THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 156, 19 June 1942, Page 5

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

ce HEY All Went to London", the title of a series of talks from 2YA on Friday everings, does not, as one might imagine, refer to Nazi bornbers nor exiled royalty nor visiting Prime Ministers from the Dominions, but to those musicians who braved English audiences in an effort to earn their guineas at Covent Garden or elscwhere. The 19th Century English may not have been musical but they liked being fashionable, and they were wealthy-some of them-so many musigians, ranging from the young Mozart prodigy to Chopin, went to London. Next week's talk (June 26) is on Felix Mendelssohn who, in the fashionable suburb of Denmark Hill (now merged in the slums of Camberwell) composed his " Songs Without Words." We do not know whether words failed him, but at last ho achieved sufficient popularity for the spot to be marked with a tablet dedicated to his memory, and for the composer himself to be invited to play at the palaco to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Les Belles Dames Sangfroid For a long time now wo have been devotees of Miss Dorothy Lamour, and after watching hcr parado through film after film ia lide more than a sarong we are astonished that the next "Health in the Home" talk should be "Why Women are Colder than Men." But if women are colder than men, it is the fault of the rationing system. If a woman gets herself a now costume this year she'll have to go without a winter coat for the next two years, and if she is fortunate enough to get herself four pairs of silk stockings sho will naturally not dream of buying a pair of stout woollen ones. However we are assured that though at the present time women are

colder than men it will not be very long before the relative positions are reversed, because it will soon be necessary for every loving wife to extract from her husband’s ccupon book enough .coupons to provide the year’s supply of towels and sheets and pillow cases, so that he will not be in a position to provide himself with a warm winter coat or even a pair of woolly socks for many couponbooks to come. For the rest of the story, listen to 2YA on Wednesday, June 24. Man Marches On? We hope that Dr. C. M. Focken who is to talk on "Science and Human Prospects" from 4YA next Tuesday evening (June 23) will reject the philo-

sophy of the author of " Greenland’s Icy Mountains" (where ev'ry prospect pleases, and only man is vile") in favour of tho Tennysonian optimism which . » + gazed into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the glory of the world and all the wonders that would bo. But prospecting isn’t what it used to be, as any old Westlander will tell you, and nowadays the scientist who is on the lookout for wonders is more. likely to devote his attention to spiral nebulae and decomposing planets than to the proper study of mankind. So we are looking forward to hearing Dr. Focken’s assertion that humanity Aas prospects. Perhaps the view from hero 8,000 A.D. is slightly better than that presented to our first ancestor by a panorama of the years 4,000 B.C. to the present time. Summer in Winter Having paddled our wet way through the merrie month of May thinking of the light-hearted references of posts to the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," many of us will now lay up our garden tools, the hose having been neatly curled up for the winter sleep many months back, until spring bursts upon us with its usual severity oncc more. Meanwhile we may tune our radios to 4YA this Saturday, June 20,when the "Summer Suite" (Eric Coates) will be played to feed our memory of brighter days. j All Talking Devotees of the spoken word (as tho daily newspapers would put it) who are within range of 3YA should not miss the programme from the Christchurch station on Sunday evening noxt, Aftor the nine

o'clock news and comraentary will come the dramatic piesentation, Front Page Splash, which tells the story cf a Lendon newspaper office during the Big LDlitz, This will be followed by a speech from T. S. Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral, by Robert Speaight, and then John Barrymore will be heard in two soliloquies: Gloucester’s from Henry VI. and Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be." And for those who are not then satisfied with: the evening’s diet of words, there will be the news commentary at 10.50 and the final news bulletin at 11.0 p.m. A Shropshire Lad University Professors, living in the unreal atmosphere of their scholastic achievements, are apt to become notorious for such absent-minded achievements as arriving at dinner parties in carpet slippers, boiling their watches and watching their eggs, or limping down the streets with one foot on the pavement, the other in the gutter. Fortunately one or two have shown a more generous eccentricity. A professor of mathematics produced Alice in Wonderland, and .a professor of economics the Nonsense Novels. So A. E. Housman though a distinguished Latin scholar and professor is known most widely as the author of The Shropshire Lad. Everybody can quote some of those magic verses, and a few perhaps remember this: And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man. Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think. But they are not the inspiration of our drawing. Our artist has shown the lad himself full of good spirits of quite another sort-despite the rain-and if

you were to ask him why, he would say "OI have been to Ludlow Fair!" This is the fresh rural atmosphere of rain and wind, trees and hills, with the alehouse mildly in the background, that Butterworth has tried to catch in his " Shropshire Lad Rhapsody" which will be played by the 1YA Orchestra on the evening of Friday, June 26. Debunking the Poets Debunking has been so much a fashion during the last two or three decades that one is in danger of dismissing it as a purely modern tendency. But thore havo been debunkers in every age and none is of more ancient lineage than the parodist or literary debunker, Aristophanes had many -a sly dig at his more sober pre-

decessors and contemporaries in the Greek theatre, Shakespeare parodied his theatrical rivals, and Dean Swift could be most undecanal in the same genre, Few serious poets (or poetesses) have escaped the attention of the irreverent. Sir John Squire, for example, has given us a2 version of Casuhianca as it might have been written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: What was he doing, the brave bright boy, Down on the deck that was burning? Shouting "Papa!" and yelling " Ahoy! 2 Fire! The Ship is becoming hot. May I skedaddle or may I not?" And so on. There is, in short, a wide field of choice for the compiler of the session "Parodies of the Poets" which will be heard (in the form of readings) from 3YA on Friday evening, June 26. Un, Deux, Trois "Ce n’est que le premier pas qui compte," the French say, but the title of M. Ken Alexander’s next talk is "The little things that count." Perhaps he is going to tell us stories of the young people of his acquaintance who got up to ten by the age of two- Alexander Pope, for example: While yet a child and still unknown to tamo, I lisped in numbers, for the num- : bers came. But Ken Alexander is too experienced an entertainer to risk boring his audience by talk of infant prodigies, so perhaps he’s going to tell us something about electric totes, or those dinky little machines that you plug into the wall and which go "br-r-r-r-" and then flash up the total in red figures. He will be on the air from 2YA on Friday, June 26, at 11.0 a.m.