A FALSE APPROACH

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 30, 1 February 1935, Page 5

A FALSE APPROACH

PUBLIC opinion is stirring to the dangers of the indiscriminate dissemination of music. A correspondent in last week’s *‘Radio Record" pointed out that it is now impossible to shop in peace; another correspondent to-day refers to the "‘amazing hodge-podge of sublime and jejune music’ which continually assails one’s ears. This paper has pointed out on numerous occasions the evils of letting wireless sets blare forth from early morning till late at night, and it now condemns with an equal vigour the continual fiddling and trumpeting in eating places and stores. Music was once symbolic of peace and joy. One sat in the hush of a darkened theatre and listened to the world’s masterpieces-or in the leafy shade of a park and listened to a well-balanced band-or at one’s! own fireside while familiar voices sang the songs that were loved by the whole family. To-day all that is changed. One gulps a hurried meal to the accompaniment of a Beethoven sonata, dashes off to catch a train . in a taxi that pours forth a Schubert melody from somewhere in its interior, buys soap and safety pins to the tune of ""The Merry Widow."’ This is truly lamentable in that it is killing youth’s appreciation of music, a fact that is brought home by a little sketch in an American paper just to hand. It shows the head of the house tuning in the wireless with his 14-year-old son remarking,, "Aw gee, pop, cut out that grand opera stuff and give us some jazz!" This indiscriminate blare of sound is bringing to young people an altogether false and destructive approach to music. The most difficult problem in train-. ing a layman to appreciate great music fully and intelligently is to rid him of the practice of searching in each piece of music for a story, of finding pleasure in only such musical works as may be translated in his mind from tones to pictures. True musical appreciation can come only when the layman has learned, at last, to hear "sound" alone, and to derive impressions, sensations and finally human experiences from different sound qualities. This can be done only by purging the mind of the preconceived prejudice that music tells a story, and by acquiring the habit-either through concentration, experience, or through a knowledge of musical technique -of listening to music as music.