Letters
Musical fantasia
Sir: 'The chief defect of Master Booker', as Belloc might have written, forsaking rhyme for respectability, 'is being such a silly chap'. Nowhere is this sad fact better illustrated than in the absurd piece appearing in your last issue under the heading 'All fresh air and flowers?'. Indeed, the title of his article illustrates Mr Booker's main difficulty: distinguishing between fact and fantasy, Our official, Mr Don Smith (himself a trained and distinguished musician), has never spoken to Mr Booker nor made the statement attributed to him, from which the heading is extracted. Presumably, in the best traditions of his type of journalism, Mr Booker dreamed up the heading first and designed the statementlater.
The article suggests that Mr Christopher Hogwood — whom Mr Booker chooses to make the hero of his fairy story— 'will need little introduction to Spectator readers'. I must confess that after a quarter of a century of perusing your sometimes interesting organ I have formed a rather different view of your readership. Hence I venture to point out that Mr Tony Pleeth (whose father, incidentally, plays the cello and not as Mr Booker believes — the viola) is also an eminent and highly regarded musician who, being an intelligent man, knows — as Mr Booker does not — that our union's rules and policies on membership reflect the collective will of the vast majority of .British musicians and are susceptible to change by normal democratic processes involving, I incidentally, ballot voting of the membership. It would be too tedious to deal with all the follies and inaccuracies in Mr Booker's article. I hope, for his and your sake, that Mr Pleeth's character includes a fair measure of tolerance in view of the grotesque way in which his role in the matter has been depicted. For myself, I have uttered no threats, veiled or otherwise, about Mr Hogwood but have merely stated that he would be welcome to join the vast majority of the British music profession who are already members of our union. Mr Booker concludes his article by confiding, with a delicate shiver, that he 'cannot suppress the image of some "rough beast", stumbling in upon a garden of flowers .. . I advise him either to give up the study that has become evident in his recent meanderings of 'sixpenny pamphlet psychology' or to get a better opinion than his own on his condition.
John Morton General Secretary, Musk:Ws' Union 60-62 Clapham Road, London SW9
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