"WARSAW CONCERTO"
Sir,-"Constant Reader’s" attack on the "Warsaw Concerto" is interesting; it would have been even more interesting a year or so ago before the recent attack by all the musical purists. Is there any valid reason for the belated discovery of the worthlessness of this particular composition? Has the fashion just changed in these matters, or did it change overseas’ some time ago and is our intelligentsia making the usual frantic rush to catch up on what their gods decree? / I am always astonished at the viollence displayed by the music critics: it seems that too intense an interest in music leads to emotion replacing intellect as the ‘determining factor in appreciation. As one of the "musically mentally deficient" (to borrow your correspondent’s quotation) I listen with pleasure to the "Warsaw Concerto." But I am no authority on the subject and it may be that I am corrupting my musical taste, if any. But does it matter? May I venture the suggestion that music might, just might, be for one’s enjoyment and that perhaps after all man was
not created just to be a unit in an audience and have music played at him? Musical pretensions in this country are sadjy in need of debunking. They have become the cult above cults, In concluding I must say that I find I am, although musically illiterate, in at least one instance correct. Having long enjoyed hill-billy music, I néw discover that all the time I have had a taste for the real folk songs of America! Is this discovery peculiar to Auckland or do Wellington’s musically elite also now regard Gene Autry as the sweet singer of the hills?
GORDON INGHAM
(Auckland).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19461004.2.14.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 380, 4 October 1946, Page 5
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282"WARSAW CONCERTO" New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 380, 4 October 1946, Page 5
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