Most critics agree that, so far, the arts have failed to measure up to the challenge of total war. The literary arts haven't probed any deeper than the kindly sophistry of "The Moon Is Down," while music, judging from the late lamented "Leningrad" symphony, has little more to boast of. One thing is certain, however, the war can't do music much harm:

The future of creative composing could hardly have been more doubtful or insecure, than in the late thirties. The gulf between composer and listener had grown steadily wider. Under the barrage of clever and unappealing work that the atonalists, impressionists, neo-classicists, etc. turned out, the critics became evasive and began to accept each new work with equal tolerance and an equal lack of enthusiasm. That isn't to say that competent, entertaining music wasn't turned out in the twenties or thirties, but rather that the composers were mainly experimentalists, interested in playing with effects.

In America particularly, the public appetite for good new music increased, as did opportunities for getting in performed. Orchestras, audiences, honors (witness the fuss made over Shostakovitch's "conversion" in '37), everything awaited the arrival of the great man, but he never came. The public wanted music in the grand style, forgetting that great music is the offspring of a certain quality of life that the times could not produce.

The effect of the war is a matter of guesswork since as yet there is no concrete evidence of improvement. Germany seems to musically as well as politically bankrupt. On our side, we can't expect war itself to create any radically new values, because it never has been much more than a brief interruption in the slow evolution of a culture. But in the case of music, which originates in emotional attitudes, it can be a tremendous stimulus. For example, Beethoven wrote some of his best work during the German Wars of Liberation. Musical history seems to have developed steadily and independently of national upheavals, but there is no reason to suppose that composers live in an emotional vacuum. Good music may be "emotion recollected in tranquillity," but a composer has a skin to save, and knows the price which events place on the available peace of mind.

Now, with the war rejuvenating old ideals and creating a will to fight based on something higher than just a standard of living, we may have the stimulus for stronger and more spontaneous music. If the old muse still has any life in her, this global struggle should serve to draw it out.