Modern Music

THE new movement in art is not unaffected by the more practical aspects of modern life, some of which are favourable, some unfavourable to music. The modern man's interest in art has not escaped the notice of the business world. Musical producers and agents, bound up as they are with commercial interests, are masters of the situation; the music-oving public unconsciously plays into their hands, while the best artistic opinion finds it hard to obtain a hearing. The business of musical production centres in Anglo-Saxon countries, particularly in London and New York, where it is very highly organised and where the Italian impresario has been exploited to the utmost.

England, burdened with the responsibilities of her own great past, has long been preoccupied with practical matters, and has exercised her world-wide political influence to the detriment of her artistic life, more especially in regard to music, the least practical and most metaphysical of the arts. The English themselves realise their need and are anxious to meet it. Some of England's accumulated wealth was early employed to attract the best foreign exponents of music to her shores in the hope that musical appreciation would in time give rise to an English school of composition. Throughout the eighteenth century musical virtuosos visited London in great numbers, and when the Augustan age of South German music dawned, distinguished composers were invited to live and work in London and to associate their name and fame with that of England. Thus Handel became English property, and when Salomon induced the Austrian Joseph Haydn to cross the Channel for the sum of four hundred pounds sterling, musical production in the modern sense began to be a serious factor. Salomon, a business man with a knowledge of the fiddle, wanted to ensure the success of his subscription concerts, but Haydn, who had been living under patriarchal conditions as a Court musician little better off than a servant, was quite unaware that he was heralding the dawn of the new commercial era. He settled down in London, not only to conduct but to compose symphonies, and symphonies of no mean order. Thus began the first lucrative association of the business man with the composer, in the glaring publicity of London life.

The presence of a creative musician in England promoted the best kind of musical appreciation, gave an impetus to the study of music and inspired a certain amount of imitative work, but social standards were both too conventional and too practical to leave room for creative originality. London society wanted "stars" to adorn the London season, and "lions" to idolise. The cosmopolitan Mendelssohn and his unexacting neo-classical music were naturally well received, but there was an immediate instinctive hostility to Wagner, who never disguised his hatred for the musical producer and all his works, and the greatest prophet of modern music was rejected by a society which clung to outworn forms with complacent satisfaction. Not until the musical agents had succeeded in attaching notoriety to Wagner's name by assiduous advertisement did he obtain a hearing, by which time his best creative work was over and he had the traditionist Hans Richter for his advocate.

English conditions in the somewhat blatant atmosphere of the nineteenth century were very favourable to the virtuoso. The "publicity" cult in the modern sense began with the prima-donnas and tenors of old-fashioned opera, when the whole programme was made subordinate to these favourites. The system of travelling operatic companies was found to be the best means of satisfying without jading the public appetite for operatic stars, and naturally persisted long in England where "pretty pretty" artistic devices attain a green old age, and the new idea has no chance of acceptance unless securely linked with the old.

To Malibran and her successors was later added a succession of instrumental virtuosos. Creative artists like Paganini and Liszt were accepted and lionised for their unparalleled brilliance as performers, though the essence of their genius was not understood, but when Chopin came to England in the maturity of his artistic powers, and near his end, he did not achieve a like success. The poetry of this modern romantic fell on deaf ears; the moment decorative art became really significant and creative, the English audience would have none of it.

All England's wealth and business enterprise failed to foster an original art, because the necessary preliminary conditions were wanting. A people which had produced great subjective poetry and great--if for the most part objective --painting, was yet far from the spirit of music. Self-restraint and circumspection were so highly cultivated that there was no room for the worship of Dionysus, but among those who were not content with mere enjoyment of the music so amply provided, the study of musical science was taken up very ardently. Modern music, when once it was accepted, afforded scope for technical research, and much musical criticism was published in England, a poor substitute for creative inspiration yet serving, perhaps, to prepare the soil for the future.

