not until quite recently has musical criticism been taken seriously either by the london or provincial press. in the old days of the sixties, when wagner came to london (i am writing many miles away from books, but surely it was in the sixties that wagner visited us?), there was not a single open-minded musical critic on the british press. j. w. davison, the very powerful times critic, was not only a fool, but, what is much more dangerous, he was a learned fool. he treated wagner shamefully, and he did more than his share to bring our country into musical disrepute among the cultured men of other nations. joseph bennett, of the daily telegraph, was a fluent writer who contrived to say less in a full column than a man like ernest newman or r. a. streatfeild or samuel langford can say in a couple of lines. he footled gaily for many years, wielded enormous power, and did nothing whatever to advance the cause of music in england.
as a commercial asset, joseph bennett must have been invaluable to the proprietors of the daily telegraph. for, like davison, he had great influence. people read him. even in my own time, when an important new work was produced, we used to question each other: “what does old joe say?” and, most unfortunately, it mattered a great deal what old joe did say, though anyone who knew much about music was very well aware that nine times out of ten bennett would be wrong. if he damned a work—well, that work was damned. no 144musical critic to-day wields such power as his, though there are at least a score of writers on music who have ten times his gifts. his present successor, for example, mr robin legge, is incomparably a finer musician, a much more open-minded man, and a student of infinitely more culture, than bennett. yet his influence, i imagine, is not so great as that of his predecessor. one cannot say that bennett stooped to his public, for bennett could not stoop; if he had stooped, he would have disappeared altogether. no: he was the public: the people: the common people. he had the point of view of the man in the back street.
but to-day things are changed. the musical critic is no longer primarily a raconteur, a gossiper, a chatterer. as a rule, he is a man of culture, of experience, of solid musical attainments. he earns little—anything from one hundred and fifty pounds to five hundred pounds a year, though, no doubt, in very rare instances, he may be paid more than the latter figure. musical criticism, therefore, is not a profession that seduces the ambitious man, for the ambitious man of materialistic views may more easily earn three times what the press has to offer him by selling imitation jewellery or doing anything else that money-making people do. when e. a. baughan, now dramatic critic of the daily news, was editing the musical standard more than twenty years ago, he wrote me a very earnest letter beseeching me not to become a musical critic on account of the payment being so meagre. “if you have a desk, stick to it; if you are a commercial traveller, remain a commercial traveller” was his advice in essence. but i would rather be a musical critic on one hundred and fifty pounds a year than a stockbroker earning fifteen hundred pounds. i love money, but i love music and journalism more, and the three years i spent in manchester with an income of three hundred pounds were full of happiness, brimful of great days when i 145felt my mind growing and my spirit taking unto itself wings.
e. a. baughan is not, i think, a musician in the true sense of the word, nor does he claim to be, but i imagine that, being musical and having the itch for writing, he took the first journalistic work that offered itself. that work was the editing of the musical standard. subsequently he went to the morning leader as musical critic, and then to the daily news as dramatic critic. he is sane, level-headed, honest, but not conspicuously brilliant. his musical work, judged by a high standard, was poor. he had not sufficient knowledge to guide him to a right judgment when faced by a new problem. hugo wolf was such a problem, and if ever baughan reads now what he wrote about hugo wolf some fifteen years ago, he must, i imagine, tingle with shame to the tips of his toes.
as a dramatic critic he has secured an honourable and enviable position. i used to meet him very frequently at first nights, and always thought him a trifle blasé and almost wholly devoid of imagination, subtlety and true artistic feeling. he has not the artist’s attitude towards life, and he would probably bring an action for slander against you if you said he had.
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i was never introduced to c. l. graves, the musical critic of the spectator and the well-known humorous writer, but on one occasion i sat next to him at a very important concert, and in conversation found him an extremely courteous but rather baffled man. his knowledge of music is that of the cultured amateur. his mind but grudgingly admits “advanced” work, and i, as a modern, regret that an intellect so charming, so gracious, so able, should be even occasionally occupied in passing judgment on work that has its being entirely outside his mental horizon. but i doubt very much if the spectator has any influence on the musical life of london, though i 146imagine that dr brewer, mr t. h. noble, sir hubert parry, sir charles v. stanford and sir alexander mackenzie read mr graves with regularity and approval.
