WHAT IS SIR GEORGE LIKE? The question can be answered without difficulty: tall, a typical schoolmaster, and stubbornly reticent on some of the subjects on which I tried to "draw him out." However, he has quite strong views on a number of matters related to his profession, as many of his students are aware. It annoys him, for instance, when people speak scornfully or in supercilious, patronizing tones, of amateurs. He believes that the world of music would be a very dull place without the amateurs: they form the cream of the audiences and do an enormous amount to keep alive an enlightened interest in music.
Similarly, he resents the popular
notion that the musician who lacks the ability to earn a living as an executant
can always make a career as a teacher, for this has produced an assumption that
all teachers of music are mediocrities. If this were true, music would soon get
in a very bad way.
Ever since the disturbances in Europe began to drive refugee musicians into this country, Sir George Dyson has worked assiduously to prevent them from competing unfairly with our own artists. He is not unsympathetic, in fact he has given much of his time in providing relief and assistance for refugees, but he fails to see why some of them should take unfair advantage of our hospitality, and exploit the silly form of snobbishness that accepts a foreign name as a hall-mark of great talent in the musician.
There have been dozens of cases
where highly competent British musicians have been passed over in favour of
foreign artists, of whose ability and past experience little has been known,
merely because their foreign names have had a greater publicity value among the
more ignorant sections of the community.
As President of the Incorporated
Society of Musicians, Sir George has always been the champion of the British
musician, who is as efficient as his counterpart in any other country in the
world.
He believes that all our
musicians must forsake narrow and selfish interests to pursue a policy that
will establish their profession on a sound basis in the future and conserve our
great heritage of music.
He advises all musicians to
cultivate a power of concentration, calm purpose, and unwavering attention to
work, so that they can detach themselves from the many distractions that
surround them at the present time. Every man who is devoted to a high task of
any kind must also be able to refresh and recreate himself by periods of
repose, of contemplation, of detached and single-minded judgment of what he is
trying to do, and what end he is serving. He should at times be able to get
completely outside of preoccupation of every kind.
His advice to young musicians may
be summed up in a statement made to his students at the College a year or so
ago:
"Seize every chance that
comes along, however humble and unpromising it may seem. Nobody will buy
tickets to hear an unknown performer, and you can only become known by
constantly giving superb performances, at first for small fees or even none at
all. Young performers are like young banisters, who must take a brief for
nothing rather than sit idle, otherwise no one will ever discover their talent.
When a young barrister defends some penniless man skilfully, there is always a
solicitor in the court who thinks 'There's a promising young man: I must
remember him. That is the way all the great advocates began."
"If you look through the list of our most successful artists you will find that their careers have almost invariably been self-made. If you don't sing well for one guinea, you will never be offered ten. If you can't prove your worth in a scratch orchestra, you will never be asked to lead a good one. In music “the race is to the swift: the battle to the strong: To be a successful artist, the musician must have three gifts: talent, character and good fortune.”
Concluded.
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