19TH longer command an exclusive [publishing] No.14. kla th ort. CENTURY contract" (p. xxiii). This is a crucial point be- 'That which ye have, hold fast till I come."--RIv. 2: 25. MUSIC P. P. cause it clearly indicates the strength of Fos- BLISS. P. P. BIiss, by per. ter's (or his family's?) anxiety that he succeed as a composer not of minstrel songs but of 1. IHo! my com-rades, see the sig - nAl Way -ing in the skyI ballads. Austin have - 4 genteel might heightened i •-•alA - • •--r• -•-.. •: 7-c- o-- - -- I ,,L_.___-9- __--•_ the the ?-- ---l -•--I - -'? irony by underlining equally sig- --•--iY • --J-t---Y-•----.-•-i------= nificant fact that until 1852 Foster's only ? •-:•-----t-i-=••- • • popular successes were all in black dialect. In- •••.- :I• deed, even his first nondialect success, "Mag-

gie By My Side" (October 1852), was first set Re - in forc-ments now ap- pear -ing, Vic - to- ry is nigh! down in his manuscript book as a dialect song -a- - -• •$ .--. see T. Howard's -- ("Fanny By My Side"; J. biog- --,------

raphy, Stephen Foster, America's Troubadour CHORUS. [New York, 1953], p. 211). This was not six months after Foster had written to Christy (25 May 1852) of his determination to "pursue the "Hfold the fort, for I am corm- ing,' Je - sti sig - nals still, -0- -*W * -R __ O business without fear or shame"! ------Ethiopian • t t -J --- Lr ------Clearly, Foster's decision to devote his ef- , •-"77.-___ - -- •- - .-__• -- forts after all to "white men's music" was made. And --- consciously following the example 11z- -- ~-•- of Austin's poignant remarks on the meaning we of "Jeaniewith the Light Brown Hair" for Fos- Wave the an- swer back to Hcav- en,-" By Thy grace will."

ter's wife Jane, we may be tempted to look a -----c -- - _,- bit more closely at "Maggie By My Side." It is _ _ _I-- not difficult to find mirrored in that song's nautical metaphor the high hopes of a young father who has just settled into his chosen WALTER FRISCH career. BernardShaw. The Great Composers: Reviews and The wind howling o'er the billow Bombardments. Edited with an introduction by From the distant lea, Louis Crompton. Berkeley: University of California The storm raging'round my pillow Press, 1978. xxvii, 378 pp. Bringsno care to me. Roll on ye darkwaves, With this unusually laconic preface Bernard O'er the troubled tide: Shaw in 1932 introduced his collection I heed not your anger, largest Maggie'sby my side. of musical criticism, Music in London 1890- 1894, comprising weekly articles contributed to The World from Marion Foster was one and a half years old in May 1890 to August 1894: October 1852, and her father (see Howard, p. called her There are people who will read about music 273) "Maggie." and nothing else. To them dead prima donnas are It is a tribute to the breadth and subtlety more interesting than saints, and extinct tenors of Austin's study that it inspires the reader to than mighty conquerors. They are presumably the further meditations and developments of only people who will dream of reading these three themes that he himself has His volumes. If my wisdom is to be of any use to them suggested. it must come to them in this form. And so I let it book is an important contribution to all of its go to them for what it is worth.' chosen fields, as well as a stunning interdisci- effort of It plinary major proportions. is also an Although the brevity is atypical for an author intriguing indication of the special method- ologies that may be required of researchers into nineteenth-century music. 'London, 1932, p. [v].

