Made-Over Music

X. THINKS that musical programmes and numbers should be radically rearranged. In the first place, instead of the usual sequence of Allegro, Andante, Scherzo, Finale (Presto), the Andante should always come at the end. This is simply because X. likes the Andantes best. His ideal programme would be all Andantes, but leaving them for the end seems to him a passable makeshift, He wants to be left in the deep quiet places rather than in the exalted helter-skelter of the Presto, where each instrument chases the others like boys playing leap-frog, and all at last land in a triumphant heap of outcry. The Andante, X. says, is like a great blue ocean of sun and serenity. The Scherzo is choppy, and the Presto sets a high sea running. X. does not like high seas.

It is only a natural corollary of this arrangement that X. desires every programme to end with Beethoven. It may race from Bach to Debussy, or far wilder harmonists than he, but it should end with Beethoven. Beethoven speaks the final word. He sees furthest and goes deepest. When he is sandwiched between somewhat frivolous dabblers in the agonies of emotion and harmony, he is a demigod at a débutante’s luncheon table, an eagle among chattering finches and jays. Let him speak last, and he will speak the truth and leave it deep in his hearers’ hearts, says X.

X. has other notions as to the rearrangement of musical programmes for his own benefit, but one important change is not so much æsthetic as social. He wishes that all the audience at any musical performance — more especially at that intimate type of recital where everybody knows everybody else and an afternoon-tea sense of rose fragrance and white kid mingles subtly with the wonder of Brahms or Schubert — should be required to leave their voices in the ante-room before approaching the hall of entertainment. The voices might be checked, and hung on hooks with the hats and wraps, to be reclaimed after the performance. But during it they are, X. affirms, only a nuisance and an ugly impertinent interruption of the music.

Without them the recital could pass in utter peace. There would be no idle uproar between the numbers; no jerk from paradise to dull earth at your neighbor’s well-meant comments; no stupid effort to ‘ think of something to say ’ and to look wise about some mad futurist mélée. The echoes of the culminating Andantes might still pace like heavenly spirits through the arcades of the soul. And after Beethoven, there must be at least ten minutes before the cloak-room could be unlocked.

Meanwhile, how agreeable and illuminating it would be to slip out and examine the voices, hanging helpless till their owners’ return. Here is a gray one, fiat, lanky, stiff, somewhat fearfully like a switch of dull gray hair. Here is a little chirky voice, pink, baby blue, and pale lavender, with ribbons tied to its ridiculous little curves, and here and there a tinsel star or a silk rosebud. Next it hangs a curious voice. It seems a long straight tube of bronzelike metal. But if you touch it, it reverberates with an echo of its vital self—deep, resonant, thrilling, like the bourdon of an organ.

There is a voice that looks like a bluebird in an apple tree, and one, most pleasant, all sparkling with the topaz glamour of a forest brook. But its neighbor has the hairy ears and looselipped jaws of Bottom’s Ass’s head; and there are others like stones, like grease-spots, like wagon-wheels, like barking terriers, like over-ripe bananas, like pools of sad interminable rain; and certain weary ones that are glad to hang still, for they must commonly chugchug day and night — restless motors driven by nervous spirit-chauffeurs.

While it is unfortunate for X. that he has not the liberty of arranging an evening of music altoget her for himself, it may not be such hard luck for his guests. For I have no doubt that lie would tip the check-room maid to be extraordinarily stupid, so that the beautiful ice-blue cold voice would angrily find itself exchanged for the magenta-feathered jet-buckled voice, and the shy Quaker would blush at taking the place of the opulent diamond tiara.

It is not hard to imagine a scene of shameless scrambling and grabbing, till every voice crept back to its own private boxes and passage-ways, and every owner departed, cursing X. in good set terms.

And then, where would be the profit of all the heavenly Andantes? And where, under the sun and moon, would be the final glory of Beethoven?