New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-06-24
Confusing
The Classics
CRITIC of music has stepped for
ward with the theory that classics
- are best appreciated when the hear


4 are best appreciated when the hear
e. doesn't know they are classics, or any
thing about theni-also that composers OF
a single period come to sound very much
alike few generations later on.
''The classics" declares Ernest New
man in one Of the newer British weeklies,
"enioy an unusual immunity from criti-
c;sm' And this, he believes, is the reason:
There are dul! things in Bach, there are
vapd things in Mozart; but the rash critic
Nko should dare to speak of the dulneSs Of
Bach or the vapidity of Mozart would not be
arle to call his soul his own for the next
fortnight.
1t is only when we hear a classic without
moving that IL is classic that we can see
{ as it really is. | was once in my profess
slonal capacity at a concert at which lynn
phatic gentleman played some Emphatic
solos on that most Emphatic of instru-
men,s, the flute Music written specially for
the flute is not as rule, remarkable for Its
intellectual quality, and the flute music
played that evening was quite up TO the nor
nal standard of emptiness. AT the finish the
fautist played melody that struck me as
being OF even less intellectual substance
han its predecessors, and in my notice of
the concert next morning / said so. Inc
next day a friend stopped me IN the street
and asked me. in awe-stricken tones If was
WARE of the blasphemy | had committed
This last melody il seems, was an arrange
ment for the flute of one of Mozarts My
friend evidently thought that this guaran-
teed it; he was quite hurt when | pointed
out that it was precisely because | did not
know the melody to be by Mozart that lis
tened to it and judged it with ears unpreJu-
diced Had known its authorship might
have been subconsciousy prepossessed in its
favor.
Bach May Steal the Horse
often wonder what we should do and say
here and there during performances of the
Matthew Passion and the Minor Mass, the
moral symphony and Tristan if we did
not know we were listening to Bach and
Beethoven and Wagner. We pour the walls
# our scorn on smaller men for boring us
much less; so true is it that Bach may steal
the horse while Sant-Saens may not look
over the hedge. Were the authorship of an
Unsigned work Of Brahms in dispute, | won
lor how many Of our Brahms experts could
and would criticise his workmanship with
the same skill and freedom as that with
which the workmanship of Romney was criti-
c;sed in n recent trial.
That is one point; but still more inter-
estinc one for musicians is what would hap
pen row and then if scores, like pictures,
we're sometimes left unsigned or falsely
signed. and their composers had to be dis
covered by the deductions of experts from
internal evidence. We may think that the
.tyles Of the leading composers Of to-day
IRE so distinct from each other that no con-
fusion between them is possible. Perhaps
not at present; but what may happen in an
other two hundred years or so, when time
md new and still newer developments OF
Ire vocabulary of music have given TO the
lost diverse styles of to-day something OF
hat air Of resemblance that the once diverse
composers of the sixteenth or seventeenth
century now have for US?
think il unouestionable that the time
viii come when. to the ordinary music lover,
relius and Debussy will sound as much alike
as Mozar. and Haydn or Wagner, and Elgar
aud Cesar Franck as much alike as Couperin.
Daouin and Rameau, or as wilbye, Weelkes
and Ravenscroft. Only the expert Will then
c able 10 distinguish between the mocern
STYLES have cited, as only the expert can
now distinguish between the older styles that
we're contemporary with each other. But
will even the experts be able 70 speak with
confidence
During the past season the old debate
over the contention that Gounod may not
have been the composer Of Faust was
i revived, preceded, possibly influenced, by
the presentation of an inferior opera by
the illustrious Bzet, creator of Carmen
The English critic has some things to say
about the general fallibility Of the public
even the discerning few-in matters OF
estimating authorship. DR.. Johannes
Schreyer, of Dresden, startled the world
year or two before the war by declaring
that nearly third of the works attributed
to Bach in the great Bachgeselschaft edi-
ton are not by Bach at all. And
Did Grieg Write Madame Butterfly?
Without going quite that FAR with hin, II
IS toierably certain that we convention1lly
admire Bach for more than one work OF
which be is innocent
Were the unsigned score OF "Rienz" 70
- discovered by later generation than
ours, by what process of analysis would any
expert dare TO attribute it to Wagner? And
II, for century or two. Wagner's career had
beer sunnosed "a have Chased with
"Lohengrin.' would there be a musician in
europe courageous enough 10 attribute TO
The same composer the newly discovered
Anonymous score of Tristan?
IL the score Of Madame Butterfly" had
come 70 lgh, for the first time in the TWEEN
ty-second century, It might have been at'rib-
uted 70 Greg on the strength OF the quite
GriegiSh quality Of tho little slumber.song