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This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Wed, 29 Jul 2015 20:57:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions whose "prefaces" rival his plays in length and in the year of his death, 1950. Also included is REVIEWS scope, the blend of contempt, ambivalence a valuable biographical index providing and self-deprecation is quintessentially Shav- thumbnail sketches of the legendary conduc- ian. Shaw frequently expressed doubts about tors and extinct tenors that inhabit Shaw's attempts to republish newspaper or magazine columns. articles, his own included. "What the jour- Before Laurence had rounded out the pic- nalist writes about," he noted in the Preface to ture of Shaw as a music critic, Eric Bentley "The Sanity of Art," "is what everybody is tried to focus the image and make it more eas- thinking about (or ought to be thinking about) ily available and affordable. In 1955 he pre- at the moment of writing. To revive his utter- pared an excellent paperback anthology for ances when everybody is thinking about Doubleday-Anchor, called Shaw on Music. something else; when the tide of public Drawing on the four volumes of regular Lon- thought and imagination has turned ... these don criticism, Bentley cut and reshuffled some inevitables test the quality of your journalism seventy articles into three main sections-- very severely."2 "The Point of View," which presents Shaw's Shaw's musical journalism (he was also at ideas on criticism; "The Main Tradition," dis- various times an art and drama critic) seems cussing the principal opera composers from to have passed that test handsomely-at least Gluck to Wagner; and "Musical Questions," to judge from its numerous reprintings. Five which offers Shaw's thoughts on such topics years after the appearanceof Music in London, as "Light Music" and "Music and Religion." Shaw's publisher prevailed on him to collect Bentley designed this not for the musicologist, his only other unbroken series of music arti- the social historian, or the serious student of cles, written under a now famous nom de Shaw, but simply for "music lovers"; and plume for The Star from May 1888 to May many music lovers who, like myself, nurtured 1890; this volume of 1937 was (inaccurately) their critical tastes on this anthology, were titled London Music in 1888-1889 as Heard sorry to see it go out of print some years ago. by Corno di Bassetto (later known as Bernard A reissue of the Bentley volume would Shaw). Again Shaw had misgivings, acknow- have been more useful, and surely easier ledging in his preface a "reluctance which has to produce, than the recent new anthol- been overcome only by my wife, who has ogy edited-or, rather, over-edited-by Louis found some amusement in reading it through, Crompton. (One guesses that a paperbackver- a drudgery which I could not bring myself to sion will soon appear to fill the void left by undertake."3 the Bentley collection.) Crompton, a Shaw Shaw wrote on music throughout his long scholar who teaches English at the University career, although he spent only six years as a of Nebraska, has made a hyper-Bentlean at- regular London critic. All his efforts are jour- tempt: he has drawn on the Laurence collec- nalistic save one, his well-known book The tion and The Perfect Wagnerite, as well as the Perfect Wagnerite of 1898. In 1961 the devoted four collected volumes, to "present the heart Shavian Dan Laurence assembled and pub- and soul of what Shaw thought about music lished almost all of Shaw's miscellaneous and over his long lifetime" (p. xiii). The book is unsigned pieces in How to Become a Musical organized into four large parts--"Overviews," Critic. Like the earlier collected volumes "The Concert Hall," "The Opera House" and which it was intended to complement, Lau- "English Music." After the first part, selec- rence's book is arranged chronologically-ex- tions are arrangedby composer. The basic ar- tending from Shaw's earliest articles for The rangement resembles Bentley's, but Crompton Hornet in 1876 (which the twenty-year-old has aimed far beyond the earlier editor's mod- ghosted for a family friend) to late interviews est attempt at a music lover's collection: "what the reader has before him is, in effect, 21n Major Critical Essays, The Collected Works of Ber- the book on musical history that Shaw could nard Shaw (New York, 1931), XIX, 295. have written, and should have written, but 3London, 1937, p. 28. never did write" (p. xiv).

