“THE MESSIAH”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26641, 11 December 1947, Page 10

“THE MESSIAH”

Sir, —In Wednesday’s Daily Times are six inches of stock pedantry, in which occasional sanguineness jostles with sophisms of the most maudlin character. I refer, of course, to D. R. G’s too facile appraisement of the Dunedin Choral Society’s presentation of “ The Messiah.” He tells us nothing of what we are not already aware, and turns readers against him by such conceits as “ this auaible omen of the persistence of their traditions ” and ’’ that dead enchanted.” Coleridge has it that “ reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, histpriaps, biographers, if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other and have failed; therefore, they turn critics.” But, be that as it mav, we expect our critics to be good critics—that is. to intellectually criticise, or in the words of Anatole France, to “ narrate the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.” We expect the critic to select both the flaws and the flawless, and set them up on equal pedestals, to inform his public of how, with one notable exception, the soloists of the evening delighted in muddy passages barely audible at the rear of the hall, of how evidence of training and execution was offset by lack of body in the voice; of these and many more things.—l am, etc., Cliff Dowe.