Chapter 9

IX - INTEREST IN THE ARTS

Many people pursue a regular and uninterrupted course of idleness inthe evenings because they think that there is no alternative toidleness but the study of literature; and they do not happen to havea taste for literature. This is a great mistake.Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properlyto study anything whatever without the aid of printed books. But ifyou desire to understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat-sailing you would not be deterred by your lack of interest inliterature from reading the best books on bridge or boat-sailing.We must, therefore, distinguish between literature, and bookstreating of subjects not literary.

I shall come to literature indue course.Let me now remark to those who have never read Meredith, and who arecapable of being unmoved by a discussion as to whether Mr. StephenPhillips is or is not a true poet, that they are perfectly withintheir rights. It is not a crime not to love literature. It is not asign of imbecility. The mandarins of literature will order out toinstant execution the unfortunate individual who does notcomprehend, say, the influence of Wordsworth on Tennyson. But thatis only their impudence. Where would they be, I wonder, ifrequested to explain the influences that went to make Tschaikowsky's"Pathetic Symphony"?There are enormous fields of knowledge quite outside literaturewhich will yield magnificent results to cultivators. For example(since I have just mentioned the most popular piece of high-classmusic in England to-day), I am reminded that the Promenade Concertsbegin in August. You go to them.

You smoke your cigar or cigarette(and I regret to say that you strike your matches during the softbars of the "Lohengrin" overture), and you enjoy the music. But yousay you cannot play the piano or the fiddle, or even the banjo; thatyou know nothing of music.What does that matter? That you have a genuine taste for music isproved by the fact that, in order to fill his hall with you and yourpeers, the conductor is obliged to provide programmes from which badmusic is almost entirely excluded (a change from the old CoventGarden days!).Now surely your inability to perform "The Maiden's Prayer" on apiano need not prevent you from making yourself familiar with theconstruction of the orchestra to which you listen a couple of nightsa week during a couple of months!

As things are, you probably thinkof the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments producing aconfused agreeable mass of sound. You do not listen for detailsbecause you have never trained your ears to listen to details.If you were asked to name the instruments which play the great themeat the beginning of the C minor symphony you could not name them foryour life's sake. Yet you admire the C minor symphony. It hasthrilled you. It will thrill you again. You have even talked aboutit, in an expansive mood, to that lady--you know whom I mean. Andall you can positively state about the C minor symphony is thatBeethoven composed it and that it is a "jolly fine thing."Now, if you have read, say, Mr. Krehbiel's "How to Listen to Music"(which can be got at any bookseller's for less than the price of astall at the Alhambra, and which contains photographs of all theorchestral instruments and plans of the arrangement of orchestras)you would next go to a promenade concert with an astonishingintensification of interest in it.

Instead of a confused mass, theorchestra would appear to you as what it is--a marvellously balancedorganism whose various groups of members each have a different andan indispensable function. You would spy out the instruments, andlisten for their respective sounds. You would know the gulf thatseparates a French horn from an English horn, and you would perceivewhy a player of the hautboy gets higher wages than a fiddler, thoughthe fiddle is the more difficult instrument. You would *live* at apromenade concert, whereas previously you had merely existed therein a state of beatific coma, like a baby gazing at a bright object.The foundations of a genuine, systematic knowledge of music might belaid.

You might specialise your inquiries either on a particularform of music (such as the symphony), or on the works of aparticular composer. At the end of a year of forty-eight weeks ofthree brief evenings each, combined with a study of programmes andattendances at concerts chosen out of your increasing knowledge, youwould really know something about music, even though you were as faroff as ever from jangling "The Maiden's Prayer" on the piano."But I hate music!" you say. My dear sir, I respect you.What applies to music applies to the other arts. I might mentionMr. Clermont Witt's "How to Look at Pictures," or Mr. RussellSturgis's "How to Judge Architecture," as beginnings (merelybeginnings) of systematic vitalising knowledge in other arts, thematerials for whose study abound in London."I hate all the arts!" you say. My dear sir, I respect you more andmore.I will deal with your case next, before coming to literature.