Comments on: Source of G.B. Shaw quote defining "style"

Question: Source of G.B. Shaw quote defining "style"

bmckenzie — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 06:46:22 -0800

"It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force of assertion." Help me find the source of this G.B. Shaw quote.

As not everyone knows, George Bernard Shaw began his journalism career in 1890s London writing witty music reviews under the name Corno di Bassetto. I think the passage quoted at length below, all I could find via Google, comes from a talk given, after Shaw achieved fame as a playwright, to a French learned society.

"It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force of assertion. If you can say a thing with one stroke unanswerably you have style; if not, you are at best a marchand de plaisir; a decorative litterateur, or a musical confectioner, or a painter of fans with cupids and cocottes. Handel has this power. When he sets the words "Fixed in his everlasting seat," the atheist is struck dumb; God is there, fixed in his everlasting seat by Handel, even if you live in an Avenue Paul Bert and despise such superstitions. You may despise what you like, but you cannot contradict Handel. All the sermons of Bossuet could not convince Grimm that God existed. The four bars in which Handel finally affirms "the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace," would have struck Grimm into the gutter, as by a thunderbolt. When he tells you that when the Israelites went out of Egypt, "there was not one feeble person in all their tribes," it is utterly useless for you to plead that there must have been at least one case of influenza. Handel will not have it: "There was not one, not one feeble person in all their tribes," and the orchestra repeats it in curt, smashing chords that leave you speechless."

from http://mynptv.org/musicFeat/composer/cmhandel.htm
-- no publication source given.

By: cacophony

cacophony — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 06:52:24 -0800

This may or may not be helpful, but here is the relevant Bartleby's attribution, which is sometimes useful in establishing source. I didn't do any independent confirmation.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 07:03:09 -0800

NYPL Research library has the IHT going back that far, you just might be able to get a librarian to go look it up for you or, depending where you are in New York, go check.

By: gubo

gubo — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 07:41:36 -0800

This page gives the year 1913, but no source.

By: verstegan

verstegan — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 07:53:03 -0800

I think this is from Shaw's 'Causerie on Handel in England', first published in Ainslee's Magazine in May 1913, reprinted in an anthology of Shaw's musical criticism entitled How To Become a Musical Critic (1960).

By: gubo

gubo — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 07:55:29 -0800

This is probably the source of the IHT article that Bartleby's cites (see page 3). It's a November 15, 1981 review of Shaw's Music: The Complete Musical Criticism in Three Volumes.

By: mdevore

mdevore — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 10:21:09 -0800

Second here on verstegan's cite of Causerie on Handel in England.

The book Handel(Master Musicians Series) states "Bernard Shaw summed up this aspect of his genius perceptively" and then quotes the first sentence of your longer text, giving a footnote of "Causerie on Handel in England (London 1913)".