nprepared
for his art, possessed with no technique to cope with it. He has very
largely been operating in a void. It is not so much that he has been
tried and found wanting. He has not even been heard. Because the musical
world has been unable to follow him, it has dismissed him entirely from
its consciousness. Scarcely a critic has been able to express what it is
about his music that he likes or dislikes. They have either ridiculed
him or written cordially about him without saying anything. There is
nothing more demoralizing for the artist. At present they are even
classing him with Prokofief. The virtuosi have shown a like timidity.
Scarcely a one has dared perform his music. Many have refrained out of
policy, unwilling to forfeit any applause. Others have no doubt quite
sincerely refused to perform any music that sounded cacophonous to them.
For the army of musicians is almost entirely composed of rearguard. Not
a single one of the orchestral conductors in New York has dared consider
performing his "Sinfonietta," to say nothing of the early and
comparatively accessible "Marche funebre" and "A la chinoise." Of the
Philharmonic Society, of course, one expects nothing. But one might
suppose that the various organizations allegedly "friendly" to music,
eager for the cause of the "new" and the "modern," would see to it that
the musician whom such an authority as Ernest Bloch has declared to be
the single composer in America who displays positive signs of genius,
was given his opportunity. The contrary has been the case. D'Indy's
foolish war symphony, the works of Henry Hadley, of Rachmaninoff, of
David Stanley Smith, even of Dvorsky, that person who exists as little
in the field of composition as he does in Biarritz, have received and do
receive the attention of our powerful ones. It would be small wonder,
then, if an artist like Ornstein, who, like every real artist, requires
the contact of other minds and cannot go on producing, hopeless of
attaining performance and exhibition, had finally flinched and wearied
of his efforts, and suddenly found himself writing such music as the
intelligences of his fellow-craftsmen can reasonably be expected to
comprehend.

There are other reasons that might lead one to presume that these recent
works represent a slump. For Ornstein has been devoting too much of his
energy to concertizing. He has been traveling madly over the United
States and Canada for the last few years, living in Pu