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Best Intermission Talk*
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Mr. Deems Taylor. — Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. The suite by Johann Sebastian Bach that opened today’s program reminded me of an incident that occurred not long ago, that came in for a good deal of newspaper comment here in the East. I don’t know how far West the accounts of it went. Not very far, I imagine, as it was purely a local flurry. Assuming that a good many of you haven’t heard of it, I thought it might amuse you to tell you about it. Briefly, then, the president of the Bach Society of New Jersey sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, complaining of the practice of playing the music of the classic masters, particularly Bach, in swing time. He said, specifically, that on two recent occasions he had heard a jazz orchestra giving its own rendition of Bach’s Toccata in D minor. “All the beautiful fugue effects,” he wrote, “were destroyed by the savage slurring of the saxophone and the jungled discords of the clarinet.” What started the discussion was his proposed remedy, which was — I quote from his letter — “that any station that violates the canon of decency by permitting the syncopating of the classics, particularly Bach’s music, be penalized by having its license suspended for the first offense. A second offense could be punished by revocation of the license.”
Now, I hadn’t intended to discuss the incident at all, as it didn’t seem very important. It still doesn’t. But I’ve had a surprising quantity of mail from correspondents who have opinions about it, pro and con, and seem to think that I ought to have some. So, having a few, I suppose I might as well air them.
In the first place, of course, the proposed remedy for the offense seems to be a little out of proportion to the enormity of the crime. If you’re going to suspend the license of a broadcasting station for permitting Bach to be played in swing time, what are you going to do to a station for permitting swing music to be played at all? You might offer the owner of the station his choice of either listening to • Copyright, 1939, by Deems Taylor.
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