He is terribly in earnest—in earnest about Brahms and perhaps about Frau Schumann also. He wrinkles his forehead about Brahms and poises a white hand in the air.... Please do not imagine that I do not love Brahms: I adore him. But Brahms was not God. He was not even a god. Whereas Wagner.... It was [255] ]in 1911, I think, that I heard Dr Walford Davies preaching about Brahms. Now, if you preach about Brahms, you are eternally lost, for you exclude both Wagner and Hugo Wolf.
How exasperating it must be to possess a temperament that can accept only part of what is admirable! It seems to me that Walford Davies distrusts his intellect: in estimating the worth of music, he seems to say, intellectual standards, artistic standards, are of no value. To him the only sure test is temperamental affinity. And he wishes all temperaments to conform to his own limitations.
I have seen Dr Davies near Temple Gardens with choir-boys hanging on his arm, with choir-boys prancing before him and following faithfully behind him. A shepherd with his sheep! I am sure he exerts upon them what is known as a “good influence.” But in matters of art how bad that good influence may be! Did ever a worshipper of Wagner walk the rooms of the Y.M.C.A.?
. . . . . . . .
I have a very bad memory for the names of public-houses and hotels (though I love these places dearly), and I regret that I am unable to recall the name of that very attractive hotel in Birmingham where, early one evening, Dr Vaughan Williams, travel-stained and brown with the sun, walked into the lounge and began a conversation with me. He had walked an incredible distance, and though, physically, he was very tired, his mind was most alert, and we fell to talking about music. He told me that he had studied with Ravel, and when he told me this I reviewed in my mind in rapid succession all Vaughan Williams’ compositions I could remember, trying to detect in any of them traces of Ravel’s influence. But I was unsuccessful. To me he, with his essential British downrightness, his love of space, his freedom from all mannerisms and tricks of style, seemed Ravel’s very antithesis.
[256]
]Like myself, he had come to Birmingham to listen to music, and the following evening, after we had heard a long choral work of Bantock’s, we had what might have developed into a very hot argument. With him was Dr Cyril Rootham, a very charming and cultivated musician, and both these composers were amazed and amused when, having asked my opinion of Bantock’s work, I became dithyrambic in its praise.
“But I thought you were modern?” asked Williams.
“I am anything you please,” said I; “when I hear Richard Strauss I am modern, and when I listen to Bach I am prehistoric. But why do you ask?”
“Moody and Sankey,” murmured Rootham.
Williams laughed.