MECHANICAL MUSIC MYTH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 143, 18 June 1936, Page 10

MECHANICAL MUSIC MYTH

An Aid to Enjoyment

i OFTEN a meaningless slogan can win I an election. The erroneous catch cry of “mechanical music ’ has played an important part m Ihe last-waning campaign against modern aids to musical enjoyment, writes Keith Barry in the Sydney “Daily lelegraph ’. \\ hen the gramophone first, burst on afi astonished woild, elderly pessimists foretold the death ol concerts. Iheir gloomy forebodings were renewed on the advent ol broadcasting. Yet concerts have flourished since reproduced music became popular I’he present London conceit season, just concluding, is said to he the most successful evei known. Radio music is not mechanical' . music, any more than is gramophone music. Mechanical music is music made by a machine.* In the radio and gramophone the music is made by flesh and blood artists I entirely agree with the distinguished English pianist, Anderson Tyrer, that the radio and gi a mophone have bon the means oi bringing good music to a much wider audience’ than was possible hetorc. There is no doubt nt all that the average person (and especially the average young person), is more knowleclgable, musically speaking, than the average person ol pre-radio days In the days bolore reproduced music, it was necessary to visit a big city to hear big orchestras and celebrity artists. Nowadays you can hoar them all day and every day, by merely twisting a knob One ot the delusions associated with the. early days of gramophone and radio was the idea that there was no longer any need for individual tuition in music As well to argue that no one need learn to write because print-

mg presses regularly turn out books* In this hard, cold world you seldom get more out ol anything than you put into it. 11 you want to get something worth while out ol gramophone and radio music you have to spend a certain amount ol time in learning w hat music ieally is In other words, the arrival ol icpru* duced iii’imc is a signal, not lor the cessation <1 musical study, but lor in. icascd activity in it Ihat tins lact is being realised n obvious from the large number of music students in Australia and el so where. You don't have your child taught Shakespeare at school so that be may be an actor but to enable him to enjoi

iho art ol literature. Similarly yoi don’t have .your child taught music sc that he may be a concert artist, ol even, that he may perform for the admiration ol the I fiends. You add music to his studies so that he, too, may kind comfort in culture and have an appreciation ol things that matter. Away with thi< myth about mechanical music! In its place substitute the idea that in the gramophone and the radio w c have two marvellous missionary aids to music, aids that have already helped music to a greater degree than anything known before.

A certain clergyman, on being asked whether his teaching was m keeping with modern science, replied, 'I don’t know. I have not seen the morning paper.”—Sir Norman Angell.