THINGS TO COME A Run Through The Programmes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 57, 26 July 1940, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run

Through The Programmes

ANTERBURY school children will soon e be very familiar with "There’ll Always Be An England." This song has been selected by the Canterbury Education Board to help in a move which the board describes as aiming at sustaining in the children "an abundant source of loyalty and vitality." All schools have been instructed to arrange a saluting-the-flag ceremony every Monday and to sing the song every day. To accustom the children to the song the board has arranged with the NBS to have 3YA broadcast a recording every Tuesday and Thursday, at 9 a.m. The first of these broadcasts took place on July 16. Background for Teachers It is a far cry from teaching in the earlye days of New Zealand to the elaborate system of to-day, with its training colleges, university college courses, school committees, and education boards. In those days there was a great deal of difference between districts in

the provision made for education. In some places there was little or none, and the casual teacher flourished-the man who came out to this country with a university degree, or the governess type of woman. Teaching was often incompetent, and teachers were often " Passing rich at forty pounds a year," dependent for their living on parents who themselves had to struggle. These early schools will be described in next Monday’s talk from 2YA. The speakers will be T. G. Hislop and L. R. Palmer, and they are likely to treat this subject in the "Background of New Zealand" series with rather more respect than our artist does. Haydn the Genial Many composers are too wrapped up in their own souls to have much time for laughter and fun. But not so Joseph Haydn.

He was born in a wheelwright’s cottage in 4 village in Lower Austria in 1732, and by hard work and study climbed to European eminence. Some of his ancestors were probably of Slav descent, and whether that was good or bad luck, it perhaps gave him a sense of humour. His Symphony in G Major (SYA, 8.23 p.m., Friday, August 2) was nicknamed "The Oxford" because it was performed when the composer received an honorary Mus.D. from Oxford University in 1791. Music of the People Like most families of the old Russian nobility, the Moussorgskys claimed to trace their descent back to Rurik, that figure, half fact, half legend, who in 862 was invited by the Slavonic tribes of Northern Europe to rule over their country. The founder of the composer’s branch of the noble family was called "Moussorga" -- which means the "Foul-Mouthed." The key to Moussorgsky’s work lies in his letter to the painter, Riepin: "It is the people I want to depict; sleeping or waking, eating or drinking, I have them constantly in my mind’s eye-again and again they rise before me, in all their reality, huge, unvarnished, with no tinsel trappings! How rich a treasure awaits the composer in the speech of the people ... A true artist who should dig deep enough would indeed have cause to dance for joy at the results!" Vladimir Rosing, tenor, will be heard in songs by Moussorgsky at 3.30 p.m. on Sunday, July 28, from 1YA, Auckland. Don’t Miss Lord Elton Encouraged by the success of Sunday afternoon talks at 2YA, the NBS recently put on a series at 3YA, and now 1YA, beginning on July 28, is to broadcast the series by Lord Elton. When these were heard at 2YA, some listeners reckoned them among the best they had ever heard. Lord Elton has in full measure the rare gift of rambling. His voice is rich and pleasant, and he knows how to use it; he doesn’t lecture or instruct or report; he just talks. His reading is wide, his sympathies deep, and his humour the sort that leaves you warm and chuckling. Lord Elton was head of Rugby School, went on to Balliol, served in the first world war, and was captured by the Turks at Kut-el-Amara. Since

then he has been a don at Oxford, and has written books. He was a member of the Allswater Commission on the Future of Broadcasting. Don’t miss Lord Elton, Marsh for Mystery In another paragraph on this page we mention Herrick as a contrast between England four hundred years ago and Britain now. For another contrast, between us now and them then, 3YA also provides the necessary item. Herrick and his friends wrote when words themselves were almost new, and rhymes cheap at a penny a dozen. Now all the words are worn out. We no longer write in rhyme. We use the same vocabulary, but we use it to describe new things; among these the art and craft of murder, arson, burglary, bigamy, and other developments in the modern organisation of crime. Our own notable exponent of the new literature, Ngaio Marsh, will talk about "Detective Fiction" from 3YA at 7.40 p.m. on Tuesday, July 30. Landmark? When you listen to "Arctic Rescue" at 9.29 p.m. on Sunday, July 28, from 2YA, Wellington, you will be hearing a show which may be considered a landmark: for many radio experts declare that it is this type of production-the reconstruction of an actual event-which will be the true radio drama of the future. Written by the celebrated "Taffrail," this is a chronicle, part fiction, mostly fact, of a shipwreck which occurred off Bear Island, which lies well north of the Arctic Circle, in November, 1931. The "Howe" went ashore on the west side of the island, and the rescue involved crossing the barren island in the face of a gale. This is a National Broadcasting Service production. Happy Herrick No greater contrast between the present and the past could be drawn than O. L. Simmance will make with his reading from 3YA on Wednesday, July 31, at 8 p.m. His author this time is Herrick, who lived in what we now regard as the bravest days of England’s history. Around him the world was growing out of childhood into husky adolescence, but for Herrick life remained a time for cream and cheese, milk and milkmaids, peaches and roses, on the trees and bushes and in the milkmaid’s cheeks as well. History tells us about Danegeld and Doomsday, the Armada, Flodden, and the Irish question. But it takes a Chaucer to tell of the Canter‘bury pilgrims, and Herrick to give us haw-

thorne hedges and milady’s silks a’flowing. Herrick was a romantic, almost pure and very simple: a good antidote for totalitarianism. Slang Harangue However it may be resisted-in the schools, by the radio, newspapers-however much it may. be. ignored by the dictionaries, slang sooner or later establishes its place in the language of a nation. For its expletive or descriptive effect, slang must have vigour, it must be fit for its job (our artist suggests one of its more common uses), and if it is

good slang it will be good enough to last until in the end even the haughty "Oxford" will have to print it and explain it. Slang is, in fact, a prime source of new language. But how do these new words take shape, where and when do they begin? These questions Sidney Baker has been asking himself for many years. He is now collecting his answers for a dictionary, and is being generous enough to make progress reports available. Some of these will be given in a series beginning at 2YA on Sunday, July 28, at 3 pm. Mr. Baker’s work is described in our "People in the Programmes" page. Anti-Christ? Largely because he had written "Thus Spake Zarathustra," Nietzsche, then many years dead, was in 1914 called "the mind that caused the Great War." Zarathustra expounds the philosophy of the superman, and it has been called the philosophy of AntiChrist. Whether this is true or not, Richard Strauss, in writing his tone poem "Thus Spake Zarathustra," has embodied some of the strange brilliance of the writing in his music. The Strauss composition is to be heard from 3YA, Christchurch, at 3 p.m. on Sunday, July 28. "ine Mihai