“SOCIAL GIPSIES”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 March 1939, Page 9

“SOCIAL GIPSIES”

MODERN-DAY MUSICIANS. FAMOUS CONDUCTOR’S ANALYSIS. In picturesque language, Sir Thomas Beecham has referred to musicians as “social gipsies.” On their behalf he suggested a national music day. Every person interested in music would be asked to put a shilling in the box, and the result should provide employment for thousands of musicians. Sir Thomas has drawn attention to the grave evils of unemployment in the musical profession; unemployment which is aggravated by the substitution of “potted music” in theatre orchestras. Sir Thomas was speaking at the annual conference of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, Marylebone. He said he was still an employer of musical labour, which means that almost daily he listened to the talents, complaints, sorrows, and joys of young people. “In nine cases out of ten there, is in these young people little except disappointment, disillusion, and a certain resentment that they ever allowed themselves, or were persuaded by others, to enter a profession in which there is nothing for them to do. “There is practically no organised music in the country on the scale worthy of its musical talent. There is the most praiseworthy concentration on musical education, and everywhere the most highly organised and efficient system of teaching. “The moment the lives of the students cease within these walls where they looked for guidance, where they were treated as an indulgent father treats a child, where they lived happily, and where, alas they are indulged in a fond illusion that it is a happy preparatory condition for something that will go on for 30 or 40 years afterwards, there is no analogy and no connection with the life that awaits them. "For practical purposes of regular and certain employment the profession has hardly advanced beyond the condition of vagabondage which was iits appellation in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. We are really social gipsies in respect of the certainty of employment in the musical profession.’’ Sir Thomas said that unless a strenuous effort were made the state of affairs would be worse, for they were entering a very difficult time in the history of every country. “I myself,” he said, “do not believe there is ground for this apprehension. I believe in the cause of peace and . progress, but I find in this country a ■ most reprehensible condition of neivous fright, blue funk, and a desire I to escape into bolt-holes, and to get underground. Whenever the editor of some wretched, twopenny-halfpenny little Italian or German newspaper opens his mouth people rush off to Cornwall. Then, too, there are those really great Comedians, Herr Hitler and Signor Benito Mussolini, without whom life would be very dull. “There is a future for music in this country. If children listened to it from the age of five or six, you have material for renaissance of musical culture in this country. I do not think the people of this country have ever been appealed to on the right lines, and I estimate that there must be considei - ably more than 1,000,000 people attending musical performances all over lhe country in one year.” STANDBY— oefHe/t hiolee cognisroe