Apart from suggestions that such pioneering chamber orchestras as the Fires of London and the London Sinfonietta ought to receive regular grant-aid, and that ‘The Arts Council should initiate discussions between the four subsidised London orchestras and the BBC, in the light of recommendations made in the 1970 Peacock Report, of subsequent experience and of present and future shortage of funds available for music’, Lord Redcliffe-Maud's report on Support for the Arts in England and Wales contains few specific proposals calculated to have an immediate impact on the fortunes of contemporary music in Britain. It is not that sort of report. Properly enough, Maud has deployed his wide knowledge of and enthusiasm for particular arts fields not as a topic in itself, but as background and justification for a much broader consideration of how those arts are and ought to be supported in this country. So even if the immediate impact is limited, the longer-term effect of his views will be of vital interest for all of us who are concerned with the welfare of music today and of musicians today.

The idea for a scheme that was eventually to become the Contemporary Music Network emerged from an assessment by Annette Morreau in 1970 of the amount and quality of contemporary music performances taking place in Britain. Predictably, London presented a large number of concerts, whilst in the regions very little contemporary music was performed. In an attempt to maximize rehearsal time and artistic effort, a touring scheme was suggested whereby London concerts should be linked to tours. The idea was that these tours should be planned in co-operation with the emerging Regional Arts Associations, who would suggest suitable promoters and share the deficit. Practical problems relating particularly to the widely varying types of contemporary music (jazz, electronic, music-theatre, improvised etc.) made the establishment of a single ‘base’ in each region unrealistic, and it soon became obvious that not every Association could afford to contribute substantially to the scheme. In view of the importance of making such tours possible, and the varying levels of finance throughout the country, the Council agreed to cover the full cost of fees and travel, whilst the local promoter would be left to pay all other costs. In the current season, a total of 97 concerts is being given by 13 performing groups.

The London Sinfonietta has just returned from its first world tour, which took it to Germany, Australia, New Zealand, the U.S.A. and Canada. In seven weeks the ensemble travelled approximately 33,000 miles and gave 29 concerts with programmes ranging from J.C. Bach and Mozart to Henze and Ligeti. It was in fact the fulfilment of an ambition we had long held to take our kind of programmes round the Commonwealth and so make contact with a much wider audience—hitherto reached only by the gramophone record and radio tapes.

During a visit to Scotland in 1970, I went for a holiday to Orkney: really just to see the things that everybody goes to see, such as the prehistoric stone circle remains and above all the Cathedral of St. Magnus in Kirkwall—which, apart from being an extraordinary architectural monument, has musical associations. Those of us who have done music at university are familiar with the 12th-Century ‘Hymn to St. Magnus’, which was composed for that building. And so I went there and it was rainy and rather grim; but that you expect and put up with.

These pieces, described as ‘meditations’, are in no sense religious programme-music. Their motivation (in the structural sense) is musical, not extra-musical. They seek to celebrate the Festivals of the Christian year not by direct representation (of bleating sheep, for instance, or sleigh bells, in the case of the first work), but by association; and not for any sectarian church only, but for the Church Universal. Partly for the unequalled richness of its sustained tone-colours, partly for its age-long association, the organ is uniquely able to meet this task, even if such a musical transubstantiation requires from the audience, for its fullest acceptance, a measure of rapport which can by no means be taken for granted in a secular age such as ours.

On p.2 the publication details for Charles Rosen's Schoenberg should have read: published in hard-back by Marion Boyars at £4·25 and in paperback by Fontana at 75p.