Art. 9.-A CENTURY OF ENGLISH MUSIC.

1. A History of Music in England. By Ernest Walker, Mus.Doc. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.

2. Forty Years of Music, 1865-1905. By Joseph Bennett. London: Methuen, 1908.

3. Studies and Memories. By Sir C. V. Stanford. London: Constable, 1908.

SINCE the first number of the Quarterly Review' made its appearance most things have changed a good deal in England; but in no branch of art has so great a transformation been accomplished as in music, and in the attitude of the general public towards the art. In the early part of the nineteenth century the man who would admit that he understood anything about music, or cared for it beyond the degree of admiration implied in the desire to lounge in to an opera-stall after dinner, would have been considered an eccentric; though the word 'decadent' was hardly in use then, he would certainly have been viewed with various kinds of disfavour by his contemporaries. It was the pride of the typical John Bull to allege that he could not recognise his own national anthem; and George III's love of music was generally held to be a symptom of the mental weakness of his last years. This profession of indifference to music was often an empty one; and in his volume of collected essays Sir Charles Stanford gives an example of the acute sense of just musical accentuation shown by Tennyson, who would never admit that he possessed any kind of instinct for music. Of course among the ladies musical taste was supposed to exist; but their average achievement in the art was on much the same level as their water-colour drawing or their tambour-work. Even as a polite accomplishment their music was confined to a little harp-playing, if a young lady had a well-formed the striking of a few chords on the 'forte-piano,' if she possessed, like Miss Wirt, ' a finger'; or the delivery of a sickly ballad, whether she had a voice or not. On special occasions those who paid court to these performers were expected to throw in an 'accompaniment on the flute; but, from all accounts, this accompaniment was of a more or less extemporaneous nature, and must

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have been rather trying to listeners who did not feel that music was the food of courtship.

There may have been individuals here and there who genuinely mourned the death of Haydn in 1809, who had enjoyed 'The Creation,' and themselves attempted some of the English canzonets; but really cultivated amateurs were rare, even among the ladies of the time. In certain of the fashionable papers musical compositions were occasionally mentioned; and their readers may have come across such a review as that which appeared in Le Beau Monde' of 1809, and have learnt that there was in Germany a young composer called Beethoven, whose quartets-the 'Rasoumovsky' set was under notice-were 'at least eccentric if not erratic,' and that 'we' (the critic) 'do not always understand what the composer would be at.' If this were the general opinion, it is difficult to see how at the same time Beethoven was recognised, as he undoubtedly was, by the musicians of England as a really great man, whose oddities were to be condoned for the sake of the sublimity of his ideas.

Of course the amateurs did not make up the world of music, for their music-masters and the organists of the churches they frequented constituted the musical profession-a calling very sparsely filled, according to our modern standards. The foundation of the Philharmonic Society in 1813 was a purely professional enterprise, intended almost as much to draw its members together socially, as to give them an opportunity of performing, and of knowing what was going on in the musical world. Undertakings of the same kind had existed before the end of the eighteenth century, such as the 'Professional Concerts,' the 'Academy of Ancient Music,' and others; but these had come to an end before the nineteenth century began. Most of the other institutions were for the amusement or edification of the few amateurs who cared for the best music. The 'Concert of Antient Music' existed from 1776 till 1848; but, by its exclusion of all music less than twenty years old, it gradually became more and more dry-as-dust, and showed an ever-increasing tendency to confine its programmes to selections from Handel. The convivial societies, such as the still existing 'Madrigal Society,' the 'Catch Club,' the 'Glee Club,' and the 'Concentores Sodales,' were also meant for

the pleasure of the rich subscribers, and only secondarily for the good of art.

