THINGS TO COME A Run Through The Programmes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 38, 15 March 1940, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run

Through The Programmes

HAT is the good of learning history? Is it worth while? Does the past teach us anything? These questions, with special relation to New Zealand, are to be discussed in a series of interviews in the Winter Course session at 3YA, beginning on Wednesday, March 20. The first discussion will cover general ground, and in later talks Cook’s achievements will be considered. Listeners will be told, "How And Why New Zealand Became British," and from that point will be led into the controversial field of Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s activities. A topical series for Centennial year. Inconstant Queen "The Rose Without a Thorn," by Clifford Bax, will be broadcast by Station 3YA at 9.25 p.m. on Sunday, March 17. The play has been adapted for broadcast by C. T. A.

Tyndall and produced by the NBS. It is a royal drama about royalty; royalty in love and royalty inconstant; royalty wrathful. It is the story of Anne, and Henry, and Henry and Katharyn, Thomas Culpepper, Derham, Mannox, and the executioner’s block. The lively stuff of which the plot is made and Bax’s crisp certainty of treatment, make this a broadcast item which no one should miss, and we do not often say that. An English Irishman It is fitting that the talk at 2YA about Archbishop Redwood, in the "Leaders of the Churches in Early New Zealand" series, should be scheduled for March 17, S&t. Patrick’s Day. Francis Redwood was not an Irishman, but an Englishman, yet he founded "St. Patrick’s" Colleges in Wellington and

Silverstream. For the choice of the name he gave this reason: "Why was the College called St. Patrick? The reason was obvious. The vast majority of Catholic youth in New Zealand were sons of Erin, and St. Patrick was their Apostle and Patron. And, oh what thoughts and fair visions start up in the mind in pronouncing that beloved name!" Francis Redwood was consecrated Bishop of Wellington on the Feast of St. Patrick 1874, and he was Bishop and Archbishop for sixty-one years, The talk is to be given by T. P. Cleary. Made in Paris : Just as rock comes from Bulgaria, onions from Spain, stew from Ireland, leather from Morocco, and delight from Turkey, so gaiety traditionally comes from Paris. Paris has always been gay, but never more so than at the end of the last century, when a host of writers, painters, actors and musicians conspired to turn the French capital into the most brilliant coterie of intellect and genius in Europe. In those days, for the young in heart, every road led to Paris. It was the Paris of Guy de Maupassant, of Baudelaire and Verlaine, of Gaby Deslys and Cora Pearl, of Rimbaud and Toulouse-Laurec, and"this was the Paris that Offenbach invoked when he wrote his opera "La Vie Parisienne." The ballet from the opera "Gaiete Parisienne" is to be presented at 9.41 p.m. on Friday, March 22, from IYA Auckland. Turnabout You may be the most ardent champion of swing music in the world, but you cannot deny that many of the so-called original modern swing and dance tunes are deliberate plagiarism of the classics. In fact, plain pinching seems to be getting so boring these days that song-writers are giving up even slightly altering melodies by great composers, and are serving up "hot" versions of such things as Tchaikovski’s "None But the Lonely Heart." This paragraph is to tell you about the exact opposite of that, however. Taking the "Lambeth Walk" as his theme, pianist Frank Rayston plays this modern dance item in the manner of Verdi, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and ‘Liszt. These clever piano-pyrotechniques are to be broadcast at 9.31 p.m. on Tuesday, March 19, from 3YA Christchurch. Remembering Down in Otago, there is so much remembering to be done about such brave old days that they find it necessary to organise it

through the Early Settlers’ Association; a very strong organisation with its own meeting place and its own important place in the community. They live to a ripe old age there, and work to a ripe old age. And when they can no longer work, they can still join the Early Settlers’ Association and work enjoyably in reverse. Station 4YA will broadcast proceedings at the celebrations on Saturday, March 23, at 2.30 p.m. and 8 p.m. Full Circle Not long after the first copy of The Listener came off the presses, W. Graeme-Holder found his way into its columns. He was talking then about how plots come into authors’ heads, and he said, incidentally, that he had in mind a simple story about a man and a dog on a hillside, and a woman who meets them. Since then, the seasons have come almost full ciréle, bringing with them "Full Circle," the play from this plot. It will be broadcast by 2YA at 9.25 p.m. on Friday, March 22. It is a simple, sentimental story. For a text, Mr. Holder quotes: "And thus full circle come the seasons, Bringing rhyme but seldom reason." Fowls and Feathers A fowl, so far as we are concerned, has three uses: for eating (which is first), for laying eggs (British Breakfasts Are Best), and for rearing chicks (for eating and laying more eggs when their turn comes). And feathers can be used (1) for burning under the noses of any ladies who still believe it fashionable to faint, (2) for mixing with tar for any gentlemen who still believe it fashionable to be tarred and feathered, and (3) for making Red Indian headdresses for those small boys to whom Red Indians will always be fashionable. But we don’t doubt there are other uses, and we shouldn’t be at all surprised if most of them are included in the A.C.E. talk from 4YA next week (Wednesday, March 20, 3.15 p.m.) Prodigy Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas had something in common with Mozart -- they were both infant prodigies. Both of them, unlike many prodigies, fulfilled the promise of early years, and became great in maturity, Thomas was born in Metz, and as a student in Paris at the Conservatory won a prize that took him to Rome. On his return he wrote works for the Opéra Comique and Grand Opéraespecially "Mignon," by which he is best-

remembered. If you tune in at 8.40 p.m. on Tuesday, March 19 to 2YA Wellington, you will hear the "Festival of Spring," ballet divertissement from the opera, played by the 2YA Concert Orchestra, conducted by Léon de Mauny. New God in China Over the land of cross-legged Buddhas, of pot-bellied gods in peak-roofed temples, over the land that still nourishes the gentle traditions of Confucius, over the paddy fields, the endless rivers, now stands a new god, the God of War. Vaguely, we know that China is fighting, and has for years been fighting, a strange scattered war, with the tactics of the bandit and the tactics of the aeroplane and tank, strangely mixed; with aims and unities confused among the confusion of puppets and diplomacy. James Bertram is one

of those people who really can tell us what has been going on in China. His third talk in a series will be broadcast by 2YA at 7.40 p.m. on Monday, March 18. The title is " Along the Battlefront." Oyez! Like the old town crier, or the Aga Khan on Derby day, we raise our voices to proclaim "We know the favourites." We have been listening, you see, to " Hollywood Cavalcade, " the bright programme devised on the favourite films of 1939. If you tune in at 9.25 p.m. on Saturday, March 23, to 1YA Auckland, you will hear memories of a wide variety of films-for music, "Three Smart Girls Grow Up" and " The Great Waltz"; for drama, "If I Were King," and " The Citadel "; for-but there, you’d better tune in and see what you think of it yourself,