NOTES ON THE CLASSICS.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 503, 11 February 1949, Page 5

NOTES ON THE CLASSICS.

Sir,-Because one has sufficient musical knowledge and the technique required to perform "The Old Folks at Home" on the mouth organ, it would be unwise to imagine that without further owledge and a different and betterdeveloped technique one could perform the piano part of the "Emperor" concerto. One should know one’s limitations. The Listener does not. It prints facsimile reproductions of manuscript copies of a few bars of masterpieces of music. Other copies of The Listener may differ from mine, but in mine of various dates errors frequently occur. To save

space I give only one example. Two crotchets and a quaver do not constitute a bar of simple triple time. This mistake occurs twice in the illustration of the Scherzo from the String Quartet in B Flat, Op. 67, Brahms. Such errors make the illustrations of little or no value. But the most delightful feature of, the whole series is the conviction of The Listener that its readers have sufficient knowledge to appreciate a masterpiece when all they know about it is a few bars.

JOSEPH C.

McEVOY

(Tomahawk).

(If our correspondent would spare himself enough time from his mouth organ studies to consider what our contributor’s purpose is, he would realise that the illustrations are not intended to be miniature musical scores, but aids to listeners when they hear these in their context. The missing dots after the crotchets in the Scherzo are simply failures in the printing, for which our contributor is not responsible.-Ed.)