Words from a Music Lover

The world may not be getting tired of Composer Arthur Honegger, but Honegger is getting pretty tired of the world. His music has often been brilliant and provocative, e.g., in his oratorio King David, at other times about as profound as movie sound tracks, of which he has written dozens. This month, at 62, Honegger sounded off to Paris' Franc-Tireur on tiis favorite subject. Excerpts:

"There are works I used to like and can't hear any more. I literally don't hear them. The Beethoven symphonies, for example. After having heard them a few hundred times, it's as if I hear nothing but noise . . . Music is dying. The radio, that infernal machine, is helping to kill it. Always, always the same things . . . A composer needs contact with his listeners. Does he ever obtain it? No. They play Tchaikovsky . . . And still I'm one of the few composers who like music . . .

"It's all becoming more and more like a circus. They're giving to the public . . . four-year-old conductors in diapers, brought onto the stage with their-little chamber pots . . . Our civilization is going to end soon, and music even sooner. All this will be replaced by something else--perhaps concrete music, when it's made by composers, not engineers."

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