"SYNTHETIC MUSIC"

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 46, 1 September 1928, Page 24

"SYNTHETIC MUSIC"

«, AMERICAN" OPPOSITION Faced by the new and formidable competition of audible motion pictures, the American Federation of Musicians has appropriated 300,000 dollars annually for an indefinite number of years to fight the substitution of these for orchestras in cinema-houses, states the New York cor . respondent of the "Manchester Guardian." The federation has 158,000 mem beis, numbers of whom are employed in the orchestras, which sometimes number a hundred men, engaged to play in the movie palaces. The sound-reproducing devices are now being used not only to supply spoken dialogue, but complete orch estral accompaniments for the films, and these have become quite popular, parti cularly in the smaller communities, which could not afford an orchestra of more than a few men, and prefer the mechani cal reproduction of a large body of highly skilled musicians. Something like three hundred theatres have already beeu equipped, and installations for . sound-re production-are being made in seven hund red others. A considerable number of musicians are already unemployed because of this movement, and many others soon will be. The federation says it welcomes the talking movie as a speech-recording device, while objecting to it for musical effects The criticism is put on aesthetic grounds "If the machines are used as a substitute for vocal and orchestral music," says an official statement, "they will become a serious menace to our cultural growth . . . Music at best reflects the mood of the artist. You cannot mechanise an art. If synthetic harmony comes to supersede the services of musicians the public will be the loser." While sympathy is expressed for the predicament of the musicians, public comment on the subject is generally to the effect that they are trying to hold back the clock of progress and are doomed to failure. The "synthetic music" is recorded by first-rate artists, who express their moods quite as fully as does any other musician. The same objection might be made to the gramophone, or even to wireless broadcasting, and seems no more pertinent in one case than another.