amateur but to every professional actor and theatre-lover. It is full
of the most uncommon sense, and although Mr. Calvert has decided
opinions on voice-training, gesture, team-work, scenery, dressing,
music, and producing, he does not lay down the law with the evidence
of inexperience, but reasons his position from point to point with a
quietness that is far more impressive and convincing. Mr. Calvert has
also done more than he probably set out to do. The book is, in the
first instance, a guide for the young actor or would-be actor, giving
him a good deal of wise advice on the technical side of his craft.
But in doing this Mr. Calvert has written a book which should be read
by every theatre-goer, since it will increase his appreciation of the
theatre enormously by opening his mind to detail of which he was, in
all probability, completely unaware, although more or less conscious of
its cumulative effect. After reading Mr. Calvert's book he will find
himself itching to go immediately to the nearest playhouse and regard
the drama being enacted there with what he will feel are new eyes;
and since the standard of acting and of drama generally is dependent
largely upon the level of intelligence of its audience, Mr. Calvert's
book will be as beneficial to the theatre when studied by the ordinary
public as when studied by the actor. Finally, this book is an attempt
to put the actor again in his proper position as the pillar of the
drama. On this point I am in absolute agreement with Mr. Calvert. Plays
are conceivable in which the actor may be no more than an instrument
in the orchestra. I think they will be written, but I have yet to see
them. But in the plays of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans the actor
is first in importance, and scenery, dressing, music, and everything
else must be used simply as a background and a subsidiary to him.
Moreover Mr. Calvert makes a claim--which is also made by the late Mr.
H. B. Irving in an introduction--to the consideration of the actor in
his highest moments as a creative artist. This claim, in my opinion,
Mr. Calvert makes good, and if there are any people to-day who still
cherish the old superstition that the actor is merely a sort of clever
but shallow showman, then unless they are bigoted beyond the reach of
intelligence this book will dispel it once for all.
W. J. TURNER
THE FINE ARTS
War-pictures at Burlington House
One would have hesitated to predict success for a set of commissioned
war pictures: meaning success in the sense of excellence. In
commissioning any painting or piece of sculpture with a dictated
subject there is always the danger that the subject will be uncongenial
to the artist, that it may have no connection with his own intimate
experience. This is one of the disadvantages of portrait painting. The
artist is supposed to be capable and desirous of depicting all kinds of
characters, not to speak of flattering them. The novelist and dramatist
are more fortunate. People are anxious to avoid and also tired of their
revelations. But Mr. Horatio Bottomley still expects the Poet Laureate
to boom out the appropriate ode.
Besides the general objection there was the further feeling that the
war was a sufficient preoccupation in itself, and a disagreeable one of
such a kind that deliberately to set out to make contemporaneous art
about it would be not only superfluous but almost profane. It would
amount to gloating. The war was a foul and dirty job that had to be
gone through with, and the experience of concentrating on this was
enough. It was not without good reason that immediately following the
war the most popular forms of art were the Revue and the Russian Ballet.
Again, one rather grudges the large sums of State money spent on
war-pictures when one thinks of the comparatively small expenditure
on art in peace-time. And those two rich and influential patrons who
started the ball rolling with large contributions, did they before
the war, will they now after the war, patronise art extensively
and seriously? The motive may have been sound, but it was in all
probability very mixed.
But doubt and scepticism tend to be quashed by the result, which must
be admitted to be a very considerable success. The field appears to
have been so wide that the artists have been able to select the themes
which had most significance for them, and there is a direct continuity
in their present with their past work. Even pure landscapes have not
been ruled out. It is, in fact, far the best modern exhibition that has
graced the walls of the Academy for some time, and the memory of it
will still be fresh in the spring.
It is not meant, however, that the Exhibition is full of masterpieces.
It contains work that is representative of much of the best English art
of to-day, but the keynote of that art is talent, accomplishment, and
not genius. And this judgment does not exclude such well-known painters
as Sargent, Cameron, Muirhead Bone, Francis Dodd, Clausen, Orpen,
Lavery.