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This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Wed, 29 Jul 2015 20:57:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19TH I think Shaw himself would have been the Primrose Hill, none of these may be called the view of Primrose Hill. I now that the CENTURY first to scoff at Crompton's procrustean effort, perceive political MUSIC because a coherent of situation is like Primrose Hill. systematic, history Wherever I have been I have found and fer- music is what precisely Shaw would not have vently uttered a true view of it; but as to the true written-and what he would have disliked to view, believe me, there is no such thing ... see artificially extracted from his journalistic It is just the same in music. I am always elec- writing. He valued lively topicality and spon- tioneering. At the Opera I desire certain reforms; and in order to get them I make every notable per- taneity over sententious value judgements. formance an example of the want of them ...5 The only truly immortal writing was that created for one time and one he noted in place, Elsewhere he proudly confessed the subjective his preface to "The of which I Sanity Art," nature of true critical writing: quote at length because it seems a central statement of his beliefs: We cannot get away from the critic's tempers, his impatiences, his sorenesses, his friendships, his ... journalism can claim to be the highest form of spite, his enthusiasms (amatory and other), nay, his literature; for all the highest literature is jour- very politics and religion if they are touched by nalism. The writer who aims at producing the what he criticizes.6 platitudes which are "not for an age, but for all time" has his reward in being unreadable in all These last two in ages; whilst Plato and Aristophanes to knock quotations appear Bentley's trying "Point of View" in some sense into the Athens of their day, Shakespear section, which the selec- peopling that same Athens with Elizabethan tions stress the critic's changeableness, but mechanics and Warwickshire hunts, Ibsen photo- not in Crompton's analogous "Overviews," the local doctors and of graphing vestrymen a Nor- which purportedly "gives us Shaw's values the life of wegian parish, Carpacciopainting St. Ur- and the framework in which he made his sula exactly as if she were a lady living in the next street to him, are still alive and at home judgements" (p. xxv). It seems clear that in everywhere among the dust and ashes of many seeking to steer Shaw toward a central thousands of academic, punctilious, most arche- point of view-a "clearly defined set of ologically correct men of letters and art who values"-Crompton works to suppress the spent their lives haughtily avoiding the journalist's obsession with the I am also a "journalist." vulgar ephemeral. the of honor in journalist, proud of it, deliberately cutting out of Crompton gives place my work all that is not journalism, convinced that "Overviews" to "The Religion of the Piano- nothing that is not journalism will live long as lit- forte," an essay of 1894 which he calls erature, or be of any use whilst it does live.4 "Shaw's most significant summing-up of his views" and "his clearest general statement on The style is rhetorical here, but for Shaw the nature of music" (p. xx). In it Shaw com- "journalism" was more than a euphemism: it pares the sensuous immediacy of music with was a philosophy that informed all of his writ- the less direct appeal of all the other arts. ing, including his music criticism. Above all, Pounding through the fight scene of Les Shaw crusaded for the best possible perfor- Huguenots at the piano is infinitely more mances of high quality music in his own time; vivid than reading a description of a duel by and he often attacked from different sides to Dumas. Shaw claims to value music which attain that goal. Shaw once compared his task has poetic or dramatic content above "music to political campaigning: which was trying to exist ornamentally for its own sake," i.e., absolute music. Indeed, all I learnt that there are several long ago though drama and poetry is incomplete without mus- places from which the tourist may enjoy a view of ic-without "the transubstantiation of pure

4Collected Works, XIX, 295. SMusic in London, 2, 128-9. 6Ibid., 3, 237.

