Biographies should be read with discretion. The portraits which they are meant to present are far too often created in the writer's own image. The tales they tell are usually lopsided and lack that depth of perspective which shows the whole of a character, with its contradictory features and its facets of changing inclinations and opinions. I for one prefer first-hand information, such as is contained in autobiographies—even if some of their facts should prove to be fiction, the way of telling them mirrors the author. In a sense, all creative artists are autobiographers. Composers, in particular, cannot help revealing themselves in their works. Schoenberg claimed that he, being a teacher of composition, had a rare opportunity of getting to know his students: the music they wrote disclosed not only their gifts, but also their characters.

The promotion of British music overseas was one of the earliest activities of the British Council. In 1935, the year the Council was founded, an advisory committee of musicians was set up to provide expert advice on the handling of requests for information, which even then were numerous.

In February of this year the New York Philharmonic-Symphony, under the direction of Dmitri Mitropoulos, gave two performances of Alberto Ginastera's Overture to the “Creole” Faust, one of which was broadcast on a national network. In April of last year the famed Budapest Quartet, which seldom ventures into contemporary music, performed Ginastera's First String Quartet at the Coolidge Auditorium in the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.) and subsequently took this work on tour through South America. Last year, also, two important recordings of his music were released in the United States: one was the same quartet played by the Paganini Quartet, the other was the Variaciones concertantes played by the Minneapolis Symphony under the direction of Antal Dorati. Previously, the Louisville Orchestra had recorded his Pampeana No. 3, a score commissioned by that orchestra (in Louisville, Kentucky) for its contemporary music series. And in 1952 his Sonata for Piano was recorded by Johana Harris, who had performed it for the first time anywhere at the Pittsburgh Festival of Contemporary Music that same year. These, as viewed by an American, are some of the recent events that indicate recognition of the growing stature of this forty-one-year-old Argentine composer, as he appears on the musical scene to-day.

During the orchestral year just concluded, about 83,000 young people living in the metropolitan area of Washington, D.C. heard 43 concerts played especially for them by the National Symphony Orchestra. Another 41,000 high-schoolers from all over the United States were our guests for 30 Music for Young America concerts played in the beautiful Pan American Union building between April 17 and May 21, after the close of our regular season.

Anybody who decides to inquire into the features and development of contemporary Hungarian music is obliged to take Bartók and Kodály as points of departure. And by so doing one is not merely advancing from the familiar to the unknown. Admittedly in “foreign” eyes they, and they alone, represent the music of their native country. But at the same time they have provided the greatest stimulus to, and exerted the strongest influence on, practically all who have followed them. To these Bartók and Kodály were the archetypes of music, uniting progress and tradition, genuinely and characteristically Magyar elements and general, European standards of achievement. They appeared to complement one another in the nature of their art and personality. Significantly, they are often described by Hungarian commentators as Castor and Pollux, the twin gods of the nation's music. They have much in common: both were dissatisfied with the state of music as they found it within the confines of their native land and in Europe in general. But in addition to the need of speaking a new language, there was also the need of speaking a new, genuinely Hungarian language as well: both turned to the surviving musical traditions of the community as a regenerating source of inspiration.

The most recent Festival of Contemporary Music at Venice brought to light a new work by Henry Barraud, a work the success of which was immediately established, not only at Venice itself but by virtue of various performances which it had during the Paris season that has just ended and which were given either as public concerts or for the “Jeunesses Musicales de France” or by radio. It is a Te Deum for chorus and instrumental ensemble dedicated to the memory of Serge Koussevitzky. Last winter, too, the Concerts Lamoureux of Paris gave the first performance of a new Symphonie pour cordes which was also received with like success by the audience and by the critics. Finally, during recent months, the Symphonie de Numance has had a number of performances on European radio stations. Here we are then, confronted by three works which bear witness to the rich and ripe maturity of a composer who is just now at the height of his powers, who has evolved an idiom which is strong and personal, a forceful and novel language of his own, an emotional climate of a very special nature, and who now exercises complete mastery in the handling of his means of expression.