“MUSIC HATH—”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1050, 14 August 1930, Page 14

“MUSIC HATH—”

cAy It in Sharps and Flats TEACHING SOUND “We have been talking for half an hour; I have understood what you have said, and you have understood what I have said; and yet we have been only making sounds. If we had whistled instead of talked, I (as a musician) should have understood much more about you than you would have done about me, and yet we should have been making sounds.” In these words Sir Hugh Allen, Professor of Music at Oxford, who recently visited Auckland, concluded an interview. He wanted to make it clear that everyone should be able to read and write music just as they read and write their own language. A child should not be taken to the piano, shown a note, and told “That is C.” It should be taught the sound of “C,” and encouraged to hum the note as it wrote them down on a score. “Someone has said that education is what remains after we have forgotten all that we have learnt,” said Sir Hugh. “I have learnt Greek and forgotten it, but every day I am glad that I learnt it. That is why music should be a part of the Australian Universities, as it is at Oxford, Cambridge, and London Universities. It should be there so that a man who wants a musical education turns to your University to get it. The University gains much by his presence, and he gains much because, besides becoming a musician, he has a chance to become an educated man. New Worlds “No education is complete without some knowledge of music. A man may learn enough French to know what the French are saying, to understand the trend of French thought. So everyone should have enough grounding in music to understand a world of thought which might otherwise be for ever closed to him. He need not know enough music to become a musician, but only enough to decide for himself whether he would like to go farther into the subject. Time is so short that none of us can do more than select one subject tha.t interests as and go deeply into it: but we can open the doors to many subjects, look in, and decided whether to go farther or not.

» "Music is now a part of Oxford and Cambridge. At Oxford Monday nights are sacred to the Bach Choir, and the University is a centre of musical thought. Every great musician in the world finds his way there sooner or later. Music is taught in the public schools by men who have graduated from Oxford, and the modern music master can mingle among his colleagues, an educated man just as they are.

"I hope to see the day when there will be a standard of musical teaching all over the Empire, when a man with a degree in music at Sydney or Perth Universities can be accepted at Oxford, just as a doctor who has graduated at Sydney today can secure his English degree, because your medical course is uniform with ours in England.”