Transcription

June 2, 1956 ORIENT LINE

England Australia S.S. ORSOVA

My dear Alex (do I call you Alex or Alec?)

It was a revelation to hear yr lovely, personal & original music again & to find that, (tho it differed much from anything of yours I had heard before - for you are not one of those that repeat themselves) it had all of the richness & deep expressiveness of your early styles. I have no quarrel with the non-harmonic music of today (often finding it very brilliant & telling) but see no justification for abandoning harmonic richness & expressiveness. (I still feel that Purcell's abandoning the rich polyphony of his string Fancies in favor of the empty Italian styles was a tragedy - in spite of the fact that he did wonderful things in the new style.) You seem to me to be exactly what the highest flight of Australian musical genius should be. Or put this way: your music is the tonal counterpart of Norman Lindsay's most complicated & cosmic drawings, say "Man's World" or that Bachanalian One (I forget the title).

May I (at the risk of boring you) repeat my opinion about piano pieces, & the practical

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