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It had not been always so in England. distant times Englishmen were pioneers in music. The Reading round, 'Sumer is icumen in,' is anterior to any secular composition of the same degree of development. Dunstable ranks as one of the earliest theorists. The Elizabethan composers carried that beautiful art-form, the madrigal, to a higher degree of perfection than it had attained even in its native Italy; the composers of the Restoration, from Purcell downwards, had gained for England a high position among musical nations; and even through the dark days of the eighteenth century, when the vogue of Handel's music was so strong as to swamp every effort of our native writers, there were still existing concerts with a certain amount of artistic aim. The story of the nation's music is ably told in Dr Walker's history. In England the first public concerts of the world were given; and the status of the professional musician was established and recognised here sooner than in any other country. It is possibly due to this early acceptance of the commercial side of music that England became so rich a harvest-field for foreign performers. The presence of these aliens, which has been a prominent feature ever since the days of Handel, has naturally kept back the reputation of our native musicians, by taking up all the opportunities for lucrative display, and engaging the attention of the fashionable world to the exclusion of composers or interpreters of English birth. In every department of music, save only that of the Church, the domination of the foreigner existed; but happily one sphere of musical activity after another has been gradually won back, and at the present moment even the last entrenchment, that of exotic opera, is in a more doubtful position (artistically though not financially) than ever before. English singers and players are being more and more widely appreciated in England and abroad; the long struggle to obtain a hearing for English music of high aim has been won; for at last the spectacle has been witnessed of all the London world rushing to the Queen's Hall to hear a symphony by an Englishman. No more striking evidence of the change that has come over our country could be given than the

extraordinary vogue of Sir Edward Elgar's symphony; and, whatever the means by which public attention was at first attracted, the important point for our argument remains, that the British public has for once become enthusiastic over a piece of music of British origin.

It is not uninteresting to trace the process by which not merely the performers, but the composers of England have gradually advanced in public estimation, so that the old sneers about England not being a musical country are quite inappropriate now. In the first article on music which appeared in the 'Quarterly Review,' in 1848 (vol. 83, p. 481), foreign domination is accepted as an inevitable part of the scheme of things.

'If, since the early death of Purcell, England has produced but few native composers of eminence, we may be satisfied in remembering that she has adopted more than any other country. It may be said without presumption that in no other respect is the national pride and prejudice so utterly forgotten as in our taste for music; nowhere does the public ear embrace a wider range of musical enjoyment and knowledge; nowhere do the various professors of musical art find fairer hearing or better pay.'

This state of almost servile contentment with the existing state of things was exchanged for a more hopeful view in the next article on music included in the Review eleven years afterwards (vol. 106, p. 82), where the reviewer of Chappell's Popular Music' finds it possible to compare favourably the state of things in the middle of the century with what it had been a generation before. 'Scarcely thirty years have elapsed since the normal John Bull was supposed to entertain a manly abhorrence against the sing-song that delighted more frivolous foreigners. But now music is the rage everywhere-if, indeed, the word "rage" can be applied to a steady predilection which extends over all classes of the British public, and gives no signs of evanescence. . . . The epicure . . . finds a series of soirées and matinées sufficient to occupy his mind with instrumental music of the most recherché kind for at least three months in every year. The lover of sacred music is content to pass three summer hours in a large uncomfortable room, as one of a dense crowd that listens to an oratorio by Handel or by Mendelssohn.'

After pointing out the undoubted fact that England had in old times been eminent in music, and that there is no natural unfitness for music in the English temperament, the writer goes on:

"The antiquary . . . knows that the anti-musical tendencies which were so highly developed in the last century simply denoted an exceptional state of the British mind. As well might the Frenchman, born during the prevalence of the Revolutionary Calendar, regard the substitution of “1805" for "xiv," and the transformation of the 10th Nivôse into the 31st of December, as the introduction of an unheard-of novelty, as the Briton express astonishment at the passion for music manifested in his native island about the middle of the nineteenth century.'

It is curious to notice that there were concerts which would keep the amateur alive in music for three months of the year, and that this is considered a wonderful point to reach. There is nowadays no such thing as a period of three months during which public concerts are not given in London at the rate of some dozens a week.

It was indeed between the dates of these two articles that the movement which has been called the 'renaissance' of music in England began. It is probable that the Great Exhibition of 1851 had an indirect influence upon the revival; for, although the musical arrangements at the Exhibition itself seem to have been far from ideal, yet the transference of the building to Sydenham led to the establishment of the Crystal Palace concerts, which were undoubtedly among the first and most important factors in the encouragement of music from a rational point of view. Music began to be looked at, not merely as a commercial employment on the one hand or a fashionable recreation on the other, but as an art intrinsically worthy of the best intellectual attention it could receive. While Manns gradually formed the rudimentary band of the Palace into a first-rate orchestra, Grove, by his personal enthusiasm for the best music, and his interesting and suggestive analytical programmes, formed the tastes of an audience that came from all quarters to enjoy the rare treat of regular orchestral concerts.

Not only was the stock orchestral repertory of the