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Here in England it is impossible to give orchestra concerts on the Mahler scale, and still more impossible to provide for adequate rehearsals. In Austria and Germany, where everything is on the brink of ruin, opera houses are still kept going and orchestral concerts still flourish. No wonder many of our patriots take this as a sign that they still possess enormous wealth. The aggregate wealth of England would indeed have to be colossal if so much music could be performed on that percentage of the aggregate which England is disposed to spend upon it.

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It is to Schreker and Schönberg that Vienna owes most of its acquaintance with modern non-German music. Schreker's Philharmonic Choir even produced such exotic composers - the epithet is that of a Viennese writeras Elgar, Delius, and Cyril Scott. Schönberg in 1918 founded the 'Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen,' a society which subscribes for weekly music meetings at which modern chamber and orchestral works are both rehearsed and performed. There were ten rehearsals of Schönberg's own Chamber Symphony, and some other works received as many as twenty. These meetings arose out of Schönberg's activities as a teacher of composition; their object was to make modern music more accessible to the public, and to train up the public to the right appreciation of it. Evidently Vienna has not lost that characteristic which gave its life so much charm the principle that everybody always had plenty of time for anything he might want to do. There are very few people in London who could manage to go to weekly meetings to hear a work rehearsed twenty times, and those whose principal occupation is concert-going would seldom go to more than one rehearsal, if that.

It is natural enough that most peo

ple should find Schönberg's music pedantic and doctrinaire as well as repellent in sound. He represents a reaction against romanticism that derives its peculiar force from the fact that to him as to all Germans romanticism is bred in the bone.

A modern German critic has pointed out that romantic music, from the early days of Wagner, and even from the days of Weber, depended largely on the symbolic acceptation of chords. With the classical composers chords, whether consonant or dissonant, occur just as they happen to be wanted; the romantic composers would pick out some one particular chord and set it up by itself as a dominating symbol. Thus in Weber the diminished seventh always stands for horror; in Mozart or Spohr it has no such invariable significance. The symbolic chord may quite well be a concord; in 'Lohengrin' it is the chord of A major, in 'Meistersinger' the chord of C. Still more conspicuous is the E flat chord of 'Rheingold.' Other obvious examples from Wagner are the Ring, Tarnhelm and Curse motives of the 'Ring.'

And with the romantic impulse came also the cultivation of chords that were ambiguous and could be used to destroy the sense of key. The first and most obvious was the diminished seventh, made by superposing minor thirds. Other superpositions of thirds produced the sevenths and ninths common both to Wagner and Debussy. A more mechanical construction produced the superposed major thirds and superposed fourths.

The chief theme of Schönberg's Chamber Symphony is a succession of fourths which naturally leads straight away from the original key. The second theme is built mainly on the wholetone scale; but its rhythms are those of Wagner and Strauss.

It is rhythm more than anything

else which differentiates Schönberg from his contemporaries in other countries; German music seems curiously reluctant to get away from either a vigorous four-beats to a bar, or, in a lower station of the art, the familiar threebeats of the waltz. Schönberg is trying to build up a deliberately intellectual construction out of romantic material. His music aims, one may say, simul

taneously at clarity and at obscurity, an aim which the English reader may well be tempted to think curiously characteristic of the German philosophical mind. It is after all the criticism which English listeners have passed on all German music from the days of Dr. Burney. None the less, German music has survived it, even for the public of England.

THE TRUE MACHIAVELLI

BY H. M.

[The following article is apropos of a study of Machiavelli by François Franzoni, just published under the title, La Pensée de Nicolas Machiavel.]

From Journal de Genève, May 17
(SWISS LIBERAL REPUBLICAN DAILY)

Few writers are more often quoted than Machiavelli. Is he better known for that reason? How many of those who condemn him or praise him, who appeal to him with admiration or consign him to public obloquy, have read through a single one of his works or know more about him than a few isolated quotations from his writings, or anecdotes about him, or merely his name? . . .

