Prelude and Hula

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 347, 15 February 1946, Page 8

Prelude and Hula

.UCH a title is likely to catch the eye; and the added knowledge that it is the work of a Hawaiian-Chinese composer, Dai-Keong Lee, naturally moves one to listen in the hope of learning something about the relation of Western, Chinese, and perhaps Polynesian elements in the mind of a composer of origins so characteristically 20th Century in their mixture. But in evaluating a work of this kind one really needs far more knowledge than one actually has of the composer’s background and of the various elements he is combining. Of Chinese musical tendencies we have had no opportunity to learn anything; and the hula we know only as a theme for) funny remarks and a distasteful noise on a ukelele. So it is hard to say what impression this interesting work leaves behind. Certainly it is Western in its form and spirit, with the other motifs imported and introduced; but if any listeners are sufficiently well-informed to say just what was the Chinese contribution and how it stood in relation to the rest, I am not among them. As for the place of Hawaii and its music, one can say with certainty that nothing in this work had anything in common with the "Hawaiian" ditties familiar to the listener; but this, though it may be good news, is a negative statement. One really could not gather the intention of the latter part of the composition unless one already knew what the hula is in Hawaiian life and how the outsider should regard it; and this knowledge commercial entertainment has made it impossible to acquire. There was one (continued on next page)

"(continued from previous page) other feature I thought I noted in "Prelude and Hula" which may be worth mentioning in New Zealand; and that was the idea of the Pacific Ocean as a vast and surrounding presence. There was something indefinable which reminded me of such dissimilar works as "Pacific Image" and Lilburn’s "Landfall in Unknown Seas."