suffering from at the present time is the excess of technical skill divorced from any commensurate inspiration. By comparison with some of the scores of Scriabin those of Schubert or Beethoven might be reckoned, from the purely technical point of view, mere child's play. Stravinsky long ago, in his Petrouschka, proved himself to be a consummate craftsman, however crude some of his more recent utterances may appear to be; while Schönberg in his Pierrot Lunaire and other works has produced compositions which are miracles of misplaced learning and ingenuity. And if all the smaller men are not equally accomplished, it is probably true that the general standard of technical skill has never been higher than at the present day. The only pity is that it does not seem to be matched with a corresponding amount of genuine creative genius, and that it is devoted as a consequence to such unprofitable purposes.

But then this is, of course, no unfamiliar phenomenon in the history of æsthetics. We seem, indeed, at present to be going through one of those periods common to all the arts when for the time being, and in the absence of creative genius of the highest order, technique becomes the all-absorbing preoccupation, to the exclusion of worthier and more substantial aims. So it was, it may be remembered, in the case of music in the fifteenth century, in the time of Josquin des Près and his contemporaries, when the leading composers of the day devoted all their energies to the construction of what could only be characterised as musical conundrums.

Mr. Cecil Forsyth has described in entertaining fashion the kind of things they did :

Unheard-of outrages were perpetrated. . . . One found that by using three clefs and three time-signatures he could pack a fairly elaborate work into a one-line part. A composer after burying himself in the country for a few weeks would bring back a couple of square inches of paper and set his friends guessing. Full scores were written, so to speak, on the thumb-nail. Then came diabolical pleasantries. The notes were written out innocently enough and appeared to be firm ground to walk on; but a humorous Latin finger-post showed the unhappy singer that he was in a quagmire from which he could only escape by following its directions. One such finger-post said, 'Look in the mirror,' or 'Walk like a crab,' or 'Sing Jew-wise,' meaning that the part was to be sung backwards. Another said, 'Turn night into day,' that is, ' Sing the black notes as if they were white '; 'Don't stop shouting,' that is, 'Neglect the rests throughout the part 'He who is exalted shall be abased,' that is, 'Go up where the music goes down and vice verså.'

It is with exercises hardly less vain, if of a different order, that some of our ultra-modern masters seem to be occupying themselves to-day, as, for instance, Schönberg in Pierrot Lunaire with his Canon Cancrizans—that is, a canon on a theme which can be played either backwards or forwards with the same result-and

other ingenious absurdities of an equally artificial kind. Not that even a Canon Cancrizans need be regarded as a deadly sin in itself. Quite the contrary; it might be very jolly if it had been written so that one could hear it, instead of having been inextricably embedded in a maze of counterpoint, so that not a living soul, save Schönberg himself, would ever have known of its existence if some 'poring man' had not come along and dug it out of the score.

But man cannot live by crab-like canons alone, and that is the point. There is not the least objection to occasional extravagances which are merely incidental occurrences in the midst of music otherwise sane and intelligible. Indeed, most of the great masters have indulged their humour in some such fashion at some time or another. Nor are harmonic audacities in themselves in any way a new thing. There is hardly a discord probably in the most daring modern music which could not be paralleled in Bach, who also revelled, of course, in technical feats and stunts of the most artificial kind. Mozart's extremely discordant introduction to his C major quartet is still something of a puzzle to the theorists. Beethoven has a chord in the Ninth Symphony containing actually every note of the diatonic scale, while his famous horn passage towards the end of the first movement of the Eroica Symphony is of course a classical example of musical naughtiness which has none the less come to be accepted as an unqualified joy. And countless other instances could be cited.

But between occasional examples of waggishness or wilfulness such as these and music composed wholly of the same sort of thing carried much farther there is all the difference in the world. One is reminded of the old Punch joke of the horse-dealer trying to dispose of a particularly scraggy-looking steed and expatiating volubly on his 'points' to a prospective purchaser. 'Points! replies the latter, as he looks the animal over; he seems made of 'em.' And so it is with so much of this music which we are asked to accept in the name of progress-it seems to consist entirely, as a learned professor once expressed it, of wrong notes. Preoccupied with their stunts and sensations, the avant garde, as they proudly style themselves, are turning out to-day works which bear little more resemblance to music as it has hitherto been understood in Europe than the music of China or Japan.

