The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 18

SUNDAY, MAY 19, I57 ND MUSICIANS Haro Concludes- NI ON THE WHO'S WHAT (3) In Our Social Revolution FUTURE By ERIC BLOM -4 HI. When it is said of someone that he is a 'self-made man53 it means he has risen from Labour Member for the Midlands? Poor old Annie on the gin again' Mrs. Atherton-Goald has devoted her life to breeding bull-mastiffs. Peer's son gone to seed or Gracious living on a Government grant. Here, in fact, we see Monsieur Bertil, born Herbert Wilkins.

whose flair for hair styles brings him an Income bigger than the Prime Ministers. 5 The Third Abroad By Our Radio Reporter WHAT several countries think of the B.B.C's Third Programme, not to mention what its Controller, Mr. John Morris, was thinking about it last spring, emerges from a Unesco report on a meeting of cultural programme specialists" held in Paris just under a year ago. The report, dated December, 1956, was available in this country last week. The texts of ten speeches are given, and the Third is respectfully praised.

Speakers from France, India, the United States, Czechoslovakia and Germany ail referred to it as a kind of cultural yardstick; one of the Germans, Dr. Carl JJnfert, described how a "Night Programme" emanating in Hamburg and made up of the esoteric and experimental, was modelled on the Third, and has since been copied by all the German studio centres. He complains that "Night Programme" has to be content with eighty or ninety minutes daily, but looks forward to larger and earlier airspace and the creation of a real Third Programme." The head of Britain's real Third Programme, Mr. Morris, seems to have spoken with pride and few misgivings. After odmittios that talks of a lower standard would attract more listeners, he went on: If we adopted this course, however, the flhird Programme would inevitably, in the course of time, become a mere extension of the Home Service, and would thereby cease to have ft raison d'etre." French Output A little later he was describing criticism that the Third cost too much in relation to its small audience as "an argument to which hitherto we have not felt it necessary to pay great attention." But he admitted as valid criticism that the Third "is specifically designed to interest the very people who are in a position to satisfy their cultural needs from many other sources." The French sneakers described a considerable output of quality radio, including 10i hours a week by the Service des Emissions Culturellcs, with talks on subjects ranging from Writers and the European Idea to Infectious Parisitic Ideas." Then there is the Club d'Essai five to ten hours weekly of largely experimental radio and another experimental programme using frequency modulation and broadcasting virtually nothing but music from 2 to 11 pja.

each day. East Europe makes no bones about culture. Mr. Nkolae David, of the Rumanian Broadcasting Service, has a paper emphasising the people's "ejrtraoxdirjary thirst (for culture" and listing a string of serious-minded programmes that would do justice to a super-Reith among them "The Shop Window of New Books," "Three Books a Week," and "8 o'clock, a Cultural Album to Leaf Through on Sunday Night- Radio Moscow's three domestic programmes are said to put out fifty hours a day, about forty of which are devoted to art subjects and to the popularisation of Cultural Radio Broadcasts: Same Experiences. it special prejudices with which that breed of musical hybrid is invariably afflicted, whether he writes well, as Busoni did, or not It must not be thought that Busoni as a composer had old-fashioned ideas.

His respect for tradition combined with a healthy contempt for convention. But he had, by a great deal of thought, arrived at an aesthetic' of his own, and its principles, comb iced with a composer's natural intolerance and often, indeed, limited understanding of others who work on quite different lines, could not fail to make his pronouncements as a critic insufficiently comprehensive, though they happened to be -theoretically very interesting. The Supremacy of Melody Although he had singularly little Influence on composers of the future composers whose work now natters, that is he had much to suggest that a coming genius might have found salutary. His warnings against "hysteria" and "temperamental gestures' vera much to the point, and so was his suspicion of new harmonic systems used for their own sake. We have seen into what dismal Wind-alleys these things have led many a promising talent.

Then, his fastidious taste made him declare that in opera realistic subjects are apt to. quarrel disastrously with the delivery of words in song, which is unalterably artificial, so that the best subjects for opera were for him poetical, fantastic and he did concede as much comic ones. Above all. he believed in the supremacy of melody, which for him meant a texture of horizontal melodic combinations, as distinct from vertical blocks of harmony in fact polyphony. It is all so sound and sensible that one mav wonder why Busoni has not had a greater effect on younger composers.

The answer is, I feel sure, that composers are not influenced by theorists but by irresistibly great examples of artistic creation, by work that, once heard, proves to be indelibly memorable, not in the sense of being singable in the bath after one performance, but in the sense of being recognised as familiar at a second hearing. This does not happen with Busoni's work. It is fine and often fascinating music based on admirable principles, but it cannot be called great music. For that he was perhaps too much of a critic and also, as one of the greatest pianists who ever lived, too much of a performer. ThB Eisenee cf Muilc and other Papers," by Femiccio Busoni, translated from the German by Rosamond Ley (Rockllft, 2 It waa hardly accessary to emphasise from the German that soon becomes obvious when one comes across expressions like deep sounds or also not an finds titles of Italian and French operas given as Die Poritaner and Die Hugenotten." Busoni, though Italian-born, mote perfect German, but a Stood translation of such German should bo perfect English, and hat wo get here is a poor compromise.

