THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, October 1, 1940. FALSE VALUES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24417, 1 October 1940, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, October 1, 1940. FALSE VALUES

There was so much of sound commonsense in the remarks addressed by the president of the Music Teachers’ Association, Mr G. W. Johnstone, to the recently formed Students’ Club on Saturday evening that it is to be hoped they will be read and appreciated by many more than those who heard them. It is easy enough to speak of lost or degraded values in a world afflicted as the world is at the present time, but it is perhaps less than easy to discern the way to recovery Mr Johnstone’s belief is that both religion and art, which he rightly describes as having been necessary to man right down the ages, will have to turn back in their tracks in a search for simplicity, and he sees in the resolve of the members of this new student body to meet in each other’s homes, “ and by so doing bring music back to the place it should never have left,” the beginnings of a movement which may have a wide and beneficial influence. There can be no doubt that where the radio has taken charge in the average home there has been a tendency to neglect the pianoforte or other musical instrument. That development would be less harmful than it is proving if certain other conditions were satisfied. But the truth is that the radio produces for the mass and caters not at all for the individual. Its outpourings, where they are not controlled, must affect the young mind, if only by discouraging individual performance and by confronting it, to a large extent, with ready-made standards. It is, of course, not to be argued that all broadcast performance is bad. It may be extraordinarily good in its class —even where the class itself is essentially bad, or at any rate a good deal less than elevating or instructive. There is'absolute justification for Mr Johnstone’s strictures on “ alleged music ” heard over the air which “ can only accentuate a suggestion of anaemia or barbarity,” and for his impatient condemnation of a policy which prevents or discourages the importation of musical instruments and sheet music while the Government itself secures huge revenues from broadcasting. Any movement which is designed to encourage a love for the better forms of musical expression, especially among the younger generation, should be aided rather than hindered, for it is difficult to see how else the abandonment of false values for true, in the cultural sense, can be assisted.