MUSIC FROM THE PAST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 51, 14 June 1940, Page 8

MUSIC FROM THE PAST

The Art Of Arnold Dolmetsch

Early this year the death occurred of Eugene Arnold Dolmetsch, the composer. As a tribute, Zillah Castle and Ronald Castle, who are members of the Society of Recorder Players, EngJand, will present "To Arnold Dolmetsch," a programme of music for recorder, virginal and violin, at 9.15 p.m. on Tuesday, June 18, from 2YA Wellington man, born in Le Mans, on February 24, 1858. His surname, by a curious coincidence, is closely allied to the German word "dolmetscher," which means "interpreter." It seemed, therefore, to be the destiny of a Dolmetsch to interpret the music of a more spacious past. One of the rarest and, perhaps the sweetest thing remaining with us in music, a memory of those days when music-making was carried on extensively in intimate domestic circles, has been the quiét persistence of the Dolmetsch ‘family to keep ‘alive the charm of old viols, virginals and recorders of Elizabethan times. There is something so exceedingly refined, quaint and | A RNOLD DOLMETSCH was a French-

rare, in hearing them in performance. Arnold Dolmetsch studied the violin under the great Vieuxtemps, at Brussels, also at the Royal College of Music, London. He became interested in teaching and joined the staff of the Dulwich College, London, but this was merely a step in the direction of his

real job in life. He began to collect and repair and play on old instruments, with old music which he revived for the purpose. He went to the Chickering piano factory in America, later he had a department. in the Gaveau piano factory in Paris, and ultimately he returned to England, when he installed a workshop at Haslemere, in Surrey.

For many years Arnold Dolmetsch and his family, world-famous experts on old English music, manufactured such instruments as lutes, viols, recorders, clavichords and harpsichords. Such is the family’s passion for their art that they may often be found wandering around in Elizabethan costume. They play the entire range of the instruments they make, and every year hold a festival of old music. Down at Haslemere, under conditions far removed from the push and bustle of today, the Dolmetsch family re-established in its own household the domestic conditions of earlier centuries. To these festivals musicians from all countries in the world came*to hear at first-hand old English music played on the old-style instruments, and interpreted by a foremost authority, craftsman and artist. For all Arnold Dolmetsch’s very long residence in England, he never wholly succeeded in learning our language. The almost comical effect of the broken English in which he addressed his audiences came to be recognised as an essential part of the entertainments, and it certainly endeared him to everybody.