ABSTRACT
Fifty years ago we were drawing near to a Golden Age, though at the time we seem to have been unaware of the fact. For a long period we had been living in a fool’s paradise, and on a starvation diet. Our grandparents knew and cared little for the art of Music, unless it was presented to them in four-part vertical harmony, and dressed up as a hymn-tune, or as a respectable oratorio. Students and would-be Bachelors of Music were not allowed to write consecutive 5ths, and were forbidden – in my own student days at the R.A.M. – to listen to the sinful progressions of a Richard Wagner, or to the “circus-music”(?) of Franz Liszt. Under such irrational prohibitions the Muse came near to suffocation and a comatose condition. She might have packed up her baggage, and departed for a more hospitable land. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that she did actually escape, and take up her residence in Russia, where she gave birth to a progeny of world-famous composers such as Rubinstein, Balakirev, Borodin, Taneiev, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, and Stravinsky. She succeeded, however, in founding a distinctly national school, which is more than likely to survive and influence the future development of Music.
