elf is only a recommendation if we
are collectors of curios. The literature of Art is far too comprehensive
for anyone to study it all, we can but touch a fragment of the whole:
why, then, should that fragment be determined by tradition and custom
alone? Will anybody's clothes fit me: am I not likely to secure a better
fit by being measured for my own? And why should not the same
consideration apply to my mental outfit? It is the same desperate fear
of originality and initiative, coupled with a certain unwillingness to
take individual responsibility: it is the "ditto" idea again, and yet a
writer has said "imitation is suicide." Let music be studied
historically and in its development, by all means, this indeed is
necessary: but to spend hours and hours learning to play or sing
something just because "everybody does it" is the sheerest waste of
time, unless the music so played or sung still bears a living message
for the performer.

Protest might also be registered against the unadulterated rubbish that
is put forward as a translation when a song or operatic excerpt of
foreign origin is rendered in English. Of grand opera even the _Daily
Telegraph_ is moved to say that "the translations are in most cases
literary nightmares." Mere baldness might be excused, and even doggerel
overlooked, but one has only to turn to almost any of the current
standard translations of foreign songs to see that the matter is worse
than this. To expect a student to get up and participate in this verbal
foolishness and ineptitude, by endeavouring to express as genuine the
balderdash that poses as sentiment and sense, is an insult to his or her
intelligence.

Finally there remains the "graveyard" school of composition. Here we
have the author or composer, or both of them, seeing the world much
worse than it is, and think that they do Art a service by putting their
realistic conceptions on permanent record. We would join issue with all
the various methods--song, literature, drama, and painting--of giving
the unpleasant a wider and more effective publicity. The suggestive
nature of all of these negative things cannot be overlooked, and
should not be underestimated. The Biblical advice is to the point:
"Whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good report: think on
these." The graveyard and realistic schools reverse this sage precept,
saying, in effect, "Whatsoever things are nasty, unwholesome, and
disagreeable--make the most of them: they wi