Hat and pot Sir: It is true, as Gavin Stamp
says (New Orthodoxies, 2 August) that there is as yet no musical Post-Modernist movement. But music went through a 'post-modernist' phase some 60 years ago, under the name of Neo-Classicism. The Neo-Classicists, like Post-Modernist architects, used tradi- tional classical procedures in an 'ironic' way, to show that they didn't really mean it. In view of the games the Post- Modernists play with structural features like columns and arches, it is interesting to recall Constant Lambert's comment on Stravinsky's Pulcinella: . . the expressive element is treated in a mechanical way, and purely conventional formulae of con- struction are given pride of place. Like the savage standing in delighted awe before those two symbols of an alien civilization, the top hat and the pot de chambre, he is apt to confuse their functions.'
Peter van der Merwe
8A Coronation Road, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa 3201
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