In musical matters, America possessed the faults of England in exaggerated form. The country was peopled for the most part by men determined to get rich quickly, and their plentiful lack of culture gave scope for the worst kind of artistic exploitation. From about the middle of the nineteenth century, musical exponents who had made a name in Europe began to visit the land of dollars, heralded and accompanied by an orgy of advertisement. Even the true artist, the man of ideals, cannot always withstand the lure of gold, so that a roaring trade was and is done in art and artists. A premium is put on sensationalism, the impulses of creative art are stifled under the resultant ignorant idolisation of name and fame and the systematic cultivation of bad taste, yet they undoubtedly exist and will appear when an artistic social milieu has been formed. The study of art, and a measure of technical insight, already exist in America, together with the acute sensibilities which have made modern music possible. The musical agent--descendant of the impresario who, as the business interests involved have become larger and more complicated, has now become his prey--is essentially hostile to creative art. All he asks is a long "run" for his production and artists who will lend themselves to sensational effects, particularly operatic singers, whom he can insert in the concert programme as a "draw." If he senses opposition to any item on the programme, he immediately cuts it out, except in rare cases where the opposition is so fierce as to give the chance of a succès de scandale. He has indeed a precedent for this in Berlioz's practice of deliberately working up public interest by composing for orchestras of unprecedented size.

The general demoralisation caused by the war strengthened the position of the musical producer and established the preponderance of reproductive over creative artistic activity. In music, creative and interpretive work are interdependent, and it is through their hold upon the exponents of music that business interests affect composition. The increasing influence of the press, based as it is on financial interests, plays into the bands of the musical agent. The journalist first "discovers" and then to some extent regulates modern art, and although his influence is not necessarily in favour of sensationalism, it tends in that direction.

Two great modern composers-- Berlioz in France and Richard Wagner in Germany--ranged themselves the one for, and the other against, the press. They both knew the value of stage-managership to the artist in the nineteenth century. They both knew the far-reaching influence of the printed word in the modern world, and they were both born selfadvertisers. Here, however, the resemblance ended. Berlioz, whose love of sensation amounted to hysteria, wrote musical articles sparkling with Gallic wit. It is true that as a creative artist he disliked the critic's task which circumstances imposed upon him, but he made the most of the possibilities it offered and was not above using deliberate untruth for his own advantage. The truth of his inspiration as a composer, however, mocked at the utilitarian devices and intrigues of his lesser self; his work was always in advance of the comprehension of his fellow-countrymen, and he himself solitary among them. Wagner, on the contrary, advertised himself, not through but in spite of the press. He could not adjust himself to the journalistic tempo, and his writings took the characteristic form of long-winded treatises. His keenness and personal ambition were very great and he, like Berlioz, was not fastidious as to the means he employed; his propaganda was very persuasive. Berlioz and Wagner may be said to have been their own agents, but neither liked the task. It was forced upon them by the real necessity of getting performance, without which a musical composition remains unfulfilled. They had to speak through the many mouths of the orchestra and sought to inspire all its members, from the conductor downwards, with the spirit and meaning of their work.

Berlioz travelled about in Germany, advertising his work by conducting it, while Wagner had to awaken interest and win support in likely quarters by distributing his scores in samples. With the same object he emphasised his connection with Beethoven by conducting his symphonies, his creative genius transforming them into Wagnerian apologia under the magic of Ms conductor's baton.

He could not entirely dispense with the musical agent, however, and it was the impresario Angelo Neumann who almost forced the colossal Ring upon the notice of the contemporary world.

This occurred at a time when musical production in Berlin was inspired by the spirit of speculative enterprise which swept through the new capital. It was closely bound up with the ancient musical culture of Prussia, a culture very much opposed to modern sensationalism. In spite of this, Berlin supplanted Leipzig and Vienna as the musical capital of German-speaking countries, while its musical agents and producers set the mode for the whole world. America followed Berlin in the choice of musical "geniuses," and watched the rise and fall of their value on the Berlin market.

