What Our Commentators Say

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 303, 13 April 1945, Page 12

What Our Commentators Say

Bad Boy N her "Educational Diversions" from 1YA the other evening Cecil Hull was making delightful mockery of the verbosities, poly-syllables, and circumlocutions that are muddying our language, and clouding our thought. At only one point did I disagree. I cannot see that "juvenile delinquent" is regrettable as a new synonym for the good old AngloSaxon "naughty child." I am sure these two phrases mean two different things. A naughty child is our neighbour’s child, our friend’s child, or even our own child, whose crimes harm us ourselves and

have to be dealt with by us; his naughtiness is not due to the way we treat him, but to his inborn sin, and it is often more than we can do not to take a stick to him. The juvenile delinquent, on the other hand, is a child. whose crimes we read about in text-books and newspapers; we view his delinquency with charity and perspective, recognising it as the inevitable result of maltreatment, maladjustment, malnutrition and an unsuitable environment. We know that what he needs is by no means corporal punishment, but reorientation, readjustment to environment, rehabilitation, perhaps psychiatry and occupational therapy. It will be a sad day for the juvenile delinquent when we begin to think of him as a naughty child. Music for Easter FIFTY-THREE years ago Bernard " $haw was writing plaintively that there was nothing for the music critic to do in London at Easter time but go to church and listen to Bach’s Passion Music. All I can say to Mr. Shaw is that I wish I had half his complaint, for in Auckland it is as difficult to hear a little Bach at Easter as it is to avoid hearing a lot of Handel at Christmas. To hear the "St. Matthew Passion" relayed by 3YA from Christchurch Cathe dral, we need the weather on our side, and this year Good Friday brought instead of its usual static-laden storms, a pure autumnal calm; reception was good and the performance itself I thought the best I had heard in recent years. Sadly enough these improvements only strengthened my conviction that for this music a broadcast is better than nothing, bu’ not by very much. Personal attendance at the Cathedral would require the expenditure of a night in a queue, two on the Main Trunk, two on Cook Strait and at least £10 in cash, but if I will not. put comfort aside and undergo these rigours, I can scarcely make a grievance

of the fact that none of the choirs within walking distance of me will desert the -familiar paths of Stainer’s "Crucifixion" and tackle this more exhausting and perilous singing. Celts and Celts HE musical programmes for St. Patrick’s Day happened to coincide with an outburst of Highland pipe music | (announced recently in The Listener) and provided an opportunity to compare nation with nation, musically. (Incidentally can we hear some Irish pipe music sometime? Those Kerry pipers we are always being sung at about. . .?) It is a curious thing that to the unreconstructed Sassenach or the mere generalised neither-one-thing-nor-another Briton, the conclusion is inescapable that Scottish music, High or Low, is part of his own tradition and background, but Irish music, however much he likes it. i something definitely apart and alien. The cause must be chiefly historical -. the very different relations to Great Britain and England of Scotland and Ireland, just as we feel immediately friendly to Wallace, Bruce, or Montrose, and uncomfortable and hostile in the presence of O’Connell, Parnell, or Collins. But why it was-apart from reasons of distancethat the Catholic clansmen of Ireland inspired such disgust and contempt in the English of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, who regarded the Catholic clansmen of Scotland with admiration, even when with enmity, I do not think anybody knows. Elsinore Calling HE wave of literary recordings over Christchurch stations rolls on in a Shakespearian direction. 3YL on a recent Sunday had John Barrymore speaking Hamlet’s "Now I Am _ Alone" soliloquy and the following Sunday evening the same character (speaker not given) was heard in "O that this too, too solid flesh" and likewise "To be or not to be." Citizens of Christchurch must be beginning to wonder whether Canterbury College has captured 3YL on the quiet. As a matter of fact, the mere experience of listening to an eminent actor (even Barrymore), though a good idea in a near-theatreless country, seems very insufficient. Sound is only part of acting-and a film-conscious generation knows that much. And lacking the mood induced by the whole theatre atmosphere (though Barrymore’s speech was introduced by what was obviously Meditation Music), one tends just to sit and listen. It’s Lovely When You're In A VERY hearty BBC programme provided amusement from 3YA; called "Let’s Go for a Bathe," it was a series of anecdotes, funny facts, and songs about bathing through the ages, historically not always impeccable, but well executed. I particularly liked the way. in which splashes, gurgles, squawks and other aquatic noises were interwoven with the musical backgroufd. One or