HpHERE is a feast of reading Jj. for musicians in Busoni's collected essays, cow published in English. The spread is too lavish fo a single article, which, to take it all ia. would have to be reduced to a mere annotated catalogue. So I feel rather like the man up from the country who, on being shown an enormous menu in a restaurant, said to the waiter I can't possibly eat all that just give me the nicest thins ypu've got.

The dish now before me is the section beaded "The Future of Music," a collection of small hots-tfauvre that may stimulate the appetite for the other courses provided by Busoni. A good deal of his future is now the past, for these short cjsays and jottings date from between 1393 and 1922, while an undated one, to judge by the contest, teems to be only a little later. We cannot be at all sure how Busoni would react to some firmly established composers now, were he still alive: to Schoen-berg, for instance, "the Vienna Secessionist," or to Stravinsky, "the Russian acrobat of sound," both of. whom, he said years ago, "laid the foundation for misunderstandings which pass to-day for positive But we may be sure that he would have bad something decisive to say and almost as certain that he would have disliked them both. He would probably have acknowledged the logic and perhaps even' the satisfying designs that Schoen-bergian twelve-note music can achieve on paper, but found in these virtues no guarantee that the music will satisfy the ear.

As a Frenchman once said about Lancashire hotpot: "It is very good, but I do not tike ze zings zey put in it." Healthy Contempt for Convention What Busoni wanted from a music of the future to satisfy his ideals may be summed up in three criteria: technical mastery, beauty and respect for tradition. Indeed he saw these qualities in all great fnusic, but iri that of the future he wished to see them applied in new ways, being very progressively minded. Being also strictly honest, he would have acknowledged that both these composers, in their own new and different ways, do show respect for tradition arid that their technical mastery is beyond question. This would have left only the problem of beauty, a very large and uncertain one, to be sure. He would no doubt have flatly denied their music any sort of beauty; but then beauty is a relative thing, a thing n'ot only in the eye of the beholder but also in the car, and more especially in the mind, of the listener.

With Schoenberg's or Stravinsky's music it is very much a matter of A. is happy, B. is not and if we take to stand for composer-critic," we come upon the humble beginnings. But the truth is we are all self-made, with great or disastrous results. Many people who have won eminence for themselves in the process, have found daily in The Times a first-rate partner.

For while it is excellent that anyone should make himself good at his job3 The Times broadens his horizon. Through its regular reading, he makes himself, in the truest sense, ea man of the world5. There is indeed perhaps no greater help to your advancement than the wide and sharply-focused view of events which The Times affords There can be no mistake about this one. Obviously he is someone's Uncle Fred. And he is to an estimated audience of eight million children.

He tells them about slugs and has been Top Pop Personality on TV ever since Seedtime started. Clearly a man of ideas profi-ably uncomfortable ones. A new force in the world of books'! A curate attached to a factory to study conditions! Dave Higgs is a misfire from a co-educational school. CHESS By B. GOLOMBBK you each morning.

fufriea book tokens, and the otoer eight get oneuinea book tokens. Other good scores were C. P. Brown and B. Silver 149.

J. Tierney US, G. Abrahams and P. H. B.

Cadman 147. F. Alexander and W. Slum 14S, and Dr. B.

Spain 145. A new competition starts next week. TIMES JO. PROBLEMS mwm Solution to Position No. 16 From tame played in Bucarest.

,1956, between Radulescu and Hegrea 1 1 bklippaktlppl; 1 KT 1 3 4 8 PPB1QPPP; 1 1 1 1. White won by 1. Kt a P. i Kli 2. B-KO K-EJi If K-Ki3: 3.

Q-X4 ch, B3; 4. Q-B3 with mate to follow. 3. a in order to deprive Black of an eventual KKU. 3.

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QR Qt eb. Q2 S. Kl ck. Bit 9. K6.

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B7. rtsifu. Prizrainnins scores in the competition were O. P. Bonner 157, D.

V. Mardle 1J6. Palmer and P. D. Robinson 155, J.

An-aell IJ3, t. H. Beaty. B. CaSerly and Dr D.

B. Scott 152. D. Mease 151, F. Fischer, L.

3. Lean. Miss E. Tranmer and 1. C.

Werbia ISO. Too first five receive two- i HfS El sstf I alU USkM I 0 HL 1 ES xy j. I-, No. 83. by Heilbut.

Israel (7 5). White to play and male in two. Solution to No. 82 (C. Mans-field).

Key hI(RI). walling Deceptive tries with W. K. The Times misses nothing that uught not to be missed. Yet it never assumes you have time to waste.

Foreign news, politics, legal and city affairs, arts, sport are all presented with bala nee and authority. See your newsagent. Price Top People take THE TIMES portend mmk4 Sotntioas on SLEM to I. F. L.