The question which concerns us, however, is whether artistic values were able to thrive in--to what extent they were helped or hindered by--the atmosphere of the modern world.

Circumstances in Germany were at this time very different from those in Anglo-Saxon countries. Society was in a state of transition, but rested on a firm substratum of artistic sincerity. What was the result there of the alliance between musical composition and musical production? What changes were wrought in the composer by the new publicity, and how did the press affect artistic values?

 

The orchestra, perfected by Wagner, is by far the most important, in a beneficial sense, of the material forces which go to the making of music. It affords a very perfect means of expression for the modern composer. Wagner established a tradition of "personality" in the conductor--that is to say, the conductor's personality was to inform the whole body of orchestral sound, to give it soul, and thus to reach and compel the imagination of his audience. As an outcome of this, musical agents and the public began to demand and expect conductors of a melodramatic type, men who displayed their "personality" at the expense of the composer's meaning. About this time there arose an entirely new type--the conductor-composer. Richard Wagner, gifted as he was, had only taken up the baton when forced to make his work known in this way, and had abandoned it as soon as he felt himself firmly established in Bayreuth. A later generation of orchestral composers saw the full advantages of the business. Realising the conductor's strong power of suggestion (and not oblivious of monetary considerations) they set about the advocacy of their own works. They counted on the personal interest, the enthusiasm awakened in the public by a skilled performer, the acoustic deception which so frequently confuses the excellence of a work with the excellence of its performance--more especially where performer and composer are one--but business interests compelled them further to a commonplace interpretation of others' works (to which their own authority and popularity lent a spurious interest), although a composer interpreting every shade of his own work to an admiring public still provided the greater sensation. The mid-European kapellmeister came very much to the fore at this time. He inherited the Wagnerian temperament and had the trick of making it "tell" on the concert platform. Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and Felix Weingartner are different types of this species.

 

The modern conductor has played an important part in the development of music, yet the accompanying commercialisation of art has inevitably injured the composer's creative freedom. The modern musician who tastes the delights of public and private adulation to the full, undoubtedly does so at the expense of his own work. His ear is filled with all the subtlest gradations of organised musical tone, his mind is sensitive to a thousand possible shades of expression, with the result that his imagination is hampered and confined. The continual interpretation of the works of others to which his profession compels him is a constant incitement to composition, yet it clouds the sources of inspiration with a mass of irrelevant matter. The underlying idea, the very mood and colour of another musician's works, assimilated through frequent and sympathetic interpretation, may deceive the composer into thinking them entirely his own. Much of the work of even the most advanced modern composers, though very individual in detail, is yet, as regards thematic inspiration, what is bluntly called "kapellmeister music." Even in details the line between what is original and what is derivative depends largely on the egotism of the artist.

Richard Strauss, indeed, found himself in the practice of his profession. As a young kapellmeister he felt his own lack of creative ideas, and deliberately sought inspiration in orchestral tone. Even in later life he returned from time to time to the conductor's platform to renew the tonal impressions which were so necessary to him, although he felt that in the course of this work foreign elements were unwittingly introduced into his composition. He was obliged to borrow his ideas, but his natural egotism made him attempt to stop the inrush of alien influences by confining himself to interpreting only such work as was in his particular "line"; this limited, if it did not altogether exclude, the possibilities of self-deception, but the compulsion of the kapellmetster's calling was upon him and is often imposed through his work upon his audience.

