In many ways Edinburgh is the most substantial, the most luxurious, the most opulent of British Festivals, yet not necessarily the most interesting or even the most significant. It is as well to remind ourselves that British Festivals did not begin with, and certainly do not end at Edinburgh. They have been characters on our musical stage for many years, although all too often they have disguised themselves with distressing reticence in the drabbest robes and made use of a property-box that has not caught up with the times. The Messiah might give way to a younger work now and again, if the suggestion were not considered revolutionary. A change round of the cast, a draft of new blood, is always refreshing, and indeed essential, if a festival is not to become a funeral. Charles Stuart, writing in TEMPO in the autumn of 1947, bemoaned the complacency of the Leeds Festival of that year and gave a list of the “Festival battle-horses”—Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Berlioz' Te Deum, Verdi's Requiem—which drew the cortège to its final resting place. The Leeds authorities seem to have realized the importance of a blood transfusion, and Mr. Stuart could not complain of the 1950 programme, which shows this Victorian infant (born in 1858) to be still of lusty and adventurous age and embarking on the second public performance in England of Britten's Spring Symphony, besides Honegger's rarely-heard King David, Rubbra's Morning Watch Motet, Strauss's Oboe Concerto and Vaughan Williams' Sixth Symphony.

Geographically, historically, linguistically and culturally the three Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, are closely connected with each other. The connexion was once closer than it is to-day; the course of history has deepened the gulfs between the Nordic peoples and the haughtiness of growing national arrogance promoted separatism. In the last hundred years however, efforts have been made to unite again what time had separated. The so-called “Scandinavism” arose among the university men, but gradually it spread to other circles in the three peoples. The Nordic Music Festivals were part of these endeavours towards common activity.

Just as the natural seasons have changed their character over a period of time, so, it may be said, have the musical seasons. Of recent years the emphasis has swung over from Autumn and Winter towards Spring and Summer, abandoning the great cities and theatres of ancient tradition for more picturesque abodes, which possess greater interest from the point of view of climate and local colour. Thus the opera and concert seasons which take place in Rome or Milan, Naples or Bologna, Palermo or Genoa begin to lose their appeal; and there is a growth of interest, on the other hand, in Spring or Summer festivals held in cities which are rich in every kind of artistic interest. Musical snobisme has suffered a change: whereas it was once considered fashionable to be present at the first night of the La Scala opera season, now it is even more so to attend the first performance of the “Maggio Musicale Fiorentino” and find oneself on the Lungarno Vespucci between the Hotel Excelsior and the Teatro Communale, or in Venice, in September, for the Festival of Contemporary Music, between the Caffè Florian and La Fenice. At bottom, however, if we consider well, the success of these festivals is due to less superficial and external causes, in as much as they satisfy the entirely modern need for summarising, condensing and intensifying the manifestations of the spirit in a brief space and limited time: for the man of to-day is always in a hurry and his curiosity cannot be kept awake for a long period. In consequence, these festivals are intended to give, in two or three weeks and in a single city, a kind of symposium of the most important musical happenings of the past year–in the fields of opera, ballet and concert–and, moreover, they are combined with the varied and famous attractions of places of touristic interest, thus realising the ideal of the utile dulci; care is taken of the health of the body, and substantial nourishment is provided for the soul.

The outstanding characteristic of German musical life has always been its ubiquity. Another feature was the existence of music centres in which local activities were enhanced by the regular participation of world famous artists as guests. In the first rank of these centres was Berlin, with its three opera houses and six large symphony orchestras, with many fine concert halls and often three or four recitals on the same evening. In addition, the capitals of almost all the Federal German States, and some of the medium-sized provincial towns as well, could offer a standard of musical activity far higher than that of most provincial centres in other European countries. The Munich and Dresden Operas were world renowned; the orchestras of Hamburg, Leipzig, Cologne and Frankfort (to name only some of the most important) were of a high calibre. But in its entirety, German musical life embraced an untold number of symphony and opera orchestras in towns which were otherwise quite insignificant, and drew a wide circle of visitors to the opera and concert performances of Municipal Theatres and local choral and orchestral societies. Here the standard of achievement, compared with the international top level, was naturally not very high. But in educating the general public, in encouraging new recruits to Music, these smaller places performed a cultural task of the greatest importance. Germany was the country with most orchestras and most opera stages.

After many visits to Tanglewood during the years 1940 to 1949 one is finally driven to pose the question as to how far this great summer musical event may really be called a Festival.

I do not think that any extravagant claims have in fact been made for its being “a Festival,” and over the years that magnificent character in music, Dr. Serge Koussevitzky, has been at pains always to emphasize the “student” or “school” aspect of the undertaking of which he is, so to speak, the Alpha and Omega. One cannot begin to discuss Tanglewood without paying the deepest possible tribute to the very real work, effort and love that Dr. Koussevitzky has devoted to this, his child, for the benefit of musical America, young and old. There is no similar event anywhere else in the world—but then, one might say that there is no similar character anywhere else in the world who could in fact have engendered it. Yet after ten years one begins to feel that either the students have outgrown Tanglewood or that Tanglewood has out grown the students. In the opinion of this writer the latter is definitely the case.

The classical drama of Elektra was recreated through the spirit and language of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and through the limitless, manifold power of musical expression possessed by Richard Strauss. These two poets—of words and sounds—were really seismographs for the tidal wave of blood that was to overtake the world. We have come through the wave. We have seen mankind in the dungeon of its bestiality, we have witnessed its thirst for vengeance, its unlimited cowardice, its tormented anxiety. We have seen it, too, in its mute preparedness for sacrifice, its devotion to duty; or in its greed for life, now trampled on, now trampling, now doglike in devotion, now applauding the victor. We have known Elektra, Aegistheus, Klytemnestra, Orestes, Chrysothemis—we have encountered all of them, all the characters in this piece.