MUSIC WEEK

Hokitika Guardian, 23 September 1930, Page 2

MUSIC WEEK

SUCCESS IN SYDNEY

SYDNEY, September 11. Sydney lias been indulging in a Music Week. As with Health Ween, Eat More Emit Week, Drink More Milk Week, and all the other weeks, it excited quite a lot of attention, and its promoters say it was, a great success. No - one will mind as-long as it does not produce a fresh crop of suburban saxophonists, or encourge fond parents to believe that, in their infant prodigies, they have potential Paganinis or Paderewskies, or budding composers with all the spirita! fervour of Palestrina. One can hardly walk two yards in Sydney now without meeting out-of-work musicians and being accosted by their collectors. If the week inspires people with the idea that there is money in music, they only want to look round Sydney. The fostering on broad lines of a love of good music, however, is a good idea Of the church folk, the Alethodists notably swing themselves enthusiastically behind Music Week, This not surprising, for it is as what might lie termed n singing church that Methodism is noted. It is the power of song, rather than the hortative influence of its speakers, that nttrncts such big crowds in Sydney every Sunday to the Lyceum Hall. Every good Methodist knows that John Wesley’s conversion

was in part attributable to music, and his fervnnt evangelical ministry in no

small measure to the hymns of gifted brother Charles. So there are possibilities in Music Week. It might inspire someone to set Sydney’s troubles to good, inspiriting, crashing music, and thus feed’ the flames of economic revival, just as music has fed the fire of 'spiritual fervour.