ORGAN RECITALS AND APATHY

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 96, 20 October 1931, Page 6

ORGAN RECITALS AND APATHY

(To the Editor.) Sir, —It is difficult to find tactful words to condemn the public for miserably small attendances at the organ recitals. The average attendance is well under fifty, so that, as there are thousands of professed music know-alls in Wellington, there must be a reason. It is well known that the man in the street, having only a smattering of musical knowledge and, making no attempt to improve it, cannot be interested unless the City Organist were to play such music as he can understand without effort. Now the organ and the organist are not provided for the playing of rubbish, and the City Organist is to be admired and respected for keeping the level as high as possible. At the same time, the organist has an opportunity not only to interest but.to educate the people.. Nine out of ten '*peopJe< cannot fathom . the meaning of a high-class composition, and nine-tenths of these must hear a "piece" a few times before its beauties can sink in. , ,■ ,-.■■ '■ ■■•■.'' : '

' On Sunday last the attendance was forty, a good many of whom left after tho second and third items. Yet the excellent programme was appealing for the most part, and may be divided into, say, four heavy pieces, one of, which is very well known, and six lighter pieces. If anyone, even though uninitiated, wants something more appealing and more understandable than the three portraits, (Karg-Elert) played by Mr. Page, he ought to get his head read. Not only was the programme excellently arranged and annotated, but the music was most artistically rendered in s masterly way. Those' who missed this recital missed something which it would have been to their advantage to hear. ■~-... As I have said, many people require to hear a musical composition more than once to appreciate it to the full of their capabilities. I am therefore going to make a suggestion which I hope will, be considered in the spirit in which it is made—to help citizens to rise from a sordid taste to some finer appreciation of the best in music—giving them programmes which will have a strongly appealing rather than a repelling effect. If I were an organist, I think I would try the effect of frequent repetition of such high-class compositions as it is good and right for the public to become larniliar with. Therefore, I suggest the repetition next Sunday and the following Sunday of the Second Movement of the Symphony fn D Minor by Cesar Franck, a symphony which is soulinsp>ingto the musician but probably gibberish to the man in the street. If this were done, ; those who, 'like myself, attend regularly, would have an Opportunity to thoroughly know it, and those who only attend occasionally would have an opportunity to at least know of it. There is no need to labour the point further. What one: learns in childhood is the foundation of. one's whole-life appreciation, and I have often ■wondered why batches of school children are not'regularly taken to hear the organ—at least as an extra in their education. I myself am not more musical than the next man, but I was, when a kid, made to take music seriously and to differentiate between good, bad, and indifferent. As a consc?uence,. I still do so, and, whether or not understand music as a musician would, I can at any rate take an intelligent interest in the heaviest of classical compositions. Others can do the same, if they will.

Finally, let me say that the small audiences at the recitals are,not only a disgrace to the musical citizens of Wellington, but an insult'to the City Organist and the organ.—l am, etc., / :;:- ,■■.- INTERESTED.