TOO MUCH JOY. Music for the Masses.

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 256, 27 May 1905, Page 6

TOO MUCH JOY. Music for the Masses.

THE Wellington Corporation charges a particularly stiff rent for the letting of the Town Hall for concert purposes That is one way of stimulating the popular taste for music But it also acts on the principle that you can't have too much of a good thing We take tha.t to be the principle. It is the only one we can discover at short notice for its practice of la.te That practice is first to let your hall at a good, swingeing rate, and then, on the appointed evening, to advertise a free brass band performance on the rotunda across the street from the concert hall. * * * In this way the festive Corporation manages to kill two* birds with the one stone. It starts into rivalry with the concert in its own hall by tempting people to stay away and enjoy the free show over the road. It also breaks the hearts and rums the tempers of the concert neo^le — especially those who pay the cxcs — by drowning: the inside programme with the blare of the brass and the thunder of the drum from the rotunda If you have tried to ship- under this sort of opposition. you will see eve to eye with us on this question. We haven't sung ourselves, but we have tried to listen amid this medley of dissonance — the impossible mixture of sound from outside and in. Imagine the feelings of the crowd who' have paid to get a musical treat. * * * Now, we dont want to pump cold water on the Wellington Garrison Band, seeing that the Free Lance stirred it into activity in the openair performance line. Previously, it was a missing number Since we awoke it to a sense of duty, it has been pretty often on the rotunda What we do want to drive home is the plain, outstanding fact that that band rotunda is in the worst possible place. * • • There is no place for the public to sit or even stand m safety to enjoy the open-air music. They have to huddle together in the open street, blocking the entrance to the Fire Brigade Station, and, with trains screaming or trams rattling past them at very frequent intervals, to the serious peril of life and limb. The other side of the question — the hardship inflicted on concert patrons and performers in the near-by Town Hall — has already been dealt with. In short, a band rotunda in such i place is a public nuisance. * * » Open-air band performances m suitable positions are deserving of every encouragement the Corporation can offer Now, why not shift that out-of-place rotunda to> Oriental Bay, or Kelburne, or some other site where room may be found to

place seats for the people, or to let them stroll round ? Let the band performances go a-head, but study the comfort and convenience of pcr T formers and listeners alike. Why not make more frequent use of the Basin Reserve, for instance? It is the most central and suitable place. We commend the idea to the Garrison Band, the Central Mission Band, and the other bands of the city^ And the City Fathers will do well and wisely to at once shift that band rotunda from Jervois Quay, if they don't want somebody to b» killed by a passing tram. In any case, they needn't play off the band against the concert in their own Town Hall.