Some Problems of Present-Day Music

Extract

When I had the honour of receiving your Council's invitation to read a paper on present-day music, I will not pretend that I felt nothing but pleasure. Naturally I was greatly pleased, and very grateful for the opportunity of talking about a subject on which I am intensely keen. At the same time I felt very much alarmed. It seemed to me that a man could not reasonably be expected to know enough about such a subject to address your Association until he had been a concert-goer for at least a couple of hundred years. Two reflections, however, gave me courage to accept the invitation. The first was that, long before a man has been attending concerts for two hundred years, he is apt to lose his interest in modern music. At the best he probably only retains an interest in the music that was modern when he was young. The second comforting reflection was that age is apt, not only to diminish one's enthusiasm for modem music, but to diminish also one's enthusiasm for rushing in where angels fear to tread. And that, I think, fairly describes this afternoon's enterprise. In other words, we have to discuss points on which no wise man would offer an opinion.