"He held a high view of his office, and would make a sacrifice of self rather than a sacrifice of truth. It is difficult to calculate the extent of your loss. Musicians succeed musicians; they being dead may yet speak. But the critic's words are ephemeral; they remain in the files of the newspapers. For musicians there are schools; but what school is there for critics? In music we need guides, men with a wide horizon, a general culture, men unfettered by musical faction, with definite ideals, with command of the English tongue, of courage and of true instinct. Such an one, I take it, was Mr. Arthur Johnstone. Who will fill his place?"
Upon this precise statement of the case we could not try to improve. We can only add some words upon the nature of the man apart from his profession. In an estimate of Johnstone's character the foremost place must be assigned to his love of truth in all things; this virtue was the touchstone he applied to his friends and to all artistic work. M. Vantyn happily quotes, as the most appropriate motto for him, Locke's words, "To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world and the seed-plot of all other virtues," adding by way of comment, "In everything, in all intercourse, upon all occasions, under all circumstances, whether in enjoyment, in work, in serious intercourse, he was a gentleman in the strictest sense of the word." Next we may place his wonderful sympathy with the oppressed in every class. Even where there was much that roused his anger in the sinner, as in the case of Oscar Wilde, he was indignant at the merciless treatment he received, and pleaded for a minor punishment. Where his sympathy could have free play he was tender in the extreme, he would take infinite personal trouble, and give all that his modest means permitted. He was fond of animals, he disliked the idea of killing them in "sport," and was glad that most of his intimate friends shared his view. But he was not unreasonable on this point; and, to take the real test question, he was not absolutely opposed to vivisection under stringent conditions. For all his early talk of the "joy of life" he was more anxious to secure it for others than for himself. He was tolerant under his armour, and would rebuke pointless severity by saying, "Well, well, there is something wrong with almost everybody;" but he did not extend this indulgence to the cruel and pedantic. His youthful rebelliousness, apartness, and questioning of society did not all vanish, but were taken up and transformed into a more flexible temper; for they had never been the mere plant of nihilism and vanity, that a selfish nature manures in its barren private garden. Some of his friends valued, above all, his total lack of the small inquisitiveness, which he resented more than anything in others. He was deep in his work or in the minor preparations for the day, and did not trouble much about his friends' affairs. But when anything was doing, he emerged at once. When one of his old companions was in suspense over illness at home, and yet could do nothing but wait, Johnstone planned for him and personally conducted an elaborate series of distractions and amusements covering about four hours—not an easy thing to do in Manchester—each of them appearing to be improvised as it came. The trouble over, he relapsed into thought and went his ways. There were many such incidents. A picturesque and noble character of this kind, with its traits of quaintness, claims thus much record, and the more so that reticence made it less easy to discover. To the public the journalist is such a mere spectral hand and pen, writing by lamplight, without a face or form behind it, as we hear of in a certain class of old ghost-stories. Johnstone had become more than this to many of his readers. But they could not know him as a man. It is well, therefore, to lift so much of his privacy as may enable them partially to do so. He went through the world scornful of its common valuations, appraising for himself, watching with a certain isolation, and always preferring (if he must choose) liberty to happiness, and rightful pride to obvious advantage. But he was all the more human for that.
We may here say something about his piano playing. Johnstone, of course, never professed to be more than an amateur. He was quite aware that the difference in executive skill between the professional and the best amateur is almost as great in music as in billiards; and that, to paraphrase Matthew Arnold's saying, "Technique is three-fourths of musical performance." As to the remaining fourth his playing stood on a very high level. Even in undergraduate days the charm of his rendering was considerable, always carefully thought out and individual. If he had never heard a piece performed, his insight was remarkable, lighting instinctively upon what one realised was the best way of playing it. His touch was very delicate; he never forced the tone out of a piano, and always avoided anything that might be called hard hitting. He liked best playing something in the style of a Rubinstein barcarolle, where the music should speak through a veil of sound. But his strength really lay in a fine sense of rhythm, a rare gift even among great pianists. Whatever piece he attempted he took at the proper pace, even if occasionally a note might be missed or a passage blurred, rather than give a false idea of it by playing too slowly; what was altogether beyond his powers he left alone. On his return from the Cologne Conservatoire his actual execution was at its best, the fingers strong and lissom; and, being at the top of his physical health, his playing was full of almost exuberant vitality. A weak circulation was always a trial, and it was his habit to warm his fingers at a fire, when possible, before sitting down to the piano. It was perhaps a small talent, but singularly dainty and cultivated, for which our memory of twenty-five years is profoundly grateful.
We might expect that the qualities he aimed at in his own playing would be those that most attracted him in the great pianists of his period. Of course he admired at their full value those transcendent players, Rubinstein, Sophie Menter, Paderewski, Rosenthal; but there are also artists equally unapproachable in their own delicate way, such as Pachmann, Godowsky, Reisenauer, Siloti, and it was from them he received the greatest personal pleasure.
As critic his first object was to explain the qualities and scope of the music (in Pater's words, "to disengage its virtue"); to show, if a classic, why it had attained its position, if modern, why it should command serious attention. He never assumed too much musical knowledge on the part of his readers, avoiding the use of technical expressions, still more of stereotyped phrases. Bad work and slovenly performance he could chastise unsparingly, but he never wrote harshly when he recognised genuine effort, and he was very generous in his praise of young performers, and often attended minor concerts at some inconvenience to encourage rising artists. His style was clear and precise, rather expository in tone; coloured when the occasion demanded, and occasionally enriched with allusions to other arts. Thus the elaborate tracery of Gothic architecture exhibited in Strasburg Cathedral (a favourite figure) is employed to illustrate Bach and contrasted with the formal classicism of earlier composers, and the Palladian style of Handel; Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius" is compared to some "jewelled ciboire of the Middle Ages;" a pianist's playing of arabesque passages reminds him of the "arrogance and costly unreason of fine jewellery." His discernment of any new work of permanent value was quick and unerring; we may instance his early estimate of Elgar and indeed of Strauss too (for his position then was uncertain) as having been in advance of general musical opinion, though unquestioned at the present day. Tchaïkovsky's Pathetic Symphony was a more obvious discovery; here he showed his critical power rather in quenching the popular enthusiasm (which he had at first assisted in creating) for this work when the public seemed to have lost all sense of proportion, by reminding his readers that after all "Tchaïkovsky and Dvoràk are inspired barbarians and must not be put on the same level with Beethoven and Schumann." Mention too should be made of his appreciation of Liszt, whose services to music are too frequently ignored—the creator of the modern pianoforte technique, the brilliant and original composer, and the generous friend of Wagner.
In their choice of the articles of which this volume is composed the editors have given special prominence to those on the works of Sir Edward Elgar and Herr Richard Strauss, the two composers of our time who, as Johnstone considered, would bear the largest share in influencing the cause of musical development. Many of the articles were written on the first production of important works, and, in Elgar's case, further impressions are given of later performances of the same work. Those on the great acknowledged masters, if they cannot add much more to our stock of actual knowledge, are interesting as confessions of a sound musical faith. It is also true that the sum of potential energy in the works of these great masters is infinite; in this sense, that they strike a new flash out of every fresh and apprehensive mind. They can beget generations of critics, each with another thing to say. Such criticism is not a mere absorptive or passive process; it is re-creation: it puts into fresh terms, by the art of words, some of the impressions that have been built up of sound without language; or it tells those who have felt the same thing what they did not clearly know or remember that they had felt. The power to explain music is rarer than competence in judging books. It may be thought that amongst Englishmen of our generation Arthur Johnstone had as large a share as any of this re-creative genius.
Musical
Criticisms