IV
The same premature labelling may be seen in "musical London" with the appearance of every new composer and the exhumation of every old score. While Verdi is tolerated and Gounod deplored, Ravel is—at the moment—a safe winner, and a liking for Delius commands respect, Debussy holds his own; Richard Strauss is still a bone of friendly contention; de Lara and Ethel Smyth are encouraged as British composers by a perplexed audience which has been taught to distrust British compositions; but "musical London" has decided that it is time for a reaction against Puccini.
Does "musical London" ever turn an introspective eye to watch the manufacture of musical opinion? The spectator who wanders from box to box on the first night of a new opera, may see the gentle herd-hypnotism at work.
The Honest Ignoramus, who goes to Covent Garden to see his friends between the acts. "Well, what d'you think of it?"
The Languid Woman who will not give herself away. "I heard it in Monte Carlo, you know, this winter."
A Voice. It's a pure crib from The Barber.
Another. Rossini and water.
Another. It's quite too deliciously old-fashioned.
The Honest Ignoramus strays into the next box, shedding some of his honesty by the way. "Rather Rossini and water, don't you think? I don't know anything about it, of course, but it seemed to me a mere up-to-date Barber."
A Voice. It's very modern certainly. I confess I'm rather old-fashioned....
He moves on. "D'you like all this modern stuff? If we are to have Rossini——"
A Voice (impressively). He gets no value from his orchestra ... Rossini? Who's talking about Rossini?...
He beats a retreat and recuperates in the corridor.
A Voice. I was lunching with George to-day. He'd been to one of the rehearsals and he said that no one since Wagner had understood the wood-wind like this man. A pure genius. I'm giving you his actual words. Whether it'll pay I can't tell. It's rather modern for Covent Garden....
The Honest Ignoramus returns to the first box. "Only one more act? I'm rather enjoying this. I suppose some people would call it a bit modern, but it's rather a relief to find a man who's not afraid to use his orchestra. The, er, wood-wind...."
All (gratefully). "Too wonderful!... Were you here on Thursday?..."
The press-notices next day will add a few more technical terms, but regular attendants at the opera can say whether this is a caricature of the manner in which contemporary musical opinion is formed.[55] None will wait to think; few will shew the courage to express their own unsupported feelings; every one will pass a criticism of some kind. And, when the aggregate judgement has been launched, all will be half converted to it. Perhaps only financial good or harm is done to a contemporary work, but "musical London" will not so circumscribe its criticism: there must be an opinion on everything, a label for every one; and against the verdict of the hour there is, in all eternity, no appeal.
Here, indeed, is the weakness of all artistic criticism: the critic is as greatly influenced by atmosphere, fashion and the æsthetic limitations of a period as the creator; sometimes it is the same atmosphere, and each new novel by George Eliot was acclaimed a classic because her critics believed as strongly in her formula as she did; sometimes the atmosphere is different, and readers in this generation may praise Wordsworth and belittle Byron as vehemently as another generation praised Byron and belittled Wordsworth. Will it never be understood that in æsthetic taste there can be no finality?
There is little harm in awarding a Nobel or a Hawthornden prize if we remember that the judges are breathing the same atmosphere as the candidates and that their verdict concerns an author of their own generation; in forty years' time their taste may seem as grotesquely perverted as that of the mid-Victorians who exhausted their superlatives on George Eliot or of the assassin who struck down Keats. That is the price exacted of the critic by posterity for the infallibility which he enjoys in his lifetime. The harm is done when these verdicts are accepted at second-hand by a public which has not read the evidence nor heard the trial. It is neither practicable nor desirable that the work of to-day should be pusillanimously referred to the judgement of to-morrow; but an artistic assessment, to have any value, must be the sum of individual and independent opinions. That independence would disappear with the birth of a literary London. The propaganda of a coterie, the direction of critics, the explanations of authors and the herd-voice of literary society narrow artistic sympathy and stunt artistic originality. Long may England be spared the unofficial Academy.