FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

            For many persons, it may come as a surprise to learn that the most compelling influences on the development of the art and artists of mid-America have come, not from the fragments of bowls, baskets, chants and Choreographic Charts left by departing native Americans and gradually retrieved from their mounds and cave paintings, nor from the cultural baggage brought to mid-America by settlers from Great Britain, Germany, Slovakia, Spain, or Scandinavia, but from the mentoring (actual or imagined) of the French, and particularly the Parisian French with their elegant sense of style and satisfying standards of artistic balance.

                And so it was that we chose to share with you the compelling argument for Parisian superiority made by Claire Noyes in the 1920s and the fascinating information provided by Patricia Redman [Fuller] in the 1960s as she completed her half-year’s study of the fading of the old order of musical style (Impressionism) and the blossoming of the new (minimalistic Expressionism), with emphasis on the iconoclastic contributions of Erik Satie.

                In the case of Ms. Noyes piece (originally a convocation speech), we have made the few minor changes necessary in the refitting of a speech to make an article – a task accomplished without changing meaning or affecting emphasis, we believe.

                As regards Ms. Redman-Fuller’s article, we have of necessity exerted it from the book-sized treatise she formulated from the results of a half-year’s study of the works of Erik Satie.  By presenting the opening section of her dissertation together with her concluding statements concerning the work of this composer, we hope that we have set the stage for Ms. Redman’s very pertinent conclusions concerning Satie’s importance – a composer still well known only in the France, he sought to guide musically all at a time of great musical complexity.