Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1931-10)

October 1931, Vol. VI, No. I 7 any other, known as an active experience in which the listener plays a part no less than the musicians and composer. The work is well named. It is not a setting of psalms such as Liszt or Franck has given us; it is a symphony of psalms. The work is an integral whole. First comes the plea, the eternal anguished “hear my prayer!” spoken here with austerity and perfect sim- plicity. “For I am a stranger with thee, And a so- journer, as all my fathers were.” The choral writing lifts starkly, barely above the unappeased unrest of the orchestra, striking only at the end a full-voiced cry. The thin reedy pipe of the oboe begins the fugal second psalm. The orchestral lines gather in- to an involved web, plaintive, laborious, a wrestling of the spirit. The chorus begins its song, “I waited patiently for the Lord.” Here is nothing of the freshness and innocence of the Gregorian Chants. Such music could only have evolved from a profoundly world-weary generation. Strawinski more than any other man has tested the resources of the music of this age and found; the shallowness and rankness with which its feeling is rooted. The psalmist sang of deliverance from the horrible pit, out of the miry clay, but we of Strawinski’s age are mired more hope- lessly. There is no relief in the resignation and lament of the music. Only, and increasingly toward the end, an inarticulate hope of deliverance. The movement ends suspended in air in incredibly heigh- tened expectancy, resolving at last with miraculous compassion into the serene tranquility and light of the closing psalm’s “Alleluia!” With the lifting un- dulant passage beginning just past the middle of the fifth record side comes a sense of infinite and yet dispassionate rapture, in its majesty and simplicity unlike anything that music has ever known before. The Psalmist exults: Praise him with the sound of the trumpets . . . Praise him with the timbrel and dance . . . Praise him upon the loud cymbals: Praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. Let everything that hath breath, praise the Lord. But the crash of literal cymbals would be a vain- glorious tinkling. Strawinski has long since punctur- ed the bubble of vanity and childishness of illustra- tive music. His music performs the function de- scribed by Santayana: giving form to what is natural- ly inarticulate, expressing the depths of human nature which can speak no language current in the world . . . Vindicating the forgotten regions of the spirit . . . At the close of the chapter from which I quote (perhaps the most searching and most precious words on the much written and so little understood subject of music) I find the concisest, most eloquent state- ment of exactly what I believe Strawinski has en- deavored and accomplished The concern of the artist, says Santayana, is to lift experience out of the discord and confusion in which a chaotic age may have plunged it. “The more barbarous his age, the more drastic and violent will be his operation. He will have to shout in a storm. His strength must The New RCA Victor Chromium Plated NEEDLES Two styles are available, one for the regular records and one for the long playing records. Each needle will play perfectly 100 record sides or 300 minutes of playing time. The volume of this new needle is about equal to the full tone steel needle. They are packed 6 needles to the container and the price is 25c per pack- age postpaid throughout the world. You will wish to try these new needles. In ordering please specify whether you wish needles for use with the regular or the long playing records. H. ROYER SMITH CO. “The World’s Record Shop” 10th and Walnut Streets PHILADELPHIA, PA. U.S.A. needs be, in such a case, very largely physical and his methods sensational.” Strawinski once employed such methods; shouted louder indeed than any of his contemporaries, but unlike some of them realized finally where even the most sensational feats of shout- ing in this most barbarous—emotionally at least—age would lead. The artist cannot evade his age. Strawin- ski is of it, but has won beyond it to the anticipation (or is it retrospection?) of a gentler age where “he may grow nobler, and blood and thunder will no longer seem impressive. Only the weak are obliged to be violent; the strong, having all means at com- mand, need not resort to the worst. Refined art is not wanting in power if the public is refined also. And as refinement comes only by experience, by com- parison, by subordinating means to ends and reject- ing what hinders, it follows that refined mind will really possess the greater volume, as well as the subtler discrimination.” Whether a public of today can follow Strawinski is enigmatic. Where it hissed and applauded Straw- inski the sensationalist, it is all too likely to ignore the matured Strawinski. But surely there are those who can recognize, even on these discs—product of a mechanized age—the sweetness and strength of this Symphony of Psalms. “Its ecstacy without grimace, its submission without tears, will hold heaven and earth better together—and hold them better apart— than could a mad imagination.”