By the time this appears, your editor will have fled the country. Well, fled England, at any rate: to the glories of Bonnie Galloway and the Solway shore. Lost in Caledonia? – without trace?

Aber abseits wer ists? / Ins Gebüsch verliert sich sein Pfad, / Hinter ihm schlagen / Die Sträuche zusammen, / Das Gras steht wieder auf, / Die Öde verschlingt ihn.

[But who is this who has turned aside? His path disappears into the undergrowth, the bushes close and the grass rises again behind him, the wilderness swallows him up.]

Yes, another foreign quotation, unapologetically offered to delight our readers! Admirers of the ISM’s Distinguished Musician for 2007 will recognise it immediately; others who do not, perhaps including some correspondents and their wary pupils, should embrace its apparently guttural language, throat-slitting subject matter and minor key tendencies. Unlike the government, which is set to scrap oral tests in language exams, we believe that familiarity with other Western European forms of cultural expression – especially the writings of significant figures – is not merely beneficial, but highly desirable.

Anyway, as we turn aside, let us cast a swift Rückblick across 18 years. Much has changed. Challenges once dreaded have melted away; but so too have opportunities once eagerly anticipated. There is perhaps more music – or at least, sound-based activity – going on; but the notion that ubiquity implies worth has, like some noxious bindweed, taken deep root. ‘Fitness for purpose’ has lost its qualitative associations and become primarily quantitative. The cult of celebrity has spread from those evincing at least a modicum of talent to those with little or none. A noble desire for inclusion has marched, increasingly out of step, alongside an ignoble ambition to exaggerate and elevate differences into a kind of cultural cringe.

Much has not changed, though. On the debit side, philistinism and charlatanism are no less prevalent: they may take more insidious forms, and wear a smile rather than a snarl, but their effects are equally baneful. Expediency (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em) and its pale cousin pusillanimity (we’d better join ‘em, in case we can’t beat ‘em) pop up as regularly as ever. On the credit side, however, is the unswerving dedication, professionalism and integrity of those who have chosen to ally themselves with the ISM. The Society does not exist just to provide cheap legal advice when defaulters turn nasty, pull tax chestnuts out of the fire when the inspectors come knocking, and generally lurk in the background with a bazooka at the ready. As those members know, it is here to promote the highest standards of professionalism, quality and service. Eternal verities!

So – and here, a switch to the first person singular – my thanks go to all those members who have understood the purpose of a professional body for professional practitioners. Thanks, too, to my Head Office colleagues over the years, without whom it would have been impossible to achieve anything. Thanks also to the Presidents, Treasurers, Councillors, Committee members and Centre officials who have offered guidance and support at every turn. But most of all, thanks to those particular Council members – some, alas, no longer with us – who decided, one autumn afternoon in 1989, to put the future of their Society in the hands of an unknown civil servant returning to the profession after 14 years in Whitehall’s wilderness.

Ist auf deinem Psalter, / Vater der Liebe, ein Ton / Seinem Ohre vernehmlich, / So erquicke sein Herz! / Öffne den umwölkten Blick / Über die tausend Quellen / Neben dem Durstenden / In der Wüste!

Neil Hoyle

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