FRUSTRATION.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 483, 24 September 1948, Page 5

FRUSTRATION.

Sir,-Speaking of our promising young musicians, Guy Marriner says’ in your issue of Sep'ember 10: "It worries me to think of the undeserved frustration and disappointment many of them will meet with." The gap between aspiration and achievement is, with most of us, so wide, that a feeling of frustration is a common experience, particularly after we have passed middle-age. Our promising musicians can hardly expect to escape the general doom. The crux of the matter is found in the needs of the artistic temperament. The young musical genius, practising alone, or on 4 desert island, can enjoy the thrill of sublime achievement, and if some of the mush uttered about "art for art’s sake" is valid, this should be satisfying. But it is not completely satisfying. The genius not only wants to feel that he, ‘or she, is a mastefly or brilliant practitioner. The craving for pre-eminence is so strong that the corroborative testimony of a packed audience and thundering applause and a full till in the boxoffice are required. The truly artistic ego is, so to speak, a worthwhile facet of our\common human vanity, and the aspiring artist these days will feel frustrated if the foregoing gratifications are not experienced. This gratification is only possible in the highest degree where there are vast concentrations of civilised beings, as in Britain, the U.S.A., or a restored Continent of Europe, New Zealand can do nothing about it "because the population is too small and scattered to provide compensating thrills or a comparable sense of distinction. So we must expect our promising young folk to follow in the footsteps of Natzka, Farrell, Horsley and the others.

J. MALTON

MURRAY

(Oamaru).

(Abridged.- Ed, )