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were educated, the progress of the public would be rapid. They would no
longer be ready to admire the canvases of Michael Angelo, who, as I
learnt the other day for the first time, painted frescoes, nor would
they prefer him, as unhesitatingly as they do now, to Buonarotti, which
is his surname, nor would they imagine Raffaelle's Cartoons appeared in
_Puncinello_. All these mistakes I have myself made, though no one
discovered them; while in the realm of music no one has more
misrepresented the masters, more discouraged the overtures of young
composers."
"But still I do not understand how it is done," urged Lillie.
"You shall have my formula in a nutshell. I had to be a musical critic
and an art critic. I was ignorant of music and knew nothing of art. But
I was a dab at language. When I was talking of music, I used the
nomenclature of art. I spoke of light and shade, color and form,
delicacy of outline, depth and atmosphere, perspective, foreground and
background, nocturnes and harmonies in blue. I analyzed symphonies
pictorially and explained what I saw defiling before me as the music
swept on. Sunsets and belvedere towers, swarthy Paynims on Shetland
ponies, cypress plumes and Fra Angelico's cherubs, lumps of green clay
and delicate pillared loggias, fennel tufts and rococo and scarlet
anemones, and over all the trail of the serpent. Thus I created an epoch
in musical criticism. On the other hand, when I had to deal with art, I
was careful to eschew every suggestion of the visual vocabulary and to
confine myself to musical phrases. In talking of pictures, I dwelt upon
their counter-point and their orchestration, their changes of key and
the evolution of their ideas, their piano and forte-passages, and their
bars of rest, their allegro and diminuendo aspects, their suspensions on
the dominant. I spoke of them as symphonies and sonatas and masses, said
one was too staccato and another too full of consecutive sevenths, and a
third in need of transposition to the minor. Thus I created an epoch in
art criticism. In both departments the vague and shifting terms I
introduced enabled me to evade mistakes and avoid detection, while the
creation of two epochs gave me the very first place in contemporary
criticism. There is nothing in which I would not undertake to create an
epoch. I do not say I have always been happy, and it has been a source
of constant regret to me that I had not even learnt to play the piano
when a girl and that unplayed music still remained to me little black
dots."
"And so you did not dare marry the composer?"
"No, nor tell him why. Volume Three: I said I admired him so much that I
wanted to go on devoting critical essays to him, and my praises would be
discounted by the public if I were his wife. Was it not imprudent for
him to alienate the leading critic by marrying her? Rather would I
sacrifice myself and continue to criticise him. But I love him, and it
is for his sake I would become an Old Maid."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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