Communication

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 291, 19 January 1945, Page 8

Communication

N "The Common Reader" Virginia Woolf suggests that every writer must know clearly in his own mind for whom it is that he writes; and that very readable music critic, A. H. Fox Strangways, also admits that he cannot write for an average reader but has in mind always one particular friend. If this is a good method for writing, it is surely to be recommended also for radio programmes; too often they become incoherent, as many of our concerts do,

through trying to please every possible type of taste within a brief hour or two, and they would gain both warmth and clarity if each were conceived with a definite audience in mind. A musical session at its best can sound like a selection made by a thoughtful host for the pleasure of a friend, and if those who arrange these things were to try the experiment of pleasing in one session after another, various clearly defined individuals or small groups, we might have programmes of new character and vitality. Perhaps for an hour each year each listener would be completely satisfied, and that he would not soon forget; then once a year we would allow the organiser to arrange a session for his own taste alone-he would probably choose a rich silence,