Ancient and modern
Sir: On the subject of this union and 'Ancient Music', Mr Booker can burble on as long as you are prepared to pay him for his contributions (24 November); he may afford harmless amusement to some readers and that is a benefit not to be discounted in these difficult times.
What he must not do, however, is to continue his baseless assertion that my col' league Mr Don Smith uttered the words with which he chose to decorate his first effusion and from which he drew his spinechilling conclusions. He now claims that 'this remark was in fact recorded as part of a telephone conversation on 14 September' between Mr Smith and a Mr Hugh Keyte. Does he intend to allege that a sound recording exists in which Mr Smith is heard saying 'artistic matters — that's all fresh air and flowers to me'? If he can produce such a recording, I will send my personal cheque for £50 to the Spectator Christmas Party Fund or some equally worthy charity provided that, if he cannot, he will donate the payments that he is contracted to receive for the two articles that he has written on this matter to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund (a charity in which we have no material interest). If by 'recorded' he means anything less corroborative than that, then this pomt in his article is obviously as insubstantial as the rest of it.
John Morton General Secretary, Musidans' Union, 6062 Clapham Road, London SW9 Sir: Various devices with strange names (such as 'Hygiaphone) have been employed in recent years to separate us, the public, from officials with whom we have to speak or deal in banks, railway ticket offices, post offices, and so on. They may be effective to prevent us from grabbing the money. But they are even more efficient at preventing communication. I sometimes think that some similar device has been interposed by higher authority between the union mind and the rest of us less privileged beings — and this feeling has been reinforced by a fully frontal talk with Mr Morton of the Musicians' Union. As the hapless sponsors of Christopher Hogwood's concert on 9 November at St John's Smith Square, we felt angry and frustrated when we discovered that the programme and the performers were not going to be allowed to play as announced and advertised, Over a year's work on this project jeopardised arbitrarily at ten days' notice — and no one had bothered even to tell us! (They hadn't even noticed that there was a sponsor.) Mr Morton can't understand why that Should upset us. What I can't understand is Why he can't understand. He says, correctly, that we are 'modest' sponsors. In fact, modest sponsorship from small and impecunious companies seems to me to represent a much more difficult and therefore significant effort than massive sponsorship by Multi-nationals. We have told Christopher 11°gwood that we are unwilling to continue this occasional sponsorship unless there is some reasonable guarantee that any programme and the performers we announce Will actually be allowed to appear and play. 14, r Morton has described this as 'arbitrary interference' and he feels musicianS need to be protected from it. Can he and I be talking about the same thing? Does a simple desire to be given what you pay for seem unreasonable?
The spectral hygiaphone seems to have descended..
John John Letts The Folio Society 202 Great Suffolk Street London SE1
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