A few days later Mr Julius Harrison came to my aid. The committee, it appeared, objected to “her white breasts gleamed” and also to:
Her lips, tired of tame kisses, parted with
The expectancy of proud assault....
I changed those lines, and the work in due course was performed at Norwich, and in Queen’s Hall, London. Later on, when my little poem was sung in Southport in its original form, with Mr Havergal Brian’s music (for he also had honoured me), Mr Landon Ronald conducting, the members of the audience did not leave their seats when the “objectionable” lines occurred; rather did they seem to lean forward a little and listen more intently.
I have mentioned this incident, not because in itself it is important, but because it so beautifully illustrates the point of view of our Cathedral Festivals. Their “secular” concerts are echoes of the concerts given in the Cathedral. They hate (or else they are afraid of?) every emotion that is not a religious emotion. They think that God made our souls and the devil our bodies. They may be right; if they are, it is clear the devil is not lacking in consideration.
. . . . . . . .
There is no doubt that our most ecstatic moments at the Cathedral Festivals were supplied by Wagner’s Parsifal, which Mr J. F. Runciman, in his little book on this composer, describes as “this disastrous and evil opera.” Only excerpts from it, of course, were given; all “objectionable lines” were cut out. If Parsifal is to [195] ]be given on the platform at all—and, in view of the fact that we seldom have it on the stage, why not?—then it had better be given on a platform that has been erected in a spacious and beautiful cathedral. I remember those white voices floating down from a place out of sight near the roof, away above the clerestory. I always used to try to obtain a seat near some dimly stained window so that it might for me blot out the rather bewildered or consciously “rapt” faces of my fellow-creatures, for, in listening to noble music, I invariably feel much greater than, and curiously irritated by the presence of, other people.
And it used to be so fine to come forth from the Cathedral at noon, step into that mellow September English sunshine which I have not seen for nearly three years, and walk by the river ... walk perhaps a mile or so and come back to the hotel to eat cool meats and cool salads and drink cool wine. It was at these times I used to sigh and long for Bayreuth and wonder if I should ever see the grave of Wagner in the garden of Villa Wahnfried in that little Bavarian town.
It was at Gloucester, I think, that one year I was pursued by a certain hard-working, but not very talented, composer who, having gained a most extensive “popular” public for his work, was now anxious to win the suffrage of more cultivated people. Most unhappily for me, he took it into his head that my musical criticism had some influence in the north, and though he was quite wrong in this assumption, I was never able to convince him of his error. Wherever I went, lo! he was there with me. And always under his arm was a musical score, a score of his own composition. Something new, he assured me; something really quite modern. Would I look at it? I did. It was feeble, paltry and bombastic, but I did not like to tell him so. But when he pressed me for an opinion I said, what was near enough to the truth, that it was a great advance on his previous work. This seemed to [196] ]please him, and he took to inviting me out to lunch. If ever I went into the hotel smoke-room for a quiet pipe, I would invariably notice a vague but self-important figure in the doorway, and presently would hear the unmistakable pop that a champagne bottle so deliciously makes when it is opened. A bubbling glass would be placed at my side.
“Now, Richard Strauss in his Ein Heldenleben ...” his voice would begin. And he would proceed to tell me all about Ein Heldenleben and its beauties. To bewilder him, I used to assert that Carmen seemed to me a much finer work than Strauss’s Elektra, and, because he was very ignorant and because he had not the slightest appreciation of Strauss, he used to look at me rather pitifully, and would eventually confess that he too liked Bizet more than he liked Strauss and that, indeed, it appeared to him that Arthur Sullivan....