CLASSICAL MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 123, 31 October 1941, Page 4

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Sir.-"Anti-blues" compares good music with fashions in dress. What person with any understanding of art and culture would do this? The jazz which "Anti-blues " supports compares more favourably with fashions-both quickly become stale and out-of-date. The fact that we are at war is no excuse for throwing overboard culture, morality and good taste. To the music-lover, and to the person of average refinement, the blaring trumpet and brazen trombone in a jazz band, along with all the other hooey of swing, is more distressing and disgusting than "Antiblues" can apparently understand. And one does not need to become vulgar to become gay. Who could be gayer than Mozart, or wittier than Haydn, more thrilling than Wagner, or more inspiring than Bach or Beethoven?

A SCHOOLBOY

(New Plymouth).

Sir,-Your correspondent "Anti-blues" in his reply to "Discobobbulous") makes use of the word "hooey". I have only a vague idea of the meaning of the word, but if it means what I think, his letter

is a very good example. Does he suggest that pre-sent-day styles have more gaiety than those of the past two centuries? That is almost as fallacious as the claim that light music is brighter than the classics. Also, if by his misquotation of Longfellow, he means that classical music is a thing of the past, he is being merely absurd. I am happy to believe that there is to-day more appreciation of real music than there was in the past century, at least in British countries, and for the simple reason that people as a rule have more opportunities of hearing it. Let "Anti-blues" sing his V for Victory songs (sic) whatever they may be, and whistle at his work, if he pleases, but I would not have him labour under the delusion that the effect so produced is. even distantly. akin to music.

H.W.

L.

(Auckland),