A Rubber Band

Abstract The way we might make a bridge between the twenty-first century and a living tradition of music-making so inadequately handed down to us is an enormous topic. But one of the exciting aspects of the search is that our sense of inadequacy gradually becomes diminished. As time goes by we learn a bit more. Julian Budden’s books about Verdi, for example, came out some while ago, yet they still mean a great deal to me and my generation of Verdi performers; for the first time we had a reliable reference book to which we could turn for answers to some of our doubts, to learn more about Verdi’s compositional process and how to tackle performance—things we could apply directly at 10.30 in the morning, in the theatre, faced with singers.