MUSIC HATH CHARMS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5134, 2 June 1927, Page 1

MUSIC HATH CHARMS.

AN INTERESTING ADDRESS.

THE BEAUTIFUL IN LIFE.

“ He has given us a great deal to think about,” were the words with which Rotarian A. L. Muir, commented upon Mr E. Douglas Taylor’s address to the Gisborne Rotary Club at its last luncheon. Mr Tayler is supervisor of musical education in the State schools.

In his opening remarks Mr Tayler said that in the past musical education had been looked upon as an extra. ”” During the past year 360 land schools, or one gramophone land schools, or oope gramophone every two days ; but he knew of one school committee which refused to get a gramophone for the school because it was “merely to amuse the kids.” Music, he said, was an important and intense form of life. Amusement was of great benefit to humanity ; it had its value as an education, bringing into its action some form of emotion. The team co-operation and training for the proper conduct of our games was a training for later life. Music gave a similar training. In our schools, added Mr Tayler, most of the time was given to training the child’s mind and body, but in neglecting to train the imagination they neglected to train the emotion, and for all they knew they might be training a first-class animal. Training only the body might make a. good athlete, but the result might be loss of temper and self-control as the result of neglecting the emotions. The athlete would then lose his place in the world of athletics. “If we neglect to train the emotions or the imagination we leave the two dominating factors of human life,” added the speaker, as he went on to say that it was urgent when considering education to also promote the emotional expression and imagination. The imagination gave the great creations of tomorrow.

Tn the old world men had made errors in civilisation as the result of lack of imagination and emotional control. When people gave vent to music 'it showed an overflowing of happiness, but not only <lhl happiness take expression in music but sadness also. This was evident in negro slave songs, which were expressions of pent-up feelings. Tn the primitive tates of life the expressions were not of a very high order, as with barbaric tribes and the crying of a baby. The fine arts offered a solution of keeping out the black side of life ; this was done by taking the dark things of life and issuing them in a beautiful form.