VOCAL MUSIC

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6404, 18 October 1923, Page 8

VOCAL MUSIC

,PLACE IN NATIONAL LIFE A subscriber writes as follows: — One evening not so very long ago I chanced to be in the neighbourhood of the local showgrounds. A number of youths, one of whom was armed with some dread weapon of music, had occupied the stand misnamed “grand.” They were entertaining themselves and startling the countryside by singing—if that word may be used to describe the fearful din—the raucous bellowings. Don’t let it be imagined that I want somebody to “run in” the gang of noise-makers. I desire nothing of the kind. Better 'for them to yell in Herriesville than stew in a frowsy saloon. The ideas suggested to my mind as I fled from the place were not even faintly tinged with the desire for vengeance. I thought what a pity it was that >the leather 7 lunged fraternity could not be metomorphised into an angelic t choir. Herriesville then would be the very gate of Heaven. At present, alas, with this and with that, ’tis a howling high road to Hades. Whose fault was it, I wondered, that these youths were content to bellow like bulls when they might have sung like angels. It is curious that the inherent powers of a people may slumber for centuries. There is an idea now that the English are not musical —that they must import' their music from Germany or Italy or Russia. And there seems to be reason underlying the idea. I doubt if in this town of more than two thousand people one could find fifty able to sing by printed note. How many are able to sing at sight a part in a simple harmony ? It is difficult to credit that for centuries England took the lead in music. In the Encyclopaedia Britannica I read, “From the end of the 10th century music was in England in advance of other nations until its rise in Flanders in the 15th. when still our forefathers kept abreast of their contemporaries.” Again, “In England the lyrical drama found an early home.” The reference is to the 16th and 17th centuries, when musical genius of the highest order had a flowering time in our Motherland. Going further back I find this—“So devoted to their song-tunes were the English people in the later Saxon times that churchmen, as is well* attested, would often sing these to attract the public to divine worship, and after the Norman settlement it was a frequent custom to write words of hymns to fit secular tunes. This is interesting —“The earliest piece of music for several voices that has been found in any country is an English ‘six men’s 'song,’ contained in a manuscript which best judges assign to the period prior to 1240.” It is a fact that in Tudor and Stewart times it was a regular custom for social gatherings to entertain themselves with the singing of part songs of various kinds. In the diary of old Samuel Pepys are many references to the vocal performances of himself and his friends.

Is there any remedy for the cacophonous caterwauling of the hobbledehoys? For the present generation of them, probably not. But much might be done for those to follow. One means of working a reformation is the school. In-every school—primary and advanced—singing should form a large part of the daily programme. The authorities at present are merely trifling with the matter. It is possible to go into a large school and find not one of the staff qualified in any serions sense of the word to teach singing. The tom-fool system of expecting one individual to teach everything under the sun from cow-spanking to the classics still prevails. This fatuous futility is one of the causes working together. with others to produce that Herriesville noise-making. We need in our schools competent teachers of vocal music—specialists in music.