“'Preposterous ass! that never read so far
To know the cause why music was ordained,'
and give me the desired testimonials at once. And so I manage to scrape along without falling under suspicion of being an honest man.
“However, since mystification is not likely to advance us in the long run, may I suggest that there must be something wrong in the professional tests which have been successfully applied to Handel, to Mozart, to Beethoven, to Wagner, and last, though not least, to me, with the result in every case of our condemnation as ignoramuses and charlatans. Why is it that when Dr. Blank writes about music, nobody but a professional musician can understand him; whereas the man-in-the-street, if fond of art and capable of music, can understand the writings of Mendelssohn, Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz, or any of the composers? Why, again, is it that my colleague, W. A., for instance, in criticizing Mr. Henry Arthur Jones' play the other day, did not parse all the leading sentences in it? I will not be so merciless as to answer these questions now, though I know the solution, and am capable of giving it if provoked beyond endurance. Let it suffice for the moment that writing is a very difficult art, criticism a very difficult process, and music not easily to be distinguished, without special critical training, from the scientific, technical and professional conditions of its performance, composition and teaching. And if the critic is to please the congregation, who wants to read only about the music, it is plain that he must appear quite beside the point to the organ-blower, who wants to read about his bellows, which he can prove to be the true source of all the harmony.”[117]
FOOTNOTES:
[105] Mr. T. P. O'Connor.
[106] In speaking of his first appearance as a journalistic writer—in a “London Letter,” written, at the age of fifteen, for a well-known journal in Scarborough—Max Beerbohm once wrote (the Saturday Review, January 26th, 1901): “I well remember that the first paragraph I wrote was in
reference to the first number of the Star, which had just been published. Mr. T. P. O'Connor, in his editorial pronunciamento, had been hotly philanthropic. 'If,' he had written, 'we enable the charwoman to put two lumps of sugar in her tea instead of one, then we shall not have worked in vain.' My comment on this was that if Mr. O'Connor were to find that charwomen did not take sugar in their tea, his paper would, presumably, cease to be issued.... I quote it merely to show that I, who am still regarded as a young writer, am exactly connate with Mr. Shaw. For it was in this very number of the Star that Mr. Shaw, as 'Corno di Bassetto,' made his first bow to the public.” This latter statement, although inaccurate, is essentially correct.
[107] The name of a musical instrument which went out of use in Mozart's time.
[108] In his introduction to the Dramatic Essays of John Forster and George Henry Lewes.
[109] In the Days of Our Youth. In the Star, February 19th, 1906.
[110] The reference is to Rubinstein.