Mu~ic education in societytaste and which is nowadays sometimes spoken of-with what teme-
rity!-as progress and development. Once that has been done, we can
resume the upward movement in the artistic training of young people
and adults alike. Mr. Cuvelier’s statement that, among the Musical
Youth groups, the vogue for jazz is declining in favour of great and
beautiful classical music is encouraging and gives hope for a better
future.
For more than a century, music has played a large part in European
adult education and, if it be true, as Plato said, that it is ‘the art which
penetrates to the soul and inspires in it the love of virtue’, the Workers’
Leisure Time Committees have done well to give all the support they
can to the popular societies for instrumental and choral music.
Some may criticize their repertory, and admittedly it still often shows
traces of the nineteenth-century tradition, especially in the choral so-
cieties, but those who would like to take us back to the age of folk
music can hardly complain of the repertory’s being out of date! In
general we have gone beyond the age of folk music and if our friends
on the other side of the Atlantic still have a fondness for it, it is because
they have not acquired the centuries-old traditions of the Europeans,
who have introduced into their popular music sophisticated works,
and indeed in many cases extracts from the works of the very greatest
composers.
It is not now a question of setting up new bodies, but of reviving
those already in existence. We must restore to amateur societies the
prestige they had forty or fifty years ago; for they are true centres of
popular music education and of training in the arts. It may be well to
append some data about the work of the 903 popular musical societies
in Belgium.1
- Total number of musicians and singers, 36,909; total number of non-performing
members, 17,758; total number of rehearsals, 34,768; average number of members
present at rehearsals, 26,421. Total number of performances by the societies: (a) organ-
ized by the societies themselves, 3,482; (b) other-competitions, 114, contests, 148,
festivals, 786, concerts, 4,190. New works in the repertory of the societies: (a) Belgian,
3,579; (b) foreign, 2,345. Number of instruments in the possession of the societies,
25,426. Number of conductors and other persons in receipt of fees, 1,026. Total expen-
diture of the societies for the purchase of instruments, 5,300,228 francs; total expendi-
ture of the societies for the repair of instruments, 3,137,142 francs; total expenditure
of the societies for the acquisition of new works, 1,565,246 francs; total amount of
royalties paid by the societies, 604,219 francs; total amount of miscellaneous dues paid
by the societies, 285,073 francs; total amount of subsidies granted by the provinces and
municipalities to the societies themselves, 3,405,638 francs; total expenditure of the
societies 10,899,908 francs.