A centenary celebration raises various questions and prompts some warnings. Any nostalgic gesture is suspect: there is never any compulsion to think back. A calendar-based revival must justify itself by the sort of recognized central appeal that conditions a case for amplitude. This granted, and performances organized, the questions arise as to what the artist signified in his time and immediately after it, and what attention he can command in the context of present events. There was, for instance, never any doubt about the demand for Beethoven in 1970 by almost every variety of audience and performing body. Even the neglected early cantatas were found acceptable in what was a well-nigh routine acknowledgement across the board. Nor had the cult of Beethoven's art needed much more than time and personal advocacy to spread from Austria abroad, as a priority for orchestras and pianists, as the outstanding embodiment of resolute musical thought and as a triumph of evolution with unparalleled influence on the future of music.

A good deal has been said recently, in these and other pages, about the wealth of good music now being written under conditions of at least relative artistic enlightenment in the countries of the Eastern European bloc. Nobody, I imagine, will suggest that we should pay any less attention than we do to that welcome phenomenon. But at the same time it would be a pity if we were to forget that Western Europe still harbours a number of composers who fled from the East during the years when music was still not free to take its own course there, and when there was no immediate reason to suppose that the situation would soon improve. Of these, only the Hungarian Ligeti, who lives in Vienna, has been taken up internationally. The Pole Andrzej Panufhik, a comparable figure who happens however to live in London, is at present hardly recognized as a composer of even national importance.

Early in the Summer of 1969, having just completed an organ transcription of Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera (‘Musical Notebook of Annalibera’) by Luigi Dallapiccola, I wrote to the composer—who was then in residence at the Dartmouth Congregation of the Arts in Hanover, New Hampshire—describing my work and seeking his advice for revisions. His reply, written in English and dated 9 July 1969, stated in part:

It is very interesting to know that you saw some possibilities of an organ transcription of the Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera, but since I do not play the organ it would be very difficult for me to judge the real value and importance of your transcription.

George Rochberg's Third Quartet is a curious piece. To come to it with an absolutely Innocent Ear would be very disconcerting: that is, if your innocence extended to a complete ignorance of all the tortured twists and turns which musical thought (if you care to call it that) has been undergoing in the last dozen years. But the person so strong-minded that he can resist reading a sleeve-note before putting on a record has not yet been born. And after reading the prolonged, convincing and very well-written pièce justificative which Mr. Rochberg has provided for this record-cover, you will have learned a good deal of Mr. Rochberg's musical autobiography as well as his intentions for this piece. This raises the old problem of programme-note writing: should you be told what to think? But in this case, such a detailed exposé may well rebound on its author's head: for you eventually find yourself discussing the validity of the composer's intentions and the gap between them and their execution, rather than the music itself. No worthwhile composer would want this: and I am pretty certain that is not the way to listen to, or to think about, music.