SCIENCE HELPS MUSIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 224, 21 September 1929, Page 9 (Supplement)

SCIENCE HELPS MUSIC.

BROADCASTING come to stay 'BUT musicians still keeded PERSONAL CONTACT AND MAGNETISM. ((By JOHN MeCORMACK, the famous English. Tenor.)

In every country where broadcasting "has been established musicians of all classes are complaining that it is having a, harmful effect upon their art. 2\ow, as a working artist—and I have ■io work for my living as hard as the man who plays in the orchestra of a cinema or the lounge of a hotel —I have given the matter careful thought, and I do not feel that the musician has anytiling to fear from mechanical music in any form. The fact is that broadcasting has come to stay, and not ail the managers in the world can stop it. They are like someone trying to keep ljyck the hungry waters of the sea. It is far wiser that instead of reviling it we should turn our thoughts to the best methods of utilising this new invention. Twenty years ago actors were bewailing the fai't tliat the cinema was killing tlio stage. Timo has shown that they -.vere false prophets. There are more theatres than ever to-day—New York has three times the number it had twenty • years ago—and. the chief influence of the cinema has been in teaching theatre managers to give their audiences greater comfort. Twenty years has taught all those concerned that the art of the stage and •the art of tiie screen arc quite separate, and need not necessarily compete with c;!ch other.

In exactly the same way the production of gramophones and records a c a low price was bewailed by musical artists, but actually there are to-day far more people interested in music than there were twenty years ago. The large audiences which opera now ,commands has been created largely by gramophones, which enabled them to hoar line artists in their own homes and realise that good music is not necessarily .cither unintelligible or "highbrow." Telling Personalities. When radio is more firmly established people will realise that no mechanical device, however scientifically perfect, can equal the appeal of flesh and blood. No one ever contests that a photograph is as good as a painting by a master, and, however much we may enjoy the gramophone records of a great singer, those who have heard him in person will never find the mechanical music anything but a rather wistful memory. The fact that broadcasting cannot catch the real personality of. an artist is; proved by the statement that few programmes are more than half an hour in length. In a concert hall an audience will listen to a great singer for two hours without showing signs of boredom. But try a two-hour song recital on the wireless and I think the broadcasting company's mail bag would contain a heavy batch of complaints next day. The interest of a wireless audience is intermittent, and I imagine that in many homes classical music is accompanied by tho rattle of plates or desultory conversation. But what wireless can do is to stimulate in men and women the desire to hoar great artists. The family that has switched on the loud-speaker during dinner, and is disappointed because it is a classical recital, suddenly hears a song of great beauty and immediately become interested in the music.

They realise that a song is not necessarily unintelligible because it is called "lied'er" or "aria," and within a week they try visiting a concert hall. Far from keeping people away from concert halls and opera houses, I think that used judiciously wireless can stimulate an interest in music far better than any advertising campaign. Tf for no other reason than that it helps. invalids of all classes to while av.ay tho weary hours of waiting to get well, broadcasting deserves to be encouraged.

Ordeal By Microphone. liven to the experienced artist broadcasting is an ordeal. He is conscious that the slightest slip will be heard by millions, and that he cannot, as in a gramophone record-recording studio, scrap the song and start .again. He seems to be at the mercy of a machine. It is an ordeal, but an ordeal that I am prepared to face occasionally. What we have to learn is that we have gifts given to us and that it is up to us to make the best use of them. Neither wireless nor the cinema can destroy the value of personal contact and magnetism, and sooner or later, those who are generally interested will seek out the artist in person. Science may change the methods of art; but it cannot change the basic principles, and art is as personal to-day as it was a hundred years ago, or even wheji "burning Sappho loved and sang' in ancient Greece.