AFTER MUSIC WEEK

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 37, 12 August 1930, Page 10

AFTER MUSIC WEEK

SOME REFLECTIONS

ARE WE MUSICIANLY ?

THE EIGHT AND THE

WEOJTG

(By "Auricle.")

The musical festival is over, and it is possible to draw some conclusions, and perhaps some lessons, from its results. Whether any such conclusions and lessons are palatable or useful remains to be seen. This is the fourth musical festival in Wellington's history. The last of its predecessors was held twenty-seven years ago; and in tho interval thero have been changes, mostly in tho last decade, which have entirely altered the conditions of the musical world. It was these changes which led to the holding of the recent music week. Their, principal .effect is that whereas the previous festivals catered for a community to which music of any kind was something of a luxury, today the people have far too much of it. If good music a generation ago was "caviare to the general" through lack of opportunity to acquire the taste, it is out of favour now because of jaded palates.. It is gravely to be feared that the faculty of appreciating good music has become dangerously, if not hopelessly, atrophied. Sir Hugh Allen, Director of ,tho Royal College of Music, has remarked that thei-c is such a thing as music becoming too popular. "Music is being so familiarised that people can hardly bother to notice it. The moment you get used to a thing it has no effect on you." While it tasto for the musical classics was altogether admirable, ho added, he dreaded to think of tho way those classics would sound, after passing twice through mechanical processes, yet thousands of people and thousands of children were imbibing the idea that the reproduced sound was the right sound of music. llt was in part to counteract the pernicious effect of the mechanisation of music upon taste that the musical festival was organised. The musicians hoped, of course, that- if the contrast between original and reproduced performances could be satisfactorily impressed upon the public, it would inaugurate a demand for that direct aural communion between performer and audience which tho gramophone, broadcasting, and the sound film have now almost abolished. ' How far has the effort succeeded ? THE USE OF BROADCASTING. We are able, as yet, to judge only by the response of the public to the musicians' invitation to undergo the test. It could not bo called enthusiastic. We have on tho one hand an overwhelming response to other forms of entertainment which have little or no claim to artistic qualities; and on the other a great response to the fact that the musical week programmes have all been broadcast by wireless. It may seem curious that the Music Week organisers, striving to repair an injury to which they think broadcasting has contributed, should have accepted the hand which that, friendly enemy extended to them. They felt, however, that it would help in two ways—by giving a. form and extent of publicity not otherwise available, thus attracting people into the concert halls, and by conveying their musical offerings to people who could not come to them, sousing the radio service as a proselytising agent for "better music." It is rather sad to be driven to tho conclusion that in both respects they have been disappointed. Simply because people could hear the whole programmes in comfort and warmth and with" no. expense at all, the publicity which broadcasting gave—and gave, it must be recognised, ungrudgingly, and in a spirit that leaves no room for suspicion of ulterior motive—caused thousands of people to stay at home. And because the programmes were all designed for concert halls, they were of a type that no sensible broadcast director would think for a moment, of arranging for his station. .An item like the Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony, enjoyable in a hall, becomes a weariness when in .its full length, almost an hour, it is heard from a radio 'receiver, and even tho highly coloured "Hiawatha" cannot hold continual attention. Diversion to other interests is too easy; in a concert hall it is difficult. We have, to . admit that such programmes, instead of reconciling the listeners who do not appreciate "highbrow "■•music with "foreign names," merely confirm them in their prejudice. If it had been a band, now, with some humour and "I Love You in Velvet!" OUR TOLERANT EARS. The problem of the musician rests upon the extraordinary educability of the human ear. Those of us who take an interest in the technical aspects of reproduced music have generally been impressed by two things—the eontmued effort of the "engineers" to bring the musical reproduction ever nearer and nearer to the original, and the firm belief that exists in the mind of the average home-keeper that, _ his own gramophone or loud-speaker is "pretty good," or even "very good indeed." We know that perfect reproduction is still some way off, and may never be' achieved, and we know that many reproducers which are happily accepted by their owners are, in the musical sense, simply abominations. It is one of the curiosities of acoustic psychology, if «ne may coin a phrase, that a man who is proud of the nearly-latest in gramophones, with good records, can be equally proud of a radio receiver which gives no bass notes and sounds like a tin trumpet, and that he -will presume, in his pride, to discuss the quality of broadcasting. He has simply adopted two standards.- It is not easy at first to convince the owner of a bad loudspeaker that a good 'no is better; one has to "wean" him, and let him use tho good one for .1 few days. Then the old one goes straight to the dump. 'The community lives in an atmosphere of reproduced music. Wo get it in the home, from gramophones, good or bad; from radio receivers, good or bad, and activated by broadcasting which may bo good and may not; we get it in the picture theatres, whero it is often bad. These fon... of reproprodueed music all fall short of tho ideal. But assuredly, if one listens habitually to these reproductions, they become, in Sir Hugh Allen's words, "the right sound of music," and equally certainly a genuine orchestra becomes the "wrong sound," or at least an unfamiliar type of music. If we add to this the fact that neither the gramophone nor.the radio attempts to sustain interest in one musical item for more than about ten minutes, listening to a long orchestra] selection must be recognised as possibly a difficult aural, and mental exercise. VOX POPULI, VOX DEI. Who are the musicians, 01 the musical critics, to quarrel with taste1? It is like fashion, irrational. The Bushman likes his women stearopygous, and would, sec no beauty in Miss New Zealand or the whole galaxy of Hollywood. How many young people of to-day, carefully tutored by good teachers of the piano, follow their tuition by an intensive course of jazz, and find no more pleasure in Chopin? I do not say they are right, but I admit that they ma^ b«j right }». |h«JS taste—as right j

as we- are in our style of furnishing as compared with Victorian styles, as right as our women are in preferring short frocks to long (or is it long to short1?). This fetish of consistency!

I think that we are a musical people, but not a musicianly people. The musical festival is a musicianly movement, and it has appealed to the musicianly few—tho same class to whom it would have apepaled ten years ago. The audiences have- been disappointingly small. We may blame the weather and the broadcasting for part of that. But in "the old days" a lot of people went to every concert to hear music because they heard none elsewhere. In a "dry" country, a man will walk torn miles for a glass of whisky; in a wet one, champagne two streets away will not greatly tempt Mm if he has beer at home, especially if lie prefers beer.

It seems as if the musicianly few must recognise that they- are a few. They are to be commended for their efforts, indeed they are to bo most warmly commended for the way they have pooled their artistic resources and worked for the common good. But they have not reached the hearts of the people. As for the unregenerate many, filling their cars with the derided mechanised music and gazing spellbound —forty thousand at a time — at thirty men playing football, have not the musicians learned that even the broadcast programmes do not suit them, the music is too "high brow"?