THE MODERN TREND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 September 1938, Page 5

THE MODERN TREND

CRITICISM BY A. A. MILNE. CROONING FOR PEOPLE WHO CANNOT SING. In what I shall call “my day,” anybody who wanted to earn a living or entertain a drawing-room as a singer had to learn to sing. In tune. It js hard work learning to sing—in tune, writes A. A. Milne. So now you needn’t. You croon. The convention that crooning is singing enables all those people who cannot sing, but wish to earn a living (or entertain a draw-ing-room) by singing, to do so without going through the labour of learning to sing. In my day dancing was waltzing, and waltzing was not only hard work, but was something which had to be learnt. Today, with a minimum of fatigue and an entire absence of technique, it is possible to claim that one is dancing. Drawing is difficult. A famous draw-ing-master of my day used to go round the work of his pupils, saying to each one as he compared the work with the model, “It is always a good thing to be something like.” It is also a difficult thing. Modern technique, both in painting and sculpture, avoids the difficulty of being something like; just as modern hot music avoids the difficulty of disclosing a new tune.