Gustav Mahler was a very different type. He sought rather to ennoble his professional work, to transcend it, by giving himself up to it whole-heartedly. He was intensely sympathetic and, strong as was his own personality, he was ambitious for the success of other composers. Although his metaphysical bent urged him to creative work, his love of musical beauty made him imitative. He sank his whole personality unreservedly in another's work, gave individual expression to every phrase, offered himself up to the great musicians of the past, spent himself in interpretation. His work went beyond mere effective display to exposition of the most enthralling and original kind. His lack of egotism was a hindrance to his composition, the ideas, colouring and moods of others being received without resistance and incorporated quite unconsciously in his own work. The imitative side of his nature usurped the place of the creative, and Mahler was more completely sacrificed to the kapellmeister's calling than was Strauss. This could not, of course, have occurred but for certain limitations in both composers which drew them into the business. Their forerunner, Wagner, consented to remain a conductor only so long as his work lacked distinctive originality. The course of events (and certain forces within himself) did eventually induce Mahler to abandon the profession, but finally he sold himself to America, where he was attacked by the malady which killed him.

The modern composer, whether "conductor-composer" or composer pure and simple, cannot exist without the help of the great handmaid of the business interest--the daily press. The journalist, in his hunt for news, forces himself upon the composer whether he will or no, and the short press notice is but the thin end of the wedge. It is to the interest of business to have an account of every phase of a new work of art, from its conception to its birth, set down in black a and white, no vestige of mystery remaining. By this means a composition attains market-value long before its production. The modern mind, whilst laying special stress on originality, has few opportunities for quiet and recollection, though these alone can give rise to really great and original work, more particularly in an age overburdened, as is ours, with the heritage of the past.

Hans Pfitzner, a genuine disciple of Wagner, has tried to find peace, even with some loss of creative robustness, in a retired corner out of the limelight of commercial journalism, but most of the moderns are hardly sensible of their need. They are intolerant of symmetry and form, but incorporate the rush and confusion of modern life in their work with real zest. Strauss is still an architect in the classic forms, whereas a vast number of present-day musicians compose in aphorisms. Max Reger reflected the strenuous business life in the tempo of his creative work, and the speed of many a composer's output is increased to satisfy the insatiable demands of producers and artists. The present-day descendant of the virtuoso does much to determine the popularity of a new work and, being involved in the whole business of production, he is not permitted to take long views or exercise a sound artistic judgment. Business methods, moreover, are being adopted by composers themselves. In Germany they have formed themselves into the Genossenschaft deutscher Tonsetzer, under Richard Strauss's leadership, to protect their interests against publishers and producers on the one hand and the concert-going public on the other. They have quite abandoned the theory that starvation in a garret is favourable to artistic work, excellent as its effects are said to have been on the genius of past ages.

Modern works thus differ from those of the past just at the point where personal struggles with circumstances and environment have a modifying effect on both form and content. Many modern compositions are strongly suggestive of mood in proportion to obvious feebleness of form, for acute sensibility checked in its imaginative flights is revealing, and the friction of hostile contacts sometimes strikes out sparks of genius, even where there are no great depths of thought or feeling to be looked for.

Works of this type, however, demand a new public and a new school of criticism. It is impossible to ignore the existence of a host of journalistic sensation-mongers, parasites who flourish in our over-commercialised society, hindering the true progress, though not the rapid exploitation, of the musical profession, but it may be possible to supersede them. The best advocates of modern art are to be found in the ranks of educated artists and littérateurs. Since Wagner was rejected by the musical profession and "discovered" by educated people outside the guild, they have felt a measure of responsibility for modern music, and have given it encouragement and support. Their interest has been further quickened by its approach to the other arts, and the poets in particular take an increasing interest in music and act as its literary guardians. In Germany, Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephan George, and others are closely associated with music. Their influence extends beyond opera and song to instrumental music. Painters are not interested in tonecolour only, for they can trace many of their own problems of composition in musical work, and the aesthetes are finding much matter for investigation in the art of combined sounds. All these circumstances, according with certain developments in music itself, make for an increasing, divergence between "advanced" music and that which is "understanded of the people."

In German countries criticism is for the most part in bondage to technique, to a narrow professional or guild spirit, which the modern newspaper actively encourages. The critic is frequently a time-server, entirely without a critical conscience.

