EXPRESSION AND DESIGN

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 61, 15 March 1924, Page 16

EXPRESSION AND DESIGN

HEBRAIC INFLUENCE ON MUSIC

Sl' Henry Hadow (vice-chancellor o£ Sheffield University), in a lecture on "The Balance of Expression and Design in Music" (says the "Morning Post"), traced the development of expression through the ages from the Hebrews and the Greeks. Some critics, ha said, held that the Greeks had failed lamentably in musical expression,l as in their "Hymn to Apollo," but that charge should not be made, because we could not understand them. They aimed at a totally different thing from what we meant by music. Theirs was simply a method of reciting poetry, and, looked at Jfrom that point of view, a great many of our difficulties would disappear. The whole object of Greek music was musical expression. He could See ro evidence of design in it at ,all. In its origin it was intended entirely for the recitation of verse. Much of the Old Testament, especially the1 Psalms, was obviously written to be sung; to music. David bad" a choir of 1000 voices, not all, probably, used at the same time. Ho believed there was more evidence of Hebrew influence in musical expression than critics were ready to admit. It was not-.all Greek. The Greek and the Hebrew stream flowed side by side into later civilisation, and begun to affect the course of medieval music. The old English song, "Summer is a-oumin' in"—the first treatment of melody, and written in 1240—could not have been written unless the writer had been trained in something that went before, but this apparently had been lost to us. Through the ages the expression to emotion was I aimed at, and Handel himself laid the ! most stress on the emotional side.