Rotary Luncheon; "Kind Friend" at the Lyceum"
"If we consider the astounding number of music teachers in this town; if we consider that we have at our disposal a full symphony orchestra and a big choral society, not to mention many other organizations of less importance; if we figure at 40,000 the number of potential concert goers Chinese and foreigners, which represents a small European town; and if we realize that in spite of cinemas and radios an average of over 3,000 people go every week to the symphony concert, to the opera or the light opera productions, or to recitals and various concerts it is really diffeu* accuse, Shanghai of being unmusi So spoke M. Charles Grosbois, Inspector of Education for the French Municipal Council, durin~ the course of a brief talk on music, from common sense point of view rather than some farfetched philosophical or technical point of view," at the weekly luncheon meeting of the Shanghai Rotary Club yesterday.
Music had been called one of the useless arts; that might be so, but it was certainly very much used. In olden times, music was interwoven in Ordinary life, the education of a gentleman being considered incomplete without a good knowledge of music. No matter to what period of history one turned, there was music as well as language, "sic flowing naturally, under the pressure of an irrepressible instinct almost as a necessity of life itself.
Legends, popular belief and the philosophers all agreed that music ad a mysterious yet nonetheless real wer, A Beethoven symphony cast spell over one, as anyone who had attended a few concerts, even if he lid not enjoy them, would at least rave noticed. As de Goncourt put "I do not like music at all but it creates in me a nervous state and it Seems that the nervous state in which Beethoven puts me is tenser than with any other musician."
The modern school of psychologists ould explain this "nervous state" and measure the blood pressure, cerebral coctions and so on, but without pplying laboratory methods, was it of obvious that musical waves actual-y struck the listener?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.