Plainsong: Some Pros and Cons

truth.As has been said, music itself is but a small part of the total output of controlled activities called out in this stirring time.But it is no small thing for a great art that new urgency has come into it.New audiences have come into being, and as my friends of the choir could tell you, they are distinguished for sincerity.Soldiers will tell musicians when they have had enough.They will take a moving part in the concert.They will even do us the invaluable service of starting a tune of their own, if our utterance interests them less than theirs.If only such sincerity pervaded the output of our post-European-War art, there would then be no more blase affectation.Creative energy would work in composer, player, and listener alike in such strength and breezy sincerity that we shall write the common chord anew and aright, because we love it anew and aright.There is certainly hope that one of the incidental joys resultant upon and evoked by a great sorrow and anxiety will be, that the much-desired national art will now become naturally emergent and understood.We shall speak our own language, to the joy of England, and, let us hope, to the enrichment and gratification of her Allies and her enemies alike.