MUSIC AND THE B.B.C.
Snt,—" Janus's " criticisms in your issue of January and of the B.B.C.'s attitude to music are severe but fortunately inaccurate and easily disproved.
One has only to refer to the programmes of the week ending today to see that there were twenty-four programmes of serious music, in the strict sense of the term, from gunday to Saturday. There is no need to suffer the humiliation of tuning in to foreign stations in order to hear complete masterpieces when within a period of seven days the B.B.C. offers such musical fare as Elgar's " Enigma " Variations, Balakirev's First Symphony, Delius's "Songs of Farewell," Schubert's songs, John Ireland's "These Things Shall Be," and John Alden Carpenter's
"Song of Faith," Mozart's Sonata fox Two Pianos, and so on. More than sixteen hours a week are regularly devoted to the broadcasting of serious music, and the mere catalogue of the classical masterpieces broadcast complete since the beginning of the wax would fill more space in The Spectator than you, Sir, could spare in these days of paper rationing.—Yours faithfully,
Broadcasting House, London, W. z.
[That " Janus's " criticism was not without foundation tht letters in our last issue show. Statistics alone prove nothing. If the quantity of good music broadcast by the B.B.C. were double what it is this would not tell us anything about the way it was presented or indicate the practice of fading out compositions before they were finished, of which Mr. Scholes complained.—En., The Spectator.]
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