The Bey H. R. Haweis.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5278, 7 June 1895, Page 2

The Bey H. R. Haweis.

MUSIC AND NOISE.

The people of Christchurch are, presumably, more addicted to music than to poetry, for the audience at the Theatre Boyal last night, when the Bey H. B. Haweis lectured on " Music and Noise," was considerably larger than tbat on the evening on which be spoke of Tennyson. The lecture, or causerie, was more theoretical, more abstruse, thau thoae which had preceded it. It was, however, never obßcure. Mr Haweis gave more than one humourous warning that his hearers would find such and such portions of his discourse tremendously abstruse, but hia treatment of those portions wes wonderfully lucid for all that ; in faot, as a clear, forcible, presentation of a subject, in familiar language aud yet with perfect accuracy, the lecture waa a model. It was a fascinating discourse, too; the audience had never a dull moment. It was illuminated by wit and humour, aa one would imagine every discourse by Mr Haweis must be, for, like the Scotchman of the old story— who, by the way, is not usually regarded as a type of his race — he " jokaa spon-taneous-like." It contained matter for thought and reflection, for Mr Haweis is a thinker, as well as a musician, a critic and a humourist. In this lecture he had the assistance of what he facetiously described as hia Orchestra— » -violin, a tuning fork, a penny whietle, a glass of water, a blackboard and chalk, and the gong of the heathen Chinee. He denied the tight of the English to be considered a musical people, by-the-bye, on the ground that no people could be deemed musical who allowed themselves to be Bummoned to dinner by such an instrument as the gong. In introducing his subject he remarked that what made music bo interesting was that it was the creation of man. There waß, he said, no music in Nature. Nature provided the sculptor with models, the artist with subjects, with the gorgeous hues of sky and flower and plumage; but .for the musician she did nothing. There were musical sounds in nature, but they were not music, any more than the gold in the quartz vein was minted money. The poets, with their rhapsodies about the grand harmonies of the sea, the music of the winds, and the songs of birds were largely answerable for the delusion that there was mu.io in Nature ; but Snakepere, the greatest poet of all, had gone right where others had gone wrong, and said even of the much- vaunted nightingale, "The nightingale, did he but sing by day, when every goose is cackling, would be thought no better a musioian than the wren." The lecturer denied the title of music to the songs of birds, contending that what caused people to find in them the musio of nature was the influence of intoxicating surroundings, the association of ideas. He illustrated the difference between musio and noise by the gong and the violin, the former producing a noise— a number of notes so mixed together as to be indistinguishable and inextricable ; the latter giving forth a number ot notes ! mixed, indeed, but with one sufficiently powerful to dominate the others. Speaking ' of the timbre or quality of sound, he paid a tribute to the great German Helmholtz, who discovered that the difference of the quality of musical sounds waß due to the presence of mysterious undertones hidden in the principal note. In this connection Mr Haweis indulged in a little moralising, a piquant comparison of various kinds of human oharacter with the quality of the toneß of different musical instruments. The fascination of the human voice and the violin was due, he explained, to their complexity of tone. The first part of the lecture was ended by what the speaker styled an experiment in violin sound, a very tastefully-played solo. In the second part he showed how musical sound physically affected the nervous Bystem, how the vibrations set up in the drum of the ear were carried by the nerves throughout every part of the body. He concluded with a striking demonstration, by means of blackboard diagrams, of his own discovery of the metaphysical or mental reason why sound affects the nervous system. Sound, he said, manipulated by the art of music, possesses outwardly all the attributes which emotion or feeling possesses inwardly and unexpressed. Elation and depression, velocity, intensity and variety in unity (mixed feelings) were the states of emotion, and could be expressed by sound. Emotion and Bound were wedded by the art of music. This evening Mr Haweis will give his last lecture in Christchurch on the question, "Marriage: Is it a failure P"