Listening While I Work (21)

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 247, 17 March 1944, Page 18

Listening While I Work (21)

By

Matertamilias

dreamt I was in an examination room. Before me was a paper. I can’t remember all the questions, but some of them ran like this: 1. Distinguish between: (a) Breakfast Music; Lunch Music; Dinner Music; and After Dinner Music. (b) Music While You Work; Music, © Mirth, and Melody; Melody and Rhythm. (c) Classical Hour; For the Music Lover. 2. Explain why music that cannot be announced in advance cannot be announced in advance. 3. Explain why some of the greatest works of Bach and Beethoven are not considered to be music for the musiclover. : [oe week I had a nightmare. I

Then, just as I was about to be dragged down among the baritones and basses, I woke up. * % * ROGRAMME terminology can be roughly classified into about half-a-dozen groups. There are, of course, these titles that tell you what to expect in'a general sort of way. For instance, we know that Morning Star means a single artist-though it may be Frank Sinatra or Yehudi Menuhin or Elizabeth Schumann. We know that the Classical Hour means music that we would not hear in dance halls or musical comedies, though it may be quite modern music. (What is an exact definition of "classical"? Serious?) We know that a Beethoven Hour will, as a general rule, mean 40 minutes or so of Beethoven. Music While You Work means a miscellany of recordings a little lighter and a little more "popular" or jazzy than say, breakfast music. Then there are those titles with an appeal to the would-be intellectually ‘superior: For the Music Lover, For the Connoisseur. There is also the sentimental appeal. What man or woman of 70 or over could resist These We have Loved? But who are we, anyhow? Is it you or me or Mr. Brown, the NBS or the American War Department? * * Ba "HISTORY is pretty useful," a small boy said to me not long ago. "You can win big prizes at the History And All That Quizz." But history as a money-maker has been shelved for a time in favour of NEWS. You don’t need more than your daily half-hour with the paper and a moderate memory to come away from 2ZB with the price of an evening with your girl at the pic(Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) tures. I should myself doubt whether the War Topics Quizz can last as long as the other jackpots. It will be hard to make the questions difficult enough for a normal newspaper-reading public. The questions I have heard would be quite fair to put to a class of Standard Six children, They may be popular enough with the winners, but will they have listening value? But the lure of the quizz is a remarkable feature of the ZB programmes, * * x VEN stranger to me than this craze for. quizzing (which has its monetary aspect) is the popularity of the Request Sessions from 2YD and from the ZB’s. The organisers of these programmes are so rushed with requests that sometimes it is five or six months before a specific item is put over. Requests come in higgeldy-piggeldy, every sort of record-swing, jazz, jive, crooning, comedy, grand opera, light opera, light classical. These sessions are enormously popular, But why? Almost any programme from almost any station has more point, purpose, and arrangement. I can only surmise that the lure of the request programme lies in the fact that it is personal. The listener asks for something which he wants to hear. It may come on the air a hundred times in other sessions before he gets it

in this special request session, but when it does come it is prefaced with his name and address. For weeks he may have had to listen to the "requests" of other listeners; but now, for a few short minutes, the airwaves are filled with an item put on specially for his benefit. It seems to me a high price to pay for such a brief gratification, but obviously I am in the minority.