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of the opening phrase of the C minor symphony, 'Thus Fate knocks at the door,' are indulging a pleasing fancy that has nothing to do with music. If they suppose that a composer writes music in order to tell us that Fate knocks at doors, they are far from the understanding of any art. Equally unhelpful are the sentimentalists who tell us that the famous phrase was suggested to Beethoven by the song of the yellow-hammer. If that is so, the Viennese yellow-hammers must have a local idiom, for the English yellow-hammers sing nothing whatever resembling the C minor symphony, and could not help us if they did. The plain man should no more try to admire a symphony because it suggests Fate and yellowhammers, than he should admire an actress because she is good to her aunt. Music has suffered greatly from the persistent attempts of well-meaning people to force it into association with values drawn from other regions.

But, the plain man may ask, does not music sometimes tell a story? Yes, it sometimes does; and always very badly. In fact, the fuller the story, the worse the music. Thus the 'Don Juan' of Richard Strauss is a generalised story of the Don's search for the ideal woman, and his death at the moment of realisation. The piece is probably Strauss's best, with its fine vigour and vivacity, and its rich melodic passages. His 'Heldenleben' is an autobiography in much greater detail, with a coquettish lady and a few disagreeable musical critics among the characters. The story may be good as literature, but as music the piece is greatly inferior to 'Don Juan,' its best part, the love-scene, succeeding when played entirely without reference to the schedule. The musical account of Don Quixote's adventures with the sheep and the description of his attack on the mills are simply ludicrous in their attempt to blend art and fact. It is difficult to listen to them without embarrassment. But the Pastoral Symphony is, as Beethoven warns us, intended more as an expression of feelings than as the painting of a scene. It tells no story. Beethoven conceived the Pastoral Symphony as music, not as literature; Strauss conceived the 'Heldenleben' as literature and tried to translate the literary concepts into the terms of music. Some contemporary composers have written pieces with a

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descriptive significance-Ravel's 'Jeux d'eaux,' Debussy's 'La Cathédrale Engloutie,' are two popular examples. We shall continue to like them as long as they appeal to us as pattern and texture. That Ravel's Jeux d'eaux' immediately recalls Liszt's 'Waldesrauschen' indicates the limitations of descriptive music. What suggests water to one suggests the wind in the trees to another. Smetana's Vltava is remarkably like Wagner's Rhine, and the supernatural terrors of Hell in Tchaikovsky's 'Francesca da Rimini' are indistinguishable from the street riot in his 'Romeo and Juliet.' Music's powers of description are limited; its powers of suggestion are infinite. The feelings that lie too deep for words, do not lie too deep for sounds. The whole point for the plain man is this: listen to programme music for its story if you wish; but do not confuse its merits as fiction with its merits as music, and do not try to force a story on to music of pure pattern. There is no story in a Mozart quartet or a Beethoven sonata. Even Chopin, the first great modern sentimentalist, named his lovely pieces from their form, not from their content. There are no stories in Chopin. But because the third number in his B flat minor sonata is called 'Marche Funèbre,' the little sentimentalists must needs try to make the fourth movement mean the wind moaning over the grave, or alternatively, the gossip of the mourners about the deceased. Chopin's delightful Valse in D flat has been quite seriously described as the fluttering of a canary's wings and its subsequent burst into song! Thus do the ecstasy-mongers honour the delicacy of an exquisite artist. Probably the supreme achievement in programme-making is the description attached by a German to the Andante of Beethoven's Sonata in D, Op. 28 (the so-called 'Pastoral'). This movement, it appears, is the funeral march of a mighty hunter, who is followed to his grave by the beasts and birds of the forest. The opening in D minor represents the funeral cortège; and the interlude in D major represents the joyful noises of the birds and beasts singing Fear no more the shoot of the gun,' or words to that effect. After this the solemn procession passes on once more! Let the plain man heed not the voice of these charmers, charm they never so vilely.

