GERMAN MUSIC.

Taihape Daily Times, 9 October 1919, Page 6

GERMAN MUSIC.

AN OUTCRY IN SYDNEY‘

XVAGNER NOT POPULAR

SYDNEY, Sept. 24.

Emphatic protests in the columns of the newspapers during the last few days against a Wagner concert in the Sydney T\o-wn Hall by the State Conservatorium Orchestra led to 21 motion by Sir Thomas Hughes in the New South Wales Legislative Council last night for the adjvournment of the LHOUSC in order hfdraw attention to the matter. ‘ '

The controversy -and Parliamenfa.ry debaft-e found their genesis in a protest fvom Lady Hughes. “If,” ‘she said, “our Australian public are so poor-spirited as to patronise concerts of exclusively German music, played by an orchestra with ‘‘the encouragement of the ‘State _g'oVO]TnlnGllt, and if the City Council allows the Town Hall to be used for such a purpose, then truly do we insult. the memnory of our glorious dcadj and write ourselves down as a decadent people.” Lady Hughes said much‘ more, but that -final sentence ’epitolnises her feelings.

Mr G. F. Earp, M.L.C'., another of Sydney’s citizens who entered Warmly into patriotic work during the ‘war, supported Lady Hughes’ attack with some rapie-r—like thrusts. Here is just one of them:— '

| “Have we so soon forgotten the }lying and spying before the War, the murder, and worse than murder, of de- ? fenceless Women, the torture of our men ' made prisoners of war, the introduction of poison gas‘ and projected flames, the laying Waste of all the countries upon which the Germans set foot, the subniarine outrages, Ithe millions hf brave lives which we end -our allies have lost, and the c»on_d_ition of which theaworld finds itself to-day, drunk with Sieg'friedism and Wo‘tanism‘;3 Does the German show any signs of repentance or refiorm? Do not the Allies have to send ultirnatumg from time to time to him to make him toe the line‘? In the nanfe of art, let us have the beautiful and soulful music of such ‘men as Puccini and «Leoneavallo in Italy. Charpentier and Debussy in France and Elgar -and Mackenzie in England, at the present time, rather than wholly German pro~gl'amnles.” »

Mr H. Vcrbruggen, director of tlle State Conservalf-oriunl——and inciden_’rally a’ Belgian—-all of whose relatives have lived and Asufl:'ercd under the German hecl——entered ’chc lists in the broad cause -of art, and with an expression of tllc_belicf that “those loyal citizens who wish to hear Wagner’s music should be considered as well as .oth.ers. " But the ink that had been spilt over the ‘German music had not flowed in vain, for he promised, in deference to fl:-:3 views expresseil, not to give another all-Wagner concert after those that had already been arranged for. Then came the Legislative ‘Council’s denunciation of the all-\Va{:;ner concert. To quote Sir Thomas Hughes, “An outrage of. this kind could not be cloaked by saying that the art of music was the common property of all nations.” I That. ends it.