, may be taken down to the seaside, and lounged over not unprofitably; or, 'Readers may do worse than peruse this unpretending little volume of fugitive verse;' or even, 'We hail this new aspirant for the laurels of Apollo.' But in the thick of the publishing season, and when books pour into the reviewer by the cartful, nothing can exceed the violence, and indeed sometimes the virulence, of his language. That 'Now then, stoopid!' of the 'bus conductor pales beside the lightnings of his scorn.

'Among the lovers of sensation, it is possible that some persons may be found with tastes so utterly vitiated as to derive pleasure from this monstrous production.' I cull these flowers of speech from a wreath placed by a critic of the Slasher on my own early brow. Ye gods, how I hated him! How I pursued him with more than Corsican vengeance; traduced him in public and private; and only when I had thrust my knife (metaphorically) into his detested carcase, discovered I had been attacking the wrong man. It is a lesson I have never forgotten; and I pray you, my younger brothers of the pen, to lay it to heart. Believe rather that your unfriendly critic, like the bee who is fabled to sting and die, has perished after his attempt on your reputation; and let the tomb be his asylum. For even supposing you get the right sow by the ear--or rather, the wild boar with the 'raging tooth-what can it profit

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