MUSICAL SNOBBERY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

MUSICAL SNOBBERY.

Dr. Vauglian Williams, the composer, in an address at the Oxford summer course of music and music teaching, said that the one thing the average Englishman hated - .vas English music. "Something is wrong here," he said, "either with the Englishman, the music or the general student.. There are two causes which make ' the man in the street demand his music from any street rather than his own. One is our natural national artistic snobbery and the other is our natural, national self-deprecia-tion.

"If there is any art among us as a community it must show itself creatively and not merely as admirers of the spiritual revelation of others. I believe we all want ultimately a United States of the World, but the only way we can get it is by everyone contributing to the common pool. So should we bring to the whole world our own special version of music."

Dr. Sydney Northcote, professor of singing at the Guildhall School of Music, said that one of the requirements of a singer was that lie or she should be a student of poetry. He recommended that singers should read some poetry aloud every day. So many of English singers were brought up on a diet of German and Italian songs that when they came to the English composers, particularly of the Elizabethan period, they seemed entirely at sea with the subtlety of their own songs.