Not until quite recently has musical criticism been taken seriously either by the London or provincial Press. In the old days of the sixties, when Wagner came to London (I am writing many miles away from books, but surely it was in the sixties that Wagner visited us?), there was not a single open-minded musical critic on the British Press. J. W. Davison, the very powerful Times critic, was not only a fool, but, what is much more dangerous, he was a learned fool. He treated Wagner shamefully, and he did more than his share to bring our country into musical disrepute among the cultured men of other nations. Joseph Bennett, of The Daily Telegraph, was a fluent writer who contrived to say less in a full column than a man like Ernest Newman or R. A. Streatfeild or Samuel Langford can say in a couple of lines. He footled gaily for many years, wielded enormous power, and did nothing whatever to advance the cause of music in England.

As a commercial asset, Joseph Bennett must have been invaluable to the proprietors of The Daily Telegraph. For, like Davison, he had great influence. People read him. Even in my own time, when an important new work was produced, we used to question each other: “What does Old Joe say?” And, most unfortunately, it mattered a great deal what Old Joe did say, though anyone who knew much about music was very well aware that nine times out of ten Bennett would be wrong. If he damned a work—well, that work was damned. No 144musical critic to-day wields such power as his, though there are at least a score of writers on music who have ten times his gifts. His present successor, for example, Mr Robin Legge, is incomparably a finer musician, a much more open-minded man, and a student of infinitely more culture, than Bennett. Yet his influence, I imagine, is not so great as that of his predecessor. One cannot say that Bennett stooped to his public, for Bennett could not stoop; if he had stooped, he would have disappeared altogether. No: he was the public: the people: the common people. He had the point of view of the man in the back street.

But to-day things are changed. The musical critic is no longer primarily a raconteur, a gossiper, a chatterer. As a rule, he is a man of culture, of experience, of solid musical attainments. He earns little—anything from one hundred and fifty pounds to five hundred pounds a year, though, no doubt, in very rare instances, he may be paid more than the latter figure. Musical criticism, therefore, is not a profession that seduces the ambitious man, for the ambitious man of materialistic views may more easily earn three times what the Press has to offer him by selling imitation jewellery or doing anything else that money-making people do. When E. A. Baughan, now dramatic critic of The Daily News, was editing The Musical Standard more than twenty years ago, he wrote me a very earnest letter beseeching me not to become a musical critic on account of the payment being so meagre. “If you have a desk, stick to it; if you are a commercial traveller, remain a commercial traveller” was his advice in essence. But I would rather be a musical critic on one hundred and fifty pounds a year than a stockbroker earning fifteen hundred pounds. I love money, but I love music and journalism more, and the three years I spent in Manchester with an income of three hundred pounds were full of happiness, brimful of great days when I 145felt my mind growing and my spirit taking unto itself wings.

E. A. Baughan is not, I think, a musician in the true sense of the word, nor does he claim to be, but I imagine that, being musical and having the itch for writing, he took the first journalistic work that offered itself. That work was the editing of The Musical Standard. Subsequently he went to The Morning Leader as musical critic, and then to The Daily News as dramatic critic. He is sane, level-headed, honest, but not conspicuously brilliant. His musical work, judged by a high standard, was poor. He had not sufficient knowledge to guide him to a right judgment when faced by a new problem. Hugo Wolf was such a problem, and if ever Baughan reads now what he wrote about Hugo Wolf some fifteen years ago, he must, I imagine, tingle with shame to the tips of his toes.

As a dramatic critic he has secured an honourable and enviable position. I used to meet him very frequently at first nights, and always thought him a trifle blasé and almost wholly devoid of imagination, subtlety and true artistic feeling. He has not the artist’s attitude towards life, and he would probably bring an action for slander against you if you said he had.
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I was never introduced to C. L. Graves, the musical critic of The Spectator and the well-known humorous writer, but on one occasion I sat next to him at a very important concert, and in conversation found him an extremely courteous but rather baffled man. His knowledge of music is that of the cultured amateur. His mind but grudgingly admits “advanced” work, and I, as a modern, regret that an intellect so charming, so gracious, so able, should be even occasionally occupied in passing judgment on work that has its being entirely outside his mental horizon. But I doubt very much if The Spectator has any influence on the musical life of London, though I 146imagine that Dr Brewer, Mr T. H. Noble, Sir Hubert Parry, Sir Charles V. Stanford and Sir Alexander Mackenzie read Mr Graves with regularity and approval.
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But the man whom all of us who write about music honour most of all is Ernest Newman, of The Birmingham Daily Post. Here we have a first-rate intellect functioning with absolute sureness and with almost fierce rapidity. As a scholar, no man is better equipped; as a writer, he ranks with the highest; for fearlessness and inflexible intellectual honesty, he has no equal. His books on Wagner and Hugo Wolf and the volume entitled Musical Studies are head and shoulders above any volumes of musical criticism ever published in our language. But though his knowledge of music is encyclopædic, music is but one of many subjects upon which he is an authority. Under another name he has published a volume on philosophy which, on its appearance, created something like a sensation; unfortunately, this book ceased to be procurable within a few weeks of its publication. Poetry, French and German literature, sociology and psychology are but a few of the subjects upon which he is as well qualified to write as he is on music.

Why does he hide himself in Birmingham? Well, if you are a musical critic in London, it is impossible to do any solid work. All day and almost every day you are at concerts and operas, and you are sadly in danger of becoming a mere reporter. Newman’s post in Birmingham leaves him some leisure in which to write more important work.

I never think of Newman without wondering if ever he will be given the chance to achieve the work that is nearest his heart. That work is a full and complete history of music. For this task he is intellectually well equipped, but the labour in which it would involve him calls for years of leisure. Time and again he has planned 147work—notably, a book on Montaigne—which, for lack of leisure, he has been compelled to abandon. He was made for finer things than newspaper work, and though he has made an indelible impression on musical thought in this and other countries, his life will be largely wasted if the latter half of it has to be spent in writing daily criticism and occasional articles.

Newman’s psychology is peculiarly complex. Though there is a vein of cruelty in him, he is yet sensitive to the suffering of other people. I was with him on one occasion when Bantock told him that a certain enemy of his (Newman’s) had just died. The effect of this news on Newman was to me most unexpected. He started a little. “Good God!” he said; “poor, poor devil.” And for the rest of the evening he sat gloomy and silent. The thought of death is intolerable to him. His repulsion from it is as much physical as nervous. Though, on occasion, a stern and relentless critic, he reacts morbidly to criticism of himself. He is highly strung, imaginative, rationalistic; he believes little and trusts not at all, loves intensely and hates bitterly. Vain he is, also, and he clings almost despairingly to what remains of his youth.

It is some few years since I saw Newman in close intimacy, but when he was on the staff of The Manchester Guardian and, later on, when he removed to Birmingham, I was at his house very frequently, and a very small circle of friends used to pass long evenings in delicious fooling. In those days Newman could throw off twenty-five years of his age and become a high-spirited and impish boy. I remember one night when, a macabre mood or, rather, a mood of extravagantly high spirits having descended upon us, one of our company, a lady, simulated sudden illness and death. We dressed her in a shroud, placed pennies on her eyes and candles at her head and feet. But in the middle of this foolery, Newman disappeared, and when it was all over and he h............