Editorial

Teaching music is an exciting adventure when it really represents the transmission to the beginner of the knowledge acquired, maintained and developed by professional musicians and virtuosos. It is on the quality of this transmission that the potential for evolution of the younger generations will depend. This is a crucial problem, therefore, and care must be taken that the teachers do not become isolated in the routine of their curricula.

The “transmitters” owe it to themselves to take part in all musical evolution and to stay in touch with artists working on the development of new techniques and new means of expression. They owe it to themselves to keep their sensitivity as “translators” constantly fresh so as to present their artistic material at the beginner’s or student’s level without this “simplifying process” removing the essential foundations of the language of music.

Each time that I doubt the usefulness of a written magazine (the written word is so different from the universe of sound), as we stagger through an over-informed, over-documented world full of infernal humbug, I still find arguments for going on when I tell myself that the range of articles and news which the BRASS BULLETIN team manages to distribute in the brass world enables everyone to achieve a part of this vital — private — “transmission”.