"'Even so is English academic music. And I now see why it must be so. It is not in us, because another force takes its place. Like all people we like to shine in that wherein we are most deficient, and the other day I was present at a scene that could hardly be more painful. At the house of a rich and highly distinguished city man I met the famous Sir Somebody Hangar, the composer. The question arose who was the greatest musician? Thereupon Sir Somebody, looking up to the beautiful ceiling of the room, exclaimed dreamily: "Music is of very recent origin...." One of the gentlemen present then asked Sir Somebody whether he had ever heard the reply given to that question by the great Gounod? Sir Somebody contemptuously uttered: "Gounod? It is not worth hearing." I was indignant, and pointedly asked the gentleman to tell us Gounod's reply. The gentleman, looking at Sir Somebody with a curious smile, related:
"'Gounod, on being asked who in his opinion was the greatest musician, said: "When I was a boy of twenty, I said: moi. Ten years later I said: moi et Mozart. Again ten years later I said: Mozart et moi. And now I say: Mozart."'
"This reply," said Alcibiades, "has Attic perfume in it. Having suffered so much, as I have, at the hands of musicians in my time, when dramatic writers were as much musicians as dramatists, I have in my Olympian leisure carefully inquired into the real causes of the rise of modern music.
"'You said a few moments ago, ma très spirituelle dame, that music is the art of poor classes. There is this much truth in that, that modern music has indeed been almost entirely in the hands of middle-class people. This being so, everything depends on the nature and dispositions of the middle class in a given country. In England, for instance, the middle class is totally different from that of France or that of South Germany, the home of German music. The English middle class is cold, dry, gaffeur to the extreme, afflicted with a veritable rage for outward respectability, unsufferably formalist, and deeply convinced of its social inferiority. In such a class nothing remotely resembling German or French music can ever possibly arise. Such a class furnishes excellent business men, and reliable sergeants to the officers of imperial work. But music can no more grow out of it than can a rose out of a poker.
"'This middle class is the result of British Imperialism, and this is how Imperialism has prevented and will, as long as it lasts, always prevent the rise of really fine music in the higher sense of the term. This is also why we Hellenes never achieved greater results in music. Like the English, or the Americans, we never had a real bourgeoisie, or the only possible foster-earth of great music. However, bourgeoisie is only a historic phenomenon, one that is destined to disappear, and with it will disappear all music. Mr Richard Strauss is singing its dirge.'"
When Alcibiades had finished his entertaining tale of women and music in England, the gods and heroes congratulated him warmly, and Zeus ordered that, under the direction of Mozart, all the nymphs and goddesses of the forests and seas shall sing one of the motets of Bach. This they did, and all Venice was filled with the magic songs, which were as pure as those produced by the nymph Echo in the Baptistry at Pisa. All the palaces and the churches of Venice seemed to listen with melancholy pleasure, and St Mark's hesitated to sound the hour lest the spell should be broken. When the motet was ended, the gods and heroes rose and disappeared in the heavens.
CÆSAR ON THE HOUSE OF COMMONS