MUSIC AT HOME

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 112, 14 May 1927, Page 24

MUSIC AT HOME

AN OUTSPOKEN SINGER

"SNOBS AT THE HELM"

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, 25th March,

Dame Clara Butt, who presided at a dinner of the, Musicians' Club, had many encouraging things to say about music in this country. The papers eaid there was no music in England, and it was said further that music was going to the dogs. "Personally, I don't believe music is in such a bad state," sho said, continuing: "What constitutes a musical country? What makes it musical? Surely the love of the people for music, and I think you will all agree that we do love music I think the fault has been with the supply I wish people would not talk about music as they do about port wine. Some people cannot appreciate new music until it has been bottled for twenty years. Music only becomes intelligible to them when it is crusted over with years. (Laughter.) I think the workers have changed things. Iheie were too many on the upper deck in the limelight, with snobs at the helm, and it is that attitude to music and that catering for the snobs that have got us the reputation for not loving music. The workers are changing thingß, and the real work is going on below deck, unseen. Music is getting a hold in places where it was never known before, and great and Rood work is being done, and the love of music is stronger than ever in England." (Cheers.)

THE INTELLECTUAL SNOB. "What is a snob?" the "Daily Telegraph asks. "The essence of snobbery is surely_ui the desire to be a superior person. This is borne out by the world's history. Originally a cobbler, a person of no account, the snob became anybody underbred, without gentility, and thus a person who pretended to what he had not, a natural superiority over his fellow-crea-tures. Thackeray studied the animal in relation to social prestige. His snobs are snobbish about family, income, precedence, and so forth. But these are only one corps of .the noble army. The intellectual snob we have always with us, the superior persons who will not like what the natural man likes, and make it a point of honour to acclaim what bores the ordinary mind. Is it these of whom Dame Clara Uutt waß thinking'when she spoke of snobs at the helm? The world is so made that the superior person has an excessive influence in every department' of life. The pretension to despise what everybody has always enjoyed, 'not only elevates man above the vulgar herd, to adapt the famous sermon, 'but leads not infrequently to positions of considerable emolument.' When these snobs from the eminence _on which «-c hare placed them assure us that the greatest masterpieces in the world are books which we cannot read or music which we cannot listen to, or pictures which disturb our poise, the proof of their superior genius is complete and final, and it is in no way obligatory upon us to adventure our souls among these masterpieces again. 85, Fleet street.