The other piece of Wagnerian criticism by which Shaw is best known was the subject of a letter Shaw once wrote to the editor of the Academy (October 15th, 1895): “I see you have been announcing a book by me entitled, 'The Complete Wagnerite,'” writes Shaw. “This is an error; you are thinking of an author named Izaak Walton. The book, which is a work of great merit, even for me, is called, 'The Perfect Wagnerite,' and is an exposition of the philosophy of Der Ring des Nibelungen. It is a G. B. eSsence of modern Anarchism, or Neo-Protestantism. This lucid description speaks for itself. As it has been written on what the whole medical faculty and all the bystanders declare to be my death-bed, it is naturally rather a book of devotion than one of those vain brilliancies which I was wont to give off in the days of my health and strength.—P. S. I have just sprained my ankle in trying to master the art of bicycling on one foot. This, with two operations and a fall downstairs, involving a broken arm, is my season's record so far, leaving me in excellent general condition. And yet they tell me a vegetarian can't recuperate!” In this commentary to what had already been written by “musicians who are no revolutionists, and revolutionists who are no musicians,” Shaw reads into Wagner far more Socialism than he had ever read into Ibsen. He took pains to base his interpretation upon the facts of Wagner's life—his connection with the revolution of 1848, his association with August Roeckel and Michael Bakounin, his later pamphlets on social evolution, religion, life, art, and the influence of riches—rather than upon his recorded utterances in regard to the specific meanings of the “Ring” music-dramas. It is not difficult to recognize, with Shaw, the portraiture of our capitalistic industrial system from the Socialist point of view in the slavery of the Niblungs and the tyranny of Alberich: but little significance attaches to such cheap symbolism. It is more difficult to identify the young Siegfried with the anarchist Bakounin on the strength of the latter's notorious pamphlet demanding the demolition of existing institutions. To the Ring of the Niblungs, Shaw has, so to speak, applied the Ibsenic-Nietzschean-Shavian philosophy as a unit of measure, and found it to apply at many points. Siegfried is a “totally unmoral person, a born Anarchist, the ideal of Bakounin, an anticipation of the 'overman' of Nietzsche”—a Germanized Dick Dudgeon or a Teutonic Prometheus. Whenever the philosophy of the “Ring” diverges from the Shavian philosophy, Wagner was “wandering in his mind.” Whenever his own explanations do not agree with the idée fixe of Shaw, they only prove, as was once claimed by Shaw in the case of Ibsen, that Wagner was far less intellectually conscious of his purpose than Shaw. As an exposition of the Shavian philosophy, the book is worthy of note; as an exposition of the Wagnerian philosophy, it is unconvincing. The book is exceedingly ingenious and in places, brilliant; but it is the work of an ideologue and an a-priorist.

One final word in regard to Shaw's position as a champion of Wagner. While it is of little importance now, still Wagner and anti-Wagner was the great controversy of that time in music until anti-Wagnerism finally became ridiculous in the face of Wagner's overwhelming popularity. In the same way, Ibsen and anti-Ibsen was the great controversy in drama in London after 1889. In both instances, the whirligig of time has brought round its revenges. For some years, even before his death, Ibsen stood unchallenged as the premier dramatist of the age. And now that Wagner's battle is won and over-won, Shaw has the profound gratification of seeing “the professors, to avert the ridicule of their pupils, compelled to explain (quite truly) that Wagner's technical procedure in music is almost pedantically logical and grammatical; that the Lohengrin prelude is a masterpiece of the 'form' proper to its aim; and that his disregard of 'false relations,' and his free use of the most extreme discords without 'preparation,' were straight and sensible instances of that natural development of harmony which has proceeded continually from the time when common six-four chords were considered 'wrong,' and such free use of unprepared dominant sevenths and minor ninths as had become common in Mozart's time would have seemed the maddest cacophony.” And in a letter to me, Mr. Shaw said (July 15th, 1905): “I was on the right side in both instances: that is all. According to the Daily Chronicle, Wagner and Ibsen were offensive impostors. As a matter of fact, they were the greatest living masters in their respective arts; and I knew that quite well. The critics of the nineteenth century had two first-rate chances—Ibsen and Wagner. For the most part they missed both. Second best they could recognize; but best was beyond them.”[115]