I shall, no doubt, be accused of iconoclasm, of indulging in easy
destructive criticism; and the term Futurist will be hurled at me with
such a lot of prejudicial glue on it that, although it is inapplicable,
it will inevitably stick. And I shall be asked if I would consign the
whole of the past to the rubbish-heap and abolish all tradition, and
so on. The answer is, emphatically and vehemently, no! It is precisely
because the past looms so imposing and ever watchful that the late
twentieth-century English painters are dwarfed. Place a Muirhead Bone
beside a Meryon (the comparison is not irrelevant, because there are
definite similarities between the two) and the Muirhead Bone will
disappear into the Meryon. Two possible exceptions in the present
Exhibition are _The Great Crater_, _Athies_ (280) and _Deniecourt
Chateau_, _Estrées_(284). Place a Sargent beside a Manet, Courbet or
Velazquez and Sargent's horses beside those of Géricault, and the
Sargent loses all vitality. Or, again, neither Steer nor Clausen
will stand very prolonged comparison with Constable or even Monet.
Practically the whole of English late twentieth-century art is derived
from Constable and from the French Barbizon and Impressionist schools,
and is inferior to it. The latter is the significant point. This may
sound too sweeping, and indeed it probably does leave out of account
the few gems which a complete collection would reveal. Still, the
fact of it being necessary to hunt for these few gems and not rather
to eliminate the few failures would confirm the general judgment.
We have never had anything like the great constellation of French
nineteenth-century art.
In reaction against the tendency of English Impressionism to degenerate
into the pleasant but slipshod æstheticism of a Lavery there is
the crude Vorticism of Wyndham Lewis and W. P. Roberts. It had
once a negative, destructive, rebellious value, but as a permanent
constructive effort it surely is a _cul-de-sac_, a mere mechanical
formula. Before any theory comes into play the primary test is whether
a picture really moves us, appeals to us. If Vorticist or Futurist
art did this, then no amount of argument refuting their abstract
theory could condemn the actual art. But, at any rate, so far as I am
concerned, this art has no appeal to me in a picture-frame. Indeed, it
seems to me to be becoming increasingly stereotyped, and it is amazing
that Mr. Wyndham Lewis should honestly believe in it himself. Mr.
Wadsworth's Vorticist design for a house, which was recently exhibited
by the Arts League of Service, absurdly unpractical though it was, had
far larger possibilities in it.
The most interesting work exhibited by the younger painters is that
painted in the more traditional manner--that is to say it is not
abstractionist. It is possible that on seeing for the first time the
pictures of the Nash brothers, Meninsky, Schwabe, Elliott Seabrooke,
one might mistake them for "Futurist" efforts. This is, however, not
owing to any distortion or abstraction, but to the fact that they have
in common with the abstractionists a certain restlessness of design.
Even when allied to absolute truth in representation, this trait might
at first sight appear novel and revolutionary. It is, or tends to be,
expressive of a new outlook.
Paul Nash's large picture, _The Menin Road_, is a distinct achievement.
It grips one's attention. Yet it is overloaded, the incident, the drama
of the landscape is piled on too thickly. John Nash's _Over the Top_,
on the other hand, attracts attention because of its very bareness
and simplicity. On a small section of a snow-covered front men are
stumbling out of a jagged muddy trench into rolling fog cloud. Yet in
spite of its success in convincing us that that is exactly how it was,
the picture lacks intensity and depth. We are grateful to Mr. Nash, as
also to Mr. Sargent, for having spared us the harassing agonies of the
typical old-fashioned Academy war-picture. But neither has altogether
succeeded in providing the real substitute. What such a picture would
be like still remains to be seen. For it has not yet been painted.
The distinctive characteristics of the younger school, its sense of
actuality, of lively conflicting movement, its combination of realism
with rhythm, are summed up in Stanley Spencer's _Travoys Arriving
with Wounded at a Dressing Station at Smoll, in Macedonia_. In spite
of certain possible faults of perspective, this is a thoroughly good
picture. But although about a scene in the war, it is not of the war.
It contains an inner civilian joyfulness expressed in unhampered,
rhythmical activity. Equal praise must be bestowed on Henry Lamb's
_Irish Troops in the Judaean Hills Surprised by a Turkish Bombardment_,
which possesses the same sense of concrete (not abstract) dynamic form.
The New English Art Club
There are two large pictures by Stanley Spencer at the New English
Art Club Exhibition which confirm the impression that there is an
immense promise in his art and already considerable attainment. It
has such depth and breadth, such spontaneity and comprehensiveness.