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This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Wed, 29 Jul 2015 20:57:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions feeling into musical tone. The greatest of the snippets on the anniversary of the French Rev- REVIEWS great among poets, from Aeschylus to Wagner, olution (1889), on the musical opinions of have been poet musicians.. ." (p. 9). Such ob- Edward FitzGerald, the translator of Omar servations are, of course, highly Wagnerian, Khayyam, and on Mozart's great nobility echoing Opera and Drama; for most of his and self-possession. The French Revolution career as a regular critic Shaw was a fervent piece-three paragraphslifted from a review Wagnerite and, like many of that persuasion, -is too insignificant to merit our attention, disdained other trends in late nineteenth- and the latter two selections are so irrelevant century music. Brahms was his bAte noire, an that one is led to believe they were included "insufferably tedious" composer of "strings of by mistake. incomplete ballad and dance tunes" mas- Shaw did, of course, think quite deeply querading as symphonies. about the issue of "music and revolution," but But only two months after the publication mainly in the context of Wagner. As a of "Religion of the Pianoforte" Shaw would Socialist and political reformer, Shaw admired seem to have retrenched dramatically: Wagner's active role in the uprisings of 1848. In The Perfect Wagnerite he elaborates a per- The man who roused me into common sense on suasive interpretation of the Ring (up to the this subject was no other than our friend Brahms Third Act of Siegfried) as an allegory of class ... The moment he tried to use music for the pur- struggle-an overthrow of the forces of indus- pose of expressing or describing anything in the trial embodied in the least degree extraneous to itself he became capitalism, gods, giants, commonplace and tedious... On the other hand, and dwarfs, by a true Hero, the human Sieg- when he made music purely for the sake of music fried. In fact, Shaw found in Wagner's myth ... he became one of the wonders of the world ... Absolute music was in him abundant, fresh, hope- the most inevitable dramatic conception ... of the ful, joyous, powerful... (pp. 346-47) nineteenth century ... that of a perfectly naive hero upsetting religion, law and order in all direc- The article that contains this tions, and establishing in their place the unfettered important action of what it and a review of music Humanity doing exactly likes, statement, by Stanford, ap- producing order instead of confusion thereby be- pears at the very end of Crompton's anthology cause it likes to do what is good for the race (p. under "English Music" rather than after "Re- 254). ligion of the Pianoforte," which it surely com- plements. In his introduction Crompton Two important chapters of The Perfect Wag- suggests that the apparently sudden shift-as nerite advance these ideas, "Wagner as Revo- well as a later article in which Shaw again de- lutionist" and "Siegfried as Protestant." nigrates Brahms to praise Elgar-manifest Crompton has indeed included them in his an- "one of the ironies of Shaw's career as a music thology but has unhelpfully placed them critic" (p. xxii). But the fluctuation of view- under "Wagner" in "The Opera House" sec- points is more than ironic; it is an essential tion, rather than in "Music and Revolution." aspect of Shaw's criticism and shows that his The subsection that Crompton styles writings cannot easily be sifted for consistent "Form versus Feeling" is also unsatisfactory. "Overviews." It includes an entertaining essay on fugues, in Other subsections of "Overviews" fail to which Shaw argues that Beethoven and later guide us toward any central philosophy be- composers "brutalized" that once noble form; cause the articles and excerpts reprinted here three paragraphs which Crompton entitles often bear little relation to the editor's sub- "Sonata Form" but which hardly constitute a headings. "Music and Revolution" sounds po- major statement from Shaw on that subject; tentially impressive; but what we discover, and a review here called "Requiems" which after a colorful but unprofound article Shaw discusses Dvofik's Requiem but has nothing wrote for the Beethoven centenary in 1927, are whatsoever to do with feeling or form. Shaw's

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This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Wed, 29 Jul 2015 20:57:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19TH most compelling and developed ideas on for- Developed statements such as these, rather CENTURY malism and expression can be found in this than isolated remarks on sonata form, consti- MUSIC anthology; they are not among these rather tute the real core of Shaw's views on "Form trivial excerpts, but in "Religion of the Piano- versus Feeling." forte," in the complementary essays on Stan- With more sensitive editing Crompton ford and Elgar I have already mentioned, and might have given us a clearer picture of "the in the subsection "Wagnerism" which follows essential Shaw," but his search for "a central "Form versus Feeling." Again and again it is point of view" does not ultimately seem Wagner who focuses Shaw's thinking, or worth all the trouble. For very little of Shaw's serves as the most responsive backboard for general aesthetic and philosophy of music his ideas. strikes one as original or profound. Most of In the essay "Religion of the Pianoforte" the ideas in "Religion of the Pianoforte" go Shaw clearly values most highly that music in back to Plato, Goethe, Schopenhauer, and which the form is not a priori or arbitrary but Wagner, as Shaw himself notes (p. 14). His grows out of the poetry and drama. "The San- concept of music drama derives from Wagner's ity of Art" (from 1895) expands on this aesthe- writings; discussion of music's unmediated tic: Wagnerism is for Shaw precisely the aban- power is as old as Plato, and was taken up en- donment of "pure pattern-designing in music" thusiastically by Herder and his Friihromantik in favor of reflecting the narrative or dramatic followers in Germany. structure. Shaw somewhat naively assumed Liszt may have applied certain Wagnerian that most medieval and Renaissance music principles to symphonic music, as Shaw was pure "pattern-designing"; this was "be- suggests, but the implication that he aban- fore the operatic movement gained the upper doned formal repetition to express his pro- hand" (p. 40). The real transition to Wagner- gram is absurd. As Gerald Abraham has said, ism began with Mozart, who was the first of "The fallacy seems to have been echoed by the modem dramatic composers to accept every sciolist who has ever written about "the rules of good pattern-designing in Liszt."7 Les Preludes has a fairly regular musi- sound." The numbers in Mozart operas "fol- cal form; moreover, Liszt devised the program low the dramatic play of emotion and charac- some years after he had written the music, ter" and yet still "are seen, on examining and then borrowed the title from Lamartine. them from the point of view of the absolute In a marvelous account of the Dante sym- musician, to be symmetrical sound patterns" phony, Shaw himself questioned the appropri- (p. 41). ateness of Liszt's programs: Shaw felt the evolution of instrumental music in the nineteenth century reflected the I am seriously of the opinion that if the symphony trend toward music-drama in opera: were dubbed anew The Conflagration,and a careful analytical program compiled, assigning the various episodes of the to The The Fire Liszt tried hard to extricate himself from pianoforte allegro Alarm, and become a tone like his friend Gaining Ground, Awakening of the Inmates and arabesques poet their of the Arrival of the Wagner. He wanted his -to ex- Flight, Gathering Crowd, symphonic poems Exertions of the Firemen press emotions and their development. And he de- Engines, and Struggle of fined the emotion it with some Police with the Mob, with the Falling in of the Roof by connecting as a climax, not one of the audience would known story, poem, or even picture ... But the perceive moment to make an instrumental the slightest incongruity between the music and you try composi- the tion follow a story, you are forced to abandon the subject (p. 132). decorative pattern forms ... Consequently he in- vented the symphonic poem, a perfectly simple and Shaw's frequent characterization of abso- fitting commonsense form for his purpose, and one lute music as decorative pattern-designing is which makes Les Prdludes much plainer sailing for the ordinary hearer than Mendelssohn's Melusine overture or Raff's Lenore or Im Walde symphonies (p. 43). 7100 Years of Music (London, 1974), p. 38.

