“How will the public react to it?” is a question that arises when an opera is about to have its first performance in a foreign country

Arthur Benjamin's opera Primadonna does not seem a difficult one to “export,” mainly because of its subject-matter. One might expect the action of a British opera to take place in some remote part of Old England (as in Peter Grimes, the most famous of English operas with us French) whose ways are so unfamiliar as to risk leaving the general public quite untouched. Here, however, there is no such risk: we are in Venice, the courtly Venice of the 18th century, and the characters, the déecor, the whole atmosphere belong to the cultural heritage of all Europe.

Caracas, Venezuela, unlike Paris, France, is a newcomer in the field of present day music. Nevertheless it recently succeeded in putting itself on the contemporary musical map—and with a bang. No one, not even Paris, had ever before thought of organising a festival of orchestral works by contemporary Latin American composers. This happened for the first time anywhere in Caracas, which is full of vitality at the moment, thanks to an oil-engendered prosperity. The town boasts of a good orchestra, a brand new open-air amphitheatre seating six thousand people, and a lively cultural organisation, the Institución José Angel Lamas, headed by Dr. Inocente Palacios. This musically minded enthusiast is the kind of Maecenas composers dream about. By enlisting the aid of the Venezuelan government and other private sources he managed to put on an event that will have historical significance in the annals of Ibero-American music. Within the space of two and a half weeks forty symphonic compositions originating in seven Latin American countries were performed in a series of eight concerts. This was a major effort for all concerned, especially for the courageous musicians of the Orquesta Sinfonica Venezuela and the Festival's principal conductors: Heitor Villa Lobos, Carlos Chávez, Juan José Castro, and Rios Reyna.

It is difficult to believe that Ernest Bloch will be celebrating his seventy-fifth birthday on July 24th. His steady flow of new works, his lively letters and firm handwriting, his active life at his home on Oregon's lonely Pacific shore—all these suggest a man much younger in years. But Bloch's life has been grandly full, varied and fruitful. He has known successes and failures, happiness and pain. His perpetual concern for human beings and humanity at large, maintained in sojourns in the cities and solitudes of many countries, has reaped its reward in the vitality and wisdom of his old age.

Music examples usually illustrate articles, but the present article is no more than an illustration appended to my analytic music example of the complete central song from Strawinsky's most recent composition (Spring, 1954), In Memoriam Dylan Thomas. I think that writers on music should be encouraged to keep to the music, and seriously contend that all the adverse critics of Schoenberg's serial technique, and most of the writers who pass for serial experts, are incapable of a serial analysis and have only the very vaguest notion of what makes a serial piece “tick.” They quote a bar or two—usually from the opening of Schoenberg's 4th Quartet—where the note-row is fairly obvious or, anyway, has previously been uncovered by someone else, and then proceed to let obscure theory take the place of clear if complex practice. The reason is simple: they don't hear the row, and if you are unable to imagine a row aurally, it is very difficult, usually indeed impossible, to trace it throughout a piece. Let me hasten to add that I should not dream of reproaching any critic with his tone-row-deafness if he left it at that: for all we know, he may otherwise be a musical genius. If, however, he professes to talk serial “shop” at the same time, I raise the strongest moral objections.

This year Ballet Theatre celebrates its fifteenth anniversary with a three-weeks' season in April at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. After fifteen years it still remains one of the greatest companies in the world, and if the New York City Ballet has become more widely accepted as America's leading company, there can be no doubt that the influence of Ballet Theatre has been decisive in establishing the popularity of ballet throughout the United States.

Beethoven stands at the pinnacle of development in the history of music. Many lines lead up to him; many lead away from him. He absorbed the different trends of thought of the 18th century and brought them to completion. At the same time he struggled towards a new language in music which was to have a fundamental influence on the trends in style of the 19th century and which is still discernible in their development in the 20th century. Thus Beethoven occupies a position of the greatest significance in the history of music: he completes one epoch and begins another and the music historians of the 19th and 20th centuries unanimously acknowledge his double rôle.