two points left me a little confused: did Beau Nash throw somebody into the pool of the Royal Pumphouse at Bath in 17 umpteen, or did somebody throw Beau Nash? And whose wife was involved, anyway? The backbone of the programme, of course, was installed by Edwardian music-hall ditties (to my amazement, we were denied the Onehorse Shay); and it is interesting to see

how that great age and culture, as it recedes in time, becomes a legend and national heritage, and its characteristic musical forms played in a sort of halo of genial nostalgia. Whodunit "Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks; And when she saw what she had iid She gave her father forty-one." RECENT American play depicts the original of this rhyme, living a blameless life under an assumed nameé in a small town. It is quite possible, for Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the ghastly crime described so unfeelingly

in the popular jingle of the day. According to the version heard in the radio play from 4ZB, it is difficult to see just why the jury brought in so unequivocal a verdict. Lizzie’s case was one of the most notorious in history and one popular thriller by Mrs. ‘Lowndes, attempts to reconstruct the strange affair, but, like the radio play, leaves the reader guessing. If we think Lizzie guilty, we ate asked to believe that a woman’s hatred of her father, and the frustrated life led by herself and her sister, while the money dye to them was spent on their stepmother, is circumstance enough for her to commit two of the most horrible, maniacal, premeditated murders ever attempted. On the other hand, if we believe her innocent, as did the many church organisations which espoused her cause, the fact remains that nobody else had the opportunity or motive for doing two murders in the same house within two hours of each other. The fascinating Borden case remdins a mystery to this day, in spite of the definite verdict in Lizzie’s favour. The Edge of the Wedge ‘THE reconstructed Classical Hour from 4YA is indeed a success. It justifies its title by being devoted wholly to classical music, and lasting an entire hour. Also, it devotes the hour to works by one composer, and listeners may keep the time. free to hear a favourite, or make other arrangements for a day when the hour is occupied by someone they don’t particularly care for. There are many who would move heaven and earth to make time to listen to a whole hour of Bach. Even so, people who want good musi¢ can never get enough of it, and an hour passes like five minutes when it (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) fis filled up with a Suite or two and a Brandenburg Concerto. I notice, too, that 4ZB has made a brave gesture-a short session, once a week, called Good Music (implying, fairly accurately, that the music heard at other times from this station is pretty ordinary). I can imagine the jazz addicts protesting incoherently at the very thin edge of the classical wedge being gently insinuated into the programmes, Looking After Mother "HERE is a stage of tiredness at which the housewife can no longer distinguish essential work from non-essen-tial, when grim feat$ of sewing or springcleaning are undertaken late at night with a tight-lipped expression which can be interpreted as "I-will-die-in-my-tracks-before-I-utter-a-word-of-cgmplaint." At this point a woman needs to be put firmly in bed against her will until her sense of humour is again equal to what is demanded of it. And so I was sorry to see that the A.C.E. talk, "Looking After Mother," which presumably dealt with such problems, was broadcast from 1YA at the usual A.C.E, time in the morning’ when the family would not be around to hear it. Although New Zealand husbands are world-famous for thoughtfulness and domesticity, and New Zealand children unparalleled for independence and capability, I have never heard a busy housewife look forward to Easter or any other general holiday, with anything but dread. So I suggest that next Easter any propaganda in favour of looking after mother be directed at her family at an effective moment-say, dinner-time on Thursday. She may then be given a very unusual week-end, and if the measure of a satisfactory holiday is the alacrity with which one returns to office routine, it may not be a complete failure from father’s point of view.