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Spenglerian doctrine, though it is hardly possible to discuss one aspect of it as I propose briefly to attempt -without first paying a modest tribute to the tremendous vision and astonishing knowledge which its author displays in putting forward theories that have inevitably aroused the most profound controversy. Whether we agree with Spengler or not, either in his main ideas or in his more detailed application of them, the perusal of his great work, 'The Decline of the West,' is an unforgettable experience. Difficult though all honest readers must confess it to be, it is one of the few books which may be said to enrich our whole outlook on life, driving us to think out afresh the greatest problems of man's career and to strive to discover our own solution of them.

Yet it is astonishing to find, in spite of the profundity and the inspiration which permeates Spengler's book, that again and again he distorts or ignores facts in order to suit his theories; and in no department has he done this to a greater extent than in his treatment of music. Just as, in the scientific domain, he is so anxious to prove that Western science is now on the wane that he conveniently overlooks, for that purpose, the discoveries of Einstein and of Marconi, so he twists musical history into strange shapes in order to make good his belief that we cannot expect any more great music to be forthcoming from Western Culture. It is a part of Spengler's thesis that Cultures pass through phases analogous to those which mark the careers of individuals. They have birth, youth, maturity, decline, and death. He has another way of putting the same notion when he assimilates the successive periods to the seasons of the year and speaks of the spring, summer, autumn, and winter of a Culture. Even if we agree with this conception, his application of the principle is not always easy to accept and is especially puzzling in the case of music.

In the first place, it is not clear at what stage he conceived that Western musical history reached its highest point. In two passages (pp. 44 and 90) he describes Mozart as representing the 'golden summit or 'zenith,' which in the language of seasons one would naturally expect to correspond to the summer.

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later on (p. 108) he speaks of Mozart as 'fragrant with the sweetness of late October days,' and again (p. 207) of Haydn and Mozart as representing 'the gleaming autumn of the style' and belonging to the form-world of the arts as a sensitive longing and presentiment of the end.' This is the penultimate stage of the Culture --just before 'the style fades out.' Both these conceptions of the place of Mozart give rise to difficulties. The student of musical history, deep though his love and admiration for this great master may be, will probably be disinclined to agree that he marks the very highest point of musical attainment. If this be so, the implication would seem to follow (according to the logic underlying Spengler's own theory), that Bach, belonging to an earlier age, was on a less exalted pinnacle and that Beethoven shows a slight falling off from the perfection of Mozart. If, on the other hand, Mozart's work stands for the autumn of Western Culture, many of us might feel some consolation in being allowed to regard Bach as the summer, but our spirits would probably be a little damped as a result of Beethoven being brought even nearer to the period of decline.

These difficulties illustrate the position in which Spengler is apt to be involved through adhering too slavishly to his own theories. In order to establish that Western civilisation is now declining, he feels himself bound to work backwards and to show that our music, like everything else, was less great in its early days, rose to a noble climax about the middle of its career, and then started to fall away from grace. But there must be very few impartial lovers of music who will agree that this is a true account. The ideas of progress, maturity, and decline, as applied to the history of an art, are exceedingly hard to follow. It is doubtful whether an art can be said to improve or to grow worse as it goes on, except in respect of the technical means employed, and, as far as this is concerned, the present age is in many ways ahead of those that went before, while the development of instrumental colour is a marked feature of quite modern times. Actually, however, it is extremely doubtful whether the composers of one age, as such, can be described as being greater or less great than those of another. The comparatively early appearance of Palestrina and Byrd upon the scene-at a stage which corresponds, I suppose, to the 'Spring' of Western music-does not in itself imply that they were lesser geniuses than Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, Franck, or Delius. Hitherto we have had great composers springing up at all sorts of odd times throughout the last four or five hundred years, with occasional short periods of smaller men in the intervals. It will be my contention that we are in the midst of one of these intervening ages at the present day. The transcendence of Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner did not depend upon the periods at which they lived, but upon their own individual genius. Spengler's theory rests upon the belief that the epoch makes the man. But history seems rather to show that it is the men-and especially those of outstanding quality-who shape and mould the epoch. Spengler is unquestionably justified in emphasising that every man is a product of his time and of his culture and is influenced and affected by his environment and the fashions and outlook of the civilisation to which he belongs and of the particular period in which he is born. But the strange position in which the author finds himself when he tries to go further than this is illustrated by the following passage:

'Imagine Columbus supported by France instead of by Spain, as was in fact highly probable at one time. Had Francis I been the master of America, without doubt he, and not the Spanish Charles V, would have obtained the imperial crown. The early Baroque period from the Sack of Rome to the Peace of Westphalia, which was actually the Spanish century in religion, intellect, art, politics, and manners, would have been shaped from Paris, and not from Madrid. Instead of the names of Philip, Alva, Cervantes, Calderon, Velasquez, we should be talking to-day of great Frenchmen who in fact -if we may thus roundly express a very difficult idearemained unborn' (p. 148).

