Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1929-12)

December, 1929 The Phonograph Monthly Review 79 Delius’ songs are not many. Best known are the very early, facile, and rather characterless Scandinavian songs, from which Leila Magane recorded Sweet Venvil and Twilight Fancies a few years ago for H. M. V. (E-403), but although this disk is electrical, it has been withdrawn from the 1929 catalogue. However, the November supplement of the English Columbia Company lists a record by Dora Labbette containing Twi- light Fancies, Cradle Song, and The Nightingale (all from the same series). The disk is given a special fillip of interest by the fact that Sir Thomas Beechman plays the piano accompani- ments (L-2344). Delius’ finest songs (apart from the cycle with chorus, Songs of Sunset on poems by Ernest Dowson) are the gloriously ver- dant four Elizabethan Songs (and particularly To Daffodils), and the set of brief, but intensely dramatic Nietzsche Songs. The former contain the distilled essence of Delius’ art and reveal again the keenness and depth of his insight into a world of feeling that is purely English and yet universal in its moving force. The latter are quite unlike any of Delius’ other writings; they are pointed, even mordant, harmonically leaner than is usual with hint, but highly effective. I cannot understand why these two sets are not better known. Adequate recordings are badly needed. There was an acoustical version of To Daffodils by Muriel Brunskill (English Columbia 3876), but it has long been withdrawn. Delius’ piano pieces are few and for the most part hardly notable. The only large work, a concerto, is very early and echoes Grieg and Liszt, and has overtones even of MacDowell. More characteristic is the little Dance for Harpsichord written for Mrs. Gordon Woodhouse; it would be an apt recording choice in either the original or a piano version. Most of the orchestral works are available in two-hand or four-hand transcrip- tions. The vocal-piano score of Sea Drift, the four-hand arrangement of Brigg Fair, and the two-hand arrangement of On Hearing the First Cuckoo are perhaps the best. Finally, a word of caution. Delius’ music is not for everyone. It is and must always be caviar to the general musical public that puts objective qualities first, that wants its music al- ways in the present tense, active voice, imperative mood. Delius’ mind is turned inward; he speaks with reserve; he understates. He not merely disdains the vehemence and glitter that appeal to the majority; they are inherently impossible for him. His music is vom herzen zum herzen. Its beauty is often bitter, usually nostalgic, but al- ways heart-wrenchingly expressive. The unique and unanalyzable enchantment of his works give him a place apart and mark him as one of the most tender and compassionate musical sensi- bilities. Such qualities of serenity and virginal bloom are alien indeed in this nervous, tough- minded age, and so intensely personal and re- strained an art is sorely buffeted and dissipated in the concert hall. But the phonograph provides the medium by which it can be literally “brought home to one”, and in many record libraries the album devoted to Delius disks is the choicest of many choice treasures. Like Proust’s vast novel, Delius’ work is worthy to bear the lines of Shakespeare (applicable to no other music of these days) : When to the sessions oj sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance oj things past. “Canned” vs. “Immortalized” Music By ADOLPH SCHMUCK (Reprinted from The New York Times) One could not wed take issue with the general purport of The Times’s recent editorial “Fresh Music and Canned.” It seems quite likely, as there conjectured, that ‘‘canned” music will never supplant “fresh” music, by which is meant music heard at the instant that it is being produced and in the presence of the players and singers. It would be foolish to deny that certain satisfactions attending the hearing of music in this fresh way will always be sought. One could well go further than this editorial, which says that concert attendance is not likely to decrease, and say that there is considerable probability of its being stimulated and increased by recorded music. What moves me particularly to write is the editorial’s reference to ideas that are “more subtle though not neces- sarily more important than the ideas that may be perfectly translated through mechanical reproduction.” My purpose is to dicuss a rarely mentioned aspect of this question by showing that not all the points of sublety are on the side of fresh music. Much that attends the bringing together of an audience and musicians is so irrelevant to the essentials of music that it is often'disturbing and distracting. Condescension Noticeable. We all have had experience of the fact that music sung off stage often stirs the imagination more than when the singers are seen and comes to an anti-climax when they arrive in view. Wagner kept his orchestra out of sight at Bayreuth. All will recollect performances when his music dramas would have, fared better if the impersonators of his heroic figures could also have been made invisible.. Many, because of experiences like this, do not look upon opera as real or pure music. This should make them hospitable to the idea that recorded music could assist still further in clearing music of its impurities by eliminating the obtru- sive personalities of its performers, but I see litttle evidence of such hospitality. Instead, I observe almost everywhere a certain condescension toward recorded music. The impli- cations of The Times’s use of “fresh” and ‘canned illus- trate this attitude.