Grave and delicious
Sir: John Bridcut rejoices in Sir William Glock's 'success' in securing the largest audience of the 1961 Proms for a Schoenberg piece (could Schoenberg really have needed such dubious promotion even in those unenlightened times ?) by jamming the pill with Debussy and Beethoven. One recalls Sir William's public reminiscences of walks on the beach with Pierre Boulez and grave and delicious discussions on what the rest of us were to have rammed down our throats. One remembers a manifesto couched in language of very Olympian selfassurance in which Boulez-Glock decreed a regime of Shostakovich and Haydn (that order) for lumpen amelioration.
During the same Glock epoch Chopin no more existed but numbers of living wonders—odd how their names escape remembrance—amazed us with their sublimities. Then, and still, the weekend Radio 3 bears a high quota of musical chat on a level from which, as the musical administrator knows and knowing can sleep quietly in his bed, no embarrassing falling-off is possible. Then, and now, stuff from the attic and basement and perhaps recently recorded is smuggled in under the naïve device of having been asked for by three (yes, three) listeners.
To one outsider at any rate these things hint at a need for corrective action and he looks to his John Bridcuts to do their stuff with impartial independence.
N. R. Fearey 257 New North Road, London Ni
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