Patrons Wanted

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 313, 22 June 1945, Page 8

Patrons Wanted

‘THE other day the Correspondence " $chool began a series of talks on the instruments of an orchestra. The first talk dealt with violin and viola, displaying their various moods and capabilities with well-chosen records. If this series increases the pupils’ capacity to enjoy the intricacies of orchestral recordings, it will do a great deal, One might hope that it’ would do more-that a handful of country children would be fired with the determination to play one of these instruments-were it not that their chances of realising this. ambition are so remote. There’s an opening here for a patron of music to act as fairy godfather, discovering the would-be horn players and clarinettists of the backblocks, putting the instruments into their hands and giving them access to lessons and orchestras. But musical patronage is a thing of the past, and so are symphony orchestras. If we had orchestras, the children might sometimes see and hear the living instruments in action and wish to work hard to learn to play them; if children were being taught how to handle these instruments we would not be wondering, as we are, where on earth our symphony orchestras are to come from. How we got into this slough nobody seems quite to know, but if everyone worked at whatever corner of the problem lies within reach, as the Correspondence School is doing, we would ‘pull out of it somehow.