Radio Times/1923/10/19/Broadcasting Symphonies

HE biggest musical events of the past week are two connected with broadcasting. The first is the issue of the Postmaster-General's Report, and the second the broadcasting, from all six stations simultaneously, of a fine Symphony Concert Programme.

Both these events are of tremendous importance. I gather that in one way or another the general effect of the new official regulations will be still further to popularize broadcasting. And I do not believe that any of us as yet realize that the popularization of broadcasting means to music.

It seems to me to be comparable with the invention of printing. Less than 500 years ago the Classics, the Holy Scriptures, the Legends, and the Poetry of Europe existed only in manuscript, and could be studied only by the tiny class of literate men. There were no novels and no newspapers. Ideas were preached from the pulpits, and news passed from mouth to mouth.

Then came the invention of printing. A great extension of education naturally followed, and nowadays the whole of the world's literature is open to anyone who cares to read it.

To a large extent the gramophone has, perhaps, already done for music what the invention of printing did for literature. But broadcasting will do even more, for it makes fine musical performance easier to come by—and dirt cheap.

There must be some who live on the outskirts of London, and who find the labour and expense of getting into the concert halls too great to be often undertaken. There must be others who live in small provincial towns, where a full orchestra is never heard, very rarely a string quartet or a fine singer, and decidedly never an opera performance. And there must be still others living in remote country places where absolutely no music whatever is to be heard. I congratulate all these people upon the enormous extension of their pleasures that has already brought been about by the British Broadcasting Company.

Up to the present, the great music of the world has been the private preserve of a little band of people who happened to live in the places where it could be heard, and who happened to have enough money to pay to hear it. Henceforth, it belongs to everybody. This means an immense widening of public interest in music, and, I believe, a great raising of public taste.

I sometimes hear "highbrow" musicians complain of the programmes of the Company. Well, I claim to be as big a highbrow as anyone and I don't complain. I think it is remarkable that in the week's programmes there should he included so much music of the highest class, and I am convinced that as the demand grows for more and more of this fine music the Company will meet it.

Of course, there will always be a need for plenty of good, light music, and that need, too, must he met. But we do want the masterpieces, and I believe we are going to get them.

And the reasons I think these concerts so important is that I feel that they will influence history. In five years time, in my judgment, the general musical public of these islands will be treble or quadruple its present size. And the next generation, instead of regarding a symphony as a mysterious contrivance of concentrated boredom, will accept the great symphonies of the world as a part of its regular, natural daily and weekly pleasures.