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The Editor's Quarterly Surprise

It is time for me yet again to face the rapidity of life and events, and accept that we have already entered the fourth month of the year, so a glance at the preceding quarter will yet again astonish me, but no more nor less than our readers.

I quickly adjust to the logistics of a daily magazine, but thankfully not to the fascination of such varied content. In about ninety daily issues already this year, there is a stream of information and a flood of views, coloured by impatience, adulation, humour, astonishment, and anger. Yet it is not the variety so much as the continuity which never fails, and never fails to stimulate my imagination with so vast a subject. The global aspect is constantly illuminated by our contributors, each representing music in the light of personal experience.

Paying tribute to our regular columnists can, for me, place only one writer at the head -- the 86-year-old Wilfrid Mellers. He tells me that yet three more books are in hand. His capacity for writing about anything within his amazing intellectual grasp is infinite.

With the continuing flood of new CDs we sustain the regular publication of reviews, but with some emphasis on the composers and their place in the development of music. So many composers have the explosive effect of recording to thank for some aspect of survival. Nonetheless, it remains a tough environment for new music to endure. Of that we are also mindful.

Amongst the luminaries writing for us so far in 2001 I list Peter Dickinson on Gordon Crosse,  Thomas Georgi on the viola d'amore,  Roderic Dunnett on Fibich,  Wilfrid Mellers on Pelléas et Mélisande,  Peter Dale on Penderecki,  Gordon Rumson on Gunnar Johansen, Jennifer Paull on Charles Ives, and Robert Anderson on John Jenkins  for special mention. There's a high degree of lucidity in this writing, so always remember as a reader the simplicity of accessing our database for referring back to anything you wish to read again.

As long as you remember that www.mvdaily.com places a new edition of Music & Vision on your screen every day, so the fruits of our work and planning may be enjoyed the world over.