It would not be possible, in the limited time available, to survey the entire field now covered by the term “Electrotonic Music”. Moreover, properly to explain the many diverse ways in which musical sounds can be produced by purely electrical means would involve many technical expressions, and I think it would be better to avoid these technicalities, which are mostly borrowed from the science of communication engineering, and thus difficult to reconcile with musical knowledge.

The giants of the Viennese school, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, produced over one hundred and thirty piano sonatas between them. Among the “minor prophets” Hummel wrote nine, Dussek over thirty and Clementi (according to Grove) about sixty. Clementi's pupil, Field, although he wrote seven concertos for the instrument, was more niggardly with sonatas; there are perhaps four of them, three being his Opus 1. The prolific era was followed by a great drop in numbers; from Schumann, Chopin and Brahms we have three each and from Liszt one. Subsequently Grieg, Tchaikovsky and Balakirev contributed one each, Glazounov two, Szymanowski three, Ravel a sonatina. Benjamin Dale's one monumental effort seems to deserve a separate sentence. Some great masters of piano writing, Debussy for example, refrained entirely. Three Russian composers have alone made any attempt to “stop the rot”, Scriabin with ten, Medtner fourteen, and Prokofiev eight. No other noted living composers have got anywhere near Medtner and Prokofiev in regard to numbers; Bax has given us four sonatas, Ireland two (if we count the sonatina, but Prokofiev has two of those), Pizzetti and Bloch one each, and there is even an early one by Sibelius. These figures make no attempt to be exhaustive.

Anyone who has studied the subject must be aware of the lack of consistency with which the principle of lateral fingerholes in wind instruments is occasionally treated in textbooks and elsewhere.

When I speak of the recorder as a musical instrument, I do so knowing that you cannot fail to have heard the instrument at some time, as it is now once again an integral part of our musical life.

This paper has its origin in the affection of the author for his subject on the one hand: on the other in a conviction that the philosophy of Handel has current significance. In our part of the country music is synonymous with Handel. Since Elijah declined in popular favour Messiah has been left as virtually the sole musical experience in which thousands of our neighbours in the Black Country may, once or twice a year, participate. Therefore our consideration, which must in any case be limited, will be principally with the oratorios. In our particular environment musical scholarship must develop—if at all—purposefully and with practical intention. We may analyse but we also attempt to synthesise. In so doing we observe the principal tenets of Handelian thought. Handel viewed his contemporaries critically, but sympathetically, and incorporated his findings within his music which, in turn, not infrequently took the form of more or less direct personal communication. In an indeterminate way art is often referred to as a reflection of society. That branch of art with which we are immediately concerned is more definite. It is not a remove from reality: it is, in a Platonic sense, reality. The ideas from which it is formed are the ideas which are otherwise shaped into personalities. The people with whom Handel had contact still live. If this is so the moral for interpretation is clear. The music must, by sensitive handling, be brought to life. This is only possible with a realisation of its original function and a regard for the immutable character of human emotions.

Musicologists are sometimes reproached for being interested only in the music that lies outside the normal répertoire. Against the reproach they have numerous sound lines of defence: that the ‘normal répertoire’ covers a relatively small range, that their work helps materially to widen that range, and so on. All the same, there is (I think) a general and quite natural tendency on the part of scholars to neglect the very familiar composers, to assume that we already know all that is worth knowing about the music of, for instance, Schumann and Mendelssohn and Chopin, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky. There may, they feel, still be some gleaning to do but the main harvest has already been gathered in. It is perhaps a natural assumption but it is a quite false assumption.