"MUSIC AND MARKS DON’T MIX"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 159, 10 July 1942, Page 6

"MUSIC AND MARKS DON’T MIX"

Impressions Of South African Examiner

N examiner in music who believes that music and examination marks are really contradictory terms is at present in New Zealand. He is Colin Taylor, of the University of Capetown, South Africa, and he is here to examine for the Associated Board of the Royal, Schools of Music, London. He gave The Listener some of his impressions. "One thing about being an examiner in music," said Mr. Taylor, "is that you are always on wheels. I have examined all over South Africa, in India, in Australia, in Canada, and have judged at many festivals, No, I have never been to New Zealand before. I was to have come just after the last war but my tour was put off on account of the influenza epidemic." "Whom do you examine in India?" we asked. "In India you get a pretty mixed bag. About 75 per cent. are Indians. You get all sorts of incongruous situations. I remember once flying from Calcutta to Rangoon and examining some Chinese on Japanese-made pianos in German music-and I am an Englishman living in South Africa. Most of the music taught is European. One is sorry to feel that it may usurp the native music. Much of the Indian music is very complicated and very beautiful but difficult for us to understand, but it is much more closely related to real life than our own music. Certain music, for instance, is for special times of day, dawn or midday or sunset, and cannot be played at any other times. Then they use quite different and more complicated scales or ragas. I think that Western music might gain by adopting their scales. After all we confine ourselves to only two scales while there are 2,200 possible combinations in the octave, and we might use more of them. On the other hand, some Indians are trying to do impossible things, adapting Western music to their ragas en bloc." The Background is Lacking "And what is your experience of examining in Australia, Canada, and South Africa?" "There is plenty of talent, I always find," said Mr. Taylor, " but not enough background. All these countries are too new — even South Africa where the Dutch are really a very artistic people and very highly strung beneath their outward stolidity. In South Africa, we have not yet developed an art that is the outcome of our own needs. We have merely absorbed European culture. No country can voice itself, I believe, until it has ‘been through it,’ has suffered and suffered again with war, revolution, and all the growing pains that have produced the great nations of the past." * One of my main objects in examining," concluded Mr, Taylor, "is to encourage teachers to use examinations and not to abuse them. Music and marks

just don’t go together, and it is a pity that we have to try to make them, We must of course put up with this until we can get something better." Mr. Taylor is to give a studio recital which he calls "An Informal Half Hour of Debussy," from 2YA on Sunday, July 12,