At any rate, one cannot read without being moved the following words which appeared in the Daily Telegraph after a recent performance at the Norwich Festival, 1911. They were contained in an article, not only brilliantly, but even sympathetically written, yet this is what it says:—
"Time was when this work was appraised as a world's masterpiece for ever. As a fact, it affords but one more example of the many that go to prove the rule as to the absurdity of prophesying unless one knows. I would not go so far as some one was heard to go yesterday, who vouchsafed the opinion that even the singers seemed somewhat abashed. That is a gross exaggeration. But it is no exaggeration to say that none of them ... seemed very deeply moved by the extreme placidity and suavity of the phrases once deemed to be of purest gold. Nor, for that matter, did the chorus themselves. The truth is that time has not dealt over kindly with this work."
Yet this very work, let it be remembered, was not only the most popular, but practically the single one of its kind written by an Englishman that had ever touched the imagination of the English people. To go still further, it may be said with absolute truth, that it was the most successful sacred work produced in England up to the time of Sir Edward Elgar, since Mendelssohn introduced the "Elijah," at Birmingham in 1846.
The inference, which seems to me obvious, is that no work that is not typical of the country from which it emanates possesses those qualities that make for permanence.
The amelioration in the position of the native composer, to which we alluded just now,
was due to the fact that he had not lost belief in his own powers so far as sacred music was concerned; hence the revival of public interest in this form of art was, naturally, a source of gratification. Unhappily, however, the fact cannot be ignored that instead of pursuing their way on their old lines and traditions, even the most gifted among the English composers gave way to the fatal temptation to try and write on the lines of such a colossal genius as Handel.
The power to hurl the thunderbolts of Jove is given to few, and at the time of which we write, there were certainly no Englishmen among that select company.
We need but cite one example.
William Boyce, one of the most gifted of English composers of the eighteenth century, was born in 1710, and was, therefore, about twenty-eight years of age when the oratorio "Saul" was produced. That he completely fell under the new influence is quite apparent, as little examination of his music, dating from that time, is sufficient to shew. Not only did he allow it to affect his own work, but it carried him to the absolutely indefensible point of taking one of Purcell's greatest compositions, and revising and adding to it, in order to bring it into conformity with the great school which had arisen. There are two kinds of imitation, conscious and unconscious. Such an act as this can only belong to the former. From this date may be said to have commenced that system of imitation of foreign music that has been the