THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1913. MUNICIPAL MUSIC.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 17 October 1913, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1913. MUNICIPAL MUSIC.

The question of amalgamating the Brass Bands in! Masterton, and of providing the public with good music at ' frequent intervals, is occupying the attention of the Mayor and Borough Council just now. There is no institution in which discord is !so easily produced as in a brass band. The discords axe not confined to the instruments alone. They seem to affect the players as well. Hence, it is a matter of extreme difficulty to secure cohesion amongst musicians "in a small ootmmunity. So far as Masterton ia concerned, there can be little doubt that one efficient band would be preferable to two indifferent qpmbinatibns. The hope will thlfcefore be generally entertained that the Mayor will succeed in his effort to bring about an amalgamation. In this connection, it is desirablo that the public should have so' Tie assurance that during the summer months programmes of .musks will be provided in

the public park, and elsewhere, -with some degree of regularity. Care should also be exercised in the selection of music, as is dome in the larger townships of the Old Country. The example of.'the London County Counoil is one that night well be followed in this Dominion. That Council has decided that the Londoner is to have good music, whether he demands it or not, and certainly, with these opportunities, there can be little excuse for the "man in the street" continuing to possess a low standard of musical taste. Glancing at one Wednesday evening programme, one notices as the first item, say, the War March of the Priests, from "Athalie," followed by Brahm's Festival Overture, Strauss's Laguncn Valse, and Tschaikowsky's Pathetic Symphony. . After this there is ail interval of a quarter of an hour, and then another hour and a half of Elgar, Weber, Dvorak, and other great composers to complete the evening's entertainment. Every evening during the summer months, from 7 till 10 o'clock, the jaded Londoner may enjoy such a musical feast as this. Four days in the week the Council also provides during the lunoh hour a band concert in another part of the Embankment Gardens. Besides keeping up its own band of one hundred and sixteen instrumentalists, divided into three sections—one; orchestral and two military—it hires a large number of other bands to give performances in the various districts of greater London under its control. No #less than sixty-five parks and other open places in London receive a three-hour visit from one of these bands at least once a week. In addition, the music costs the auditors nothing—at most the expenditure of a penny for a programme and the use of a chair—so that nd one can reasonably complain that this is a luxury beyond his means.