A new work, besides labouring under the disadvantages of the composer's natural lack of technical experience, has to meet the determined obscurantism of the critic who considers himself a technician. The genuinely competent critic (and there is a certain amount of genuine critical ability in German-speaking countries) has his own dangers to meet from the time-serving spirit. The artistic critic who prides himself on his close connection with the creative artist is very frequently devoted to a clique. He believes in himself as a person of very intense sensibilities and in his own first impressions as sacred, and consequently does not trouble to form a balanced judgment when simple affirmation is sufficient. This attitude is common to all the arts. A favoured few are acclaimed, their work accepted, without the formality of argument. The value of the critic's personality is, however, not to be despised. The average man can only be reached by wide circulation and reiteration of the printed word, while its influence, once established, can only be annulled by actual experience. The best kind of influence is exercised in this way by the writer in whom strength of mind underlies sensibility and receptivity, giving capacity for critical dissection, selection or rejection. In an age like the present, filled with perplexing artistic problems, the word of the critic is mighty. The modern artist's intellectualism and analytical trend make even him dependent in some degree on the critic. While hustling business interests encourage much hasty and imperfect work, while meretricious dilettantism and pretentious mediocrity flourish on all hands, the critic's task is to detect and encourage true genius and to expose sham brilliance; the genuine artist can only be grateful for the discernment which recognises the merit of his work as a whole yet points out the faults which hinder perfection.

If criticism is an important factor in the modern experimental musician's efforts to achieve a new form, it has a yet greater influence for good on less advanced work. It guarantees a certain definite standing, amidst the turmoil of the modernist schools, to sound technique, the older "guild" spirit in music. This type of music receives a measure of welcome from the musical business world also; it affords the possibility of long "runs," since the public does not easily tire of work which it knows by heart already. Brahms's music is a case in point. He appeals rather to German and English-speaking peoples than to Europe in general. His amazing success was due in the main to the unanimous support of the critics and the musical producers, backed up by a basis of traditional musical culture widespread in Germany. Brahms was neither anarchic nor original in the region of form. His form was the obvious, clearly-defined form of tradition, offering no intellectual obstacles to a public brought up on Bach and Beethoven, and nourished on musical science. A certain lack of "divine frenzy," of anything like intense emotion in Brahms's music was, indeed, felt, particularly in South Germany and among the passionate Viennese. Critics and exponents accordingly emphasised the essentially German character of Brahms's reserve and austerity. The brilliantly journalistic Hanslick, the scourge of Wagner and Bruckner, was not so consistently "professional" as be set out to be, but he based his aesthetic system securely on Brahms. His persistence and fluent eloquence at last converted the Viennese. It was a curious fate which made this intensely musical and sensuous people adopt and champion a musician of the severest type. They did it reluctantly, yet they did it thoroughly. In the meantime, criticism and performance of his work won North Germany and Berlin for Brahms. His spiritual relationship with the North Germans was instantly recognisable, and his way there had been doubly prepared. The pre-eminence of symphonic music had been established in the north by the critical and enthusiastic educationist, Hans von Bülow, and the romantic and sensitive Nikisch; while the same had been done for chamber-music by Joachim and Artur Schnabel. Brahms was thus a profitable speculation for producers and artists. The Brahms cult degenerated into an over-emphasis upon the individual qualities in his work till they appeared as mere mannerisms, but it undoubtedly helped to preserve the sense of form in music, though not to create new form. It took a particularly strong hold upon a considerable body of music lovers who were indifferent to modernist experiment, and it gave a number of less adventurous composers courage to continue on moderate lines. Furthermore, it did something to bridge the rapidly widening gulf between cultured and folk music, an alienation particularly deplorable in a country where love of music is widespread and the capacity for assimilating musical culture innate in many of the people. If one goes from a big city to a small provincial town in Germany one still finds no trace of the modernist storm, none of the excitability encouraged by the modern music industry; the old firm musical outlines, bound up with long tradition, are as firmly established there as ever. The Great War, unfortunately, has hardened piety of this type into stubbornness, and has made Brahms and Beethoven the symbols of a narrow patriotism.

