"Funereal Music"

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 52, 11 July 1930, Page 7

"Funereal Music"

A Listener’s Complaint A correspondent in North Auckland, who is evidently something of a wag, writes to the Broadcasting Company making a plea for lighter numbers. He refers to classical items in this way: in the fields finishing earlier during the short days, I turned in at dinner-time weeks ago, hoping to hear something cheery put over for the kids. Instead there was a funeral on, Mozart’s I think it was, and just when the body was being lowered into the grave the bloke who looks after the gramophone went away to the pictures (I don’t blame him) and _ left this household at the graveside until .he returned.. He then put on "Poocheeny’s. ‘Pallbearers’ Sonata,’" and we left him to it. This fawning adoration of the tuneless ravings of- foreign ‘maestros’ gives a Britisher a pain in the neck. We British people need tuneful, stimulating music if it is only for half an hour in‘ the evening, and you ought to know it. The trouble is that this ‘art’ business is a form of mental snobbery created by that crowd of overfed and underworked warts of both sexes who dall themselves the ‘intelligentia.’ These are the people who claim that the stone abortions of Epstein; the introspective, neurotic bilge written ‘by, say, Conrad and Olive Schreiner, are among the highest expresssions of human art. And these egoists are probably working their wills on broadcasting until they succeed in getting every darned listener to turn it.in. If Mr. Hutter could broadcast the next egglaying contest I’d like to bring my darned hens in to listen and hear what others are doing."