Sago music
Sir: Your music critic (21 October) sug- gests that modern music should feature in our conversation as much as modern litera- ture and does not understand why we do not pay more attention to it but still do not talk about it except to make a few rude remarks.
In his Reith lectures Alexander Goehr suggested that modern composers have written themselves 'into a ghetto'. Another music critic recently wrote that they had 'dug themselves into a bunker'. The Mini- malist movement was an attempt to get out of it but they will have to try harder than that Modern novelists have avoided doing this. If you use words it is much more difficult to get away with writing rubbish than if you are writing in sounds. I have a tape of music by Oliver Knussen. The label reads: 'Symphonies 2, 3 etc'. I like that 'etc'. It aptly catches the feeling the music arouses — what's it about, where is it going, when is it going to end, why did it begin anyway? If Mr Holloway compared modern music with modern poetry he would find a much closer analogy. The journal of the Poetry Society and .a dozen other small poetry magazines publish work by writers who have abjured metre and rhyme just as composers have turned their backs on harmony and melody. The result is chop- ped up prose which is about as enjoyable as cold sago pudding.
R. M. Blomfield
147 Banks Road, Sandbanks, Poole, Dorset
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