M. D. Calvocoressi's "The Principles and Methods of Musical Criticism"

M. D. Calvocoressi's "The Principles and Methods of Musical Criticism"Author(s): Gilbert ChaseSource: Notes, Second Series, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Dec., 1969), pp. 237-241Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/896138 .

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Classics of Musical Literature:

M. D. CALVOCORESSI'S THE PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF

MUSICAL CRITICISM By GILBERT CHASE

Michel D. Calvocoressi, b. (of Greek parents) Marseilles, 2 October 1877; d. London, 1 February 1944. The Principles and Methods of Musical Criticism. Oxford University Press. London: Humphrey Milford, 1923. First ed. 148 p. Rev. ed. 1931.

Many years ago, when I was young and callow, I decided that I wanted to be a music critic. This impractical and probably absurd notion entered my mind because I was equally devoted to music and to writing. Musical criticism seemed to me then a logical way to combine both interests in one occupation. I admired the men who were writing musical criticism for the New York press at that time: Richard Aldrich for The Times, W. J. Henderson for The Sun, Lawrence Gilman for the Herald Tribune. Their books, too, were my introduction to musical scholarship (as distinct from musicology, of which I knew nothing). They wore their learning lightly and adorned it in graceful prose. But over and above these worthies I had two veritable idols: James Gibbons Huneker (1860- 1921) and Ernest Newman (1868-1959). The former was a "steeple- jack" (as he called himself in his memoirs) of all the arts, an aesthetic adventurer in romanticism and modernism, a cosmopolitan observer of the current scene in the capitals of Europe. His influence on me was strong and lasting. But Newman was a close second; I believe that two of his books, A Musical Motley (1919) and A Musical Critic's Holiday (1925), actually determined my vocation. Judgment and knowledge sea- soned with wit and style: such was the ideal that Newman embodied for me.

When I found myself, by chance and circumstance, employed, at the age of twenty-three, as music critic for The Continental Daily Mail-an English-language daily published in Paris-I sought to prepare myself, post facto, for a job that often filled me with trepidation. It was then

The author, who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is Director of the Inter-American Institute for Musical Research and Editor of the Institute's Yearbook. Among his publications are The American Composer Speaks; A Historical Anthology, 1770-1965 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), A Guide to the Music of Latin America, 2d ed. (Washington: Pan American Union, 1962), and The Music of Spain, 2d ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1959).-Ed.

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that I made the acquaintance of a writer who was to be my intellectual companion for many years (I never met him in person): M. D. Calvo- coressi, the Greek-French writer on music who eventually settled in England and wrote most of his books in English. His fascinating memoirs, Musicians Gallery: Music and Ballet in Paris and London (London: Faber and Faber, 1923), I still reread with pleasure. He had a special interest in Russian music, attested by his first book, La Musique russe (1907), his study of Mussorgsky (1908; English trans. 1919), and his work (with Gerald Abraham), Masters of Russian Music (1936). He also wrote monographs of Liszt (1905), Glinka (1911), and Schumann (1912), and translated into French Rimsky-Korsakov's Treatise on Orchestration (1914). In the realm of aesthetics he wrote Musical Taste and How to Form It (1925). He was a close friend of Ravel and an associate of Diag- hilef in the golden age of the Ballet Russe. He wrote with intimate knowledge of the musical scene in Paris that was to be my own milieu for eight years.

It was perhaps around 1930 that I acquired a copy of Calvocoressi's Musical Criticism, and applied myself assiduously to self-improvement by its perusal-with what success I cannot really say. What I can say is that the reading of this book was its own reward. "Calvo" (as all his friends called him) was immediately admitted to my private Olympus because he knew how to write well-extremely well (in both French and English). He had also a flair for the apt quotation. Opening his book at random, I find him quoting this description of the ideal critic:

A good critic, in our sense of a man with many forms of interest, with a manifold outlook on life, is by implication capable of appreciating many kinds of literary performance. He must be vowed to no artistic school, but open to the most diverse; and, if he have predilections, he must not insist on them to the disregard of excellences which come less close to him....

He is here quoting from J. M. Robertson's New Essay towards a Critical Method, which dealt primarily with the field of literary criticism. Calvocoressi was not writing merely a manual of musical criticism, but a study of its principles and methods. Hence he took pains to estab- lish and examine those principles in as broad a context as possible, getting into "first principles" before discussing the specifics of a specialized field. This is probably, and in the long run, the most valuable lesson I learned from Calvo's book: to put "principles" before "methods," the theory before the facts. Calvo also quotes Robertson's definition of "scientific criticism," as being "capable of persuading and convincing men by a constant drawing of conclusions from premisses... proceeding from points agreed on to points in dispute, and showing that consistency involves one view as following on another."