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At no point does Spengler fall a more helpless victim to his own theory than when he comes to deal with the later stages of musical history. He seems almost to personify Cultures, so that he is led to the belief that a Culture, when it reaches a certain stage in its career, is, as it were, no more capable of producing great

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men or great works of art than a woman, after she has passed the period known as the 'menopause,' is able to bear children. Thus he makes the astonishing statements that Western music 'died in "Tristan"" (p. 291) and that 'What is practised as art to-day-be it music after Wagner or painting after Cézanne, Leibl, and Menzel-is impotence and falsehood' (p. 293). Now the score of 'Tristan' was completed in 1859. Among Wagner's own works it preceded the composition of the music for 'Siegfried from the latter part of Act II to the end of the opera, and the whole of 'Die Götterdämmerung,' 'Die Meistersinger,' and 'Parsifal.' The latter is regarded by some others besides Spengler as exhibiting signs that Wagner's powers were waning. But even apart from that work, the consequence involved by Spengler's theory is that a great deal of that which the world has regarded as Wagner's finest music simply

does not count.

In 1859, Brahms was a young man of twenty-six. Between that date and his death in 1897 he produced most of his greatest masterpieces, including the German Requiem and the Triumphlied; the concertos for violin and for pianoforte (No. 2); all his four Symphonies; the double concerto for violin, violoncello, and orchestra ; and a quantity of superb chamber music. In fact, it was well after the composition of 'Tristan' that the art of Brahms, who is generally acclaimed as one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time, attained its full glory. The name of César Franck owes its distinguished place in the history of music chiefly to a series of compositions which, unfortunately for Spengler's theory, date from the 'seventies and 'eighties, the most conspicuous, perhaps, being 'Les Béatitudes'; the 'Variations Symphoniques'; the Prelude, chorale and fugue' and the 'Prelude, aria and finale'; the sonata for violin and piano; the quintet for piano and strings; the symphony in D minor; and the string quartet. Since 'Tristan,' too, Verdi created his Manzoni Requiem, and those two operatic masterpieces of his old age, 'Otello' and 'Falstaff.'

In face of these facts, it is surely fantastic to suggest that the composition of 'Tristan' was the 'finale' of Western music' (p. 291). It will be observed that I have mentioned only such creations as are almost universally recognised to be really great works of art. Actually, Spengler's thesis is inconsistent also with the fact that the most notable music of the Russian school did not start until the 19th century was fairly well advanced; that the latter part of that century witnessed the beginning of a revival of English music which has resulted in this country producing more striking compositions than it had done since the days of Purcell; that there has been a simultaneous re-awakening of creative activity with fruitful effects in Spain; that the art of 'lieder '-writing reached perhaps its zenith in the hands of Hugo Wolf, and that the genius of Berlioz on the one hand and of Franck on the other led to a Renaissance of French music in the hands of such imaginative composers as Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel.

Spengler was not content with stating that there had and would be no great musician in the West after Wagner (p. 425). If this phrase stood alone, it might be taken to mean not indeed that Wagner's immediate or later contemporaries did not continue to produce masterpieces after his death, but merely that among his successors there have not been, and could not be expected to be, any really great musical geniuses. But Spengler actually goes so far as to describe the music of to-day-which he identifies with music since Wagner-as impotence and falsehood (p. 293). We must assume that he is referring to the work of men who, though in some instances they may have been alive before Wagner's death in 1883, have reached their creative maturity since then. Ignoring, therefore, those of the masterpieces of Brahms, Franck, and Verdi which, though written by contemporaries of Wagner, were composed after 1883, we arrive at the position, if we are to follow Spengler, that the music of Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, Rimsky-Korsakof, Parry, Stanford, Elgar, Puccini, Debussy, Stravinsky, Delius, VaughanWilliams, Bax, de Falla, Ravel, Schönberg, Bartok, Holst, and Bliss, is to be classed indiscriminately as 'impotence and falsehood.'

It is essential for Spengler's theory that he should express this view. It would not do for him to assert merely that the post-Wagnerian composers have been of somewhat smaller calibre than such giants as Bach,

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