Swedish Joker

Sad indeed is the state of musical affairs when so feeble a composition as Kurt Atterberg's wins the $10,000 Symphonic prize of the Schubert Centennial Contest (TIME, Dec. 3). So did critics mourn in Manhattan last week and in many a major city in Europe--all save Ernest Newman of the London Sunday Times who refused even to take it seriously, marked great slices in it as belonging to Dvorak, Berlioz, Stravinsky, to Schubert himself, and laughed.

In Sweden, Composer Atterberg is also a musical critic. There, reading the estimates of his symphony, he chose to laugh with Ernest Newman's review headed "Attaboy. " Critic Newman had called the $10,000 "a fair price for a fair symphony which is what Atterberg has delivered f. o. b. as per esteemed order of yesterday's date, and hoping for continuation of valued custom.";,Composer Atterberg took the same tack, let his laughter reverberate through the press: that all along he had meant it only as a joke; that he had deliberately plagiarized and that only one critic had guessed. The $10,000 was his, he said, and the laugh on them. But to many it seemed singularly empty laughter. The Columbia Phonograph Co.. donors of the prize money, could not believe that anyone would make a joke for the centennial of Schubert's death, cabled Composer Atterberg and chose to accept a rather dubious denial. Others, less interested, reflected that a really good comedian rarely laughs at his own jokes; that neither the joke nor the laughter had in any way enhanced Composer-critic Atterberg's prestige.