ERNEST JENNER LOOKS BACK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 877, 25 May 1956, Page 16

ERNEST JENNER LOOKS BACK

HEN Ernest Jenner gave up his Music Appreciation talks at the end of last school term he. broke an association with music broadcasts to schools that has lasted for a quarter of a century. Mr. Jenner and a small group of school music specialists first offered to give broadcast music lessons to schools in Wellington in 1931, only about three years after Mr. Jenner arrived in New Zealand as one of the first Teachers’ Training College lecturers in school music. Apart from a_ break during the depression, when Training Colleges were closed, he has been an active broadcaster in this special field €ver since. "Music appreciation lessons really began in 1935 as something supplementary to class singing-which is what they should be," Mr. Jenner told The Listener. "In that year my subject was

the teaching of class songs by Byrd, Bach, Mozart and others, reaching to the easier songs of Brahms, and with these lessons came references to the music of these composers." Two years later Mr, Jenner prepared a_ booklet and gave lessons in school music reading, which he’ still believes’ should be the backbone of every school music course. "It is only in this way that the child will leave school knowing something about music," he says. "This doesn’t mean that school work in music should consist only of ‘music-reading. Fine songs and music appreciation are essential. But the straight line of progress from class to class follows the steady development of vocal music reading. It’s the basis, too, of the study of instrumental music, as the Curwen family long ago maintained and proved." It was sad, said Mr. Jenner, that these sound principles had been forgotten by

experimenters in school music in different parts of the world. Music appreciation as a separate subject has been the special concern of Mr. Jenner since 1938, when Singing and Music-Reading were taken over by T. J. Young. His opinion of Music Appreciation is that while it must never be viewed as the chief part of a school music course it is important because it develops the art of listening to music. "Many a child begins with no inclination to listen to music," he said, "but if a regular time is set for listening the habit begins to develop and the child

finds himself enjoying what once would have bored him. Repeated listening is the basis for understanding the language of music. Childten who might normally get to know only,the sounds of decadent music meet in the Music Appreciation lesson another type of music-and some will find that this means far more to them." Music Appreciation lessons, Mr. Jenner added, were of little or no value unless they were aided in the classroom by the teacher. When we asked Mr. Jenner about the way he selected material for Music Appreciation lessons he said that works children are to listen to must be short, or at least able to be divided into short, self-contained sections. For _ primary school pupils they must have some

imaginative appesl, though older~ children could be given more difficult and longer items. Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is one of Mr. Jenner's favourite pieces for encouraging Music Appreciation. "These are short pieces, they have imaginative appeal in their titles ang content, and in the Ravel orchestral version they teach listeners an enormous amount about different instruments and tonal qualities," he said. Debussy, Schubert, Dvorak and Tchaikovski were other composers who had won over many children, and humouras in Pierne’s The Entrance of the Little Fauns-was a_ factor that should not be overlooked.