MAORI MUSIC

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21412, 2 March 1935, Page 15

MAORI MUSIC

MR JOHANNES ANDERSEN'S STUDY Maori Music. By Johannes C. Andersen. Thos. Avery and Sons, Ltd. New Plymouth. 483 pp. (£2 Zs net). This compilation is the tenth volume of the Polynesian Society's Memoirs. It is creditable to the compiler's industry, scholarship, and devotion. In his preface he rather modestly considers his work as a mere introduction to the study of Maori music. The Polynesian background has been represented with adequate completeness, Maori instruments of music and the use of the human voice have been analysed, the Maori dance has been described, and a number of songs have been exemplified. It is to be regretted that, even in denying himself an intensive study, Mr Andersen did not include one chapter classifying Maori songs by nature, occasion, and mood, and giving clearer information about the range and influence of music in Maori life. For a consideration of such a kind the chapter discussing the qualities of Maori music is an inviting introduction. With the Maori-

every song had its point; its definite object. With a song an orator would drive home an argument; a pleader would sway his listeners to compliance; would move them so that they too would join and sing—for the most favoured were the old and wellknown songs. The early chapters of "Maori Music" are a collection of reports and observations made by explorers from Cook's first voyage to modern times. These supply an appropriate foundation upon which Mr Andersen builds with his powers of deduction and musical scholarship. The indefinite and the uncertain are tested, confirmed, or rejected, till a conclusion of scientific exactness may be made. The technical analyses of Polynesian and Maori musical scales are the finest work Mr Andersen has done, although greater interest, historical and ethnological, may be found in the society suggested by his account of native instruments and their purpose. From a purely literary consideration the examples quoted in the observations on Hawaiian music will be most surprising. Skilful, sympathetic translation has preserved the essentially simple, but cultivated, lyricism of these native songs. I Few New Zealand writers are so I versatile as Johannes Andersen. His verse is superior to that of most contemporary poets; he has examined the laws of verse; he has patiently studied and practised and reported Maori pastimes; he is an historian and a short story-writer. This latest volume exhibits him both as the scientist and the romanticist. Where exactitude is required he is exact; but he has not feared to show warm feeling and to write with freedom. Only rarely is the "I" insistent, and an occasional passage of excessive richness ma> nearly always be pardoned, but not "If, like flowers preserved in ice, these as shapely flowers of song and melody might have been frozen as were the notes of Munchausen's trumpet, and thawed out for later hearers, what echoes from the long ago might be caught, like horns of elfland faintly blowing . . ." Before these pages were finally bound into the expensive book they now form, much greater care in revision and proof-reading should have been exercised. On page 65 is a lamentably constructed sentence: a less intelligible sentence than the third on page 79 has probably never been printed; faults in punctuation are not rare, and there are instances of dropped words. Some of the notes mi it have been incorporated in the text. The index, however, is admirably complete, the illustrations are never dull or pointless, and the general craftsmanship of the printer and binder is good.