"Jazz is nothing but a march tune, something used more than 2000 years ago, with occasional syncopations thrown in, played on unpleasant instruments, as insipid saxaphone, harsh trombones and trumpets, and ratting drums," was the opinion of Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor of the Symphony concerts in Boston this week, as he addressed a group of newspapermen in his suite in the Ritz Carlton.

"Let a decent orchestra play your jazz tunes and you will see that there is no originality in them," he continued. Sir Thomas then said that jazz was being played in "England even more than in America. "Why they dance to it afternoon and evening and they practice mornings," he added.

Anxious to lift the conversation to a higher plane, a lady from a Boston paper inquired whether Sir Thomas thought that jazz had affected the culture and life of manhood, "in the deeper sense of the word."

"Yes, I think it has made life decidedly noiser," the conductor replied.

He then explained why there was no really well developed English music. "There is no English type of music, no English school because the composers don't all run on one track. We have a number of very good writers, but they all represent different opinions. There is no unity, no real English school and that is largely because we have no typical folk-song. Yet the people are musical; in London alone we have 4000 choral societies," he remarked.

"Our English audiences are peculiar, though," Sir Thomas continued, "In New York the house was sold out every time I conducted, and I understand it's the same here in Boston. In London you may have a full house one day, but if the sun is shining the next, only a handful of people will make its appearance. People's decisions are prompted entirely by the weather," he concluded.