Among the works Strawinsky has written in his late contrapuntal style, the Canticum Sacrum is the most representative so far. In accordance with the importance of the subject he has chosen, the scope of the music is wide, and the apparatus needed for performance comprises two soloists (tenor and baritone), a mixed chorus (including descant instead of soprano), organ and a large orchestra, though without violins, cellos, clarinets, horns and percussion. These resources are, however, very economically employed. In a short Dedicatio to the city of Venice and its Patron Saint the two soloists are accompanied solely by trombones. The five movements that follow form the Canticum Sacrum proper and are based on texts of the Vulgate, i.e. they are in Latin. They include quotations from the Old and the New Testament, viz. from the gospel of St. Mark, St. John's first Epistle, the Song of Songs and the Psalms. Strawinsky imparts a great variety to his pieces of sacred music, but closely integrates the musical material by divers means of tonality as well as of the serial method of composition with twelve notes.

The subject indicated by my title is probably the obscurest in the whole of musicography. I say “musicography,” not “music,” because musically it is not, in my submission, obscure at all; it is merely complex. But musicians do not tend to write, and musicographers do not tend to hear.

To begin this article, I ought to give a picture of the condition of Japanese Society a century ago, when European culture was first introduced into Japan.

Until a century ago Japan had been ruled by Shogun Tokugawa, an administrator of the feudal age, under whose policy of isolation we had no possibility of assimilating either European or Oriental civilisation. In the year 1867 a civil war against the Shogun brought to an end the feudal system in Japan. The revolutionary army, which was supporting the Emperor, established a new government and opened up the country to foreign commerce. To make up for the backwardness caused by three centuries of isolation, they took an extreme course and europeanised the country in a very short time. Not only did they send a great number of young scholars to Europe to be trained there, but they also invited European advisors into government and many other important posts. Eagerly the upper classes set about changing the ancient customs of their country: they took a special pride in wearing European dress and discarding all signs of traditional Japanese life. In fact, very soon Japanese aristocrats vied with each other to appear at the soirées of the European Diplomatic Corps in the most fashionable European dress, dancing to European music minuets and waltzes instead of traditional Japanese dances and Japanese music, and speaking French. Soon the progressive middle classes tried to imitate this zest for europeanisation. They wore kimonos with European shoes and bowler hats, smoked big cigars, and sang ‘Home Sweet Home’ in English in the street.

The contrapuntal inspiration of the Folksongs does not preclude harmonic inventiveness; in fact, contrapuntally controlled harmony gives wide scope to very advanced tonal excursions. Valid bi- and/or polytonality depends a great deal on a satisfactory combination of individual melodic lines with independent tonal allegiances. The most aggressive tonal clashes are, as a rule, convincingly explained by melodic, contrapuntal progressions: it is an interesting fact that the most daring dissonances usually conceal a stereotyped melodic formula of age-long usage. To mention but one example, which is said to be an English peculiarity too, here is a passage from Taverner's Lamentations:

The only permanent opera houses in England are both in London. This is perhaps the main reason why, since the war, the operatic life of this country has been characterised by the appearance of tiny companies dedicated to performing opera in what novelists of the last century would have called “reduced circumstances.” It is the nature of the reduction in each case that distinguishes one little group from another: it can mean complete opera in concert performance; truncated opera in stage performance; excerpted opera, and opera designedly miniature in its creation. In no instance are the functions of the leading London-based companies precisely duplicated.

In this year of 1956 it is only right and proper to call attention to the fact that it is the tercentenary of the founding by King Charles II in 1656 of the Royal Regiment of Guards, subsequently “The Royal Regiment of Foot Guards” and finally, after the Battle of Waterloo, according to the following order: WAR OFFICE. July 29, 1815.