not, indeed, because he cannot write, but because he is too consciously superior. His general note can be heard

in a sentence like this:

'The tonic-sol-fa movement, to which there are not a few objections on various grounds, has to its credit that it makes its pupils consciously aware of the harmonic relation of every note of the scale to its tonic.'

What are these dragged-in objections on various grounds' to the tonic-sol-fa movement-other than, say, its faint suggestion of Nonconformity, Elementary Schools, and the neighbourhood of Leytonstone? Mr Fuller-Maitland, having made his gesture of distaste, is silent. Surely the fact that the tonic-sol-fa notation had to be invented, and that, being invented, it has made the reading of music easy to a million or two of people otherwise dumb, indicates that there are not a few objections on various grounds' to the older notation. Any form of notation-even the notation of poetry and drama in printed words-has its limitations. The notation of music is bound to be defective. Busoni himself could not write down his own pieces as he played them. Mr Fuller-Maitland has the air of belonging to the elect, and of condescending to the rest of the world. Well, the plain man, while not disputing the election, dislikes being reminded of his inferiority, and suspects, not without reason, that condescension rarely makes helpful writing.

But no one could call a writer like Dr Eaglefield Hull 'superior.' His volume called Music, Classical, Romantic and Modern,' addresses itself usefully to the plain man in one respect at least: it gives him the definite help that is worth a great deal of pity; it gives him a series of appendices containing such aids as a glossary of musical terms, a dictionary of musical biography, a list of 'best' folk-songs compiled by eminent hands, a short bibliography of musical works, and a catalogue of appropriate gramophone records. The last is not so clear or full as it might have been, and it should have been supplemented by a list of player-piano rolls. These are generally free from the excessive mutilation that makes certain discs of classical pieces almost useless to the student of form.

The text of the volume is composed of bright journalistic sketches of the chief musicians, ancient and modern ; but Dr Hull is sometimes a little too bright for the truth, and wanting, we will not say in taste, but in a sense of magnitude and proportion. Thus of Beethoven he remarks in easy parenthesis, his deafness (probably due to syphilis contracted in his early years). . . .' Dr Hull astonishes us by his moderation. Why not add, 'His death, due to cirrhosis of the liver (probably contracted during a lifetime of alcoholic excess). . .'? We have lately seen how difficult it is to defend a dead man from libel, how many are the greedy mouths that love a foul taste, and how ready are the merchants of sensation who minister to them. Dr Hull has no facts-there are no facts for him to have; he has nothing but wild surmise. But even if his supposition were firmly founded, what good purpose is served by dragging in a distressing allusion of which he makes not the least use? He might be pardoned if he attempted to relate the alleged fact to Beethoven's life and art; but he does nothing of the kind. He merely flings his handful of mud and passes Such utterances are impertinences in every sense. Dr Hull probably thinks it clever and modern to befoul the memory of a great artist; it may be modern, but it is not clever, it is merely foolish. Dr Hull simply creates suspicion of his own competence, and disinclines the plain man to believe anything he writes.

on.

The well-intentioned enthusiasm of Thayer has served Beethoven ill during the recent period of centenary effusions. Thayer was so overwhelmed by the genius of Beethoven that he devoted a lifetime of research to the collection of every ascertainable fact, surmise, and theory about his hero. But Thayer was totally devoid of literary or artistic feeling. He simply collected and poured out upon paper everything he could discover about a compelling male creature who might have been anybody or anything, but who happened to be Beethoven. To those with imagination and intelligence Thayer's accumulations are most fascinating when properly placed in the picture; but critics of music, being of the kind that we have indicated, ignored the plain needs of the anniversary occasion, and, rushing to Thayer's dismal details, put before their readers a picture of a shabby,

suspicious, deaf man who died in Vienna a hundred years ago. It really seems necessary to point out that we do not celebrate the centenaries of shabby, suspicious, deaf men. They must produce stronger claims on our memory than quarrels with their cooks and indifference to dress. At the moment of writing, there appears in a paper, under the heading 'Beethoven,' this poem:

'I listen ravished; and my wayward mind
Calls up, as in a vision of the screen,
An uncouth figure, quarrelsome, unkind,
Touched with dishonesty, not over-clean :
'How can I hear the symphony aright
As, fascinated and repelled, I see,
Creeping across the disc of heavenly light,

The squat, coarse figure of Humanity?'