Boggle as we may at certain neo-primitive tendencies in his figures,
at certain humorous irrelevancies in their occupations, overriding and
almost justifying these eccentricities there is the fact that these
two pictures do immediately and irresistibly heighten and intensify
our consciousness: they give us a "silent and instantaneous flash
of collusion with beauty." The picture _Swan Upping at Cookham_ is
freer from the static archaistic convention than the pseudo-Biblical
composition, _The Sacrifice of Zacharias_, which is, nevertheless,
because of the landscape background, equally fascinating. In the former
it is the rigid mask of the woman lifting the cushion out of the punt
and the distortion of the shoulders of the dark-faced gentleman that
provoke criticism: in the latter nearly all the figures are a little
inexplicable, except (and here the realist will demur strongly) the
gentleman who is footing it gently towards Zacharias and the Florentine
gentleman who is indulging in a graceful and somewhat reminiscent
dancing gesture. These two are an inevitable part of that luxuriant
and yet refreshing scenery. Pre-Raphaelite will doubtless be the
derogatory term applied to Mr. Stanley Spencer, and it is true that he
has affinities with that group which started with such promise and then
proceeded to develop its vices more fully than its virtues. But Spencer
has not got these particular vices, an inordinate love of photographic
detail and a languishing sentimentality. His work suggests, rather than
actually contains, an infinite wealth of detail, and it is swept with
fresh country air precluding any Pre-Raphaelite hothouse languor.
Nor must we fall into the error of demanding realistic character
studies from an artist who does not see people from that point of
view at all. His outlook is nearer to that of Blake: his people are
embodiments of universal emotions, they are penetrated with a sense of
religious awe and beauty. Or, rather, this is what they would be if his
expression were to reach its full maturity and get rid of its present
archaistic obsession. His figures might still be stiff and intense, but
we would not notice this because of their profound significance.
HOWARD HANNAY
MUSIC
MR. ARTHUR RUBINSTEIN'S RECITAL
During the last few months the Wigmore Hall has been the scene of
some very notable recitals given by pianists of the first rank. They
had several interesting points in common. Their audiences consisted
largely of professional musicians, their programmes were generally
of a severe and far from popular type. Yet in spite of the somewhat
exclusive character of both programmes and audiences, so well adapted,
one might think, to the intimate atmosphere of a small hall, intimacy
was exactly the quality that in all cases was entirely absent from the
performances. Both with Busoni and Cortôt, and lastly with Mr. Arthur
Rubinstein, it was impossible to avoid feeling that one was at much
too close quarters. The difference between such players as these and
the more intimate type of pianist is moral rather than physical. Some
players give the impression that they are playing for themselves alone,
and that it is by mere accident that we happen to overhear them; the
others seem almost to assume that their audience will not listen to
them unless its attention is gripped and consciously dominated by the
overmastering compulsion of a powerful personality. If we are soothed
and charmed by the intimate players, we may indeed be uplifted and
transported by the men of might, but there is at the same time the
chance that we may be crushed and exhausted.
Mr. Arthur Rubinstein is certainly to be counted among the great
pianists, but not yet among the greatest. He is a player of outstanding
ability, but not of outstanding personality. He lacks Cortôt's
inspiring animation, and, still more, the monumental intellectuality of
Busoni. A conventional programme, or an almost conventional one, was
the index of an almost conventional mind. The usual Bach-Somebody, the
usual heavy Chopin; no Beethoven (thank goodness!), some modern French
and Spanish, a Liszt Rhapsody to end up with. What saved the programme
were the Spanish pieces and Liszt's _Funérailles_. If Mr. Rubinstein
had had the courage to offer a programme as individual as those of
Busoni he might have given himself a better chance of asserting his own
individuality.
