A DUNEDIN EXPERIMENT IN SCHOOL MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 268, 11 August 1944, Page 9

A DUNEDIN EXPERIMENT IN SCHOOL MUSIC

HE introduction of music into the school curriculum, and its inclusion in the school time-table, as a regular study for every pupil, is an experiment that has been made with notable success at the King Edward Technical College, Dunedin, during the past 10 years. Dr. Vernon Griffiths, now Profess of Music at Canterbury University College, who has always firmly believed that opportunity and wise guidance are all that are needed to unlock the door of music to ordinary boys and girls, and that exceptional gifts are not essential to enjoy or take part in good music, introduced the experiment 10 years ago, when he joined the staff of the college. He aimed at giving every pupil entering the school an opportunity to hear and to study good music, to take part in vocal music, and to learn to play any instrument of the orchestra, if he wished. Dr. Griffiths believed that such a scheme would be useless were it to depend on any one person, and that it should provide its own leaders from its own students, so that when two years ago, Dr. Griffiths took the Chair of Music at Canterbury College, the school

music continued uninterrupted under Frank Callaway, one of Dr. Griffiths’ own students. The actual number in the various school groups are, perhaps, almost incredible to an outsider, but the photograph above gives some idea. It was taken at a concert in the Dunedin Town Hall in August, 1943. The massed choir includes more than 700 voices, the massed orchestra, the largest in New Zealand, more than 300 players, the senior orchestra, about 150 players, and the military band, conducted by Mr. White, a member of the school staff, and also a former pupil in music classes in the school, about 60 players. A public performance is to be given in the Dunedin Town Hall on August 16 and 17, under Mr. Callaway. All the school music groups will take part in the programme, several items of which will be sung in six parts by the massed choir. An innovation this year is that for the first time part of the concert on the second night, Thursday, August 17, is to be broadcast. So those in other parts of New Zealand, interested in school music, will now have an opportunity to hear what is being done. The broadcast will be from 4YA, beginning at 8 p.m.