December 12.
Sir Henry Wood conducting
Went to the Queen's Hall, sat in the Orchestra and watched Sir Henry's statuesque figure conducting thro' a forest of bows, "which pleased me mightily." He would be worth watching if you were stone deaf. If you could not hear a sound, the animation and excitement of an orchestra in full swing, with the conductor cutting and slashing at invisible foes, make a magnificent spectacle.
The face of Sir Henry Wood strikes me as very much like the traditional pictures of Jesus Christ, tho' Sir Henry is dark—the melanic Messiah I call him (very much to my own delight). Rodin ought to do him in stone—Chesterfield's ideal of a man—a Corinthian edifice on Tuscan foundations. In Sir Henry's case there can be no disputing the Tuscan foundations. However swift and elegant the movements of his arms, his splendid lower extremities remain as firm as stone columns. While the music is calm and serene his right hand and baton execute in concert with the left, perfect geometric curves around his head. Then as it gathers in force and volume, when the bows begin to dart swiftly across the fiddles and the trumpets and trombones blaze away in a conflagration, we are all expectant—and even a little fearful, to observe his sabre-like cuts. The tension grows ... I hold my breath.... Sir Henry snatches a second to throw back a lock of his hair that has fallen limply across his forehead, then goes on in unrelenting pursuit, cutting and slashing at hordes of invisible fiends that leap howling out towards him. There is a great turmoil of combat, but the Conductor struggles on till the great explosion happens. But in spite of that, you see him still standing thro' a cloud of great chords, quite undaunted. His sword zigzags up and down the scale—suddenly the closed fist of his left hand shoots up straight and points to the zenith—like the arm of a heathen priest appealing to Baal to bring down fire from Heaven.... But the appeal avails nought and it looks as tho' it were all up for poor Sir Henry. The music is just as infuriated—his body writhes with it—the melanic Messiah crucified by the inappeasable desire to express by visible gestures all that he feels in his heart. He surrenders —so you think—he opens out both arms wide and baring his breast, dares them all to do their worst—like the picture of Moffat the missionary among the savages of the Dark Continent!
And yet he wins after all. At the very last moment he seems to summon all his remaining strength and in one final and devastating sweep mows down the orchestra rank by rank.... You awake from the nightmare to discover the victor acknowledging the applause in a series of his inimitable bows.
One ought to pack one's ears up with cotton wool at a concert where Sir Henry conducts. Otherwise, the music is apt to distract one's attention. R.L.S. wanted to be at the head of a cavalry charge—sword over head—but I'd rather fight an orchestra with a baton.
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
This symphony always works me up into an ecstasy; in ecstatic sympathy with its dreadfulness I could stand up in the balcony and fling myself down passionately into the arena below. Yet there were women sitting alongside me to-day—knitting! It so annoyed and irritated me that at the end of the first movement I got up and sat elsewhere. They would have sat knitting at the foot of the Cross, I suppose.
At the end of the second movement, two or three other women got up and went home to tea! It would have surprised me no more to have seen a cork extract itself from its bottle and promenade.
Tschaikovsky