We must now devote a short space to the consideration of opera as a branch of Germany's manifold musical life. The Germans as a people are essentially ethical and consequently non-theatrical, with the result that opera in that country has always been left in the hands of profit-seeking producers who have aimed at making it merely entertaining without regard to higher artistic values. Such producers have done their best to cultivate love of the theatre in the people, and the daily performance, now to be found in big and little theatres up and down the country, is the reward of their labours. On the other hand, the struggles of the German operatic composer are well known, and it was long before Berlin would accept even Wagner. Liszt, in his day, declared war against the producers on behalf of freedom for the artist, and attempted to force a way for operatic progress, but the power of the producers remains immense, and only very recently a few vigorous and original theatrical managers and dramatists have begun to make their wholesome influence felt in Germany. In general, gorgeous and meaningless stage settings still smother intelligent stage-craft, and the artist's work has to accommodate itself to them as best it can. In the provinces most performances fall flat unless bolstered by the presence of "stars." The producer regards the matter strictly from the money point of view; he realises the costliness of operatic production, and he knows that the most hackneyed operetta will attract an audience if it offers a few pretty tunes and sensational scenes. The public very seldom hears any good work. The chief hope far the future lies in education, and there are already signs of a coming folk-opera. The German people are undoubtedly susceptible to culture in music, and their achievements in opera are likely to be limited only by something essentially unoperatic in their nature.

It is impossible to blink the fact that in spite of Wagner's work, German audiences--and those not only the most superficial--are attracted by light Italian opera and the "star" system, that it is this fact which is the main obstacle to genuine German opera, and one is tempted to conclude that the charm of the Latin type of opera has become an absolute necessity to the public. The most encouraging aspect of the situation, however, is the decline of the music industry in the home of opera, in Italy itself, where it is now carried on only in wealthy and enterprising Milan and to a lesser extent in Turin. The Italians, so highly cultivated in the small things of life, are children in business. In that fortunate country even American business enterprise finds itself "up against" a cheerful indifference which makes profitable bargaining very difficult. On the artistic side the strength of tradition is great; musical science is developing, and there is a growing desire to revive the spirit of Renascence art which gives promise for the future.

The essence of modernity is to be found, as always, in Paris. Between 1870 and 1914 an entirely new and amazing musical culture sprang up there and flourished unconnected with business interests of any kind. Fierce battles were waged in Paris on the subject of opera, the cult of personalities issued in much wordy warfare, and the soil appeared at first to be favourable to operatic music, opéra lyrique, only. In Germany, as we have seen, the things of the soul sought expressive form in music, but in France love of the visible arts and an innate sense of form led to an interest in music which expressed itself naturally in opera. The somewhat withered glories of the past, "Grand Opera" and the Academie nationale de Musique, were long cherished and the spirit of sensuous delight persisted in the Opéra Comique, which was perfected by Carré and which was on the whole progressive, though it was not quite free of the fetters of tradition.

There is no folk-music and no real passion for music in the French people. Habeneck's performances of Beethoven's music at the Conservatoire are said to have marked an era in French musical history, but they only served to bring about the reign of a new tradition, as dead and conventional as that which had preceded it. Originality, when it came, arose in the seclusion of the salons. The intimate social intercourse of a few fine minds has always been the source of true art in Paris, though it has also given rise to objectionable cliques. Other influences came from without. In their desire for a musical revival the French willingly absorbed the ideas of their German conquerors. Wagner's amazing artistic exploitation of all the senses aroused in theatre-loving France a frenzy of enthusiasm, encouraged in word and deed by Lamoureux, until even the middle classes were carried away by it.

