Sir Adrian Boult

Many of you will remember with pleasure the visits to London of Miss Nadia Boulanger, who with her ensemble has given us very delightful performances; and also last year, in one of these Sunday afternoon talks, told us how her ensemble had grown simply out of her wish to make her composer pupils take part in music themselves.

Miss Boulanger is here again today, and I am happy to ask her to take over the microphone in my place.

Miss Nadia Boulanger

I am to speak to you today of the latest work of Igor Stravinsky. This work was written last year for two great lovers of art, Mr & Mrs. R. W. Bliss, and is to be broadcast on Friday.

It is a concerto for fifteen instruments, each instrument being treated as a solo. The most perfect unity has been attained in this work. Unity of spirit, of means deployed, and of achievement.

Whoever you may be, you who are listening to me now, it is to you as human beings that I am speaking. The greater the work of art, the more knowledge it may require to be fully understood, but also, the greater it is, the more nearly it touches each individual life—the more universal it becomes.

I fear my acquaintance with your language is slight, and moreover being a musician, music is my native language—and I find it difficult to express in words that which is so clear to me in music.

The appreciation of Stravinsky's works should be a source of strength to every human being—musician or not—artist or not. You may not have followed his evolution, you may not like his works, you may not even be interested in art at all—still, it is worthwhile for each of us to feel that meeting a man who knows what he wants to do, and does it, is of immeasurable importance. And that is why I want you to listen to this concerto.

How can we represent to ourselves a work such as this concerto in E flat major? Its beginning was a white, empty sheet of paper, its end is a perfectly achieved and finished work of art.