PAYING TRIBUTE
The Editor's Quarterly Surprise
It is time for me yet again to face the rapidity of life and events,
and accept that we have already entered the fourth month of the year, so
a glance at the preceding quarter will yet again astonish me, but no more
nor less than our readers.
I quickly adjust to the logistics of a daily magazine, but thankfully
not to the fascination of such varied content. In about ninety daily issues
already this year, there is a stream of information and a flood of views,
coloured by impatience, adulation, humour, astonishment, and anger. Yet
it is not the variety so much as the continuity which never fails, and never
fails to stimulate my imagination with so vast a subject. The global aspect
is constantly illuminated by our contributors, each representing music in
the light of personal experience.
Paying tribute to our regular columnists can, for me, place only one
writer at the head -- the 86-year-old Wilfrid Mellers. He tells me that
yet three more books are in hand. His capacity for writing about anything
within his amazing intellectual grasp is infinite.
With the continuing flood of new CDs we sustain the regular publication
of reviews, but with some emphasis on the composers and their place in the
development of music. So many composers have the explosive effect of recording
to thank for some aspect of survival. Nonetheless, it remains a tough environment
for new music to endure. Of that we are also mindful.
Amongst the luminaries writing for us so far in 2001 I list Peter Dickinson on Gordon Crosse, Thomas Georgi on the viola d'amore,
Roderic Dunnett on Fibich,
Wilfrid Mellers on Pelléas
et Mélisande, Peter Dale on Penderecki, Gordon Rumson on Gunnar Johansen, Jennifer Paull on Charles Ives, and Robert Anderson on John Jenkins for special mention.
There's a high degree of lucidity in this writing, so always remember
as a reader the simplicity of accessing our database for referring back
to anything you wish to read again.
As long as you remember that www.mvdaily.com
places a new edition of Music & Vision on your screen every day,
so the fruits of our work and planning may be enjoyed the world over.
Copyright © 6 April 2001
Basil Ramsey, Eastwood, Essex, UK
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