“FROZEN MUSIC.”

Hokitika Guardian, 11 May 1929, Page 7

“FROZEN MUSIC.”

“We are most of us sensitive to beautiful sounds, and even those who are quite innocent of the technique of great musical compositions are able to derive keen pleasure from their peifonnance, because off the ease with which musir is communicated to our senses. This is only as it should be. for if a supreme artist has enshrined in a work of art a large part of ihe thoughts and feelings that are shared by men and women, these should be felt and understood by his audience. But to understand what someone sajs we must know something of the language in which he speaks. We have seen that in the cast Of most of the arts their language is familiar to us, and in music it is a language that is so elemental and universal that we seem to know its alphabet without being taught. There is even something ot this kind in architecture—a something that is at the root of saying that architecture is frozen music—the feeling ot pleasure and awe that comes over us when we enter beneath the vaulted roof of one Of our great Cathedrals, and that rises even more readily when we see a noble ruin, where the building has lost all trace of its mundane purpose, and in its decay seems to be prilled and to wear an ethereal crown of untarnished beauty »-Mr. Walter fl. Godfrey, in “The Story of Architecture in England.”