MUSICAL ART

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1938, Page 8

MUSICAL ART

NEGLECT IN BRITAIN

"There are vast hordes of celebrity worshippers with no discrimination and no standard of artistic values, but the number of people who can listen with enjoyment to the highest forms of musical art is deplorably small." This statement was made by Mr. Robert J. Forbes, principal of the Royal Manchester College of Music, in his presidential address to the conference of the Incorporated Society of Musicians at London, says the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post.' He said that it had always seemed strange that in England the pursuit of excellence should be considered such an admirable aim in sport and of so little account in art. "Any of us could kick a ball about a field and we should no doubt obtain a measure of physical satisfaction from doing It. But we prefer to employ people who make this harmless but rather futile occupation the main interest and business of their lives. We are prepared to pay them very handsomely for doing it. "On the other hand the passionate desire of the pianist or violinist for supreme excellence impels him to forgo many of the- ordinary pleasures of life and submit with fierce concentration to a training and self-discipline that would be considered arduous by a heavyweight champion or a professional lawn tennis player. He is looked upon as an oddity—a sub-nor-mal individual who can be admired as an object of curiosity if he comes from Czechoslovakia or the Caucasus, but who. does not deserve the good fortune of being born an Englishman." Mr. Forbes said that there was more natural musical talent in this country than in any other country in the world. We' were turning out annually hundreds of gifted and well-trained musicians, who were just as unwanted as the tons of fish that were thrown back into the sea because there was no market for it.

The creation of an intelligent and discriminating listening public was needed, he added, and the most direct way of accomplishing that object was the subsidy of music by the State and the municipality.