Some Curiosities of Musical Criticism

Abstract

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I must thank you for the honour you do me by inviting me to speak to you. Though you will not fail to discover the fact very shortly for yourselves, I would rather confess at once that I am only an amateur—and, I hope, a humble one. I come here as much to learn my mistakes as to state my opinions; and if I do the latter with that certainty and emphasis which are the special privilege of the partially instructed, I hope for equally emphatic contradiction from those who know far more than I do. Having then begun—as do some preachers—by begging for charity, I will start with one of the many curiosities of criticism that I had the pleasure of discovering in that home of delightful curiosities, animate and inanimate—the British Museum Reading Room. One of the best musical critics of the 19th century, Mattheson, of Hamburg, has described in detail the effect of music upon different animals. He does not worry about scientific proof, but says that crabs follow the pipe, hares the transverse flute, camels a small bell, trout and carp a large bell, bees the cymbals, and spiders the lute. “Pigs,” he says, “will go anywhere after a zither.”