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Hokitika Guardian, 30 October 1933, Page 4

Wiiat is the proper place of music in life? writes a correspondent to the Times Educational Supplement. Should it be an adornment of various recognised lines of social activity or a much more special pursuit? Is it for the many or for the few? It is tempting to answer such questions b untly one way or the other, according to one’s temperament er training, but no lairminded person will accept any crude inference from personal piejiul ces. On a satisfactory working reply to these cnestions, among others, depends the right planning of that preparation 'or a full life in which “? r cod education’’ consists. It was therefore appropriate that at th.eir summer conferences at Malvern College the mus e musters’ section of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, should have touched on theses problems. The headmaster of the college. Mr F. S. Preston } raised the

issue in a, splendidly provocative paper cn the amateur’s point of view. Did music masters, he asked, wish to resti'et their activities to the severely musical? Re had sometimes noti'ed a certain exaltation of the intellectual approach at the expense of t' e sensational, and he, for one, questioned the professional musician’s right to dismiss established “favourites” as irretrievably hackneyed. Passing to- another aspect, Mr Preston asked: Would musicians accept cn occasion a- subordinate place (e.g., in church music), or would they unswervingly insist on full musical’ rights? Here, agsr.’n, the speaker conveyed his opposition to the nairow'y musical point of view. On the other hand, he heartily condemned the vulgarities of the cinema-organ transriptions, and ‘in all circumstances of the saxoohcne.