The Society for Twentieth Century Music
SIR,—Having devoted very nearly the whole of my column in your issue of February 6th to commenting on the melancholy necessity for a Society for Twentieth Century Music, and having even made an (obviously futile) attempt at the kind of constructive criticism which critics are repeatedly blamed for forgetting, I was at first surprised and then mildly pained to hear that the Society's officers were sending me " a rocket." Mr. Humphrey Searle's letter in last week's issue must be what second thoughts substituted for the more formidable projectile with which I was originally threatened.
His first point—that contemporary works are not given a sufficiently prominent place in the general repertory—is a truism implicit in what I myself wrote. His second—that the audience was not in fact bribed to attend the first concert by the prospect of free drinks—only con- firms my belief that no critic should ever attempt a joke. And his third consists of a mild disagreement with me on the relative importance of different compositions by Constant Lambert and a petitio principil about the nature of the Society's first programme. We already have one group of musicians in this country who resent any attitude among the critics except that' of indiscriminate approval. Is the Society for Twentieth Century Music to be another ?—Yours, etc.,
Previous page
