Letters

I am researching the career of the pianist Gwendoline Warren (1899-1987), who studied and later taught at the TMPS from around the mid-1920s to the closure of the school in the 1940s. Gwendoline Warren's details are listed in the 1949/50 editon of Who's who in music. On pp.86 & 87 of The life and works of Tobias Matthay, written by his wife Jessie Henderson Matthay and published by Boosey & Hawkes in 1945, Miss Warren is listed as being on the General Committee of the school and also a piano professor at the TMPS in 1936. I am interested in finding the staff registers, student records, minute books and copies of school magazines. Locating this information would help me discover Gwendoline Warren's role as a piano professor at the school. If anyone can offer any advice regarding my research I will be pleased to hear from you.

Gillian Smith

1 Toppin Castle Cottages, Heads Nook,

Brampton, Cumbria, CA8 9AX

e-mail: foxseely@aol.com

Free speech

I was disappointed by the hostility in Mr Taruskin's letter (MT, January 2003) in reaction to my questioning the usefulness, even relevance, of theoretical approaches to performance practice.

It reads like a musicologists version of an American sentiment we've all heard rather a lot of recently: `Support the Land Of The Free and everything it says and does, or we'll send the bombers over.'

Professor Peter Williams

Newent