DINNER MUSIC

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 94, 15 January 1935, Page 8

DINNER MUSIC

The universality of radio has introduced to the great mass of the people an institution reserved in a less advanced and more exclusive age to a much smaller circle of society—“dinner music.” ■ If we are going to be exact in these matters it might be more correct to style the entertainment provided for the multitude at when it is busily engaged in eating, as “lunch music” and tea music. Somebody has been complaining about the musical fare supplied by a solicitous Broadcasting Board to enhance the flavour of oui gastronomic fare. The obvious reply to such complainants is that if they do not like the selections provided to facilitate the process of alimentation they can switch off.' But that does not dispose of the difficulty, which is merely one of many others that demolish ate ine truth of the philosophy that it is impossible to please everybody. And who should know that better than the programme-arrangers of the New Zealand Broadcasting Board ? Dinner music in its pre-wireless sense was something soothing and alluring wafted from a concealed orchestra in . subdued tones. With all the imagination in the world the lunch music and tea music which we hear in the restaurant and in the homes cannot be haimonised/with that picture. It is close up, pervasive, and. in. many cases fatal to conversation. It adds to the noise of modern civilisation against which suffering humanity has been forced to take up arms. Should it be switched off for good and all? Hardly. It is one of our established amenities which, to be fully enjoyed, and allowed to fulfil its true mission, should, like many others, be guarded against abuse. With this new device for the enrichment of our daily lives we need to become practised and discriminating in its use. ... “Dinner music,” to use its more pretentious description, should be of the kind that does not distract from the process of eating, or make conversation difficult. Rather, through appropriate modulation of the sound, should it be made unostentatiously to provide a subtle and agreeable presence in the atmosphere. Dialogues and comic songs, the saccharine maudlin croonings of whispering baritones, and the like, could well be ruled out in favour of better-class music that would not only enhance the enjoyment of the meal but cultivate the ear. v\ ith the Victorians, dinner was an impressive rite, and music part ot t.ie ritual. We might arrive at that some day,, but not as long as people bolt their midday meals to the accompaniment of crooning and the jerky lilt of syncopated cacophony from so-called salon orchestras.”