THE INVASION OF MECHANISED ART.

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 51, 4 July 1930, Page 4

THE INVASION OF MECHANISED ART.

FRADIO has loosened an avalanche. It has made possible the spread of entertainment, it has improved almost beyond recognition recorded music, it has made the moving picture a good substitute for the stage, and we are looking for the time when pictures will come to us over the air. These mechanical processes are reacting on "legitimate" art; they are changing it, but how, we are not yet in the position to judge. Only a few years ago one of the essentials of the aspirant to social success was the ability to entertain, musically or otherwise. Now the stage has changed and radio or its derivatives do all the entertaining. The reflection of this transition is not very difficult to imagine, and even now it is being made evident. There ‘is a falling-off in the number of young ones who learn music. Few want to hear a very amateurish rendition of, say, "Minuet in G" when they can hear Kreisler or Heifetz play it with life-like realism. And who wants dance music from an accordion or from an untuned piano when Paul Whiteman or Jack Hylton can be persuaded to entertain? What must be the ultimate outcome of this? Surely music will become the practice of only the really talented, who will find scope in the broadcasting or recording studio. The amateur dramatist will no doubt move toward the broadcasting or talkie studio. Then there is the invasion of the sound film, the talkie. It is bringing popular music so quickly that one no sooner gets used to one theme than another is upon him. The desire for change is characteristic of modern youth, and it seems that classical music will get less support than it deserves. One appreciates classical music either because he learns to or because it is inherent in him to do so. Radio and the electric gramophone give him the chance of hearing this traditional music well presented. But the popular outcry is for more popular, less highbrow fare. Inquire at a broadcasting studio, or better still, try and connect with it by telephone after an unusually prolonged classical programme that has meant the curtailment of the popular and see the trend of opinion. There is still an outcry for classical music; that is natural. Societies of musicians, disbanded by the talkies, are still fairly well treated, But what of the younger _-

generation brought up to the fare of screen vaudeville and their theme songs? Even the traditional stage is being swept away or popularised.’ Even the works of the immortal Shakespeare are being modernised«-gy. Radio and its attendant’ sciences is bringing into being new arts, it | is altering the old ones; it is a process of evolution of which we are at an interesting and decisive era.