Oct. 6
Ovr rash remark about real music and the moderns has at least had the merit of evoking most interesting and enthusiastic' letter from our gentle antagonist. The issue really comes to this, that he likes modern music and we do not.
He appeals to the enormous quantities of it that are not only produced but find their way into concert halls; but he forgets that, while the critics applaud, the audience may only be patiently enduring because (1) there is something on the programme that they know they like; (2) they are commendably anxious to see if they enjoy the modern stuff; or (3) because they have been told they ought to enjoy it. We ventured to speak of music that bears its own death sentence written on its pages, because a great deal of the music that "W.J.D." admires appears deliberately to ignore those self-limitations which all great artists, musical or otherwise, have found it necessary, and the history of art appears to prove are necessary, to be observed. In respect of tunes, may @ piece of autobiography be - permitted? Almost the first Wagner that the writer heard was ''Siegfried."" It was largely unintelligible to' one used only to Italian opera, but there was no mistake about the tunes nor difficulty in recalling them afterwards. This writer cannot say the same about Strauss, Debussy et hoc genus one; and he is not alone in that inability. The paragraph about British violins is most interesting. One would be surer about the screen test, if one were also sure that the player's desire to show the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.