Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. SATURDAY, APRIL, 3, 1909 MUSICAL SOCIETIES.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4394, 3 April 1909, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

SATURDAY, APRIL, 3,1909 MUSICAL SOCIETIES.

This above all—to thine own self be true , i nd it most, follow as the night the day 1 hou canst not then be false to any man Shakespeare .

For some time past there has been a hint as to the starting of a musical society in Te Aroha, and the idea will naturally take on a more substantial shape as the winter approaches, The idea is an excellent one. Our sympathy with this particular muse is well known, for we have advocated the inauguration of an orchestra for Te Aroha, and tried to indicate some of the lines upon which the business portion of the scheme might be worked. The musical society which is talked of would, however, be on somewhat different lines from the orchestra which we had in mind, yet nevertheless it is bound to afford to local musical taste and talent a powerful, and an educative impulse. Someone has defined music as “ the finest form of sensuous enjoyment,” —a painfully limited definition. To a reverent mind, and one capable of exalted impressions, Sir Thomas Browne’s feeling seems more fittingly to express the qualities of music. He wrote : “ Even that vulgar and tavern music which makes one man happy, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and profound contemplation of the first composer. There is something in it of divinity, more than the ear discovers ; it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of God, such a melody to the ear, as the whole world, wellunderstood, would afford the understanding.” No, music is certainly not even a “ finest form of sensuous enjoyment ” merely, but rather to the really fine mind what wide heavens or the singing seas are, a medium of communication from the world which lies beyond the senses, and yet utters its message through them. |

Further, music is a matter for in J tense and profound study, as all those who follow it, with no matter how necessarily intermittent a devotion, will attest. When the famous organist Jude visited Auckland some years ago he pointed out, in one of liis musical demonstrations, the analogy between music and mathematics. It is wonderful how far the popular mind has been led on along the higher paths of musical feeling and appreciation, until the taste for the classics of music has been developed. A contributor to “ The Times ” in a recent article entitled “ Muhicipal'Musichas pointed oijt how keenly the public appreciate the higher kind of music when set before them. He cites an instance which is so well told that we are fain to quote it. He says : “ I remember on one occasion, many years ago, forming part of a bored crowd on the pier at Bournraouth, lolling through a summer afternoon beguiled by the ‘ Merry Widow ’ waltzes of that day. What the pieces actually were it would be impossible to say now;' but at the end of the programme Mr Godfrey’s excellent band played Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, arid I remember that the cigars we*re thrown away and people left th4ir seats to listen, and a first-rate per-* formance was given.” One cannot help reflecting what a pity that Beethoven was witheld until the last.

We have plenty of musical talent in Te Aroha, as we know by the excellent performances to which from time to time we are privileged to listen. Fortunately also we have a music loving community. Hence there is no doubt that the proposal to institute a musical society will meet with plenty of support. It is to be hoped that the formation of this society will be the means of consolidating into an educative musical organization the talent which has already proclaimed itself, and at the same time bringing to light the talent which may for the present be biding its light under a bushel of exclusively domestic and drawing-room performances. And we hope thq,t by the opening pf our next tourist season we shall see once more in our midst an orchestra for the supply of municipal music.