In the drawing room there is the scent of hyacinth. Japanese lamps brought back from a distant journey alternate with subdued lighting from lace-covered lampshades in a characteristically French style. There is a grand piano, a leafy tapestry, like a wood at twilight, and on the walls a picture in red and black by Roger Bezombes inspired by the ballet Cinéma. A bust of Jolivet by Joseph Rivière stands on the mantelpiece. Both east and west have made their mark on this friendly apartment. Even before Jolivet took me into his study I felt the presence here of the African sun, and the memory of ritual songs. I knew that this great composer preferred lyricism to all other things.

Stravinsky's latest published work is called A Sermon, A Narrative, and a Prayer—a cantata for alto and tenor soloists, speaker, chorus and orchestra (consisting of flute, bass flute, 2 oboes, clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, 3 gongs, piano, harp, and strings—8, 7, 6, 5, 4). It is in three movements, and the duration is given in the score as circa 16 minutes. Its first performance will be at Basel on 23 February, 1962, under Paul Sacher, who commissioned it.

I had long heard of this extraordinary work as one of the most startling productions of the avant-garde school of serial composers and was therefore greatly interested when my friend Alexander Gibson invited me to join him, together with John Carewe, in presenting it at one of his Musica Viva concerts at the St. Andrew's Hall in Glasgow.

Carlisle Floyd's Wuthering Heights is not only a deeply moving and dramatically convincing treatment of a mercilessly demanding subject—it is a real opera, in the sense that we have always understood opera. Here is music that is immediately accessible without being cheap or superficial; music that follows traditional paths in an original and confident manner; music that recognizes the basic laws and needs of the theatre. I emphasize this point because the far-out composers are getting all the critical attention, these days. Anybody who dishes up a serial score to a freakish libretto is more likely to be publicized than a composer like Floyd, who is not ashamed to be part of the mainstream of musical development and who is primarily concerned with communication to the best of his ability rather than with wild experimentation.