MUSICAL EDUCATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20924, 14 July 1931, Page 10

MUSICAL EDUCATION.

VALUE OF TRADITION. SOUND FOUNDATION NEEDED. [from our own correspondent.] DARGAVILLE, Monday. A message to students of music in the Dominion /"was conveyed by Dr. D. Vaughan Thomas, of Trinity College of Music, London, who is at present in Dargaville. "What strikes one in travelling over large parts of the British Empire as I do," said Dr. Thomas, "is the widespread interest in music as compared with Iho conditions some years ago and one always is impressed by the great difficulties which confront the profession and the students. " I have been greatly impressed with many individual candidates," Dr. Thomas continued, " and I sometimes feel_ sorry that they are not able to settle in the great art centres, for one feels that they have the ability to rise to considerable heights of accomplishment and of imagination. It must be difficult, however, for such students so far removed from the great centres of music to grasp what is called modernism in art.

" The new language spoken must be meaningless without sound foundation in the old traditions and in the classics," said Dr. Thomas. "It may trap the young and they may be intrigued by its newness, but it can be said ,that no music is able to survive the test of years unless that learning which gives it birth has passed on the old traditions. I am dealing with the creative side of music, and I would impress upon young New Zealand students this grandeur in the great principles of art, lest they become lost in the maze of modernism and grope in the dark."