A Letter From The Publisher, Nov. 3, 1947

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Dear Time-Reader

Some of you may have wondered recently why a TIME music quiz reposes in the windows of a department store in your community. The answer follows:

To the people of many a U.S. city, department stores are important centers of civic activities. During the war, for instance, they were focal points of war bond sales. Their auditoriums (many stores have them) are used by such organizations as the Community Chest and the Red Cross. Lately, in their own interest and that of their customers, many stores have enlarged and improved their music departments in response to a steadily increasing interest in music, especially classical, on the part of the public. Evidence of this increased interest is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that of the 275,000,000 records of all types sold last year (1941's total: 127,000,000), about one-fourth were the higher-priced serious music.

In view of these facts TIME offered recently to department stores in 31 American cities which have symphony orchestras a display called TIME for Music. From our standpoint, this display is designed to call attention to TIME, to our Music department and to our advertising pages. It is a quiz consisting of 24 enlargements of TIME covers, with the cover portrait replaced by famous composers from Bach to Gershwin. Attached to each cover poster is an excerpt from a story in TIME'S Music department—but omitting the composer's name. With the excerpt as a clue, passers-by are asked to pause at department store windows, read the quiz questions and guess the names of the composers. The correct answers are posted in the stores' music departments. Here are some questions from the quiz:

1) FIVE BARS IN HELSINKI: _____ walked out when he heard five bars of a ragtime version of his Valse Triste.

2) RHAPSODY IN BLUE: By serving ginmill blues to highbrow audiences, _____ made a lady out of jazz, was richly rewarded.

3) NOT BANNED, NOT PLAYED: Recanting for the sins of his Ninth Symphony, ___ said: "Some write music for their own pleasure. I write to serve the nation."

4) SONG OF LOVE: From ____'s great A-Minor Concerto was wrung a vapid tune, timed for the forthcoming movie on the composer's life.

5) FULL MOON & EMPTY ARMS: Seven recordings of a sugared-to-taste version of _____'s Piano Concerto No. 2 were steady juke-box nickel-pullers.

The answers to these questions are: 1) Sibelius, 2) Gershwin, 3) Shostakovich, 4) Schumann, 5) Rachmaninoff and, for the cut, Chopin. The answer to our offering of TIME for Music is that department stores in all 31 cities have accepted it and are displaying, or planning to display, it to coincide with the opening of their local symphony orchestra's season.

In Cleveland, The Higbee Company devoted 18 of its windows on the public square to its own development of TIME for Music the week that the Cleveland Orchestra gave its opening performance.