Composer On Top Of A Pyramid

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 156, 19 June 1942, Page 11

Composer On Top Of A Pyramid

Tuesday of this week, June 16, the NBS Orchestra conducted by Andersen Tyrer, played the first movement of "New Zealand Symphony" a work by a young New Zealand composer, Alan Heathcote White. This ig not the first time that Mr. White’s music has been performed over the air. In 1937, the Choral Society gave a presentation of his "Coronation Ode" in honour of the Coronation of George VI. This ode was written during the author’s first trip to Europe and was actually composed in Trafalgar Square with the pigeons fluttering round and Nelson looking down from his column. Another of his symphonies, the "European Symphony," was composed during a bicycle tour round Europe, through Belgium, France, Holland, the Rhineland, and Austria. Perhaps this was something of a pilgrimage as well as a tour. "I stood in a room in Beethoven’s house," Mr. White told The Listener. "I visited the place where Schubert lived; and I went to Weimar and saw Goethe’s house. All the time, in every place, I was composing. I even composed a song on the top of the pyramid at Ghizeh when I was in Egypt!" On his first visit to Europe, Mr. White visited Palestine, and this inspired him to write another work, the "Eastern S;mphony." "The work that I think is my most important," seid Mr. White, "is ‘The Triumph of Christ. This is an oratorio, and embodies my idea on all that has happened in recent years and the new world of hope and peace that will be established." The "New Zealand Symphony" was written in 1937, and was to have been published in Vienna, but the project had to be abandoned on the eve of the Munich crisis because the Jewish head of the publishing house had to flee from Europe. :