THE famous and friend of Elgar, Sir Adrian Boult warned of the dangers of "canned" music when he visited Worcester at this time half-a-century ago.

He was invited to the city to officially open a bazaar at the Shirehall in 1951 to raise funds for the Worcestershire Orchestral Society.

In his speech, reported in the Journal, he stressed the importance of promoting "live" music-making in the face of increasing "armchair" competition from gramophone records and the radio.

"If as a nation we fail to support musical societies, we could soon be at a stage where we have no music at all except for that which is 'canned' in London and sent out on the wireless. With so much mechanised music, it is easy to sit back and get music at home by the wireless instead of going out to support music-making in our own towns and cities," said Sir Adrian.

"Mechanised music has the tendency to make people interested only in perfection. This is all very well but the living thing is much more important," he asserted.

Not long after his Worcester visit, Sir Adrian conducted several concerts given by the London Philharmonic Orchestra during a week-long Elgar Festival at Malvern.

Death of a genius

THIS week 200 years ago, Worcester was mourning the loss at an early age of an educational genius.

The Journal of 1801 stated: "We regret to announce the death on Sunday last, in the 29th year of his age, of Mr John Price of this City, teacher of the French, Latin, Italian, German and Spanish languages and the author of the Worcester Guide and of the histories of Hereford and Leominster."