26 MAY 1990, Page 32

The Composer's Ear-Trumpet

Pick me up. Put me to your ear. No. The other way. Are you deaf? Now, you should be able to hear baton-taps and then the uncoiling clef of the old tunes, fury, fugue, double-basses like sea-swell, molten brass, staid bassoons, the old music caught in a shell.

A voice cries from another planet. Shouting through clouds of hair-powder, it's obdurate, deaf as granite: `Louder. Louder. Louder.'

Oliver Reynolds