Musings and Memories of a Musician
By . New York: The Macmillan Company. 1919. 8vo, 400 pp.
SIR GEORGE HENSCHEL has had a long, varied, honorable career. As singer, composer, conductor, he has seen many cities and known many men ami women. A shrewd observer, he is a man of native force and restless, almost aggressive, activity. No one has ever doubted the sincerity of his musical life. When it was stated that he was writing his memoirs, one had a right to expect much. The volume disappoints expectation, for it is chiefly a necdotical.
The unessential incidents of the singer’s life for it is as a singer that Sir George will be best remembered — are described at length. There are agreeable pages about his boyhood in Breslau, his student days at Leipsic, his sojourn in Boston, his journeyings in Europe and Africa. There is gossip about famous persons: how and what he ate and drank with them, for there is much of gastronomic interest in the volume. Brahms figures largely, — the lecture that Sir George read in Boston is substantially incorporated, — but one learns little about Brahms the composer. Whistler is introduced as serving buckwheatcakes at breakfast and entertaining a passion for imported American oysters. Dukes and duchesses, crowned heads, are in the procession reviewed by Sir George, who, apparently, as was said of ‘Tommy’ Moore, ‘dearly loves a lord.’
The egoism of Sir George is child-like, and not too disconcerting. His honesty in reprinting adverse criticism of his orchestral leadership in Boston is refreshing. When he is most garrulous about trifles, there is suddenly a hurst of frankness that commands respect; and when, at the end, he exclaims, ‘ I have never betrayed the ideal of my art by consciously stooping to the unworthy, to the commonplace,’ no one will contradict him.
With his wide acquaintanceship, with his long and rich experience. Sir George might have writen an autobiography of abiding value. He might have pronounced judgment on composers, singers, other musicians, informing those to come, without annoying by technical speech, or by arguments supporting some theory, those who read merely for pleasure. He has compiled many more or less amusing anecdotes, a superficial volume from which little is to be learned about the music of even the last forty years; little or nothing about bis own interior life, his reflections and conclusions concerning the art he undoubtedly cherishes. The book is for the easy chair, not for the student’s desk; not for a carefully selected musical library. P. H.