Page:The International Jew - Volume 3.djvu/72

 66 THE INTERNATIONAL JEW

out doubt, regarded as serious by those who know anything about it. Not only is there a growing protest against the Judaization of our few great orchestras, but there is a strong reaction from the racial collusion which fills the concert stage and popular platform with Jewish artists to the exclusion of all others.

The American people have been urged and chided and shamed into the beginning of a rather generous popular support of music in this country, and the first thing they see for their money is that Jewish artists supplant the non-Jewish artists, and use the prestige of their membership in symphony orchestras to work various small business schemes of their own. If they were superior artists, nothing against it could be said, but they are not superior artists; they are only better known and racially favored in Jewish musical circles.

That, however, is a big subject. It will receive attention in its turn. Just now it is the "popular song" that is being considered. However, as something which true lovers and knowers of music may meditate upon in view of future studies of Jewish influence in music, this observation is offered (the italics are ours) :

"Meanwhile the Oriental, especially the Jewish, injection in our music, seemingly less widespread than the German was or the French is, may prove even more virulent. Those not temperamentally immune to it catch it less severe- ly, like Mr. Leo Ornstein ; and if they ever throw it off, as he has given some signs of doing, seem to be left devoid of energy and, as it were, permanently anemic.

"The insidiousness of the Jewish menace to our artistic integrity is due partly to the speciousness, the superficial charm and persuasiveness of Hebrew art, its brilliance, its violently juxtaposed extremes of passion, its poignant eroticism and pessimism, and partly to the fact that the strain in us which might make head against it, the deepest, most fundamental strain