DECAY OF MUSIC

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 December 1936, Page 12

DECAY OF MUSIC

SMALL FAMILY BLAMED LONDON, October 24. Broadcasting was not so great a danger to the personal production of music by amateurs as was the present smallness of the average family and the settled disposition to seek amusement outside the home, said Sir Landon Ronald, Principal of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, yesterday. He was speaking at the annual concert of pupils of the school and the prize-giving at the Mansion House, The Lady Mayoress, Lady Vincent, distributed the prizes. Mr. Archibald Galloway, chairman of the Music Committee of the Corporation of London, presided. Sir Landon, who declared that he did not believe that music could flourish on a basis of a handful of performers and a multitude of listeners, said: “If I were charged with the task of re-establishing personal music-mak-ing in the home, I would be less eager to prohibit broadcasting than to abolish the' motor-car, dancing and bridge. “Even then I should be left with the obstacle presented by the small family, for, if it be' true that one swallow does not make a summer, It is also true that one child cannot make a

family circle.” The mechanisation of music, by gramophone and broadcasting, continued Sir Landon, had produced a vastly more experienced and intelligent generation, musically speaking, than its predecessors. Referring to what was called “modern music,” he said; “I get suspicious when even the smaller men among the moderns cannot write music which can be understood by the multitude. “I will bend my knee and raise my hat when somebody brings me along another Chopin, another Schumann, and another. Rachmaninov. Then- I believe we shall return to personal

performance and the making of music in our homes as we used to in years gone by." Sir Landon awarded his prize for the student he considered the most likely to distinguish himself in the musical profession to Joshua Glazier, member of the 8.8. C. orchestra.