SWEET MUSIC.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 12863, 23 May 1905, Page 6

SWEET MUSIC.

Sweet mews a'nid m'usie aro Myuiioinynibus in the minds of most (pecjplo in the abstract (says a Dome journal). We talk of "music of the solul," we afclmit the "truth of the okl' saying 1 abomt m.usic hawing charms to .sioat ! he tlie savage breast., and we mate 'jokes afcoiit some persons couifiiisi'n'g uoisc with muisic. All that is very well, but one can scarcely refrain from a'»king- whether we are not Joking oair oi^i'g-inal ooncdption of the m»use. Tn plain langmage, are \\&— t<he anlajbrity <^f us, an*d apart from the tjueslion of c'ulUirU — mistaking noise for tmjlisio nowadays ?

If you pass along- a street anfd 'hear someone sin«ing- in his or Hier own drawii?gi-room, what do yevu Jimjcl ? Dq yon.l iiiKi sweet, soft atrainfc; that steal insitlirtusly jj n it<o yciur vory s»o)ul a'nld enthrall ydu ? No ! You hear a ''top*' mote and a strong- voice : the tdchbiique of tihe art may ho perfectly o'bseiived, but the result is not wfuHiu in 'it« old sense. Wie Ihin'k more of e\te'n.ding uur ra'n/g-p, the conHpass of the voice, I'htL'n of producing- sweet sounds.

"The sweetest irtusic 1 ever 'heard, " said one of the audience at a recent concert, ''was a soing- given by a man alia homely party; we hatl to gjatther roiu'nfd him, his voice boi'ng- l^o low aiikl soft to carry far, Mut it was so s^eet that we were aJI in ecstasy, d >-hall never forovt it !" Let 'us look at the matter dispas'sio.li-ately aiifd ndk ourselves if there is 'not mlich iriit'h m the above observations !

Ami hwe is another faiuJt into which most of us fall : Wo lock to the uxocut/ion rather than to the S'oiulnkls procJuced. *We sit and listen to a lolirr o piece full of difficult passages but with little sweetness tin it, and wo say that it is gra'rtd. 'We <lo the warn« as an L-ng-raivcr whio loiVks at a steel 011gra,ving ; he examines t'hu workmanship, the difficulties which the workman has cleverly overcome, anW he says that fhe picture is v .^loiiclW piece of delineation. 'He is thiulkjtirg* of his craft, not of tho -picture us a seeno in jiat,ure. Just now theoro is a gjrowi'ny 'belief that -we are becoming nicrre of a musical nation ; 'people take more interest in all kiiKls of irvuttic, fnqm. the otpora to t,he 'barrel or^an-.' Let us taike care fchat we do 'not dljil'ain a perverse view of melody !