indicated as follows:--(1) Bustle of the streets; (2) a virile personal
note; (3) companionship and interchange of ideas between two
sweethearts; (4) pert children playing their pranks; (5) military band
episode; (6) impressions on passing from the street into a church; (7)
new phases of street-bustle music. Musical symbols of very considerable
plastic force are invented for these things, and are woven into a
powerful and entertaining tone-picture with that mastery of the
orchestra which no one can now refuse to recognise in Dr. Elgar. He
always works with definite lines, and does not seem to care much for
those atmospheric effects in which certain moderns, such as Richard
Strauss, are so strong. The music has a far wider range of ideas and
emotions than would be possible in a poem occupying the same time in
delivery. It gives us impressions of London by day and by night,
impressions that are partly realistic and partly antiquarian, following
the flight of the imagination with absolute freedom, forming a sort of
musical parallel to Henley's "London Voluntaries."
And lo! the wizard hour
Whose shining silent sorcery hath such power!
Still, still the streets, between their carcanets
Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep.
But see how gable ends and parapets
In gradual beauty and significance
Emerge! And did you hear
That little twitter-and-cheep,
Breaking inordinately loud and clear
On this still spectral exquisite atmosphere?
'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold
A rakehell cat--how furtive and acold!
A spent witch homing from some infamous dance--
Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade
Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade!
And if this is effective, does not a certain sonnet of Wordsworth's
exist to prove that an aspect of London may furnish a magnificent poetic
inspiration? It should be remembered that there is originality in
emotion as well as in ideas and in devices; and this is where we find
Dr. Elgar strong--perhaps stronger than any other British composer.
Besides the technical ability to express himself in music, he has
originality of emotion. He takes us into regions where music never took
us before. As to his use of Wagner's procedure, that was also
Beethoven's procedure in some of his finest works. In fact, it is the
procedure of everyone for whom music is a language, such as it has
tended more and more to become ever since Beethoven's time. The history
of music in the nineteenth century is the history of something growing
constantly more articulate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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