Mr. Shaw's most recent incursion into the field of music criticism was occasioned by a criticism of Richard Strauss' Elektra, at the time of its first production in England in March, 1910, from the pen of the well-known critic of music, Mr. Ernest Newman. The vigorous controversy between Mr. Shaw and Mr. Newman that ensued was, of course, quite inconclusive, so far as erecting any absolute standards by which Strauss' greatness as a dramatic composer might be judged. But it evoked from Mr. Shaw an outburst of enthusiasm unparalleled in his career as a critic of music:

So often was Shaw mocked by scepticism concerning his talent and by imperviousness to his mood, that he sometimes actually went to the length of tagging one of his Irish bulls with the explanatory parenthesis (“I speak as an Irishman”). If the larger public ever gains a just understanding of Shaw, it will be because they have found this central and directing clue: he speaks as an Irishman. The right to say in jest what is meant in earnest is a right the average Englishman denies; he agrees with Victor Hugo that “every man has a right to be a fool, but he should not abuse that right.” M. Faguet has recently said of Sainte Beuve that he was guided by one of the finest professional consciences the world of literature has ever known. Early in his career, Shaw succeeded in imparting to his readers the conviction that his glaring deficiency was the total lack of a professional conscience. Shaw was preoccupied with the exposition of the eternal comedy. He is that hitherto unknown phenomenon in the history of musical criticism—a musical critic who charged his critical weapon with genuine comic force. The conviction has probably come to every musical critic in some moment of self-distrust that his effort to catch and imprison in written words the elusive spirit of music is, after all, only a more or less humorous subterfuge. In this respect Shaw differs from every other musical critic who ever lived: instead of feeling his criticism to be merely a humorous subterfuge, he actually believed it to be a comically veracious impression of reality.

No view of Shaw's unique attitude as a critic has yet been obtained that is not one-sided, false, or—what is far worse—misleading. The absurdly simple truth is that Shaw always aimed at saying, in the most forcible and witty way possible, exactly what he thought and felt, however absurd, unnatural, or comic these criticisms might sound to the “poor, silly, simple public.” To the feelings of other musical critics, to the prejudices of the dry academic schools, or even to the consensus of opinion, crystallized through the lapse of years, he paid no heed whatsoever. He did not feel himself bound by the traditions of any journal, by any obligations, fancied or real, to operatic managers, or by the predilections of his audience. In fact, to put it in a homely way, he was “his own man,” feeling free to express his opinions exactly as he chose. And it is perhaps no exaggeration to say that, since 1885, the whole spirit of English criticism, personified in Walkley, Archer and Shaw—an Englishman of French descent, a Scotchman, and an Irishman—has been a spirit of forthrightness, outspoken frankness and unblushing sincerity.

In the matter of individual style, Shaw occupies an absolutely unique position in English literature. He occupied a more unusual terrain than had ever been occupied before. Concerning the subjects in which he claimed to be thoroughly versed, he gaily announced himself as an authority. With an air of grandiose condescension, he once confessed that he might be mistaken: “Even I am not infallible—that is, not always.” He really meant that he was. “Let it be remembered, that I am a superior person,” he characteristically says, “and that what seemed incoherent and wearisome fooling to me may have seemed an exhilarating pastime to others. My heart knows only its own bitterness; and I do not desire to intermeddle with the joys of those among whom I am a stranger. I assert my intellectual superiority—that is all.” He was ever sublimely conscious of his own supreme dialectical and critical skill. “Some day I must write a supplement to Schumann's 'Advice to Young Musicians.' The title will be 'Advice to Old Musicians'; and the first precept will run, 'Don't be in a hurry to contradict G. B. S., as he never commits himself on a musical subject until he knows at least six times as much about it as you do.'” If he had been matched in argument with the greatest living critic of the arts—and he was frequently matched against the greatest English critics—he would doubtless have said to him, in the language of the apocryphal anecdote: “All the world's mad save thee and me, John. And sometimes I think thee's a little mad too.”

