Bartok: the facts
Sir: I hope Richard Ingrams will welcome nine facts in reply to his opening paragraph in your issue of 18 April, the more so since he devotes close on 300 words to grave misinformation about both our listening attitudes and my own role in our musical world.
1) But first, he says he wasn't trying to be funny about Bartok — while on another page, your correspondents declare themselves 'amused' and even 'deeply amused' by his anti-Bartokian observation's 'monumental wit'.
2) I am not a 'Bartok fan', and have never written (or spoken) an analytic word about his music. As distinct from Richard Ing rams, I never write or talk about any music I don't grasp as comprehensively as I understand the music closest to my heart.
3) Mr Ingrams says that 'through the medium of the BBC' and 'all [my] life', I have been 'trying to educate the British' about Schoenberg. For one thing, my adult life has been a little longer than 19 years.
4) For another, apart from my students and pupils, I have never tried to educate anybody, nor do I ever address myself to a national group; my broadcasts in America, Australia, Israel, Germany, Austria, the BBC's own World Service, or anywhere else, do not differ in any way from what Mr Ingrams may have heard or turned off.
5) In fact, I passionately object to unsolicited adult education, and have only be come a teacher, even (uncharacteristically, perhaps?) a university professor, in order to counteract what I consider the mortal — de-individualising — dangers of teaching, of telling other people what's good for them, in their best interests.
6) I have never invited anybody to listen to Schoenberg's music; on the contrary, I've always said, 'Keep off it if you dislike it'. Music is not a duty and suffers when it's turned into one.
7) What I have done and am doing is analyse the music I understand (more Haydn or Mozart or Beethoven or Britten, incidentally, than Schoenberg) for those who are interested — when asked to do so.
8) When I joined the BBC, audiences to Schoenberg broadcasts were 'too small to be recorded'. When I left, they ranged between 50,000 and (as in the case — if I. remember aright — of the Prom broadcast of Moses and Aron) 200,000 listeners, while his fiddle Concerto sold out the Royal Festival Hall as early as the mid-Sixties. Contrary to Richard Ingrams's imaginary statistics, which he calls 'facts of life', the Bartok figures have been similar, though Bartok had far more of an audience when I joined.
9) Whereas I only speak for myself and about great music, to whose understanding I hope to contribute, Mr Ingrams now suggests that he is speaking for the populace, for all 'the poor listeners and viewers' who are made to suffer Bartok. He has every right to do so — if he does. But what is he blaming the BBC for? As he points out himself, he can switch off and go to bed. Is his incomprehension incapable of tolerating other people's understanding? My own incomprehension of sundry musics admires it.
Hans Keller 3 Frognal Gardens, London NW3
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