548 Sir Alexander C. Mackenzie [May 23,. 



palettes and can use orchestral colour with defter hands. I say 

 " orchestral " advisedly, because the gift of painting the " word " 

 unerringly by means of punctiliously chosen harmonies, accurate 

 inflexion and 'syllabic accentuation, droop and rise of the phrase, are 

 precisely among the secrets to which he possessed the key. 



So, too, one might point to composers of more pronounced 

 emotional warmth — not of necessity mere limp sentimentalists, or 

 something baser on that account — of wider range and hghter touch. 



Although their natural temperamental bents tend in totally 

 different directions, their convictions are equally true and genuine, 

 and it would indeed be a dull musicalVorld without them. 



The habit of analysing and philosophising too much about every 

 new manifestation in art is perhaps more apt to confuse and obfus- 

 cate than help ; and in less self-possessed men may cast a chill 

 " All Winter and severe " over such imagination and inspiration 

 wherewith they may happen to be endowed. 



But between the lines of Parry's latest published staves w^e may 

 perhaps read something importantly significant. 



A violent abuse of glaring pretentious effect, like splashing 

 paint about with a mop out of a bucket ; an increasing encroach- 

 ment of noisy realism, shrieked out by an over-grown monster 

 orchestra : and the degeneration of honest emotion into the hysteric- 

 ally morbid — and worse — were among other much too readily 

 accepted but thoroughly unwelcome importations from certain 

 quarters for some years prior to the war. 



But however unlikely to affect, much less to taint, the lofty aims 

 of one who believed that " the music which is going to live longest 

 is that which addresses itself only to the highest mental faculties," 

 he appears — if deductions from dates and events are fairly correct — 

 to have receded more and more within himself, the better to avoid 

 contact with probably the ughest and most destructive tendencies 

 known in the whole history of the art. 



I hope we are now better able to appraise it at its real worth. 



Living as we are, however grudgingly conceded, in one of the 

 most active and liveliest musical centres in Europe— one which 

 promises to be, now more than ever, the great cosmopohtan arena 

 open to all comers. 



And exceptionally well provided as we are, and always love to be, 

 with willingly seized opportunities of acquiring an almost immediate 

 knowledge of the very last word in the music of every nation — 

 except perhaps our own — it demands a rare power of concentration, 

 or, better said, of absolutely water-tight detachment, to enable even 

 the resolution of a Parry to keep unswervingly to the straight 

 independent course he mapped out for his own, and so honourably 

 ran to the end. 



Therein lies the kernel of a noteworthy example, the drift of a 

 great lesson ; and in that respect I claim him — using the word in no 



