MUSIC IN ENGLAND

Evening Star, Issue 20032, 24 November 1928, Page 17

MUSIC IN ENGLAND

SIR THOMAS BEECHAM'S GRITiCiSM ATTACK ON BRASS BANDS An indictment of Great Britain as a musical nation was made recently by Sir Thomas Bccch.nu at the Leeds Luncheon Club. England, ho said, was the only country in the civilised world which was not only immeasurably below tin standard of other nations, but had fallen back terribly below the level of twenty-five years ago. The level of English singing was not what it was twenty-five years ago. “■ I. have a clear recoiled ion year by year of tbo musical life of this country, and J say that the level of singing is far lower than it was. The level of choral singing may b© about the same in certain places. Tn regard to orchestras, twenty years ago the English orchestras took rank with tho best on the Continent. Now there is not in tbo whole country—with all respect to the one which is engaged at the Leeds Festival—one which is in the front rank, according to tho in the front rank, according to the estimate of most Continental countries. As for competition, the most precious mind in music this country has produced for the last fifty years and the greatest composer to-day is an Englishman, and for tho first time in the history of ho Leeds Festival you arc doing one of his masterpieces this week. But the bulk of his work is quite unknown, not only in this country, but in the country of his birth. This man is Frederick Delius. It is the most dilficult thing in the world to find a singer, but there are great English singers; they are to be heard, but it is in every other country under the sun. These great artists do not think it worth while to live in this country. The idol of Austrian opinion is an Englishman. You have never heard him in Leeds, and I venture to say, from my experience, that you never will. (Laughter.) The two greatest dramatic singers in the British Empire and in the world are in Leeds this week, but they do nob appear in this country more than two days in a year. “You have in this country that superannuated, obsolete, beastly, disgutsting, noisy, horrid method or making music in sheer abundance known as tho brass band. (Laughter.) This grinding, disgruntling music. There is plenty of the gramophone. Look at tho profits of the gramophone companies. Oh! I don’t mind the profits, I've got shares in them all. (Loud laughter.) I make records, but I have never heard one yet I considered to be music. Then think of all the incompetent musicians in every cafe and hotel in tho country, and in broadcasting there is distorted music committed by all sorts of orchestras, making the whole of life wretched as a result of this filthy sound. But for real music, what on earth have you got to show in this country? Germany has Kid opera houses and 210 permanent orchestras, Italy—poor old Italy under the yolk of Mussoliniseventy opera houses, Paris five m the city alone; London, with 8,000,000 of people, has not an opera house, not a. permanent institution. There are thousands of people who do not like opera. In most cases the chances are that the opera they had seen was badly done, so badly that no one would like it. In Leeds you have never heard ot opera done well, not once. (Loud laughter.) “ Opera properly done is the most appropriate medium of conveying not only music, but other arts to the unsophisticated mind of the average person Opera is an amalgam, a combination of all the arts. You cannot have great singers rallying round the the music life of tho country without opera, yet I fear that England in ten years’ time will not have even a skeleton of the musical life it has today, and to-day it only exists in attenuated form.”