CHESS PROI Sir W. Beach Thomas By IVOR BROWN gIR William Beach Thomas, whose Open Air articles appeared in The Observer for thirty-three years until bis retirement last, year, died last Sunday at his home in Hertfordshire, aged eighty-nine. "Beach," as he was known to his friends, had a long life and a full one. He had in his last years the solace of his perpetual refreshment, the countryside. The naturalist is fortunate in a way that many are not; the source of his delight is always there, and, apart from expense of travel, freely there, while age, so long it spares the eye and ear, is no hindrance to fehVty.

That happiness of the informed spectator flowed warmly in all the articles and notes that be wrote for The Observer. To the lore of the botanist and the bird-watcher he added a wide reading and deep enjoyment of English literature. Thus what he saw and heard in his Hertfordshire garden, or when ho went farther afield, stirred echoes in his consciousness and brought the finest of our word-music to his lips. Mlchad Peto c2) rq)(T cated to L. Garvin, the gayest lover of poetry that I know." Editor and contributor were at one in their relish for the happv word evoked by the natural scene.

"To me," wrote Sir William, "Coventry Patmore and Francis Thompson are precious beyond my own perception of their peculiar and intrinsic merits because I first heard the things they say thrm minted with inimitable austo War CorresDondent by J. L. Persuasive Defender CiinA I Ann'1 i yt'nrl' fnr hia mil fit! 'vtxp- men E. Ifr Uh! Wfcy not." Well, you never see the boss, let alone get the chance of talking to him. Fact is, in a big factory like this you must be just a number without a name.

Bit out-of-date aren't you? In these I.C.I, factories there's plenty of chances for a man to make himself heard. He can see his foreman or manager at any time, and he can call Moreover, he had had a full journalist's training in the art of clear expression and of coming quickly to the point. He went to school at Shrewsbury and then on to Christ Church, Oxford; there he enjoyed his athletics as well as his reading, rising to be president of the University Athletic Club. In his Fleet Street life he met I. L.

Garvin on The Outlook. and so began a lifelong friendship. During the 1914-1918 war he served the Daily Mall brilliantly as War Correspondent, and was knighted for his work. But he was happy to escape from the clatter of the town and Fleet Street's "long, unnatural night to the serenity of the 'country. There he could practise the more leisurely authorship and journalism of the man whose hand and eye moved together in the keen perception of the seasons' rhythm and of the painted panorama of the months, from black Janiveer to the richly tinted times of flower and fruit.

One of his happiest books, "The Squirrels' Granary," is an anthology of nature-writing with interposed comments of his own. It was dedi- Such collaboration of congenial spirits is not common in the stress and bustle of journalistic life. It was lucky for Beach Thomas that he could devote his later years to contemplative recording of the way things grow in beauty and utility, and also of the fight that man as cultivator, must continually wage to save growth from its enemies. He was a persistent and persuasive defender of all wild life, and his help was often sovereign in the protection of threatened solitudes and sanctuaries. The fouling of our rivers was one vice of industrial civilisation that he powerfully attacked.

He had seen too much of this in the streams of the Home Counties, of whose remaining but menaced charms he was the enduring champion. His book on Hertfordshire, in the County Book Series, was written when he was over eighty; age never sapped his love of the rural theme, or his skill in the transference of the flower in the field to be the ornament of a printed page. on his shop steward or his works councillor if he wants help to put his case. Through them he can make his views heard right at the top. Bridge: By TERENCE REESE The bidding was the same in both rooms Maybe, but there cant be much of a matey spirit LCI's just too big for that.

Don't you believe it! I.C.I, provides playing fields, recreation rooms and clubs where all the chaps can get together. You should get yourself invited to an I.C.I, club some night you'd see what I mean! Maybe I will. But don't tell me that when NORTH EAST SOUTH WEST 19 1 No 2 0 No 2 34 No No No THHE first two matches in the final trial, one a win for Preston by the narrowest margin, the other a draw, were closely fought and the standard of play was high except for some missed games. The most reprehensible of these was the following: Dealer, North. N-S vulnerable.

A92 AI984 0 AJ76 A3 I.C.I, provides all this it isn't guided by self-interest. Of course it is. The Company wants to see Twelve tricks were made at one table, eleven at the other. Opinion among the critics was divided: some thought that South should have jumped to Four Clubs, others that North should have found another bid after Three Clubs. South's hand is not very powerful until there is some evidence that partner has 4 A.

As I see it (having been East-West on the board), North should give partner a chance with Four Clubs or, if he plays the convention, with a directional asking hid of Three Spades. That says to partner- If nu have a guard in bpaiks can do Three Q8 CK76 52 0 8432 AAJ1064 0 103 0 10 9 5 SJ 8 tf97 FINEST PETROL IN THE WOULD the team spirit in all its works, for it knows that a happy team produces die bcsi iciuhi. SsK753 O'Q 0 cKQI0to42.