RECENT MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 178, 20 November 1942, Page 2

RECENT MUSIC

By

Marsyas:

No. 37 =I

f CORRESPONDENT’S suggestion A that the broadcasting of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was a convincing answer to those who say that "most people are incapable of attention for more than thirty minutes" and also "to the fears of those who, including myself, dread intellectual snobbery" may have been an allusion to my query: "How many... managed to keep their attention right on it for the whole 75 minutes or so?" Though I have ignored past allegations of musical snobbery, I am bound to explain now that I certainly did not keep my own attention on the work for the whole time and have no expectation of doing so. I would not pretend to be satisfied by the introduction to the last movement, where Beethoven intrudes the clumsiness of his non-musical thinking (by trying over themes from the other movements, rejecting them, and then deciding on the great tune). It is not a musical process of the mind to be thinking out loud in terms of trial and rejection but a critical process, and clumsy criticism doesn’t make an introduction to the finale of what should have. been the greatest symphony ever written. Still, I do remember liking that little bit at twenty-five to eleven, * * * NE or two recent short programmes have pleased those who find solace in pre-psycho-analysis music. There have been Couperin, Scarlatti, and Bach recitals, madrigals, and Handel choruses, all health-giving reliefs from the newly plugged Rite of Spring, or Gershwin’s Concerto in F. As William Glock wrote recently in the London Observer, there is no need for an effort of the imagination to rediscover such music: "for the genius of Byrd and Wilbye and Weelkes (here I add Couperin and Scarlatti). shines through their works with no more need of an ‘explanation’ than with Haydn or Mozart." % *" * USTAV MAHLER’S Ninth Symphony, on the other hand, was a weapon placed in the hands of those who say that classical music is deadly dull and lifeless) Even an earnest attempt at respectful and attentive listening had to be abandoned long before the symphony had spent its rambling hour-and-a-half. (To put the whole thing on without a break was to show commendable enterprise, and it may be un- — to notice the enormities of the work, ) We permit our Great Composers to lose their grip of specific virtues hete and there: Beethoven may lose control of texture at a peak of excitement at which Haydn would retain it; symphonic non sequiturs are pardonable if they are as beautifully done as Schubert’s; but to lose grip of Music itself cannot be atoned for by all the virtues in the world. IF someone sent in Augustus John’s. ~ Madame Suewe playing the ’cello ra See to * knees (alreddy not ’cellist who could (a) afford to pay an yea ustus John to make her bowing stance look handsome, (b) could also afford to use up all her M, and most of her O coupons, in a dresslength that reaches almost to the painter’s feet,