MUSIC
IT is a comparatively recent discovery, for all but scholars, that much of the admired grace, elegance and charm of Mozart is not so much his own as that of his century. His language was, in all major respects, that of his contemporaries, and his supreme excel- lence lies in his use of it, in his forming a personal style from a fusion of the older contrapuntal and the newer galant manners and using that style for a new expressiveness, a new emotional com- munication. Since this discovery there has been much talk of " style," not as a personal manner of expression, but more abstractly, as a general sense of propriety and distinction which can sometimes lend interest even to unpromising material.
Stravinsky is generally credited with this gift of style, this instinctive knowledge of how to behave in the world of sounds. But listening to the performance of Apollo Musagetes by the Phil- harmonia Orchestra under Markevitch, I could not help wondering whether this concentration on " style " does not defeat its own ends. Is not style in this sense something like breeding or happiness, something that automatically eludes anyone who sets his mind or his heart on its possession, and is either granted gratis— that is, as a " grace "—or not granted at all ? The " style " of Apollo Musagetes is certainly the only thing of any interest about it.; but so, too, is the air of would-be breeding about the snob who assumes it, and Stravinsky, though not ludicrous like the snob, is very nearly as tedious. Mozart's style was an admirable instru- ment, acquired gradually and unconsciously and used for the great communications of his last ten years. Stravinsky's is consciously formed arid an end in itself, for he has nothing whatever to communicate.
Richard Lewis at the Wigmore Hall on February 11th battled with great success against the difficulties of Janacek's song sequence, Diary of a Young Man who Disappeared. The material of a one- act opera is here treated in twenty-two songs for tenor solo and piano, with smaller parts for contralto solo and women's chorus. Janacek, like Mussorgsky, based his melodic line on the speech- rhythms of his native tongue—in his case the form of Czech spoken in Moravia. In translation this line loses its aptness, even when it is not actually clumsy, but the freshness and passion of these songs are communicated in spite of this grave disadvantage. John Wills played the important piano part wholly admirably, but Constance Shacklock was ill-cast as the gipsy.
Beethoven's Mass in D was given by the L.P.O. and Choir, under van Beinum, at the Albert Hall on February 9th. The singable parts of this work were, on the whole, well sung. The dogmatic statements of the Credo and part of the Gloria reduced Beethoven to a frenzy of incoherence, a fine frenzy if you like, but none the less incoherent and therefore inartistic ; and there is nothing that can be done about it by any performers however gifted.
MARTIN COOPER. MARTIN COOPER.
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