To begin with the two extremes: the Bach transcription at the beginning
and the Liszt Rhapsody at the end are long out of date. Liszt's
arrangements of Bach's organ works may have been very wonderful fifty
years ago or more when there were not many organs in England on which
the originals could be played, even if there were the organists to play
them. To-day they are familiar to all of us. Moreover, the modern big
pianists play them too easily. They seek to reproduce, as far as they
can, the effect of the organ, and sometimes achieve a very remarkable
uniformity of tone, as faultlessly regular as any given row of pipes
can produce. But this uniformity of the organ's tone-colour is just
the obvious deficiency of that instrument, and the exact reproduction
of it on the pianoforte very easily tends to reproduce no more than
the relentless accuracy of the mechanical piano-player. Mr. Rubinstein
played his Bach-Liszt with intelligence and skill, and even succeeded
in suggesting a certain organ-like effect of sonority by means of an
ingenious method of pedalling; but in these days we should prefer
either a more astounding miracle of transcription or, still better, the
direct simplicity of Bach unadorned. Again, if it is still necessary to
end a recital with a display of fireworks there are surely more showy
things available now than Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies; and if we want
Liszt for his own musical thoughts, we want something that represents
him in a more serious mood. For the _Funérailles_ Mr. Rubinstein
deserves sincere gratitude.
Liszt's Hungary is only less difficult to believe in than Chopin's
Poland. It is true that Hungary exists, and true that in Hungarian
_cafés_ one may still hear the tunes which Liszt embellished, but such
underlying truth as the Rhapsodies possess is completely disguised by
their tawdry romantic theatricality. As for Poland, "if she had not
existed, it would have been necessary to invent her," for Paris of
the eighteen-thirties. That Poland, populated entirely by devout and
amorous aristocrats, is the musician's Mrs. Harris--no, his Countess
Harricka. Certainly the robust vigour of Mr. Rubinstein's playing make
short work of the languor and swagger of the Scherzo in B flat minor
and the Polonaise in A flat. All pianists are expected to play Chopin;
but there are not many works of Chopin that will stand the strain of
interpretation in the modern virtuoso's manner. The Barcarole is one of
the few which by virtue of its serene and classical beauty has still
been able to survive it.
MODERN SPANISH MUSIC
One composer stood out with unexpected prominence from Mr. Rubinstein's
programme--Isaac Albeniz. Albeniz is hardly to be counted among the
moderns. His training as a composer was mainly German, and he came to
a certain extent under English influences as well. Like Chopin, he was
primarily a pianist and a composer for the pianoforte. His songs, a
few of which have been heard recently in London, are pianoforte pieces
with a voice thrown in. He lives almost entirely by virtue of the
volume of Spanish pictures entitled _Iberia_. Mr. Rubinstein has spent
a considerable time in Spain, and it is clear that he has succeeded
to a wonderful extent in absorbing the musical spirit of the country.
There was a depth of poetry and passion about his playing of the
_Evocation_ and _Triana_ which he never attained in any other item of
his programme. Spanish music has at last begun to come into its own. We
can trace its development clearly in the successive stages represented
by Albeniz, Granados, Turina, and De Falla. Granados, like Albeniz,
writes on a harmonic system that is predominantly German, in that
German influences are the foundation of almost all nineteenth-century
music. Turina, a pupil of Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum, has
affinities with the French intellectuals. He is the chief Spanish
representative of chamber music. De Falla is more definitely one of the
moderns. All four are pianists--Turina less obviously so than the other
three.
It is easy to see the Spanish element that is common to the whole
group. Anyone can recognise the rhythms and turns of phrase that are
derived from Spanish national song and dance, the more so as all four
have drawn their principal inspiration from popular sources. But it
is to us foreigners that the Spanish local colour is most insistently
obvious. In listening to the music of any particular school we may
approach it in two ways. At first we are conscious of the school as
a homogeneous group; we notice similarities and look out for more of
them. This may easily lead us into error, for we are tempted thus to
regard as essential characteristics things that in reality are only
tricks of manner or stereotyped conventions of a particular place or
period. If we are to form a reasonable judgment we must be prepared
to ignore these and keep our ears open for differences. We must note
not so much the local theme that is common to all the group as the
diverse treatment of it which each separate composer affects. If there
is anything really Spanish about these four composers that is of vital
importance, it should be not the mere choice of a Spanish melody or
rhythm as the foundation of their music, but the method on which the
complete structure is designed and built up.
Here begin the difficulties of understanding even Albeniz and Granados.
The Spanish themes appeal directly to the foreign ear, almost too
directly; we might even dismiss them as cheap and obvious. It is
the treatment of them that is individual. One's first impression
of _Iberia_ and the _Gozescas_ is that they are rambling and
incoherent--yet it would be strange if a Latin composer should lapse
into a Celtic indifference to form and logic. Mr. Rubinstein succeeded
in making the Albeniz pieces not only poetical but lyrical. They
tempt a pianist at first to play them at top speed; their style of
piano-forte-writing suggests the rattling brilliance of the virtuoso.