Behind all this “infernal blague” lurks the real critic, whose chief conviction is that “Bach in B minor” is not fit subject for enjoyment or criticism. “I would not be misunderstood,” Mr. Shaw remarked to me one day, “in regard to my position about analysis and 'analytic criticism.' The analytic criticism I mercilessly condemn is the sort of criticism of Hamlet's soliloquy that reads: 'It is highly significant, in the first place, that Hamlet begins his soliloquy with the infinitive of the verb “To be,” etc., etc' Far from minimizing the function of analysis sanely and appropriately employed in criticism, I attribute my superiority as a critic to my superiority in the faculty of analysis.” The inevitable reaction from “absolute music” was the dramatic expression of individuality, e.g., Wagner. The inevitable reaction from “analytic criticism” is the critical expression of individuality, e.g., Shaw. He never hunted out false relations, consecutive fifths and sevenths, the first subject, the second subject, the working out, and all the rest of “the childishness that could be taught to a poodle.” His supreme effort was to get away from a discussion of the technology of music to the nuances of the music itself, the source of its inspiration, the spirit of its genius. If Shaw should find Wagner an offensive charlatan and his themes cacophonous strings of notes, he would frankly say so, without making any effort to prove him so by laying down the first principles of character and composition, and showing that his conduct and his works are incompatible with these principles. The expert, in Shaw's view, should merely give you his personal opinion for what it is worth. Shaw protested against the whole academic system in England, and declared himself its open enemy. “This unhappy country would be as prolific of musical as of literary composers were it not for our schools of music, where they seize the young musician, turn his attention forcibly away from the artistic element in his art, and make him morbidly conscious of its mechanical conditions, especially the obsolete ones, until he at last becomes, not a composer, but an adept in a horribly dull sort of chess played with lines and dots, each player having different notions of what the right rules are, and playing his game so as to flourish his view under the noses of those who differ from him. Then he offers his insufferable gambits to the public as music, and is outraged because I criticize it as music and not as chess.”

Shaw made the most persistent effort to encourage the employment of the vernacular in music, as well as in criticism of music. An arrant commonplace, made out of the most hackneyed commonplace in modern music, pleased him more than all the Tenterden Street specialties. “I cry 'Professor' whenever I find a forced avoidance of the vernacular in music under the impression that it is vulgar.... Your men who really can write, your Dickenses, Ruskins and Carlyles, and their like, are vernacular above all things: they cling to the locutions which everyday use has made a part of our common life. The professors may ask me whether I seriously invite them to make their music out of the commonplaces of the comic song writer? I reply, unabashed, that I do.”

With the deepest fervour, he continued to preach the doctrine of spontaneity and naturalness. “Why hesitate to perpetrate the final outrage of letting loose your individuality, and saying just what you think in your own way as agreeably and frankly as you can?” His own aim was to reach that truly terrible fellow, the average man—“the plain man who wants a plain answer.” If he can only awake the attention of the man in the street and, by expressing himself frankly in everyday language, the quotidian commerce of thought, occasionally even in the vernacular of the street, make clear to that man the appeal that music makes to a critic acutely sensitive to the subtler implications of its highest forms, Shaw is perfectly satisfied with himself and his performance. Accordingly, he aimed, primarily, to make an exact record of the sensations induced by a certain piece of music, or a certain performer, Don Juan or De Reszke, Letty Lind or The Pirates of Penzance. He made no effort whatsoever to control the current of his humour. He allowed it to play as lightly about Patti, as uproariously about Paderewski, as derisively about Vieuxtemps as his inclination directed. The most solemn symphony excited his risibility to the explosion point, and the latest Mass suggested seaside promenades instead of the life of the world to come.

Shaw's efforts to free musical criticism from the blighting effects of academicism, his advocacy of the free expression of individuality, and his insistence upon the return to nature, both in music and in criticism, brought upon him the scorn and contempt that is always the meed of the would-be reformer. The French public looked up to Francisque Sarcey with a sort of filial veneration, and affectionately dubbed him “uncle.” The English public sneered at Shaw's brilliant attacks upon their favourites and their idols, and looked down upon him, not as a reasonable human being, but, as Shaw expressed it, as a mere Aunt Sally. Not only did the critics and the public laugh at his revolutionary zeal, but they regarded him as an amusing incompetent, availing himself of his abundant gift of humour to supply the deficiency of any knowledge of music or of the possession of the faintest critical sense. Analytic criticism was revered, while the individual and impressionistic style of Shaw was immoderately enjoyed as the tricky device of a colossal humbug. Shaw fought against misrepresentation and prejudice with unabated vigour, continually confounding his critics with some unanswerable argument that logically reduced their attacks to nothingness. By apt examples, he often revealed the absurdities of analytic criticism in literature, once confronting his critics with the startling query: “I want to know whether it is just that a literary critic should be forbidden to make his living in this way on pain of being interviewed by two doctors and a magistrate, and hauled off to Bedlam forthwith; whilst the more a musical critic does it, the deeper the veneration he inspires. By systematically neglecting it I have lost caste as a critic even in the eyes of those who hail my abstinence with the greatest relief; and I should be tempted to eke out these columns in the Mesopotamian manner if I were not the slave of a commercial necessity and a vulgar ambition to have my articles read, this being the main reason why I write them, and the secret of the constant 'straining after effect' observable in my style.”

