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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
Why the work of one composer survives and another doesn't remains a little mysterious. I myself incline on the whole to a Darwinian view of musical posterity: it is quality that chiefly determines the survival of the fittest, and some process of natural selection upon this criterion that ensures that the best are sorted out in the end. (If one throws in the other bit of evolutionist jargon—adaptation to one's environment—the limits to pursuing this metaphor become obvious). But temperamentally I distrust the endless discovery of Unjustly Neglected Composers. When the writer Mr. X is spoken of as ‘the persuasive advocate for’ composer Mr. Y, the phrase itself suggests the lawyer doing too good a job, and that the client so skilfully defended is in fact guilty—of lack of distinction anyway, if not lack of talent. There are so many Justly Neglected Composers. Every now and then, though, you make a discovery that upsets the comfortable applecart of this non-revisionist view of musical evolution.
page no 8 note 1 ‘English Contemporary Music’ by Wood, H. (in the Penguin European Music in the 20th Century, edited by Hattog, Howard, p. 145).Google Scholar
page no 9 note 1 The Music of Frank Bridge by Anthony Payne, Foreman, Lewis and Bishop, John. Thames Publishing in conjunction with the RCM Frank Bridge Trust, 1976, £3·20Google Scholar
page no 9 note 2 See Nos. 106 and 107
page no 10 note 1 Lyrita SRCS 91—Peter Wallfisch, L.P.O. c. Warwick Braithwaite.