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]. 272 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). 273 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 ..