Seventy years ago today, on the 22 November 1932, Hilda Collens, founder and Principal of the Northern School of Music (then the Matthay School of Music), delivered a speech to the students and families gathered for the School’s fifth annual distribution of awards ceremony.
She spoke of her pride in the School’s accomplishments in the previous five years, and of the challenges which lay ahead, particularly in view of the political, economic and social difficulties of the time. She urged her students not just to practice and perform whilst at the School, but to take music to their local communities and sing and play whenever possible.
‘I would appeal especially to you younger people to keep music alive in the district where you live, not merely by means of the gramophone and wireless but by taking part in the actual making of music, either vocally or instrumentally’, she said. Such actions were worth more than any kind of advertising, ‘Newspaper advertisement is very costly and the best recommendation is that which comes from those already connected with the School’.
A laudable message, indeed!
Front page of the Matthay School of Music’s programme for the fifth annual distribution of awards ceremony, 22 November 1932
Extract from Hilda Collens’s speech.
