Copland Says Classics Have Overly-Powerful Grip on Concert Halls

"Our concert halls have been turned into museums for the old masters," commented Aaron Copland, Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer, in Sanders Theatre last night. Copland gave the first of his lectures on "Music and the Imaginative Mind." He was introduced by Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. The talk was followed by a short concert program.

Copland also said: "The classics have been used to snuff out all liveliness . . . and to set up a religion of music . . . while the public has been afraid to invest in anything not bearing the label of a masterwork."

Previously he had spoken of the attributes of the gifted listener. Quoting Santayana, he warned; "though music were the most abstract of arts, it serves the dumbest of emotions." People respond to music from a "primal and almost brutish level," which acts as a reflection of their "physical life of gesture and movement," and of their "inner sub-conscious life."

The musical program began with "Concerto Per Due Pianoforti Soli," by Stravinsky. It was followed by songs by Berlioz, and by excerpts from "Lea Jeux d'Enfants," by Bizet. Assisting artists were: Patricia Neway, mezzo-soprano, Arthur Gold, pianist, Robert Fizdale, pianist, and John La Montaine, accompanist.