Do any newspaper commentators really write with the fear that their opinions will be read twenty-five, fifty, and a hundred years hence and be compared with the verdicts of later generations? If so, they have absurd and childish notions. Most opinions printed in a newspaper are for a glance at the breakfast table and then the wastebasket.

Music is composed for people. People are not assembled merely to observe a musical ritual. Rut a conductor rules otherwise. So the audience behaves like the well-trained flunky that it is in the interpreter's presence.

We constantly hear about the necessity of an open mind in listening to new music. Does it occur to many that an open mind is also a necessity with old music?