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This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Wed, 29 Jul 2015 20:57:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions annoyingly simplistic. It is not clear what less variegated and heavily weighted toward REVIEWS music he intends when using this description the choral tradition. London and the provinces for the period 1200-1400; and to discuss the boasted many choral societies, which were sonata forms of Mozart and Haydn in such nourished on the innumerable cantatas, crude terms is to miss all the dramatic power oratorios and part-songs written by English with which these masters filled the "symmet- composers. The composition of a Scriptural rical patterns" of their day. oratorio in neo-Mendelssohnian or neo- Handelian style was almost a guarantee of re- spect and popularity. And in this enterprise In the three sections which follow "Over- the best of the academic composers-such as views" and make up the bulk of this book, Alexander MacKenzie, Hubert Parry and Crompton has arranged the selections by Charles Villiers Stanford-frequently collabo- genre and by composer. Although Shaw's ob- rated with prominent music critics who pro- servations on the "great" German and Italian vided the librettos. Bennett, for example, was composers are stimulating and often il- an active librettist. luminating, "English Music" proves to be the Shaw was repelled by this inbred atmo- most valuable part of this anthology. In the sphere of musical life, by the Victorian vener- Bentley collection a few scattered excerpts ation of Mendelssohn, and by the affected touch on this subject, but Crompton has piety of much nineteenth-century choral wisely judged that Shaw's frequent dis- music. For him the only truly religious works cussions of late Victorian music and musical of the modem era were The Magic Flute, life merit separate consideration. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Parsifal; all As an independent, anti-establishment the rest was "sentiment and claptrap." In one figure in the musical scene, Shaw clearly review of a performance of Mendelssohn's St. stood apart from the London circle of powerful Paul at the Crystal Palace, Shaw sums up the music critics like Joseph Bennett of the Daily situation with a brilliance and candor no con- Telegraph and Francis Hueffer of the Times, temporary critic could match: who tended to be overly bullish on native Shaw is not even mentioned in composers. I do not know how it is Bennett's Years possible to listen to memoirs, Forty of Music, these works without indignation, especially under which deal in considerable detail with criti- circumstances implying a parallel between them cism in the last four decades of the century. and the genuine epic stuff of Handel, from which, Another critic, Herman Klein, notes only how in spite of their elegance, they differ as much as Booth does from distinctive Shaw appeared at London musical Bunyan. The worst of it is that events: Mendelssohn's business is still a going concern, though his genius has been withdrawn from it. Every year at the provincial festivals some dreary The newcomer was an obviously gifted young man doctor of music wreaks his counterpoint on a string of my own age, made conspicuous at concerts by of execrable balderdashwith Mesopotamia or some his extremely light red hair and skimpy beard; also other blessed word for a title. The author is usually by the fact that he rarely put on evening clothes a critic, who rolls his own log in his paper whilst and generally wore a tweed suit and a red tie.8 his friendly colleagues roll it elsewhere. His oratorio, thus recommended, is published in the Victorian London (like the London of to- familiar buff cover, and played off on small choral an active musical societies throughout the country by simple-minded day) enjoyed extremely life, who their in organists, display knowledge by analys- abounding operas, operettas, concerts, ing the fugues and pointing out the little bits of chamber and solo performances. Production of chorus in six real parts. In spite of the flagrant native music was no less abundant, but was pedantry, imposture, corruption, boredom and waste of musical funds which the oratorio system involves, I should not let the cat out of the bag in this fashion if I thought it could be kept in much 8Musicians and Mummers (London, 1925), p. 87. longer ... (pp. 29-30).

