Mailbag

[IEDSRI@aol.com]

Ron Girardin asks whether 150 Pounds for an
original Bill Duffield program is a reasonable price. 
It is not. At last year's International Kate
Bush Convention in London, Homeground's Peter
and the KBC's Lisa distributed what seemed like
hundreds and hundreds of copies of this item 
from the stage -- free of charge, if IED remembers
correctly -- to anyone who asked.  Although
wonderfully collectible, the Bill Duffield
programme is plainly NOT yet rare. It's likely
that your Record Collector advertiser picked up
a handful of these things at the Con, and is now
trying to take advantage of other fans' naivete.

IED enjoyed reading Frederick Delius' opinions as
transcribed by BuckyLucky, but he takes issue with
the claim that his music is "altogether free of
Classicism". One needs first to decide on a definition
of that term, but certainly his rejection of what IED
supposes (D. doesn't specify in the quotation BL
reproduces) is the music of the Second Viennese 
School would tend to place Delius rather closer to 
the conservative camp of his era than otherwise --
an aesthetic camp which, judged from this perspective
only, numbers composers as unlike him as Rachmaninoff
and Barber.  Judging from the remarks BL cites, 
it seems likely that Delius would at least agree with 
IED that an artist can achieve "originality" without 
breaking utterly from widely accepted traditions 
-- an unorthodox view, perhaps, but by no means a modern
one.

-- Andrew Marvick (IED)
   S         R        I