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The plain man should not begin with difficult pieces. Just as the beginner in poetry is likely to be more encouraged by 'The Ancient Mariner' than by The Second Anniversary,' so the beginner in music is likely to be more encouraged by Mozart's Symphony in G minor than by Brahms in F major-by Beethoven's C minor quartet in Op. 18 than by the Grosse Fuge. The anonymous writer of a pleasant volume called 'Leaves from a Northern University' recently confessed that though he liked some of Bach's great choruses instantly, it took him nearly forty years to learn to like Bach's vocal solos. The period strikes us as slightly excessive. Still, the hearer who listens for the first time to the lovely duet 'Domine Deus' with 'La ci darem' (or 'Excelsior") as his standard for duets, is certainly likely to be puzzled. La ci darem' is written as a purely vocal piece with an accompaniment; 'Domine Deus' is a long concerted piece in which the voice parts are two lines, with a flute as a third line, two violins and a viola as three more, an unobtrusive 'continuo' or thorough-bass as a foundation. In 'La ci darem' your interest is focussed on the two vocalists; in 'Domine Deus' the singers are just two vocal soloists among several instrumental soloists combining in a concerted piece. A Bach solo is, in short, 'team' music, not individual music. If the vocal soloists try to force themselves into special prominence they not only achieve personal failure, but they ruin the team. Now a tenor who refused to force himself into prominence in a solo like 'Di quella pira' would fail as badly as if he tried to sing Bach in the manner demanded by Verdi. One of the loveliest and most affecting pieces ever written is Aus Liebe' (No. 58, Matthew Passion), a perfect concerted piece of just four lines-soprano voice, flute and two oboes; but the hearer must listen to all four lines, and not merely to a voice and an accompaniment-he must listen to a 'team' or a crew.' Let it be admitted that there is such a thing as connoisseurs' music. Most people are carried away even at a first hearing by the almost supernatural majesty of Bach's tremendous 'Sanctus'; but a chorus like 'O Mensch' (No. 35, Matthew Passion) has to be known intimately before the exquisite beauty of its texture is revealed. Its beauty is, in part, beauty of

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character, and character is rarely revealed at a first encounter. Even a great Cantata, like 'Herr gehe nicht in's Gericht' is connoisseurs' music-that is, music for the ear that knows by practice how to listen. For listeniing comes by practice. Study of musical theory will help; but hearing must come first. A safe rule for the I plain man is not to bother about musical terms until he encounters a form, an effect, a figure, or a chord that he wants to know how to describe. He will then naturally turn to the books or friends that can enlighten him. To put study of the language of music in this inferior position is not to minimise its importance. A knowledge of musical form adds greatly to the intelligent hearer's enjoyment. It enables him to take in more at once than the untaught hearer can. The untaught hearer may hear beauty in the mass; the instructed hearer will hear the fine shades as well. But the course of the plain man is clear. He must practise hearing by hearing; and by hearing he will learn what there is to hear. If his enjoyment gives him an impulse to systematic study, he can teach himself much-he can, for instance, get an idea of fugue from the text-books, and turn for illustration to player-piano rolls or gramophone records, which will repeat the difficult passages patiently for him as often as he wishes.

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The plain man of the future will be in a happier position than his father. Music, once belittled as an accomplishment of unwashed foreigners or received, at the best, as an exotic, is now an integral part of education in schools of all grades and kinds. The language and laws of music have at least as much claim to be taught to ordinary children as the language and laws of chemistry. The best approach to music is made at schools where everybody is the choir, and where, as a consequence, an affectation of superiority on the ground of having no ear' is hardly likely to be impressive. The bragging spirit takes many forms, but none so ludicrous as a boast (generally quite untrue) of inability 'to tell one tune from another.' The assumption is always that this defect is a symptom of superiority, though the exact nature of the superiority is never indicated and never discernible. There are, unfortunately, tone-deaf people, though many fewer than those

who assume a deformity when they have it not; but such people are not specially estimable, as they are, in fact, physical deficients, like the colour-blind, who are rarely found boasting of their misfortune. The ability to hear music is part of the complete man's equipment; he is less a man by the extent to which he lacks that ability. It is not unfitting to remind ourselves that an ancient legend made music open the gates of hell. Hell has no music; music is the very air of Heaven.

The sensible teaching of music in schools, aided by such inventions as the player-piano, the gramophone, and wireless transmission, will soon make musical ignorance rare. The influence of musical festivals and competitions has been valuable in one direction; illustrated lessons in the appreciation of music (the art of music) and in the theory of music (the science or grammar of music) have been valuable in another direction. But the most valuable work done by school music is the undermining of the recent superstition that the enjoyment of good music is an affair of class or coterie. The new generation will know better than that. It will know that music is for all. It will have rediscovered the England which produced the folk-songs and the Tudor music now honoured as great national treasures. It will understand that the simples and gentles of Shakespeare's world sang to each other and with each other because song is human and morose silence devilish. It will inherit by natural right all that has been sung and played in the world since the morning stars sang together. In short, it will know that the best music for the plain man is the best music.

GEORGE SAMPSON.

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