Page:The Dial (Volume 75).djvu/194

162 because he isn't hard and scornful and sophisticated himself—he is merely callous to some beauties and afraid of others and by dint of being in revolt against a serene and classic beauty pays it unconscious tribute.

The orchestra of Vincent Lopez I take as an example of the good, workmanlike, competent, inventive, adequate band. It plays at the Hotel Pennsylvania and in vaudeville and although Lopez lacks the ingenuity of Lewis in sound, he has a greater sense of the capacities of jazz and instead of doing a jazz wedding he takes the entire score of "that infernal nonsense Pinafore," cuts it to five characteristic fragments, and jazzes it—shall I say mercilessly or reverently? Because he likes Sullivan and he likes jazz. And the inevitable occurs; Pinafore is good and stands the treatment; jazz is good and loses nothing by this odd application. The orchestra has verve and, not being dominated by an excessive personality, has humour and character of its own.

Jim Europe seemed to have a constructive intelligence and had he lived I am sure he would have been an even greater conductor than Whiteman. To-day I know of no second to Whiteman in the complete exploitation of jazz. It is a real perfection of the instrument, a mechanically perfect organization which pays for its perfection by losing much of the element of surprise; little is left to hazard and there are no accidents. Whiteman has been clever enough to preserve the sense of impromptu and his principal band—that of the Palais Royal in New York—is so much under control (his and its own) that it can make the slightest variation count for more than all the running away from the beat which is common chez Lewis. Like Karl Muck and Jim Europe, Whiteman is a bit of a Kapellmeister; his beat is regular or entirely absent; he never plays the music with his hand, or designs the contours of a melody, or otherwise acts. I know that people miss these things; I would miss them gladly a thousand times for what Whiteman gives in return. I mean that a sudden bellow or a groan or an improvised cluck is all very well; but the real surprise is constructive, the real thrill is in such a moment as the middle of Whiteman's performance of A Stairway to Paradise when the Beale Street Blues occur. That is real intelligence—and the rest—is nowhere. The sleek, dull, rather portly figure stands before his orchestra, sidewise, al-