travagance '-based mainly on certain portions of the 'Symphonie Fantastique' and 'Harold in Italy' and the 'Ride to the Abyss' from 'La Damnation de Faust'has a tendency to blind people to the fact that such works as 'Les Troyens' and the 'Te Deum' and many episodes of the 'Faust' and of the 'Grande Messe des Morts' contain not a trace of over-emphasis or wild musical profligacy. Berlioz could even at times be as delicate as Mozart or Debussy: witness, for instance, the pastoral slow movement of the 'Symphonie Fantastique' ✓ (of all works!) and the 'Danse des Sylphes' from 'Faust.' The word 'poetic' as applied to music is purely metaphorical. Strictly speaking, music can no more be poetic (or poetry be musical) than crème de menthe can have a green taste. If, when speaking or writing fancifully, we choose to transfer adjectives from one art or one sphere to another, well and good-so long as we are clear what we are doing, But I am afraid that a good many people who use the term 'poetic' to describe a piece of music have the very haziest idea of any meaning at all. Usually, I suppose, it is intended to be much the same as 'romantic'-a word about which I shall have more to say later. What is a 'comic opera'? That is one of the main problems raised by Mozart's 'Don Giovanni.' The attachment of labels such as 'comic,' ' tragic,' or ' serious,' to an artistic creation is often a very rough generalisation which must not be pressed too closely, and Mozart is the very last musician whose compositions admit of easy definitions. On the contrary, his art presents a number of most complex problems. He himself gave the title 'dramma giocoso' to 'Don Giovanni,' but it has been suggested that the term 'comic opera' is inappropriate to it. Why, it is asked, should the humorous parts of the opera justify us in calling the whole work 'comic,' any more than the other portions make it a serious or tragic opera? The truth is that a comic opera does not necessarily consist of nothing but wit and humour from beginning to end. Even modern musical comedies include serious love-songs and dramatic-or melodramatic-situations, with music to match. The Mikado' does not cease to be a comic opera because it contains the madrigal 'Brightly dawns our wedding day' and Yum-Yum's air 'The sun whose rays,' any more than the plays of Aristophanes forfeit the right to be called comedies because they include some charming lyrics which are not meant to provoke amusement. How far we are intended to take the catastrophe of Don Giovanni seriously will probably always remain a debatable point; but one thing is quite certain, that if Mozart did find himself drifting away from the 'opera buffa' style to that of serious, or even tragic, opera when he came to depict the downfall of his chief personage, he clearly wished to restore the spirit of comedy by means of the final scene in which Leporello gives a grimly humorous account of the catastrophe and he and the others join in a light-hearted sextet bidding the audience take warning from the Don's fate. Mozart possibly went further into the domain of tragedy in the music just preceding and accompanying Don Giovanni's death than he had originally meant to go, or even than he was conscious of going, but as he showed by the subsequent scene that he did not want to end on a tragic note, a false impression is left on the audience if the curtain is rung down (as it often is) on the death of the principal character. The opera is, of course, nearer to being a tragedy than, for instance, 'The Sorcerer,' at the end of which the wizard is seen carefully adjusting his gloves and necktie before he disappears amid a puff of smoke down the trap-door to the infernal regions-(so that he may appear neat and smart in the presence of the Master?). No one imagines that either Gilbert or Sullivan meant us to take the fate of their 'hero' seriously. But the term 'comic opera' is a sufficiently comprehensive one to include within its ambit even a tragicomedy like 'Don Giovanni,' just as the character and downfall of Shylock, who is very nearly, if not quite, a tragic figure, do not preclude us from regarding 'The Merchant of Venice' as on the whole a comedy-a less light-hearted affair indeed than 'Twelfth Night,' and even further removed from the almost continuous fun of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' but still a comedy. We are right, too, to call 'Die Meistersinger' a comic opera; but the person who found in it nothing but humour and satire directed against Wagner's 1 opponents, would be far indeed from a full appreciation of the work. The term 'classical' has three meanings, so far as music is concerned. In the first place, it denotes, roughly, 'high-class'-the sense in which the phrase 'classical music' is used by most schoolboys and especially by those who profess to be bored by it. This use has been to a large extent displaced in recent years by the word ' high-brow '-an expression which is, however, not properly applicable to music itself or any other art, but only to persons or to their attitude towards the art: it is a term of reproach, and, if justified, implies that they evince a consciousness of intellectual superiority: to call a man high-brow simply because he enjoys something which we do not, is just a case of sour grapes-unless we are pulling his leg. The distinction between ' classical,' or 'high-brow,' music and popular music is, of course, fallacious. Countless numbers of masterpieces do in fact appeal to so-called 'unmusical' people, so