only between movements, but between the artists
of a movement. That is what angry critics will not do. That is why the
admirable Mr. Dent--whose brilliant lacerations of _les six_, and other
exponents of Jazz, I sometimes have the pleasure of translating to his
victims--knew no better, the other day, than to bracket Poulenc with
Miss Edith Sitwell. Confusions of this sort seem to me to take the sting
out of criticism; and that, I am sure, is the last thing Mr. Dent would
wish to do. He, at any rate, who comes to bury Jazz should realize
what the movement has to its credit, _viz._, one great musician, one
considerable poet, ten or a dozen charming or interesting little masters
and mistresses, and a swarm of utterly fatuous creatures who in all good
faith believe themselves Artists.

[Footnote Z: Honegger, I think, was never officially of the band.]

The encouragement given to fatuous ignorance to swell with admiration of
its own incompetence is perhaps what has turned most violently so
many intelligent and sensitive people against Jazz. They see that it
encourages thousands of the stupid and vulgar to fancy that they can
understand art, and hundreds of the conceited to imagine that they can
create it. All the girls in the "dancings" and sportsmen at the bar who
like a fox-trot or a maxixe have been given to believe, by people who
ought to know better, that they are more sensitive to music than those
who prefer Beethoven. The fact that Stravinsky wants his music to be
enjoyed in the cafes gives pub-loafers fair ground for supposing that
Stravinsky respects their judgement. Well, the music of Brahms is not
enjoyed by pub-loafers; but formerly the concert-goers were allowed to
know better. Stravinsky is reported to have said that he would like
people to be eating, drinking, and talking while his music was being
played (how furious he would be if they did anything of the sort!), so,
when a boxful of bounders begin chattering in the middle of an opera
and the cultivated cry "hush" the inference is that the cultivated are
making themselves ridiculous. Again: if rules were made by pedants for
pedants, must not mere lawlessness be a virtue? And, since savages think
little and know less, and since savage art has been extolled by the
knowing ones (I take my share of whatever blame may be going) as much
as "cultured" has been decried does it not follow that ignorant and
high-spirited lads are likely to write better verses than such