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but the man whom all of us who write about music honour most of all is ernest newman, of the birmingham daily post. here we have a first-rate intellect functioning with absolute sureness and with almost fierce rapidity. as a scholar, no man is better equipped; as a writer, he ranks with the highest; for fearlessness and inflexible intellectual honesty, he has no equal. his books on wagner and hugo wolf and the volume entitled musical studies are head and shoulders above any volumes of musical criticism ever published in our language. but though his knowledge of music is encyclopædic, music is but one of many subjects upon which he is an authority. under another name he has published a volume on philosophy which, on its appearance, created something like a sensation; unfortunately, this book ceased to be procurable within a few weeks of its publication. poetry, french and german literature, sociology and psychology are but a few of the subjects upon which he is as well qualified to write as he is on music.
why does he hide himself in birmingham? well, if you are a musical critic in london, it is impossible to do any solid work. all day and almost every day you are at concerts and operas, and you are sadly in danger of becoming a mere reporter. newman’s post in birmingham leaves him some leisure in which to write more important work.
i never think of newman without wondering if ever he will be given the chance to achieve the work that is nearest his heart. that work is a full and complete history of music. for this task he is intellectually well equipped, but the labour in which it would involve him calls for years of leisure. time and again he has planned 147work—notably, a book on montaigne—which, for lack of leisure, he has been compelled to abandon. he was made for finer things than newspaper work, and though he has made an indelible impression on musical thought in this and other countries, his life will be largely wasted if the latter half of it has to be spent in writing daily criticism and occasional articles.
newman’s psychology is peculiarly complex. though there is a vein of cruelty in him, he is yet sensitive to the suffering of other people. i was with him on one occasion when bantock told him that a certain enemy of his (newman’s) had just died. the effect of this news on newman was to me most unexpected. he started a little. “good god!” he said; “poor, poor devil.” and for the rest of the evening he sat gloomy and silent. the thought of death is intolerable to him. his repulsion from it is as much physical as nervous. though, on occasion, a stern and relentless critic, he reacts morbidly to criticism of himself. he is highly strung, imaginative, rationalistic; he believes little and trusts not at all, loves intensely and hates bitterly. vain he is, also, and he clings almost despairingly to what remains of his youth.
it is some few years since i saw newman in close intimacy, but when he was on the staff of the manchester guardian and, later on, when he removed to birmingham, i was at his house very frequently, and a very small circle of friends used to pass long evenings in delicious fooling. in those days newman could throw off twenty-five years of his age and become a high-spirited and impish boy. i remember one night when, a macabre mood or, rather, a mood of extravagantly high spirits having descended upon us, one of our company, a lady, simulated sudden illness and death. we dressed her in a shroud, placed pennies on her eyes and candles at her head and feet. but in the middle of this foolery, newman disappeared, and when it was all over and he had returned, he was in a 148sombre mood. it was not because we had trifled with a terrible fact in life that he was disturbed and distrait, but because we had unwittingly cut into his shrinking mind and hurt it by reminding him of something he would fain forget. insanity repelled him in the same violent manner, and all who knew him intimately when he was writing his book on hugo wolf will remember that wolf’s warped and poisoned psychology obsessed and dominated him.
but often newman would spend an evening in playing modern songs to us—bantock’s ferishtah’s fancies, wolf’s mörike lieder, and so on. i can see him now as, his clever, rather saturnine face abundantly alive, he described richard strauss’s ein heldenleben, telling us how the music of the harps stained the texture of the music in a magical way, like one flinging wine on some secretly coloured fabric. those evenings are to me among the most valued of my life. i remember how my wife and i used to walk home under a long avenue of trees very late in the spring nights, the gummy smell of buds in our nostrils, newman’s voice still in our ears, and our minds fermenting deliciously with a kind of happiness we had not experienced before.
those days are gone for ever: days of a recovered youth; evenings that were romantic just because they were evenings; nights when, in silence, one dreamed long and long, the body sunk deep in unconsciousness, the soul ranging and mounting and, in the morning, returning to its home subtly changed and infinitely refreshed.... newman opened for me a world which, but for him, i do not think i ever should have beheld; nor, indeed, should i ever have been aware of that world’s existence.
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i have written of samuel langford elsewhere in this book, and i have little to add here. he succeeded newman on the manchester guardian, and i recall the curiosity with which many of us read his first articles, fearing that 149anything he might write must of necessity fall so far below newman’s high standard as to be unreadable. we were soon reassured. langford and newman have little in common, and there is no basis upon which one can compare them. and, at first, langford had to feel his way, to master his métier, to acquire some of his literary technique....
