Mar.

5,19241

The Nation

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263
-4

KingsDaughter.
T r a g e d y in Verse. By John Masefield.
The Macmillan Company. $1.75.
volume,
Having adapted Racines Esther in an earlier
Mr. Masefield now writes a Hebrewtragedy of his own. The
heroine is Jezebel, and the story is a good one, like many others
i n t h e Old Testament which awaitthedramatist.
Mr. Masefields verse, asalwayslately,is
loose andfeeblyemphatic;
but he has done all, perhaps, that he intended t o do-written a n
actable and exciting play.
~

H a r r y . ByNeith Boyce. Thomas Seltzer. $2.

Thespiritwhichpervadesthis
memorial-a
tribute of a
modern mother t o her son-would have baffled the readers of a
previous generation.There
is a detachmentinthe
viewpoint
of the book which would have puzzled ones grandmother-and
yet the current of sympathy is none the less authentic for all
that. Harry has been understood in terms of his own age; it is
perhaps significant that he was of an age in which mothers may
approach their children by some path other than the maternal.
of the
The book isessentially a reflection of life-apicture
modern family done with feeling and
aby no means common
degree of artistry.

Jazz and The Rhapsody in

~

Blue

By HENRIETTA STRAUS

R. PAULWHITEMANandhisPalais
Royal Orchestra
gave a concert recently in Aeolian Hall t o show the development of jazz.Theorchestrahad
been increased, f o r the
occasion, from fourteen t o twenty-two members, most of whom,
it is interesting t o note, hke Mr. Whiteman himself, were of
legitimate symphonic experience. As f o r the concert, it
according t o theirleader, a purelyeducational experiment.
But he might have added that as an educational experiment it
was revolutionary and successful beyond the wildest dreams of
educators. F o r the public is not usually moved t o enthusiasm
at the thought of being educated; yet he could have sold out his
house three times over t o those who were willing to learn. Moreover, music, from an educational standpoint,
is not entirely a
democratizingforce,
forthere will always be theultimate
mental division of the high-brow from the low-brow. Yet
here one had the unique experience of being shoved into a concert hall by a cabaret player from Fourteenth
Street, and of
being shoved out again by some smug musician from the studio,
his smugness fbr once demoralized by the naked allurement
of
rhythm. As fortheauditorium
itsel, equality reigned from
the back drop to the back
row, from the stage, .where frying
pans, saxophones, and wah-wahs hobnobbed with violins, clarinets, and grand piaqos to theaudience, where Broadway rubbed
shoulders fraternally with the
classicists. And it may as well
be admitted now that the day was to Broadway, and the
education t o the classicist. F o r , t o the former, there was probably
nothingstrangeintheOriental
decorations of the stage, the
exotic coloring of the music, the disheveled-looking instruments
lying about in an informal,
detached way, the swaying bodies
of the players as they beat time with their feet, and the nervous
power of the leader, with his shimmying right leg. And above
all, there was nothing unfamiliar in the spectacle of an American boy playing with extraordinary ease an original
composition of terrificrhythmical difficulty and of individual power
and beauty, and winning immediate recognition f o r his achievement. But t o t h e musician trained in other
schools there was
something verynewandexcitihgand
moving inthisutter
abandonment of allemotionalreserve.
And there was alsop
perhaps, a secret and overwhelming realization that he had been
caught napping, that a distmctive ,and well-developed art having obvious kinship with the world-thought of today had grown
up, unheeded, under his very ears while he -had been straining

his auditory nerves to catch the echoes

sound three thousand
milesaway.
The question stillremains, however, Whatisjazz?
Mr.
Whiteman himself confesses that he does n o t know, that what
we call jazz today is jazz in name only. He divides it into four
phases.These
are,if I remember rightly,thesixinstrument
noise of ten o r twelve years ago attainedmainlybykitchen
utensils which he calls the true jazz, the blues, or Negro
element, usuallyslowerin
tempo, theadaptation
of themes
from the classics to dance rhythms, and the modern orchestra,
to definite
and the evolution from instrumental improvisation
orchestral scoring. At his concert he began with The Livery
Stable Blues, a piece of Hogarthian humor as legitimate and
vlvid In expression as the more classical Till Eulenspiegel with
his thumb ever t o his nose. Then followed various comic strips,
of which the best were done by
Confrey at the piano. There
were, also, of course, various kinds of modern blues, besides
a jazz fantasy on the Volga Boat Song, symphonic arrangements of populartunesincludingthe,whatis
now, historic
Alexanders Rag-time Band,modern
orchestralarrangements of semi-classical melodies, like MacDowells To a Wild
Rose, four beautifully orchestrated serenades by Victor Herbert, a fair amount of trash, George Gershwins remarkable
piano Rhapsody in Blue, which the composer himself played
with a modern orchestral accompaniment, and a purely symphonic number now no longer, thank Heaven, played in the concert halls, Elgars Pomp and Circumstance.
It was, on the whole, a curious orgy of unrestrained laughter and tears, in which East and West met and merged with
strange, half-caste results. There were, for instance, sustained,
drawn-out Slavlc effects in melodic passages of pure, AngloSaxon bathos. Perverted brasses and winds
depicted, in subtle
slap-stick
variety.
and
intoxrcatmg
colors, humor of the
Aphrodismcalrhythmsalternatedwiththose
of theordinary
dance. And inTheRhapsodyin
Blue, which takes its title
of jazz, one heard a dialoguebetween
from the Negro phase
American slang and expressions a s elemental as the soil. This
work was indeed a n extraordinary concoction gathered together
during the month preceding its performance. It began with a
braying,impudent,laughing
cadenza on clarmetand
ended
with its initial mbtlve, a broad and passionate theme worthy 05
a Tchaikovsky. I n between wereorchestralinterludes as fantastic and barbaric as any of a Rimsky-Korsakoff o r Stravinsky,
and piano passages whose intricate and subtle rhythms might
havebeendanced
in the rites of Astarte. The form was haphazard, a n 6 theplayingoften
ineffectual, butitssubstance
marked a new era.
With It all one cannot but wonder whether this now Slavic,
now Oriental element injazz
is not due tothefactthat
many of those who write, orchestrate, and play it are of Russian-Jewishextraction;whether,
in fact, jazz, withits
elements of the Russian, the Negro, and the native American
is
not that f i h distinctive musical phase of the melting-pot for
which w e have been waiting s o long and which seems to have
such endlesspossibilities.
Certainly, Mr. Whitemanand
Mr.
Gershwin have, in the meantime,
added a new chapter to our
musical history.

Drama

Cross-Section

OME years ago, writing o n this page, divided the pabulum

of the popular theater into sentimental
comedy and melodrama. Slowly, since then, if one reckons from month t o month;
rapidly, if one thinks in terms of years, things have changed.
The melodrama is as good as dead. Even as Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl and her many sisters of hair-breadth escapes
andmuch-enduringvirtue
passed intoforgetfulness, so have
passed o r are passing The Woman in Room 13 and all her