and afterwards repeated in the same manner, but this time accompanied by the vocal quartet in detached notes in imitation, as it were, of the rejoiceful throbbing of the carillon:

Translation: Then should the carillon resound from all your towers; then should the old folk chatter, then should the young folk dance.

The entire chorus is, besides, accompanied by the orchestra. This is genuine Flemish music, sufficiently external in effect, we admit, but astonishingly fresh in color and supremely natural in expression. Hence, it is no matter for surprise that it has been gathered into the current repertory of popular Flemish song, of which it forms the finest modern specimen.

But in the Rubens Cantata not all is of this quality. And if Peter Benoît savors Weber and Wagner above all, there is no room for doubt that in the principal theme of the final chorus:

the generous Weberesque sweep of the melodic phrase is, to a certain extent, spoiled by a trivial accent à la Meyerbeer.

However this may be, the Rubens Cantata is nevertheless, taken as a whole, a highly typical work and one almost of the first rank as regards the expression of popular patriotic feeling; and, better than any other in Belgium, it exhibits the essential difference between the music of this country and that of France.

When we come to artists like César Franck (1822-1890) and Guillaume Lekeu (1870-1894), who received, all in all, the most effective part of their musical education in France, the question becomes somewhat more involved. But in any event there

is one fact that cannot be disputed, namely, that in spite of the strong French influence brought to bear on them by this same course of education, they held fast to certain native characteristics which markedly differentiate them from the French masters.

César Franck was born and brought up in Liége, in the very heart of the Walloon country. His father, however, belonged to a bourgeois family which had lived from father to son at Gemmenich in the northeast corner of the Province of Liége, at the point of intersection between Belgium, Holland and Germanya region where a dialect is spoken which by some is qualified as German, by others as Dutch, but which is, in all probability, a mélange of the two. Nicolas-Joseph Franck (such was his name) married in 1820 a young girl of Aix-la-Chapelle. The youthful couple settled in Liége, where César was born December 10, 1822.2 They spoke German and, according to indirect though reliable testimony, which we have been able to gather, it is averred that the master, until the end of his life, never failed to say his prayers in German-and what more natural, seeing that it was his mother Barbe Frings, a German, who taught them to him?

In these circumstances it is difficult to claim that the great Belgian musician, French by naturalization, was a pure Walloon. But that is of no consequence. What interests us to know is, that he was descended from a family belonging to a part of Belgium where the Germanic and Latin influences met, combined and blended in such a fashion as to form a thoroughly original whole. In Lekeu's case the matter is much the same, although his family, so far as appears, was purely Walloon. His native place, Heusy, near Verviers, is in fact situated some twenty kilometers to the southwest of Gemmenich, in a Belgian district where Walloon is spoken, but where, among the family-names, one still meets with a surprising proportion of German appellatives.

César Franck left a strong impression upon the young French school, more particularly during the period between 1885 and 1900. But if one cares to take the trouble to investigate the product of this influence, one will speedily remark that it is limited to the adoption, on the one side, of the master's harmonic innovations, and, on the other, of his principles of formal construction. Now, these are purely extrinsic elements which have

'Touching this point, cf. the article by L. Lambrechts, "Had César Franck Vlaamsche bloed in de aderen?" (Did César Franck Have Flemish Blood in His Veins?), publ. in the journal "De Standaard" of October 30, 1921, Brussels.

"All these details have been established with remarkable exactitude in two articles in the Euvre (monthly bulletin of the Euvre des Artistes publ. in Liége) for June and July, 1914, by Dr. V. Dwelshauvers.

practically nothing to do with what constitutes the most characteristic expression of a creative artist's individuality—we mean his melodic invention and his application to it of an harmonic and polyphonic structure which gives it its entire value.

The melodic invention of César Franck, and of Lekeuthis it is which instantly differentiates them from a d'Indy, a Chausson, a Duparc, or a Fauré. The difference is not easy to define these are things that one feels rather than distinguishes by the intelligence or by analysis.

Franck is the Christian mystic; Lekeu, the pagan. In both there is an overflowing flood of lyricism, more tender with the old master, more passionate with the neophyte. Nothing, or next to nothing, of that restraint, that excessive pudicity of emotion, that so frequently checks the French in mid-career and constrains them to standardize their inspiration, to contain it within the bounds of a classic frame. Franck and Lekeu let themselves go, and, as they have only beautiful things to say, they do not stop until their artistic instinct warns them that it is time. The French musicians have a curb made ready beforehand. Those of Belgium borrow one along the way, according to necessity. Thus they display greater warmth, keener penetration, subtler ingenuity, while the French possess more elegance, a larger variety of half-tints, more intellectual subtility.

Men like César Franck or Lekeu cling closer to the soil than a Fauré or a Chausson. They are rougher, less civilized, have less of the "cit." With them the feeling for nature is more direct, less "literary," more visual and, in general terms, more "sensuous" in the most elevated acceptation of the word. Here, again, we encounter the Belgian temperament in yet higher potency, sensitive above all to the magic of color, to the caress of the breeze, to the broad expanse of the clouds, to the salty tang of the ocean winds, to the paradisaical bloom of summertide, to the vast yearning of wide northern horizons. Take up Les Eolides, or Psyché, or the pastoral entr'acte of Hulda, by César Franck. Note the melancholy and impassioned revery of Lekeu, overspreading all his compositions, and the "pantheistic" themes in the Adagio of his sonata for violin and piano:

I

In France you will never meet with such as these. And with these quotations, of a character at once so racial and so individual, I bring this study to a close, assured that my readers will no longer doubt, after the proofs which I have sought to set before them, that there is indeed a Belgian music very different from the French.

(Translated by Theodore Baker)

T

MUSIC AND ITS AUDITORS

By CONSTANTIN VON STERNBERG

HE purpose and utility of art criticism were some time ago explained by the great critic Ernest Newman (London) in an interesting essay where he specifies its various functions converging upon the central point of informing the public and guiding their taste and judgment by analyzing or otherwise elucidating the works of art that are offered said public for inspection and audition. A number of other well-known critics have treated the same theme in a similar vein, but they-one and all-have dealt either with the works of art or with the interpreting artists and sometimes with both. They have never touched upon the public. To the public they have always spoken, but never about the public.

Is, then, the public exempt from criticism, favorable or adverse as it might have to be? Is it not a generally accepted fact that some audiences inspire an artist, while some others chill him? Do not some audiences applaud or refuse to applaud without discrimination? Are not some (or many) audiences captivated by the quality of a voice rather than by its artistic employment? Do not many audiences grow enthusiastic over a pianist's technique, though it betray a total absence of spirituality? And in the face of such well-known facts should the man on the stage or platform have no right to say how his audience impressed him and to speak his mind as frankly and as publicly as the auditors do it through their critics and through their "letters to the editor"? Is the relation between the artist and his audience the one thing in the world that has only one side? One can scarcely believe it; and since the critics have, so far, failed to discuss audiences, an attempt to do so may here be made by one who has faced the audiences of many, aye, of most countries where music is cultivated and whose entering the concert-halls was for a long term of years through the stage door which leads to "the other side of the house."

It would be manifestly unjust to single out the audiences of one large city when the "musical publics" in all large cities are almost entirely alike with but two exceptions (which, out of forbearance with political bigotry, shall not be named). To