Book Reviews

These are some book reviews that Arthur Duff wrote for the Dublin Magazine.

As Time Went On (1937)
Delius As I knew Him (1937)
Music Observed (1937)
London Music in 1888-89 As heard by Corno Di Basseto (Known as Bernard Shaw) (1938)
The Orchestra in the Eighteenth Century (1941)
Words for Music (1941)
The Latch-key to Music (1943)
Sir Arnold Bax - Farewell, My Youth (1943)


As Time Went On by Ethel Smyth (Longmans)
Delius As I Knew Him by Eric Fenby (Bell)
Music Observed by A.H.Fox Strangways (Methuen)

The Dublin Magazine Vol. XII, New Series, No. 1, January - March 1937, pp. 85-86


I have never yet succeeded in becoming even a tiny wheel in the English music machine,” writes Ethel Smyth in her latest volume of reminiscences, and she stresses her isolation and neglect when she adds that “even now, at an hour when all passion should be spent, it sometimes saddens me to think that during my lifetime I have had no chance of making myself musically known to my countrymen and women as I have done in books - more or less.” Ethel Smyth belongs rather to the Germany of forty years ago where her associates were people for whom music was a sacred thing - Frau Schumann, Nikisch, Brahms, and the Griegs, and having found appreciation in such a brilliant circle, how exasperating on her return to London to find it almost impossible to secure a performance of her work by the sugary Sir Joseph Barnby, conductor of the Royal Choral Society. As time went on, however, her contribution to English music was recognised by the Festival held in 1933 for her seventy-fifth birthday when she joyously records that her big choral works were held up in the blazing sunlight by Sir Thomas Beecham, and no more acceptable birthday gift than this is possible. A delightful book, brilliantly written.

The same cannot be said of Mr. Eric Fenby’s Delius, though Mr. Fenby’s pen is a mighty one, indeed, and never misses an opportunity to indulge in some devastating sword-play. He writes that the first time he tried to shape a melody for the blind composer he was too flurried, too nervous, too upset to go about it in a proper way. “I had not thought that it would be like this,” we read, “and the sting of my emotion pierced me to the heart. . . my pen flopped about in my fingers, and in my confusion I found myself holding it upside down. . . the tears that I had been fighting to keep back now blurred my spectacles.., and I broke down.” There are, however, one or two calm statements. Delius was hard, stem, proud, cynical, godless, completely self-absorbed, and the household at Grez, peaceful and self-sufficient, was cut off from the outside world except for the wireless and visits from Balfour Gardiner, Heseltine, Roger Quilter and Beecham. There is an interesting chapter in which Mr. Fenby explains how Delius dictated a composition and how between them they eventually arrived at the finished orchestral score. This is a rather hysterical book.

Mr. Fox Strangways is the scholarly and lively musical editor of the Observer, and his weekly articles are of such exceptional interest and his prose style so excellent that this slender and moderately priced volume which contains some fifty of them under the title “Music Observed” is most acceptable. Mr. Fox Strangways is not to be read hurriedly ; these penetrating critical notes should be lingered over and digested slowly - whether it be the B.B.C. or tempo rubato, Donald Tovey or street-trombonists, Vaughan Williams or the Wesleys. And, unlike Mr. Fenby, Mr. Fox Strangways does not wear spectacles!

Arthur Duff


London Music in 1888-89 As heard by Corno Di Basseto (Later known as Bernard Shaw)
With some further Autobiographical Particulars
London: Constable
The Dublin Magazine Vol. XIII, New Series, No. 1, January - March 1938, pp. 75-76

When the Star newspaper was founded in 1888 under the editorship of T.P. O’Connor, George Bernard Shaw was shouting socialism at every street corner in London, and H.W Massingham (O’Connor’s assistant) conceived the bright idea of bringing the political agitator into his chief’s fold. The editor was at last persuaded and Shaw accepted with alacrity. But T.P. soon repented. Nothing brighter than Shaw’s political paragraphs had ever found their way into his editorial sanctum. He refused to print them, but was too good-natured to sack their author. Shaw, however, had other strings to his bow, and immediately and unashamedly offered himself as a commentator on concerts, composers and conductors - two columns at a modest two guineas a week. T.P sighed and assented. The Albert Hall was a safer ground than the House of Commons and theories about music preferable to themes of Karl Marx. Thus Corno di Bassetto was foisted on the unsuspecting makers (and un-makers) of melody. But why such a fantastic name? Merely because “Corno di Bassetto” sounded and looked like a foreign title - a Count di Luna of a figure from Offenbach.

As to the criticisms, I doubt whether serious Sunday readers would care to exchange their Ernest Newman or their Fox Strangways for the Saturday night antics of a Corno di Bassetto; but, at least, Bassetto could blow a lively tune, and here they are - four hundred pages of them - for everyone to dance to. Mr. Shaw’s Preface is, of course, a comedy overture.

