Between the curtains the autumnal sunlight
With lean and yellow finger points me out;
The clock moans: Why? Why? Why?
But suddenly, as if without a reason,
Heart, Brain and Body, and Imagination
All gather in tumultuous joy together,
Running like children down the path of morning
To fields where they can play without a quarrel:
A country I'd forgotten, but remember,
And welcome with a cry.

O cool glad pasture; living tree, tall corn,
Great cliff, or languid sloping sand, cold sea,
Waves; rivers curving: you eternal flowers
Give me content, while I can think of you:
Give me your living breath!

I want no death.

FROM DARK TO DARK

A little thought came years ago,
But, hardly having shown its face,
And smiled, and blinked, it turned again,
Dived back, and nestled in my brain.

And it was hidden till to-day,
When, searching corners of my mind,
And never dreaming it was there,
I took it asleep and unaware,

And recognised it in a flash,
But woke it with too loud a cry.
It sprang my grasp, and only left
The memory of a sparkling eye.

THE OCEAN IN LONDON

In London while I slowly wake
Each morning I'm amazed to hear
The ocean, seventy miles away,
Below my window roaring, near.

When first I know that heavy sound
I keep my eyelids closely down,

And sniff the brine, and hold all thought
Reined back outside the walls of town.

So I can hardly well believe

That those tremendous billows are
Of iron and steel and wood and glass:
Van, lorry, and gigantic car.

I passed a fish shop in the street
And smelt its brine the other day.
At once the vans and lorries swayed;
The trams were waves; the fog was spray.

T

ENGINEERS AND MUSICIANS

HERE are people who say that London is a place in which it is impossible to hear modern music. They do not, as a rule, do anything to help it, beyond collecting minor celebrities in their drawingrooms; yet the fact remains that modern music does somehow get played here. It is simply not true to say (as some propagandists and some journalists who are not musical are inclined to say) that the only place for modern music is Paris. A musician, amateur or professional, who has a few dollars, not necessarily very many, and who now and then goes abroad to hear an opera or a concert, might have gone sometimes to Paris, sometimes to different places in Germany, and at least once to Barcelona and Budapest; but he would have found London, in this last winter at any rate, a very good centre for hearing typical modern music.

To those organizations and organizers who from time to time perform contemporary music has lately been added the British Broadcasting Corporation, that is to say, in a certain sense, the British Government. Due honour must be given to their enterprise. As Engineers they are beyond praise, and engineering has a great deal more to do with the performance of music than is generally believed. This is so not only when we listen to music broadcast; there is a mechanical, engineering side to every performance of music. Orchestration, for instance, is in a sense a question of engineering, and so are those acoustic questions which may mean that a performer sometimes has deliberately to play or sing out of tune' so that the total harmonic effect shall sound right.

The broadcast programmes also show that the Corporation has acquired considerable knowledge of what

contemporary music there is and what players are accustomed to playing it. It may be suggested however, with all due deference for a government department, unlike the general public, is always in possession of all the facts' -that the broadcast programmes have not given honour where honour is due, or sought their information in the place where it is most easily obtained. Practically without exception, all the interesting new works that the Broadcasting Corporation have given us have been first performed or first made known by the International Society for Contemporary Music at their festivals at Zürich, Venice or Salzburg, while the performers were players who had been discovered, or who had made their reputations at those festivals. Yet the concert programmes I have seen have not acknowledged that fact, though they were copiously annotated, and even mentioned other continental festivals like Donaueschingen, which is a semi-private event given by a reigning prince. It can hardly be supposed that the B.B.C. has tried to take all the credit to itself, yet it seems deliberately to have ignored the International Society; and this is curious, because that Society has a British Section, the Contemporary Music Centre' of the British Music Society, which (as I know from experience, in writing about contemporary music), is always ready to give information about new works and, what is more, always seems to have that information ready, at the disposal of members. Again and again its technical experts have saved me from making blunders.

The enterprise of the B.B.C. has added one more to the numerous organisations which exist in London for the performance or encouragement of music, although, even as it was, their number and overlapping make it impossible that any one of them should pay running expenses. Here is something for an engineer, or for the mind of an engineer: the co-ordination of some of these concert-giving bodies! Engineers and musicians are not mere men of

D

the world or fonctionnaires of the Government. They are technicians, who would prefer to get into touch with existing organizations, rather than add to the confusion. The musical critic of the Morning Post is perfectly right. If music, as an art, is to survive in this country, the control must be more centralized; there must be federation of smaller bodies into something resembling the Philharmonic Society, while the Philharmonic itself might be reformed and extended. Audiences must get more into the habit of subscribing in advance for their tickets at the beginning of the season. One of the chief reasons why certain orchestras in the United States (and in Europe too, witness Barcelona) are as good as these are, is that there are people in those cities who are prepared to pay for good music and pay in advance.

The B.B.C. however, has got a good deal of contemporary music played in London, and deserves to be thanked for it. The most enterprising concert was one at which the Amar Quartet of Frankfurt played modern German music, or rather two contemporary German works separated by a trio by Max Reger, which could only have been included to show that it is quite useless for composers to go on writing in that idiom now. One of the new pieces was a Quartet by Hindemith, his best so far, while the other was the Quartet by Jarnach (op. 15) which, on its first performance at Salzburg in 1924 was described in this chronicle as being the most significant work in the whole of contemporary music. A very great debt of gratitude is owing to the B.B.C., and to their advisers in this matter; but there the difficulties begin. There is a rumour (and as a rumour it should be accepted with all reserve) that numerous owners of loud-speakers (and low brows) were furious at the unintelligible noises made by Jarnach's quartet, and wrote stiff letters to the B.B.C. When an organization is a private company it can afford to be idealistic; once dividends are assured it can afford to make experiments