Funny BartOk
Sir: Mine is a genuine, genuinely puzzled question to you, to Mr Richard Ingrains and, above both, to any reader who feels able to attempt an answer. On 4 April, Mr Ingrams finished his television review thus: 'After a few bars of [Barta's] discordant music, I realised that the passing of time had done nothing to mellow my attitude and was grateful for the power, not given to the concert-goer who must sit and endure his punishment, to switch off and go to bed.'
What I should be grateful for is the reason why this autobiographical report is worth public print: what precisely can, or does, or should, or might any reader get out of it?
My question is unaggressive, unrhetorical: lam seriously and wholly baffled — aware that Mr Ingrams wants to be funny: is he funnier than, say, my 11-year-old school mates making comparable jokes about their experience of Beethoven (accompanied, invariably, by howls of the narrator's own laughter)? Is anybody amused, please, and if so, how so?
Hans Keller
3 Frognal Gardens, London NW3
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