New-York tribune., 1921-04-03
Recent Biographies of
Two British Composers
Cyril Scott and Josef Holbrooke Considered in Crit
ical Studies by A. Eageield Hull
and George Lowe

poetry. This led MIN to poetic efforts
of his own.
AT twenty-five Scott first came into
contact with occultism and Easterr
mysticism matter which changed the
whole tenor Of his inner life" To-day
his most absorbing interest in life is
transcendental philosophy and one Of
his greatest pleasure the discussion Of
occult lore with kindred spirits. an
entertainment which he calls Soulful
intercourse
Musically, SCOTS affections are
hmited. He likes Bach and In q
lesser degree Scarlatti. Mozart and
beethoven do not appeal to him "excep+
bar or two here and there" These
TWO composers give him IAN unplea SAINT
sense Of childshness." To him Rec
thoven seems to have lived in an un-
fortunate age--to have been a great
man born at time when musical ex-
presslon was somewhat childish. Apart
from his last string quartets. he can
M 1eei any enthusiasm for his com
POSITIONS They seem bald and thin.
striving to be grand and majestic.
sounding in our present time too OBJ
Vlous and often banaI" To Beethoven
"hom ne aserts was no harmonist
Scott prefers Bizet. Although he
thinks Tschaikowsky a far more pro-
gresslve influence than Brahms. h.
compares the Russian composers music
with that of Beethoven as not hayinr
worn well. Schubert and schumann
do not interest him. Max Roger is "a
mere elongation Of Brahms" Straviu~
sky fills him with admiration. Scriabin
had talent, but died while still man
nerist- THE result was monotonvr
Like Scriabin, Scott looks to music to
carry further the spiritual evolution
OF the race and believes that it has
occult properties Of which only few
enlightened people are aware.
The Passacaglias and the Concerto
Much of the book is devoted to
analysis of the composers works, with
many musical illustrations in the text.
HIS two Passacaglias DR.. Hull re-
CARDS as Scott's highest orchestral
achievement. When Scott conducted
these works here and played his piano.
forte concerto, which early in his book
Or. Hull characterizes as Superb" at
concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra
last November, the music left these i'm
pressions upon Henry E. Krehbiel:
"Mr Scott labored with fragments Of
two Irish melodies, one of a lugubrious.
the other Of a rollicking, character. In
the words Of the song from which the
first theme was borrowed there is a
lamentatlon, We believe, upon the di-
minutive size of the potatoes which
grew in Ireland in the year Of an his
toricai famine. No potato could have
been 80 small as the ideas in the con-
certo considered as melody, and no
folksong theme was ever so beplastered
with Grass dissonances as the one
which served as the unhappy founda-
tions Of Mr.. SCOTS variations. We
know Of no man who has ever more eff
eectually concealed a tune than Mr..
Scott in some of his arrangements Of
iolksong melodies for pianoforte. He
did not hide the contour of his themes
in his Passacaglias, but he outraged
their spirit, as he outraged every CON
caption Of euphony in all three compo-
sitions"
Scott's attitude toward musical criti-
cism is reported by DR.. Hull in the fol-
lowing statement made by the COM
poser: GAS to winning over the critics,
the mora slated one is the better: to
be immediately understood means one
is not worth understanding"
Yet in his own book, The Philosophy
Of Modernism, the composer shows no
I such Indifference. In a chapter, "Crti-
cism and the Critical Faculty." he es-
capes from the perfumed haze that en-
velops most Of the volume to vent con-
siderable spleen, and refers to musical
criticism as q custom which has no real
justification for existence. Possibly this
may be an evidence that, in spite of \
spirituality much vaunted by his biog-
rapher, Cyril Scott is not without a
human side.
A Frank Egotist
In marked contrast to this precious
soul is the frank egotist Josef Hol-
brooke, whose motto has always been
Hard work" When a student at the