The writer seems to us extremely foolish and should be recommended to devote himself (or herself) to Mendelssohn, who was much better-off and much betterlooking than Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Schubert, or Schumann; but the lines indicate the kind of dis-service done to musical art by writers like Dr Hull. No doubt there have been Beethoven enthusiasts, as there have been Shakespeare enthusiasts, who praised their hero with stupid and irritating excess; but the confusion is worse confounded when people retort by calling Beethoven a diseased boor and Shakespeare a drunken mummer. The moral of Thayer's researches seems to be that the less we know about Shakespeare the better. Others abide their Thayers: he, at least, is free.

One of the things a plain man wants from writers on music is a simple and credible account of an artist's aim and convictions. No kind of criticism is more common and more valueless than that which condemns an artist for not doing what he has not attempted. When Paul Cinquevalli successfully balanced billiard balls on the point of a cue, it would have been absurd to exclaim, 'But this is not billiards.' Yet critics of the arts are much given to these exclamations. They complain that Bishop Blougram's Apology' lacks the suavity of The Lotus Eaters,' and denounce In Memoriam' because it has not the intellectual excitement

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of 'The Ring and the Book.' When people used to say that there was no 6 tune' in Wagner, they meant that 'Tristan' contained no detachable airs like 'Il mio tesoro' or 'Largo al factotum,' with a clearly prepared beginning and a definitely announced conclusion. They were condemning Wagner for not doing what he had specially avoided. The proper defence was not to praise 'tunelessness' and to condemn set 'tunes' as dramatically inartistic and inappropriate-all of which the elderly Wagnerians did with great faith and piety-but to reply that Wagner was attempting the kind of melodic line which avoided definite breaks, and that he must be judged by the success of this attempt and not by his refusal to imitate Mozart or Rossini. So in the end, when the musical pundits had declared they could prove by Macfarren that Wagner's music wasn't music at all, the public, after listening to them for a time with great respect, replied that Wagner's music gave them genuine musical pleasure, and that they proposed to listen to it in spite of Macfarren. The point is worth labouring because we are being deafened at the moment with loud contentions from new Macfarrens about the pentatonic scale, and the whole tone scale, and polytonality, and atonality, and the division of the whole tone into thirds or quarters, and other immensely interesting scientific matters-scientific matters, because they have nothing to do with art. Art is concerned with results, not means. A picture is not a fraction better or worse because an armless artist has painted it with his feet. There is no weight for age handicap in art. To be concerned with the years or size or deformities or social rank of an artist is to leave the world of art for the different world of sport or journalism. What we have to look for is the beauty which is truth-that is, the beauty which succeeds in making itself believed. So whether a composer has advanced to the whole tone scale or retreated to the pentatonic scale is important only to the musical logician or analyst—that is, it is important only after the event of success. The cathedral organists and doctors of music who used to set the libretti of the late Joseph Bennett in the safe style of Mendelssohn or Brahms have not survived for all their orthodoxy; 'Tristan' and 'The Meistersinger' survive, not because

they were loudly denounced or acclaimed as the Artwork of the future,' but simply because they succeed. We apply to them precisely the same test that we apply to the Freischütz' overture, or the madrigal in The Mikado': we ask them to give us musical enjoyment each in its own way. If they do that, we like them; if they do not, we refuse to listen. A composition is neither admirable because it is polytonal nor admirable because it is not. We attach no importance to scales, or modes, or continuous melody, or theories of composition; we want artistic pleasure, and we are not to be persuaded or bullied by mere talk. Musical success is the final test. Wagner's music succeeds in spite of his prose works; the music of one English imitator continues to fail in spite of his.

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