MUSIC
Disbandment
EXCEPTING literature, the fine arts have been. among the first and not the least significant casualties of war. The national galleries and museums are shut for the duration ; theatres and concert halls are, after a ten-days' closure, drastically restricted in their opening, and will probably relapse once more into silence when, and if, the fun really begins. In the sphere of music, which is our special concern, one of our chief orchestras has been disbanded, and Sir Thomas Beecham sees yet another of his creations dissolve into dust. There is a certain poetic justice in the manner of the London Philhar- monic Orchestra's demise, for it was the example of visiting orchestras from Berlin and Vienna that, at a time when English orchestral playing had declined to a wretched standard, inspired its formation. Now it is German action that has caused it to crumble.
And it is a victory, if not for Germany, for the Nazi ideal. For if this war is being fought to preserve civilisation, which includes a proper place in life for the things of the mind, any curtailment of our opportunities to enjoy those things, especially at a time when they are more than ever needed to solace and fortify our spirits, is a victory for those who have set at nought in art, no less than in politics and diplomacy, the decencies of human life. That this initial defeat was inevitable, since we had to be prepared for the onslaught that has not yet been made, need not be disputed. But was it really necessary for the defeat to be so signal? The " Proms." ended abruptly on the eve of war. Yet, though' audiences in situ could not hear them, might they not have continued " over the air "? There was the orchestra, and there was Sir Henry Wood, the last man to strike his flag in the face of the enemy. Some drastic curtailment of the programmes would, no doubt, have been necessary, and would have done no harm. With all the organisation in being for the provision of good music, it was a poor response to the challenge of barbarism to succumb without a blow. Whatever technical difficulties there may have been were surely not insuperable to the ingenious staff of Broadcasting House.
The B.B.C. has not come out of the first fortnight of war with any credit so far as the provision of music is concerned. For the first few days between the hourly bulletin of news that was mostly no news they subjected the public to gramo- phone records that seemed to have been taken haphazard from a pile casually shuffled. You might hear a fugue by Bach, followed by a dance-band or Tosti's " Good-bye." That the Corporation must cater for all tastes is acknowledged, but this was to cater for none.
Things have improved a little since then. A real live orchestra may be heard, usually at an inconvenient hour— lunch-time or near midnight—but its performances are limited to thirty minutes. This would be time for some one major work, but the powers that be prefer a " programme " in the conventional sense, which must consist of two or three (and, therefore, minor) compositions. There are admitted difficul- ties, the chief of which is the restriction (for, I am told, very good reasons, though they do not seem to apply to Paris or Berlin) of broadcasting to a single programme, upon which so many different interests have their claims for time. But I doubt most strongly whether in the relegation of serious music to a back place the B.B.C. is really gauging the public taste.
This is a time when beauty is all too rare. It is also precisely the time when we are most sensitive to beauty, whether in nature or in art, a time when it is enhanced in the eye of the beholder by the very feeling that this may be the last occasion of his seeing it. It is for those who have the power to feed that sense, and, in the confusion that has come upon the concert-world, the responsibility rests mainly with the B.B.C. I am not sure whether the restrictive line for evening performances which runs along Wigmore Street encloses the Wigmore and Queen's Halls, which lie just to the north of that street. If not, there is some hope that in the dark months ahead there will be an opportunity of hearing once more living musicians at their work when ours is done, and of forgetting for a while the darkness outside.
DYNELEY HUSSEY.
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