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The Review of Reviews. 



MUSIC AND ART IN THE MAGAZINES. 

 The New Bach Criticism. 



Ir is now some two hundred years since the great 

 Bach lived and flourished, primarily as an organist 

 and only secondarily as a composer. But in the last 

 half-century or so research has revealed a dozen new 

 aspects of him and has slowly changed our general 

 view, not only of him, hut of esthetics in general, 

 writes Mr. Ernest Newman in the January number 

 of the Musical Times. In his article Mr. Newman 

 deals with Bach literature since the monumental 

 biography by Spitta, which appeared between 1873 

 and 1880. The Bach criticism of recent years 

 includes two great books, one by Albert Schweitzer 

 and the other by Andre Pirro, and these have largely 

 transformed the older notions of the aesthetic basis of 

 Bach's music. The tendency during the last decade 

 has been to study more his vocal works and to look 

 there for a key that will unlock, not only these, but 

 his instrumental works as well. Schweitzer and 

 Pirro prove conclusively, says Mr. Newman, that so 

 far from being the most " abstract " of musicians. 

 Bach is the most "poetic " or " pictorial." If a line 

 or a verse offered him an opportunity for " painting" 

 he never failed to seize upon it to the occasional 

 neglect of the sentiment of the passage as a whole. 

 The same verbal "image" was sufficient to evoke 

 the same, or a similar, musical phrase. Thus we 

 have quite a system of " motives " — generic types of 

 melody or of rhythm which may be classified as 

 symbolising joy, or grief, or terror, or majesty, or 

 peace, etc. ; and these discoveries throw a new light 

 upon both the vocal and the instrumental music of 

 Bach. 



Music and Drama. 



Writing in the Qnarta/y Eeview for January on 

 Music and Drama, Mr. \V. H. Hadow tells in outline 

 the story of music's association with drama from the 

 days of earlier Greek tragedy to our own times. He 

 replies to the dictum of Tolstoy that the musical 

 drama is an untenable convention by explaining how 

 music has been needed at all times to enhance the 

 effect of the drama — either to intensify the dramatic 

 note, or, it may be, to rela.\ and alleviate it, as in 

 poignant tragedy. With regard to modern music- 

 drama, he deals with Wagner, Richard Strauss, and 

 Debussy. The most momentous composer to carry 

 on the Wagnerian tradition is Strauss ; but, says M. 

 Romain Rolland, Wagnerian drama does not in any 

 sense respond to the French mind, and he declares 

 Debussy's " Pelleas et Melisande" to be the manifesto 

 of the French revolt against Wagner. Mr. Hadow, 

 in conclusion, says that it is clear that no common 

 measure can at present be set to the ideals of Strauss 

 and Debussy, to the music of " Pelleas " and that of 

 " Elektra " ; they stand poles asunder, and seem to 

 admit of no point of union. But each in its own way 

 has shown how the music-drama caji enrich its theme, 

 and it is possible that the ways may after all converge. 



The day may come when men will regard Strauss as 

 we regard Gluck, and see in Debus.sy the lineal heir 

 of Mozart. Also the day may come when a greater 

 than either shall arise and show us that these ideals 

 are not incompatible ; that the poignancy of .the one 

 and the exquisiteness of the other may be resolved 

 into a fuller and nobler art that shall absorb them 

 both. 



The Chantry Gallery. 

 The Windsor Magazine for January publishes the 

 fourth article, by Mr. Austin Chester, on the Pictures 

 in the Chantry Bequest. Referring to the pictures 

 which represent the sea the writer mentions Mr. 

 Henry Moore's masterpiece, " Catspaws off the Land," 

 and Mr. Thomas Somerscale's " Off Valparaiso," the 

 former depicting the English sea, hyacinth, purple, 

 and sapphire, and the latter the dark-blue, deep- 

 rolling, oily-looking sea of the Pacific. The note of 

 tragedy is struck by such works as Mr. Arthur 

 Wardle's "Fate," Mr. W. F. Yeames's "Amy Robsart," 

 and Mr. Frank Bramley's " \ Hopeless Dawn," the 

 last-named appealing to the eye and to the heart in a 

 manner attained by no other picture in the collection. 

 History is represented by several pictures, and 

 " pastoral " by a number of landscapes by Mr. David 

 Murray, Mr. Yeend King, Mr. Adrian Stokes, Mr. 

 MacWhirter, Mr. F'arquharson, and other well-known 

 painters. There is a group of pictures by Mr. 

 Thomas Matthews Rooke, illustrating the story of 

 Ruth, and Mr. Arthur Hacker has a picture repre- 

 senting the Annunciation. Other pictures deal with 

 mediaeval subjects, and there are many more, the 

 subject-matter of which it would not be easy to 

 classify. The writer notes the catholicity of choice, 

 both in regard to subject and to style of painting, 

 which has been exercised by the Purchase Com- 

 mittee. There are now nearly one hundred and forty 

 pictures in the collection. 



Murillo's "Holy Family" in the National 



Gallery. 

 Murillo's " Holy Family " in the National Gallery 

 in its spiritual significance is the subject of a little 

 article, by H. A. Dallas, in the January number 

 of the Treasury. No other picture in the National 

 Gallery, says the writer, offers so much food for 

 thought to the Christian mystic. Poverty brought 

 -Murillo into contact with the poor and gave him 

 sympathy — and he saw in a family group of poor 

 peasants the material for his imaginative pictures of 

 the Holy Family of Nazareth. \Ve are told that his 

 wife was the model for many of his Madonnas. To 

 the writer, the " Holy Family " in the National Gallery 

 suggests that the idea of the artist was to represent 

 the Divine Trinity and the human trinity, the Man, 

 the Woman and the Child, as Joseph, Mary and Jesus 

 presenting the human trinity, while the picture symbo- 

 lises Eternal Fatherhood and Sonship united by the 

 Di\ine Spirit imder the figure of a Dove. The Child 

 is the meeting-point of the two trinities. 



