It is by no means the first time that musicians have tried to “return to nature,” but the difficulty of going back to a state of primitive savagery presumably becomes greater as civilization becomes more elaborate. The enthronement of idiocy may for a moment be amusing but it soon becomes tiresome; these two favourite epithets of musical journalism are not without their appropriateness. Nevertheless it is only common sense frankly to face the fact that music is made up in the first instance of physical sounds. The metaphysical attitude towards music has given us the last quartets of Beethoven, but in the general practice of music it has done much to lower our standards of performance, especially in the matter of singing; indeed among singers who have deservedly obtained a reputation for high musicianship and intelligence those purely vocal qualities on which the emotional power of the voice in the first instance depends are in all countries only too often conspicuous by their absence. Instrumental music has been affected hardly less. It is difficult for the musician who has been trained on the classical system to adapt himself to this new point of view. He feels inevitably that he is being asked to lower his intellectual standards. He has built them up by the application of a lifetime; they have brought him his most precious experiences and he feels that to desert them is an act of disloyalty to his most cherished ideals. It is one of the consolations of increasing years that our intellectual appreciations are deepened; at any rate we like to think so. But we have regretfully to admit that increasing years are apt to bring a blunted sense of emotional values. Our direct impressions are less vivid, our capacity for enthusiasm shrinks. Before it is altogether too late, before we lose all sensitive response to the stimulus of musical sound, it may perhaps be wise to relax our austerity of principle and allow ourselves to enjoy the primary pleasure of sound as we once did naked and unashamed. It might yet be the beginning of a genuinely new and delightful experience if we would risk the adventure.