BEAUTIFUL MUSIC

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 July 1939, Page 5

BEAUTIFUL MUSIC

SOOTHING THE SAVAGE BREAST. “A great many people may love music, but the question is whether they love good music,” said Professor Sir Percy C. Buck, of London University, in an address to students of music at Liverpool. “People misuse music .as. they misuse games, by seeking glory for themselves. The reason for music, and all art, is one —to make and spread happiness. The greatest compliment any musician can receive is to hear a listener say, not how well he had played, but how beautiful the music was. That is a lesson that musicians all over the world seem to have forgotten. They use their art as a means of self-glorification instead of as a means of bringing more beauty into human experience. I would like to steal into Liverpool City Council Chamber, when nobody is looking, and paint on the wall, as a sort of text, the wise words of Confucius, the sage of China: ‘Have no education without music, for if we had more music in the world there would be more courtesy and less war.’ That seems very apt in these days.”