To be just to a man, we should interpret him, not only by his epoch, but also by his environment; that is, by the intellectual atmosphere by which he was surrounded. If we try to convert Machiavelli violently into a moralist, — if we judge him by the standards of Christian ethics, or even by those of an idealist, we cannot be too severe in our condemnation, in spite of the fact that he could feel deeply the moral greatness of a St. Francis or a

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St. Dominic. But if we bear in mind that the author of The Prince never pretended to write a work on morals but only on politics, things very different both in his day and our own, and if we add that his ideals were not drawn from Christianity, with its command of sacrifice, humility, and love, but from the antique conception of 'virtue,' from the Roman ideal that not only the citizen's body but also his morals must be sacrificed to the state in case of need, we shall see that Machiavelli was not a cynic, but only a man uttering the political thought of his time, and trying to relate it with the civic standards of the Romans of the ancient republic, with their conception of public weal and of what constituted the true greatness of the state and of the individual.

These are ideas which may be odious to men of our generation. The doc

trine that the welfare of the state justifies everything, that there are different standards of morals in public and in private life, that statesmen may properly commit, in the public interest, acts of violence and deceit not tolerated in private dealings, is precisely the opposite of the doctrine we hold to-day, although Europe has just witnessed some adept applications of the ancient theories. Certainly the old ideal survived a long time, not only among the ancients, but among nations which call themselves Christian.

This doctrine has always been vigorously assailed by idealists who hold that there is but one standard of morals for princes, magistrates, and private citizens. They insist that it should be our supreme purpose to enforce that single moral standard, and that we should never weary of pursuing that ideal. Even men who, in practice, habitually violate this principle, still applaud it. Yet how rare is the spectacle of a government observing as high standards of honor and rectitude as are demanded of an individual? Writers who insist on describing things as they are, instead of as they ought to be, have in all ages recognized this.

That is what Machiavelli did. The Florentine writer had been intimately associated with public affairs for many years, during one of the most immoral periods in history. He observed the course of public policy and the acts of public men with lively interest, and recorded what he saw. He formulated these practices into precepts, which he never designed should be moral aphorisms, but rather recipes for success. He studied and recorded them as he might have jotted down recipes for the kitchen. If you want to be a good cook, you must combine your ingredients in certain proportions and certain orders. If you want to gain power or preserve power, you must act in such and such a

way. He analyzed those methods in conformity with his observations, studying the more or less edifying illustrations under his own eyes. He did this coldly and without emotion. He was not a man of sentiment, but of pure intellect, a marvelously gifted brain which, with but few rare exceptions, never betrayed the quiver of a heart impulse. This last fact doubtless explains why he attained only moderate success in actual political life. Men whether rulers or commons respond more readily to sentiment than to reason. The great leaders of the masses are those who know how to appeal to emotion. Since reason, however, never abdicates its power and rights, such leaders speedily come to grief if they are sentimental and nothing else. But they would not have succeeded unless they appealed to passion. It is certain that Garibaldi could not have maintained himself without Cavour. But would Cavour have won complete success without Garibaldi?

We are not so far away from Machiavelli in appealing to these contemporary names. We need not leave Italy. Italy is the country par excel lence of theoretical and practical politics. Its division for centuries into a great number of petty states made it a collection of laboratories, where a sharp-eyed observer could find plenty of clinical material for his studies. These political divisions, so fruitful for historians, were a source of feebleness for Italy, and invited foreign intrigue and intervention. Machiavelli knew that well. He longed ardently for Italian unity, fora national army powerful enough to expel beyond its frontiers the foreigners whom he hated.

Whenever this cold observer, this skeptical and almost cynical man of pure intellect, discourses on Italian unity, he is inspired with warmth and life. His appeal to Lorenzo de' Medici

to deliver Italy from the barbarians is one of the most beautiful passages in his works, because it is inspired by powerful passion. And Machiavelli's great charge against the Roman Church at the opening of the sixteenth century

was that it had not united Italy against the foreigner. His criticism of the Church was therefore purely political. It had no connection whatever with the religious grievances that produced the Reformation.

RESTAURANTS IN ITALY

From The Saturday Review, June 4
(TORY WEEKLY)

ITALIAN restaurants succeeded in Soho by appealing at once to palates and purses, overcoming even rumors of dirt and resurrected scraps. There was also a mysterious magnetism of slumming, seeing life, brushing Bohemians, almost exploration. The proprietors were shrewd business men, who knew how to make the most of every crumb; they boxed and coxed compasses reappearing one minute as waiters, and disappearing the next to cook. Then here they were again, as cashiers, cabrunners and chuckers-out. If they were content to remain expatriated, they soon blossomed forth as the imperious owners of palace hotels.

It is an odd thing about Italians that they do things well abroad, and things ill at home.

