The Frankfort group, or Gang, was the name given in later years to the band of young English musicians who found themselves quite by chance studying together at the Hoch Conservatorium at Frankfort-on-Main in the 1890's. The members of the group were Cyril Scott, Roger Quilter, Balfour Gardiner, Percy Grainger and Norman O'Neill. Associated with these in later years, though never actually members of the group, were Delius, who came into touch through his great friendship with O'Neill and Balfour Gardiner, Thomas Beecham, who gave first performances of many works by these composers, and Frederic Austin, that very gifted man who obtained eminence in three careers—as composer, singer, and teacher.

The Period following Purcell's death has long been looked upon as one of the Dark Ages of English music. It is unquestionably true that Britain took a long time to produce her next really great composer, but our readiness to accept a musical back seat and our refusal to make unjustifiable claims on behalf of British music have tended to blind us to the true facts of the musical life of eighteenth-century England. The fact that Handel prospered here, that Haydn wrote some of his finest music for London audiences, and that whole hosts of minor masters settled here—J. C. Bach and Geminiani, for example—surely tells us a good deal about the standards of taste pertaining among London audiences. In fact, concert life in eighteenth-century England as a whole had a variety and vitality to which it would be hard to find a parallel. Not only were concerts held in the fashionable London salons, but in the ‘Great Rooms’ of taverns in villages which today are barely large enough to find a place on a map.

The earlier part of the nineteenth century is considered a ‘bad’ period of English music. It has been labelled, like the earlier period discussed by Dr. Sadie at our last meeting, a ‘Dark Age’. It is interesting to see on what basis these judgments are held. How much music written by English composers in the years 1800–1860 is still generally known? I have compiled a rough list of works that are still in current use, apart from occasional revivals. It is based on recent programmes, chapel lists, publishers’ catalogues, and so on.

To Discuss the operas of Janáček without a smattering of Czech is rash. The extensive Janáček literature so far published is almost all in untranslated Czech; this includes the composer's two treatises on harmony, which are said to be obscure even to his compatriots. Moreover, Janáček's music is closely linked with the rhythms and contours of speech in his native Moravia, and study of this aspect of his work is inevitably hampered by ignorance of the language. My solitary claim to speak to a learned society on the subject—apart from a personal enthusiasm which can be taken for granted—is that during recent years I have been able to see all nine of his operas performed in Czechoslovakia, some of them more than once, and some of them elsewhere in Europe as well. Criticism of opera on the basis of the printed page alone, though often unavoidable, is seldom satisfactory; in the case of Janáček it is particularly hazardous.

In recent years a far-reaching change in musical habits was brought about by the development and increase in sound-recording. This is especially true in the field of non-European music. Some forty years ago the music of Bali on discs was a curiosity on the collector's shelf, but today exotic discs from the four corners of the earth are commonplace. In consequence there has grown up a generation of music students which no longer depends solely on travellers' tales and descriptions, but can listen for itself. Not unnaturally, these new opportunities and habits have tended to strengthen an old belief, namely, that music is eloquent and can speak for itself.

With the forthcoming publication of volume xxxi of Purcell's works, comprising his famous Fantazias and other Instrumental Music, the Purcell Society will at last have completed its edition of all his known chamber music. The Society's scores of the two printed sets of trio-sonatas were issued more than half a century ago, but, like most scholarly editions of the nineteenth century, they do not always accord with our current views of how such editions should be prepared and presented. Indeed, it seems to me that musical scholars would save themselves a great deal of mental anguish if they worked on the assumption that any publication or history of earlier music will at best hold good only for about thirty years after it is first published. This assumption is demonstrably true for the two centuries that have elapsed since Padre Martini wrote the first volume of his Storia della Musica, and I do not think any of us will live to see it change.

One of the aspects of Handel's many-sided genius to which particular tribute should be paid this bicentenary year is his extraordinary lyrical power. There can be few of those to whom serious music makes any appeal that do not know at least one aria by Handel, even if it be simply the noble Larghetto from Serse dressed up in one of a thousand guises. Yet this great composer, who wrote more arias in his operas alone than Schubert did songs of all types, is rarely thought of primarily as a melodist. But the splendid richness of his choral style, the brilliance of his purely orchestral works and the urbane virtuosity of his solo concertos should not distract one from the central source of his creative strength, a seemingly inexhaustible gift for melodic invention. Viewed from the musical background of today it may not always be easy to appreciate the nature of Handel's melodic writing; music has been mainly concerned during the last two centuries with different lines of development. Instead of Handel's long melodic line, constantly renewing and extending from resources within itself, composers have been increasingly interested in the organic growth of relatively short melodic themes, associated and integrated with harmonic, rhythmic and textural ideas. Musical thought has tended to move away from purity of line towards the co-ordination of varied elements on different planes into a significant pattern. Separated as we are from the eighteenth century aria by the achievement of the great symphonists and the steady drift towards declamation in the opera house, it requires a certain mental adjustment to be fully responsive to Handel's melodic process.