Conjuring Up Music

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 283, 24 November 1944, Page 8

Conjuring Up Music

ON a recent Tuesday aiternoon the Auckland Primary Schools held their third musical festival, Mr. Luscombe (continued on next page)

(continued from prévious page) directing the grouped choirs and Professor Hollinrake the massed singing. On this occasion even the’ vast Town Hall was so full of singing children that there was no room for their parents, who had to depend on the radio for knowledge of the procéedings, and probably spent the afternoon (as mothers will) trying to distinguish the voice of John or. Beverley from 2299 other voices. Ea % * PROFESSOR HOLLINRAKE seems to have the most rare gift of drawing coherent music from large groups which have not rehearsed together before, and which are not mainly composed of gifted individuals. (And it is not only out of the mouths of babes that we can conjure up unexpected music, for a middle-aged and allegedly non-musical friend told me how she attended one of his lectures, and before she knew what was happening she was for the first time in her life singing at the top of her voice. along with everyone else in the room and enjoying it like anything.) But two men cannot by their own effort alone produce such a festival, and we must not forget that these songs were taught in the first place by dozens of teachers, working in noisy classrooms with tired pianos, and later shepherding batches of excited children through hot streets and crowded trams to group rehearsals and to their final performance.