There are probably few more vivid contrasts imaginable than that between the Italian restaurant in London, and the Italian restaurant in Italy. The present writer has spent ten months in Italy, and can speak from experience after some six hundred restaurant meals. The charges of those six hundred meals did not seem heavy with the English exchange at ninety lire to the pound, but the caterers seemed to think their business was to do those who dined. Any Italian will tell you that he fares more

cheaply and sumptuously in his own house.

To begin with, they make the most of nothing. Neither reason nor interest nor entreaty will ever induce them to provide rissoles, hashes, minces, stews, made dishes of any kind. The invariable answer is, 'If we prepared them, even with the freshest meat and all the arts of Brillat-Savarin, no one would touch them. We should be suspected of using up the leavings of past meals.' Deliberate waste is accordingly universal and prodigious. Even cold meat is almost taboo. A joint is cooked, carved, and consigned to the dust-bin, though there may not be half enough provisions to last the peninsula half through the winter.

Dr. Johnson once described a certain leg of mutton as badly killed, badly hung, badly cooked, and badly served. What would have been his irascibility if he had crossed the Alps and broken meats in a trattoria? We know how to breed and feed and hang and cook the roast beef of old England, whereas French rosbif is nearly always a delusion, because the French breed for veal, beating us there into a cocked hat. But Italian veal and beef are blackguards both. Italians have practically no mutton, and will brazenly tell a Highlander

or a Welshman that it is never fit to eat. Their chickens are stringy, and only just palatable if cooked immediately after slaughter. Hanging, they say, is prohibited by their climate, though that need not necessarily save the necks of their cooks.

Macaroni, however, does admittedly assume a whole Fregoli arsenal of disguises, and made at home with many eggs and great care, beaten, and rolled, and coaxed, and stuffed with rare dainties, is fit to set before a pre-war king. But in the average restaurant of Italy it is mere paste, made in a factory, garnered for months by a grocer, and served with preserved tomato-pulp.

Again, there is probably no country possessing such a wealth of beautiful fruit, but every restaurant in Italy offers it unripe, and at six or ten times what it costs at the stall round the corner. Except badly baked pears, hot and clammy and horrid, it rarely appears in a cooked form. Some is exported for jam-making, but no jam was ever made at home, even when sugar was plentiful. One feeble excuse for that is a scarcity of jars and tins, though plenty of glass seems available for bottling wine.

Italians have only one way of cooking potatoes, even new potatoes, which they slice and fry in oil. They spoil all their other luxuriant vegetables-artichokes, egg-plant (aubergine), chillies, French beans, etc.-by chopping them up and soaking them in oil. There is no harm in good oil. Indeed, it is infinitely preferable to bad butter, but it must be used with a discreet judgment, whereas Italian cooks have a heavy hand.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Italian fare, and the most shocking to a stranger, is the lamentable absence of good wine in one of the most generous vine-producing countries of

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the world. There are exquisite light white wines at Frascati and other Castelli Romani, and various remote villages in all parts of the peninsula. But you must make pilgrimages to drink them, for they will scarcely travel a yard. Most of the bottled beverages especially the so-called Capris and Chiantis-are unskillfully doctored. The red wines are too rough for educated tastes, but used to be exported profitably for blending with vin ordinaire and begetting cheap claret. Now, however, newly enriched Socialists and other war-profiteers drink up all they produce, and Italy actually imports more wine than she sends out. The favorite restaurant wine is Barbera, a violently effervescent red wine that tastes of tannin and seidlitz powders. There is some fun in watching a young waiter open a bottle in the near neighborhood of welldressed people and speculating on the subsequent language.

Your Italian waiter in London looks as if he had slept in his tail-coat, but he is usually civil almost to excess. In Italy, next to a railway-man, he is the most intolerant and aggressive of citizens. Here is a typical incident, that occurred at Ferrara. A diner complained mildly about cold soup, long delay, or some such trifle, and was treated to violent abuse. The proprietor ventured to remonstrate, whereupon not only did the rude waiter depart at once, but all his colleagues laid down their napkins and followed him. As they were not taken back at once, every waiter in the town struck next day out of sympathy, all except the non-unionists in one hotel, which had its windows broken. That sort of thing occurs constantly, and most clients treat waiters with respectful awe. You may even hear them call 'Mr. Waiter' (Signor Cameriere) not altogether ironically.

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