The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1935-02-19
WORLD of
MUSIC
ShOstGkOUich and the Critics
By CARL SANDS
by del
CONTINUED from yesterdayJ

HAVE pointed out a lew respects
4 in which two Of the most promi-
nent New York music reviewers
Gilman and Henderson, have. in
their condemnation of Shostako-
yich's opera, Lady Macbeth of
Mzensk, recently performed at the
Metropolitan Opera House. signally
failed to measure up to the stature
OF the man whose work they de-
nounce.
Coming now to DIN Downes of
the Times-his reckless word sling
ing means only one thing, indeed, it
fairly shouts it, namely: Nothing
good can come out of Soviet Russia
except what goes out on its ear"
The bias is best shown by a few
quotations.
Says Mr.. DoWnes: at was time
for Mr.. Shostakoyich to strut his
hour. His opera cannot last. for it
has no real music to make it last"
1t is "himsy, lurid and callow
score" Compare Stravinsky and
ShostakoYich-"the one is the ex-
IRENE of decadent and, in his case,
superimposed culture; the other is
Of the dire, the squalor, the ideol-
ogy,' the satire, the blazing resent
ments of the last revolution"
1T is a revolution that would fling
not only earth, but manure in the
face of the past" This is lie. Mr..
Downes knows as we'll as anyone
that there are things in the past
our" past-that merit even rougher
treatment than that. He also knows
perfectly well that there are things
in our past that everyone agrees are
to be priced, honored and preserved,
and that in no place in the world
are they in safer and more reverent
hands than in the land of this same
revolution. To pass out this lie, this
outworn propaganda of czarism,
under the glise of music criticism is
the basest sycophancy,-a blatant
prostitution of intelligence, itself
foulness that inyalidates any judg-
ments printed along with it.
COMPARED to Stravinsky whom
y Mr.. Downes would undoubtedly
have greeted with similar verbiage
a short twenty years ago., Shosta-
kovich is "a schoolboy. And a dirty
and ill-clad CD schoolboy to boot.
A schoolboy in whose home there
was no ease or good manners-only
savage revolt and contempt for his
elders. The sehoelbey filings taunts,
and a group Of onlookers laugh, at
his superior Czarist Russia any,
body's superior! Which is better: to
have groaned under it or to find
oneself in the amazingly fortunate
position of being able to laugh at it?
Perhaps however, 1t is Mr. DIN
DoWnes of the New York Times who
is the schoolboy and is outraging
thus, or rather trying to outrage, his
superior-one Dmitri Shostakoyich
who has written an opera as diff
ferent from the sterile fertilizer of
the New York Times review as is
the socialist construction of Soviet
Russia from the incredibly stupid
and vile decadence of the profit
system in whose defense the review
is written.
There is a lot more about cock
sureness," artistic INSCRIPTIONS
ness, Incredible efTrontery, taste
less smut and swagger" How often
do we not see a man pillary in
others the very faults of which he
himself is possesser! The history of
music is one long record Of such
things. Mr.. DoWnes knows it. And
he goes ahead committing the same
old ineptitudes, revealing the depths
of his own baseness with the same
old dogged persistence. Why? They
still serve journalistic interruptions
ness!
listen to this. Whereas limo
Il theus, the Milesian, an immi-
grant in our state, despising the
music in use since the days of old,
having abandoned the seven
stringed Tyre and introduced null
tiplicity of tones, has ruined the
ear of our youth, and, whereas, by
the great number of his tones and
the WretchedneSs of his harmonieS
he has converted our simple and
Well-ordered music into an ignoble
D vi rrrJ1a fur
thermere he has treated the
subject (of sacred myth with i'm
propriety and has fostered irrever-
ent beliefs in our youth, therefore
the assembly of the people has
charged the Kings to censure
Timotheus and to Danish him, and
to cut out from among the eleven
strings of his Tyre those which are
superfiuous, so that the seven old
strings may remain" Thus, in the
Sparta of $50 B. C.-almest 2,400
years ago-the revolutionary must
clan was "crlticized"i
Sarto found, ABOUT 1885, that
Mezart's C-major quartet was "un-
bearable." BsetheYen's and Wag-
ner's finest works were heralded
with the same criticism" with
which these highly-paid and stupid
men = Gilman, Henderson an
Downes = have greeted Shostako-
vich's work. Did these ancient crit
les" have an economic, political and
social motivation? 1t is not I'M
likely. Did they admit it? No more
than the New Workers do.
But a vigorous protest, addressed
to the editors of the papers con-
cerned may do something! And re-
member-it is not Just the music
that made these reviewers write as
| they did!