TASTE }N MUSIC

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 121, 22 May 1926, Page 9

TASTE }N MUSIC

MODERN "SLAP-DASH TRASH"

CHILDREN NEED THE VERY BEST.

An intellectual treat was afforded a large gathering of students at Victoria College this morning, when a lecture on music, principally as affecting the modern child, was given by Mr. D. E. Tayler, Director of Music under the Education Department. The lecture hall was packed, and the address was followed with the closest attention.

Mr. Tayler dwelt at length in the various aspects of music as influencing the intellectual and physical functions of the race. Mankind individually, he said, was peculiarly susceptible 'to rhythm, so that bad music promoted bad effects, as it alienated the individual's conception of good music. Bad music left a false impression, and consequently could bring about a certain amount of harm intellectually. There /Were people, Mr. Tayler continued, who did not understand music, and were, strange to "say, .actually proud of this fact. Music,, he said, was universal in effect. Intellectually and physically that effect was constantly illustrated in the case of sailors and soldiers. The men of the sea, when hoisting a sail with block and tackle, sang, and their physical exertions were minimised simply through the agency of rhythm. It was the same with soldiers on the march. Here was to be found the physical effect of music. "Music," Mr. Tayler said, "has so much influence with us that it is essential that we should familiarise ourselves with the best possible in the most beautiful forms. The lecturer! illustrated his argument by the use of a gramophone. First he submitted a popular air in syncopated time and contrasted it with a number more sombre in theme and strictly musical. In the first instance the music, to use the term of Mr. Tayler, was of the "sugar" order —gay, vivacious, and stocked with seductive chromatics, but without any depth of soul or meaning. Mr. Tayler had a little to say concerning bugle bands. This class of music, he contended, was of the geometrical order, which was of no value as music. The bugle was, on the other hand, an easy instrument to play.

Music, Mr. Tayler proceeded, liberated the imagination in a subtle way, and care had to be exercised in the class of music chosen for children. Ehythm could be expressively, exciting, and it could be dull. There could be excess in rhythm and discord, which in time simply constituted an irritant. Taste for music, the lecturer went on, was a reflection of ourselves —it was social and not solitary, and so it was necessary for teachers to impress their juvenile charges with the best of music to be had, and the best of music, it had to be remembered, must necessarily be well performed to give it its true expression, and make it tell its own story. "Band muiae," said Mr. Tayler, "is an artificial product, but we have no protection for the public against it. There are lots of people who consider good music dull and monotonous and cling to the everyday popular songs and pieces as expressive of the best. This, he said, was to be regretted. There was plenty of good music—music that people loved". Genuine music—Mr. Tayler said he used the word genuine advisedly—had to be governel by a sincere impulse. In conclusion, the lecturer deplored the fact that there was a pronounced tendency nowaday to syncopate and drag to the level of silly music some of the most popular hyjnns. "Why," he said, "if some of the angels heard these hymns mashed up in syncopated melody, they would want to dance. Of course," he added abstractedly, "David danced in front of the King's Court!" (Laughter.) Mr. Tayler spoke of popular fancy in music at the present time. He criticised the methods adopted by composers of present-day popular songs who, he said, all exploited the same stock-in-trade —"slimy" melodies and semitones with a "wimper" with their rhythmical devices and crossed rhythms, Schubert was a master of crossed rhythms, but his efforts of the kind were purely playful. • Finally, Mr. Tayler urged his hearers to study closely the tastes of children under their charge. "Give them the best," he said, "the very best. Cultivate their tastes, and away from this slap-dnsh trash wo hear every day." At the conclusion of his lecture Mr. Tuyler was enthusiastically applauded, and received a vote of thanks by acclamation.