Steve Schwartz responds to Scott Morrison:

>>The BBC 3 radio announcer said he was one of the three indisputably [great?]
>>composers every produced in England: Purcell, Elgar, Britten.
>>
>>Anyone care to argue with that?
>
>Sure.

Steve's quite right, of course.  Britten had a remarkable facility, but if
depth and coherence and emotional cogency are your yardsticks, Vaughan
Williams is your man - a reflection of their own relative emotional
stability.

I also find Havergal Brian a far more satisfying composer than Britten, but
that's not an argument I am going to win here.  But I'll tell you why.  The
composer David Matthews reported a conversation between Brian and Deryck
Cooke, after they had listened to Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maitre.  Cooke
asked Brian (whose ears were wide open to everything that was new in music)
what he thought of it.  Brian, then in his 90s, answered, in his Potteries
accent: "It's got no bass".

Martin Anderson
Toccata Press
www.drakeint.co.uk/toccata-press