BRITISH MUSIC.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 6 January 1923, Page 4

BRITISH MUSIC.

ENCOURAGED IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA. At a meeting of representative musicians and amateur lovers of the ? n re^ nt'y Mr- W. H. Foote, A.l^c.M., conductor of the orchestra vVw Eider Conservatorium of Music, Adelaide, spoke on the question of British music. He pronounced himself as opposed at all times to the alleged necessity of foreign supervision. Had they gone through a dreadful war and emerged victorious to see the old state ot aftairs revived, with the foreign element at the top in everything? Pretty, we'l the first stand against it had been taken in the production of opera in Enghshm London in 1907, after which the jjriLish school had begun to assert' itself.^ He was not proposing to ostracise the foreigner, but he insisted that 'die native-born musician could carry on alone, and during his long stay in Adelaide he had worked on that i principle at the Elder Conservatormm. (Applause.) They had on the staff j there Professor Harold Davies, brother of Dr. Watford Davies, now newly ! knighted, who had urged on the people the value of the old English folk-songs. I Then there was Mr. Reimann, an Aus-tralian-horn musician, who had worked with signal success- to develop piano playing in Adelaide, and while representing the Elder Conservatorium had engaged him (the speaker) in London to settle in Adelaide to develop woodwind playing, and generally to found and build up the South Australian orchestra. The result was that Adelaide possessed both male and female students who were now proficient on tne reeds and horns, so that some 50 players, who were behindhand eighteen months ago, could now perform ovew tures and symphonies. (Applause.) Indeed, the orchestra had drawn large audiences, and he also conducted the Tramway Military Band, which had advanced rapidly. Technique as the basis of every virtue in playing any instrument had been insisted on by him throughout, and the result had been eminently satisfactory. ) I I