BEETHOVEN CENTENARY

Evening Star, Issue 19584, 16 June 1927, Page 1

BEETHOVEN CENTENARY

- Music is the language of the soul—higher, liner, ami more delicate in its methods, and more ethereal in its results than anything to which the tongue can give utterance—expressing what speccli cannot . speak, and effecting, as no mere talking can, the invisible, player who manipulates the keyboard of the human intellect, and whom we call “(lie soul.” Beethoven wrote such music, and, like 1 he ocean, we can feel its power, .while at the same time we arc conscious that .explanation would he almost desecration. Under tho spell of Midi music as Beethoven’s we can explain only the emotions it produces in us, anti wo can do this onlv in a. tashion far from complete. Fashions change in music, as in oilier tilings, hut, Beethoven’s music has in it that truth which, being eternal, cannot, change. Every truly great, composer is an innovalor, and his artistic progress and power of expression can bo more or less clearly traced in bis successive works., .but in none can tho process of individual musical evolution be so clearly discerned as in tho mighty compositions ol Beethoven the master. The centenary celebration on .Monday next promises to he unique in the. musical records of Dunedin. The box plan is at llio Bristol.