Musical Score for Maori Film

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 962, 3 May 1930, Page 27

Musical Score for Maori Film

COMPOSER’S TASK NOW COMPLETE MR. ALFRED HILL RETURNS “I havd just returned from one of the most delightful arid stimulating experiences of my life; an experience that is the dream of many an artist, but realised by few —to get away from the hustle and bustle of strenuous civilised life, back to the glory and wonder of nature, free of care and worry/ 1 So writes Mr. Alfred Hill, who is at present visiting Wellington. “I cannot imagine a more ideal spot for the realisation of such a drea?m than the isolated western shore of beautiful Lake Taupo, where I have spent nearly three months with Mr. Alexander Markv, composing the musiscal score for his Maori motion picture. “Added to the matchless charm of the surroundings, and the everchanging splendour of this fascinating inland sea, was the priceless contact with members of the Ngati Tuwharetoa tribe, and the constant inspiration they were to me in my effort to write a fitting musical accompaniment

to Mr. Marky’s Maori story. “The intricate mechanism of motion picture production on a large scale, ever so much complicated since the introduction of sound, has been a revelation to me. “Tlie many-sided activities required for the building of two ancient and full-sized Maori Pas, a fleet of war canoes, a motion picture laboratory and theatre on location, the assembling of scores of complex instruments and varied equipment in so isolated a spot for the reproduction of the visual and sound life of the ancient Maori, the endless perseverance and ceaseless work required for the solving of the hundred and one problems attendant upon the coordination of all these carefully conceived and organised efforts into a perfect working whole, could not but evoke my admiration.

“By working almost without letup from the day of my arrival I have been able to finish the musical score in time to return tp the New South Wales Conservator ium for the second term, and I am looking forward to coming back to New Zealand upon the completion of

the final editing of the picture to supervise the orchestral recording of my score/' ,