Music: No Strike

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"The difference 'between Ach, du lieber Augustin," he explains, "and any waltz tune composed from the middle of the 19th Century onwards is the dif ference between a piece of music al most devoid of any emotion and a piece of music deeply saturated with sentiment, languor and voluptuousness. The susceptible maiden who, when she hears Ach, du lieber Augustin, feels no emotion beyond one of general cheerfulness and high spirits, is fairly made to palpitate by the luscious strains of the modern waltz ; her soul is carried swooning along undulating oceans of molasses ; she can hardly breathe for the overpowering odors of opopanax and ambergris. . . . "And what has happened to the waltz has happened to all popular music. It was once innocent, now provocative; once pellucid, now richly clotted; once elegant, now it delights in being barbarous. ... It is the difference be tween life in the Garden of Eden and life in the 'artistic' quarter of Gomorrah. . . . "The people who compose popular tunes are not musicians enough .to be able to invent new forms of expression. All they do is adapt the discoveries of great men to the vulgar taste. . . . Beethoven is responsible, because it was he who first devised really effective mu- sical methods for the direct expression of passion and emotions. Beethoven's passion and emotions happened to be noble. But, unhappily, he made it pos sible for people of infinitely inferior mind and character to express in music their less exalted passions and more vul- gar emotions. . . . He made possible such masterpieces of popular art as You Made Me Love You and That Old Black Mammy of Mine. The corrup- tion of the best too often becomes the worst; 'lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.'"

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