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This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Wed, 29 Jul 2015 20:57:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19TH Occasionally Shaw aimed his rapid fire at a person by doing for Mendelssohn what Pasteur CENTURY specific target, as in this exasperated account has done for the hydrophobia virus" MUSIC (p. 327). of Parry's oratorio Job: Shaw discussed "the tragedy of Sir Arthur Sul- livan," the Bennett disciple who at first fol- For some time past I have been carefully dodging lowed the academic route but was then Dr. Hubert Parry'sJob. I had presentiments about it from the first. I foresaw that all the other critics seduced by the Venusberg of comic opera- and would cleverly imply that they thought it the was forever made to feel guilty by the greatest oratorio of ancient or modern times-that "gentlemanly remnant of the Stemdale Ben- Handel is rebuked, Mendelssohn eclipsed, and the nett set." Shaw admired Sullivan's music and rest nowhere. And I was right: they did. The future posed (but did not answer) the question: historian of music, studying the English papers of 1892-3, will learn that these years produced two entire and perfect chrysolites, Job and Falstaff, ... would the skill that produced these two works especially Job ... [Parry] might have left Job alone [Patience and Pinafore] have been more worthily and left me alone; for, patient as we both are, there employed upon another oratorio, another cantata? are limits to human endurance (pp. 335-36, 339). When all our musicians are brought to their last ac- count, will Sullivan dissemble the score of the Pirates Shaw the critical with a blush and call on the mountains to cover him, perhaps exaggerates recep- whilst Villiers Stanfordand Hubert table The tion of but the Parry Parry's oratorio, following un- Revenge, Prometheus Unbound and Judith with signed review in the Musical Times will give pride?(p. 329). an idea of the tone that Shaw so detested in contemporary musical criticism: In his 1894 review of Stanford, Shaw pre- scribed that the future of music ... .the numerous attendance was a recognition of English lay success already achieved-of lofty talents used in not in vocal or choral composition, nor in the best manner and with a single eye to the glory music drama, but in absolute music. And of art. Readersof these remarks have been told that years later he claimed to have found the savior is unconventional. I add that it is dar- Job quite may in Edward I think it no but in so far Dr. knew that he Elgar. is coincidence ingly so, going Parry that would have influential support ... Dr. Parry here Elgar's strong independence from the takes a step toward what is known as "advanced" academic "clique" struck a sympathetic chord music, departing to that extent from the solid and in Shaw, an outsider himself: dignified classic style as shown in the works imme- diately preceding. But taking the piece as it stands, there can be no dispute as to its masterfulness. A young man from the west country without a mu- Whether Job will become popular is a question I sical degree, proceeding calmly and sweetly on the shall not take upon myself to answer, but musi- unconscious assumption that he was by nature and cians will always turn to its pages with interest, destiny one of the great composers, when, as a mat- and with admirationfor the strong sustained flight of ter of fact he had never heard of the supertonic, which Dr. Parryshows himself capable.9 shocked and irritated the clique very painfully ... He pitied them and was quite willing to shew them The fate of English music concerned Shaw how a really handy man (they were the unhandiest "The of in of mortals) should write for the trombones, tune deeply. phenomenon greatness the or music had vanished from with Pur- organ, flyfish, groom and harness and drive a England horse. He could talk about every unmusical subject cell," he wrote, though "Musical facility had on earth, from pigs to Elizabethan literature (pp. survived abundantly" (p. 354). "University 353-54). music" dominated the nineteenth century, beginning with Sterndale Bennett, whom Shaw called "the superfine academician who Ernest Newman, one of the few writers on won rest and self-complacency as a superior music to comment seriously on Shaw as a critic, reviewed Shaw's collected criticism in 9"The Gloucester Festival," The Musical Times 33 (1892), 1932 and summed up the Irishman's unique 599. position in Victorian musical life:

