MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 143, 20 June 1925, Page 8

MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE

BENEFITS OF THE GRAMOPHONE

TYRANNY OE THE PIANO.

(IT.OU OUR OWN COURESrONDBXT.)

LONDON, 24th April,

"The altitude ot musical people towards Iho gramophone was for many years nothing less than criminally dullwitted," said Mr. Oonipton Mackenzie, in a lecture on "Tho. Gramophone :■ Its .Past,' Present, and Future," given at a meeting of tho Musical Association. "Here was something," Mr. Mackenzie proceeded, "that could do for music what printing had dons for literature, and, whether out of priggishness, or stupidity, or laziness, the musical public allowed it to be exploited by commercial interests with as little concern as if they, wei'o watching the exploitation of a patent medicine."

. This lack of interest was all but fatal, and even now ho did not know how, except by Divine providence, we had escaped seeing the gramophone and everything connected with it as rapidly and as dreadfully debased as the cinematograph. However, we had escaped, and now,' when the recording companies were producing every month more good music than they formerly produced in five years, they were never so prosperous. Moreover, they had.the satisfaction of knowing that the production of good recorded music in England exceeded every mouth by far the united production of the rest of the world. Not merely was the best music produced, but it was produced in the best way.

A. BEAUTIFUL JUSTICE.

Nothing that was bafeg done by wealthy men and women t« cultivate the public tasto in oilier arts could compare with whai, (.lie public was doing to cultivate, its own taste iv music by means of the gramophone. The effect of the gramophone rould not fail lo lin nnimaginalily great. It lincl, alivarly lulled tlio tyranny of the piano, ami he conltl nut lint fi-fl a lieantil'nl justico in its oiilstanding failure to reproducp adeijiKilely tin iirslrumeiif. Ili.-tt had <lonn so 111 null to liindor the developTiienl of innsie. (f>i\iigliter.) For years uneducated .musical "(,a.sU> had bed. allowed -to suppose that enjoyment of the piano and enjoyment iif "music must be synonymous; For years every note' ol music had had to be translated into terms of: lh,> pinuo. It would be :is reasonably to expect youn^ ]>coplc to begin English ' verse by trausl.-iting.it into Latin elegiacs us 'to expect that. Iliey would enjoy music by healing it only lhir.n-1, ths pi ;;n , ? . 'l-,,rther 'im-I'l-ovoinciils- were iicndint; iv the "Tamophone, and in a short linn; existing cvilickm WMiild-bn s^em. :|V ,- ; .y, avir] U,.~ v >vrml;l be „■-;,.<'.■ l.« lli« vl yi q ,-O^ . oC tt'hK'U Utfj; UtCjliiU,