Morning journal and courier., 1886-05-28

gerel Why should not Messrs. Novel1o & Ewer, or some other leading firm, strike out for themselves @ new sphere of enterprise, and insist upon the literary as well as the musical excellence of their publications? Poets as a rule do not make large incomes out of their writings; and it is not to be supposed that their demands for such work would be very exorbitant. In any case the employment of cultivated writer whose
 name might be writ large on the cover, in-
 stead of only appearing in small characters on the title-page, would not involve great CT increase of expense than the increased circulation would compensate.
 But the depths of musico-literary incom-
 petence are not fathomed until we come to
 the sphere of translations. There few things so hard to do well as to translate, and there is no kind of literary work so execra-
 ply paid, and as natural consequence so execrably executed. How difficult the task of translation is can be appreciated by no one who has not attempted it.; but the time and trouble which on occasion practised
 hand will devote to piece of work of this kind argues the inexpediency of intrusting it to illiterate hacks, often foreigners. There is charming song of Rubinstein's, the Eng
 fish version of the words to which in our standard edition runs follows:
 When, oh, when thy tiny feet see,
 | can comprehend not, sweetest maiden, How so much beauty they can be bearing.
 When, oh, when thy little hand see, can comprehend not, sweetest maiden, How to give such wounds they can be sparing'' There is more, but we too will "be spar ing" and content ourselves with another specimen taken this time from Pauers' other wise excellent edition of Schubert's songs. If our readers will turn to page 102 they will observe that singer unskilled in the Ger man tongue, and desirous of making ac- quaintance with that fine song entitled "Rs- trospect," will be obliged to start off with the words, Through broken boots." Now aSYnfr thof not raof lirn- guists and that ordinary singers, amateur professional, will not sing in 8 foreign tongue if they can help it, it will be admit ted that the need of translations is very real In many cases there are admirable versions available; but the drudges employed are un- happily unaware of their existence, and in stead of adapting these to the vocal require
 ments of the situation, adapting them
 wholesale, they hammer out renderings of the sort quoted above. Take for example
 Berliozs ''Faust, , the French words to which
 were written by Berlioz himself, whose ac- quaintance with Goethe was derived from
 the translations of Gerard de Nerval. Ac- cording to our way of thinking the proper course to have pursued in framing an Eng fish version would have been, wherever it was possible, to adopt or adapt the words of the numerous admirable existing translations from Anster to Webb. As a mere matter of curiosity we have tried the experiment and found that in some of the most characteris- tic numbers it will answer perfectly. As it stands, however, the singing version, trebly diluted from Goethe, is a melancholy monu- ment of mistranslation, full of false accents and rhymes, yet, like other ibrstti, unmur- muringly adopted by musicians and unas- sailed by music critics, who seem either un- willing or unable to detect flaws in work of this description.
 But the improvement in all the depart
 ments we have toached on-critieisn, ibret- ti and translations-will have to grow out of the increased general cultivation of musi- clans. The English professional artist is, on
 his own showing, person of somewhat
 limited intellectually; and when several of them are gathered together they display one-sidedness and a disposition to talk
 "shop," which is perhaps unequalled by the
 members of any other profession, artistic or otherwise. Fortunately at the present date our leading composers are men of some in-
 tellectual calibre, and they have it in their power, by their own work as well as by the choice of competent collaborateurs, to break through the evil tradition which stamps the literary associations of so much English mu- sic