This week I found a fantastic collection of essays from H.L. Mencken on music, including comments on wedding marches, church organists, and Pope Pius X's motu proprio. I have reviewed the book here: http://fragmentedobsessions.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/h-l-mencken-on-music/

Two highlights:

"Mencken’s writing is incisive and vivacious, graced with a wit that, while sardonic, never descends into bitterness. He could, at the same time, be fiercely logical, particularly when exploding the various quackeries put forth by congressmen, the Temperance Union, or the Kiwanis Club. All things considered, he seemed to me to be the last person that would be so profoundly absorbed in music. I was wrong, and in my error I found great delight, for Mencken approaches the subject of music with such deep devotion that many of us paid minstrels, who face the same job hazards of frustration and burnout that everyone else does, ought to be put to shame for approaching our art sometimes in routine rather than inspired fashion. At moments, Mencken wrote with such enthusiasm that he had me running for my iPod, and sometimes even my old-fashioned CD rack, to find something that I hadn’t listened to perhaps in years."



"More interesting gems are contained in Mencken’s writing about church music. ”New Wedding March Needed,” trumpets a headline to one of these essays, written years before it was popular for pastors to ban the now infamous Wagner and Mendelssohn pieces. The author goes on to suggest that these works remain entrenched because of the laziness of organists, for whom each wedding is about as interesting as a new chin to a busy barber..."