SIR, —Sir Thomas Armstrong's letter which you pub- lished last week
exposed the fallacy of much that Mr. David Cairns had written about the colleges of music in a recent article.
Mr. Cairns's further comments on this letter will also inspire little confidence, for his reasoning is far from logical. If he concedes that the material supplied by the colleges was not had, he must admit that the material was good for the very reason that it had been well trained in the college orchestras. Mr. Norman del Mar could not have produced the excellent results he did in so short a time with players who were merely talented : these were students with some sound orchestral experience.
It is only to be expected that a combination of some of the best players from the college orchestras should represent a higher potential than the indi- vidual orchestras themselves, but Mr. Cairns exaggerates when he claims that their concerts are worlds away from the standard reached by the British Students' Orchestra. If he could have attended some of the concerts at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama during the last year or two, when works by such composers as Bartok, Hindemith, Stravinsky and Webern were performed, he might also have felt less inclined to imply that the colleges do not recog- nise any music later than Elgar and Vaughan Williams.--Yours faithfully, GORDON THORNE Guildhall School of Music and Drama, John Carpenter Street, Victoria Embankment, EC4
[David Cairns will deal with these points in a later article.—Editor, Spectator.]
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