LOST MELODY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1941, Page 8

LOST MELODY

CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN ' COMPOSITION. REFLECTIONS OF UNEASY AGE. Music in recent years has lost much of its earlier melody, and one has sometimes been tempted to wonder whether in the brilliant technique of our modern composers, melody has not been ruthlessly relegated to the position of the hand-maiden, writes Mr Walter Kettle, editor of “The Choir.” Yet let us look at the position for a few moments. Academically, there is not much difficulty in defining the term “melody.” but musically it is altogether elusive. To some there is melody in progressive dissonances, in the machinery of the workshop, in the clashing of iron and steel, even in the warring elements of nature itself. The last quarter of a century has produced few periods of restfulness, and when we remember the years of mechanised civil and industrial warfare, through which we have been passing, the, constant atmosphere of unrest and disquiet all over the world, is it, after all, a matter for surprise that melody, that gentle mistress to whom all true music-lovers delight to pay reverence, should find no place? Yet we sometimes obtain glimpses of her nearness, and in the days to come, when, in God’s own time, the clang of war shall cease, it may be that the freedom of the countryside will come again, and with it a peacefulness in which the melody we have lost awhile shall return again to cheer and sweeten men’s souls in all lands.