The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-11-08
In the WORLD
of MUSIC
Business Business! Business!
Nv Carl SANDS

music is contributed not by a
new child prodigy, not by a prima
donna conductor at higher salary
land better press agent) than any
yet, and not by the latest victor in
the scramble for the few crumbs
OF patronage still remaining for
musical lap-dogs, but by the staid
critic of the New York Times, Mr..
Olin Downes.. Listen to this:
Reasons, if not excuses, for con-
ditions which have stultified art in
late decades are plain all around
us. Music is puryeyed today, not
as an art, but as business. The
artists are more or less helpless
in the matter. They must engage
agents an artists career is
largely matter of advertising, per-
centages, profits. The musical cor
porations fight one another for
right of way through various ter
ritories, vigorously if not as bru-
tally as rival oil companies fought
their way years ago :" (What?
Don't they do it any longer?) +. 4.
"to triumph over or exterminate
their rivals. These things are not
the doings Of individuals" (Some-
body does them and not some
body's pet cat. Come clean, DIN,
everybody knows who owns the
managers, the publishers, the SYM
phony orchestras and opera houses,
the radio and photograph COM
panies, the manufacturers of radios
and monographs and the cinema
halls and the vaudeville houses
and whose advertising keeps some
papers going oh now we
have the villain.) These things, he
says, ARE the results of modern
life"
If these are the results of mod
ern life, what, I ask you, Mr..
Downes, is modern life? "Dog-eat-
dog policy. the buying up by
rival organizations Of artists for
whom there is no market, in order
that the other orgs nization shall
not have them to sell high
crimes against music the pub
lie writhes business, business,
business vicious circle the
public is failing to pay" And then:
What shall be done? 1t is a ques-
ton that this department does not
set itself up to solve"
Mr.. Downes, I believe you
thought 1t took a good deal of
courage for you to write your ar
ticle. But whatever courage it
took, oozed out of you in that last
pathetic confession of weakness and
pusillanimous buck-passing. Can it
be that you don't know that your
prime business as a critic is Just
this-to at least attempt a solu-
ton? Or can it be you are so
saturated with the decay you COM
plain Of that you really don't be-
lieve there can be solution, or so
ignorant as not to know that there
actually Is one and that thousands
and millions Of people know it? Or
are you afraid for your Job?
from such thoughts as these we
1 hurried down to Carnegie Hall
for the concert of the Philhar-
monte Orchestra conducted by
Hans Lange. The superb orchestra
came on the stage, the competent
but not brilliant conductor walked
on to subdued lights, and the water
music of Haendel began. Music
written for fat German King of
England, to be played on barge
on the Thames and procure for the
composer, then in disfavor, a royal
smile, with, of course, q grant from
the royal purse. Business, business,
businessD.
Then we had Delius' Briggs
Fair" It's the sort Of music that
is supposed to make you wish you
had a country place at Newport
with a pleasure-dome on 1t where
beautiful maidens would sing sad
songs while they famed you with
purple fans. -.
Finally, an Elgar symphony.
Warmed over Wagner; frumptious
pedantry; should have been buried
as soon as the still-birth occurred
long ago. Before 1t was half over
the conviction that the comrades
were lucky not to be there, COM
PEELED flight-flight to fresh air,
to sanity, to the sound Of the
"Comintern" on battered piano.
uAENDEL wrote fine music. The
IL water music is fine, musicianly
writing. But 1t is not good for to-
day. It is too compliant, too SNUG.
Delius was a sensitive, restless,
capable composer of little original
ity who might have written good
music if he had stumbled upon
some valid reason for writing any
at all.
But Elgar! Not even the best
orchestra in the world can make it
sound like anything but trash. 1t
reeks with the stuffines of leisure
class imbecility.