The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-10-26

Musicians as well as all lovers of the dance, oldest of the arts, owe a greater debt to Anna Pavlowa than they may realize. The impetus she has given to creative artistic impulse in many fields in America cannot now be fully estlmat- ed, but it is evident on every hand and, aside from the mere fact that her per formances have familiarized us with some interesting scores, is of very great importance to our composers.
 Our composers are unhappily divided in large measure into two principal classes-the well-educated respectables and dilettantes, who pattern their thinking and their creative procedure after more or less fashionable and dis tinguished European modes, and the mass of musical hacks and routiniers, some of whom are gifted and turn out good things in spite of materialistic en- virOnment, most of whom are interested only in the practical considerations and the money-making possibilities of their profession. And it is from these that we expect interesting music! Before interesting American music appears there must be an internal revolution in the breast of the composer, vast liber- ation from provincialism and self-con- sciousness, and a vivid perception of beauty that pervades life and informs joyous, living art.
 And of more than one art. The art of which Pavlowa in her own genre is an incompatible exponent is that of scul- sculpture and painting, of drama and music and dance in one. It is poetry, too, unless there is academic insistence on the part of the critic that poetry is an art of words. But most of all does this art glimpse the secrets of music, envisaged in forms of line, movement, color and rhythm. It suggests, in her hands, what music alone of the arts possesses freedom from things of the earth and the material boun- diaries of existence. Its revelations, made by physical means, are of the in- corporal and the real that lies beyond good and evil. At the same time its mo- tives come from life and nature, from other arts and the most varied fields of human experience. Greatest of alp'- we quote from the lively and informative volume, "The Dance" by the Kinneys- greatest of all, perhaps, in its contri- button to her particular art is special of vision into the heart of things; sensitiveness to what may be called the bluLC OI Lulnu UOJI Ol animate beings and inanimate things, and receptivity to those impressions which, interpreted into expression, en- able Pavlowa to endow flowers and birds and insects with lively and interesting sentiments"
 There are certain musicians to whom fiddle is Q fiddle, and a chord Q chord, and nothing more, who will reply, What of it? What of it? Merely that these small thingse are more important to a musicians development than all the scale practice and harmony gram mars that ever existed. The fact has not been advertised, by our bookworms, but nevertheless it is true. The routine of music, indispensable as it is for practical artistic purposes, is not the music. Music remains the magical re- flex of nature and the expression of hu- man feeling. Music" said BusOni, was born free; and to win freedom is it's destiny But freedom is something that mankind have never wholly com prehended, never realized to the full. They can neither recognize nor acknowl- edge it. They disavow the mission of this child they hang weights, upon it. This buOyant creature must walk de- gently, like anybody else. It may scarcely be allowed to leap-when it were its joy to follow the line of the rainbow, and to break sunbeams with ] the clouds" We are reminded of these