We are often told that there is to-day a promising efflorescence of musical culture in this country; that the public for ‘good’ music is growing rapidly; and that more adequate provision must be made for music in the post-war reconstructed world. Substantially I believe all this is true; but it does also seem to me that much potential cultural vitality may be wasted if these conclusions are accepted too easily, without enquiry into the premisses on which they are based. What do we mean by musical culture? What do we expect music to give us? The mere quantity of music played tells us nothing; we want to know what kind of relation the noise has to the society that produces it, we want to know what bearing it has on the way people live. If we look back a moment to consider some of the things that music has meant to people living before us, we shall soon see that our problems are peculiarly difficult, and that we may well need a virtually new technique to deal with them. A refusal to see our educational problems against the background of history will lead to confusion and incompetence in musical culture as in everything else.

It was easy enough for them to forbid a word that annoyed them, or even to burn and destroy all the books whose authors they did not like. In one particular case, however, they could not touch me without at the same time hurting a man whom they needed more than anyone else in this critical moment for their prestige before the world, the greatest, the most famous living composer of the German nation, Richard Strauss, together with whom I had just finished an opera.

Much is written and spoken to-day concerning the popularity of concerts. In this connection, ‘concerts’ usually refers to serious orchestral programmes, although a similar measure of success is attendant on musical entertainments of every description, whether for industrial workers, the Forces, or the public at large. This boom in the English musical world is certainly without precedent.

It is a striking paradox that Ethel Smyth's music, though strongly wrought, demands for its true effect an exceptional care in performance. Indifferent playing of her more robust pages can make them sound both tedious and heavy-fisted; a first-rate interpretation of the Mass in D, so memorable under Sir Adrian Boult, can give likelihood to the fantasy that Beethoven respected her sufficiently to raise his hat. Her delight at that greeting would have been mingled with surprise. Despite her sturdy and justifiable belief that she had something worth-while to say, backed up by a pertinacity which had to be experienced to be believed, Ethel Smyth judged shrewdly the distance separating her from ‘great’ composers, and even in tribute this judgment must be upheld. It is quite a different thing to claim, nor ought one to claim less, that her best works contain qualities of undeniable greatness.

It might at first seem difficult to appraise the work of a composer when only five of his compositions are available for discussion. But the difficulty begins to disappear when we find that these compositions differ widely in medium and scope, and are by no means the composer's first.