Moreover, he will not be cognizant of the fact that he is acquiring what is known as a "musical education" (the knowledge of and the ability to hum tunes from one-fifth of the aforementioned numbers would generally be considered to constitute a musical education). Heaven forfend that such an idea be put into his head! The moving-picture concerts, like the pictures themselves, should be classified as amusements. Only, having gone this far, why not go a little farther? If one must become acquainted with Wagner in the concert hall at all, why not in the electrical picture theatre? There are no excerpts in the present concert repertory that could not well be played there; the Funeral March from Götterdämmerung, the Lohengrin prelude, the Good Friday Spell from Parsifal, the Ride of the Valkyries, and all the rest of them, should be doled out, between the actualities and the feature film, to the youngsters seeking tone-knowledge and to those oldsters who enjoy hearing them divorced from the text and the stage action. And while you can scarcely expect Dr. Muck or Mr. Damrosch to pay Beethoven the compliment of giving him up altogether for the time being, his music might be played less by the symphony organizations in view of the hearings it would receive at the hands of the moving-picture societies. The first two symphonies, at
Page:Red (1925).pdf/93
