A new symphony orchestra aiming at the highest standards has been founded this year in Sydney. There has been no ‘stunting’ in order to attract fame, no desperate appeals for funds, and in fact the necessity of asking for subscriptions from the public has simply not arisen.

The orchestra, which has a full complement of eighty players, is financed jointly by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (a non-commercial concern), the New South Wales State Government, and the Sydney City Council. It is assured of a subsidy of £60,000 annually for three years—£30,000 from the A.B.C., £20,000 from the State Government, and £10,000 from the City Council. The last mentioned will also grant free use of the city concert hall, usually rented at £40 a night.

In part III of Schönberg's Gurrelieder there is a section, Des Somtnenvindes wilde Jagd, that is described as a “melodrama” and that constitutes the only appearance in the work of the character listed among the soloists as “The Speaker.” The words of this number are written under what would appear to be a normal vocal line (though perhaps of rather unusually simple nature), except that crosses are used instead of note-heads:

There are no directions in the score as to how the part is to be rendered.

The period of sensationalism and experiment in music seems to be passing; of the giants of a period which was richer in technical research than in musical achievement it is the mature Bartók and the thoughtful Hindemith who alone seem to have sufficient vitality to interest a more balanced generation; and it is even possible in the most sophisticated circles to mention British composers without making a shamefaced apology. Indeed, the gap between popular and sophisticated opinion seems to be narrowing: Peter Grimes was a popular success; A Child of Our Time aroused widespread enthusiasm; and the concertos of even the redoubtable Bartók filled the Albert Hall. All this is a sign of a new and healthier orthodoxy. But one fundamental heresy is still widespread; it is the tendency to judge music not for what it is but for what it portends; to regard works exclusively in terms of their potential significance instead of in terms of their achievement; to make (as someone put it) “the best the enemy of the good.”

Among the private papers of Darius Milhaud is a notebook which will some day be treasured by one of the world's great libraries. It is a completed register of this composer's works in his own handwriting, setting forth in parallel columns the “titre,” “genre,” “dédicace” and éditeur” of each.

The word “Tanglewood” evokes two vivid associations in the mind of the American public—firstly, with Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales, secondly with the great summer music festival held there in recent years by Serge Koussevitzky.

For some years (one no longer knows how many—they have seemed interminable) French music has been marking time. It has survived, however, and continues its course thanks to the ardour of its devotees. Many of them have suffered the most unjust ostracism owing to the blindness of a nation that judged their work dangerous and contrary to the principles of National Socialism. This question of German musical politics is discussed by Marc Pincherle in the first number of the new French musical review Contrepoints.

Rarely can one safely say from a purely aural knowledge of a single performance that any new work is a masterpiece. But at last such an opportunity has come with the Zorian's performance of Tippett's third Quartet. Beside it, many fine quartets of this century are dwarfed, and Bartók's alone seem of comparable stature. There is indeed a strong resemblance to Bartók's fifth Quartet. In both works the composers are most accessible, yet most individual; both achieve amazing textural clarity in combination with exquisite new sonorities; lastly, both quartets have five movements, alternately fast and slow, of approximately corresponding character. There is in each work a profound first movement, a jaunty high-speed, folkish third, (Tippett's containing bagpipe effects similar to those in certain movements of Bartók marked Cornemuse) and a puzzling fifth, problematical because it presents no problems, which makes us unsure how to interpret it. Not that these two movements have anything else in common except that they are fine music. Bartók's is a wry sneer at the eighteenth-century rondo, Tippett's a gentle epilogue, but just as the sneer is out of place and puzzling in the one very serious quartet, so is the ingenuousness of the epilogue in the other.

Since Diaghilev no one has achieved so close a fusion of the three elements of music, painting, and dancing, a fusion in which, for him, lay hidden the secret of the “perfect ballet.” Before looking at some recent works given by the Sadler's Wells Opera-Ballet, the Ballet Rambert, and the Sadler's Wells Company at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, it may be useful to glance for a moment at that truly alchemic process by which the mediums of different arts may be fused into one. This can only be accomplished by a knowledge of those primary elements which are the life-source of every art, whatever its means of expression.

I Have just read a very amusing little book which was issued in pocket size to the American troops during the war. It is written by Oscar Levant and carries the attractive title A Smattering of Ignorance. The author throws a powerful spotlight into American film-music and analyses its disclosures in a style sometimes cynical, sometimes ingenuous, but always exhibiting the delightful and disarming American quality of self-criticism.

This subject is a new one in Tempo, and it is hardly necessary to add that it has forced its way into these pages by reason of the BBC's Third Programme. For the benefit of our growing body of overseas readers it should be explained that the new programme, which is on the air daily from 6 p.m. to midnight, is devoted exclusively to serious music, drama, and talks, and is avowedly directed to the more intelligent members of the community. There are no news bulletins, and the clock hardly counts—single items lasting from one to three hours are a normal occurrence, and there is no “fading out” when a programme over-runs its allotted time.