Musical Avalanche

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 286, 15 December 1944, Page 8

Musical Avalanche

HE first of the Technical College concerts this year in Dunedin was broadcast, but the second was not, and for the benefit of those people who failed to hear either concert, some trial recordings were made and played from 4ZB on successive Sunday mornings. While allowng for technical difficulties and the fact that records taken at a concert cannot be as good as those taken in the studio under ideal conditions, I felt that I ought to warn any Northern listeners who may hear this delayed broadcast that it is not a fraction as good as the performance put up by these hundreds of young musicians at their actual concerts. Dr. Vernon Griffiths, who started over ten years ago at the Dunedin Technical College what turned out to be a musical avalanche, has a genius for fostering enthusiasm, and no pupil who has ever (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) worked with him’ will remain uninfluenced by his high ideals. The aim of the music-making in this school is not to pick and choose the instrumentalists for an orchestra, and to select small gifted choral groups for public performance, but to get every pupil in the school without exception to learn some sort of instrument or to sing in the choir. Instead of making his less talented pupils feel inferior by ignoring them, Dr. Griffiths found time to write special parts for them, within their learners’ capabilities but none the less effective. ‘He wrate multi-part settings of wellknown tunes and trained his hundreds of singers to perform them entirely without music. His untiring work in the cause of school music, and the excellent example of his successor, Frank Callaway, have ‘borne remarkable fruit; for music has become not a special subject rather remote from ordinary study, but an intrinsic part of school life, and an influence for the raising of public taste.