To watch the growth of a composer has been the great interest of my life. It is a fascinating experience to see how they all begin from some older composers whom they love, and how they assimilate from them congenial ideas and idioms until their own personality and language is fully developed. I have observed several composers from the start who later gained distinction and great fame, and though the cases were as different as the individualities, some incidents always seem to recur with the inevitability of natural laws. There is always at first more public reaction against, than receptiveness for, the new message; and later, when the composer has grown to fuller stature, his earlier, originally censured works, are often preferred to his new ones. Obviously it takes some time until people become accustomed to what is unfamiliar.

On my desk lies the prospectus for the Leeds Triennial Musical Festival (October 7th to 11th), founded in 1858, twice suspended for the duration of wars, predestined, apparently, to survive all modern tribulations—financial crises included—without turning a hair. In a world which has graduated bewilderingly from Sterndale Bennett's May Queen (the first “Triennial” novelty) to the bleakness and concomitant blah-blah of Twelve Tone music, the Festival promoters have contrived to keep cool heads, forgetting little and prudently refraining from learning too much.

In Prague, during August, I was taken to a performance given by young Russian dancers graduated from the Moscow and Leningrad Ballet Schools. They were all soloists, and the programme was made up of short divertissements from ballets in nearly every instance quite unfamiliar to me. I am no expert on ballet, though I have watched it often enough, but the veriest ignoramus would have recognised their great technical achievement and the unusual quality of their energy and enthusiasm.

From the garden of Wagner's house at Tribschen, one can peer down through the screen of foliage to the many-spired bassin of Lucerne; and inside the house are the framed programmes of the gigantic and adventurous concerts at which were performed the new inventions of the householder. Wagner is much esteemed by the authorities of Lucerne, and they have carefully trimmed his maple avenue, carefully swept and polished the corridors of his box-like villa. But when it comes to organizing a festival, his works are not performed, and the programmes have nothing of his obstinate audacity. An amiable incoherence was the mark of this year's Lucerne Festival. There was little planning, and there had been little publicity. The representative of the Cape Times bore almost alone the privilege of interpreting the scene to the English-speaking world. The programmes themselves would have been inconspicuous even at a Promenade Concert. Nobody, at this stage in the history of music, is going to post half across the world to hear Don Juan or the First Symphony of Brahms.

The Rosenkavalier has run like a lovely musical theme through my whole life in opera. Sophie was the first important rôle which was entrusted to me as a beginner. The conductor, Gustav Brecher, even considered letting me do the première in Hamburg. I think that was in 1911—the second year of my engagement there, but then he thought better of it and gave the part for the first performance to Elisabeth Schumann. She was dramatically much more talented than I, and in spite of her youth had already given evidence of her delightful gift for acting and her ripening artistry in several rôles; while I was still very much in the background and really nothing more than an ignorant and awkward beginner with a nice voice. Then too, Edith Walker, who sang and acted Octavian quite enchantingly, wanted Schumann as Sophie, for which I certainly couldn't blame her. But at the time I was bitterly disappointed and saw everything in a very false light. I felt persecuted and surrounded by intrigue—how I laughed later on over this ridiculous idea! Elisabeth's whole being is worlds apart from any intrigue; she has always been the best colleague one could imagine—a wonderful character through and through. And Edith Walker certainly had no ground for persecuting me with disfavour as the stupid little beginner imagined. She only wanted the performance to be as fine as possible, and so very wisely chose Elizabeth. But suddenly I found myself only the understudy, and sat through the stage rehearsals in the hall gnashing my teeth and comforting myself with the thought that I was the dramatic victim of a finely woven intrigue. Later, when Schumann was not available, I was allowed to sing Sophie and had a very nice success with it.

Near the western border of the state of Massachusetts, more than 100 miles from the sea, stand the Berkshire Hills, remnants of an ancient and imposing range of mountains. The countryside is dotted with small one-industry cities, with prosperous farms, with relics of iron mining and the heavy industry of 125 years ago, and with the country estates of the wealthy from Boston and New York. In the heart of the Berkshires, about 140 miles from those two great cities of the North-east, lies the town of Lenox, a near-perfect example of what Americans across all our 3,000 miles like to think of as a typical New England community—wide streets, unbroken expanses of green lawn, an old white and gracefully steepled Congregational Church on the highest hill near the centre of the town. For forty-six weeks in the year the population of Lenox is under 3,000 persons, but on a sunny Sunday afternoon early in August it may hold five times as many within its borders. Lenox is the home of the Berkshire Music Centre and the Berkshire Festival.

If we are a few days late in proffering birthday congratulations it is not entirely inappropriate, for the Third Programme itself does not insist on rigid punctuality. And if we forego a review of the year that ended on September 29th it is mainly in order to avoid printing a huge catalogue of major works and interesting performances. The temptation to reminisce is of course enormous, but to examine in detail one month of the Third's activity is probably more representative than to gloat over a year's masterpieces, curiosities, rareties, experiments.

A ballet, like every work of art, has what may be called a “life” or “time-body,” that something which remains a unity or whole, under all changes of condition, approach and fashion—the “Linga-Sharira” of Hindu philosophy.

In his interesting book “This Thing Called Ballet,” George Borodin touches the fringe of this idea when he points out that there is no system of dance notation comparable to that of music; none capable of recording with exactness the intricate movements and rhythms of modern ballet. As the reproduction and revival of works depend almost entirely upon the memory of choreographers and individual artists, “even often repeated ballets are in a constant state of change … From generation to generation there are minute changes until the whole is subtly and fundamentally altered.” These changes include, of course, differences in casting, orchestral direction, renewal of décor and costumes, with other elements too numerous to mention. Even one performance is never precisely the same as another. In short, the balletomane finds himself in the not very congenial company of the “weeping philosopher,” Heraclitus. “You cannot step twice,” he said, “into the same river; for the water into which you first stepped will by now have flowed on, and other water will have taken its place.” Is it the same river? The same ballet?