THE MUSICAL WORLD

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 104, 26 January 1935, Page 19

THE MUSICAL WORLD

(By “C.J.M.”) Stray Notes. The January issue of "Music in New. Zealand ” has an interesting article on "Music in Germany To-day” by Mr. H. H. Tombs. The New York Schools of Music recently conducted psychological tests and found that the pianist was the most fretful member of the orchestra. The violinist was found to be tlie most nervous; the tuba player the calmest; the drummer the swiftest thinker—and the saxophonist the most eccentric. Ernest Schelling, who gives delightful children’s concerts in New York, has a good idea. He makes the children sing with the orchestra —and on the stage there is a big thermometer which he operates. The thermometer’s column goes from "terrible” to “very good.”— These Americans! A famous wit was invited by a lady to share her box at tlie opera, lie knew that this lady was an incorrigible talker. He asked what the opera was. “Lohengrin.” “Oh,” he said (it was Mark Twain), “I should be delighted to come. I've never hear you in ‘Lohengrin’.” This is the heyday of tlie conductor. Toscanini recently conducted three concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic (one of the few really great orchestras of the world—and one of the few Toscanini likes). Tickets brought fabulous prices. The concerts were sold out weeks in advance. AU of Toscanini’s comings and goings—all of his sayings were fully reported in the newspapers. At the end of the first concert, the audience was what the papers described as “musically hysterical." « * * Mr. Robert Russell Bennett is developing into one of America’s most interesting composers. His new symphony, “Abraham Lincoln,” is being played by major orchestras in the United States, and the Philadelphia Opera is thinking of producing his new opera. * * * In a paper read recently to members of the Music Teachers’ Association of Victoria, Madame Ottlee, formerly a teacher of singing in Christchurch, told the association that Christchurch was very flat, and not a good place for naturally fine voices. She had found from experience that one did not usually get resonant voices in fiat districts in England or New Zealand. It might be different in Australia, due possibly to better climatic conditions. However, the students in Christchurch were very keen, splendid workers, and willing to make up in musicianship and artistry what they might lack in actual voice. « * Four Famous Hymns. Dr. Percy Dearmer, Canon of Westminster, says in a recent article that “Christians, Awake,” to that most satisfactory eighteenth-century tune, “Stockport,” is by John Byrom, a remarkable and versatile man who came out on the Stuart side in 1745, and among other things wrote the lines: — “God bless the King—l mean the faith’s defender; ' God bless —uo harm in blessing—the Pretender; But who Pretender is, and who is King, God bless us all! that’s quite another thing! “ 'Hark, the Herald Angels Sing’ is Whitefield’s adaptation of Wesley’s ‘Hark, How All the Welkin Rings,’ with further alterations; the tune, ‘Mendelssohn,’ was made by that composer for a festival at Leipzig in 1840 to celebrate the invention of printing. •• ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ is of unknown seventeenth or eighteenth century origin, the words not quite satisfactorily translated from tlie Latin, but passable, and too well known now to be much altered. It owes its popularity, of course, to the splendid melody, ’Adeste lideles,’ the origin of which is quite obscure; it was once called ’Portuguese Hymn’ and is printed in a collection dated 1782; but it is more probably French or German in origin, and has been traced back in manuscript to 1751. “ ‘While Shepherds Watched’ was one of the hymns added to the New Version, the ‘Tate and Brady’ metrical version of the Psalms, still familiar to our grand-parents (we get ‘As Pants the Hart’ from it). It was familiar throughout the eighteenth century; for it first appeared in the Supplement to Tate and Brady in 1700. The very fine tune, ‘Winchester Old,’ goes much further back, to Est's Psalter, The Whole Booke of Psalmes, 1594; so it must have been familiar to Shakespeare, though it was not connected with Christmas till two centuries later.” Mr. Lloyd George on Hymn Tunes. Mr Lloyd George, presiding at the annual Armistice festival of the United Welsh Churches of London at the Westminster Clxipel said that, according to three of the greatest musicians, the five great hymn tunes of the world were The Old Hundredth, two German hymn tunes, and the other two were composed by Welshmen. They were Tanymarian and For All the Saints. “I feel rather proud,” he remarked, “to know that we had composed two of the greatest hymn tunes of the world.” Speaking of Dr. Joseph Parry, he described him as a man who believed that music really involved melody, and added: “I keep a large number of pigs and I can tell you now about modern music. If I take a piece of paper the next time I go when the feeding is on and put down in the old notation every squeal, every grunt, I turn out as good a specimen of modern music as you can get. Melody has vanished from it.”

An Elgar Evening. Elgar was the sole item on the menu at the second festival concert at Melbourne Town Hall, recently. He was served (says “The Bulletin, Sydney), in four guises—hors-d’oeuvres, roast, fish and pudding. If the order seems strange the meal was excellent. The "Pomp and Circumstance” overture began the proceedings. The "Falstaff” symphonic study was solid nutriment. Taking it in the spirit in which it was meant, that is, as a musical picture of a conversation between Prince and knight and their subsequent peregrinations through the streets of London, it was full of literary interest. Falstaff grunted, snored, sneezed and shook with laughter, and finally died babbling about his childhood. As music, it may have had unity—Elgar was hardly the sort of composer who would write palpable nonsense—but a design so complicated and enormous would be difficult to grasp at a first sitting, and this was the first performance in Australia, though the music was composed in 1913. In the “Sea Pictures,” first sung by Clara Butt at the Norwich Festival iu 1899, Isabel Biddell aired her clean, clear and warm contralto, and it failed to make a deep impression on the vast Town Hall auditorium chiefly because the orchestral accompaniment was too loud. Miss Blddell’s vocal organ remained successfully alloat in A. 1.. Gordon’s "The Swimmer,” however. A beautiful rendering of (lie lovely “Enigma” variations <;rowned Fritz Hart’s labours.