MR. MASSEY’S VOICE

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 1 June 1925, Page 8

MR. MASSEY’S VOICE

A PERMANENT RECORD. KEPT INj BRITISH; MUSEUM. Future generations will be able to listen to the tones of the late Mr. Massey’s voice and observe his methods of oratory. It is not merely because it can, be heard on gramophone records now purchasable, but the mould from which those records have- been struck is being preserved in the British Museum. The April issue of The Gramophone, a magazine published in England, states that the Gramophone Company miakem of “His Master’s Voice” records, have deposited in the museum the matrices of records of the speaking and singing voices of a. number of famous people-. Among those lately stored there- are the* matrices of utterances by the King and Queen and the Prince of Wales-, and of the address - delivered by Mr. Massey on the British .Empire-. From the account given by the. magazine, it appears that only about 30 persons- have- so far been thus immortalised. The -collection was. begun in 190(5, with the ma’,trice® of records by Patti, Melba , Caruso, Tamag.no, Cardinal Bourne, and Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock). In the- next two or three years followed those- of Lord Kelvin, Lord Roberts, Sir Beerbohmi Tree, Tet-trazini, and one or two other speakers- or singers. The war period saw a long gap in the- deposits, but in 1921 ca-me- a- further instalment, including Mr Winston (Churchill, Sir Ernest Shackle-ton, Mr. ,Lloyd 1 George, Mr Asquith (now the ElarL of Oxford), and the ceremony of the- burial of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey. Quite- recently the voices of Their Majesties and our late Prime Minister have been, added. It in interesting to note, moreover,. that the decision to- preserve Mr. Massey’s vocal tones has not been occasioned by any burst of enthusiasm: consequent upon his death, for it was made and acted upon before it could have been kiibwn in England that hist illeness was likely to terminate fatally. Since the advent of the gramophone, one has- often heard regret expressed that the world has no means of forming an idea what the voices of, say, Julius- Caesar, or William the Conqueror, or Henry VI 11., or Queen Elizabeth, were like. Future generations will have no such grievance as regards ■] great men of to-day for, if ever occasioh requires it, and the records- of ] Mr. Massey now In circulation should 1 have perished, they can at any time 1 be resuscitated by new mouldings from ! the matrix in the national collection. 1