In the year 1601 there appeared in Florence a musical work entitled Le Nuove Musiche (The New Music). The composer was Giulio Caccini, one of the leading members of the circle associated with the noble dilettanti who in attempting to revive the Greek drama laid the foundations of a new branch of music—opera. Le Nuove Musiche contains a collection of songs for solo voice to harp or lute accompaniment, of the kind that Caccini, who was singer to the Tuscan Court, had been singing for many years. The work—called not New Music, but The New Music—was a contribution to a current controversy in which the opposing side supported the “old” manner of musical composition, the one in which two or more melodies are woven together to form an elaborate pattern. (This manner of composition is known as polyphony, and in modern times the style has been called after one of its greatest masters, Palestrina). Consequently, Le Nuove Musiche has a long preface in which Caccini expounds the meaning of his songs, declaring, among other things, that the new style considers its principal task to be to interpret the poetry, to give rightful scope to the words by careful enunciation, and to let the tune bring out the phrasing of the poem, an aspect which, in the modernists' view, had been singularly neglected in polyphonic compositions.

Some unusual biographical and æsthetic interest may attach to a few manuscripts existing in the archives of the Paris office of Prokofieff's publishers. More than most composers, Prokofieff had the habit of revising and re-arranging his early compositions, and as in the new versions much of the original texture generally survived, he obviously attributed their original failure to corrigible technical shortcomings while continuing to believe in the maturity of his conception. Of the works here in question, the two short symphonic poems Rêves (Op. 6) and Esquisse Automnale (Op. 8), Le Cygne Blanc and Les Vagues (Op. 7) for female chorus and orchestra and the operas Magdalena (Op. 13) and The Flaming Angel (Op. 37), all but the last were written between 1909 and 1912, that is to say, before he left Russia for the first time. It is unlikely that in the circumstances of his hurried and unplanned departure he would have taken these scores with him and we may rather assume that he found them again, like the manuscript of The Gambler, when he first returned therein 1927. He then brought them back to Paris to re-write them there. This is all the more probable as the Sinfonietta, originally Op. 5 composed in 1909, the manuscript of which may have belonged to the same batch, actually appeared in Paris in a revised version in 1929 as Op. 48. Esquisse Automnale was re-arranged shortly before Prokofieff's definite return to Russia in 1934 and as there is much evidence of his intention to continue to visit the western world, the fact that these manuscripts remained in Paris does not mean that he wished to abandon them.

Quilter often said he loved Poetry more than music. The poems he set to music would form an anthology of some of the choicest lyrics in the English language, while a collection of those poems which he loved but considered unsuitable for music, would give us an insight into his kind and gentle nature. Evenings spent in his company were a sheer delight. He had a great sense of humour, exquisite taste, and he delighted in surrounding himself with beautiful things. Helpful to young artists and friends, his generosity was of a most uncommon kind.

The last lights you see from the plane are those of Hamburg; there is a flaring horseshoe of electric light from a vast stadium, and then blackness until an hour later the plane noses down on an island of illumination. This is Berlin. Nothing could better give a sense of the artificial isolation of the place; it is in fact a city besieged and the only way back and forth for its seething overnight population of businessmen, conferenciers and international artists is through the clouds. As I left the Tempelhof I could not resist a last backward glance at the cosy “Pionair” preening itself on the airfield. It takes some days to rid oneself of this feeling of clammy insecurity, the ridiculous compulsion to look back over one's shoulder; and the sound of aeroplane engines one hears so consciously all day bears a twofold significance. Strolling around this devastated capital, now at such pains to ingratiate itself with its guests, one may well wonder how a cultural and creative activity can exist at all. Writers will always write and composers will always forge their nebulous material into potential existence. But how, amidst these unbelievable expanses of rubble with isolated skyward-pointing digits of habitable rooms, maintain the players to play, the orchestras that breathe life into a score, the theatres and opera houses?

Who wanted to go to Bulawayo? Not I, for one. And if that sounds at once churlish and unenterprising I protest that the sound of the place—Bulawayo—did not conjure up a picture of a musical Mecca at the end of what would be a very long pilgrimage.

Where was it exactly? Taking out the atlas and turning to a page marked “Africa”, it was to be found above the Transvaal, alongside Mozambique, in Southern Rhodesia and rather small print. Thousands of miles away from London, England. And who was invited to go to Bulawayo? The Opera Company from the Royal Opera House. The Rhodesian Government, celebrating the centenary of Cecil Rhodes's birth with a large exhibition, had built a theatre there, and they requested the pleasure of a visit not only from the Opera, but they also invited the Hallé Orchestra, the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet, and a Company of actors which included Sir John Gielgud. The Ballet and the Halle orchestra were the earliest visitors at the Exhibition, and stories of extreme cold, of discomfort caused by altitude, of the tiresome length of the journey, all began to filter back to England. Who wanted to go to Bulawayo?