Form in Opera: ‘Albert Herring’ Examined

Extract

To watch the growth of a composer has been the great interest of my life. It is a fascinating experience to see how they all begin from some older composers whom they love, and how they assimilate from them congenial ideas and idioms until their own personality and language is fully developed. I have observed several composers from the start who later gained distinction and great fame, and though the cases were as different as the individualities, some incidents always seem to recur with the inevitability of natural laws. There is always at first more public reaction against, than receptiveness for, the new message; and later, when the composer has grown to fuller stature, his earlier, originally censured works, are often preferred to his new ones. Obviously it takes some time until people become accustomed to what is unfamiliar.