MUSIC IN SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19780, 29 October 1927, Page 14

MUSIC IN SCHOOLS.

NEED OF CULTIVATION.

VIEWS OF THE SUPERVISOR.

"DANGEROUS" MODERN MUSIC.

" Wherever there is any progress of intelligence, we find music with it," said Mr. E. Douglas Tayler, supervisor of musical education to the h,ducation Department in a lecture to school teachers yesterday afternoon. "It is an art that has grown up with the human race and it has a wonderful grip on us. A gramophone or a piano graces nearly every home, there is music at every public gathering. They even play music at you while you eat. And then, in recent years, there has been the amazing spread of wireless.

" Music is one of the great forces in life to-day and it is not a force we can afford to leave out of account in our system of education. Music is a means of expressing an overflow of happiness, and as such it cultivates happiness in the listener. The music written in a sadder vein has come to the rescue of humanity on more than one occasion, providing an emotional outlet.

Music had immense vitalising powers, continued Mr Tayler. Speaking materially this was one of the great uses for music in schools. It gave the children energy. Care had to be taken that they were instructed in the best class of music, music which would help to beautify life. It could rise superior to environment. In the industrial areas of England, in ugly and grimy towns, beauty had been created by the establishment of the finest choral societies and bands in the world. Music in schools at first should be purely recreative. Every opportunity should be taken to teach sight reading, and the children should be given an understanding of the fine national songs and some of the more simple classics. " But music has destructive as well as constructive powers," said Mr. Tayler. " Good music improves human nature; it has a refining power. But there is a poisonous and dangerous element creeping into the popular music of to-day. It is not in all our popular music, but some of it must have its bad effect on the human mind. There is that powerful discordant element, and one can only imagine the state of mind of young people who dance to it continually. These tunes catch you with a laugh. They have their humorous element, and that is where they are dangerous." The speaker demonstrated the point with a gramophone record of a tune having something to do with a graveyard. " Did you ever hear anything more alcoholic?" he said.

Mr. Tayler paid a tribute to the work that was being done at the Auckland Training College. There future teachers were given an appreciation of good music which they could pass on to their pupils. He also thought that wireless was playing an enormous part in awakening a desire for more and better music.