British Composers
SIR,—In your issue of August 8th your music critic comments on Dr. Vaughan Williams's statement at the International Folk Music Conference that England gets her painting from France, her music from Germany and her dances from America, and goes on to say that the charge of snobbery against the musical public of this country has been made " in tones of varying, bitterness " by the composer over the last forty years. Those who know Dr. Vaughan Williams can afford to smile at the word " bitterness," but the reference to the article written in 1912, Who wants the British Composer ?, calls for some comment. (The article is easily available for reference since it is reprinted in Hubert Foss's Ralph Vaughan Williams.)* In the main it is addressed to the British composer, and is a defence of tho taste of the British public rather than an attack on if. He says: " The cultured amateur says to the composer ' What have you to offer me better than the great Masters ? I have my Bach, my Beethoven, my Brahms. They are enough to satisfy me; or can you show me more suitable harmonies than Debussy, more striking orchestral effects than Strauss. If not why should I bore myself by listening to you or trying to play you ? ' And the amateur, judged by his own standard, is perfectly right. The English composer is not and for many genera- tions will not be anything like so good as the great Masters."
Dr. Vaughan Williams was too pessimistic about British composers, and did not foresee the great and rapid flowering of our music—not least his own—that was soon to come; but the article as a 'whole is an inspiring call to British composers to have faith in their own national heritage. He says: " We must be our own tailors, we must - cut for ourselves, try on for ourselves and finally wear our own home-made garments, which, even if they are homely and home- spun, will at all events fit our bodies and keep them warm." The call has been answered far beyond his expectations in 1912, and no one is more keenly alive to that fact than the man who made it. The article ends : " Perhaps the future has an- other Bach in store for us and perhaps he will be an English- man, but if that is to be so we [i.e., British composers] must prepare the way for him." To represent this article and Dr. Vaughan Williams's more recent utterances on the subject as a mere complaint about public preference for foreign music is a travesty of the facts. Your critic seems to have read the title Who wants the British Com- poser? and to have left it at that.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Goldhanger, Essex.
GILMOUR JENKINS.
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