In the number and quality of great composers, the present is probably as rich as any period in history. In quantity of untutored, incompetent, fourth-rate composers, it is even richer. Because the public needs time to appreciate first-rate music and because even competent listeners cannot always, at first hearing, tell a crackpot musician from a genius, the work of contemporary highbrow composers is unpopular. The public prefers familiar music of guaranteed workmanship.
Because of this public deafness, contemporary composers have been in danger of turning into mutes. To combat this deafness and muteness, societies of intrepid and hard-eared listeners have been formed, who sit through concerts of contemporary music almost without flinching. Chief among these devoted bands is the International Society for Contemporary Music, which last week opened its 16th annual festival in London.
Since 1923, when it made its debut in Salzburg, the society has held its annual egg rolling in nearly every important country in Europe, and composers from more than 20 nations have flocked to them like hens to feeding time. Most recent of them have taken place in Prague
(1935), Barcelona (1936), Paris (1937). In each cooperating nation a committee appoints a jury of well-known native musicians to judge works submitted by their countrymen. Selections of these national juries are then submitted to a special international jury elected each year by the society's Council of Delegates. This year's jury: Modernist Composers Darius Milhaud (France) and Alois Haba (Czechoslovakia), Conductors Sir Adrian Cedric Boult (England), Ernest Ansermet (Switzerland), Thomas Jensen (Denmark).
Results of such careful picking and choosing should be a gilt-edged list of entries for each festival. But musical compositions, unlike dogs, horses and tennis games, cannot be judged on points. Not even the modernist composers and well-known conductors of the society's international jury know for sure whether they are picking a sunrise or a dodo. Ultimate decision rests with the musical public. And very few of the musical public attend the festivals of the International Society for Contemporary Music. The audiences (made up of composers, executant musicians, esthetes, theorists, critics, future-boosters) do not go primarily to enjoy the music, but to keep from missing something. Cheers are as scarce as hen's teeth, but hisses are as common as chickweed.