It will be fifty years tomorrow since the convocation ceremonies for a new Institute of Musical Art were held in a building at Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street. The speakers that day were Cornelius C. Cuyler, Frank Damrosch, Felix Adler and Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton.

It seems to come as a complete surprise to many people, especially in the United Kingdom, that Canada has a vital musical life of its own, both as regards performance and creative activity. That this should be so is due chiefly to Canadians themselves, who are the most backward of all people in spreading abroad the facts of their cultural life. Apart from this, they are ill-served by their own musicians, who arrive in large numbers in the United Kingdom telling everybody that they have come because there is nothing for them to do in Canada. I myself was also a victim of this widespread impression until I had the good fortune to take the Boyd Neel Orchestra on tour in the Dominion in 1952. Imagine my astonishment when I found enormous audiences of an extremely enlightened nature and a musical life boiling with activity and lacking only one thing—sufficient players to meet the demand. I then realised the ludicrous situation that obtained with so many Canadians pouring into the already overcrowded musical world of the United Kingdom, while their confrères, who remained at home, were all working twenty-four hours a day to try to keep the pot boiling. I found the same conditions when I visited Australia and New Zealand some eight years ago. The cry was always ‘Why can't we get anything going here?’ The answer was obvious—that as long as all the best musical talent went immediately to England, nothing would ever get started in the Dominions.

Giant theatres like the Colón, with six tiers (five of them fitted with boxes) and holding over 3,000 people, are in themselves not really suitable for chamber operas. On the other hand, this wonderful building has absolutely ideal acoustics which allow even the tenderest piano to make its effect. There is an intimacy overcoming the vast distances which suits chamber opera, and every one who looks out from the empty stage is conscious of this and feels the contact with the auditorium.

Accomplishments of a highly sophisticated European civilisation, and the simplicity and directness of peasant culture: the dilemma of these two modes of existence is never completely absent from Bartók's creative mentality. His dissatisfaction with urban civilisation produced an attraction to a social order where art is not merely a pleasing utilization of leisure or a highly personal and esoteric mode of expression, but is accepted as a valid response to a social need, as important and definite in its own sphere as any other manifestation in the life of the community. The music of this community must therefore be comprehensible to, must evoke responses and associations in, all who live in this society, and not merely appeal to the minority of an élite. For Bartók this community was represented by the peasant society.

By the best musical standards the average school concert programme makes dismal reading. The School Orchestra will play the usual Haydn Minuets and Handel Gavottes, with perhaps an imitation Pomp and Circumstance March thrown in. The School Choir will sing some folk songs, as well as some pieces by Bach, Mozart and Schubert; there is nothing to complain of here, but what about the dreary group of so-called modern songs at the end of the programme? No doubt a song or two by Vaughan Williams and Arthur Benjamin will be found, but otherwise the usual things are there: Fairies in the Glen and Flowers in the Spring: and to finish with, the highly moral one with plenty of uplift; there are dozens that fit in here, so there is no need to mention titles. But where is the music of our real modern composers? By modern composers I don't mean the school music masters, church organists, or “educational” composers who at this minute doubtless are turning out another uplifting song for massed unison voices, but the real composers, those who are sometimes in evidence on the Third Programme and at the Cheltenham Festival. It appears that our real composers are not very interested in writing music for our school children to sing and play. True, some have shown the way: Bartók, Kodály, Copland, Vaughan Williams, Britten have all made considerable and worthwhile contributions to this particular field. But where are the rest? The great majority of them are not “Ivory Tower” artists, and yet even in the concert programmes of those schools which are musically enterprising their names seldom if ever appear.

Within six weeks of each other two rebuilt German opera-houses opened their doors: on September 4th the East-Berlin Deutsche Staatsoper, Unter den Linden; on October 15th the Hamburgische Staatsoper. Two more contrasting examples of differing architectural approaches are hardly imaginable. These are the facts:

The Berlin Staatsoper, erected in 1743 by Frederick the Great through his architect Knobelsdorff and several times unsatisfyingly renovated until it was heavily bombed for the second time in February, 1945, has been rebuilt according to the original plans, except for some alteration of the interior. This means: early classical facades (definitely Prussian in character) with rooms inspired by sober Prussian rococo-elements originating in the Potsdam palaces. The house has plenty of room for halls, staircases, foyers, passages, cloakrooms; the auditorium seats about 1,500 persons, distributed over stalls and three galleries. The impression is one of festive intimacy. Every technical facility for pit and stage has been installed. The stage measures 85 by 75 feet (plus backstage space 38 by 73 feet). Comfortable backstage dressing-rooms have been gained through the removal of all accommodation not directly connected with the actual performance to a separate nearby building. The costs of the rebuilding of the opera-house alone amount to £3 million.