ItWas, DearWilliam, distinctly chastening the other day to discover your signature inside a precious score which had been living and sleeping in the shadow of my piano for many years—so many, indeed, that I could have sworn it actually belonged to me. Since you arc one of those rare spirits for whom the lending of books and scores is inseparable from the delights of possessing them, you probably don't need my sorry example to remind you of how easily an au revoir can become an adieu. But now that the wanderer is safely back on your shelves, the frivolous thought that this is another sense in which I'll be wishing you many happy returns has been replaced by a more serious one; for as soon as I begin to ask myself how much else that I like to call my own—and I don't of course mean mere ‘belongings’—is in fact owed to you, there emerges an immeasurably greater question whose bearing on every one of us will surely be illuminated by the celebrations of your splendid birthday. The question is this: how much have we tended to take for granted, and how much have we forgotten or never investigated, about the nature and extent of your manifold contributions to musical life and understanding within and beyond this small island?