MUSIC & BOMBS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 March 1939, Page 6

MUSIC & BOMBS

CONDITIONS IN WAR-STRICKEN SPAIN. The extent to which music continues to temper Spain’s third year of civil war is regarded as an encouraging aspect of the situation, says the Christian Science Monitor’s Valencia correspondent. Here, recently, the Municipal Orchestra, interrupted by the air-raid siren, bowed to demands from the audience and concluded the last movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony while bombs exploded less than two kilometres from the theatre. An ovation to the conductor, Jose Manuel Izquierdo, and his 80 instrumentalists was led personally by General Jose Miaja, Commander of the Central Zone’s Republican forces. This orchestra’s winter season of weekly concerts started on October 2, and similar activity is maintained by Perez Casa’s National Orchestra in Barcelona, and the Madrid Municipal Orchestra. Catalonia’s noted choirs are still appreciated in their home province, and around Valencia the celebrated village bands, one of which recently took an international prize, are in regular demand. Several bands have, been distributed along the various fronts where they are acclaimed by ih.c soldiers. Tn Valencia, the Council of Music of thp Ministry of Education is the organisation in which both composeis and publishers are centralised, and the council's de luxe editions of patriotic song books and general musical scores are a paradoxical. reflection on war-ridden conditions. At the cuy s Conservatory, too, though the majority of students are away at the front, the professors still retain their employment at a minimum monthly salary of 5000 pesetas (about £5O at'the official exchange rate). MUSIC IN THE SCHOOLS. In the schools of Central Spain a plan is being considered to make the sol-fa system of note-reading an obligatory study; the development of a sense of music in children from school age, it is argued, is an educational essential. , . ± . It. is natural that the patriotic mood should make much of contemporary Spanish composition. Extemporisation is a favourite pastime of the soldier, and folk-lore melodies particularly come in for a broad degtee of individual adaptation. Many young composers are bending their talepts to the nurturing of a new patriotic idiom, among them Rodolfe Halffter and Cailos Palacio, whose “Companies of Steel” is spoken of as a Spanish Tipperary." But mostly improvisation on established tunes is the familiar course. The typically national “Flaminco” music finds wide expression among the masses of the people. In the streets, cafes and hotels, trains, trams and workshops of the towns and villages, individual exponents of this almost Arabic-flavoured music arc always to be heard. Radios and gramophones are rarely available for public entertainment, so that these unself-conscious ■■■kills of isolated persons are the main source on which the Spaniard must I'rlv for his amusement.