Mr. Rubinstein avoided the error; but it takes a very skilful pianist
to do so.
It is not the local colour about Spanish music that we must respect,
but its grave seriousness of intention. Spain has always remained
artistically somewhat behind other countries, just as England has
done; and Spain at the present moment, unlike England, is not anxious
to be in a hurry over progress. Hence even De Falla, the most modern
of the group, is possibly a little old-fashioned as compared with
the modern French and Italian composers. Yet he is modern, in the
sense that he is intellectual and anti-sentimental, as compared with
Albeniz. This was very evident in his ballet, _The Three-cornered Hat_,
which the Russians performed all too seldom. But his intellectuality
and anti-sentimentality are distinguished and serene. He makes no
experiments with the purely grotesque, he has no desire to make a
complete and irrevocable breach with the art of the past, as some of
the French and Italians appear to do. Even in a traditional idiom he
has something genuinely new to say.
A SCRIABIN RECITAL
If anyone could have converted me to Scriabin it should have been
Mr. Edward Mitchell, who gave a whole afternoon of his works on
January 17th at the Westminster Central Hall, ranging from Op. 8 to
Op. 72. Mr. Mitchell is a player of extraordinary persuasiveness. He
evidently understands Scriabin, and is determined to make his audience
understand him. He has a very efficient and vigorous technique, and
plays with remarkable accuracy and assurance. No one could listen to
his programme without learning a great deal about the composer to whom
it was devoted. Yet in spite of a very well-chosen selection of pieces,
in spite of considerable variety of touch and style, the concert left
only an impression of deadly and morbid monotony. An afternoon of
Scriabin recalled at once to memory the effect of a concert of Hugo
Wolf's songs, or of Elgar's _The Apostles_. It was morbid and narcotic,
a perpetual command to abrogate reason and abandon one's brain to
feeling, to emotion, to a mystical trance. The emotional force of
such music is at times undeniable; what it sets out to achieve, the
representation of moods and emotions, it achieves overwhelmingly.
Scriabin has in the main three moods, a mood of violence and pain, a
mood of comatose oppression, and a mood of struggle, the last of which
is well illustrated by _Vers la flamme_. Perhaps this is all that some
people require of music. Others demand a sense of dignity and nobility,
with a conscious beauty of formal design.
Technically Scriabin can be summed up in a few words. His outlook
on music is purely harmonic. Even in his early works he shows a
partiality for certain well-known discords which he gradually comes
to use so often that the resolution of them becomes superfluous. By
this road we lead on to Stravinsky, Casella, and Malipiero. Melodic
tone there is none. This melodic poverty is very apparent and easily
demonstrable in the early works. Here Scriabin is obviously building,
or trying to build, on Chopin. But while comparing Scriabin with
Chopin, compare Chopin with Field. Chopin is clearly an advance on
Field in every way--he has a much stronger melodic line, and a much
deeper sense of harmonic values. But Scriabin is no advance on Chopin,
only a retrogression from him. He can only imitate Chopin's emotional
climaxes. He appears to be more interesting harmonically, because he
keeps Chopin's discords and omits his concords, roughly speaking.
EDWARD J. DENT
SELECT LIST OF PUBLICATIONS
ANTHROPOLOGY
TOTEM AND TABOO. Resemblances between the Psychic Lives of Savages
and Neurotics. By PROFESSOR SIGMUND FREUD. Authorised English
translation by A. A. BRILL. Routledge. 10_s._ 6_d._
AN INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY. By the REV. E. O. JAMES, Vicar of
St. Peter's, Limehouse. Macmillan. 7_s._ 6_d._
ART
THE GARDENS OF ITALY. By E. MARCH PHILLIPPS. Edited by ARTHUR T.
BOLTON. "Country Life." 63_s._
OUTLINES OF CHINESE ART. By JOHN C. FERGUSON. Chicago: University
Press. London: Cambridge University Press. $3.
PRINTING. A Practical Treatise on the Art of Typography as applied
more particularly to the Printing of Books. By CHARLES THOMAS
JACOBI. Sixth Edition. Revised and enlarged. Bell. 10_s._ 6_d._