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New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 59, 9 August 1940, Page 20

-- Sir,-As your correspondent L. D. Austin objected to using the word " music" in connection with jazz I would object to the use of the word "modern," as this term truly applies to the higher-

class music which contains the modern element, not to our ephemeral jazz. I am surprised that L. D. Austin, who is a genuine musician, associates Schonberg, Honneger, Bartok, etc., with the presentday cheap swing musicians, We shall always have critics who condemn genuine modern composers and their music, Was not Mozart the first person who used the chromatic scale systematically? (He used the whole tone scale as a joke). Did not people believe that Beethoven had reached the utmost limit in musical expression? Was not Berlioz intensely disliked because of his bizarre orchestration? Did not critics declare that Wagner’s " Tannhauser" overture and especi- — ally his later works were nothing but a horrible dissonant noise? To-day after

over a hundred years have passed we realise their mistakes. So it will be in another hundred years. People will look back and laugh at our mistakes. But to say a word for jazz. Nothing gives me greater enjoyment than Gershwin’s " Rhapsody in Blue" or his Piano Concerto in F, which I think are masterpieces of their type. May I suggest that announcers when announcing works of major importance should mention the composer’s name. It is frequently omitted. Yours, etc.,

SCHOOLBOY

New Plymouth.