438 Mr. Francis Eueffer [May 28, 



singers had to study beforehand every gesture and every movement. 

 Yet these had to appear as the spontaneous action of the moment 

 called up by the inspiration of the moment, and without this illusion 

 the dramatic effect was destroyed. All this ceased, however, with 

 repetition, and we were let into the secret. The actors appeared no 

 longer as free agents, but as marionettes pulled by strings. 



The lecturer then proceeded to speak of the Professional Critic, 

 saying that his task was that of an Interpreter as well as a Censor. 

 In the former capacity he was the connecting link between the 

 aspiration of the artist and the receptivity of the public. It might be 

 supposed that the original inherent force of art would strike any one 

 of itself. No doubt in its simplest form art would do so, but it was 

 also a growth of ages and the result of many minds. Musical 

 compositions, as well as literary, belonged to different periods, and 

 contemporaries frequently failed to recognize genius. In all ages 

 great composers met with exactly the same objections — one touch of 

 Philistinism made the whole world kin. Here the sphere of the critic 

 came in to herald genius and pave its way. 



After referring to the musical critic's difficulty in making his ideas 

 known, music not being reducible to words, Mr. Hueffer said a critic 

 must not be too technical or too poetical. Schumann was instanced 

 as one who hit a happy medium in his criticisms, and it was mentioned 

 that he was one of the first to recognize the merits of Chopin, Berlioz, 

 and William Sterndale Bennett. Writers of music were not, however, 

 the best critics, and when Schumann became a great composer, and 

 the head of a school, he lost much of his catholicity of judgment. 



Many musicians spoke of their predecessors with scorn. A great 

 original creator was necessarily a man of very marked stamp, and 

 strongly impressed with his own idea, and therefore he had little 

 sympathy with others of equally strong individuality. 



The other office of the musical critic was that of Censor^and 

 General Monitor. That was a very disagreeable one, because the 

 irritable race of musicians did not like to be censured. Critics, in 

 fact, were held responsible not only for their own sins, but for the 

 sins of their predecessors for five generations before them. Abuse 

 levelled at Beethoven seventy years ago by some obscure scribe at 

 Vienna or Leipsic was continually cited by dissatisfied young com- 

 posers to show what musical criticism in general was worth. There 

 were, of course, good and bad musical critics ; those guilty of the abuse 

 alluded to were no doubt bad ones, either intentionally perverse or 

 hopelessly stupid. So at least one would think but for the curious 

 fact that one of the most violent critics was Weber, the composer of 

 ' Der Freischiitz,' who bitterly attacked Beethoven. Weber, however, 

 was a very young man at the time, and subsequently was ashamed of 

 his own folly. Those who had judgment to discern and courage to 

 declare new genius were almost as rare as that genius itself. But that 

 there had been such men at all times was proved by the fact that the 

 great composers became famous frequently during life, or at least 



