A GREAT SINGER.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 227, 25 September 1922, Page 4

A GREAT SINGER.

To the younger generation Sir Charles Santley was only a name, but to middleaged people the new. of hit death will recall old memoi'i<__. For many years. his fame was world-wide, and no singer on the concert and oratorio platforms j was more popular. Those were tlie palmy days of oratorio, when the . "-Messiah" and the "Elijah" tilled a. larger place in the musical world than they do I to-day. and when that world was much less open to the influence ot* modern , movements. Santley and Albani—there , are now no singers in England who occupy quite the same position in the , hearts of music lovers as those two great singers held a generation and more ago. Santley was a great singer am. a great I Victorian. He wa» a consummate artist one of the very greatest singers England has produced—and he was absolutely, devoted to his art. It is a good many years since he sang in public, but we •believe that he continued to sing in a church choir unti] well past the age of eighty. He was Victorian both in Ms, attitude towards his art and in his j limitations. An interviewer has described j how Santley, in his old age, declared quite frankly that "modern" music had no interest for him. "When I men- • tioned Richard Strauss, ho smiled. At | the name of Debussy he looked bewil- j tiered, and about Max Reger, Scriabin, j Granville Kantock. Sibelius and Delius, i he had not a word to say." Moreover, j singers who to the interviewer seemed j supreme artists, Santley had either not j heard or did not even know their names. , Perhaps, however, the fl'ial word will be i I with this venerable survivor of the Vie-, i torian ago. Names that ho appears to | I have let go by him with indifference | nrc still the subject of controversy. I Ry fnr the most important thing about' him now is his singing and the pleastiv it gave to two generations. .