NEGLECT OF MUSIC

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3182, 26 May 1932, Page 3

NEGLECT OF MUSIC

" The widespread nebglect and disregard for music shown by all those in high places " in England was deplored by Viscountess Snowden when she presented the wards at the annual prize distribution of Trinity College of Music at Queen's Hall recently. " This is the only great civQised country which has no Ministry of Fine Arts," she said. " The Government in this country has not, until the last year or two, done anything to subsidise this great art, though it has purchased an infinite number of fine pictures for our benefit. Music is still regarded as a luxury, and not as a necessity. In my judgment it is not a luxury, but a necessity of our being." Lady Snowden referred to the hard struggle which many musicians were having, and said that the introduction of mechanical music had had something to do with their distress. " The cinemas are dispensing with their music and giving us the artificial thing," she said.

" Another reason for the distress is that music is over-taxed in this country. Among other things, I am interested in opera, and I would like to tell you that in the last two years the State has taken from the Covent Garden Opera Company £23,000 and £25,000 respectively in the form of taxation. That falls very heavily on musical enterprise of all kinds."