“There are exceptions, of course,” I ventured. “Newman, for example.”
“No; Ernest Newman is not altogether an exception. He is an unbeliever, and therefore cannot understand religious music—music that is at once reverential, mystical and devout.”
“‘Devout’?” whispered I to myself. Aloud I said:
“A man’s reason, I think, may reject a religion, though his emotional nature may be susceptible to its slightest [84] ]appeal. Besides, Newman has a most profound admiration for your The Dream of Gerontius.”
Elgar was silent for a few minutes. Then, with an air of detachment and with great inconsequence, he said:
“Baughan, of The Daily News, cannot hum a melody correctly in tune. He looks at music from the point of view of a man of letters. So does Newman, fine musician though he is. Newman advocates programme music. Now, I do not say that programme music should not be written, for I have composed programme music myself. But I do maintain that it is a lower form of art than absolute music. Newman, I believe, refuses to acknowledge that either kind is necessarily higher or lower than the other. He has, as I have said, the literary man’s point of view about music. So have many musical critics.”
“And so,” I interpolated, “if one has to accept what you say as correct, have many composers, and composers also who are not specifically literary. And, after what you have said, I find that strange. Take the case of Richard Strauss, all of whose later symphonic poems have a programme, a literary basis. Do you, for that reason, declare that Strauss regards music from the literary man’s point of view—Strauss who, of all living musicians, is the greatest?”
He paused for a few moments, and it seemed to me that our pace quickened as we left the bank of the river and made for a pathway across a meadow. But he would not take up the argument; stammering a little, he said:
“Richard Strauss is a very great man—a fine fellow.”
But as that was not the point under discussion, I felt that either his mind was wandering or that he could think of no reply to my objection.