"Jazz is Absolutely Trivial Music"

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 27, 11 January 1935, Page 7

"Jazz is Absolutely Trivial Music"

To the Editor Sir,-It would be unfair on my part to waste your valuabie space by entering into any further arguments with either of your correspondents re jazz, and, incidentally, myself.. Theit (musical) qualifications would appear to be on a par with those possessed by one or two people in Timaru who have given it as their definite opinion that one or two of the competitors in the forthcoming brass band contest will put the Grenadier Guards Band in the shade. To such persons it is totaily impossible to convey any sense of musical perception, and their views can only be ignored and themselves sincerely pitied. Professor Maxwell Walker in his lecturette from 1YA sast month: strongly stressed the value of good music, especially in the backblocks. Dean Inge lately said: "I found jazz to be the most worthless thing in music I had ever heard." Dr. James Lyon regrets that "we are forced to listen to chose insults which the ‘jazz merchants concoct, or toa ‘erooner’ whose vapid imbeciiities make one wonder how a human being can descend so low." What is wrong with this absolutely trivial music is that it can express nothing except the iagenuity with which composer and interpreter may make nothing sound like something. That, briefly, is why: "Jazz shall depart; Time, with his dart, . Never shall puncture the fame of Mozart." If we looked back we should remember that the greatest Empires of the earth have lost their proud positions and perished, one by one, through neglect and ‘lack of faith in higher ideals. The monotonous jazz, with its reiterated rhythms and the nauseating similarity of its har- | monies and melodies, forms a low standard of musie which :s equivalent in litera--ture to the appalling "penny dreadful." The practical abolition, through educated taste, of the latter, has had a healthy effect on the minds of modern’ generations; how much more will sound education and taste in a universal language like music contribute toward developing fine minds and clean characters, not only in the individuals pnt in the nations of the world?-I am, etc.,

J. D.

PARKIN

Timaru,