Music thus received a new impetus from two sources. The concert was still barely dissociated from the theatre, but as the various branches of music were cultivated, the idea of concert music, as distinct from that of stage music, at last arose. Musical science was systematically studied and musical criticism was gradually purged of the idle gossip and absurd inaccuracy which had characterised it hitherto. The merits of composers and their works became a subject of interest with the younger men. The old musical culture lived on in the Société des Instruments anciens, while the new Schola cantorum, under Vincent d'Indy's leadership, became a onesided but enthusiastic champion of the past.

While Berlioz, Wagner and other foreign composers, together with German conductors such as Strauss, Weingartner and Nikisch, were taking possession of Paris, and Colonne, Lamoureux and Chevillard were making French orchestral interpretations known outside France, a curious musical revival occurred which appeared to be rooted in archaism. Many of the best minds in the ranks of Parisian musicologists, musicians, littérateurs, and aesthetes shook off the yoke of Wagnerianism and asserted the independence of French music.

Once again in France music followed in the wake of the visual arts; imagination was subject to the criterion of intellect; and a new school of music grew up, resting upon the living influence of César Franck, and upon the ancient musical creed of Rameau. Debussy was the prophet of the new movement.

This rapid development of music, in both its creative and interpretive aspects, was neither helped nor hindered by business interests. Beginning as a rapid adoption and adaptation of German ideas, it became within a short space a national art, but it did not touch the mass of the French people, to whom music was, and is, simply an agrément de 1'esprit. The new movement arose in the salons; it was in a sense "precious," and its influence, spreading from Montmartre to Germany, increased the divergence between cultured and folk music which is apparently against the German spirit. It contained, however, progressive ideas derived from the painter's art, and promoted clear thinking on musical problems.

The national idea underlying French music, fanatically championed by Saint-Saëns and inherent in the work of many of the younger men, had a narrowing, political trend. The very name Société nationale de Musique showed a tendency to introduce racial emotions and antagonisms into music, while the emphasis upon the idea of nationality in the Fraternité latine--designed to draw France and Italy closer together--had a limiting effect upon composition. Political alliances undoubtedly prepared the way for the musical rapprochement between France and Russia. Russia was worlds apart from France in its musical predispositions, but its upper classes had long been associated with France in speech and manners. Russian amateurs had already contributed to musical progress (uninfluenced, of course, by the musical producer) and tone-colour arose there spontaneously, but when the Russian conservatoires began to seek for teachers they received a grounding of German music under the influence of Anton Rubinstein. German conductors began to visit Russia, where the rich soil of the national character promised to bear fruit under foreign cultivation, but political troubles arose and England and America joined the existing political alliance to close the ring against Germany.

Our survey has led us away from the question of musical production, and we can now look back and view it as a whole. Publicity and the "market" can only prove helpful to music when interest in that art is inherent in a people; but through the world-wide interdependence of business interests, musical production brings races, composers, and their works together, promoting free intercourse and a cosmopolitan spirit in music. Within recent times the music industry has caused profound changes in the musical life of Germany, a heightened sensibility which is favourable to progress, but also a want of the quietude and serenity which alone can make the best use of the new inspirational sources.

Then came the recent murderous war. Events followed hard upon one another, and history was made under our very eyes. Germany was defeated, collapsed, suffered revolution. Was it a true revolution? In any case it shook the artist's world. Even those who had hitherto remained untouched by the course of events, suddenly realised the close connection between art and world economics, and something long foreseen by the clearest minds became incontrovertible fact. The highly-developed culture of the middle classes was felt to be lifeless and cramping. Men turned to the vision of a new social order seeking to blot out the past and begin the world anew. While the activities of the middle-class music industry continued unabated, the dogmas of the New Art, which had long been developing unrestrainedly, one-sidedly, under the pressure of a spiritual blockade, were proclaimed with increasing weight and confidence. Salvation was to be found in an alliance between the artist and the proletariat, in the destruction of all art founded on the bourgeois code to make room for that of the new era. We need clarity of thought, a firm grasp of the end we seek, to guide us through this age of anarchy.