Welsh Journals

"Some Musicians of Former Days." By Romain Rolland. London, E.C. Messrs. Kegan Paul, Ltd. Pp. 374. Price 2s. 6d. net. Mr. Romain Rolland is one of the most interesting personalities of the present day and one of the most discussed in France and elsewhere. He is not only a musicologue who introduced the history of music into the Sirbonne he does not erect walls of pedantry or even of erudition around his science. His science is part of his life, and his only wish is to share it and to make it loved by the greatest possible number of his fellow creatures. He is a man who detests watertight partitions. His culture and his faith are international. Frontiers hardly exist for him. He feels at home in Italy, in Russia in England, in Germany, in the best Germany-that is, the Germany of days gone by. He is essentially religious and even mystical, but his creeds are not either traditional or intellectual before anything, he wishes to be human, and it happened to him whet happened to many in the great storm which seemed to have carried away his faith and his ideal, he determined to try and bring men-the eternal enemy-brothers-to understand and to love each other. Bitter criticisms were poured on him on all sides, and he retired to Switzerland to live in solitude and in music. Some Musicians of Former Days was written several years ago, and has lost nothing of its freshness and of conviction. Mr. Rolland does not underestimate the place of music in human life he does not confine it to a small corner. He does not isolate it from humankind on the contrary, he restores it to its place in the very heart of human evolution. Music, he says, did not develop isolated it is in close relation with other arts, with the literature, the philosophy, the theatre of each period of history and helps us to understand them better music draws us nearer to the soul of different human epochs, and each musical form is connected with some social forms and reflects their changes and transformations. Writing about the history of the Opera, Romain Rolland shows, for instance, the influence of the Humanism of the Renaissance which transforming old performances of Christian Mysteries gave birth to the Pastorale, and to the classical comedy, then to the opera. He follows, step by step, that complex and fascinating evolution. Sometimes these influences are accidental and picturesque it is thus that he shows how the coming into power in France of an Italian minister, Mazarin, at the same time as the accession of a new Pope in Rome brought about the performance of REVIEWS the first opera (the Orfeo of Luigirossi) in Paris, and all its consequences. Sometimes these in- fluences come from deep causes, such as a great revolution of ideas which transform the world the Renaissance when began the opera, the Ency- clopedia and the ideas of the philosophers of the eighteenth century in the time of Gluck and before Beethoven. Thus, music given back its proper place in human evolution is no longer a light art of recreation, or an opportunity afforded to virtuoso to shine on a platform to throw forward an everlasting top note. Music is not even a relaxation for the smaller number --it is the voice of the soul itself "it reveals the true feeling of the soul, the secrets of its inner life, the world of passion that has long accumulated and fermented there before surging up to the surface." Music as the deepest and the most spontaneous of arts, will be the voice that will still speak in the hours of disasters when all other voices will have been silenced, for music only demands one soul and one voice at the same time, music is the most social of all arts, the one which expresses most deeply the soul of one epoch "It adapts itself to all conditions of society. It is a courtly and poetic art under Francis I. and Charles IX. an art of faith and fighting with the Reformation; an art of affectation and princely pride under Louis XIV.; an art of the valons in the eighteenth century. Then it becomes the lyric expression of revolutionaries, and it will be the voice of the democratic societies of the future as it was the voice of the aristocratic societies of the past. No formula will hold it. It is the song of centuries and the flower of history its growth pushes upward from the griefs as well as from the joys of humanity." In the present turmoil of the world, Romain Rolland's work is the word of hope and of faith quand meme. Is that word already hushed up? Is it a vain dream ? Or will it be heard when the roaring of the guns is silenced? Lucie A. Barbier. Rural Housing." By Dr. W. G. Savage, B.Sc., M.D., D.P.H.. Medical Officer for the County of Somerset. T. Fisher Unwin. 7s. 6d. net. In view of the large number of contributions made to rural housing literature during recent years it would be expecting too much of Dr. Savage to provide us with much that is really new on the subject, and the value of his book does not lie so much in its contents as in the method of treatment. The character of the work is mainly descriptive, but