New-York tribune., 1919-07-27
IN THE WORLD OF MUSIC AND ART
War Time Music in England

In the June number of "The Ches-
terian" Ernest Newman, the dstin-
guished English music critics, dis
cusses "Music in England During the
War"
"In the first months of the war" he
says, eve were all busy prophesying
what would happen to music when the
conflict was over. Most people antici-
pated a great and durable spiritual
awakening that would lead to our she'd
ding all that was base and superficial
IN US, and the coming of a passion on
the part of both composers and audi
ences for nothing but the ethically
highest and purest in music. The devil
was sick, in fact, and so a monk would
be. The devil having become we'll
again, the devil monk is he. Perhaps
the war went on few years too long:
there was tOO IluCu JlIue lOT tu8 re-
pentance to wear off and for us to be-
come our normal sinful happy selves
again. We can see now that human
nature has been virtually unchanged
that we have had so many new expert
ences that we have almost unconscious
ly attained to a new standard by which
to Judge the old ones. We have learned
that you cannot drive out nature with
fork. If German music falls pleas
antly on the ear, man can no more
resist it than he can German wine
when it falls pleasantly on the tongue,
or the German landscape when it
charms the eye.
"At first some people were inclined
20 overlook this simple psychological
TACT. They would fain have kept out
all German music, from Luther to Re
ger. The motives of some of them
were perhaps not quite above suspi-
cion they had goods of their own to
SELL and they would have been less
Aan human had they been blind to the
. commercial possibilities of patriotism
IN others. But the public as a whole
vas slow to respond. 1t could not help
liking what it liked; and so it insisted
on having it's Beethoven and Brahms
and Wagner as usual, drawing a line,
however. between the dead German
composers and the living. Necessarily
i
csual musical fare; and that was a
very good thing for our public, for it
had to turn to other quarters for it's
musical satisfactions. A quickened in
terest Gas shown in French and Rus
sian music; this interest even ex-
tended, in some quarters, to British
music. The 1914 season of Russian
opera and ballet had made Englishmen
especially curious about Russian ART.
Sir Thomas Beechem produced "Boris
\Godounov" in both London and the
trorinces-at first in French, then IN
FNelish-and so did more to make cur
pubic keen about Russian music in
general than twenty years of mere lit
tIGIS propaganda Nou4U nave UOlc.
Societies sprang up everywhere for
the performances of the newer Rus
ian and French music: the newer
Italian music did not receive quite as
much attention. The interest in all
these foreign products would have been
st.ll greater had it been possible to get
some of the music over here more
easily. more plentifully and more
cheapiy, or for the English publishers
10 reprint some of the older music for
which we had been too long dependent
upon Germany.
The difficulties of procuring the
newest Russian work became in time
insurmountable; so that our public a!
as whole unfortunately remain pract
eally ignorant Of Russian music as i
really is now. Sir Thomas Beechan