DERRIERE-GARDE SIR,—Smoothing my pin-stripes and interrupting for a moment his
Imaginary Conversations with the Muses of the Bayswater Road, may I tell Mr. David Cairns a Cautionary Tale?
Once upon a time the 'top people' of one of London's most enterprising concert societies (allow- ing faith, not for the first time, to triumph over experience) decided to strike a blow for the Living Tradition of music by putting on a concert of works by contemporary composers.
It cost the earth to do so and a couple of satellites to advertise their intentions, so that, despite the fact that the concert was subsidised on a scale that would have sent Prince Esterhazy into a dead faint, it still required that some 2,000 people out of London's teeming millions should be prepared to buy tickets for the concert if the artists were not to per- form across deserts of upholstery and the sponsors not to be plunged into insolvency.
On the evening of the day on which booking opened one of the sponsors was told that an organi- sation !for the encouragement of contemporary music' had been endeavouring to speak to him all day on a matter of some urgency. Whereupon his heart leapt within him, for, thought he, this could only mean one thing : the avant-garde was at last advancing, eager to 'take the mickey out of the Establishment by the most effective means in its power—a frontal assault on the Box Office!
Alas,: the maven: of faith! When eventually he made contact with his pursuers it was to' discover that all these 'encouragers' of the Living Tradition were anxious. to know was the number of compli- mentary tickets they might expect to receive for the concert.
I hate to dim Mr. Cairns's infectious and stimu- lating ardour, but the sad truth is that this tale is typical of the kind of encouragement which the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Sym- phony Orchestra. the Royal Philharmonic Society and the BBC Symphony Orchestra have come to expect whenever they have endeavoured to widen the horizons of the standard repertoire.
If the Don Quixotes of musical criticism find this general indifference a dull enemy to attack and prefer instead the excitement of tilting at the windmills of the Establishment, by all means let them continue their knightly exercises. It makes' for lively reading. It gives the Sancho Panzas. a good laugh. And, who knows, it may even lambast both the 'encouragers' and the 'discouragers' of contemporary music into recognising that both Schonberg and Schubert are part of a living tradition, and that the'date of a composer's birth has nothing whatever to do with his power to beguile and ,fascinate!—Yours faith- fully, Royai FeAtivid SEI T. E. BEAN
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