THE Publishing Offices : 25, Newman Street,

London, W.l.

GRAMOPHONE

Edited by

COMPTON . MACKENZIE

TELEPHONE: Museum 358'

Vol. 1.

OCTOBER, 1923

No.5

EDITORIAL

IPROMISED some t ime ago to eliminate the personal note from THE GRAMOPHONE by degrees, but this month I must regretfully intrude i t still further by apologising at the outset for the delay in publishing our October issue. I alone am responsible, because the bad weather kept me later than I had intended in the Channel Islands, and the pressure of finishing a novel for my publishers made me arrive at our London office, not only belated, but empty-handed, without the Quarterly Review of Records and without an instalment of my Musical Autobiography. Both will appear in the November issue, but in the meantime I can recommend our readers not to wait for my remarks on the Seventh Symphony (Columbia) but to buy the records at once.

Apologies having been offered and, I hope, accepted, let me report that the idea of a Gramophone Society, outlined by me last month, has been received in all quarters with the eagerness which I had dared to expect. The response has been wide and large, so that by the end of the year I hope that I shall be in a position to get the society started· and to announce a specific programme of activity in the achievement . of our purpose. But I still want more names and addresses to support the venture, and I still want the right name for the society. .

This month the tests of Portables and other gramophones take up a good deal of our space, but I am glad to find room for the interesting article on U.S.A. records sent to me by Dr. F. R. Mead from San Diego, California, one of our warmest supporters. And ih this connection I should like to say that the mass of correspondence which reaches our office every day is straining the capacities of our modest staff almost to distraction, but that if our readers will have patience, we shall sooner or later deal with their suggestions and sometimes almost insoluble problems. Apart from the tests which have been conducted by this same modest staff, I propose during the winter to conduct a further series of personal tests of machines, soundboxes and needles, and would particularly say that the note on the Duophone in this issue must only be regarded as preliminary to further examination. The pressure of t ime, owing to the Portable tests, has led to the omission of James Caskett's Selected List of Records this month, but this is a department of our activities in which I mean to institute a development likely to help our readers in a more practical way.

The series of articles on Celebrities will shortly be resumed, but, in answer to numerous enquiries, let me say that the proper preparation of such articles involves an enormous amount of work, and i t is much better not to hasten the author of them into premature judgments. Incidentally I should like to express my sincere thanks to the Columbia Company for appreciating the importance of such articles and putting all their records at our disposal whenever they are asked to do so. I have had a number of interesting talks since my arrival in London, and I can assure our readers that, so far as music is concerned, the gramophone is soon going to make listening-in a waste of t ime.

Finally, grateful congratulations to His Master's Voice for making higher music and lower prices coincide!