23 8 MUSIC 



period. The interpretative technique having been developed beyond the needs of what 

 may be called classical music, a new school is springing up, the art of which seeks to take 

 full advantage of the new resources thus afforded. 



So far as one can judge in what is necessarily a transition period the centre of creative 

 musical life seems to be shifting westward. The long and glorious annals of modern 

 German music came to an end with Wagner and Brahms. The promise of an important 

 Russian school heralded by Tscha'ikovsky has so far not been fulfilled. The first signs 

 of a new life in music appeared in France, principally in the works of Debussy, Ravel, 

 and others of their school, but it appears to have died down again or dissipated itself 

 into a morbid and precious trifling with the exquisite interpretation of things not worth 

 interpreting. A little later a new and promising school of composition sprang up in 

 England, more solid in its basis than that of France and at first not so exquisite in tech- 

 nical mastery; but it has during the last three years developed to a point which has left 

 the French trifling far behind and promises to broaden into a creative art of first rate 

 importance. Such names as Granville Bantock, Joseph Holbrooke, Cyril Scott, Hamil- 

 ton Harty, William Wallace, Hinton, Ethel Smyth, Vaughan Williams, York Bowen, 

 Delius, Dale, Gardiner, Grainger, and von Hoist, represent the most modern group of 

 this English school, while composers like Stanford, Parry, Cowen, Mackenzie, Coleridge- 

 Taylor, Walford Davies, Somervell, Hamish MacCunn, Edward German, and Hurl- 

 stone represent a type of music not so ultra modern but still full of an increasing free- 

 dom, while yet retaining enough of the old classical forms to take a stronger hold of the 

 conservative public than is possible with the newer music. The work of Elgar can 

 hardly be separated from either group; in a sense it belongs to both. The high degree 

 of excellence attained by English orchestras has had much to do with the development 

 of symphonic music; and the services of the two most eminent English conductors, Sir 

 Henry Wood and Mr. Landon Ronald, have greatly stimulated and helped it. 



The new development of music, arising from its perfection of the means of interpreta- 

 tion, is as yet hardly definite enough in its direction for us to predict with any certainty 

 the course likely to be taken in its stream, but enough has happened in the last year or 

 so to make clear the general lines on which composers of the new school are proceeding. 

 The most striking characteristic which is common to them all is a great freedom of form. 

 The classical form of the sonata and symphony has been expanded and modified almost 

 beyond recognition. The modern composer does not, when he sets about a work, con- 

 fine himself within the limits of form which have hitherto been characteristic of the 

 greatest music. He seeks to interpret mood rather than to achieve structure or outline; 

 in the slang of the arts he is more concerned with " atmosphere " than with construction. 

 And here also comes in another striking quality in the new music. There were, roughly, 

 three elements in the old music: rhythm, melody and harmony. To these has now 

 been added a fourth, which for want of a better English term one must call colour. 

 Tone colour is arrived at by the use of the different sound qualities of the different instru- 

 ments; and the perfection of modern instruments, and the high degree of virtuosity 

 achieved by their players, have greatly extended the resources of the composer. In the 

 old music instruments were used more with regard to their compass than to their tone 

 colour. Melody was assigned to such instruments as violins, oboes, and clarinets, on 

 account of the facility of executing rapid passages upon them, and of their considerable 

 compass in the higher scales. To the less agile instruments such as horns, trombones, 

 and the lower strings, were assigned the task of filling in the harmonies, while drums and 

 even trumpets were used as instruments of percussion to accent the rhythm. The 

 modern tendency of music is to change all this. Melody, once almost a monopoly 

 amongst the instruments named, has been distributed amongst all the instruments of 

 the orchestra, even kettle-drums. The dream of Berlioz that every family of instru- 

 ments should form a complete orchestra in itself has now been realized, with the result 

 that by using their distribution of tone qualities, either separately, or blended one with 

 another, the modern composer has on his palette a series of gradations of tone which 

 correspond with the colours on a painter's palette. And it is this new use of colour, this 



