RECENT MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 192, 26 February 1943, Page 8

RECENT MUSIC

(No. 51:

By

Marsyas

N approaching the end of a () year’s writing in this column, I was tempted to look back over the programmes and follow the example of W. McNaught, who made a survey in the BBC Listener of the symphonies broadcast in six months, to see whether any policy was being determined and followed. A survey derived solely from printed programmes cannot speak for the unprinted programmes, which are much more extensive, but all the same, it should not be discounted too much, because an item of which the listener has advance notice, and which is on the air at night-time, has an "intentional" audience, and a much bigger audience than a "hidden" item or a daytime classical feature, and it is the musical fare of the "intentional" listener that I wish to consider. Before I give some of the results of this very rough analysis, it should be noted that the tally is confined in the first instance to the four main nationals on four week nights and Sunday afternoons, with an odd Sunday night symphony thrown in, but with Dr. Galway’s Masterpieces of Music omitted; and in the second instance to the printed symphonic programmes of the four auxiliaries, 1YX, 2YC, 3YL and 4YO. One of the first things to strike the eye when the numbers of individual works and their hearings are set down is a correspondence between them that strongly suggests a plan of distribution. On the YA’s, 57 symphonies had 89 hearings (i.e., there were 32 repeats), and 61 concertos had 93 hearings; on the four auxiliaries, 58 symphonies had 100 hearings, and 62 concertos had 108 hearings. So obviously something determines how many of these things we are to get. What is it? First I will take the YA’s symphonies alone. (In the following analyses, a figure in parentheses after the composer’s name represents the number of different symphonies by which he was represented). Haydn (8) had 10 hearings, of which five were at 4YA; Mozart (4), had seven hearings, confined to 1YA and 2YA; Beethoven (6) had nine, the Eighth symphony having three of those; four Schubert symphonies had nine hearings; of which four were in series from 3YA; three of Brahms’s four were evenly spread over the four stations; two of Schumann’s were heard from the North Island only; Franck’s one symphony had three hearings, evenly spread out, and Tchaikovski. (4) had five hearings, including 3YA’s- series of four; Dvorak (2), was left untouched by 1YA and 3YA. : Of more modern symphonists, Sibelius (7) had 11 hearings, of which seven were in series from 3YA, the rest from 4YA; the single available examples of Bruckner and Vaughan Williams were heard once each from 4YA, while those of Walton and Albert Roussel had one hearing, each from 1YA. * * * WHat do these figures disclose? First, I would say an anomaly in the Mofart-Haydn department. There are about 10 Mozart symphonies on records, (Continued on next page)

Continued from previous page) but the YA’s used only four in their printed programmes for six months, and out of seven Mozart-symphony hearings, three were for the 39th. Likewise, there are about 18 Haydn symphonies recorded, but the YA’s used only eight, and out of 10 hearings, five were at 4YA. So far I refer to YA programmes only. Having noted these particular samples of top-heavy distribution, one looks to the auxiliaries for compensating figures, and finds that 1YX and 2YC played six Haydn symphonies between them. While 2YL and 4YO left him alone, thus to some extent balancing the two islands, But the four auxiliaries gave Mozart only four out of his 10 avail-

able symphonies, playing these 12 times altogether, and of these the 36th had five hearings! Beethoven seems to have had a fair go, as you might say, with 3YA finishing a tun through the whole nine, and 1YX doing the same shortly afterwards, In addition, 3YL once played the Ninth intact. Schubert’s symphonies were evenly spread over YA’s and auxiliaries, but Dunedin listeners had his Seventh twice, and none other, from their local stations. Brahms’s four symphonies had 13 hearings, evenly spread over YA’s and auxiliaries. * we * OW my figures as to programme content are not assertive, if they

are read with an eye to didactic construction. They reveal individual preferences, as for Haydn symphonies at 4YA; 3YA’s policy of using complete sets (followed by 1YX, too); a perceptible tendency for the more recondite works and "difficult" modern works to be left by the YA’s to the auxiliaries with their more urban audiences. And so on. Of omissions, the most noteworthy are Mozart’s symphonies. The series idea could well be applied to both Mozart and Haydn, Though anything in the nature of mechanical rotation is to be avoided where possible, it might produce more useful results than present conditions.