TOO MUCH MUSIC.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 18, 26 February 1914, Page 3

TOO MUCH MUSIC.

OFFENBACH WITH ONE'S CHOP. England was once under the reproach of being the least musical country of Europe. , The result of this was that we were starved for melody. There was so little professional music that amateur music became a horrible plague, comments Twells Brex in an English exchange. Miserable children, whose musical bent did not even rise to the orchestration of a tooth-comb, had to endure agonies in compulsory lessons on the piano, the violin, the human larynx, or any other instrument that occurred to the fancy of their parents. They repaid those agonies a hundredfold on friends and relatives bidden to entertainment under false pretences. I cannot remember any gathering of my youth exempt from these tortures. DRAWING-ROOM ORDEALS. Musicians are at least as rare as artists; but at one time we were all supposed to be musical, though' our throats were no more blithe than the bull frog's, and our touch no daintier than the blacksmith's. The hostess would say to the eldest Miss Binlcs: "Of course, you have brought your music?" And the eldest Miss Binks — who had ben practicing all day the three items of her Spanish Inquisition — would reply, "Oh, please don't ask me; I have brought the wrong music-case, and they are all things that I have never played.'' Increasing pressure and increasing reluctance, until that delicate moment- when the artist feared that cajolery might cease and the audience hoped that for once Miss Binks meant it. And then we all sat with rapt faces while half a dozen unmusical people wreaked their vilest on us—and at the end of each outrage, we. cried—in voices that surprised the very utterers: "Oh, thank you so much—w'on't you give us another?" And they invariably did. It was like those tribal battles wherein quarter is neither given nor asked. It was probably the cause of -those strange people who will sometimes tell you that a.ll music is anathema to them. They acquired the. hostility at one guinea per term. _ The times have changed. The gramophone has supplanted the family piano-of-all-work (and that Thing, whose name even I write with awe-, the harmonium) . Unmusical children are no longer bludgeoned with an art as dull to their souls as the differential calculus. We have at last joined the Continental nations in the belief that music is a talent and not an elemental necessity like' reading and' arithmetic. But no sooner have, we ceased to encourage amateurs, who knew no better, to murder music in'the home than we are permitting musicians, who do know better,, to bleed music to death in public. MUSIC DURING MEALS. Once on a time restaurant music was a gentle amenity. Orchestras were bidden behind curtained grilles; their-dis-course reached us languorously, an undercurrent to our chatter, leading us insensibly into the high seas of romance. Nowadays ■ the musicians blare at us like those steam organs, at penny gaffs. We take our soup staccato to a crazy ragtime; we bolt our fish to a frenzied dance; our selle de moutori goes" clammily cold in the hushed, andante of a solo by the chef d 'orehestre; our ice melts in the fever of a hectic march. We have come here to dine, to talk to an old friend, to snatch a lotus hour out of the hurly-burly of the day. Nothing, indeed, would charm our pleasant meeting so much as the croon of soft 'cellos, the muted cry of hidden violins, low cadences of the piano; but nothing makes us so urgent to hurry and be gone as this musical tumult, which makes the dinner hour the most nerve-racking of all the 24. There is a restaurant that was one of the pleasantest places -imaginable. It lies between City and West, so business and pleasure can meet halfway at its, tables. It is as typieally English and honest-priced an hostelry as exists. It is one of the last of such places to welcome you with the English waiter. Thus it is packed every day. Yet, on this contented clientele—many of them business men who run up from the City to this quieter 'corner for discussion of affairs —the management thrust the new fashion of the orchestra! If it has attracted new custom, I wonder how muck. of the old it has frightened away? My own favourite table and waiter were too near to the typhoon of the musicians. I made my old friend a sorrowful farewell. His maledictions against music might have made Wagner tiirn in his grave. "Don't you think you art the only fjent who can't stand that of a much-moved man.) '' Half of my old customers have left!" HIDEOUS CLAMOUR IN RESTAURANT'S. Real musicians themselves must surely more than any of us deplore this blatant din, this vulgarism of their art, this competition between bawling waiters, shouting diners, and long-haired orchestrians as to who shall prevail. Go into any of these popular restaurants where the orchestra dominates and listen whether I exaggerate. Watch the people who have made a rendezvous for a social meeting and are compelled t6 shout at each other like mariners in a gale. You may wonder what a Solomon Islander might think of our civilised racket—the excess of light, the excess of hustle, and, worst of all, this > Walpurgis of brute noise. And not only restaurants, cafes, and hotels are ridden ■ by it, but every public banquet. * Some of our ironists have laughed that we English know no other way of honouring a man than of dining liim publicly. It was recently urged that a more graceful tribute than a banquet might have been paid to the genius of M. Anatole France. But surely the last thing for which civilised men so foregather is the actual dinner? The meal is oiilv a pretext for the meeting, a ruse to get so many men, so many achievers, so many warm minds, together for a few kindling hours. The menu, the wines, the lights, the music should be only so many springs cunningly set to trap us into the real feast oi the evening. But what a Barmecide banquet for minds, wits, and tongues is the modern public dinner! For even as you sit to the table the orchestra full-blooded enough for the Albert. Hall) thunders a raging tune; your introductions to your mess-mates are lost in the clamour; it is only when the riot of the overture ceases that you are able to-speak to your neighbour. You get as far as, "It really looks like an oldfashioned wint— —" when bang goes the next piece—and piano, 'cellos, violins, cymbals, and whatnots are engaged in their Cup-tie again. MUSIC THE DRUDGE. And then follow the speeches, that terrible insurgency of those to whom Nature has denied eloquence. And immediately after tlie speeches the musicians take the floor again. As far as

fellowship and conversation have had their chance, wit, sally, or anecdote drawn their bow, your tables might as well have been laid at a massed band contest at the Crystal Palace. The objection of many of us to this craze that we cannot eat a meal without a tornado of music is based on no soulless philistinism, but rather on a repugnance that the most divine of all arts should be made such a "drudge of the restaurateur that we cannot now hear a string band without thinking of German waiters. If eating is to be idealised conversation is the best grace that can beseem it. Paradox though it be, the soul of- mankind has always made some of its brightest emanations at the din-ner-table; the bravest and wittiest of imageries have leapt into utterance over the nuts and wine. If ever the tongue is unloosed, good wines, soft lights, soft music are its inspiration and accompaniment. But who can converse at a modern public dinner-table? Happy enough the man, with the voice like a megaphone, who can give his order to the waiter. *