ABSTRACT
However, if the present position for dance is compared with that of music in the early part of this century, we are forced, by analogy, to accept that a greater richness of understanding is the inevitable consequence of analytical and scholarly study. It is possible to see, in the case of music, just how much of an impact the availability of recordings has had on scholarship with reference to today's record review programmes on the radio and to detailed critical articles where several interpretations of a single work are compared. The result is that performances of a single phrase or section of a work are discussed in depth. Yet in 1909 when Virginia Woolf heard Wagner's operas at Bayreuth she felt that there were immense problems in dealing with this new sound and that these problems arose directly from the fact that the music was heard once and once only. Even in the first decade of the twentieth century there was a wealth of notated scores for study although few recordings. At the present time dance has neither in abundance.
