MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18404, 10 June 1925, Page 7

MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE.

BENEFITS OF THE GRAMOPHONE. (raOlt OtTB OWN COEBZSPONDENT.) LONDON, April 24. "The attitude of musical people towardsthe gramophone-was for many years nothing less than criminally dull-witted," said Mr Compton Mackenzie, in. a lecture on "Tho Gramophone: its Past, Present, and Future," given afft meeting of the Musical Association. "Here was something," Mr Mackenzie proceeded, "that could do for music what printing had done for literature, and, whether out of priggishness, or Stupidity, or laziness, the musical public allowed it to be exploited by commercial interests with as little concern as if they were watching the exploitation of a patent medicine." This lack of interest was all but,fatal, and even now he did not know how, except by Divine providence, we had escaped seeing the gramophone and everything, connected with it as rapidly and as dreadfully debased as the cinematograph. However, we had escaped, and now, when the recording companies were producing every month more good music than. they formerly produced in five years, they were never so prosperous. Moreover, they had the satisfaction of knowing that the production of good recorded music in England exceeded every month hy far the united production of the rest of the world. Not merely was the best music produced, but it was produced in the best way. Nothing that was being done by wealthy men and women to cultivate the public taste in other arts could compare with what the public was doing to cultivate its own taste in music by means of the gramophone. The effect of the gramophone could not fail to be unimaginably great. It had already killed the tyranny of the piano, and : he could not but feel a beautiful justice in its outstanding failure to reproduce adequately an instrument that had dono so much to hinder tho development. of music. (Laugh-, ter.) For j'ears uneducated musical taste, had been allowed to suppose that enjoyment of the piano and enjoyment of music were synonymous. . For yeaTS "• every note of music had had to he translated into terms of the piano. It would be as reasonable to expect young people to begin English verse; by translating it into Latin elegiacs as to expect that they would enjoy, music by hear-. ing only through the .piano. Jhirther improvements were pending in the gramophone, and in a short time existing criticism would be swept away, and they would be hearer, to the perfection of which they dreamt."