MUNICIPAL MUSIC

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 232, 1 October 1928, Page 6

MUNICIPAL MUSIC

COST WOT ONLY CONSIDERATION. (To the Editor.) The City Council discussion on the cost to the ratepayers of municipal music is doubt- ■ less proper and in place. At the same it is not good that music should be measured too rigidly by the standards of pounds, gtiUl; Wf| and pence. There are many arts that for the few because the gift is needed to appreciate, the purse, education and opportune* to enjoy and understand. Some of the arts are closed books to thousands, but music k the art for all and within the compreheneinn of all. It belongs to the earliest instincts of man. It is a language incapable of expressing anything coarse or impure. It has the pow« to sway a man or a nation in peace or war It has been a tremendous factor—not abstnet, but active in the destinies of the nations. It is the essence of order and leads to all that is good, just and beautiful. It is our fair and glorious gift from God. From the earliest ages music has been the sweet companion of labour; the rude song of the boatman the shepherd on the hill, the ploughman, the milk* maid. Every trade, occupation, act and scent of life has long had its own especial music. There are many who consider life in this poetwar period to be peculiarly prosaic and mer. cenary. If that is so our need for music is the more imperative. To appreciate science and art requires training, but music is in as all to understand, a language that he who runs may read. Let its real worth not be mismeasured, and may our City Fathers, who have done well in providing so goodly a place for music in the city's administration, keep well in mind its essential worth when takinp count of the material cost. T. T. GARLAND