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Musical and Literary Networks in the Weekly Critical Review, Paris, 1903–1904*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2017
Abstract
Published in 1903 and 1904 the Weekly Critical Review was a typical ‘little magazine’: it was produced on a shoestring with a small readership, with big editorial ambition. Its uniqueness lay in its claim to be a literary tribute to the entente cordiale (and it enjoyed the imprimatur of King Edward VII), but more importantly, it was a bilingual journal, which was rare at the time even for a little magazine. The Weekly Critical Review aimed to produce high-quality criticism and employed at least a dozen high-profile English and French writers and literary critics including Rémy de Gourmont (1858–1915), Arthur Symons (1865–1945) and H.G. Wells (1866–1946). It also published articles and musical news by four leading music critics: English critics Alfred Kalisch (1863–1933), Ernest Newman (1868–1959) and John F. Runciman (1866–1916) and the American James Huneker (1857–1921).
Why did these critics write for the Weekly Critical Review? What did the articles in the WCR reveal about Anglo-French relations, about the aspirations of the English and French music critics who wrote for it, and about the scholarly style of journalism it published – a style that was also characteristic of many other little magazines? And in what ways were those who wrote for it connected? As a case study, I examine the ways in which Ernest Newman’s literary and musical networks brought him into contact with the journal and examine the style of criticism he sought to promote.
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- Research Article
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- © Cambridge University Press 2017
Footnotes
*
I gratefully acknowledge that research for this article was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), 2012–2015 (ARC DE120100050).
References
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2 Extensive searches on RIPM, Gallica and Trove reveal the degree to which writings by critics, including those in the WCR including Huneker and Newman, were syndicated or recycled all over the world thus adding a further layer of complexity about networks that is beyond the scope of this article.
3 Savoy (published from January to December 1896) has been labelled an Anglo-French enterprise but this is disputed, ‘for the amount of prose and poetry by or about French writers is relatively small, though their presence is a significant contribution to the periodical’s avant-garde emanations’ (quoted in Karl Beckson, Arthur Symons: A Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987): 127). For background on the Savoy see Beckson, Karl, London in the Eighteen Nineties (New York: Norton, 1992)Google Scholar and Koenraad Claes, ‘Savoy’, in Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor (London: British Library, 2009): 559. Another periodical from around the same time (1896–1898) that published articles in English and French – as well as German – was Cosmopolis. For a history of Cosmopolis and its significance to British cultural life at the turn of the twentieth century see Agathacleous, Tanya, Realism, Urban and the Cosmopolitan Imagination in the Nineteenth Century: Visible City, Invisible World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011): 27–68 Google Scholar.
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22 James Huneker (1857–1921) described Bles as ‘a young Englishman of Dutch descent (his grandfather was a Dutch genre painter, David Bles, but whether of the Henri Met de Bles stock, the old-time painter with the white lock sported Whistler fashion, I do not know) and far-ranging in his ambition’. See Huneker, James, Steeplejack, vol. 2 (London: C. Scribner’s, 1920): 117 Google Scholar. M.D. Calvocoressi described him as ‘an enterprising man’. See Calvocoressi, , Musicians Gallery: Music and Ballet in Paris and London (London: Faber & Faber, 1933): 74 Google Scholar. Bles was made an Officier de l’Académie c. 1912. See correspondence from James Huneker to E.E. Ziegler in June 1912 in The Letters of James Gibbons Huneker, ed. Josephine Huneker (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1922): 131–3.
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32 The series on Chopin began on 5 March 1903, 8.
33 See www.henle.de/blog/en/2012/03/19 (accessed 2 November 2015).
34 I am grateful to one of the reviews of this article who provided Davey’s full name and profession.
35 H. Murray McDonald Davey, ‘He Came Like a Dream’ [song], WCR, 16 April 1903.
36 Calvocoressi, Musicians Gallery, 74.
37 Calvocoressi, Musicians Gallery, 74. James Huneker also mentioned, in passing, the generous remuneration. See correspondence from James Huneker to E.E. Ziegler in June 1912 in The Letters of James Gibbons Huneker, 133. Bles received ‘a pile of notes threatening the magazine with bankruptcy’ according to Victor I. Seroff in Maurice Ravel (New York, 1970 [1953]): 87.
38 The entente cordiale comprised a number of documents signed between Britain and France in 1904 in part to shore up Britain’s presence in Europe but also to form a bilateral relationship with France against Germany. For background to the entente cordiale see Lee, Sidney, King Edward VII: A Biography, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1927): 216–238 Google Scholar and Heffer, Simon, Power and Place: The Political Consequences of King Edward VII (London: Phoenix Giant, 1999): 155–164 Google Scholar.
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40 Arthur Bles, [editorial note], WCR, 12 March 1903, 9.
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43 Brake, ‘“Time’s Turbulence”. An article that covers journalistic networks in France, though less explicitly, is Martha Ward, ‘From Art Criticism to Art News: Journalistic Reviewing in Late-Nineteenth-Century Paris’, in Art Criticism and its Institutions in Nineteenth-Century France, ed. Michael R. Orwicz (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994): 162–81. For more recent studies on intellectual exchange and networks see Christophe Charle, Jürgen Schriewer and Peter Wagner, eds, Transnational Intellectual Networks: Forms of Academic Knowledge and the Search for Cultural Identities (Frankfurt: Campus, c. 2004).
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47 J.F.R., ‘Gluck’, 37.
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51 MS Dobell, 14 January 1896.
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59 Newman, ‘Concerning Musical Criticism’.
60 See Charles Kensington Salaman, ‘On Musical Criticism’, Proceedings of the Musical Association, second Session (1875–76): 1–15 and John Stainer, ‘The Principles of Musical Criticism’, Proceedings of the Musical Association, seventh Session (1880–1881): 35–52 and ‘Essays in Musical Criticism’, Musical Times vol. 37 (1896): 16–17, 87–8, 232.
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64 Newman, ‘Mr John M. Robertson’s essays’, 14.
65 Ernest Newman, ‘Thomas Traherne’, WCR, 16 April 1903, 7–8.
66 A further connection to Dobell is a four-part article Newman wrote in September 1903, ‘The Rationale of English Verse-Rhythm’, WCR, 3 September 1903, 152–4; 10 September, 186–8; 17 September, 206–7; 24 September, 234–5. Newman had proposed a book on the subject to Dobell but he declined it on the grounds that the topic was commercially unviable. See Dobell–Newman correspondence 26 November 1898 and 13 December 1989. Dobell Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford shelfmark 38484–5 (c. 32–8).
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