It is imputed to him for righteousness that he goes over the heads of the
general public and appeals mainly to musicians. But the greatest men do
not go over the heads of the masses, they take them rather by the hand.
The true musician would not snub so much as a musical critic. His
instinct is towards the man in the street rather than the Academy.
Perhaps I say this as being myself a man in the street musically. I do
not know, but I know that Bach does not appeal to me and that I do appeal
from Bach to the man in the street and not to the Academy, because I
believe the first of these to be the sounder.
Still, I own Bach does appeal to me sometimes. In my own poor music I
have taken passages from him before now, and have my eye on others which
I have no doubt will suit me somewhere. Whether Bach would know them
again when I have worked my will on them, and much more whether he would
own them, I neither know nor care. I take or leave as I choose, and
alter or leave untouched as I choose. I prefer my music to be an
outgrowth from a germ whose source I know, rather than a waif and stray
which I fancy to be my own child when it was all the time begotten of a
barrel organ. It is a wise tune that knows its own father and I like my
music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents. Roughly,
however, as I have said over and over again, if I think something that I
know and greatly like in music, no matter whose, is appropriate, I
appropriate it. I should say I was under most obligations to Handel,
Purcell and Beethoven.
For example, any one who looked at my song “Man in Vain” in _Ulysses_
might think it was taken from “Batti, batti.” I should like to say it
was taken from, or suggested by, a few bars in the opening of Beethoven’s
pianoforte sonata op. 78, and a few bars in the accompaniment to the duet
“Hark how the Songsters” in Purcell’s _Timon of Athens_. I am not aware
of having borrowed more in the song than what follows as natural
development of these two passages which run thus:
[Picture: Music score by Beethoven then Purcell]
From the pianoforte arrangement in The Beauties of Purcell by John
Clarke, Mus. Doc.