THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 154, 5 June 1942, Page 5

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

E have been kept fairly A/ closely in touch with the various cunning schemes by means of which a war-time wardrobe can be made to suggest peacetime plutocracy. From our everloving wife’s study of English journals we have learnt that the way to survive on 77 coupons a year is to have a simple dark dress and a wealth of accessoriessix hats, four handbags, ten pairs of gloves and numerous felt posies, beaded appliqués, white cravats, and Bond Street jewellery. You work out all the various permutations and combinations of everything and that gives you (correct us if we’re wrong) 7,800,643,353 possible outfits-which should satisfy most women. We have learnt with relief that by remodelling and constant care it is possible to make the simple dark dress last anything up to three seasons, but the fact that you can’t buy another simple dark frock is compensated for by the fact that you’re allowed to spend a lot of money on the hats and gloves and things. But here, Heaven be praised, is the A.C.E. suggesting that women needn’t buy the hats and gloves and so on. Their talk "First Aid for Dress Accessories" will be heard from 1YA, 2YA and 3YA next Monday afternoon. Lhude sing cuccu "Sumer is icumen in," the most famous piece of early English music, will be heard from 4YA at 7.44 p.m. on Monday, June 8, sung by the St. George’s Singers. It has been talked about perhaps more than any other composition of such proportions, because it proves that England (variously referred to in times such as those of Handel, Mendelssohn and Wagner as "the land without music") was in fact, as Erasmus called it in the

15th Century, "a nest of singing birds." It is a spring song, with words in the Northumbrian dialect of the early 13th Century, set to a simple pastoral melody but devised as an elaborate canon, round, or "rota." That such a‘ highly developed composition dates from 1226 is taken to prove (though it was utterly isolated) that music in England at that time was well beyond the primitive stage that was otherwise supposed to exist. Noblesse Oblige The horse is a noble animal, according to Colonel Blimp, and we are sure he and other listeners will approve of the talk to be given by H. W. Carbury from 1YA at 7.15 on Monday evening

on "The Care and Management of the Horse." We are all for horses being managed, and as for care, well our own experience has been that you can’t be too careful. Why, we once knew a man who. .’. But by this time Ellerslie is a thing of the past and there is no point in giving all the details. It is perhaps sufficient to say that he came home quoting that bit of Ogden NashI know two things about the Horse, And one of them is rather coarse. However, we. are prepared to agree with Mr. Carbury that the horse is an animal of parts, but we confess with regret that, unlike the young man in the illustration, we are chiefly interested in horses’ necks. From Bar to Bar There was once a man who, feeling ill, went to the doctor. "You must be careful of yourself," said the doctor, "and you must knock off alcohol." "That’s all very well," said the man, "but what can I tell my wife?" "Tell her," said the doctor, "that you are suffering from syncope." "What did the doctor say?" asked the wife when her husband arrived home. "He said, my dear,"’ came the reply, "that I must be extremely careful. I am suffering from 4 bad attack of syncopation." "Syncopation?" thought the wife, "I wonder what that is?" and she got down the family dictionary. "Syncopation," ran the dictionary, "is an irregular movement from bar to bar." While one variety of syncopation is limited to before six p.m. and Not on Sundays, the other may be

turned on at almost any time. In fact, 4YA are turning on a "Syncopation Potpourri" on Thursday, June 11 at 11.25 a.m. A Little Nonsense Nothing less than an extra ration-book would, we feel, be adequate reward for the enterprising 1YA programme organiser who decided that nonsense literature was a fit subject for a Winter Course series. Come the four corners of the earth against us so long as he and the angels are oh our side, we shall keep our sanity. The first of this new series, "Foothills of Parnassus: Nonsense Literature," will be heard from the Auckland station on Thursday of next week at 7.35 p.m. and no one who values a sense of humour or needs the tonic that humour can provide should miss _ it. Most of us are familiar with nonsense literature. Edward Lear wrote it, so did Lewis Carroll and Stephen Leacock, and of course there was the Old Man of St. Bees Who was stung on the neck by a wasp. When asked if it hurt, He replied, No it doesn’t But I’m so glad it wasn’t a hornet. The "Good" Old Days It is, as we have observed before in these columns, one of the major human tragedies that vice should be more interesting (to the average man and woman) than virtue. This may or may not explain why it is that the ages are remembered. rather for the weaknesses that characterised them than for the

qualities that marked their progress. Our children no doubt will talk of the Furious Forties and the Thirsty Thirties (try that one on your little microphone!), even as we are accustomed to speaking of the Turbulent Twenties, the Naughty Nineties, the Hungry Eighties and all the other decadent decades. But were the Naughty Nineties (which will be the subject of a musical presentation from 2YA next Tuesday evening) really as naughty as tradition, and our egregious artist, make them out to be? Is this not likely to be but another case of distance lending enchantment (b.s., as the dictionary. would put it) to the view? Are we not simply sighing for the Good Old Days, in the bad sense.of the word? Time, and the Old Timers, plus Fred Hartley’s Quintet, will tell. They will be on the air at 10.1 on June 9. Biblical Ballet? We write (as always) subject to correction, but we can’t help feeling that the "Wise Virgins" Ballet Suite, which

William Walton constructed from fragmerits, of Bach’s more popular music (and which is featured in the evening programme from 2YA on Sunday evening next), is a little bit out of character as far as Bach is concerned. Our Calvinistic upbringing is perhaps still. too strong upon us, but we would have thought the Foolish Virgins a better subject for ballet than their more virtuous sisters. That may, of course, be due merely to a misconception on our part of the function of ballet or perhaps we are simply exemplifying the tendency (which we have deplored in the preceding paragraph) to take less interest in virtue than in its antithesis. At any rate, the combination of Bach and Walton, no less than the combination of Wise Virgins and ballet seems piquant enough to ensure interesting listening. The Pastoral Symphony "More the expression of feelings than tone-painting" was Beethoven’s own comment on the Pastoral Symphony (No. 6, in F Major) and it is a reservation which many later composers have adopted when offering music which has a "programme." The Pastoral Symphony, which will be heard by 3ZR listeners at 9.25 p.m. on Monday, June 8, has four movements, each with a title. The first is called "The awakening of pleasant feelings on arriving in the country"; the second, the slow movement, is called "The scene by the brook", and has imitations of the quail, nightingale and cuckoo near the end; the third, "Villagers’ Merrymaking", contains a parody on a village band which Beethoven -once heard. The "Merrymaking" is interrupted by a "Storm" which links the third and fourth movements, and the fourth is called "The Shepherd’s Hymn of Thanksgiving after the Storm."