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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 954, 22 November 1957, Page 11

Sir,-When are Mr Stewart and his friends going to realise that musical development didn’t come to a full stop with the deaths of Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and the rest of the conservative masters? Music cannot stand still; it must go either forward or backward, and in any age there must be gropings for the ideal. A considerable number of the works generally accepted now as "classical," but better described as "conservative," were the dance tunes of their age, and have survived in the same way as the works -ef George Gershwin, Cole Porter and other moderns will survive. Every age has its passing fads, from the bawdy coffeehouse ballads of the 17th\century to the sexless Rock ’n’ Roll of the coffeehouses of the 20th century. If Mr Stewart will cast his mind back some 30 or 40 years, he will remember that Stravinsky’s Firebird was howled off the stage

as being too modern, while pale imitations of Bach were allowed to remain; they were musically "proper," while the Firebird was "muck." I would finish by asking one question of Mr Stewart. Does he expect every book written today to be in the beautiful language of the Bible? And if not, why does he expect music to be written in the idiom of 300 vears ago?

P.J.I.

C.

(Auckland).