Thought the following excerpts
below from a 1920s volume that belonged to a friend's grandmother would
interest and amuse you.
Mike (Jamieson)
G. H. Clutsam (The Famous Composer).*
Jazz and Light Music
"It seems hardly possible that those of the
public who derive their musical nourishment from either the stupid or the more
exotic forms of jazz can appreciate the more normal types of music. But it may
be!
... managers believe public taste to have been
affected to such a radical extent by jazz that nothing else is required. I do
not agree with this theory. There are still large numbers of people who hate
the Negro music which was imported here from America a few years ago....
I think the present phase will pass. The public
will not continue indefinitely its admiration of the hectic, unsatisfying fare
known popularly as jazz. The ear cannot permanently be tickled by infectious
combinations of trite tunes (seldom the composer’s), hurting harmonies, and
rhythmical vulgarities. The plague will inevitably die out, and its victims
return to sanity.”
*George Howard Clutsam (1866-1951)
was a pianist, composer, arranger and song writer, who wrote music criticism
for The Observer between 1908 and 1918. The book intersperses writings by well-known
musicians, singers, lyricists, composers and conductors with piano music of
operettas and light music. One of them, “famous singer” Peter Dawson
(1882-1961) wrote: “I think it would be an excellent plan to permit smoking at
concerts....I am sure that....men, especially, would be more likely to attend.”
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