our respective newspaper offices were situated near each other, and on our way from the free trade hall he used often to persuade me to drink with him before we began our work. “we shall do each other good,” he would say. and his short, ungainly figure, with its thick neck carrying a nobly-shaped head, would make its way to the bar where, placing a pile of music on the counter, he would turn to me and talk, both of us forgetting to order our drinks, and neither of us caring for the lateness of the hour.... next morning, he would frequently come round to my house immediately after breakfast, look in at the window of my study, and wave a newspaper in the air. i was always deep in work, for at that time i reviewed eight or ten books every week, but i remember no occasion on which i did not welcome him most gladly. and sometimes i would spend an afternoon in his great garden, worshipping flowers, and watch him as, with fumbling hands, he turned the face of a blossom to the sky and looked at it with i know not what thoughts. i know nothing of horticulture, but langford knows everything, and often he would talk, more to himself than to me, about the deep mysteries of his science. and, saying farewell at the little gate, he would sometimes crush into my arms a large sheaf of coloured leaves and flowers, wave an awkward hand, and shamble back to his low-built, picturesque house set deep in blooms. though twenty years my senior, neither he nor i felt the long spell of years lying between us. and sometimes i am tempted to go back to manchester to renew a friendship for the 150loss of which all the great happiness that london has brought me has, it seems at times, been but inadequate compensation.
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during my three years as musical critic on the manchester courier i had some curious experiences, and to me the most curious of them all was the persistent manner in which attempts were made by people in berlin to enlist my sympathies on behalf of an extremely able musician, oskar fried. it almost seemed to me that a secret society existed in germany for the sole purpose of getting oskar fried a job in england. letters written in english came to me from total strangers, informing me at great length and with stupid tautology that fried was the one hope of musical young germany. he had ideals; he was a leader; he had the prophetic vision; he was the man who was going to promote and lead a new romantic movement. “very good,” said i to myself, “but what on earth has all this to do with me?”
i was not long in finding out. a young englishman resident in berlin, and obviously deeply saturated with the german spirit, wrote to me to say that, in his opinion, fried was the only man in europe to fill the post that dr richter had vacated as conductor of the hallé concerts society in manchester. the letter arrived at a time when various musicians were being, as it were, “tried” as conductors of the hallé concerts, and my unknown correspondent was anxious that fried should be invited to conduct one or two concerts. to this letter i sent a polite but non-committal reply. i knew oskar fried’s name just as i knew the names of a dozen pushing german conductors; but i knew no more. my persistent correspondent, to whom i will give the name of purvis, wrote again, sending me a typewritten copy of a book he had written on his friend. it was a highfalutin document of idolatry. fried was his idol, and purvis gushed and gushed 151and gushed again. but the whole thing was done with truly germanic thoroughness. i felt that i was being “got at,” and though i resented it, i was greatly amused. i led him on. i was anxious to see this gushing disciple, this seeming advertising agent, this, as it appeared to me, wholly germanised englishman. so i replied to him a second time, and one evening he called upon me. he was a boy of twenty-one with a beard, a manner that was intended to be ingratiating but was intolerably insolent, and a self-assurance truly napoleonic. he tickled me hugely and, as i have more than a grain of malice in me, i opened out to him, flattered him heavily, and talked music with him. but, though he loved the flattery, he was level-headed enough to stick to his point—that i should do all in my power to secure for oskar fried the hallé conductorship. and he ended the interview with the astonishing announcement that fried had already been engaged by the hallé concerts society to conduct two of their concerts.
by what devious and subterranean ways this was achieved, i do not know, but i have no doubt that scores of influential germans in manchester were approached in a similar way to what i was.
oskar fried, with his idolatrous lackey, came uninvited to my house. they arrived at ten and left at six. i found fried a very remarkable man—magnetic, of forceful personality, but with the manners and point of view of a gutter-snipe. he asked me point-blank what i could do for him.
“in what way?” i asked him, through purvis, our interpreter.
“it is obvious in what way,” returned purvis, without passing on the question to fried.
“well,” said i, “i have already written about fried in the papers. and, really, i have no influence. i am not very popular with the hallé concerts society people, and if i were to begin to recommend fried.... but, in any 152case, i have not yet heard your friend conduct. it is impossible for me to recommend a man of whose talents i know nothing save by hearsay. you see that, don’t you?”
“i’m afraid i don’t,” said purvis. “you are a musical critic in manchester, whilst i am a musical critic in berlin, and i tell you that fried is the man you want here. surely that is enough? you must take it from me. i say it.”
i smiled and, glancing at fried, watched his thin, eager face, with its peering eyes which looked inquiringly first at purvis and then at me.
purvis came next day and the day after that, and i began to wonder in precisely what relation he stood to fried. when together, they seemed to be just business friends, and it occurred to me that the long typewritten life of fried that purvis had written was merely a gigantic piece of bluff. finally, i decided to cut both men adrift altogether, and the next time purvis called i was out.
when i heard fried conduct, i at once recognised his great powers: he had undoubted genius. but he was never invited to become the permanent conductor of the hallé concerts society. perchance his table manners were adversely reported upon by dr brodsky, or mr gustave behrens, or the discreet and reserved mr forsyth.
