William Mann, The Times newspaper's music critic, wrote this
famous discourse on The Beatles' music in the first flush of
Beatlemania. It became notorious for its references to
pandiationic clusters and Aeolian cadence, and signalled the
point at which Lennon and McCartney's songwriting began to be
seriously considered by established critics. The outstanding
English composers of 1963 must seem to have been John Lennon and
Paul McCartney, the talented young musicians from Liverpool
whose songs have been sweeping the country since last Christmas,
whether performed by their own group, the Beatles, or by the
numerous other teams of English troubadours that they also
supply with songs. I am not concerned here with the social
phenomenon of Beatlemania, which finds expression in handbags,
balloons and other articles bearing the likenesses of the loved
ones, or in the hysterical screaming of young girls whenever the
Beatle Quartet performs in public, but with the musical
phenomenon. For several decades, in fact since