away? There does not appear to exist, indeed, any particular reason why an artist should not be permitted to make money if he be able to do so. It is the nature of some artists to shy at the annoyances and complications of business. The work of others, Stéphane Mallarmé, Monticelli, Robert Franz, is antipathetic to the crowd and always will be. Many of the greatest artists, however, have made the widest appeal (I might mention Beethoven, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Tolstoy), and some few men of this stamp have been able to transform their inspirations into gold. In the circumstances, it seems unfair to speak derogatively of Irving Berlin merely because he happens to make money.
The most obvious point of superiority of our ragtime composers, overlooking, for the moment, the fact that their music is pleasanter to listen to, over Messrs. Parker, Chadwick, and Hadley, is that they are expressing the very soul of a nation and an epoch, while their more serious
I am acquainted, and the ability of several of its members to play a variety of instruments makes it possible to obtain a profusion of varied colour combinations with a modest personnel. The unusually gifted Ross Gorman alone is equally proficient on E flat and B flat soprano saxophones, E flat alto saxophone, oboe and bass oboe, heckelphone, E flat and B flat alto and bass clarinets, and octavion. Others in the band are nearly as versatile. The skilful employment of piano and banjo in these orchestrations is also to be noted.
