The Maccabaean

four, for all its vigor and nervous energy, bears a still undecided signature. The idiom is occasionally derived from Moussorgsky, from Debussy, and perhaps from Strauss. The value of the score lies in the effectiveness of the setting it gives the melodrama cleverly abstracted from Shalespeare’s tragedy by M. Edmond Fleg. The music is quick, intense, force- .ful, consistently sombre, even though it is scarcely commensurable with the beauty of the original play. It is obviously the uneven work of one still undergoing formation. The personality of M. Bloch begins to manifest itself in the works that followed shortly after. One senses it in the delicate and gay coloring of the two little orchestral sketches “Hiver- Printemps.” It is more surely felt in the brilliant and ironic scherzo of the C-sharp minor symphony, whose verve makes the composer of “L’apprenti sorcier” seem apprentice indeed. Audition of the symphony in February, 1915, caused Romain Rolland to write M. Bloch: “Your symphony is one of the most important works of the modern school. I don’t know any work in which.a richer, more vigorous, more passionate temperament makes itself felt. From the very first bars to the end, one feels oneself at home in it. It is wonderful to think that it is an early work. Had I known you at the time you ‘wrote it, I should have told you: ‘You are master of yourself. Continue expressing yourself in the same way, freely and fully, and 1 will answer for your becoming one of the master-musicians of our time.” Certainly, the promise. of that symphony has been amply fulfilled for those who have gotten to know the marvelous scores in the composer’s definitive style.

How futile, how barren beside the achievement of this mian, who has opened himself +0 the genius of his race, appears the work of the composers who have hitherto represented “Judaism in Music.” Was it really infertility of invention that hampered them? In the light of M. Bloch’s music, I begin to understand their aridity. After all, it had its root in the Spiritual war that divided each one against himself. There was operative in each of them a secret desire to escape his race. They were wilfully deaf to the promptings of their being, so firmly planted in the racial soil. They were fugitive from the national consciousness. Rent inwardly, distrustful of their proper reactions, uncertain in their contact with life, what freshness of apprehension and speech was left them? The bourn of impulse was sealed. It was not that they did not write “Jewish” music, express experiences solely Jewish, utilize the racial scales and the melodies. The artist of Judaic extraction does not have to concern himself with exclusively racial subjects. The whole world is open to’ him. He can express his day as he will. One thing is neces-

there permeated the doubtless very appetizing smell of Viennese cookery. He was no more successful than the renegade others. After all, Wagner’s stric- ture was iust.

And yet, they had but to acknowledge, and to -accept. They had but to face themselves. They had but to say: “We are what we have ever been,” and the way to freedom, and certitude, and self-possession would have been theirs. A mighty ore, lay buried within them. They could have refined it. But they turned shamedly ‘away, and donned their flimsy mas- querades to hide it further. They wanted courage and humility. And so they arrived at nothing. The © lordly gold that lay concealed within the race was not for them. It was for men of different temper. It was for a younger, fresher generation. It was for men in whom the ancient spirit had attained rebirth. It was for men-in whom the staunch, stiff-necked will was alive once more. It was for men like Ernest Bloch, afire with a great loyal love. To such, it yields itself.