If a foreigner new to England wished to taste the special flavour of English music, and find wherein it differed from the music of his own country, he could do no better than study first the music of Gerald Finzi. Here he would come on music that exhales the very air of England.

On September 27, 1956, a new and most promising creative talent was brought to national attention with the production by the New York City Opera Company of Carlisle Floyd's two-act musical drama, Susannah. Up to that night, Carlisle Floyd was almost as little-known in his native America as in Europe, and the following day the press, including the musical press, had to scurry around to his hotel to find out something about him.

My method of musical analysis, which aims at nothing more obscure than showing the unity of contrasting themes, has received a certain amount of unwelcome journalistic publicity, and I am reminded that I must find a name for it before my critics do. Rudolph Reti, the respected author of The Thematic Process in Music (New York, 1951) which has had a stimulating influence on the development of my method, has suggested “Process-analysis” for what our respective analytical approaches have in common, but apart from the fact that their differences are as striking as their similarities, the term would not seem to convey a great deal, at any rate on this side of the Atlantic.

It is the Court of the Middle Kingdom, of an old, foolish emperor who dotes on his daughter Belle Epine and has been turned against her gentle sister, Belle Rose. Belle Epine has no love for her father, but she humours him to his face while mocking him behind his back. And the courtiers follow her example. Alone the Fool has any real affection for his master, and he alone has given his heart's affection to the lovely, but despised Belle Rose. Belle Epine's favourite, on the other hand, is a black-clad, hunchbacked dwarf, and when the curtain rises he is maliciously plaguing the Fool. In a moment they are fighting, but the entry of the Emperor and his Counsellors and Courtiers makes them break hurriedly apart. The Emperor pets the dwarf and scolds the Fool. He is indeed a foolish Emperor and it is a gossiping, frivolous Court.

Some fifty years ago E. J. Dent, the first and greatest scholar of Alessandro Scarlatti's music, wrote “His (Scarlatti's) best pupil, we may safely say, is Mozart.” The year of honouring Mozart seemed to me an appropriate time to honour also his ‘master’, whose music has been neglected—to our great loss—since the time of Dr. Burney at least. For, as Dent continues, “Almost all those characteristics of style that we are accustomed loosely to consider as essentially Mozartian, were learned by Mozart from the Italians of the preceding half century. Indeed, Mozart to some extent repeated the work of Scarlatti, uniting in himself the massive strength of Leo, the sweetness of Durante and Pergolesi, the swift energy of Vinci and the racy humour of Logroscino, together with that divine beauty of melody which belonged to Scarlatti alone.”

A comprehensive knowledge of the workings of American universities can best be gained in two ways: by going into them, and by judging what comes out of them. I was able to pursue the latter course for many years by collecting and studying books and editions published in the normal manner or on microfilm, and by meeting and corresponding with American professors and students whenever the occasion arose. During the academic year of 1955–56 the award of a Fulbright Travel Grant and invitations to Cornell and Columbia as Visiting Professor of Music enabled me to enlarge my experience of higher musical education in American universities by actually working in two of them, and incidentally visiting a good many more.