DO MUSICIANS LOVE ONE ANOTHER?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15551, 7 March 1914, Page 1 (Supplement)

DO MUSICIANS LOVE ONE ANOTHER?

BY TOHUNGA. We know that all bowlers love one another and most yachtsmen and that although there may be jealousies among fishermen it ib bad form to show it. Even doctors have a good word to say for one another and stick together as closely as .sailormen against outsiders, while other professions, trades, and callings are generally marked by the clamishness and mutual friendliness of their membersBut do musicians love one another? To tell the truth they are rarely accused of any keen affection.

We are often told that Music is the highest of all the arts, that it only deals with the ennobling and the elevating, that it is devoid of all viciousness and an embodiment of the Beautiful and the True. It can't be all this, of course. Obviously it can't possibly cover the wide range of the emotions and the passions without being satanic as well as angelic, degrading as well as uplifting. Still—it is a popular delusion among music-lovers that only the better 6ide of human nature is responsive to the drum, the fiddle, the trombone, the cello, the piano, the organ, the sackbut, and the rest of them, when masterfully played. And doubtless, the delusion goes far towards realisation. But does it make professional musicians love one another?

Incidentally, it may be remarked that every strong delusion clearly assists realisation. Faith-healing depends upon the fact that very few sick persons are as ill as they think they are and that if they can be induced to think themselves better they are better. We are often told that the test of faith-healing is a broken leg and that when a faith-healer can knit fractured bones there will be something to go on. But a broken leg or a typhoid germ doesn't depend on delusion; on the other hand, good nursing helps bones to set and germs to die by inducing the comfortable and contented physical condition in which Mother Nature can do her best for her children. Persuade the broken-limbed or fevered patient that it is all right, that he is soon going to get well, and his chances are increased immensely ! Doctors universally recognise that the mental state is supremely important and work scientifically to have faith, hope, and even charity on their side.

And -talking of faith-healing, is it not true that despondency can kill? Normal men and women of the higher races, bred through countless generations of self-con-trol and -discipline, taught for ages to think and act somewhat on their own initiative, cannot so readily be healed by faith or killed by despair. Among us the mind goes before its depression kills the body. W>e cannot easily sit down and die from sheer despondency. But the Maori could; the Polynesian can; the Red Indian can; most of the primitive races when they choose can settle to dying as they settle down to sleep. Which is a long, long way from music and the love musicians ■ ought to have for one another-

To most of us it sometimes seems as though musicians are often demoralised by the-very music which is supposed to bring out all that is noblest and highest in men. They are often so jealous of one another. iFh&y Saie ,t>{Ua_so-.viiidictiyp. in their jealousies., They are. often so petty in their criticisms, And so impossible in their likes and dislikes. Musicians in themselves, sweet-tempered and lovable, artistic and intelligent, often hide all their finer nature when commenting on one another, and stem to have no deadlier enmities than towards their fellow-artists. Perhaps they all love one another, but certainly they don't always show their love. And why? For everything under the sun there ii a cause, a reason, even for the striking of lightning and the whim of a woman.

And possibly, loving brethren, the cause of this apparent unlovingness of musicians may be that they believe in their art, and are really jealous, not of one another as men, but of one another as rival interpreters. The more intensely national a British Tory is the more bitterly he hates the British Liberal, whom he conceives of as dragging the fair name of England in the mire—yet the Liberal also loves England, and similarly hates the partisan whose politics he abhors. When men believed with all their body, soul, and strength, Calvinist hated Catholic and Royalist fought Parliamentarian; but, now, most of us look with curiosity at religious bitterness, and we remark comfortably that a limited monarchy possesses the virtues of all political forms and the weaknesses of none. The doctor has an humble heart underneath all bis pomposities, searching ever for new knowledge, and looking forward to new truths; but the musician is a disciple of prophets, a believer in the gods that have spoken, and History teaches us that narrowness and conviction ever go. hand in hand.

Music may not be as great an art as its fond devotees assert it to be, and yet it can reach our heart-strings sometimes, and play upon them until this world melts around us and we pass—even the uncultured of us—into a strange spirit-world that has neither space nor time nor need for words. And, perhaps! And again, perhaps! The art that can lift even the outsider to a glimpse of such a world may be indeed the greatest art of all. For the things that are, the Art of Letters is easily master; but who shall judge an art that opens to us things that yet are not.

This world that yet is not, that perchance may never be, this spirit-world of Music, has not been stormed by reason or by intellect, by cold calculation or by mathematical design. It has been reached on the wings of faith, attained by passion, created from the emotions. We only know of it through the musicians. It only exists through the intensity of their belief. Without them it would cease and vanish utterly. Consciously or unconsciously they are not merely keepers of the gates, but actually trustees of an incantation. Is it to be wondered at that they hold as sacred every letter of their magic formulae — every movement, every sound, every twist and turn of their world-creating ritual?

You may-say that each and every musician cannot be the only keeper of the keys, but surely he can believe himself to be the keeper of the keys, he and those few whom he acknowledges as kindred spirits. He does believe so, in Auckland as in Munich, everywhere. Because he believes so, and has the narrowness, as well as the earnestness of that conviction, he is free of the world which is not as other worlds, and gives the herd of us glimpses of its portentous mysteries. Some day he may not need to be narrow in order to have this faith of his. Meanwhile we need not trouble ourselves if musicians do not love one another, but can take from each and all of them the priceless gift they give us, andleaving them to their quarrels— pay to all of them the honour which is most justly their due.