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New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 741, 25 September 1953, Page 5

Sir,-Heartily endorsing Mr, Austin’s drastic comments, it is opportune to allude to a recent lecture by Mr. Arthur Jacobs, a noted English music critic, who said: "In Walton’s music we find a greater alignment with continental stvle: there was the rhythmical freshness which he had inherited from jazz, a it most noticeable in his early compositions. The slow movement of his v rata demonstrated an occasional use of Schoenberg’s ‘12-note row’ technique." "Michael Tippett was another to whom jazz idioms and rhythms had made an appeal." "Alan Rawsthorne favoured something more harmonic!" Regarding the works of Benjamin Britten the lecturer stated (inter alia), "His name could be linked with Stravinsky. Some chords were apt to possess more than their ysual quota of notes." Following the jazz line of argument, Sir Philip Gibbs, describing cabaret customs after World War 1, says in his new book The Spoils of Time, "It seemed fun at first but after a while there was something ghastly in it and always the thump thump. of a jazz band like the beating of a tom tom in the jungle and always the saxophone bleating and gibbering, and cackling like amad monkey."

W. H.

WARREN

(Timaru).