Gulf Between Competence And Brilliance

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30100, 6 April 1963, Page 3

Gulf Between Competence And Brilliance

Testament Of Music. By Ernest Newman. Putman. 312 pp. Index. It is bad luck for the critic that he is remembered only by his mistakes. Hanslick’s comments on the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto have earned him an ill-deserved place in musical history and no doubt Bernard Shaw’s opinion of Brahms will be recalled long after any other musical views he had. But that is the luck of the game and anyway, most people will prefer a provocative critic who is wrong to a dull fellow who is right and there are far too many of the latter about. Ernest Newman was one of them. Grant be was erudite, wise, and more often that not, right, but then, compare him with a man like Shaw and see the gulf between competence and brilliance. There is a golden oppor. tunity to make the comparison in this collection of some of Newman's articles which, written during a period extending for nearly 60 years, have been edited by Herbert Van Thai. One excellent section is devoted to the Newman-Shaw controversy over Richard Strauss. This came about after Newman had, in 1910, prophesied no more than a few short years for Elektra, believing that the public would “not long continue to spend an hour and three quarters in the theatre for about half an hour’s enjoyment.” Well, Newman, for once at least, was wrong and Shaw was right, and whale one will not hold this against Newman who was later on to commit a volte face as far as Elektra was concerned, it is a reflection on his writings that his view of the issue is remembered only because of the reply it provoked from Shaw.

Newman was a first-rate intellect with great catholicity of taste. In music he was entirely self-taught. Unfortunately, like many selfeducated people, he took himself far too seriously and it was not surprising that we are delighted when he is wrong. He was. tn fact, one of those rather pontifical critics who have dominated the English musicaJ scene for too long. All too often one fee’s he is writing more for posterity toan his own time and if he occasionally falls, we enjoy the thud.

He has come many a cropper. Who today would agree with the ogiofoft to

held in 1912 of Granville Bantock.— I can think of none, since Bach, whose choral music talks so gravely and wisely of the profounder issues of life and death. Mr Bantock’s Omar Khayyam is particularly ricn in music of this type. . . . or his remarks about Ariadne auf Naxos?— Ariadne has been a failure in Germany. So far as the music of it is concerned, there is little doubt that it will be a failure in England also. He can be amusing: The fact that there are hardly five decent musical critics In Europe, while there are at least five thousand decent fiddlers, would seem to show that the good critic Is a type a thousand times as rare as the good fiddler. and he can be penetrating with it: Moussorgsky is the only case known in musical history of a composer with a clear enough consciousness of himself to know how far genius can be trusted unassisted. He is. above all, sound—but soundness is wfhat we are entitled to expect in any critic if it comes to that. Soundness may spell good substance but the most rhemorable critics are those who . are most stimulating Newman deserves respect but he can be a crushing bore.