Music and Racehorses

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 218, 27 August 1943, Page 3

Music and Racehorses

E print to-day a belated report of some remarks by the Polish pianist Friedman on the state of music in Australia. We print them partly because it is stimulating to see one man drawing his sword against a whole continent; and partly because it is interesting to see a man of Friedman’s intelligence arguing that if a country has money for sport it has money for music. It would be ‘as useful to argue that if a boy has a penny for an ice-cream he has one for the mission box. Of course he has if he chooses to give it and forgo the cream; but if his penny is the reward of sacrifice or effort he will earn 20 for ices before he earns One for the starving Indians. No. country starves musicians beeause it can’t afford to pay them. It starves them, or lets them starve themselves, because they do not offer it anything that it consciously and strongly wants, There is even a sense in which it is almost a sign of health when a young. country refuses to set artists apart to produce or dream for them. It is rough on the artists, as it is rough on the starving Indians when small boys refuse to run errands to earn pennies for the mission box; but the boy who is more interested in good works than in good ice-cream is not exactly the kind of boy the average man would like for a son. Artists must of course live, and they will live more comfortably and more usefully if society gives them a fair deal-work to do, and a reasonable reward. It could in fact be argued that no society is civilised that does not treat them generously. But civilisation is a question of degree and music of taste, and if Australians loved music as ardently as they love racing, horse-boxes and _ pianocases would come out of ships’ holds together. In fact, far more pianos than horses come out, because Australians breed their own horses, but it is not quite clear that Friedman wants them to breed their own musicians. He certainly does not want them to wait until a musician arrives in the fullness of time.