In recent years some inspired rebels among painters and sculptors have striven towards the elevating of their arts to the highest level, that of music, the noblest medium for the expression of aesthetic emotions, nobler than words or brush or chisel. Recall Kandinsky’s color-symphonies. Alas, music is not any longer a daughter of Olympus; she has been dragged by Huhn from the pure atmosphere of the mountain summit down into the damp valley. Wagner began the prostitution of music by making it subservient to words; he has won the sanction and acclamation of the crowd. Then followed the orgy of Program-music, those wood-cut illustrations, those rich gravies that were invented to sweeten Mr. Huhn’s meals. Now an enterprising Chicago merchant, Mr. Carpenter, has presented us with an apotheosis of vulgarity to the hilarious triumph of the appreciative crowd, to the delight of our “independent” music-critics—“that strange creature, the American music-critic,” to quote a naive English journal. And Pippa dances. IBN GABIROL. Music GABRILOWITSCH AND THE NEW STANDARD MARGARET C. ANDERSON Ideas make their impressions very slowly, but they travel very fast. That is why Gabrilowitsch’s playing of the piano on March 21 was two different kinds of revelation to two different kinds of people. To a great many it was a rich fulfillment of promise; to a few it was the end of something that had had a great beginning. The trouble is that there’s a new standard to reckon with. We used to argue that what a man had to say was more important than the way he said it. Then we reversed that, claiming that a man may say anything provided he say it well. Then the socialistic school tried to go back to the first premise, but what they were really groping for was the new standard—which is simply this: A man may still say anything he wishes and if he says it well it will be art—_provided he really has something to say_. Tennyson knew how to say things well, but he missed being an artist because he had nothing to say. On what basis do we establish such a criterion? Not merely on that of “ideas,” because you may have no ideas at all and yet have profound reactions; and not merely on that of “socialism” or sincerity or ideals; and not—oh well, I mean to get through this discussion without dragging in the artist’s alleged monopoly of the eternal verities. B. Russell Herts got very close to what I mean when he said that Arnold Bennett missed real bigness because he had only a great and mighty skill without having a great and mighty soul.