long as the latter are quite open-minded, and they often agree that a lot of music which they would not dream of calling 'classical' or 'high-brow, and which would therefore have to be pushed into the domain of 'popular' music, is extremely uninteresting: many ballads and foxtrots and waltz tunes are in this category. This first meaning of 'classical' takes no account of the period in which a work was written. But the word is also used as opposed to modern music. This is a fairly simple and acceptable distinction. Compositions which have withstood the test of time are said to be 'classics' in that they have become established and generally regarded as masterpieces. Even here, however, there is a snag, for a good many modern works seem to be classics already! Might this not be said, for instance, of the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss, of the best works of Debussy, and some would addElgar? The extent to which music is published nowadays, compared with a hundred or two hundred or more years ago, probably has something to do with this, as it enables fresh compositions to become known more rapidly and more widely than was the case in the past. Critics are able to procure and study the score, and a decision can be more quickly reached on the question whether a piece is of permanent value or not. We could hardly call Stravinsky's works since 'Le Sacre du Printemps''classics' in the sense of being established masterpieces, but 'Petrouchka' and 'The Firebird' almost deserve the description already. These two senses of the word 'classical' of course overlap to some extent. If a work has withstood the test of time and so become a classic as distinct from more modern compositions, it can reasonably be said to have permanent value, and thus to have earned a place among that 'high-class' music which though it is falsely contrasted with popular art could more appropriately be opposed to music of poor quality and ephemeral interest. The passage of time is indeed the greatest criterion of the worth of an artistic creation. The older masterpieces which continue to appeal to successive generations are classical in both senses of the term. But recent compositions which have not yet had the chance of proving their durability but which acclaimed by critics and lovers of the art are sometimes described by those who are not specially interested in music as 'classical' (according to my first use of the term) in order to distinguish them from, say, the latest dance successes. We could not call Vaughan-Williams 'Pastoral Symphony' classical if we were contrasting classical and modern music; but it would undoubtedly be given that title by a person who was not a musical enthusiast. are The most interesting antithesis, however, is between classical and romantic music. The New English Dictionary defines romantic music as that which is 'characterised by the subordination of form to theme, and by imagination and passion,' and quotes the following passage from J. C. Fillmore ('Pianoforte Music'): 'Classic is used in two senses. In the one it means, having ... permanent interest and value.*... In the second sense * ... This roughly covers both of the two meanings which I have described above. and emotional content subordinate; in romantic music content is first and form subordinate.' The distinction thus drawn sounds so simple that it is tempting, at first sight, to succumb to it. Its application, however, leads to many difficulties, and one of the chief of these is that it is customary to apply the term 'romanticism' not exclusively, but mainly, to a particular period of musical history-that which began with Weber and continued roughly till the end of the 19th century. On this footing, a man living about the year 1810 would hardly have known what romantic music is. Bach and Handel, Mozart and Beethoven, and sometimes Schubert as well, are said to be classicists: Weber and Schumann, Berlioz and Liszt and Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Wagner, are declared to be members of the 'romantic school.' Brahms is called now classical, now romantic. Franck is also rather a puzzle, and Mendelssohn is pronounced to be a mixture of the two styles. But it can hardly be said of the most characteristic works of Beethoven that 'form is first and emotional content subordinate.' Surely the very essence of his contribution to the history of the art is that he utilised the traditional forms for giving expression to more profound thoughts and feelings than any other composer of instrumental music had done before him. We cannot say whether form or emotional content comes first in the case of Beethoven. His architectural sense was prodigious; but he employed it in the portrayal of deep emotions. In his last period the ideas seem at times almost too full for the vessel which contains them. It will be replied, of course, that Beethoven admittedly stood at the parting of the ways-that he was on the borderline between the classical and romantic worlds. As a point of chronology, if we admit the existence of separate classical and romantic epochs, that may be true enough. But it is a little difficult to reconcile it with the actual quality of the music of Brahms in one period and of Mozart in another. Brahms is said to be a classic (although his work belongs to the latter half of the last century), because he so often adopted the old forms of the sonata, the symphony, and the string quartet; and as far as pure structure went, he made no very great departure from |