Arthur Duff
The Orchestra in the Eighteenth Century by Adam Carse (Cambridge)
The Dublin Magazine Vol. XVI, New Series, No. 2, April - June 1941, p. 89


It is inevitable that we should think of the musicians of the eighteenth century as actors in a period play. We see them in their wigs and fancy clothes as the dramatis personae of a witty comedy, the curtain going up on a Dresden court or a Georgian interior, a grave or allegro from the orchestra. Were these players so stage-like after all? Did tempers ever get ruffled in such polished surroundings, and was a powdered wig ever thrown to the ceiling in despair at wrong notes from the flute or bad intonation in the bassoon? Judging from the benign expression on the faces of the eight gentlemen in the 1730 frontispiece of Mr. Carse’s book, they were as polite and well-mannered as their music. Yet the conditions under which they worked were not enviable. The eighteenth century musician was treated as a servant. The Kapellmeister had to compose whatever his patron wanted. As Mr. Carse says, “he was kept for the purpose of supplying music just as we keep hens to lay eggs for us.” Thus their music is often occasional and written to order. Haydn, when asked why he had not composed any quintets, replied: “Because nobody has ordered any.” The keyboard instrument was the foundation of the eighteenth century orchestra, and on it the composer relied for the fullness of his chords owing to the fact that the three sections - the bowed-strings, the wood-wind and the brass group - were not always harmonically complete. From this chordal centre the performance was directed because in those days the conductor with his baton was unknown. We read:-

Dublin, 1777-78. “Signor St. Giorgio conducted at the piano-forte, and Signor Georgi led the band.”
Dublin, 1779. “The Band: At the piano-forte, Michael Arne; Leader, the celebrated Pinto.”

Mr. Carse is a clear and careful commentator on his subject, and he has compiled from authentic contemporary records much valuable information on the orchestra and social history of the period. An excellent and useful book.

Arthur Duff

 

Words For Music V.C. Clinton-Baddeley (Cambridge University Press)

The Dublin Magazine Vol. XVI, New Series, No. 3, July - September 1941, pp. 63-64


The history of this excellent book goes back to the summer of 1935 when W.B. Yeats, greatly excited by the ballads F.R. Higgins used to sing to him, collected poems, pictures and tunes for a set of Broadsides. These were published monthly by the Cuala Press in 1936 and were followed by a second set, of which Dorothy Wellesley was one of the editors. The BBC invited Yeats to produce a series of poetry readings and in these broadcasts he was assisted by Mr. Cinton-Baddeley who now in these pages records the poet’s view on the reading and singing of poetry, and the many talks on “words for music” which took place at the home of Dorothy Wellesley.

Yeats hated the concert platform. “We fix a quarrel upon the concert platform,” he writes in his preface to Broadsides (1937) and again, “the concert platform has wronged the poets by masticating their well-made words and turning them into spittle.” The dispute between music and poetry is two and a half centuries old. Dryden’s attitude was “‘tis my part to invent and the musician’s to humour that invention,” and Mr. Clinton-Baddeley has not to seek far for cases of poets being not humoured but wronged. The sense of the poetry is often stultified and its rhythms destroyed by the music and attempts have been made to set to music words which never should have been set at all.

The nineteenth century was a bad period in English music, but at least it gave us Hubert Parry with his respect for words. To-day the position is stronger and we have seen two composers, Peter Warlock and Vaughan-Williams, who “have interpreted poetry with a sympathy not found in English music since the seventeenth century.”

Arthur Duff

The Latch-key to Music by J.D.M. Rorke (Oxford University Press)
The Dublin Magazine Vol. XVIII, New Series, No. 1, January - March 1943, pp. 74-75


In this little book the Rev. Mr. Rorke describes how he qualified himself for music-thinking. He provided himself with his own private latch-key with which he opened the door into music. This latch-key is music-thinking rather than music-listening. Mr. Rorke started simply and doesn’t seem to have travelled very far or fast. He learned sol-fa and finds a different quality in each note of the scale - Do, the home-baser; the determined thrusting of Re; the comparative resting-place of Me; the fateful Fa, and so on. This is applied to a tune such as Annie Laurie and explains a lot! Perhaps it does. My idea of music-thinking is to hold a concert of my own of Bach Preludes and Fugues on top of a bus. Perhaps I’m wrong.

Arthur Duff

 

Farewell, My Youth by Arnold Bax (Longmans)
The Dublin Magazine Vol. XVIII, New Series, No. 3, July - September 1943, pp. 87-88
With this rather slender volume Sir Arnold Bax says Farewell to his Youth. The book might be entitled “The Strange Case of Dermot 0’Byrne”, because mostly it tells the story of a young man who having read “The Wanderings of Usheen” was spirited away to Ireland where he found his land of heart’s desire. This is the best part of the book - the description of Dermot 0’Byrne’s days in Donegal and Connemara, evenings in the Dublin of 1912 with Yeats, A.E., 0’Sullivan, Colum and Pearse, the discovery of Celtic legends and poetry which influenced the composer of “The Garden of Fand” and “In The Faery Hills”. But of his music Arnold Bax says little: instead he amuses himself - and us - with anecdotes of Mackenzie and the Royal Academy of Music, a visit to Elgar, the activities of a preposterous Music Club whose pleasure it was to invite such deities as Debussy and Sibelius to come and listen to their own compositions being murdered - and there is an excellently-written chapter about his love for a Russian girl. Another volume will no doubt give us a stronger portrait of Bax, the composer of symphonic stature; these charming pages of his youth must turn over to later chapters. Memory has erred on page 102 - Hugh Law (recently dead) A.E.’s Donegal friend, was not Sir Hugh.

Arthur Duff
  
 
Updated August 2003

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