THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 134, 16 January 1942, Page 3

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

HE first buildings to spring up in a typical New Zealand town are the church, the store, and the pub. But the early settler, returning to his childhood home to gaze once more at that historic building where as a young man he spent so many golden hours may find himself baffled. There’s the old church and there’s the old store, but where’s the old public-house? On its site rises a palatial building bearing the familiar sign and a recommentation from the Automobile Association. The early settler is dismayed. He tears his hair. But he should remember that in New Zealand we do not allow our old pubs, any more than our old soldiers, to die; we merely repaint them, re-decorate them, and put notices outside boasting that they have undergone extensive alterations and that the bar is now longer than any other in the Southern Hemisphere, Had the ancient passed through those swinging doors he would probably have recognised the same wallpaper, the same pictures, the same plush furniture that he boggled at fifty years ago. So when Major Lampen speaks from 2YA next Thursday morning on "Ye Olde Inns and Tavernes" we may expect lively descriptions of Ye Old Iron Bedstede and Ye Non-Porcelaine Bathe. ‘Ten, Twenty, Thirty, Forty Etc. We will be interested to learn what Miss Cecil Hull sees when, in her Schoolmarm Looks Back series, she looks back at a school jubilee (1YA, Friday week, 10.45 a.m.). Our own chief recol-

lection of the only school jubilee which we ever attended is of singing "For He (She, or They) Is/Are Jolly Good Fellow(s)" more frequently than we have ever done except at smoke concerts. Of course, at smoke concerts one expects to sing it loudly and frequently, and adequate provision is always made by the caterers against this contingency. And

there is no doubt that the tea provided at school jubilees can’t compare as a lubricant with the smoke provided at smoke concerts. But, of course, there are other things about jubilees which one remembers more happily. What is it in the atmosphere at such gatherings, for example, which causes us to extend the right hand of fellowship to a mathematics master whom, ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, we would cheerfully have boiled in the afternoon tea urn? Perhaps jubilee tea, like absinthe, makes the heart grow fonder, perhaps it is our adult realisation that the mathematics master was only a minor knuckle in the Fell Clutch of Circumstance. Whatever it is, the most bovine of as will admit that there is something about school jubilees. Maybe Miss Hull will be more explicit in her analysis. A Russian " Mr. Punch" "As her leg was made of wood, and she did not want it known at the point on which she stood, she had fixed a rubber cone" go the words of a rowdy Moscow street tune, used by Stravinsky in his ballet Petrouchka,-and they typify the music’s deceptive, tinselly vulgarity. Petrouchka was a kind of Russian * Punch" — a straw-filled puppet who suffered all manner of wrongs and injustices, but like many other clowns, he had a sensitive soul which really had to endure all the suffering and humility. Stravinsky's ballet brings this soul to life with the aid of some of the most remarkable music written since 1900. There is true compassion behind the facade of gay colours and the coarse dance music of a Russian Easter Fair. Petrouchka will be heard from 2YN at 8.0 p.m. on Monday, January 19. Cabbages and Queens "Kind hearts are more than coronets and cabbages than kings" as the Marseillaise reminds us, or perhaps we are thinking of the Internationale. All the same, there are few hearts, kind or otherwise, which are not fluttered at some time or other by thoughts of royalty and not even the most ardent dietician would

claim that cabbages had any chance with kings in the popularity stakes, But as usual our philosophical lucubrations are leading us away from the point, which was to draw .the attention of our 346,000 certified readers (if they aren’t certified, they ought to be) to 3ZR’s programmes for next week, where romantic royalty will be found in full flower. Elizabeth ("I am only a Poor Weak Woman") Tudor has the microphone on Sunday evening (Coronets of England), the Duchess of Marlborough (" the Divine Sarah") on Monday and Tuesday, and Queen Christina (" the swedest thing you ever saw"’) on Thursday. And to round off the week’s work, a play entitled The Royal Sisters will be presented at 8.0 on Friday evening. For once Cherchez la femme will be unnecessary advice., Ye Shagbut Swallower Most of us have been amazed at one time or another by the feats of circus sword-swallowers, but few of us are as naiye as one old Italian writer who believed that a trombonist swallowed and regurgitated the tubing as he played. Baldassare Castiglione wrote in 1528: "And when his companions demaunded him what kind of musicke did please him best of all that he had hearde in

Venice he said: ‘All were good, yet; among the rest I saw one blow on a straunge Trumpet, which at every push thrust it into his throat more than two handfull, and then by and by drew it out againe, and thrust it in afresh, that you never saw a greater wonder.’ Then they all. laughed, understanding the fond imagination of him that thought the blower thrust into his throat that part of ye Shagbut that is hid in putting it back againe." Two solos on the trombone, the modern "sackbut," will be heard from 1YA at 9.34 p.m. on Sunday, January 18, played by James Chalmers. lrishman’s Choice Rossini’s Stabat Mater held great interest for a famous Dubliner-"Leo-pold Bloom," one of the main characters in James Joyce’s notorious novel, Ulysses. Bloom told Stephen Dedalus, on page 622, that "He also yielded to none of his admiration of TRossini’s Stabat Mater, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers in which his wife, Madame Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable sensation he might safely say, greatly adding to her other laurels and putting the others totally in the shade in the Jesuit father’s church in Upper

Gardiner Street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the doors to hear her with other virtuosos, or virtuosi, rather...." But however bored Leopold Bloom may have been with his life of parody, he knew a good piece of music when he heard it. The "Cujus Anima" from Rossini’s Stabat Mater will be heard from 2YC at 9.20 p.m. on Wednesday, January 21, sung by Beniamino Gigli. Reckless of Roses In spite of the fact that to-day it is our duty’ as a nation to look on the bright side and to keep our places in the sun (when we can discover it) there will always be those among us who will persist in looking for flies in ointment, bees in amber, niggers in wood piles, and proofs in puddings. They will even point out obvious truths such as that roses have thorns and that the birds of the air haveri’t always nests. But even the professional pessimist seldom goes so far as to forget the roses while lost in contemplation of the thorns, and we feel that a song titled "Unmindful of the Roses" could justifiably be rendered only by a young man of the fifteenth century who didn’t want to get tangled up with either Lancastrians or Yorkists. Yet such is the title of a number to be sung by a Mr. Arthur Reckless next Friday at 9.56 p.m. from 2YC. In view of his name we suggest that a more suitable title would be "Unmindful of the Thorns."