Schools' Music Festival

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28984, 27 August 1959, Page 10

Schools' Music Festival

It is good to look back on a ! festival, provided one keeps an eye on the future at the same time. The Christchurch schools have just completed their annual i music festival—six nights of it[ this year, the biggest one yet held. Two thousand four hundred children sang in it, various instrumental groups played, as well as the I schools’ combined orchestras and the Christchurch Youth Orchestra. The combined orchestras numbered 120 performers. Surely these are big figures. The Schools’ Music Association (which organised the festival) can well be proud of having sponsored the scheme for instrumental tuition. Proud, too. that the Youth Orchestra played so well, and that , it accompanied also a number of songs for the massed choirs. It is grand , that children accompanied children. On each of the six nights there were both vocal and instrumental [items on the programme, and ;0n one night a group of recorders

and chime-bars from the Sumner School for the Deaf. And how• well they played! What does all this add up to? (There were 48 schools participating, and this festival shows something of the music that is being taught in them. It was an impressive showing, one which no other centre in New Zealand can equal for diversity. The good behaviour of the children was remarked on on several occasions. That was splendid. I wonder if the man in the street ■ knows that music has a good influ,ence in a school. As one head- ■ I master said: “Music has raised the [tone of my school.” . Yes. we have had a fine festival: I but it. has been held in a poky theatre instead of in a town hall ’[such as Dunedin. Wellington. Auckland, and some of our smaller . cities can offer. Let us conclude [by turning our eyes to the future . and seeing our children perform* I: ing in a sately edifice worthy of I ‘our city.—By “Appreciative ; i Listener.”