Perhaps the most enlightening evidence as to Shaw's position as a critic of music is contained in his recital of an amusing incident. One day, it seems, a certain young man, whose curiosity overswayed his natural modesty, approached Shaw on the subject of the G. B. S. column in the World. “At last he came to his point with a rush by desperately risking the question: 'Excuse me, Mr. G. B. S., but do you know anything about music? The fact is, I am not capable of forming an opinion myself; but Dr. Blank says you don't, and—er—Dr. Blank is such a great authority that one hardly knows what to think.' Now this question put me into a difficulty, because I had already learnt by experience that the reason my writings on music and musicians are so highly appreciated is that they are supposed by many of my greatest admirers to be a huge joke, the point of which lies in the fact that I am totally ignorant of music, and that my character of critic is an exquisitely ingenious piece of acting, undertaken to gratify my love of mystification and paradox. From this point of view every one of my articles appears as a fine stroke of comedy, occasionally broadening into a harlequinade, in which I am the clown, and Dr. Blank the policeman. At first I did not realize this, and could not understand the air of utter disillusion and loss of interest in me that would come over people in whose houses I incautiously betrayed some scrap of amateurish enlightenment. But the naïve exclamation, 'Oh! you do know something about it, then!' at last became familiar to me; and I now take particular care not to expose my knowledge. When people hand me a sheet of instrumental music, and ask my opinion of it, I carefully hold it upside down, and pretend to study it in that position with the eye of an expert. They invite me to try their new grand piano, I attempt to open it at the wrong end; and when the young lady of the house informs me that she is practising the 'cello, I innocently ask her whether the mouthpiece did not cut her lips dreadfully at first. This line of conduct gives enormous satisfaction, in which I share to a rather greater extent than is generally supposed. But, after all, the people whom I take in thus are only amateurs. To place my impostorship beyond question, I require to be certified as such by authorities like our Bachelors and Doctors of Music—gentlemen who can write a 'Nunc Dimittis' in five real parts, and know the difference between a tonal fugue and a real one, and can tell you how old Monteverde was on his thirtieth birthday, and have views as to the true root of the discord of the seventh on the supertonic, and devoutly believe that si contra fa diabolus est. But I have only to present myself to them in the character of a man who has been through these dreary games without ever discovering the remotest vital connection between them and the art of music—a state of mind so inconceivable by them—to make them exclaim:

“'Preposterous ass! that never read so far
To know the cause why music was ordained,'

and give me the desired testimonials at once. And so I manage to scrape along without falling under suspicion of being an honest man.

“However, since mystification is not likely to advance us in the long run, may I suggest that there must be something wrong in the professional tests which have been successfully applied to Handel, to Mozart, to Beethoven, to Wagner, and last, though not least, to me, with the result in every case of our condemnation as ignoramuses and charlatans. Why is it that when Dr. Blank writes about music, nobody but a professional musician can understand him; whereas the man-in-the-street, if fond of art and capable of music, can understand the writings of Mendelssohn, Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz, or any of the composers? Why, again, is it that my colleague, W. A., for instance, in criticizing Mr. Henry Arthur Jones' play the other day, did not parse all the leading sentences in it? I will not be so merciless as to answer these questions now, though I know the solution, and am capable of giving it if provoked beyond endurance. Let it suffice for the moment that writing is a very difficult art, criticism a very difficult process, and music not easily to be distinguished, without special critical training, from the scientific, technical and professional conditions of its performance, composition and teaching. And if the critic is to please the congregation, who wants to read only about the music, it is plain that he must appear quite beside the point to the organ-blower, who wants to read about his bellows, which he can prove to be the true source of all the harmony.”[117]