MUSICAL TRENDS.

Waikato Times, Volume 112, Issue 18703, 1 August 1932, Page 3

MUSICAL TRENDS.

OPINION OF EXAMINER. A REACTION FROM EXTREME FORMS. Modern music with its fantastic forms and grotesque harmonies was rapidly losing favour with people in the United States, England, and the Continent, said Mr Ronald Ch,amberlain, lecturer and examiner to the Trinity College of Music, London, who arrived iu Wellington by the Monowal to conduct examinations for his college in the South Island. Mr Chamberlain said in an interview with the Wellington Dominion, that he had noticed a distinct falling away from the ultra-modern forms, and people were returning to the more rational music, whioh. was based on classical models. In his own mind Mr Chamberlain said there was no doubt that there was a definite reaction from the more grotesque and extreme forms, and a return to a purer and more natural style of expression. Ideas of representing musically an express train in motion, or a factory in full blast certainly bad their attraction for the moment, but they could not live. Muslo That Will Last. The only music that would last, he continued, was musio that was based on styles that had gone before. The reason for tills was that the harmonies of the great masters were built up definitely on mathematical and scientific principles. The science of aooustlos showed that certain combinations of sounds, in a definite ratio to each other, blended and were naturally pleasing and satisfying to the human ear. But this was ignored in many of the moderns. They paid no regard to form or recognised style, while their harmonies were merely constructed whimsically or arbitrarily. Such musio could not possibly last. Musio had to grow or evolve on the old forms, he said. In so far as the new forms repudiated the old, they themselves would be repudiated. The new music was definitely not a branch of the old tree, to speak figuratively. Many of the moderns were trying to become separate plants altogether, and function quite independently. Two Great Moderns. There were a few, however, who had not done this, and who based their work on the classics. Elgar and Strauss could be numbered among these. Theirs was true music, and would undoubtedly outlast the socalled moderns. Mr Chamberlain examined for the Trinity College in New Zealand last year. After leaving on his return Home in December he spent three busy months in England, examining, lecturing and giving concerts there. At the beginning of April he left for the United States, where he examined in New York, Boston and other East Coast cities. This is the first time that the college has conducted examinations in the States. The number of entries was very gratifying, and they were bound to grow. The examination system had now become .truly international. .