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This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Wed, 29 Jul 2015 20:57:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mr. Shaw had the supreme advantage of being able appears as a fine stroke of comedy, occasion- REVIEWS current of taste without to tackle problems any ally broadening into a harlequinade in which I dead of critical convention upon him. Hav- weight am the clown and Dr. Blank [a ing been fortunate enough to evade the universities typical and the colleges, he saw things musical as they academic] the policeman."14 were, not as they would have appearedto him as a But like Lear's fool Shaw packed much member of a clan, a clique, or a junta . . . He de- wisdom and perception into his irreverent clined to take people like the Parrys and the Stan- And he was well and rest of as commentary. remarkably fords the them seriously composers, for the task of a music or the colleges as the providentially appointed equipped journalistic trainers of the musical youth of the nation. And critic. In the comprehensive article on "Criti- time has proved the rightness of nine contemporary cism" in the Fifth Edition of Grove's Dictio- estimates of his out of ten.10 nary, Winton Dean has listed eight different qualifications for the ideal music critic, in- But what impact did this critic's eloquent, cluding "a wide general education, covering as solitary voice have in his time? To some ex- many as possible of the subjects with which tent Shaw's contemporary reputation must music can be shown to have a point of direct have depended on the stature of the periodi- contact" and "the ability to think straight and cals for which he wrote. The fledgling to write in a clear and stimulating manner." Socialist newspaper at which he took his first Dean claims that with the possible exception regular post was a far cry from the august of one-"a knowledge of history and musical Times. "The Star, then a hapenny newspaper, scholarship"--Shaw possessed all the creden- was not catering for a fastidious audience," tials "in abundant measure." He calls Shaw Shaw wrote in his preface to London Music. "one of the really outstanding musical crit- "It was addressed to the bicycle clubs and the ics," who "let fall an astonishing number of polytechnics, not to the Royal Society of Lit- illuminating asides of lasting validity."'5 erature or the Musical Association. I pur- An anthologist naturally seeks to sift out posely vulgarized musical criticism, which the gems of lasting validity and preserve them was then refined and academic to the point of for posterity. But as I have suggested, Shaw being unreadable."" Shaw also noted that his does not easily lend himself to such a process. readers did not take Corno di Bassetto very And a reading of Crompton's collection makes seriously: "The cream of the joke was sup- one long to turn to the original volumes and posed by many persons to be the fact that I enjoy Shaw the unbuttoned feuilletonist in his knew nothing whatsoever about music."'12 pristine state. In attempting to mold lively The World, the weekly journal Shaw joined in journalism into a "history of music" Cromp- 1890 (now signing his articles "G.B.S."), was a ton resembles one of Shaw's pedantic Dr. highly successful and fashionable paper, Blanks. Why must Shaw shave and get into which enjoyed a distinguished repuitation evening clothes before entering the concert under its editor Edmund Yates.'3 But even as hall, when he is perfectly content-and looks late as 1893 Shaw wrote in one of his columns much better-with his skimpy beard, that to many readers "every one of my articles tweed suit, and red necktie? .

10"Mr. Bernard Shaw as Musical Critic," in More Essays from the World of Music (New York, 1958), pp. 214-15. 1'London Music, p. 29. 12"How to Become a Musical Critic," in How to Become a Musical Critic, ed. Dan Laurence (New York, 1961), p. 30. 14Music in London, 2, 246. 13See Archibald Henderson, Bernard Shaw: Playboy and 15Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th edn. Prophet (New York, 1932), p. 260. (New York, 1954), II, 527, 535.

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