THE DEARTH OF SONG.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14853, 2 December 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DEARTH OF SONG.

»T FRANK MORTON'.

I ntver have believed in crying-drtwn the present times, nor in feigning any inconsolable bitterness of regret for the days that are past.. lam persuaded that on the whole these days are better than those were. I believe that life daily becomes more spacious and more free in the older countries of the world, arid that humanity (on the main) grows wiser and kinder all the time. Science, which we are so apt to think of as a cold abstraction that in sorno way threatens to defeat the intentions of religion, is really a tender and comely handmaid caring for the little children of the world. During tho last seventy years or so, there has been a tremendous upspringing of things admirable and beneficent. Hospitals of all sorts have multiplied and grown strong. Even the men imprisoned in jails are now permitted and enabled to live with a sort of decency. Noble reformative movements are going forward in a thousand helds. Nor can it. be seriously pretended that this new fertility in the growth of human kindness is directly or especially due to religious influence. In two thousand years Christianity had been able to do very little in this regard. Up to the verv recent beginning of the new time, criminals and mentally-diseased persons were treated vilely. Hospitals were few and rough. But what I may call the human attitude has changed : the race has not become more religious but more amenable to the essential intentions of all religions. .Science, incidentally, has done much to help us to this desirable condition. The introduction of anaesthetics, antiseptics, and asceptics has alleviated the lot of the sufferer and robbed grim Death himself of some of his fiercest ancient terrors. The operat-ing-room is no longer a shrieking shambles.

So humanity advances, as I said at the beginning. It is true that men may not go to church as regularly and devoutly as some of us would like: but they behave, as a rule, remarkably well in the world outside tho churches. If you doubt that, take the one matter of war. During nearly twenty centuries, the earth has been full of wars, which Christianity had been hopeless to check. Indeed, some of the ghastliest and ' bitterest of wars of all had been supported or provoked by the Church. There were, for instance, the Crusades, which filled all Southern Europe- with misery and blood and squalor. To-day we are already on the threshold of the great revulsionthe revulsion . against the ignominy and brutality and absurdity of

war. You will observe, then, that I am by no means a dcrider of my century. Looking back across the agos, I am forced to the conclusion that a man could not have well been born into any better time than this. I have no special quarrel with the world as I find it. It is a world of manifold and unexampled opportunity. The prospects stimulate. We live in clean houses, and our habits are for the most part very decent. We eat wholesome food, and get plenty of it. We dress, on the whole, very sanely. We are better protected from the worst diseases than the race has ever been ; and in the age-long right with vermin" we at last have conquered. Humanity is stepping out of the stink. .*'■''"". But wo have yet to wait for the revulsion against Philistinism. We are still sunk in the mire of what (for want of a better term) I may call suburban thinking. Every little pawky midget of us is prepared to set- his perfectly unauthoritative opinion aginst the sifted opinion of the world. That bad beast Prejudice has us by tho scruff, and is for ever knocking our silly heads together. Take a case in point. Some time ago. I translated a beautiful and striking bit of allegory by M. Remy de CJourmont, and published the translation in a magazine. Straightway there came - to me a letter from a correspondent in Auckland. He protested against the publication of what it was his whim to consider blasphemous matter. He was not . a subscriber to the magazine concerned, and it was plain that he knew nothing whatever of cosmopolitan literai ture : he merely used his inalienable right as a British Philistine to stick his perky nose impertinently into matters which he did not in the least understand. But M. Remy de Gourmont (need I say?) is a man of a reverent mind, and a very notable writer indeed—probably the greatest writer on earth in his own manner. He. is a frank critic of life. He writes to express his honest convictions, and not to tickle the susceptibilities of rather stupid persons in the suburbs of Auckland or Old Salem. And for his convictions there is this to be said: He is a man of vast learning and profound intelligence ; he arrives at his conclusions by logical and i legitimate processes. He is never the slave of preconception, and he never cultivates a bias. Such a man cannot bo ', condemned without argument ; and in order "to argue with him effectively, you must- be on his own plane, well enough armed and equipped to meet him with a certain confidence face to face. I should I not dream of arguing with my friend A. ) A. Grace on matters of Maori mythology ' and character ; simply because- I have i sense" enough to recognise that he knows j enormously more about those subjects than j I do. So we come at last to the point at which I set out to speak about. The futility of our popular songs makes a deplorable spot on the sun of our progress. If you retort that folks sang greater twaddle during the Victorian epoch, I admit that you are right ; but they also sang greater songs. They had very good and very bad ; they had hot prostituted their souls to an I invariable and deadening mediocrity. I : cannot recall a single popular song of to-day that is worthy to live in the memory and affection of a nation. We have no English song-writers of eminence left : nothing comparable, for instance, to the human sweetness and captivating , gaiety of a Beranger. We are all for sickly sentiment and Stephen Adams' rubbish and raspberry jam. The small company of the ! good song-composers that survive—Arthur Mallinson and one or two others —are not in any sense popular. We want the shallow or murky lilts of musical- comedy, or the futile specious prettiness of American ragtime. . We have a thing (characteristic and significant) a great liking for songs about coons and moons and "Ho! my Dolores!'"- When a decent opera-company I tomes along, we yawn through its performances without any redeeming trace of genu-. ine enjoyment, merely because it is the right thing to be there. But we are i still praying for a renascense of English j opera just when. we should be beseeching j all the high gods to send us a few good j writers of English songs. The songs I I hear tinkling about me in these suburbs | pretty well every night make my head ! ache. '