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These quotations are found in the second chapter of Calvo's book, where I see that I underlined many passages. For example:

The question arises whether criticism should be judicial, deciding what is good and what is bad, or purely analytic, describing and comparing without intention to appraise. In point of fact, the distinction will be found more virtual than real. To believe that descriptive criticism, as soon as it rises above the level of pedagogic definition, may remain impassive, is a mere illusion. Turning to critics who profess not to judge, but merely to collate the facts about works and tendencies, we see that their utterances, in tone and wording, always amount to judgements professed or implied. And as regards music, any description which does not contain terms amounting to actual judgments will not only fail to show whether the work possesses vitality, but also to be characteristic as a description. In another section of the same chapter, Calvo takes up the question of

"whether technical knowledge is of use to the musical critic." He leans toward an affirmitive reply, but is careful to state that this "does not refer to the technical knowledge which is needful to the composer." And he adds these incisive remarks: "Do not let us be deluded by the similarity of the ground to be covered. The composer's object is to know how things are done, and the critic's is to know how things are." [Ital- ics added.] Again on this point: "Technical knowledge may fail to improve the critic's capacity to disengage and interpret what is vital; but it will help him to classify his data and impressions and to state things more clearly. It is only that rudimentary form of technical knowledge which never rises beyond the capacity to find labels for things which is misleading for reader and writer alike." Amen!

Calvocoressi divides his book into two main parts: I, The Theory; II, The Practice. In the former his chapter headings are: I, Preliminary Investigation: The Problems stated; II, Problems of Criticism in their relation to Music; III, The First Steps: Standards; IV, The Data: The Functions of the Mind; V, Indirect Data and Standards; VI, What His- tory teaches the Critic. In Part II, the topics are: I, A Reconstruction; II, Forming Judgements; III, Wording Judgements: (a) The Principles; IV, Wording Judgements: (b) The Application; V, Ethics, Tactics, and Points for Beginners. Under this last heading, alas!, I found no advice on how to deal with a proffered bribe. Very shortly after entering upon my professional duties in Paris, I received a scented note from a singer enclosing a fifty-franc bill. Left to my own devices, I concluded that the bribe was insufficient, and returned it to the sender-unscented.

One of the questions discussed by Calvocoressi that remains as relevant now as it ever was-probably even more so-is that of the critic's reader- ship: for whom does he write? I should like to quote what Calvo has to say on this point:

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In order to decide how to dispose his batteries, the critic should begin by knowing which public he is addressing and which order of influence he wishes to exercise. He may be writing for readers with no specialized knowledge and slight experience, if any, or for the experienced fraction of the public, or for actual students or brother specialists. Hence the temptation to say that his writings will fall under one of the three headings; (a) of interest to the layman but not to the specialist; (b) of interest to the specialist but not to the layman; (c) of interest to both. For a critic, however, there is no swifter road to perdition than to believe there is an excuse for writing stuff which perforce will have to go in category (a) or (b). If his ideas are of any value, even his primers or short notices, however elementary, will be good enough to interest the expert reader. And if he is capable of clear thinking and clear writing, his learned essays and fat tomes will be read with interest and profit by any non-specialist sufficiently educated to understand his utterances and modes of thought.

The foregoing passage is the sort of statement that gives continued relevance to Calvo's book, beyond all the valuable advice and cogent reasoning that it contains. Today, as never before, many writers on music have yielded to the temptation of placing their work either in category (a) or (b). What is worse, most of them have fallen into this trap without even regarding it as a temptation; i.e., without being aware that they had a choice-that the dichotomy was avoidable rather than inevitable. The number of writers on music whose work comes under category (c) has steadily decreased both in quantity and quality. The musicologist writes for "actual students or brother specialists." The musical journalist writes for "readers with no specialized knowledge." As scholars become more and more specialized and music critics more and more journalistic, writers like Huneker, Gilman, Henderson, New- man, and Calvocoressi tend to disappear from the scene.

M. D. Calvocoressi was a man of vast culture (as distinct from mere education-though he had that too) and of deep learning (as distinct from mere erudition, for which he did not care). He had a gift for friendship and a zest for living that are vividly communicated in his memoirs. His intellectual powers were matched by his literary skill. He was more interested in the present than in the past, in new music than in old. He believed that the critic had a duty toward contempo- rary music: "Even the utmost a critic can do is but a drop in the ocean so far as living composers are concerned....The test of his soundness will be found in his way of dealing with new music and unknown music. Nothing is simpler in a general way than to be sound on the classics. A very little experience in the art of writing and a moderately well-stocked reference library are all that is wanted."

But to deal with the new and the unknown, other qualities are indeed wanted: especially a well-stocked mind and much experience in the

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arts of listening and writing-also in the art of living. These qualities "Calvo" possessed in abundance, and he used them for the benefit of all who believe that distinction and elegance of style are not incompatible with precision of thought and advancement of learning.

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M. D. Calvocoressi's "The Principles and Methods of Musical Criticism"