ART OF MUSIC

Evening Star, Issue 23695, 1 October 1940, Page 10

ART OF MUSIC

STUDENTS' CLUB MEETING ' Mr G. W. Johnstone, president of the. Music Teachers’ Association, was the speaker at a large gatherng of the newly-formed Students’ Club at Begg’s Salon on Saturday night. “ There is one thought that seems to stand out like Mars at perihelion whenever thoughtful people meditate upon this world so full of sickening uncertainty,” Mr Johnstone said, “ and it is this, that we are. living at the end of an age, and that in the years that lie immediately ahead' of us there will be enormous changes in values. There is abundant evidence that the thinking of the whole world is on a deplorably low level, and when that, is the case in a democracy one does not have to seek one’s troubles. This is summed up in ‘ where there is no vision the people perish.’ Cut whatever happens, religion and art will continue; and it would appear that the wheel has turned full circle. No man can forecast with accuracy, but I shall be very much surprised if in the years almost immediately ahead of us both religion and art, which have been necessary to man right

down the ages, do not turn back on their tracks unto a searching for simplicity. “ We students of music are indeed fortunate in that we speak a universal language,” Mr Johnstone said. “ I have little patience with those who look upon music as a religion, but I do bo- , lieve it to be the noblest and most expressive of the arts, and as such it has the power to reach the innermost depths of the human soul. All students like you throughout the Dominion are a great national asset. “ It is a pity that any Government should act the part of a giant Mephistopheles degrading large numbers of young Fausts, and the vicious effect of much of the alleged music which is i heard over the air can only accentuate' a suggestion of anaemia or barbarity,” Mr Johnstone said. “ We know the difficulties, however, and we appreciate the work of the director even if wo feel that he could do better still, “ Why "will our political leaders continue to speak with two voices? Recently they made possible the greatest festival of music that we have enjoyed in onr history; and yet they continue the total prohibition of tlie importation of musical instruments ami allow only 50 per cent, of the 1938 sheet music to enter. _ The Government assumes too much if it assumes that rich | people are only poor people with money.

I Does Mr Nash not say in effect ‘ I never read poetry and have no time to • listen to music, so let it go ’ ? Any country that reasdhs in such a manner is—whatever its mechanical knowledge may be —well down the Gadarene slope. “ The Students’ Club will see to it that quality is placed before quantity,” Mr Johnstone said. “Mere bigness is not beauty, and you will realise that a world governed by mechanical speed and noise is neither essential nor desirable. Both are largely vulgar, while a more leisurely gait—quiet meditation and a peace that is not stagnation have always been the prerequisites of thoughtful, cultivated minds.”