Battle of Hastings

During World War I, while Germans dropped a few bombs on London, Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House dropped Richard Wagner's operas, the Boston Symphony dropped Conductor Karl Muck, and U. S. concert artists valiantly searched their attics for Italian, French and Russian substitutes for the tunes of Beethoven and Brahms.

Last week, as World War II boomed forward from its overture to its first act, there was again a small disturbance in the orchestra pit. In the provincial English beach-resort town of Hastings, Conductor Julius Harrison of the local Municipal Orchestra announced that he would ban Wagner from the coming season's programs. Said he: "Wagnerian music is the prototype of Nazi aggression. It is heavy and militant and reminds one of Hitler."

Conductor Harrison's tentative tuning-up brought hisses from his fellows. Crackled perfect Wagnerite George Bernard Shaw (in a telegram to London's Daily Herald): "Wagner, Beethoven and all Huns were banned at the Promenades in August 1914. The result was no audiences. Henry Wood* then announced an all-Wagner program. Result: house crammed. Tell Harrison try Sibelius. Shaw." Clacked England's No. 1 woman composer, bony, cigar-smoking, fedora-hatted Dame Ethel Smythe: "I can hardly believe that Julius Harrison can be banning Wagner because of the Nazis. If art is to be affected by anything but itself, good-by to culture." Soon the tempest in a Tarnhelm reached the august portals of British Broadcasting Corp., where wax-mustached Conductor Sir Adrian Boult solemnly clucked: "The BBC contemplates no ban on any musical work by reason of its composer's nationality. BBC's concern is to provide good musical programs."

By week's end Hastings' Conductor Harrison began to feel he had struck a shockingly wrong note. Sputtered he: "The London press have made a mountain out of this molehill. I made a semi-jocular remark to a local press correspondent to the effect that the Siegfried Line is not calculated to make concert goers queue up for a performance of the Siegfried Idyll. I am thinking of putting the matter in the hands of my solicitors."

*Sir Henry Wood, dean of English conductors (TIME, Oct. 17), then conducting the Queen's Hall Promenade concerts.

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