From The Times: March 28, 1922
Economy has come to the rescue of enjoyment. After April 10 there will be no music in the restaurants and cafes of Paris — not because food and music are incompatible, but because the proprietors decline to incur the heavy tax imposed on establishments where music is given. Luxury has defeated its own ends and sane pleasure once more is possible. There is something almost English in the manner in which the Parisians have stumbled into the right through motives wholly irrelevant. The original error, we are convinced, was not of the Parisians’ making; it was but one of many concessions to the taste of their foreign visitors. The Frenchman understands and enjoys his food; he understands and enjoys music; he knows that the one can only be enjoyed in silence and concentration of mind, the other only amid good and genial talk. The fashion which spread westwards across the Atlantic deluded him awhile. He pretended not to be aware that if you add music to food and talk you get music that is not worth the name, and spoil the other two. Now finance has come to his aid. He may cast off the shackles of foreign fashion and there will be at least one city in Europe where we may eat and drink with decorum and appreciation. It has been maintained that to the solitary diner music is a pleasant companion. True, the orchestra has been known to drown the noise of his neighbours’ taking their soup; but the solitary diner is an unclubbable person, whose comfort deserves no consideration. If his food be not worth enjoying, or his taste incapable of enjoying it, let him read his newspaper. The cafe and the restaurant are social places, where men and women meet to enjoy the amenities of civilized life. Such music as we hear there transforms us into solitary diners. A question is asked; the reply is obliterated by a crash of ragtime. A topic is started; some sickly tune drags away the unwilling attention; talk languishes and dies. Meanwhile we are masticating in syncopation and drinking in two-four time; and the slavery of the ear robs the palate of its independence. We cannot talk or taste. The only people who can bear to eat and talk and hear music all at once are those who do all three with so much triviality that they can properly be held to do none of them.
FROM THE ARCHIVE