Has Broadcasting Ruined Music?

Radio Record, 4 September 1936, Page 12

Has Broadcasting Ruined Music?

Arresting Conflict. of Opinions Published in Most Thrilling Music Week in Capital for Years —

[N the midst of the most thrilling musical week Wellington has. experienced since the visit of the Sheffield Choir im 1911 and the visit of the New South Wales State Conservatorium Orchestra in. 1920, the apple of discord was thrown around by a_ visitor from Auckland, in the person of Mr. J. Maughan Barnett, former city organist of both Wellington and Auckland, now retired on a pension

Mr, Barnett’s two attacks on radio’s alleged disastrous effects upon music were all unconsciously refuted by two world-famed musical authorities in the columns of "The Dominion" in the issues of August 15 and 22, as quoted below. The significance of three musicians’ views which were expressed quite unknown one to the other, makes them of. considerable topical interest ix. these. days of proposals for centennial musical festivals, a national musical conservatorium, -and . record entries for the ‘Wellington . Musical. Competitions Festival,

’ /THE OPENING BROADSIDE. "The -broadeasting of -music in" New Zealand has been, disastrous. That is my view, and many people might not agree ,with me. Broadcasting might be valuable for transmitting speech, and brass. instruments -could. also be reproduced reasonably well, but many instruments were distorted. An organ could: not be broadeast successfully, and consequently those ‘who listened. te awn organ recital over the air did. not hear recital as it was given." Comnienting on the effect of radio ou musical appreciation, Mr. Barnett said further, in an interview with the

"Hyvening Post" on his arrival in Wel» lington, that he did not think good music’ should be broadeast, . "Great works ‘which -should-" be: approached with reverence are turred. on as a background for the wash'ng of dishes," he said. "Musical appreciatin can. not be gauged by the number of radios in use, but only by the attendance at public concerts. That: attendance at the present time wus largély elderly persors, What. is going-to happen when they are gone?" He added that he wished that he might -have been born twenty years earlier and have missed radio altogether. As for the contertion that: broadcast music was educative in that it: improved. the musical taste of the public, he could not agree. As one writer said in the London "Observer" a year or two baek, mechanised music could not improve the publie taste any more than a sausage machine could improve the breed of cats. ANOTHER OPINION, "Broadeasting had given an ‘extraordinary impulse toe public interest in music, and the desire | to learn an instrument or to sing was inereasing at a great rate."Dr. Maleolm Sargent in an interview in "The Dominion," August 22. "What is the situation in music today, as compared with that of. a decade back?" asks Sir H. Walford Davies, Master of the King’s Mus‘e, ° and he answers his own question thus: "Though it must be admitted that there is prevalent at the moment much depressing broadcast . evidence of a debased taste for senseless music sensationally rerdered, there is also a strikingly healthy and. r‘sing tide of musical understanding and taste for the art itself, as apart from its associated uses, BROADCASTING AND PUBLIC. "You may safely picture millions" listening nightly; among these, tens of thousands are doubtless listen'ng with ever-increasing critical discernment; and among these again, hundreds of yourg listeners of outstanding musical sensitivity are I'stening ereativelr (inelnding maybe a genius or two). feasting on the good things but mentally vowing never. wher their chance comes, to affi'ect the world with the banalities that are still so frequently heard Public taste must needs go up and up, as well:as down and down tc the nether regions of deadly unthinking iteration. And if I may here be pardoned: a violert analogy. even decay makes for good fertil'sing. "TJ expect, as listeners, we roughly differentiate the various nationalities in music by general impression rather than by any details of melodie or harmonte pattern: by uses of mass ard colonr and by rhythmic. behaviour yather fhan. by .the. bend or turn of the composer's .melodic.tines or chords Im this general way I have been surprised to, hear a nerson, self-styled as being musically ignorant exclaim while lstening-in. "That’s Debussy, — isn’t it?" when not-only was the guess correct, but when the composer was heing (as I imagined) very faithfully French in his elusive orchestral). wavs." Article in "The Musicn}] World" fears ture; in "The Dominion," August 22.