WALTON'S VIOLIN SONATA

Abstract

THESE are hard days for critics and (one may add) for audiences in general. The diversity of styles and manners now concurrently valid makes it more than ever important that listeners shall not approach a new work with a preconceived notion of what the composer should do and how he should do it. Yet most of us continually fall into this very error, and the result is a deal of exasperation, disappointment and bad criticism. The composer, on his side, could often help us more than he commonly does, and we might be induced to approach his first performances with a more open mind if we could be certain of two things: that he will clearly present to us the tonal premises upon which his musical argument is to be developed; and that he will, early in the work, indicate the likely limits of that field of force from which he will derive the various tensions essential to the projection of his sound-successions in time. As to the presentation of his basic musical material, it seems right to say that the good composer does this as clearly to-day as he did in the past. It is also fair to say that when this basic material is not shown in a clear light the author has himself not seen it clearly and is therefore not a good composer; for the listener's perception and appreciation of music depend upon a successful exercise of memory, and memory can only be thus exercised upon material that is itself memorable. The opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is memorable in its clear and vehement impact; the opening theme of Chopin's ' Raindrop ' prelude is memorable in its limpid simplicity; Bach's fugue subjects are memorable in their strong melodic or rhythmic contours. Examples might be indefinitely multiplied; and they would include the finest works written in our own day. They will not include the mass of work (written in all ages) in which the composer himself has not seen his essential material clearly enough to present it in memorable form, or in which he has seen all too clearly that his basic material is trite or unworthy and has sought to conceal its poverty by smudging its outline. And now for the necessity, brought about by the musical conditions of our day, that the composer should make clear early in his work the limits of that field of force from which its motive power will be derived; that he should, in fact, lay down his co-ordinates.