“Wort und Ton” (word and music), according to the composer's own words in his Capriccio, constitute a basic problem in the irresolute love of the Countess Madeleine and in the artistic problem of uniting poetry with music; the symbiosis of which depends, according to circumstances, upon whether the problem is resolved “prima le parole—dopo la musica” or “prima la musica—dopo le parole.” Since Richard Strauss in this work set himself the task of illuminating this artistic and aesthetic problem from all possible sides—both in the discussion of the persons participating in the piece as well as in its musical conception—it would appear to be of particular interest to test the theory on this very model. In the process of making this detailed examination, it soon became advisable to keep within certain limits, and for various reasons the Sonnet appeared to be specially suitable. In fact it does contain the “pivotal point of the plot,” as Willi Schuh rightly points out, since the poet and the musician are therein confronted with the prospect of working on a piece together, while the Countess is rendered even more helpless in that she is now forced into making a decision. Moreover, the strict sonnet form, because of its peculiarly elaborate construction, is more difficult to set to music than any other. The composer is either forced to let the inexorable poetic law of verse and strophe enslave him; or he has to violate the form of his literary source. At least so it would appear. That the problem does not have to be solved in this fashion is shown brilliantly by the solution which Richard Strauss's setting of the poem reveals.

We have not been so annoyed by a tendentious pronoun since Vaughan Williams used it in “Do we want to hear old music as its composers intended?”, for WE regard Cosi as Mozart's loveliest score, with its exquisite serenade-band trellised by the strings and its wealth of vintage lyricism; not even poor productions and bad singers have yet turned it into a long evening for US. Beethoven thought that Mozart wasted musical riches upon the improbable and immoral, but we excuse the narrowness of genius when it may be responsible for the ethical rapture of the best parts of Fidelio. (An improbable and immoral work, WE think. Speech days and open days arranged by prison authorities just to indulge a taste for choruses? And what a scurvy treatment of the lower sort of people! How these lofty democratic puritans kow-tow to the nobs!) WE do not share Mr. Kerman's moral values, and as he is not Beethoven we merely want to smack him when he is rude.

‘The Royal Ballet, formerly the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet,’ is a mouthful of nomenclature. With the virtual unification, recently announced, of the two component companies of the Royal Ballet, this long-winded title may be expected to pass, unregretted, out of use. Be that as it may, it is the junior company of the Royal Ballet which this title has denoted in these past months and it was, of course, these juniors who—in the transatlantic absence of their seniors—came, about Christmas time, briefly to Covent Garden; it was their first visit and it was adventurous, important (as a signpost to the future) and successful.

”It is not easy,” writes Miss Joan Cross in her review* of our translation of The Magic Flute, ”to be scrupulously fair to a new translation.” For a singer who has studied and performed one version and neither studied nor heard the other, it may well be impossible. It is natural and proper that, out of personal affection for and loyalty to the Grand Old Man of Opera in English, Miss Cross should wish to defend the late Professor Dent against two American upstarts, but it might have occurred to her that, under the circumstances, a review were better left to a less partial judge.

ENDRE SZERVÁNSZKY (b. 1911) is the almost exact opposite of Járdányi. The latter's music is coolly balanced, largely undemonstrative, and preserves accepted manners of musical parlance: Szervánszky's reflects his impulsively constituted personality and is fired by an impetuous desire to convey a deeply felt experience. Since he regards the immediacy of that experience the paramount consideration, he is liable to disregard prevailing notions of sound workmanship and even cultivated taste. In fact the respective position of Bartok and Kodaly is strikingly paralleled in the relationship of Szervánszky to Járdányi.