THE NEW MUSICAL AGE

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 47, 8 June 1928, Page 15

THE NEW MUSICAL AGE

WIRELESS HELPING IT ON Four hundred years ago Germany had in Charles the Fifth an emperor who leved music, who would sit in his private apartment behind the high altar beating time and joining in the harmony till a friar chorister made a mistake, when the emperor would break off and roar, "You red-headed blockhead!" and long for better choit men. To-day a king of German conductors; Dr Purtwangler, signs again for better singing, and the other day he said to an English choir, the Newcastle Bach Society, after their splendid performe ance at Frankfort, "Tour the whole of Germany and teach the Germans hovy, to sing!" There can be no doubt that Great Britain is entering upon a new musical | musical proficiency of the Tudors. A age. Wireless and the gramophone ard helping to cultivate taste, but the tid¢ had begun to swell before their coming. The springs are the splendid choral societies, the glee clubs, the church ang chapel choirs, the school singing, an the wonderful rise and development of ecomnunity singing. All these forced are making the land ring with tuneful music, and the frenzied horrors, clash; crash, and harrowing discord of certain modern composers are powerless td check the love of the beautiful of the multitude of common folk. It is somé consolation for the noise of the jaz mob that the true music is more an more popular, Is this splendid change a develope ment or a reversion to ancestral habit Three centuries ago the British not only sang and played better than their, Continental neighbours, but had better musie, and it was their own. "In Tudor days and later everybody could sing and play at sight. Drake took hid musie men round the world with him, Choirs and orchestras at Home to» , day are rediscovering the English mus of those days, and beautiful, gras. cious, and alluring it is. We know by, actual proof that those old Tudor and Stuart times really were melodious. Even the Bluebeard king, Henry the Kighth, was no mean musician and composer, and Elizabeth, his daughter; was credited with singing and playing charmingly, though her selection of ins struments for a musical dinner, 123 trumpets, two kettledrums, with fifes, cornets, and side-drums, makes us ras ther tremble at the thought of somq of her programmes. How should wa like them from 2YA? Old writers say that the preserva tion of the lovely choral music ix eathedrals and churches is due to thd, -) a