THE FOUR SINGING SCAVENGERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 248, 18 October 1924, Page 19

THE FOUR SINGING SCAVENGERS.

CHOIK MUSIC NOT ONLY FOR HIGHBROWS. " I think it is possible to interest every- ! on« interested in music." declared Mr. Walter yeomans, in an address to teachers et the Board of Education's holiday coarse at the Royal College of Music. "There are very few to whom mnsic means nothing," he continned. "In my choir at the Working Men's College, Camdcn Town, there are four scavengers, six university men, factory girls, unemployed, clerks, and labourers. They are all most enthusiastic." The "highbrows" of the music world received a severe trouncing at the hands of the lecturer. The musician. Bald Mr. Yeomans. was apt to talk as if he knew all about it and nobody else did. lie frightened people off. Queen's Han or Gaol. A certain organist whom the lecturer knew had killed music in his town, because he regarded music as a. patent medicine, for which ho alone held the recipe. And they wondered why choira so often consisted of a scraggy, anaemic lot of nomas beings. They were the only people who would put up with the highbrows. Technical knowledge was not reqnired by everybody. "Make music a form of relaxation," said Mr. Yeomans. "Remember that most people have to listen to it after a. hard day's work. It is curioua that we have to enjoy our music under the most depressing and uncomfortable conditions. I would sooner listen to a symphony in a gaol than in the Queen's Hall."