RECENT MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 175, 30 October 1942, Page 2

RECENT MUSIC

No. 34: By

Marsyas

HE anti-crooner cry is up again, and in England at least slop and slush are to be swept off the air, together with "the pillaged classic" and "anaemic and debilitated performances by male singers." This is very fine, but is it going to stop there, in the sphere of "popular music" only? The sob of the crooner (male or female), offends those who have pretensions to taste, however slight. The same sobprecisely the same sob-produced, as it were, by pulling the plug out of the throat, is tolerated and even enjoyed by the same persons, with the same pretensions to taste, if it is done in Italian by a famous tenor. The crooner is indicted for soaring up into the "halfvoice," which he does because the higher notes can be obtained more easily that way than when the full tone and true resonance are used. But a well-loved German tenor may sing anything from Ray Noble to Franz Schubert with the same ‘technique. For all the degrading slush. and syrupy hogwash that is going to be eliminated (I hope), from the "popular" programmes, there is half as much again that takes protection under the aegis of Art. Bad taste is none the less bad for intellectual pretensions. It is, in fact, all the more vicious. If My Sister and I or the song about the little old church that isn’t there any more (on account of the Germans, you understand), are nevermore to be heard, then Gounod’s Ave Maria must be limited to one performance in three months from any one station, such performances being retained to provide examples of sheer bad taste so that our sense of values shall not suffer too violent a disturbance. * * * HILE 2YA has developed the very useful habit of forecasting the main feature of its afternoon classical hour at the end of the session on the previous day, 4YA still fails even to name long works at their conclusion. I suggest that all new records should be "back-announced" (if that is the term), for the first six months of their use, and that any work of more than eight minutes duration should invariably be named after playing. ae * * "Music of the Broad Highway" seems a quaint description to give to Sibelius’s Night Ride and Sunrise, but one auxiliary station did so. Perhaps next time we have the Ride of the Valkyries it will be given in the pro-grammes-as "Off the Beaten Track." There is no need for these tags. To stick a few pieces of assorted classical music together, put them on at 10 p.m. and call the result "Now I Lay.Me Down To Sleep" is not programme orgamising. It is an attempt to be imaginative, but it would be much more imaginative to devise an articulate sequence of items, and simply apply some prosaic classification which would (a), warn off those who don’t want "heavy stuff," (b), give others the opportunity to listen. Disguised programmes of good music serve no purpose, because seekers of good music shy at fancy titles. The function of programmes printed on scarce and valuable newsprint is to be useful, not feebly decorative.