THE FOUR SINGING SCAVENGERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 248, 18 October 1924, Page 55 (Supplement)

THE FOUR SINGING SCAVENGERS.

CHOIK MUSIC NOT ONLT FOR HIGHBROWS. " I think it is possible to interest every-! one interested In marie.' , declared Mr. Walter Xeomans, in an address to teachers at the Board of Education's holiday course at the Royal College of Music. "There are very few to whom music means nothing." he continued. "In my choir at the Working Men's College, Camden Town, there are four scavengers, sis university men, factory girls, unemployed, clerks, and labourers. They ere all most enthusiastic." The "highbrows" of the music world received a severe trouncing at the hands of the lecturer. The musician. Bald Mr. Teomans. was apt to talk as tf he knew all about it and nobody else did. He frightened people off. Queen's Hall 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 he alone held the recipe. And they wondered why choirs so often consisted of a scraggy, anaemic lot of human beings. They were the only people who would put up with the highbrows. Technical knowledge was not required by everybody. "Make music a form of relaxation," said Mr. Teomana. "Remember that most people have to listen to it after a. hard day's work. It is curious 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."