MUSIC HATH CHARMS

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43386, 14 November 1908, Page 2

MUSIC HATH CHARMS

Nobody ia more sensible of the truth of the above quotation than the

visitors to our different Dominion

reports This statement will be ▼i rifled by those who have spent the summer holiday either at Rotorua, eu joying the music dispensed by the orchestra in the Sanatorium grounds, and the moonlight concerts in those same grounds in an evening ; or by those who have spent their vacation in one of the bays of the Auckland harbour, where the phonograph is made to supplement the combined talent of the visitors, in making a success of the evening concerts. We ought to have a band in Te Aroha, we really and truly ought. Here we are, proclaiming ourselves a health and pleasure resort, and yet we have no band ! The thing is a huge anomaly, a monstrous reflection upon our lack of the saving sense oi humour, which as every one knows is the sense of the fitness of things. We leave the gay sunlit hours of our Wednesday afternoons to themselves, so far as supplementing the merry voices of our tennis players with the happy strains of music is concerned, and the song birds up on the hill are left to wonder why, since we have made us a garden, we do not make us also an orchestra, pitying the great bull frogs that they havo nothing to heat time for them, as they oit croaking among the bright waters of the cascades. It is not. that we are overawed by the propinquity of the hill with its myriad singers, its wind-and - water orchestra, we’re not like that. There’s no affectation about us. We simply haven’t a band, because we haven’t. It is not (that we do not want one either, because we do, there are a thousand reasons more or less w l.y we do. For one thing, what is the use of th. moonlight in the domain if there is noting to interpret it to the strolling couples there, nothing to enhance the dreamy effect nothing to lend it articulation ?

For if you design a pleasance, you must to ho consistent, contrive some medium of articulation suitable for it. Wo repeat, some voice must be given to it which will suit it, for the wild voices of Nature do not splash and overflow the white sunlight in your parks and gardens with gold, as we have heard them splash and overflow the far-up li lit on the mountain, they diminish their choired, symphonious performance, and limit themselves, as it were, to the scrap performances of wandering musicians. We repeat, that amid this diminution of nature-melody we want and must have a music of man’s contriving, to befit a paradise ef man’s designing. For another thing we want a band for the sake of the various local entertainments, for the sake also of any benefit which we may wish to get up, for the sake of our visitors, our wives and families, our worn and brain-fagged business men, and also for the sake of getting together the musical talent of the town in one body for the furtherance of the felicitation of all and sundry. In fact we want a band on general principles, and no one can say that we dont,

So of course we must get us a band, and the sooner the better. We would suggest as the most business-like and effective way of doing so, that we appoint a committee from among our townsmen to place the fresh scheme upon a working basis, appoin a suitable bandmaster (we would propose Mr Donovan or Mr Buchan who have worked so hard to supply us with a permanent source of public music), and arrange to reward the performers by allowing them the proceeds or a portion of the proceeds realised upon their efforts, for this would be only fair. Everyone knows that man’s leisure is precious nowadays, and we must admit that the timo necessary to the practicing required for a good orchestra will take up a good deal of it In addition to that, we do not wish our pleasure for nothing. Who is there of us that does not feel that he must express his thanks for the intense happineas ministered by a good musical performance, in some tangible manner. In conclusion, let us remind our public that if we d nt •et us a hand we shall assuredly be accounted a fossil town, an unenthusiastio. unimaginative, "unenterprising Snugdom, and it will be said of us that because nature has done so much for us we decline to do anything for ourselves.