tions which are the A B C's of every cabaret performer.
There is current an absurd theory to the effect that the test of good music is whether you tire of it or not. If I were to be permitted to apply this test I would say frankly that I no longer consider Die Walküre and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony good music. It is just as well to remember that if we heard the "classic" composers exploited by every street organ and cabaret pianist their music would soon become as intolerable as Pretty Baby has become during the summer just past. Probably a great many people are weary of listening to Die Wacht am Rhein, but that does not prove that it is not a good tune.
The creations of our best composers have been highly appreciated abroad. Stravinsky collects examples of them with assiduity and intends to use them in some of his forthcoming works,[1] just as he has utilized French and Russian popular songs in The Firebird and Petrouchka. Popular songs, indeed, form as good a basis for a serious composer to work upon as folksongs. This is a remark I have been intending to make for some time and it will do no harm to make it
- ↑ In 1919 Stravinsky composed his Piano Ragtime and his Ragtime for orchestra (violins, viola, double-bass, flute, clarinet, horn, cornet, trombone, percussion instruments and cymbalo. This work was performed in London, under the direction of Arthur Bliss, in 1920.
