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WESTERN COMMENT
Hear—Make—Enjoy
REVIEW OFFICE, CHICAGO, I I I . , February 18, 1929.
Music . . . Make Music . . . Enjoy Music! Here is the slo-
gan of the National Music Week which the indefatigable C. M. Tre-
maine is about to put through once more and
One Worth-
which promises to repeat its past successes. As
while
one who, usually by temperament, objects to slo-
"Week"
gans, "weeks," "drives" and mass-propaganda in
general, I find it impossible to become enthusiastic over any form
of verbal or physical magic; but only a fool will deny that Music
Week really has justified itself, and repaid the efforts which have
been put to its carrying out during the last ten years. And the
reason that Music Week is an exception so far to the general
rule lies in the simple fact that it does fill an actual need. Even
the much-trumpeted Mother's Day has in it something false and
hollow, and lends itself to a great deal of sloppy twaddle insin-
cerely put forth. Music Week, on the other hand, really has a
meaning and really fills a need. In actual fact it is wholly un-
necessary to appoint, on the authority of a group of advertising
agencies, a special day upon which we must all be kind to our
mothers; for the simple reason that most men and women are
kind to their mothers upon every day in the year during which
they have any contact with these relatives. Nor is it really neces-
sary to tell us, at much expense of announcement, that during one
week of the year we should eat more apples, or onions, or cab-
bages, or bread, or bananas, or whatever it is, than we have been
eating, seeing that most men and women eat too much anyhow.
On the other hand, there is some sense in waging a warfare to
compel the attention of this present age to music. Music happens
to be the one art which most nearly approaches the power to fit
itself into the soul of to-day. Each of the other fine arts takes on
to-day something of the self-conscious and of the artificial. Paint-
ing indeed is now not a contemporary art at all, for it is static,
and to-day is dynamic. So too we may correctly describe Sculp-
ture. So too even Poetry and the Novel have their limitations,
while Architecture has hopelessly muddled itself in the argument
over beauty and utility. Music, on the other hand, appeals pre-
cisely to the very soul of to-day, for Music is immaterial like
Atomic Physics, occupies no space, moves in a form of time which
is wholly its own, appeals to the unspeakable and indescribable
states of to-day's soul with influences as potent as they are mys-
terious ; and in every way satisfies the contemporary world as no
other form of artistic expression does or can. Music is pre-emi-
nently the art of to-day.
nient which promises, if only for a moment, to bring back a sense
of zest, of joy in living. Now, music occupies in every one of
these amusements a tremendously important place. Lacking
music, of one or another sort, modern life simply could not go on
without breakdown.
HEAR
then, has a place for itself which puts
it, in any ordinarily correct circumstances, beyond the dubious
position occupied by the innumerable campaigns
National
of the florists and the grocers and the sellers of
Is
paint and kalsomine. Yet the fact remains that
Local
the value of any such effort to direct the interest
of the millions toward Music during a certain week of the year,
in the hope of thus creating something which shall persist beyond
that week, can have any success only in proportion as those who
stand behind it, music merchants and the manufacturers of instru-
ments for music, realize clearly the limits of the idea and work
within those limits intelligently to make the most of what they
have. It is no less than idiotic to suppose that any artificial ma-
chinery can make a people musical; yet obviously, unless the values
which are in Music for this day and age can be put before the
public consciousness in a striking and positive manner, they will
not attain to the needed momentum. Now this can only be ac-
complished by means of machinery; and machinery in this case
includes both men and mechanisms. Music Week can only be
made worth while, then, if music merchants and the manufac-
turers associated with them, each individually and of his own
accord, take a living and definite part therein before the various
communities in which they are situated.
NATIONAL MUSIC WEEK,
IT is quite unnecessary to set forth in this place any description
of the arrangements which Mr. Tremaine and his Committee are
now prepared to place before the manufacturers,
Union
merchants and practitioners of music to the end
or
of securing a successful national celebration of
Failure
the glories of music during the week ending May
11, 1929. The facts are set forth in the literature which the Na-
tional Bureau for the Advancement of Music has prepared. What,
however, ought to be said here is that National Music Week has
long since ceased to be a mere trapping upon the garment of the
music industries in America. It has become an essential to the
structure of these industries. Despite its pre-eminent value as a
means of health-giving stimulation, comfort and delight to the
nerve-worn men and women of the day, the place of music in
our contemporary civilization can only be maintained by constant
effort. Competition for the public attention and interest is very
strong, and obstacles are constantly intruding themselves. A peo-
ple overstrained and overexcited demands entertainment, but the
more facile forms of entertainment are always provocative, never
bringing that calm and healing which Music may so divinely bring.
The music industries have before them now a serious state of
affairs in the formidable competition of counter-entertainments,
financed by powerful and aggressive groups. Yet the power of
Music is such that despite their relative insignificance the music
industries can not only maintain but actually increase their own
size and prosperity, if they will but work together and show that
they are more interested in building up than in tearing down, in
co-operation than in internecine warfare. National Music Week
provides a magnificent opportunity to do just this; and one can
only hope that the event of May will display to all the world the
spectacle of the music industries standing together in the name of
the greatest of all Arts and the noblest of all commercial activities.
W. B. W.
Music WEEK then has at once a place for itself which does rise
measurably above the mere vulgar ballyhoo of Mother's days, and
Eat more Bananas weeks, and all the rest. Music
Music,
Week means something. It means the expres-
Life's
sion, albeit commercially originated, of a real
Essential
need in the modern heart. To-day, the vast ma-
jority of the men, women and children who live in our great cities
are desperately at a loss. They have forgotten, if they have ever
known, the art of living by themselves. Everything they do is,
and has to be, done in crowds. Their work, their journeyings,
the most private works of their lives, are done in the midst of
uproar. From waking to sleeping moment, everything is done in
front of all the world. Radio brings constant intrusion of the
outside world into the most secluded home. Nervous, high-strung,
noisy, unstable young men and women . . . even boys and girls are
affected . . . throng the streets, crowd the offices and factories, fill
the eating-places, the street cars, the swarming tenements; and at
night rush forth, released from the mechanical drudgery which is
for most of them their life work,' to every kind of exciting amuse-
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