Is it surprising in the circumstances that these productions find so little favour? As I have recently pointed out elsewhere, nothing is more remarkable in the case of this ultra-modern music than the entire absence of anything in the nature of genuine appreciation and enthusiasm even on the part of those who profess to take it most seriously. Whereas all the great masters of the past, however much they may have been criticised and misunderstood by the multitude, had their whole-hearted followers

and admirers, who proclaimed their genius with red-hot enthusiasm and conviction, the same does not apply at all in the case of their alleged successors, otherwise the pioneers of to-day. Sheepish apologetics and laboured pleas for patience and forbearance seem to be the utmost that their champions find themselves capable of rising to as a rule; and I venture to suggest that there is profound significance in the fact, something indeed differentiating the case of these modernist masters in a very marked way from that of their forerunners.

When we think of the adoring homage bestowed on Beethoven throughout the entire course of his career and of the frenzied enthusiasm aroused by Wagner, so that his followers would go through fire and water to advance his cause, it seems truly ludicrous to suggest that the tepid, halting, half-hearted support accorded to the Schönbergs and the Stravinskys, even, as I say, by those who profess to admire them, can be reckoned in the same category. Not in this way were the claims of the older masters championed when they were seeking recognition. They inspired from the first on the part of those who understood them wholehearted enthusiasm without any qualifying 'ifs' and 'buts.' And I suggest, therefore, that this is a fact which it is important to remember when we are asked to assume the 'inevitable' ultimate acceptance of some of these ultra-modernist practitioners merely because they happen to be intolerable and incomprehensible to their contemporaries.

sad

On the whole, therefore, music would seem to be in a pretty way at present. Never before has there been such enormous activity, never before such deplorably inadequate results. Truly may it be said, so far as music-lovers in general are concerned, that the sheep look up and are not fed. Among the most prominent composers of the younger generation there is not one of whom it can be said that he is universally accepted as unquestionably great. There are a good many, certainly, on behalf of whom bold claims are made by their individual followers. But not one of them can be said to have won anything approaching general acceptance as an indubitably great composer, worthy of being compared with the giants of the past; and this is a condition of affairs which tells its own tale. Also it is one the like of which has never been known before since Bach and Handel laid the foundations of modern music. Always since then the line of unquestioned and unquestionable great masters has been unbroken. The succession has never failed. To-day, for the first time, the supply would seem to have given out; and 'Yes, we have no great composers,' is the melancholy formula which seems to meet the case. But even so there is no need to despair. The necessary genius -he who is awaited, in Schumann's famous phrase-may be

trusted to present himself in due course, and then all that is of real value in the wild and frantic experimentalising of to-day will doubtless be turned to proper account. In the meantime it is, it must be admitted, a somewhat poor look-out for those who want their music, not a generation hence, but here and now. True, one can always act on the famous principle of having recourse to an old work whenever invited to try a new one. But the intelligent music-lover cannot subsist entirely on the masterpieces of the past. Wherefore, while awaiting with every confidence the eventual arrival of some indubitable master who shall triumphantly resolve all our present discontents, the hope may none the less be fervently expressed that his advent may not be delayed too long.

HUGH ARTHUR SCOTT.

'FAIR MAIDS OF FEBRUARY'

THE early morning was dull; and among the ivy under the trees the snowdrops, in thick clusters, stood with their heads so drooping and their white petals folded so demurely that they looked like solid oval pendants hung on slender threads, very white and charming, of course, but with a curious heaviness about them that was in tune with the cold, wet dawn. But as the hours passed the sun came out, the mild sun of February, and its pale golden rays touched the despondent flowers and cheered them up in a wonderful way, so that their whole aspect altered. The three outermost petals began to lift, and by mid-day had so spread that they seemed to be straining themselves in the effort, and so bright and light did these 'Fair Maids of February' now look that they might well have been dancers all agog in anticipation of a lover.

As the afternoon passed and the sun withdrew itself the white skirts of the flowers fell again into demureness for the hours of night, but in the clear brilliancy of the noonday sun our forefathers' delightful name for them, as given above, abundantly justified itself. It is noteworthy that had the day not cleared up, but remained sullen and drear, the snowdrops would have remained tightly closed the whole day, except indeed the quite old ones, which had nothing more to fear or hope from life, for the 'Fair Maids' when their time comes face death gallantly in gala attitude, and only those close which still need protection for their treasure of fertilising pollen.

An old English rhyme says:

The Snowdrop in purest white arraie
First rears her hedde on Candlemass Day,

and Candlemas Day is February 2, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, when, in olden times, the statues of Our Lady' were lifted from off their pedestals in the churches (snowdropsthe Virgin's own flower-being strewn over the vacant places) and the figures carried in procession round the buildings, accompanied by young girls clad all in white and carrying garlands of this flower. So both girls and their flowers became known as 'The Fair Maids of February,' and the apposite name still clings to the blossoms.